Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 10,748 Cubs cards from 71 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades. 

1950s / 1960s: 1955 Bowman #280 Clyde McCullough...The TV Set!!  McCullough was a lifetime backup catcher.  He played for 16 seasons (plus a two year interruption for WWII) but played over 100 games only three times.  In 1955 he played in only 44 games and hit .198.  He was 38 years old and would last for only 14 more games in '56. 

1970s: 1979 Hostess #67 Rick Reuschel  Rick Reuschel led the 1979 staff in starts (36), wins (18) and innings pitched (239). He was also the NL Pitcher of the Month in August, going 7-0 with a 1.45 ERA. 

1980s: 1989 Donruss Baseball's Best #250 Steve Wilson  In 1989 Wilson made the jump from AA to the Cubs, skipping AAA.  He made 45 relief appearance and 8 starts.  He was much better from the pen (3.63 ERA) than as a starter (5.08 ERA).  

1990s: 1998 Collectors Choice #335 Henry Rodriguez  O Henry!  The Cubs picked Rodriguez up from the Expos for the 1998 season.  He delivered the expected numbers, hitting 31 homers and knocking in 85 RBIs.  His 31 plus Sammy's 66 added up to a team record for homers by two teammates.

2000s: 2008 Topps Opening Day #65 Alfonso Soriano  I liked it better when Opening Day was a bit different from the base set; it would be nice if Topps started doing that again.

OPC 1974 Billy Williams

My first O-Pee-Chee Billy Williams card arrived....

....from 1974.  The front is identical to the Topps front.  

  

The Topps card is on the right, the OPC is on the left.  The difference in color is more of a scanner issue than the card.  

The backs are quite different.

Obviously the OPC card has a yellow background while the Topps card's is green.  And since the OPC card is Canadian, it features some bilingual writing.  You can see how the printing on the OPC card is smaller to fit twice as much writing.  They had to shrink the cartoon a bit, too, to fit both the English and the French.

I'm planning to pick up all of the O-Pee-Chee cards that feature Billy as a Cub.  I'll post them as the arrive.

More 2012 Season Tickets

I got the rest of my 2012 Cubs season tickets to add to the player collections. I know, they're not really baseball cards, but they are pretty cool looking.

Ernie Banks made it on two tickets. Even better was the game numbers they picked for his cards....games 14 and 41. The significance of those: Ernie wore #14 (and 41 is 14 flipped).

Too bad they didn't do that with the other players. Billy Williams is on game 61...

Andre Dawson got game 3....

...and Ryne Sandberg showed up on game 39

And how did the Cubs do in each of these games?

Ernie Banks game #14...they won, 5-4 over the Dodgers
Ernie Banks game #41...they won, 4-1 over the Diamondbacks
Andre Dawson game #3...they won 4-3 over the Nationals (their first win of the season)
Billy Williams game #61...they won 5-0 over the Rockies
Ryne Sandberg game #39...they won 3-0 over the Astros

Five tickets, five wins....not bad for a team that only won 38 home games.

 

Cubs and Astros Bookends

On April 10, 1962 the Houston Colt '45s played their first game as a member of the National League.  At home, the expansion franchise whalloped the league's only charter member in its original city, the Cubs, by a score of 11-2.

Don Cardwell took the loss for the Cubs, lasting only 2 2/3 innings and giving up five earned runs.

The Cubs only bright spot of the day was a homer by Ernie Banks.

Yesterday the Houston Astros played their final game as a member of the National League.  Like their first game, they faced the Cubs, though this time it was in Chicago.  And this time, the Cubs won.

Bryan LaHair had a walk-off hit in the bottom of the ninth inning to give the Cubs a 5-4 victory.  And with that, the Astros are off to the American League West, leaving the Cubs to the bottom of the National League Central.  I think I'm going to miss having the Astros around.

Topps 1969 - 2012 Complete Set Prices

Here is my monthly look at set prices for all the year in which I have a complete Topps set, 1969 - 2012.

The general trend is that prices dropped again this month.  I wonder if the number of buyers goes down at the end of the baseball season, as some may tire of the season.  Fewer buyers mean fewer bidders and lower prices.

There were a couple of purchases that show the how lazy some ebay buyers can be.  Sets from both 2002 and 2006 were bought for $69.95 each, but Buy It Now prices.  The other 2002 sets averaged about $22 and the '06 sets went for about the same.  But those were auctions, so the lazy and impatient buyers spent almost triple the auction price to get their set now.  And I'm sure the sellers that listed the sets at the inflated price and just let them sit there were thrilled.

The price to buy one of each set  was $5,704.24.  That's $270.07 less than a month ago and $1,094.49 below the price from just two months ago.

YEAR	Oct. 1	Sept. 1	Aug. 1	12 Mo. Avg.
1969	$913.80	$974.60	$1,467.21	$1,206.88
1970	$1,025.21	$807.29	$981.00	$926.58
1971	$670.78	$822.33	$668.77	$808.83
1972	$873.56	$1,028.55	$1,199.02	$1,024.57
1973	$419.80	$392.22	$358.30	$402.62
1974	$194.02	$258.49	$189.85	$239.74
1975	$272.06	$318.30	$426.92	$307.16
1976	$144.14	$124.42	$115.19	$166.23
1977	$143.45	$113.50	$148.62	$133.89
1978	$122.63	$108.20	$89.85	$95.50
1979	$82.41	$72.20	$78.64	$81.68
1980	$47.89	$56.00	$70.80	$66.40
1981	$32.72	$27.29	$31.51	$31.55
1982	$40.10	$50.74	$53.05	$41.82
1983	$36.71	$30.80	$30.84	$33.29
1984	$18.17	$30.24	$29.07	$27.56
1985	$28.53	$33.35	$31.99	$29.03
1986	$25.51	$19.88	$26.59	$16.95
1987	$13.91	$11.44	$7.30	$10.16
1988	$15.58	$9.88	$9.58	$9.38
1989	$6.64	$11.29	$6.36	$7.82
1990	$14.55	$5.49	$13.89	$9.50
1991	$18.13	$9.83	$8.65	$10.97
1992	$10.30	$10.40	$10.20	$10.03
1993	$16.43	$27.19	$36.28	$25.12
1994	$16.30	$20.20	$23.57	$22.33
1995	$26.29	$38.69	$33.20	$43.16
1996	$15.85	$13.71	$15.90	$21.53
1997	$37.34	$45.29	$64.99	$45.84
1998	$18.86	$41.41	$57.18	$42.08
1999	$27.01	$21.59	$33.45	$24.03
2000	$16.83	$21.69	$20.92	$20.76
2001	$46.89	$70.39	$41.14	$59.28
2002	$32.40	$38.43	$52.58	$35.95
2003	$33.59	$26.28	$55.66	$38.44
2004	$26.67	$30.02	$38.37	$28.70
2005	$15.26	$34.40	$31.98	$29.66
2006	$38.49	$28.22	$29.18	$25.57
2007	$21.72	$18.62	$10.75	$21.55
2008	$18.41	$28.18	$32.68	$28.48
2009	$46.23	$52.61	$62.36	$46.35
2010	$22.04	$27.09	$34.58	$30.51
2011	$24.45	$29.89	$30.59	$35.72
2012	$32.59	$33.69	$40.22	$34.17

Tile Tuesday: My Relics

Last Wednesday I wrote a post about the problems that I'm having with relic cards.  With more time to reflect, I don't think that I'll quit them cold-turkey.  But I do plan to be very selective with what I buy.

When writing the post, I went through my cards to come up with a list of all the different players in my relic collection.  I've decide to do one better than just a list....might as well show all of the cards.

I split them into two different tiles; one for vertical cards and the other for the horizontal cards.  All together there are 159 different cards.  To see just how far I've come, check out this post from January 31, 2009, when I got my first.

 

Panini Billy

This recent purchase is the first card from Panini in my collection...

....a 2010 Souvenir Stamps Billy Williams autograph.  I've never looked too seriously at anything  Panini has put out since they don't have an MLB license.  But this card I like; they did a nice job of getting around the lack of logo issue they face.

The picture they used is what Billy currently looks like.  He's still connected with the Cubs organization, and he shows up on Cubs broadcasts every now and then.  I wasn't shocked at all by the picture--this was much better than the monstrosity of a card that unlicensed UD made for Ernie Banks in this year's Goodwin.

The signed stamp is a nice touch, too, especially since the stamp was from 1969.  The design is obviously based on the MLB logo, which came out the same year.  And how about the price for the stamp...six whole cents.  The sad thing is that I remember 6 cent stamps.  That's what stamps cost when I was a kid.  My grandpa was a huge stamp collector and I clearly remember him talking about the price hike that would take stamps all the way up to 8 cents.  Darn inflation!

I was also ready to praise Panini for making the design of the card Chicago-centric.  Any sharp-eyed Chicagoans catch the element?

There's the Chicago flag on the top of the card.  I thought, "How cool; they couldn't use team logos so instead they used the city logo."

Then I looked at some other cards.

Frank Howard and Red Schoendienst never played for a Chicago team.  The Chicago flag on the card isn't the Chicago flag.  So much for Panini being cool.