A Couple Other Shakey's Cards

Today's post is a followup to Monday's.

The 1976 Shakey's Pizza set was not the only set from Shakey's, though it was the largest.  There was a set both the year before and the year after, and they each included one Cub.

The 1975 set was the first Shakey's-sponsored set.  It was produced by the Washington State Sports Collectors Association and 2000 sets were made.  The cards featured west coast greats, players either born in the west or who starred on west coast teams.

The one Cubs player was third baseman Stan Hack.  Hack was a native of Sacramento, California and starred for his hometown team in 1931.  In his first professional season, the 21-year-old Hack hit .352.  He was playing in the majors for the Cubs the next season.

The final Shakey's set came out in 1977.  The fronts are quite plain, with only a black and white picture surrounded by a red border.  The blue signature is a nice feature, though. There were only 25 cards in this set, of baseball's all-time greats.

Cap Anson was the lone Cub.  He is also the oldest player included.  Most of the players are from the '20s, '30s, and 40's.

I find it interesting that the final year the Washington State Sports Collectors Association produced cards was the first year of the Seattle Mariners.  You would think that with a new MLB team, interest in cards, and the Association, would have increased, and that more sets would have been made.  I wonder if MLB cracked down on them, assuming that these were unlicensed.

Tile Tuesday: Tinker to Evers to Chance

They aren't baseball's best double play combination, but they're among the best known, forever immortalized by Franklin Pierce Adam's 1910 poem, Baseball's Sad Lexicon.

These are the saddest of possible words:

"Tinker to Evers to Chance.

Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,

Tinker and Evers and Chance.

Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,

Making a Giant hit into a double –

Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:

"Tinker to Evers to Chance." 

It seems that if a card maker issues a card of one of the three, they generally end up with a card for all three.  Today's tile will show just that.  I've got 48 cards of the trio.  Most are in sets of three.

The top row is my three authentic T206s and three relic cards, though there are two Evers and no Chance.

The next five rows are various threes.  The seventh row has two of the three.  And the bottom row has reprints of other T206 cards of the three.

1976 Shakeys Pizza Cubs

Last week I picked up an oddball set of Cubs from the 1970s sponsored by the Shakeys Pizza chain.  In the 1970s, Shakey's Pizza was big, with over 500 restaurants across the US (today there are less than 60, mostly in California).  There was one a couple miles from our house, but we rarely went there.  I can remember going to Shakey's only once.  The reason for the lack of visits....the pizza wasn't very good.  In Chicago at that time, there weren't many chains.  Pizza was mom and pop places.  And they had very good pizza.  Why bother with Shakey's when you can have Vito and Nicks.

Well, enough about pizza.   Let's talk about baseball cards.  The Shakey's set wasn't a national set.  It was produced by the Washington State Sports Collectors Association in 1976 and sponsored by five local Seattle area Shakey's.  Cards were given away or sold at Association shows.

You can see on the back that the sponsoring restaurants are listed.  I wonder if one of the owners was a collector?

The cards were the standard size and the set was made up of 160 Hall of Famers.  Nine Cubs were included.  King Kelly is listed on the back as a Cub (they were actually the White Stockings when he played) though the card shows him in a Boston uniform.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 10,953 Cubs cards from 72 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1950s / 1960s: 1962 Topps #546 Moe Thacker Moe was a back-up catcher for the Cubs from 1958-1962. He played in a career high 65 games in 1962 and also raised his batting average 16 points over '61......all the way up to .187. The Cubs traded him after the season to the Cardinals

1970s: 1979 Galasso Glossy Greats #84 Billy Herman I've got 18 different cards of the Hall of Famer, but only two show him as "Bill". Usually its "Billy." And oddly, the back of this card does refer to him as "Billy."

1980s: 1989 Bowman #289 Ty Griffin This is an oversized card from Topps' first Bowman set. The Cubs took Griffin as their #1 pick (9th overall) in the 1988 June draft. He never lived up to the hype and the Cubs traded him away in 1991.

1990s: 1995 Pacific #72 Jose Hernandez Pacific gives us a nice action shot of Hernandez at Wrigley Field. The 1995 season was his fourth in the majors and he played in 93 games, his most up to that point. His most interesting stat was home runs--he hit 13--after hitting a total of 19 in all his previous eight professional seasons. Did he find his stroke or find the juice?

2000s: 2000 Upper Deck #346 Joe Girardi The 2000 season was a homecoming for Girardi, as he returned to the team that first signed him. He had a nice season, hitting .278 and he made the All Star team for the only time in his career.

 

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. 

• there were several high-end '69-'72 sets sold, reversing the trend of the past couple months.
• I've started to again see some crazy-high prices for sets sold via Buy-It-Now.  I don't understand people paying double the price instead of buying through an auction.  I usually see more of that in November and December, which I've chalked up to wife/mom/grandma Christmas present buyers.
• If you want to buy one of each, it will cost you $6,235.50, which is an increase of over $500 from October.

YEAR	Nov. 1	Oct. 1	Sept. 1	12 Mo. Avg.
1969	$1,056.38	$913.80	$974.60	$1,169.91
1970	$918.80	$1,025.21	$807.29	$922.10
1971	$836.87	$670.78	$822.33	$812.59
1972	$1,023.22	$873.56	$1,028.55	$1,018.28
1973	$278.91	$419.80	$392.22	$386.13
1974	$337.40	$194.02	$258.49	$253.07
1975	$328.01	$272.06	$318.30	$312.54
1976	$164.81	$144.14	$124.42	$168.42
1977	$174.38	$143.45	$113.50	$139.04
1978	$79.40	$122.63	$108.20	$94.48
1979	$68.60	$82.41	$72.20	$81.66
1980	$61.40	$47.89	$56.00	$66.20
1981	$29.67	$32.72	$27.29	$31.95
1982	$34.89	$40.10	$50.74	$41.05
1983	$44.56	$36.71	$30.80	$34.32
1984	$14.30	$18.17	$30.24	$26.88
1985	$34.52	$28.53	$33.35	$30.00
1986	$21.93	$25.51	$19.88	$17.67
1987	$5.74	$13.91	$11.44	$9.94
1988	$11.70	$15.58	$9.88	$9.57
1989	$9.10	$6.64	$11.29	$7.82
1990	$8.20	$14.55	$5.49	$9.58
1991	$10.60	$18.13	$9.83	$11.12
1992	$20.99	$10.30	$10.40	$10.97
1993	$32.88	$16.43	$27.19	$25.22
1994	$19.65	$16.30	$20.20	$22.38
1995	$34.12	$26.29	$38.69	$42.56
1996	$17.91	$15.85	$13.71	$21.17
1997	$42.01	$37.34	$45.29	$45.31
1998	$57.19	$18.86	$41.41	$43.37
1999	$25.99	$27.01	$21.59	$24.36
2000	$21.99	$16.83	$21.69	$20.46
2001	$55.30	$46.89	$70.39	$58.63
2002	$45.78	$32.40	$38.43	$36.13
2003	$35.02	$33.59	$26.28	$38.06
2004	$27.78	$26.67	$30.02	$28.53
2005	$24.14	$15.26	$34.40	$29.42
2006	$22.93	$38.49	$28.22	$25.02
2007	$23.26	$21.72	$18.62	$21.49
2008	$25.49	$18.41	$28.18	$27.94
2009	$46.82	$46.23	$52.61	$46.93
2010	$21.69	$22.04	$27.09	$29.65
2011	$32.09	$24.45	$29.89	$35.19
2012	$49.12	$32.59	$33.69	$37.16

No Thanks, I'll Pass

Billy Williams is my all-time favorite player and I've been working on adding cards to my player collection.  Right now the total stands at 163 different cards. It's not a huge number, but I don't mind just plodding along, adding a few here and a few there.

It doesn't happen often, but there are times when I see a Billy Williams card and say, no thanks, I'll pass.  Here's one of those cards...

....from 2008 SP Legendary.  I passed on the card; the picture was lifted from ebay.  It's a nice enough card, with a nice color picture of Billy on top of a black and white background.  Its a /50 card and has a BIN of $9.99...nothing too outrageous.  So why pass?

I think the reason is pretty obvious--that big green piece.  Somehow, the blue uniform and hat just don't seem to match with the green Oakland A's jersey.

Cards like this I can handle.  I didn't like that the Cubs traded Billy, but I accepted it.  But a green jersey on a card that shows and lists him as a Cub---no. Sorry, I won't accept it...I pass.

The Tennessee Waltz

I'm no dancer, so I don't have a clue on how to do the Tennessee Waltz.

But I do know the tune because of....

....Jim Hickman.  A native of Henning, Tennessee, every time he stepped to the plate at Wrigley Field organist Frank Pellico would play a couple lines of the song.

Hickman was an unheralded  but important part of the Cubs teams of the early '70s.  He had the best years of his career with the Cubs and made the All Star team in 1970.  It was his hit that sent Pete Rose home with the winning run and famous collision with Ray Fosse.

As far as I know, this card is the only solo signature card of Jim Hickman.  I've been looking for one for a while but they don't show up very often.  There's been a BIN sitting on Ebay at $30 for quite a while, but at that price, it's going to sit there for a while longer.  My card showed up as a BIN at 1/3 the price of the other.  I waited a day or so and then pulled the trigger.

And now, enjoy Miss Patti Page, with the 1950 #1 hit, The Tennessee Waltz.  (Sony wouldn't let me embed the video, so you'll have to click the link.)