So Long, Spellcheck

The annual purging of the starting rotation began late Friday night.  For the past three years now, the Cubs have traded away their number one starter.  In 2012 Ryan Dempster was sent to the Rangers.  The Rangers also took Matt Garza from the Cubs last year.  And on Friday, Jeff Samardzija (and Jason Hammel) went west to Oakland.

With each deal the Cubs got several prospects in return.  And with each deal, the big league team losses what little pitching they have and the season is over.  I'm getting tired of it.

The Cubs have been playing pretty decent ball lately with the starting pitching being a big reason.  I was actually starting to feel a little optimistic.  But now the top and bottom of the rotation are gone and the replacements aren't very good.  The optimism has been sucked away.

The Cubs system is loaded with prospects, top prospects, but most are position players.  Where is the pitching?  Is the plan to win games by 9-8 scores?

The worst part of the Samardzija trade?  After seven years of practice, I can now type his name without even thinking.  All that practice is now down the drain.  I wish any Oakland bloggers good luck as they learn to type out S-A-M-A-R-D-Z-I-J-A.

Spellcheck was not in my player collection, but I did end up with 62 of his cards.  There will probably be a couple more in sets already in production but not yet released.  For now, here is my farewell tile with the 62 cards.

Some Extra Cubs

So how does someone with over 12,000 Cubs cards end up with some extras?

When they are from Fleer's 1994 Extra Bases set.

I've started looking to add more team sets and came across this one, another that I hadn't seen before.  Fleer released its one and only set of Extra Bases in 1994.  The set consisted of 400 cards and twelve of them were Cubs.  Those are both healthy numbers.

The cards were also healthy---they were  the standard width of 2 1/2" but had a oversized height of 4 11/16"  The cards look like T206 tobacco cards on steroids.  Fleer had issued big cards for hockey, basketball, and football, so now it was baseball's turn.

I'm guessing that the set was released later in 1994 based on a couple things.  First, Ryne Sandberg is not among the Cubs in the set.  He retired  (for the first time) on June 11, 1994.  That would be the only reason for his exclusion.  The 1994 Cubs didn't have enough good players to bump Ryno out.  The cards also have pictures from the 1994 season, because the 125th Anniversary patch in seen on a couple of the players.  Since the strike wiped out the last month and a half of the season, killing any interest in baseball, I find it interesting that Fleer went ahead and released this set.  I wonder how well it sold?

As I said earlier, there are twelve Cubs in the set and here they are.  The '94 Cubs were a last place team and as you look through the players, I think you'll understand why.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Birthday America!

Happy 238th Birthday America!!

Now get away from the computer and go out 
and enjoy the day off!

The Kingman Error Saga

Two days ago I featured this card,

the 1978 Saga disc of Dave Kingman.  Sharp-eyed reader Ecloy noticed a mistake on the card.  I too had noticed it but didn't say anything about it--I was going to do some more digging around and devote an entire post to the error.

Did you find it?

The mistake is that the cards lists Kingman as a second baseman.  Kong played five different positions during his 16-year career (first, third, pitcher, left field and right field), but not once in 1941 games did he play second base.


MSA also made discs in 1978 for BigT and my version...

...shows his correct position, outfield and first base.

So some of these are wrong while others are correct.

That leads to a few questions:

I've checked the Standard Catalog and the Beckett database and neither lists an error version. I couldn't find anything anywhere that mentioned two different versions of the disc. Question #1: Is this an unknown error?

The Saga disc is pretty rare, so I couldn't find any other pictures...Question #2: Was the error fixed on the Saga disc?

While the Saga version if tough to come by, there are several copies of the BigT disc available...Question #3: Is there an error version of the BigT disc?

Yes...and I hope to add one to my collection soon!

We know that the BigT error was corrected.  I'll keep my eyes out for any other Saga discs that show up on Ebay to see if there is a corrected version.

I thought my Saga saga was over.  Apparently it is not!

Topps Complete Set Prices 1969 - 2014

Here is my monthly look at Topps complete set prices for all the years in which I own a set, 1969 - 2014.  The prices are from Ebay sold listings taken on May 1.  The prices do not include shipping.

• You'll notice that the title has changed slightly.  Now that Series Two is out, I've got complete set prices for 2014.  The price is pretty reasonable right now since all that is out there are hand-collated sets.  The overpriced factory set usually comes out in early August.
• 1969, 1970, and 1972 all had strong showings while some fairly inexpensive 1971 sets were sold.  That is a bit unusual; the 1971 sets usually have a premium since the black borders make them hard to find in good condition.
• A set from 2007 sold for only $0.99.  That is the newest 99¢ set that I've tracked.
• One of each set would cost you a total of $6868.08, which is nearly $1,100 above the price from February.

YEAR	June 1	May 1	April 9	12 Mo. Avg.
1969	$1,254.40	$1,449.60	$1,233.71	$1,031.51
1970	$1,461.41	$776.00	$884.80	$973.09
1971	$864.21	$1,023.20	$1,010.00	$794.56
1972	$1,031.00	$1,279.60	$856.20	$926.63
1973	$374.30	$338.31	$319.79	$389.88
1974	$289.27	$216.20	$196.76	$226.84
1975	$325.50	$263.50	$523.99	$295.13
1976	$152.91	$180.20	$157.67	$162.07
1977	$117.50	$135.60	$150.42	$148.12
1978	$111.89	$100.92	$96.60	$96.65
1979	$111.62	$100.70	$133.30	$89.16
1980	$48.79	$70.40	$71.79	$65.95
1981	$27.76	$21.91	$28.51	$26.41
1982	$41.19	$33.00	$29.19	$41.13
1983	$32.99	$29.63	$29.59	$33.55
1984	$28.04	$14.40	$17.89	$18.89
1985	$16.85	$19.99	$16.24	$22.86
1986	$15.12	$9.49	$15.28	$15.34
1987	$11.04	$9.82	$12.34	$10.01
1988	$11.48	$6.39	$14.97	$9.15
1989	$9.09	$6.39	$10.24	$8.18
1990	$4.80	$10.10	$22.83	$8.94
1991	$6.89	$11.30	$7.78	$8.13
1992	$10.39	$10.29	$9.89	$11.93
1993	$20.05	$15.11	$23.29	$19.98
1994	$11.50	$17.61	$20.36	$21.46
1995	$28.51	$39.89	$24.29	$32.33
1996	$12.11	$19.38	$14.30	$18.83
1997	$39.00	$33.19	$28.02	$41.36
1998	$31.58	$38.51	$26.73	$35.04
1999	$23.02	$16.41	$24.49	$22.72
2000	$19.79	$20.39	$15.30	$21.57
2001	$29.94	$36.60	$36.30	$41.97
2002	$25.99	$39.20	$34.53	$36.29
2003	$44.38	$31.74	$28.70	$35.55
2004	$31.45	$28.36	$29.05	$25.72
2005	$27.41	$30.59	$27.55	$30.05
2006	$26.70	$29.45	$19.54	$26.93
2007	$18.00	$18.19	$14.89	$21.77
2008	$26.19	$29.80	$21.91	$27.49
2009	$30.13	$28.92	$38.55	$33.44
2010	$18.82	$28.57	$22.29	$22.75
2011	$23.08	$16.80	$19.40	$24.04
2012	$22.00	$20.05	$22.28	$25.60
2013	$31.02	$31.74	$40.11	$37.75
2014	$37.81	----	----	$37.81

The Saga Saga is Over!

Back in January, 2012, I wrote a post about some 1976 Cubs discs I had picked up.  MSA issued the sets that featured identical fronts and a variety of sponsors on the back.  Mine were sponsored by Isaly's Ice Cream.

A second set was put out the next year, but only two Cubs made the checklist...

Jose and Bobby Murcer.  These again had a variety of sponsors and mine discs are from Chilly Willie.

A year later MSA was at it again, but only one Cub was included, Dave Kingman.

Back in 2012 I picked up the BigT version.  But there was one I was especially interested in, and it has taken me two and a half years to get it.

The Kingman version I was after was sponsored by Saga, and it is for purely sentimental reasons that I wanted the disc.  Saga was a food service provider for schools and colleges.  I spent four year eating Saga food at college, so when I saw that there was a Cubs disc with their name on it, I figured that I should grab one.  It wasn't that simple, however.

While most of these discs were given away at fast-food restaurants, the Saga discs were given out at schools (but not at colleges) when kids bought a hot lunch.  I'm guessing that a whole bunch of these ended up in the trash each day.  Their distribution was also a bit more limited than other discs, so the Saga discs are much harder to find.

Since January of 2012 I've had a saved Ebay search for "Dave Kingman Saga."  If one popped up it was either the 1977 version (when he was with the Mets) or a 1978 disc with an overpriced BIN.  I don't think I ever saw an auction for one until a couple weeks ago.  The starting bid was reasonable, and though someone did bid on it, I was able to snipe it at the end.

The seller quickly shipped the disc my way...

...and after 2 1/2 years, my Saga saga is over!

Cubs 1950 Scorecard

I was able to pick up a 1950 scorecard and fill in the hole in my collection.  My run now goes uninterrupted from 1949 to 2014.

The cover is another Otis Shepard beauty.  Unlike some of his later covers, this one actually shows a baseball player.  The directive from above must have been to showcase the action on the field.  In later years, when the product on the field wasn't very good, the covers highlighted a fun day at beautiful Wrigley Field.

This scorecard was unscored,  though the starting lineup was pre-printed by the Cubs.  Based on the advertising in the card for upcoming games, this was probably from Friday, August 19.  Only 3,823 people showed up on a rainy day at Wrigley to see the Pirates beat the Cubs 9-3.

Now that I've got no holes in my collection, I've been thinking about what to do next.  My initial thought was to start going backwards and see how far I could afford to get.  When I started looking at scorecards from the '40s I realized that they were not like the four-page cards in my collection.  Most were smaller, 12-page booklets like my 1941 program.  

I found that the first 4 page large card was used in 1948.  With that knowledge, I've decided that 1948 would be the starting point for me.  I'll end up with the complete run of Cubs full sized, four page scorecards.

The 66 cards that I have right now make a nice 6 x 11 tile....

When I add number 67, I'm not sure how I'll make that tile.  A prime number, 67 doesn't give me much to work with.