2020 Cubs Calendar

The 2020 Cubs Calendar is now hanging at the WW World Headquarters.  This is a Christmas gift from my oldest.  I've had a calendar hanging here for the past eight years.  Early on I would have to comment on how out of date the calendar was.  Most of the players shown were no longer with the rebuilding Cubs.

This year is different.  All twelve of the featured players are still with the stand-pat Cubs.

Here are the twelve Cubs....

Lester, Rizzo, Hendricks, Quintana, Almora, Happ, Schwarber, Contreras, Bryant, Darvish, Baez, and Heyward - all the names you'd expect to see.

Done

I guess I'm done with card shows.

I went to a show on Saturday, my first time in over 30 years.

I didn't have very high expectations.  The show would be small, about 30 dealers.  The weather was lousy, with heavy rain predicted for the entire day.

The rain came.  Some of the dealers didn't.  About a quarter of the tables were empty.  I got there around 10:00 a.m., right when the show was opening.  I planned to take a picture to post here, but decided not to.  There were so few people in the room that I thought it would seem odd for me to get out my phone and snap a picture.

I don't want to stereotype, but there were at least three dealers that looked...

.... like this.  One of these guys was sitting on a chair in front of his table, thumbing through boxes of his cards.  I couldn't get near his stuff (nor did I really want to).

Many of the tables were filled with modern stuff.  There was lots of football and basketball.  It surprised me.  I assumed that baseball would be the main sport, but it wasn't.

A few guys had some older Topps baseball.  Nice, but I've got all the Cubs.

I did chat with a bit with one dealer who had all vintage  He asked what I was looking for and I told him Cubs.  He got very excited and pointed to some older Topps cards of Ernie Banks, including his rookie card.  I had to tell him I already had those cards, that I have the entire run of Topps Cubs.  Instead of dismissing me, he pointed to some other old stuff.  I found Bowman card and I actually made a purchase.

This is the 1949 Bowman card of Phil Cavarretta.  All of the '49 Boman that I have are reprints.  I think I may take a slow and steady trek towards replacing the reprints with the real cards.  So there is a nice positive to come from the show.

Otherwise, I think I'm done.  My problem with card shows isn't necessarily the show, but its how narrow my collection is.  I don't need any of the modern stuff -- I have them already.  I don't need the vintage Topps, I've got all of them too.  The cards I'm looking for, my white whales, are too oddball-ish to be seen at a small show.  If they aren't anywhere online, the chances I'll see them at a show are pretty slim.

The only time I think I'd go again would be when the National returns to Chicago.  The sheer volume of dealers and their cards gives me a little hope.  But otherwise, I'm done.

Five Random Cubs Cards

I've got 17,567 Cubs cards from 207 different brands listed on a spreadsheet. A random number generator picked five cards, one each from the past several decades.

1900s - 1970s: 1978 Hostess #90 Bobby Murcer Murcer looks like a nice enough guy, but Madlock for Murcer was a bad trade.

1980s: 1988 Donruss Traded #45 Darin Jackson Jackson has a bit of a "deer in the headlights" look.  I be most rookies had that feeling.

1990s: 1990 Swell #95 Ernie Banks  I love all the color on the Swell 1990 cards.  The yellow, blue and red on the card match well with the blue and the red of the Cubs uniform.  Nice!

2000s: 2007 Topps Chrome #174 Carlos Zambrano  The 2007 Topps design was the opposite of the Swell design -- very little color.  Yuk!

2010s: 2019 Topps 150 Year of Baseball #21 Javier Baez  We'll see if Baez makes the 175 Years of Baseball set in 2044.

2001 Donruss Classics Cubs

A couple weeks ago I mentioned that I was going after all of the Cubs from Donruss Classics, inspired by a card from reader Chad.  All of the Classics cards have now arrived and are ready to show.

The 2001 Classics set was the debut set.  It is made up of 198 cards which were a mix of current, rookie, and retired players.  It was originally going to have 200 cards, but licensing issues with Sandy Koufax and Robin Roberts cut it to 198.  The rookie cards were limited to 585 copies while the retired guys had 1,755 copies.  The limited numbers with the rookies meant I had to spend more for some unknowns than usual.

There are eight Cubs in the set.

 

Sammy Sosa and Kerry Wood were the only two current Cubs included.  The current players were given cards with a silver tint.  These were common cards, so 18¢ each was all it took.

 

 

Four Cubs were in the Legends category,  I already had the card of Billy in the player collection so I just had to move it from one spot to another.  The others were /1755 and it took a few bucks each to land them.  Does it strike anyone else as odd that Donruss made 1,755 of each of them?  That is a very weird, unround number.

 

Here are the two Cubs rookies, Nate Frese and Corey Patterson.  The /585 (another weird, unround number!) sent me on a bit of a chase.  The Patterson card was found on Sportlots for a buck while I had to go to Ebay for Nate Frese.

Haven't Gone In Years

Tomorrow I’ll be going to something that I haven’t visited in a long, long time.

I’m off to a card show!

Coldwater is just a 30 minute drive from my house.  I figured it was worth the drive.  

I have no idea what to expect.  Will there be a room full of dealers?  Will I find any of my white whales?  Or will I spend more time in the car than at the show?

I'll update you on Monday.

Recapping the 2010s

Here's the final look at the 2010s - the decade with a 100 loss team and a World Championship.

The number of brands varied from 17 to 30.  Despite its monopoly, Topps keeps cranking them out.

Topps picks a player as the team favorite and then rides them to death... Bryant four times, Castro three times, and Rizzo twice.

The decades high year, 2016, was more than double the lowest year, 2013.  The 2016 number got a big boost from several World Series sets.  The average for the ten years is almost exactly 500 --- 500.1111 according to my Excel sheet.

I'll wrap things up with a look at all 4,501 Cubs cards from the 2010s.  Sorry, but you'll really have to squint to see them.  Trust me, they are all there!

 

Looking Back at 2019

I had to wait for the Bowman Heritage cards to arrive before I could recap the final year of the decade.

Total Number of Cubs cards in the collection from 2019: 480, which ranked sixth

Total Number of brands collected: 30 brands, the most of the decade. New or revived include Bowman Heritage, PKWY, Total, and Utz.

Brands and number of Cubs cards:
Topps - 102
Allen & Ginter - 44
Autographs - 5
Archives - 17
Big League - 18
Bowman - 17
Bowman Heritage - 7
Bowman's Best - 3
Chronicles - 3
Chrome - 10
Diamond King - 7
Donruss - 11
Factory team set - 17
Finest - 6
Fire - 6
Gallery - 9
Gold Label - 5
Gypsy Queen - 13
Heritage - 58
Holiday - 12
Living Set - 4
National Baseball Card Day - 10
Opening Day - 9
PKWY -2
Pro Debut - 8
Relics - 2
Stadium Club - 12
Topps Stickers - 22
Total - 30
Utz - 6

Ernie Banks - 1
Billy Williams - 7

The player with the most cards: Kris Bryant tops the list for the fourth year in a row, coming in with 62 cards.

The nastiest looking card:  He doesn't have his hand in his mitt and the unshaved look make for a nasty card.

My favorite card:  I really enjoy listening to Pat Hughes on the radio, so when I saw that he was included in archives, I was very happy.