Purchase From Fellow Twins Collector

I bought a handful of cards from my friend Randy, who has an amazing Twins collection.  He has a thread in the "Show it Off" section on sportscollectors.net that will blow you away.  He has lots of rare stuff.  He's helped me out a lot with my collection, selling me some of his duplicates, which become the highlight of my collection.

This purchase spans five decades from 1962 to 2016.

The 1962 card is from former-Twin Jose Valdivielso and looks nice with a vintage ballpoint signature.

I also got a couple great cards from 1965.  Both Vic Power and John Roseboro played for the Twins during their careers.  These nice-looking blue sharpie signatures help fill some holes in my 1965 set that I haven't really added to much lately.  I need 142 cards still from this 598 card set.

I added a couple cards to my 1982 set as well.  These two Ken Griffey Sr. cards bring me to 185 cards of the 792 card set, so still a long ways to go at 607 cards left to get.  

I've approached this set a little differently.  In the past, I've sent out mass mailings to the common (free) players to get an early, large number of cards out of the way.  With this set, I've been focusing on the All-Star and Hall of Fame quality players to avoid missing out on some of them while I work on the commons.  It will be easier and cheaper to buy the common cards of deceased players than the higher quality players, where the prices will rise significantly once they are done signing (or pass away).

So, I already have players like Reggie Jackson's three cards from the set, a Pete Rose card, and cards from Gossage, Gary Carter, George Foster, Harold Baines, Bert Blyleven, Carl Yastrzemski, Carlton Fisk, Rod Carew, etc., etc., etc.

This 2013 Topps Heritage Vance Worley card is tough to come by in decent shape.  Apparently he holds a grudge against the Twins or something, and if he'll sign the card, he scribbles out the Twins name and their logos.

I got one from him ttm in the spring of 2014, which is nice but he personalized it. 

I took this opportunity to upgrade to a nice, blue sharpie signature without a personalization.  I just need a couple cards from Mauer (including one variation) and one from Oswaldo Arcia, to complete this team set.

And I added another Twins Heritage card to my team set with a 2016 Jose Berrios card.  I haven't created a web page to track this set yet, but I think I'm about 9 cards out of 18 or so.

In general, my Twins team sets from the Heritage and Allen & Ginter sets are missing a lot of Mauer, Santana, and Hunter cards.  I have caught up pretty well with Justin Morneau, although it wasn't cheap.

Bert Blyleven Metrodome Seatbacks

Today I received two Metrodome seatbacks from a Bert Blyleven signing.

I bought one seatback specifically with his jersey number, 28, and will leave it with just his signature on it.

I also sent the seatback that belongs to my 4-seat row.  While three of the chairs have the number of a former Twins Hall of Famer and are signed only by that player, the #5 seat didn't happen to match another Hall of Famer, so I decided to use it to gather the signatures of other Twins Hall of Famers.  So far, this seat has Jim Kaat, Jack Morris and now Bert Blyleven on it.

I'd like to add Rod Carew at some point to the #5 seat.  I don't have very specific criteria for who would sign the seats, other than Twins players in the Hall of Fame.  Molitor is wearing a Brewer's cap on his Hall of Fame plaque, and Morris wears a Tiger's cap.  The others wear a Twins cap.  I suppose I could add Jim Thome if I wanted, or David Ortiz.  Even Steve Carlton, even though he was only on the team a year and a half or so.  I think I'll focus on getting Carew, and probably leave it at that.

1971 Topps Purchases and a Doc Gooden Signing Return

I made two different, small purchases of some signed 1971 Topps.  One from an SCN member, who had their cards listed on eBay, and another via eBay itself.  Despite a total of only 13 cards between the two purchases, I bought duplicates of both Paul Blair and Jackie Hernandez.  Obviously I'm not paying enough attention to what I'm doing.

A couple of these are upgrades, but most are new and helping me knock some off my wantlist for this set.  I'm down to needing about 245 more to complete the set.

In addition to the 71s, I also bought a 1963 Topps signed by Billy Pierce, and a 1965 Topps signed by Al Weis.  I plan to send a few cards to Weis soon, to try to upgrade a few cards he previously signed in black, but bought the 65 on a whim since it was cheap and looked nice.

I also received 7 cards back from a Dwight "Doc" Gooden signing, including his 1984 Topps Traded rookie card, which I had authenticated.  I took the opportunity to have him sign some of the 1972 Topps awards cards including the Cy Young, Rookie of the Year, and Minor League Rookie of the year.

I also received a couple Metrodome seatbacks back from a Bert Blyleven signing that I'll post about shortly.

2000 Fleer Greats of the Game - Sutter and Yastrzemski

I started working on the getting the 2000 Fleer Greats of the Game set signed in 2003, when I sent my first one to Bobby Doerr.

I've worked on it gradually since then, buying some of the certified signed versions as well as getting the base cards signed both ttm and at signings.

I just added two more today with a purchase from Bud's Sports cards via eBay: Bruce Sutter and Carl Yastrzemski.

This is one of two post-2000 sets I work on with the 2008 Goudey being the other.  Both sets have some great names and good signers which make them a reasonable project to work on.  I still have several signers left to get in the GOTG set, but some are pretty expensive, like George Brett and Mike Schmidt.  There are also a few I missed simply by not really focusing on the set hard enough.  Rico Carty and Dave Parker come to mind.

Following up on the smeared cards from the Vicente Romo signing, the promoter has agreed to refund the signing fees on the smeared ones and is also trying to find a replacement for the 75 Topps, which he thinks he might have from a previous signing.  Unfortunately, he doesn't have a 71 Topps, so I went ahead and bought one on eBay today.

Signing Returns (Disappointing) and a Goose Gossage TTM Return

The highlight of the day was a return from Goose Gossage, who signed his half of the 1979 Topps Leading Firemen card as well as his 2025 Allen & Ginter.  He always does a great job.  It looks like he will sign for $10 per card, but the fees people on SCN include vary between $10 and $25.  I included $20 per card just to be safe.  

I have at least one more card I'd like to get signed by him and that's his 1982 Topps.  I have his "In Action" and "All Star" cards signed from that set already.

I also received returns from three signings from the same promoter that I think were done in Mexico, but I'm not 100% sure on that.  Three signers that don't sign ttm so these signings are great to fill holes in set collections.  It's odd how affordable the fees are ($10 per card), yet signed cards sell for significantly more online $30 plus for many of these cards.

I sent in a single card to Orlando Sanchez, a 1982 Topps, which turned out nicely.

I sent five cards to their signing with Horacio Pina, which also turned out nice.

I sent in 10 cards to their signing with Vicente Romo, which included cards from many of the sets I work on, as well as a duplicate 1971 Topps, which is a high number card.  I bought a nice, graded copy of the card for over $20, and also ordered a lower quality card as a back up in case the nice one didn't arrive in time.  They both arrived, so I included them both.

Unfortunately, not only were both of the 1971 Topps cards smeared, but the 1972 and 1975 Topps were also smeared.  4 of the 10 cards were smeared.  The most disappointing part is that the promoter simply returned the cards with no note or anything to acknowledge the situation.  They had to notice that these were smeared.

Other promoters I've worked with in the past under similar situations at least included a different signed card to try to compensate for it.  And I've had two incidents with Fan HQ, where they went WAY out of their way to correct a signature, at their effort and expense, which far exceeded my expectations and I would trust them with any item in the future.

Anyway, I've reached out to them on SCN and can see that they've read my message but haven't replied yet.  I'm guessing I'm not the only one who received smeared cards if nearly half of mine were.  Here's a better view of the affected ones.