Where Does The Time Go?

In one of my last posts I gave credit to bloggers who could post everyday. I have good intentions about posting everyday, but things happen and before I know it, a week has passed.

Well it happened again. My last post was over a week ago. It's not because of lack of interest...it's been lack of time. So while my wife is watching "Ghost Adventures", I am....

...sorting hockey cards.

This disorganization problem that I have doesn't apply only to my baseball cards, it applies to all the cards I collect...and quite a bit of other things in my life.

Part of my excuse for not posting was spending part of the 4th of July weekend at my family's camp. It was the first time my wife and I had gone up all year, but unfortunately the weather did not cooperate.

It rained just about the entire time we were there.

I took this picture right before we left. As you can see, it had stopped raining. You can also see by the waves that it is quite windy. It was so windy that the waves were lifting the back of the pontoon boat so high it was coming down and landing on the dock. Not good.

I had already left before this started happening and had to turn back to fix it. When I got there my mom was on the dock holding onto the boat to keep it from doing any more damage to the dock.

What you see below is possibly the ugliest looking makeshift dock bumper you've ever seen in your life.

But it worked.

I've also gone through about half of the monster box that I wrote about in my last post. I had hyped it up to be a pretty crappy box, and so far the hype has been justified.

We'll start with 1986 Topps. Four hundred and fifty-three cards worth.

I already have a completed set that took me quite a while to build because there was one card I could never seem to find.

Now I have two.

Also included in the first half of the monster box were three hundred and thirty-one cards from 1987 Topps. Yes, I have enough of these to wallpaper a mansion, but I still have a fondness for this set as I had just started back into collecting at this time.

Fifteen bucks a box...and I bought a lot of them. I also was buying baseball card magazines whenever I could find them, so I have memories of a lot of fun collecting during this time period. So all eye-rolling aside, I did enjoy going through them.

This used to be one of the biggest cards in the set back in 1987. Devon White was coming off a monster rookie season...24 HR's, 87 RBI's and 32 stolen bases and finished fifth in the Rookie of the Year voting.

He was unable to match that season in 1988 and pricing for his 1987 Topps card fell back to Earth.

For those of you who were not collecting in 1987 (or even born yet) may be surprised to know that Cory Snyder cards used to be worth something! We used to put these in toploaders! No shit, really!

Finishing fourth in the 1986 ROY voting and having an even better 1987 season will do that. But like a lot of sluggers that start of strong and peter out (injuries being his downfall), those cards quickly came out of the top loaders and were placed in the commons bin, where they still are today.

The Red Sox had a lot of young players coming up from Pawtucket in 1987 and 1988 such as Ellis Burks, Jody Reed, John Marzano, Brady Anderson and Todd Benzinger, but the only player to appear in the 1987 set was Mike Greenwell (Burks was in the Traded set).

He also had the unenviable task of following a string of three HOF left fielders; Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemki and Jim Rice.

Now that's pressure.

He started off well, finishing fourth in the 1987 ROY balloting and second in the 1988 MVP race, but as the years passed, his production declined.

One of the only cards which has actually increased since 1987 would be the Barry Bonds rookie. Around the end of the 1987 season this card was going for about forty-five cents. Now it's the biggest card in the set at about eight bucks...and I got it for less than a penny.

This was one of my favorite cards back in 1987. He was unanimously voted Rookie of the Year that year with an eye-popping 49 HR's and 118 RBI's. At the time this was the biggest card in the set and still is one of the more valuable (valuable being a relative term) cards in the set.

Another card I used to throw in toploaders back in 1987 was Will Clark. (I would put anything that was listed over a dollar in those.) Obviously I had far less cards back then compared to what I do now. I think I may have only had a few thirty-two hundred count boxes of dupes back then. Now I think I have over thirty.

Did you know that for a short while, people used to hoard Kal Daniels rookie cards also? Those silly 80's. You would have needed a couple of bucks to acquire one of these beauties back then.

Now this card was never more than a common. Even back when price guides used to list a good portion of the 1987 singles, it never got any love. I had never noticed this way back when, but looking at this card now, I have to ask;

Where the hell is he?

Is that his backyard?

He played seventy-nine games with the Expos the previous year, what, they couldn't find an in-game photo of him? Poor guy gets shafted on his baseball card and to make matters worse, doesn't appear back in the majors until 1989.

And there you have the first half of the monster box. I'll try not to stay away so long next time.