MrMopar's New Dodgers Autograph Thread (and other interesting items on a slow mailday)

[Dodgerfan74]

Another Don, this one /50. Good design and the gold will look great next to the red version and the black versions. View attachment 339884

A Garvey /25. View attachment 339885

This guy arrived after almost a month in the USPS system, with no updates for almost 20 days in the middle! Banty Red. I don't love the pose, but it's an age appropriate image.View attachment 339887

Question What do you mean by "Banty Red" ?
I can't wait until 2023 Heritage comes out-1974 design

 

[mrmopar]

Question What do you mean by "Banty Red" ?
I can't wait until 2023 Heritage comes out-1974 design

Banty Red is a brand name used by a guy who makes very high quality custom cards. If you have ANY interest in custom cards and have bought or are thinking of buying, I'd highly recommend Banty Red, Sporting Life or Helmar (although I don't actually own any). There may be some other better quality cards, but in a sea of literal "****" of poorly made customs, these guys do it right.

I was really hoping Topps would have included Wes Parker in the 1973 Heritage set. He was gone by 74, so unless they feature him some other way, they missed that boat in a hard way!

Today brings my first (I think) Tribute Garvey. The unexplained and sudden Garvey popularity and pricing insanity with new cards continues, and frankly I have gotten used to it. i'm still mad when I lose a card I really wanted, but it is almost freeing to not need to win every single new Garvey card, especially when people are listing most at bloated prices to begin with, almost certainly due to them seeing "COMPS" (I hate this word used for card sales) seeing on certain cards due to 2 or 3 rabid buyers. A base Topps on demand card is listed right now BIN for $199 (with no BO feature). Sadly, some dip will probably pay that! This has allowed me to explore other card opportunities and I am enjoying that freedom.



If you are going to land dupes, why not make it a good one. I think this may be my 4th or 5th copy of this card now. Came with the Nabisco Cert. Not all do and I am a little leery of some of these, because he died during the promotion and I have seen sheets of unsigned cards.

Buehler Brooklyn or Montgomery 582, can't remember which is which, /30. The team script brings me back to 1978!

Rick Monday & Andy Messersmith. I feel the need to discuss Messersmith's signature. As I understand it, he has stopped signing, period. I have even seen a couple index cards where he stated he was not signing, then signed his first name to the card. His signatures are not Mike Marshall level, but they tend to go for more than a player of his status should, other than his refusal to sign. Here is where it gets a little odd. There doesn't seem to be a shortage of his signature on the market to justify the prices they bring. Clearly, if you want a Messersmith, you can probably land one for under $20 with a little patience. However, you can't get a specific item signed now, so we have to pay for that forever? Sometimes I really wonder about collectors and their mindsets.

That said, I do still really want his 1979 OPC card signed. If you have one or see one, keep me in mind.



Last lot is nothing new, but a neat find and a bundle that saved me vs buying all 3 separate.

Mel Allen
Phil Rizzuto
Red Barber

Bought for Barber mainly, but can't complain about the other 2.

 

[Dodgerfan74]

Hi,
Thank you for clarifying the term Banty Red for me. I have noticed "Custom Cards" being shown on Facebook groups that a person made for themselves or for another person who is a fan of a player or team. I know there is/was a Canseco fan who made custom cards of Canseco on another site.
I still think Garvey should be in HOF. My favorite player as a kid along with "The Infield". He is signing in California don't remember where. I would love to get his rookie card I have signed and a Topps Chrome replica rookie card with his autograph from Heritage.
Do you have any other Garvey signed autos besides cards?
Sad how Drysdale passed away in his hotel room. Vin had to keep quiet on air until they notified Drysdale's wife. I remember Drysdale doing Angels games too.
1978 good Baseball year that didn't end well for Dodgers.
Cool Red Barber autograph.

 

[mrmopar]

Hi,
Thank you for clarifying the term Banty Red for me. I have noticed "Custom Cards" being shown on Facebook groups that a person made for themselves or for another person who is a fan of a player or team. I know there is/was a Canseco fan who made custom cards of Canseco on another site.
I still think Garvey should be in HOF. My favorite player as a kid along with "The Infield". He is signing in California don't remember where. I would love to get his rookie card I have signed and a Topps Chrome replica rookie card with his autograph from Heritage.
Do you have any other Garvey signed autos besides cards?
Sad how Drysdale passed away in his hotel room. Vin had to keep quiet on air until they notified Drysdale's wife. I remember Drysdale doing Angels games too.
1978 good Baseball year that didn't end well for Dodgers.
Cool Red Barber autograph.

I have just about anything Garvey related, signed. Collecting one player aggressively is fun, but looking back, I could have bought so much more of a variety. I enjoy my Garvey collection, but wish maybe I would have laid off the dupes a bit and went after some other good stuff at the time. Missed out on a lot because I was so focused.

 

[mrmopar]

Pair of Muncy, one base, one /5. Oddly, the /5 wasn't much more than the base.

 

[mrmopar]

Zoilo Versalles on the back of his Dodger PC.

Pee Wee Reese on a Sig Rookie card. I don't think they did certified copies of these. I am not sure I am 100% confident in the signature. His sig was so basic, that it seems it would be an easy forgery target. He did die a few years after this card was issued, so a slower signature is not out of the question.

This is a good way to get a cheap batch of signatures usually, although the background is crap. Having the players sign inside would have been ideal over the cover. The seller only advertised Paul LoDuca and Alex Cora as "key" signatures. I have not lit this thing up and cracked out the magnifying glass yet, but I did see Lance Parrish, a coach that season and Eric Weaver. I hope there are some other hidden gems or just some obscurities hidden in plain sight.

 

[Therion]

Whoa. In the preview image, it didn't even look signed!

 

[mrmopar]

Exception mail day today and it was a surprise that made it that way. First off, the stuff I knew was coming...

Archives Muncy /32. I have always liked this design for the 1969 World Series and that Muncy image is a perfect fit.

Kyle Farmer Elite /10. I am a sucker for CHEAP low serial number Dodgers common players. They are not worth much, but I find much joy in them.

Oliver 84T Traded. I must have nearly all his regular T/F/D and traded cards signed by now. Maybe missing a few, but not many, if any.

The final piece starts with this, the item I won. It's a small (3x5ish) photo pair of Garvey and Cey. I like stuff like this, but never willing to pay a ton. One of my rivals seems to buy any Garvey photo and usually pays more than me. I have so many now that adding a few here and there isn't worth fighting, unless it is something very special. The lot listed for $0.99. I bid and remained high bidder. I never set a snipe, figuring it wasn't worth more than a buck, with the nearly $5 shipping added on top. Shipping is KILLING the low end market, but that is another rant for another day.

Seller was from CA and said that these were mailed out to fans. I had not heard anything like that and with the team issued postcards being pretty common for Dodgers, I had a hard time believing that. I don't know though, maybe a few of these did end up in fan mail requests.

I ended up winning the Garvey/Cey lot for that 99 cent bid. Cool, I guess.



When I opened the package, I noticed a few extra items. one was one of those 1980/81 Topps Super Team Garvey cards. I have a ton of them and they are very common. Still nice gesture, as the seller likely had no idea I was such a huge Garvey collector and have nearly everything ever made. There was another regular Garvey card and something larger folded up.

I unfolded the paper item and immediately saw it was something I had never seen before. its about the size of a magazine page, on white semi-gloss paper. It's like one of those cut sheets that Topps used to advertise upcoming products. It does not appear to be cut from anything, so I think it was stand alone. No perforations, rips, etc. I was looking to see if this was just a page removed from a magazine or program, but it appears it was not.



I then did a search and found a little bit of info, including this ebay listing. The Sportsmen of Stanislaus Club was apparently a private men's club in Modesto, CA that no longer exists, but apparently they issued a semi-professional looking newsletter for a number of years, based on the description from the ebay listing below. This may have been an insert or perhaps even a flyer given out to members for an appearance by Garvey. Hard to say without more info, but this is something I find incredibly interesting and appealing as an oddball collector. THIS is what keeps me collecting year after year, for sure. The new, artificially scarce numbered inserts and stuff can be fun, but they can't tough this kind of thing in my opinion.

So my carefree purchase that I nearly lost out on because I didn't protect or try harder netted me a unique Garvey collectible I had never seen before, nor knew of it's existence. I'd say that was a pretty good mail day and an even better gesture from that seller, who also had no idea how excited I would be to receive this. My only minor complaint was that it was folded, but better than then to not have received it and continued to be ignorant of it's existence!!!

 

[Yanks2151]

Man that is an awesome addition. It’s still amazes me when you find stuff you don’t know exist with all the searching you do. Cool story!

 

[mrmopar]

A Sporting Life add. This is another custom maker I have a lot of respect for. Have a handful of cards they have made. Very similar in quality to Banty Red.

This guy may or may not ever make the list of Dodgers, but figured the sooner I can get a cheap add of any prospect, the better off I am. The market for untested prospects, especially Bowman, never ceases to amaze me. I'll never join that crowd, but the ability to drop $100s-$1000s on cards of guys who might never make the majors, let alone be stars is simply amazing to me. I'll take the cheap off brand signature, then maybe upgrade later if the player never pans out. Not saying I love the design of most of these crappy no-name sets, but it checks a box. I often miss nice cards with my frugality, but this is about the autograph more than the card for me anyway. When they hit the 40 man roster, it seems more likely, but this guy isn't there yet. Samuel Munoz.

This guy seems to have never been all that touted, so I can find deals on low print run cards, like this /25. He's been with Texas since June 2021 though.

My bigger mail day was non-Dodger, so check out the July Pick-up thread if you care to see...

 

[mrmopar]

The lone Dodger item today, Alex Wood Gold/50. I didn't care for the set in 1983, but it has grown on my sone. I do like the different color borders that we have seen in various retro products, but nothing pops like a gold border.

 

[mrmopar]

Got another of these now seldom seen 582 Montgomery Garvey Club autos. Not sure how limited these were, but they don't seem to pop up all that often. Apparently it was some sort of member voted card.

Added the red Will Smith. I do like this card design and the different colored parallels. Wish I would have tried harder to get all the Gonsolins before his year in 2022. These are /25.

 

[Therion]

I'm also a fan of the design. I wish they weren't stickers.

 

[mrmopar]

The Duke!

Trea Turner.

 

[mrmopar]

A pretty great mail day for Dodger content. Starting out with a Darien Nunez minor league card. What I really need to do is send this to him and hope he signs and returns it. Anyone who does TTM, have a good address they'd share? Looks like his is still in AAA in Oklahoma, but I'd be afraid to send it to a minor league club for fear it would just get lost. ideally, someone else gets this or another card signed and I can just buy it. That is what makes me a terrible TTM seeker. I'd rather just buy them.

This actually came the other day with a bunch more of these TCMA history series, mostly Dodgers/Yanks. The only one I felt I needed to share is Chuck Templeton, because he didn't seem to either sign much or be a popular request.

The big pair of the day are these Heritage cards, Duke 57 design and Zimmer 58 design, red ink /58. Keep trying to win the Red Duke whenever I see it, but always lose out on price. Someday perhaps?

 

[mrmopar]

Garvey /25. Not as excited to add new Garvey cards anymore, now that I have come down off the ledge! Still, nice to continue to slowly build on a lifelong collection for now. I have found the excitement redirected to other pick-ups that I missing in the past because I was so hyper-focused on just Garvey.

Jack Little. These are kind of fun, because of the obscurity. While I desperately chase any new Dodger roster member, there are guys that pop up that never play for the Dodgers let alone MLB ball. Because he has a dodger card though, it makes the grade. Looks like Jack may be out of baseball at 23. He is showing 2021 stats after no 2020 (Covid, probably) in A+ league, where he did OK in 24 games.

 

[mrmopar]

Added another Colletti, not the best quality sig, so it was cheaper.

Also 5 67T autos.

 

[MrMet2.0]

Garvey announcing AllStar game MVP


Sent from my iPhone using Freedom Card Board mobile app

 

[mrmopar]

An All-Star kind of mailday!!

Snider/5.
Murray/15.
Jimmy Lewis 1/1.
Reggie Smith.

Not in uniform, but he counts. I liked this one because it's his last card and what I will assume is a rare Indians autograph.

This final item was actually a gift. I offered to buy it from the seller. He tried to auction it off for a higher price, but said if it didn't sell, he's sell to me at my offer price. After no bidders at the initial price, I asked if the buy at my price offer was still good and he said he'd just send it to me! If he appeared in the photo, it probably would have sold, so thankful he is not, but would have been a much cooler item. I am not positive on the date, but Krisha Garvey was born in Oct 1974. His other daughter with Cyndi was born in July 1976 and is not pictured, so presumably it was before then. The "See You in San Diego" could mean a general visit or maybe it could mean the 1978 ASG, hosted in San Diego that year. However, I would guess this is dated before 1976, so Christmas 1975 is my best guess.

 

[mrmopar]

Added the /50 today.