1981 PERMA-GRAPHICS DAVE KINGMAN Keeping the Kingman kontent koming at Kard of the Week. And while it seems appropriate to harp on K's when Dave Kingman is involved, for love of Ray Davies I'll give it a rest... I remember when these Perma-Graphics "credit cards" first showed up at the local Ha-Cha stationery store. I [...]
1977 TOPPS CLOTH STICKER DAVE KINGMAN Dave Kingman is as much 1977 to me as Rumours, Rocky, the Ramones, and R2-D2. He brought to the mid '70s Mets something that they had rarely seen before. The franchise-- weaned on essential ineptitude, and brought to maturity by the finesse of a well-pitched game-- now had at [...]
1974 TOPPS DECKLE EDGE FELIX MILLAN What the heck is a deckle? Well, a “deckle” is a frame used when making paper by hand; by extension, a “deckle edge” is the rough, untrimmed edge that results from this process. Head to your local antiquarian book seller for a quick reference... Topps was not seeking to [...]
Just wanted to take the opportunity to share with you my most precious and valued card. Happy Thanksgiving, from my team to yours...
1992 DONRUSS ELITE DWIGHT GOODEN Donruss introduced the Elite insert set in 1991, and for the first few years of production, it lived up to its name. The regular Donruss sets of the era were as overproduced as teenage hormones, but common wisdom holds that the early Elite cards were found just one in every [...]
1994 PINNACLE MUSEUM COLLECTION JOE ORSULAK If Woody Guthrie were alive in 1994, he would have written songs about Joe Orsulak. Orsulak is the MLB version of the common man. He has a common name, a name that sounds like hard work, a name that is democratic enough to include just about every vowel. (There [...]
Happy Halloween from Foul Bill and Card of the Week! Here's hoping that Alderson & Co drop some treats in our bag this off-season...
1997 TOPPS PRO SHOOTERS MARBLES BERNARD GILKEY Back in the late '90s when New York was still my home, I used to haunt the aisles of National Wholesale Liquidators a couple of times a month. My wife liked to follow the rotation of some of the more esoteric food items, and I would head straight [...]
1972 VENEZUELAN STICKER JERRY KOOSMAN Throughout the '60s, Topps licensed its baseball-card designs for use in Venezuelan sets. The cards in those sets were generally of lower quality than their US counterparts: the low-def photos lacked any sort of gloss, and the paper stock was mealy and thin. The Venezuelan card backs were often different [...]
1999 TOPPS FINEST GOLD REFRACTOR AL LEITER I peeled Al Leiter tonight. OK, it might be helpful if I rewound a bit and explained. Back in the late '90s, card manufacturers were dabbling in all manner of metallic printing. Collectors loved the shiny stuff, but balked at how easily these cards would get scratched or [...]
1975 TOPPS HANK WEBB WAX BOX Back in the spring of 2011, I did a piece on Hank Webb. This past May, I wrote about a 1970 Topps box. Well, today is the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup moment. The moment that I stumble into the path of a random stranger, we collide awkwardly, and then [...]
2001 DONRUSS ELITE ASPIRATIONS TIMO PEREZ Fun facts/fictions about Timo Perez for your late-September, fourth-place, 2X-games-out reading pleasure... Timo is the only player named “Timo” ever to play in the majors. “Timo” spelled backward is “omit.” “Perez” spelled backward is “zerep.” Before coming to the Mets, Timo spent four years with the Hiroshima Carp. Timo [...]