Topps Cards that Never Were

Friday, May 20, 2022

What a week!

Feels like the last few days have been a blur. Karen had a follow up appointment with the Neurosurgeon last Friday. They wanted her to go to the eye Dr. and make sure her optic nerves still had a lower pressure. She was able to make the appointment on Tuesday. Long and short of that was it was the same as before her last surgery, so neurosurgeon wanted to do exploratory surgery on Thursday afternoon. We found this out on Wednesday, and naturally, I let work know, and told them I could still work my shift Thursday morning and would just need Friday off. Later that day, the hospital had a cancellation, and rescheduled it for 9 AM, so I had to call work and ask for Thursday off as well. Naturally, that went well, and boss got on to me for not letting him know sooner. I’d love to swap lives with him.

The surgery went well, I think. Everything was working, but the valve wasn’t draining as fast as it was expected to. Dr. Murad ended up taking the old valve off, replacing it with one that drains more, checked it to see how it drained (just like he expected), and then sewed her back up. We’re back home, and Karen is resting as best as she can, and we’re hopefull that this will bring her some relief from the headaches and nausea that have been getting bad again.

While this was happening, I got some cards. My COMC order came in on Friday, and I got to sort through the cards today.

I got the last few cards and stickers of Raymond that I needed to finish my Topps and Topps Stickers Raymond runs. Not sure exactly which ones I got in the order, but they are all in there as well as a few I pulled from packs and ones I got from nice bloggers over the years. Kyler should have fun looking at all of these, and hopefully we’ll get some signed over the years at Rays games and maybe finish them all off.

I mainly added a bunch of autograph and relic cards of Rays and Tigers to my collection with the order. The Andrew Miller card would’ve went for a nice price back in 2007. I’ve been wanting to pull the trigger on Spencer Torkelson and Casey Mize Bowman rookies before they get too high, so I found some for prices I was willing to pay. Even found a jersey card of Tork for a decent price.

I found a BJ Upton autograph for 2 bucks. I’m still surprised I got one for hat price. I finally added a Randy Arozarena jersey card. The Travis Lee Bowman Chrome would’ve went for good money in 1997, and the Bobby Witt, Jr. Bowman goes for decent money now.

I decided to add most of the affordable sunset cards that I needed. Looking at the backs of some of them and seeing the vanilla names in the Hall of Fame now makes me think some of these guys might join them in the next decade.

The Sutton is a box bottom. While not a ‘true’ sunset card, it does have the ‘89 Topps design which would’ve been used on Sutton’s sunset card. Some of these ‘90’s guys like Lofton, Delgado, and even Dye will hopefully get a shot at the Hall with some of these semi star guys like Raines, Baines, and Hodges getting in.

Last up are some favorite players. I’ve been wanting a Jordan Hicks autograph for a while. The Quinton McCracken was part of a bunch of ‘98 Upper Deck cards that I ordered to finish up that Rays set. I also finished off ‘97 Bowman, ‘97 Fleer, and ‘97 Topps Stars Rays sets with the order.

Kyler has always thought that Geicko commercial where Dick Vitale dumped Gatorade on himself was funny, so I got him a card of Dickie V. I met him at a Rays game and got his autograph, so if we go to another Rays game I might try to bring it and get it signed. I also got Ky a Jackie Robinson card and 2 of Bernie Brewer, one of his favorite mascots.

To follow up the story about the seller on the last post about the guy who ghosted me, we were at a concert in Jacksonville on Tuesday, and I was in line getting a soda when I got a text. Let’s see what you guys think about this.

So the guy got back to me and I kind of expected him to send me a follow up reply the next day or so. I didn’t get a response that night, so I sent him a message on Wednesday morning just letting him know which card I ordered. No response with that one, so I followed up with him this morning just asking for an update. Nothing so far.

I kind of think he got scared after my earlier text when I told him about all of the lawyers and people I knew and made up the stuff about the work stuff just to calm me down. I might wait a week and call him out on it if nothing happens, but you never know, maybe it’s legit. We’ll see and I’ll keep everyone updated if anything happens.

Hopefully I’ll start putting some of the new cards in the binders on Monday, Karen will heal and this last surgery will bring some relief, and JohnnyB will finally ship my card. Not too much to ask, right?

Thanks for checking out my latest post.

-Jeremy

Monday, May 16, 2022

Ghosted by a seller and COMC order is getting shipped

I didn’t exactly know where to ask this question but I figured that all of the fine readers and collectors have probably dealt with a situation like this before.

On April 28, I wanted to purchase 2 cards of Rays mascot Raymond for my collection. There was a 2010 Topps Openong Day card, which I purchased from an eBay seller, and then a 2021 Topps Opening Day card of ol’ Raymond with a jersey relic on it. The relic card had only had 3 listings, 2 of the listings were on eBay at the time for 20 bucks, and another one for 13 bucks on a website https://johnnybtrading.com/ . The site looked like just some dealers personal website, and at 7 bucks below the eBay price (and at about the top of what I would pay for the card, I decided to jump on it and place the order.

Immediately after I placed the order, I got a confirmation email saying I would get another email when it had shipped. The bank took the money out, and I waited for the cards.

I got the 2010 card in a week or so, and after waiting about 2 weeks on the 2021 relic with no update, I decided to email the seller. I basically asked what the standard shipping time was and was wondering if he was perhaps on vacation.

I found a Facebook page https://m.facebook.com/107599331470921/ for this guys stuff as well, so I sent him a FB message after getting no response to the original email. It was the same general question, just how long it generally takes for a single card to get shipped. All I got was an auto response that they would get back to me as soon as possible.

The page had a phone number on it. I typed the number into my phone, and it turned blue when I put it into my text messages, so I am pretty sure it’s a cellphone number, it is an iPhone that can get texts, and from the area code is a Louisiana one. Judging from the only email from this guy, the cards are coming from the Birmingham, Alabama area, and judging from my bank statement, it is located specifically in the Lake Paradise area of the state.

After a few more days of no response to the FB message, I sent the same question via a text. It’s been about 5 days, so I sent a pretty angry follow up text, letting the guy know that I knew a judge in Alabama, some politicians, lawyers, and people in law enforcement in the state. I may have embellished some of it, but I want this guy to know that he can’t just set up an online card shop, forget about it (as he hasn’t posted anything on his FB page in about a year), ignore customers, but still accept payments into whatever bank account he has for the shop. I’m gonna keep being persistent, sending texts whenever I think about it, maybe calling it when I get up for work at 3:30 AM every day, and perhaps that will draw a response. It almost appears that he is still operating his home page, as the card I ordered was listed as the last one and was for 13 bucks, and now it appears on his site that he now somehow has 4 left and they are now 4 bucks cheaper and at 9 bucks per.

I really don’t even want the money back, I more want the actual card. It would be so easy to get it signed at the next Rays game I go to, and it would be one of the coolest cards of the Seadog who is my teams mascot. I just don’t want to pay 20 bucks plus shipping on eBay to get it from a different seller.

So I say all this to say what else can I do? I’m sure people have ran into other sellers like this who aren’t on eBay and have sold a card or cards and then ghosted the buyer. What is the next step? Should I try to flag his FB page or leave a bad review on it? Can I contact the BBB? Am I basically screwed and left to play mind games on the guy with the phone stuff until one of us blinks?

On the more positive note, my order from COMC is shipping, so I’ll have between 150-200 cards to add to my binders. I’m looking forward to getting them, as I have a nice stack of Rays, Tigers, favorite players, rookie cards, sunset cards, highlight cards, and shiny cards to add to their respective binders, which haven’t been updated in about a year. My birthday is in about a month, but I don’t really expect to get any cards, and if I do, I expect it would be current stuff which would be added to the ends of my binders since I have them organized by year. So I’ll probably start putting the COMC order into my box of loose cards, and then put all of the ones in the box into the binders. Should be fun doing that.

Thanks for checking out my latest post.

-Jeremy

Wednesday, April 27, 2022

The '52 Topps set is now complete!

Today I finished the final 2 missing cards to complete the 1952 Topps set. Part of me wanted to try it just to see if it could be done. Back in the early ‘90’s, an unknown collector attempted to do this, giving us the cards in the M & A (Masked & Anonymous) set. This set featured minor leaguers in addition to missing guys from the ‘52 set. Many of these cards were missing the facsimile autographs. Today, in the 2020’s with the internet, there are not only more workable images of players, but also pictures of their signatures. I had a number of websites that I used to research for picture and autographs. Baseball-Birthdays was a big help with photos, Worthpoint helped with finding a few autographs and photos, the former 1952 Topps Site was a big help with probabhly 50 or so missing cards that I didn't have to make, and I even found a few cards from the M&A set and some on eBay from a user who I’m 99% sure is the same guy who has sold some of my customs as his work in the past (and a guy who has stolen work from many other custom makers, including the late Bob Lemke). Fair is fair. I also would like to note that Playback.fm was a great resource to help me attempt to colorize at least 100 black and white photos.

Every card has facsimile signature on it, and anyone who played a game in the 1951 or 1952 seasons who was missing a card with a team they played with in '51 or '52 now (hopefully) has a card. If you have any corrections or a card with a cleaner picture/signature, please let me know.

I wasn’t a fan of ‘50’s baseball before finishing the set (and I still don’t really care for it that much. ‘90’s and ‘00’s with all of the HRs and milestones is my favorite era), but I learned a lot about the ‘51 and ‘52 seasons, and I suppose I will learn a whole lot more very soon as I will be starting the ‘51 Topps set next. That set features a good 3-4 sentence write up on every card, so at the very least I will have to come up with stuff to say about 800 or so players, many of them obscure ones

Without further ado, here are all of the missing cards from the 1952 Topps set