Mail Day Recap: 1953 Bowman Black and White

How do you spend eBay bucks? That once a quarter, one percent rebate on the hundreds of dollars you could otherwise spend in a three month period. Personally I didn’t even know about eBay bucks until Q4 last year. But anyway. As I alluded to in my 2021 Hobby goals, I am at a point where I want to be a little more selective with my buying choices instead of going after any easy dollar insert I can find almost anywhere.

Enter the 1953 Bowman Black and White card of Philadelphia A’s pitcher Morris “Morrie” Martin. The ‘53 Bowman set first came onto my radar late last year when I was looking in a Beckett Vintage Price Guide. I noticed there are only 64 cards in this set, and none of them are really that expensive. In fact, if you believe the prices on TCDB, there is no card in this set valued at over $100.00. The vast majority can be had for less than $15.00. That’s my kind of vintage set! So I decided that I want to build this set, one card at a time for as long as it takes me to build it. I settled on this one, since the card is relatively well centered and the corners look pretty decent. I don’t much care about corners, but centering is and I liked the way this card looked. I applied my eBay bucks to the purchase and am loving the result now that it’s here.

1953 Bowman Morris Martin Black and White

So what do we know about Mr. Martin here? According to his Baseball-reference page: (Morrie Martin), he had a 10 year MLB career with seven different clubs, starting with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1949. Working mostly in relief, Martin was able to achieve a lifetime 38-34 record with a 4.29 ERA over 604.2 IP.

Thanks to my Twitter friend Nick Diunte (@ExamineBaseball), and his wonderful blog Examine Baseball, I have also learned that Morrie fought in Europe in World War II. At one time, he and two of his buddies had to dig their way out of a basement they had been in when the house collapsed after being bombed. Pretty impressive to remain calm and get yourself out of that kind of situation. If you have the time, check out Nick’s blog.

Because of Mr. Martin’s service, he was 26 year old when he made his debut with the Dodgers. This of course was the case with a lot of players in the late 1940s and early 50s. His service during the War makes me extremely grateful that his 1953 Bowman Black and White was the first card from this set to be added to my collection. I chose wisely. And now I’m looking forward to adding more with my next round of eBay bucks!

That’s it for now, more later. Stay safe!

JDM

Mail Day Recap: Rockies Sepia

Yesterday’s Mailday brought me a long overdue envelope that I was getting ready to hand over to the Postal gremlin. They were mailed a week before Christmas by new TCDB user @PennsylvaniaTiger. And am I ever glad the cards made it!

In exchange for ten 2019 Topps Heritage duplicates, I was able to obtain these two 2020 Stadium Club Sepia parallels for my Rockies PC. The images really pop for me, especially while looking at them side by side. Both guys have their gloves in a position to field the ball, and they’re both focused on fielding it just a fraction of a second later. The Rodgers card is especially sharp, as there is no motion blur on the baseball. That photographer definitely knew what they were doing. Thank you for the trade Michael!

2020 Topps Stadium Club Sepia Rockies Cards

The pre-Christmas trades are slowly starting to trickle in. In addition to the cards above, I also received three more 2018 Topps cards from a Twitter friend, and three more 1982 Topps Cards from TCDB Trader @nkandy11. That last trade had a throw in card from 2017 Topps as protection, but it’s one that I didn’t have, so I’ll definitely take it. Thanks for the trades guys!

1982 Topps Set Progress: 40 / 792 cards (5.1% complete)

2017 Topps Set Progress: 17 / 700 cards (2.4% complete)

2018 Topps Set Progress: 645 / 700 cards (92.1% complete) - I’m so close!!

I have a couple of other cards to show off some time this week. I know this one was short, but that’s going to happen as I get into the flow. Until next time, stay safe.

JDM

Mail Day Recap: 13 JAN 2021

Scratch one off the want list! I ordered this 2020 Heritage Josh Bell New Age Performer at the beginning of December from a seller on Sportlots. It was mailed December 12 in a nondescript envelope with a Non-Machinable stamp. It arrived today after a 30 day journey. Only the USPS knows where all it went or how long it sat in a post office sorting facility. But it’s here. And it’s the last New Age Performer for that particular insert set. This one feels good to get done.

The second picture are some cards I received from TCDB trader @jimsisco. They represent essentially the first cards I’ve acquired as I get ready to work on 2017 Topps during the year. He had a bunch, so I picked nine at random so we could use PWE. So these cards will go into the box with the seven I had previously. In one day, I doubled the number of 2017 Topps cards I had.

2017 Topps Set Process: 16 / 700 cards (2.3% complete)

Anyway, just a short one to show off the new acquisitions. More later, and as always, Stay Safe!

JDM

2020 Topps Heritage Josh Bell New Age Performer

2017 Topps Cards from TCDB User @jimsisco

Mail Day Recap: 17 NOV 20

Today I received the back half of the second piece of what so far is a four part trade. Wait…Wut? Confused? Don’t worry it’s awesome. I have a Twitter and TCDB friend who was six short prints shy of completing his own 2019 Heritage set. I learned this after I posted on Twitter that I had finally completed mine. A couple of the cards he needed, I had also just bought through Sportslots or eBay for what I considered to be really decent prices, so I knew the cards were out there. The only problem for him though is a tight budget, and with him getting ready to move into a new house, exceeding that budget isn’t really an option.

UWBone and I have tried to come together on trades before, but he has an excess of vintage and very little modern, and I have none of the vintage he needs and an excess of modern. So the math hasn’t really worked. But he has a lot of cards I could potentially use to start my set builds for those early ‘80’s years, and I was thinking it would be a shame to be that close to closing out Heritage and not being able to finish it off when you’re that close.

So I figured I would buy the cards for him to get around the budget issue. After they arrived, I just mailed the short prints to him and let him decide what and how many cards to send back my way. Today I received the first 12 cards off my 1982 Topps list that he had available. All I sent him on the front half was the Ronald Acuna Jr. from ‘19 Heritage that I managed to score for $4.00 plus shipping. This is a very fair trade in my opinion because it helps both of us, and making another collector happy certainly makes me feel like a valued member of the Hobby Community.

1982 Topps from TCDB user @UWBone24

As I alluded up on top, this was the second such trade. We have two more to go. The Walker Buehler and Miguel Andujar cards are sitting right here on my desk, just waiting for UWBone to move in to his new digs and get settled. More on this trade sometime in December! In the meantime, today’s haul gets me started.

1982 Topps Base: 17 / 792 cards (2.1%)

More hopefully tomorrow work permitting. Until then, stay safe.

JDM