Fuji for President!

Fuji is the ever-generous gifter throughout the sports card blogging community.  He recently shot out 33 care packages and I was on the fortunate receiving end of one of them.  Like the other 32 recipients of these postal gold mines, I am deeply honored and very surprised with how well Fuji creates these.  He knows everyone's tastes and collecting passions.  Fuji doesn't collect sumo wrestling cards, but this package nailed a bunch of awesome cards for my other collections.  Let me dive in a bit more:

2018 Stranger Things Season 1 Commemorative Patchs Tommy H and Officer Powell.  These came one per blaster box and Fuji sent them my way to fill in some holes.  I am slowly working on this 24-card insert set. 

1975 Phoenix Giants Michael Cramer and 1969 Topps Man on the Moon #48B Space Food!  Michael Cramer was an amazing part of our hobby since the 1970s and started the Pacific Trading Card Company.  He is also an NFL photographer and an all around legend in the hobby.  Rich Klein did an excellent article about him back in 2013.  The Man on the Moon set is one that I would love to complete as I am a space nut!  But thanks to Fuji, I am one less card away!

A pile of 1980s to modern Nolan Ryan cards!  As a kid I collected Nolan Ryan like tens of thousands of other kids and adults.  The 1994 baseball strike, college, and companies producing too many cards to enjoyably collect and drove me out of the hobby back then, but I recently pulled out my Nolan Ryan collection again and want to fill in some holes.  Fuji loaded me up with enough goodness to keep me busy for a while!

California Lottery Scratchers.  Last time we met, Fuji and I gambled a bit of our card show money away on CA Scratchers....he is keeping the tradition alive between us for a bit longer.  I am going to slow roll these over the course of a week or so, but the few that I have scratched haven't led me down a path to retirement yet.

Fuji, I can't thank you enough!!  Fuji for President!

A day on the town with Fuji!

First off, if anyone ever has a chance to hang out with Fuji and Mike, take them up on the offer!  Fuji and Mike are super chill, great to hang out with, and have really good insights and conversations on sports cards!  Fuji pinged me a few weeks ago and asked if I was interested in going to the Frank and Son Collectible Show east of Los Angeles.  Heck yeah I was...a quick check with my better half and I was committed.  Regrettably, I was unable to attend the Dodgers game with Fuji and Mike the night before, but hopefully my rain check will be good for a while.  As soon as I arrived at the show's parking lot, Fuji was already bearing gifts and he handed me these sweet Yuta Tabuse cards.  The first being a sweet 2004 Skybox Limited Edition #34/35 in PSA 9 (my scanner doesn't do this card justice).  This die-cut card is only the second graded card I own and a real stunner!  Plus he hooked me up with this 2004 UD SPx Auto'd Rookie Jersey of Tabuse #1809/1999.  Both of these fill huge holes in my collection.  Thanks Fuji!

Fuji also brought a brick of the Round Tripper Licorice....yum!  For those of you who haven't tried it, check it out.

Fuji also loaded me up with a bunch of cards in shoe boxes for me to look through and pick through before they ended up at a thrift shop.  I grabbed a few cards for my brother and me as well as a few cards for some fellow collectors before they ended up getting donated.

We entered and the experience was pretty amazing and hard to believe they have this show twice a week.  The show wasn't quite what we were expecting in terms of the number of sports card booths as they were swamped by the toys and collectibles arena, but I was able to walk away with these two non-sports cards for a buck.  The first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, and one of the most influential figures in military aviation, Gen Curtis LeMay.  I realized that I should have brought my NES game cartridge want list as I could have probably knocked off a few games as there were a good handful of vintage game booths.

We weren't at the show for more than an hour before we headed off to La Verne, CA to hit up a local show.  Fuji found a few goodies there and hooked me up with this 2018 Panini Status Yuta Watanabe rookie. Thanks again Fuji.

Seeing as how this was National Baseball Card Day we had to hit up one of the local participating dealers in the area and headed over to La Verne to A&N Collectibles to pick up our free pack of cards.  I'm keeping mine sealed, but Fuji surprised me again with a jumbo pack of Topps Chrome where I landed an on-card base auto Rookie Card of Jeffrey Springs from the Rangers.  I haven't heard of him, nor does it matter, this card will stay in my collection as a great memory piece of the day.

We still had a good portion of the day ahead of us so we ended up in downtown La Verne hitting up antique shops.  I snagged this really cool postcard set of US. Presidents.  They are hand-made with serigraph technology...which is very similar to silk screening.  Made by M.A. Sheehan from Topanga, CA, these date from the late 1940s to early 1950s since it still shows President Truman as the sitting president.  These are absolutely gorgeous both front and back.  A quick 10-minute search of the internet doesn't yield any examples of this set making me believe it is somewhat rare.  They are supposedly limited to 2000 sets and my set seems to be a mix of different sets as it has cards from set #19, #26, #27, and #303.  Would love to know if anyone has seen these before.

We ended the day with a quick trip to LaVerne Brewery where I grabbed a 4-pack of their Hazy IPA and Fuji threw in another 4-pack.  I wasn't counting, but let's consider ourselves even....as I mentioned before, Fuji's generosity is second to none!

 

I had a lonely drive home as Fuji continued to shoot photos my way of some potential new spots to explore in the future.  Thanks again Fuji and Mike for a great day....I realized we don't have any photos of all of us together.  Hopefully we can repeat this soon somewhere and grab that photo.

Astronaut Neil Armstrong's "Rookie Card" - 1967 Heinerle Card

During a trip to a local vintage toy and model train store here in Germany, I picked up this partial set of 1967 German Kampf Um Den Weltraum (The Struggle for the Universe).  This set was made by Heinerle out of Bamberg, Germany.  The set walks the collector through the development of rockets and the NASA space program up through 1967.  Pictures are mostly of rockets, engineers, and cool space related images (I'm a space geek and I picked up some other German space sets as well that I'll highlight here in the near future.)

Koberich lists the catalog number of this set as the 30825-25 made in 1967 with a total of 190 cards in the set.  This set also as an English-language parallel set that is identical on the front except that the writing on the back is in English....and you can definitely tell it was not translated by an American.  Koberich doesn't mention this fact of an English language version so I am going to get a hold of him and ask if he knows anything more about it.

What is really unique about this set, though, is that it contains a trading card of Neil Armstrong....card #185.  It shows him with David Scott in their Gemini 8 spacesuits together in front of a satellite dish.  Interesting fact is the image is reversed on the card front so this is also an uncorrected error...maybe they corrected it later, which would make it that much cooler.  I did an internet search and could only find his 1969 Topps Man on the Moon card as being the earliest trading card known up to this point.  Anyone know of an earlier card of Armstrong?

There are some other great cards of other astronauts including Alan Sheppard, Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee...not to mention the famous Werhner Von Braun on Card #35.  I only picked up a partial set so the full set likely has other cards of other famous astronauts.

Cards measure approximately 2 3/4" x 3 3/4"

1983 Myojo Noodles Mechanical Cards

I love the odd-ball Japanese non-sports cards from the 1970s and especially these 1983 Myojo Noodles Mechanical Cards called Myojo Meka Kado (明星メカ　カード).  These cards came affixed to the top of a bowl of instant noodles.  I wish I could find a picture, but was unable to come across one in my internet search.  There are six 30-card series that I know of: World Classic Cars, World Motorcycles, World Ships, World Jets, Space/NASA, and Star Wars.  For those that collect the Star Wars cards, expect to pay upwards of $30-$40 per card...it'll be in the thousands for sure to complete the set.  For the other ones, they are fairly cheap when they hit the market...~$5 each, but they rarely hit the market in quantity.  In fact, the Star Wars set is the easiest to find (it might explain why they are more expensive) and the Space/NASA sets are almost impossible to find.  The cards measure 2.25" x 3.5" and are printed on thick cardboard.  I hope to pick up a few more of these now and then and I am not sure I am ever going to complete a set.  Here are a few examples of the Classic Cars, Motorcycles, and Ships sets.