1986 Donruss, Phil Bradley

#22 Phil Bradley

Here is another card that was given to me by the Collective Troll. This one features the former Mariner, Phillie, Oriole, and White Sock, Phil Bradley.

I always liked Phil as a kid because he grew up in the same town that some of my cousins were from, Macomb, Illinois. I always hoped that they would run into him on the street some off-season and get an autograph for me. But, it never happened. But, he is now part of my collection thanks to the Troll.

Phil was an All-Star in 1985. For the year, he hit .300 with a career high 26 home runs and 88 RBI. Those numbers started to decline in the following years and he was out of the Majors after the 1990 season.

He didn't play in 1991, but he was able to latch on with the Cubs AAA team in '92. He hit .248 with them in 42 games before being let go and picked up by the Angels AAA team. For them, he hit .299 in 41 games. That was his last season playing ball.

According to Wikipedia, Phil now works for the player's association and is an assistant coach for the softball team at his alma mater, Missouri. While Phil was at Mizzou, he was also the schools starting quarterback for two years.

Again, I believe that this autograph was probably obtained during Spring Training. Also, you can't go wrong with a signed Diamond King card.

1985 Topps, Johnny Ray

#96 Johnny Ray

Here is another card that was given to me by the Collective Troll. This one features former Pirate, and Angel, Johnny Ray.

Johnny spent ten seasons in the Majors, mostly in Pittsburgh. He is a .290 career hitter who had 70 or more RBI in a season three times. He hit between 5 and 7 home runs every year except for his rookie year and was an All-Star in 1988. Those seem like pretty decent numbers for a second baseman in the '80s.

I am guessing that this was obtained by the Troll during Spring Training. The red really works well on this card.

1985 O-Pee-Chee, Rollie Fingers

#182 Rollie Fingers

Here is another card that I got signed at the College World Series this year. Rollie was a last-minute addition to the AT&T signing booth and I didn't have a card of him with me. So, I had to scramble over the card shop across the street to find one. I asked the shop owner if he had any and he went to check. When he came back, he said that he couldn't find his A-F box. And that was that. So, I started looking through boxes of cards that were sitting on counters. I made it through one box while only finding a couple of cards from the '80s. I gave up on that approach when I noticed a big box of team sets. I started going through those and eventually found a couple of mid 80s team sets of the Brewers. I think he charged me $7 for this '85 OPC team set. If anyone needs some '85 OPC Brewer cards, I'm your man.

This is the only Topps look-alike OPC card that I have had signed. So, it is a nice addition to the collection. I would have preferred to have had my '81 Donruss card signed instead, but this one still looks good.

1985 Fleer, Orel Hershiser

#371 Orel Hershiser

Here is the thrid and final Orel Hershiser card that I have, for now (maybe I'll pick up a signed Indians card sometime). I got the first autograph that I posted at the College World Series this year and I got the second one TTM in the mid-90s. So, where did I get this one? This one also came from the College World Series.

Now, compared to yesterdays Joe Carter rookie, there wasn't much of a debate as to whether or not to take the card. The only debate was whether I actually had it or not. Once I found it, it was a sure thing that it was going on vacation with me.

I have no idea how long I have had this card. I pulled it out of my very first binder that I started (no, I don't like to reorganize). I probably picked this gem up in a trade with the neighborhood sixth graders when I was in first grade. Who knows what I had to give up to get it. I won some and I lost some in trades those days. I traded away a McGwire USA rookie, but I was also able to snag an Ozzie Smith rookie. Unfortunately, that was the only great year of trading for me. A couple of the kids lost interest in cards after that and one (the kid with the best cards) moved away.

1984 Topps, Chris Speier

#678 Chris Speier

Here is the third and final card that I got signed by Chris Speier in June. Chris is the Reds bench coach and I got this card signed on the way to Omaha when I stopped in Kansas City. You can see the first card here and the second one here.

When I go to type Chris' last name, I can never remember if it is e-i-e or i-e-i. So, I use this helpful little tune below (and drop the "o"). Skip to the 1:59 mark to see what I am saying.

1984 Donruss, Joe Carter

#41 Joe Carter

Here is the second card that I was able to get Joe Carter to sign for me in Omaha in June. When I handed this card to him to get signed, he said "ooohh, a rookie card".

Before I went to Omaha, I had a decent debate with myself on whether I should take this card with me or not. I've had this card since the early '90s and it was always one of the better cards in my collection. The Beckett that I just dug up from 1992 lists it as $32. I have no idea what it books for now, but since it is an '84 Donruss, I bet that it books for at least $10 (but I could be wrong). I wasn't sure if I wanted to get a $10+ card signed, so I headed over to ebay to see what they were going for. You can find auctions for this card starting out at $.99 and buy it nows for $4 with free shipping. After seeing that, I decided to get this card signed. If I ever wanted to get a new one, I knew where I could find one.

Are there any Beckett readers out there that can tell me the book value of this card (before it got signed)?

I thought that it was kind of cool that Joe changed Sharpie colors when signing my two cards. He signed this one first and the Pinnacle card second. The Pinnacle card has a lot of blue in it, so it is good to see that he switched to black for that one.

Contest Winnings from APAD

A couple of weeks ago, I won a contest at A Pack A Day. If you haven't been following APAD lately, you are missing out. Skoormit has been a one-man posting machine on there. He's been averaging close to a pack a day while also updating his own blog, EX-MT.

A few weeks ago, he had a contest where he bought some packs of '88 Topps. You had to guess if there would be more California-born players or more foriegn-born players in the packs and you had to guess how many more there would be. The name of the contest was "Cali vs World". Cali won by 23 and I had the closest guess at 14.

Skoormit asked me what I wanted and I told him that I would take some Royals cards, but if he had any junk autos sitting around, I would rather have them. He ended up sending me some cool Royals cards and one autograph (which isn't junk). I'll show the Royals here and save the auto for a later date. If you really want to know who it is, go to Skoormit's blog. He posted the winnings on there.



Here is the first scan. There is a bunch of gold Royals here. But, the one card that really stood out to me was the Joey Gathright mini. I have never seen those before. Were they randomly inserted into packs of Fleer that year, or what?



Here is the second scan. There is some new OPC, a Fleer Greats Bo, a couple of Royals legends out of the '84 Topps set, and a couple of '71 Topps Royals. Check out that Rich Severson card. It has a few wrinkles in it and some bent corners. But the one feature that really stands out to me is the tack hole in it. Look just behind his head and you can see a nice exit wound from a tack. The tack entered the photo on the back by his cheek and came out on the other side in the back of the head. Someone didn't like Mr. Severson as a kid.

Here is the highlight of the package.



A Bo Jackson bat card form 2008 Playoff Prime Cuts, numbered 25/99. How cool is that? This is my first game used card of a former player and it's Bo! For about four months in 1991, I became a Bo player collector. I had nearly all of his cards up to that point except for some Traded/Update rookie cards. So this is a very cool addition. Thanks Skoormit!