Album Oficial Acereros de Monclova 1974-2011

     In 2011, marking the 37th anniversary of the team, the Acereros de Monclova, a team in the northern division of the Mexican League, produced a 26 page album and 196 sticker set spanning their entire history.  The Album Oficial Acereros de Monclova 1974-2011 was arranged by decade, and featured team photo puzzles and stickers for several prominent players for each era of the team.

Inconsequential Variations (Part the Second): 1989 ProCards AAA team set vs pack-issue

    Flying well under the radar is this variation of the 1989 ProCards AAA set, or sets.  It is that last bit that is significant for in 1989, ProCards issued it's blue Triple-A cards in two different formats.  The primary method of distribution, as they had been using since 1986, was to issue team sets to be sold or given away at minor league ballparks.  This version of the cards was made available sometime in mid-1989, and as such featured the players' statistics through the end of the 1988 season.  This version of the card sometimes featured local sponsors logos on the back.

International Baseball Card Keyword Cheat Sheet

      Below are various terms one might find useful when attempting to search for information about baseball cards in languages other than English.  Within some languages there are regional variations, This is especially true of Spanish.  I am no linguist, so these are all very much a layman's guide to these terms as I have encountered them in my web surfing.

Community Project: Help validate the 1985 MSA Subway Discs checklist

     I began this project on the Freedom Cardboard and Net54Baseball forums, but thought I should also post it here in hope of attracting a wider audience as I know there are many collectors who do not frequent the hobby message boards.  This post will be updated and re-published as new information is uncovered.

     1985 saw the release of two nearly identical sets of MSA discs (which unfortunately looked almost exactly like most of the previous years MSA discs sets). There was the Thom McAn/JOX set, issued as a promotion for Thom McAn's JOX tennis shoes, and the completely anonymous Subway set, that looked exactly the same, but was blank on the back. 

CPBL Sets For an Ever-Shifting League

       Late last year (2013), I got excited by a posting on the official CPBL blog on what I thought would be the first real set to contain a card of Manny Ramirez in the Chinese Professional Baseball League.  Manny played for the EDA Rhinos for the first half or so of the 2013 CPBL season, and as the league usually issued sets after the end of the season, I thought it reasonable to expect to see a card with Manny in a Rhinos uniform by early 2014.