Clyde's Stale News

     Because I'm slacking on getting a new post out here, I'm posting this reminder/news reel.  Yes, I am aware there are a multitude of broken images in my various Dave Winfield posts.  I recently hit the 2500 image limit in the old Picasa Web Album I was using for my collection scans, and had to split the collection into separate albums.  As a result, I broke a lot of links to Winfield cards on my blog, and across several message boards where I've previously posted images.  I've already started fixing the blog images, but it will take awhile, as it is not a fun task. I am lazyand just don't feel like fixing more than a few images at a time.


     Ntreev/Duael Entertainment and Gametree are releasing one final baseball card set covering the 2014 KBO season.  Labeled 14-15 슈퍼스타 베이스볼 카드 Blue Edition, this set covers 2014 season highlights, the post season and the various award winners and promises to include a lot more game-used memorabilia cards.  I'll dig into the checklist when it is finally posted to the Duael Entertainment website.  Currently you can find details on the set's Facebook page.

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    I've been spending a lot of time lately adding sets to TradingCardDB.com.  It is still not up to date with everything added to SportsCardForum.com's Inventory Manager, but in many ways, it is a lot more versatile.  For instance, there is no requirement at TCDB for each card to have a unique card number, so unnumbered sets can just be listed with all the cards as NNO, or in those rare occasions where multiple cards in a set share a number, both can be listed without any conflict.  TCDB has also recently updated their checklist import system, making it much easier to include all a set's detail.  This is especially helpful for minor league sets as you can now import the checklist with the team's MLB affiliate and both Note fields.  Typically on TCDB, the Note field is used for things like whether a card has an ERR or UER, or is an SP, or if the player is a CO; and the Note2 field was used for more elaborate information like "player pictured is Lynn Pettis" or "reverse negative".  I have also begun adding checklists for other Japanese sets, in addition to just baseball.  I've added a few Sumo and pro-wrestling sets, and plan to add more as time and resources permit.

    When I finally get TCDB caught up with all the minor league and international releases that I have posted to SCF, I will try to update both sites in tandem, but the underlying database system SCF is using is very outdated, and aside from additions to the catalog, is not expected to be improved any time soon.  TCDB has an active developer who really knows his stuff and has been adding all kinds of features in the past year whereas SCF can't even be bothered to clean up the bogus set entries in their Manufacturer list, or clean up the teams.  Overall, I see no real future for the SCF system, as it will just continue to get older and older as other sites like Trading Card Database and Zistle quickly eclipse it and leave it in their dust.  I will continue to support SCF, but my enthusiasm has faded.

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     I may have only mentioned it in passing, but for oddball collectors, be sure to check out the tremendous work Tim Peichel has been doing over at SuperCollectorCatalog.com.  Tim basically took what I started years ago when attempting to document unlicensed "broder" cards on my old website, and has expanded it beyond anything I would have attempted.  His database now includes unlicensed cards, obscure oddball issues and variations.  It is a great resource and saw a lot of additions over the course of 2014.

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     I have listed most of the cards from my second box of BBM's 2013 Legendary Foreigners 2: Deep Impact set in my eCrater store.  All the base cards are listed at $0.50 each.  It was an underwhelming break, resulting in no autographs, and no facsimile signature cards of Hensley Meulens.  Thanks to RyanG for helping me procure it and avoiding extra fees I would have otherwise paid through KuboTEN.  The entire contents of the first box was submitted to COMC a few weeks ago, and I saw the first couple of cards from that batch show up in the Full Card # Challenge yesterday, so some of them are close to being listed there.  Over the course of two boxes, I still ended up 4 cards shy of a complete base set.

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     Speaking of COMC (formerly CheckOutMyCards.com), I recently submitted a batch of 157 cards, almost entirely oddball, minor league and international issues.  12 cards have already hit my COMC inventory, as they were the most easily identifiable cards I sent.  Included in the batch were cards from Japan, Taiwan, Korea and Venezuela, as well as a handful of recent minor league cards.  I had intended to include some Mexican cards, but had the batch all packed up and labeled before I remembered.  This entire submission will be funded by COMC credit earned by doing the Challenges they use to help crowd-source the development of their new catalog system.  So basically the only thing I was out of pocket on was the shipping to get the cards to Redmond.

     If you're still with me after all of that, thanks for visiting and reading my ramblings.  I hope to get into a more consistent schedule of output, but can't promise anything.  I've got about a dozen posts in draft form that need to be finished, and there are more updates and additions to make to my series of Checklist Translations in the pipeline.

1990 ProCards AAA Promos

     Yet again, my saved eBay search caught a Hensley Meulens card I did not even know existed. Undocumented by neither Beckett nor the Standard Catalog of Baseball cards, this promo set was probably issued sometime shortly after the 1990 Triple A All-Star game, but before the issue of the 1990 ProCards AAA set.  In an odd move, ProCards released their big 800 card, pack-issued set after the end of the 1990 season, so the back of the promo likely refers to the fact that the set would include all of the 1990 statistics on the card backs.  Below is the actual 1990 ProCards AAA All-Star card for Meulens:

Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese and Minor League Baseball Card Checklists (Online)

(click here to skip the wandering preamble and get straight to the important stuff)

     A few years ago, when I seriously got back into collecting baseball cards, I decided to pick up where I left off on my Hensley Meulens collection.  I had mostly stopped collecting and following baseball after the strike in 1994.  Then came school, marriage, the beginnings of a career, and for awhile there, I was more concerned with just keeping the lights on, the rent paid, gas in the car and food on the table, so I had almost no idea what had happened in the intervening 8-9 years I was away from the hobby.  When I got back into it, I found that Dave Winfield had been elected into the Hall of Fame, Matt Williams was named in the Mitchell Report and Meulens had spent three years in Japan (later making a couple of unsuccessful returns to the Majors).

   As I started to jump back into things, I discovered the joys (and pains) of eBay, online trading sites (SportsCardForum and The Bench Trading being the main two I've settled into, later expanding to Freedom Cardboard, mostly for the conversation), the expansive sites based around statistics (Baseball Almanac, Baseball Reference and The Baseball Cube being my most frequented) and all manner of collector's blogs and hobby news sites.  But that only showed me that there were some glaring gaps in my collection and knowledge from outside the mainstream of the North American hobby.

     As I caught up with lots of the Meulens cards I'd missed, I had to find resources for the Japanese cards about which, up to this point, I knew absolutely nothing.  As I hunted for information on them, I encountered great sites like JapaneseBaseball.com, The Japanese Baseball Card Blog, Rob's Japanese Cards and Prestige Collectibles.  Through Rob Fitts' site, I was able to pick up most of Meulens' BBM and Takara cards, but came up short on the Calbee cards.  I only knew those cards existed because Beckett happened to include a few years of Japanese cards in their online price guide.  However, I knew there had to be more, and just in learning about the BBM and Takara sets, I knew Beckett was far from complete or accurate in their listings.  Everyone I encountered or asked for help suggested I pick up a copy of Gary Engel's Japanese Baseball Card Checklist & Price Guide.  So I picked up the 6th edition.  And learned that there was an enormous world of baseball cards in Japan.  And Hensley Meulens had a few more cards that I needed to find. (A 7th edition was released in early 2010 and is available from Prestige Collectibles.)