Odd Expos at Unfriendly's Dickish Collectables
This week, I've begun a process to rid myself of another 25,000-30,000 cards, spanning 1972-2017, from my 30 year collection.
These cards are not commons, and consist of rookies, low level inserts, stars and semi-stars, all sorted by team. I need the space badly, and do not need 500 or so Barry Bonds cards.
Above is a sorting tray full of sleeved Detroit Tigers, on top of a pile of Monster Boxes, full of the other 29 teams. Most of these Tigers will likely be kept... Not giving away Verlander rookies...
Just as I was really getting going on serious sorting groove, I discovered that I was completely out of penny sleeves...
Given the time of day it was, driving nearly 20 miles across town, to the card shop I like, just for a few packs of penny sleeves wasn't anything I wanted to do. So I was left with one option, Unfriendly's Dickish Collectables (not their real name) a few miles up the street...
For years I've lamented the closing of my long time brick and mortar card shop, Mike's Sports Cards, which closed up in June 2013. They would have served my needs and it would have been a good time going there...
Unfriendly's Dickish has been open since the early 1980's, and is very close and easy to get to, I just don't ever want to go there...
While they've never ripped me off, I've heard stories...
So in my objective view, there's nothing inherently bad about Unfriendly's Dickish... it's just a place I don't feel comfortable as a consumer, and have rarely gone there.
They do have an incredible inventory of rare and hard to find items (though in recent years, the quality of stuff that I look for has been a little lacking). The store is packed tight, cramped, and hard to look at and/or find anything. It's an overwhelmingly claustrophobic unorganized mess...
Now I do understand that obsessive collector dorks, such as myself, are tough people to get along with. Most of us are rude elitist pricks that look down on everybody, while also being highly socially awkward. We lord over our collections, and treat outsiders with scorn.
And I'm fine with all that. I recognize those parts of my own personality so I fully understand them in others. But I also know that my own social shortcomings mean that I'm not geared for work in the customer service sector. No matter how qualified I may be for that job.
All those things considered, while I rarely go there, whenever I do, it's for a specific reason (penny sleeves) and I usually find something I must have...
Not a yearbook or a program, and not distributed until AFTER the 2001 season ended... The book itself was a spiral-boud stack of 120 black and white pages, between heavily laminated single-sided color covers.
No frills, no advertising and no pictures (other than future Minnesota Twin, Orlando Cabrera, and 40 Man roster team mugshots), this was a text-heavy summary of the Expos 2001 season. Along with Minor League recaps and full bios and statistics for the 40 Man Rosters and top minor league prospects.
Very likely a low print-run publication, it was printed by the team itself. Since it only focuses on the 2001 season that had just wrapped, the publication date was November 15, 2001, so it wouldn't have been considered the 2002 Team Media Guide.
Considering at the time, Expos owner Jeff Loria, wasn't just trying to sell the team, he was actively trying to contract them out of existence. So why would he have bothered to green-light the printing of a seemingly frivolous publication?
While researching what a colossal bag of dicks Jeff Loria was/is, I found this story that I'd never heard of...
Apparently Jeff Loria was such a Yankees mark that he tried to trade for Derek Jeter after the 1999 season...
Obviously this was never even the slightest of possibilities of actually happening, it lead to a required period of what-if daydreaming...
It's doubtful Derek Jeter would have been able to draw up enough public support to build the Expos a stadium. Given that both he and Guerrero were superstars at the same age, Guerrero didn't sway public opinion.
Of course given Expos ownership, it's hard to blame the city of Montreal from turning on the team.... Due to underhanded tactics I wont even begin to get into here, Loria financially starved the Expos out of spite towards the city of Montreal, then dumped them in favor of the Marlins.
Very cool and likely rare, this makes an excellent Expos collection addition. I couldn't find any information online regarding this book, and found none for sale at the usual suspects....
Before cashing out with my Expos mystery book and a light restock of penny sleeves, I found some discount singles boxed behind the registers. These boxes boasted various "hits", autographs, relics, rookies and vintage cards for $3 each, or 4/$10, or 10/$20...
Well, there could potentially be a deal here, so I'll aim for 4 cards and call it good... Well, I found those 4 fairly quick, and decided that six more isn't a stretch, so I'll shoot for $20...
This was actually card number 10. I had my first 9, but was undecided on card #10. I grabbed Billy for two reasons... I'm not sure if I had it or not, and the MLB Network has been running all sorts of promotion for their new Billy Martin documentary that is sitting on the DVR, waiting for my next day off...
Though I wish it was Martin's 1969 Topps card. The first featuring Martin as a manager (of the Twins). I once had that card, but it was stolen in 1994. I've never been able to replace it...
After seeing this card, I will NEVER complain about Topps bad airbrushing and Photoshoppery, or Panini's lack of team logos... I fully understand that Signature Rookies (a 1 or 2 year post junk-wax prospect lottery product, featuring 1 autograph in every pack) didn't have the clout to afford a licensing agreement. Thus getting rid of the Expos logo across Fullmer's jersey was necessary. But to type "Montreal" in a script font in it's place is laughably awful...
It's also too bad the Sharpie was almost dead, Fullmer has one of the nicer signatures of failed Expos prospects...
Here's the back of Fullmer's card. Signature Rookies are one of those kinda forgotten products of the 1990's, but they do have their charm...
There was relatively few Rockies in the $3 box, most of those get piled in the crammed too full of singles and hard to look at Rockies case. Thousands of likely awesome cards, that are obscured by sheer volume...
Gibson was one of the players I collected in the mid-1990's. His five-tool talent should have translated into megastardom and winning seasons at Coors Field... He didn't and it didn't... Still, getting his autograph today seemed like a no brainer for $2...
The 1999 SP Signature Edition cards were beautiful, and I've been wanting this card for a while. Seguignol never worked out as a player, making the 1998 Carlos Perez trade with the Dodgers, pretty much a wash...
I wasn't buying many cards in the early oughts, so I missed out on a lot of good product in those years. Including Upper Deck's attempt at taking down Bowman... By hitting Topps directly in the prospect... (I so miss COMPETITION in the hobby...) Prospect Premiers was a nice set that I almost never bought.
Though I did pull a Mark Prior autograph from a wax box of this set in 2001... Back when a Mark Prior autograph really meant something...
And back when a Mark Prior autograph was worth something, this copy accidentally got folded in half when it was run over by a truck in a moving mishap. That same tragedy destroyed a 2001 Sweet Spot Albert Pujols rookie card...
I like this card a lot. The striking Expos uniform against the trees... Refractory autograph sticker covering up far too much of it...
When a player has to sign a bunch of autographs on a sheet of stickers, I like it when there's a bit more effort made in forming actual letters. And if they aren't going to form actual letters, at least make them look interesting.
eTopps was one of Topps attempts at creating an online trading card. Each weeks, new cards would be released online for collectors to buy. Topps would print the cards based on the number ordered, and hold them until the owner of the online card requested the physical copy be sent to them. Cards that were sent to collectors would be encased and "sealed" with a Topps sticker. In the meantime collectors were able to trade them online cards between collectors. The concept debut in 2000 and was discontinued in 2012. Now it's seemingly been replaced by the Topps Now! promotion...
The 2007 series featured designs based on 1985 Topps (which I've always liked), now updated with blacky refractorness!
I liked Slowey as a pitcher when he first came up... He kinda was jerked around by the Twins, lack of interest in bowling with Gardenhire was a rumor...
Minnesota's first round draft pick in 2008, Gutierrez never panned out. I really wanted this card in 2008. I got it in 2017 for a fraction of what it was selling for then...
The 2008-2009 edition of the Twins trademark light hittng utility player that gets way over-exposed when pressed into heavier duty... A Gardenhire/Kelly trademark that hasn't been as pronounced with Molitor....
Tolbert has an interesting autograph, with his uniform number 20 at the end. It does look like this particular sticker was signed a lot later in the afternoon, as the Sharpie doesn't seem to get lifted from the sticker...
While it's still been on of the my least favorite card stores I've ever been to, Unfriendly's Dickish Collectables has brought some decent items to the Honkass Collection...
Such as this 1982 Twins Yearbook, commemorating their move into the Metrodome, that I picked up a few years ago for a non-Minnesota price...
These cards are not commons, and consist of rookies, low level inserts, stars and semi-stars, all sorted by team. I need the space badly, and do not need 500 or so Barry Bonds cards.
Or any other players of that ilk...
I'm looking at you Clemens...
Above is a sorting tray full of sleeved Detroit Tigers, on top of a pile of Monster Boxes, full of the other 29 teams. Most of these Tigers will likely be kept... Not giving away Verlander rookies...
Or Matt Nokes...
Given the time of day it was, driving nearly 20 miles across town, to the card shop I like, just for a few packs of penny sleeves wasn't anything I wanted to do. So I was left with one option, Unfriendly's Dickish Collectables (not their real name) a few miles up the street...
For years I've lamented the closing of my long time brick and mortar card shop, Mike's Sports Cards, which closed up in June 2013. They would have served my needs and it would have been a good time going there...
Unfriendly's Dickish has been open since the early 1980's, and is very close and easy to get to, I just don't ever want to go there...
While they've never ripped me off, I've heard stories...
So in my objective view, there's nothing inherently bad about Unfriendly's Dickish... it's just a place I don't feel comfortable as a consumer, and have rarely gone there.
But today, I really need a couple few hundred penny sleeves...
They do have an incredible inventory of rare and hard to find items (though in recent years, the quality of stuff that I look for has been a little lacking). The store is packed tight, cramped, and hard to look at and/or find anything. It's an overwhelmingly claustrophobic unorganized mess...
With lotsa Bronco heads...
Now I do understand that obsessive collector dorks, such as myself, are tough people to get along with. Most of us are rude elitist pricks that look down on everybody, while also being highly socially awkward. We lord over our collections, and treat outsiders with scorn.
And I'm fine with all that. I recognize those parts of my own personality so I fully understand them in others. But I also know that my own social shortcomings mean that I'm not geared for work in the customer service sector. No matter how qualified I may be for that job.
Think Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons...
All those things considered, while I rarely go there, whenever I do, it's for a specific reason (penny sleeves) and I usually find something I must have...
And today it was....
Well hello there... What exactly are you?
For $5? Yeah...
Not a yearbook or a program, and not distributed until AFTER the 2001 season ended... The book itself was a spiral-boud stack of 120 black and white pages, between heavily laminated single-sided color covers.
No frills, no advertising and no pictures (other than future Minnesota Twin, Orlando Cabrera, and 40 Man roster team mugshots), this was a text-heavy summary of the Expos 2001 season. Along with Minor League recaps and full bios and statistics for the 40 Man Rosters and top minor league prospects.
Very likely a low print-run publication, it was printed by the team itself. Since it only focuses on the 2001 season that had just wrapped, the publication date was November 15, 2001, so it wouldn't have been considered the 2002 Team Media Guide.
Considering at the time, Expos owner Jeff Loria, wasn't just trying to sell the team, he was actively trying to contract them out of existence. So why would he have bothered to green-light the printing of a seemingly frivolous publication?
That set him back a couple grand in labor and printing I'm sure!
While researching what a colossal bag of dicks Jeff Loria was/is, I found this story that I'd never heard of...
Apparently Jeff Loria was such a Yankees mark that he tried to trade for Derek Jeter after the 1999 season...
For Vladimir Guerrero...
Obviously this was never even the slightest of possibilities of actually happening, it lead to a required period of what-if daydreaming...
It's doubtful Derek Jeter would have been able to draw up enough public support to build the Expos a stadium. Given that both he and Guerrero were superstars at the same age, Guerrero didn't sway public opinion.
Of course given Expos ownership, it's hard to blame the city of Montreal from turning on the team.... Due to underhanded tactics I wont even begin to get into here, Loria financially starved the Expos out of spite towards the city of Montreal, then dumped them in favor of the Marlins.
All that hurts too much to talk about...
And I just can't imagine Derek Jeter in Expo Pinstripes...
The back cover was a really nice color team photo of the 2001 Montreal Expos!
If anyone knows anything about this book, let me know...
*****
Before cashing out with my Expos mystery book and a light restock of penny sleeves, I found some discount singles boxed behind the registers. These boxes boasted various "hits", autographs, relics, rookies and vintage cards for $3 each, or 4/$10, or 10/$20...
Well, there could potentially be a deal here, so I'll aim for 4 cards and call it good... Well, I found those 4 fairly quick, and decided that six more isn't a stretch, so I'll shoot for $20...
That's the price of a retail Blaster full of disappointment!
Here's the 10 cards I added for my $20 buy-in... (Not a ranking, we'll just go by year.)
1962 Topps Billy Martin
This was actually card number 10. I had my first 9, but was undecided on card #10. I grabbed Billy for two reasons... I'm not sure if I had it or not, and the MLB Network has been running all sorts of promotion for their new Billy Martin documentary that is sitting on the DVR, waiting for my next day off...
And it's a really cool card, despite it being creased and folded multiple times.
Though I wish it was Martin's 1969 Topps card. The first featuring Martin as a manager (of the Twins). I once had that card, but it was stolen in 1994. I've never been able to replace it...
1995 Signature Rookies Brad Fullmer
After seeing this card, I will NEVER complain about Topps bad airbrushing and Photoshoppery, or Panini's lack of team logos... I fully understand that Signature Rookies (a 1 or 2 year post junk-wax prospect lottery product, featuring 1 autograph in every pack) didn't have the clout to afford a licensing agreement. Thus getting rid of the Expos logo across Fullmer's jersey was necessary. But to type "Montreal" in a script font in it's place is laughably awful...
It's also too bad the Sharpie was almost dead, Fullmer has one of the nicer signatures of failed Expos prospects...
Here's the back of Fullmer's card. Signature Rookies are one of those kinda forgotten products of the 1990's, but they do have their charm...
1997 Donruss Signature Derrick Gibson
There was relatively few Rockies in the $3 box, most of those get piled in the crammed too full of singles and hard to look at Rockies case. Thousands of likely awesome cards, that are obscured by sheer volume...
Anyways....
Gibson was one of the players I collected in the mid-1990's. His five-tool talent should have translated into megastardom and winning seasons at Coors Field... He didn't and it didn't... Still, getting his autograph today seemed like a no brainer for $2...
1999 SP Fernando Seguignol
The 1999 SP Signature Edition cards were beautiful, and I've been wanting this card for a while. Seguignol never worked out as a player, making the 1998 Carlos Perez trade with the Dodgers, pretty much a wash...
Did Seguignol sneeze as he was signing his name?
2001 Upper Deck Prospect Premiers Justin Wayne
I wasn't buying many cards in the early oughts, so I missed out on a lot of good product in those years. Including Upper Deck's attempt at taking down Bowman... By hitting Topps directly in the prospect... (I so miss COMPETITION in the hobby...) Prospect Premiers was a nice set that I almost never bought.
Though I did pull a Mark Prior autograph from a wax box of this set in 2001... Back when a Mark Prior autograph really meant something...
And back when a Mark Prior autograph was worth something, this copy accidentally got folded in half when it was run over by a truck in a moving mishap. That same tragedy destroyed a 2001 Sweet Spot Albert Pujols rookie card...
2002 Upper Deck Prospect Premiers Kory Casto
See what I wrote about Justin...
I like this card a lot. The striking Expos uniform against the trees... Refractory autograph sticker covering up far too much of it...
I miss Upper Deck almost as much as I miss the Expos...
2005 Leaf Colby Miller
When a player has to sign a bunch of autographs on a sheet of stickers, I like it when there's a bit more effort made in forming actual letters. And if they aren't going to form actual letters, at least make them look interesting.
I thought I remembered Colby Miller from the Twins.
But in actuality, I was remembering cup-of-coffee catcher Corky Miller
My apologies to Colby Corky...
2007 eTopps Kevin Slowey
eTopps was one of Topps attempts at creating an online trading card. Each weeks, new cards would be released online for collectors to buy. Topps would print the cards based on the number ordered, and hold them until the owner of the online card requested the physical copy be sent to them. Cards that were sent to collectors would be encased and "sealed" with a Topps sticker. In the meantime collectors were able to trade them online cards between collectors. The concept debut in 2000 and was discontinued in 2012. Now it's seemingly been replaced by the Topps Now! promotion...
The 2007 series featured designs based on 1985 Topps (which I've always liked), now updated with blacky refractorness!
Each card would also be serial numbered to the amount printed, for online tracking purposes...
I liked Slowey as a pitcher when he first came up... He kinda was jerked around by the Twins, lack of interest in bowling with Gardenhire was a rumor...
2008 Bowman Chrome Draft Carlos Gutierrez
Minnesota's first round draft pick in 2008, Gutierrez never panned out. I really wanted this card in 2008. I got it in 2017 for a fraction of what it was selling for then...
2008 Topps Chrome Matt Tolbert
The 2008-2009 edition of the Twins trademark light hittng utility player that gets way over-exposed when pressed into heavier duty... A Gardenhire/Kelly trademark that hasn't been as pronounced with Molitor....
Tolbert has an interesting autograph, with his uniform number 20 at the end. It does look like this particular sticker was signed a lot later in the afternoon, as the Sharpie doesn't seem to get lifted from the sticker...
And there's my 10 for $20
Overall, a good haul in the 10 for $20 sense...
*****
Okay... I've probably been too harsh on Unfriendly's Dickish Collectables...
While it's still been on of the my least favorite card stores I've ever been to, Unfriendly's Dickish Collectables has brought some decent items to the Honkass Collection...
Such as this 1982 Twins Yearbook, commemorating their move into the Metrodome, that I picked up a few years ago for a non-Minnesota price...
So from this point on, I will be nicer to Unfriendly's Dickish Collectables...
Maybe they'll even get a new name...
See you soon with A Very Four Baggers Christmas Story!
FWIW, my Dad raved about the Billy Martin documentary.
ReplyDeleteUnfriendly's Dickish Collectables might be a chain...I think I've been to a few. Great post!
ReplyDelete