Nats From 2015 Group Box Break Plus Bonus Strive Cards

This is an ancient post that has been sitting in my draft queue for several years. I was holding off on it because I wanted to post scans of the cards. Well in recent months I have been trying to declutter my apartment and trying to get my card collection in a better more organized state. That means that most of sections of cards from mail days have been moved around and are in some kind of pre-sort mode (or actually added to their respective places in the collection) and are not available to be scanned at publishing time. Plus I really need to declutter my draft queue. So there will be no card scans of this post. 

If this post were on my regular card blog it would be part of my upcoming Maildazed From The Pazt series. 

Monday 14 September 2015
I got a package of cards from 5TooSweet’s (Abel) TCC Baseball Group Box Break. [NOTE: Sadly Able passed away a few years back, I forget the cause may have been cancer] Anyway I bought my standard homie team Nationals and bought a bonus discount team Twins. It was mostly just my Nationals I might have asked not to send Twins base and they didn't get any hits. I’ll only mention a team if it is not a Nat card.

2015 Topps Baseball Chrome:
8 Denard Span
23 Stephen Strasburg
59 Kevin Kiermaier Rays (random)
81 Bryce Harper
98 Max Scherzer - minor refractor
99 Doug Fister
FUTURE STARS FSC-07 Michael Taylor

2015 Topps Stadium Club Baseball:
42 Jordan Zimmermann
137 Rondell White Expos
142 Anthony Rendon
202 Stephen Strasburg
222 Tanner Roark
251 Jayson Werth
296 Max Scherzer
CONTACT SHEET CS-22 Bryce Harper
LUMINOUS TRIUMVIRATE Die-Cut T-6A Bryce Harper

2015 Topps Allen & Ginter:
28 Jayson Werth
101 Stephen Strasburg
106 Yunel Escobar
235 Michael Taylor RC
266 Drew Storen
303 Denard Span
MINI: A World Beneath Our Feet Bug-8 Death’s Head Hawkmoth
STARTING POINTS: SP-97 Bryce Harper

BONUS CARDS:
Cards for my struggling goal “Strive For ‘65”* set build: 7 Cards
1965 Topps Baseball:
26 Bobby Knoop Angels
32 Herman Franks MGR Giants
48 Claude Raymond Houston Colt 45’s
53 Dick McAuliffe Tigers
72 Tony Gonzalez Phillies
96 Sonny Siebert Indians
97 Pedro Gonzalez Yankees

* I haven't mentioned these 1965 cards on my regular blog yet. Eventually I guess they will be when I have completed the album page they are stored in. I'm behind in doing that as well. I have an upcoming post on my regular card blog about being unorganized.

Nationals mentioned in this post:
Yunel Escobar
Doug Fister
Bryce Harper
Anthony Rendon
Tanner Roark
Max Scherzer
Denard Span
Stephen Strasburg
Drew Storen
Michael Taylor
Jayson Werth
Jordan Zimmermann

An Ancient Contest From Trading Card Central

In trying to come up with a fun post I recalled a semi-annual contest that the Trading Card Central (TCC) forum used to have. I forget if it was done last year or not. I would occasionally participate in it even though it often stresses me out trying to come up with what to show/post in the limited time given. The winner of the contest would usually get a cool predetermined prize or a huge lot of cards for their PCs. Sometimes all of the above. The contest was called "The Battle Royal" and was a free-for-all elimination type of contest, any forum member could enter the contest. The structure of the contest was that once a week there would be a challenge to post cards from whatever the head judge came up with. Post your best game used card, best on card autograph, favorite player, favorite odd-ball card etc... The contestants then had a specific amount of time to post cards from their collection that met the requirements for that round's challenge. It was usually like 48 hours from the time the challenge was posted. After the contestants posted their entries, other members could vote on what they liked, but usually the head judge would choose which he liked best. Contestants were awarded points for each round. I think the eliminations began either before or after round three. The total number of rounds would depend on how many contestants there were and how the "ring leader" of the contest judged or scored things and how many contestants got eliminated each round.

For the 2015 TCC Battle Royal I managed to stick it out til the final 3.  The first challenge was a difficult one to decide on. Here is the challenge instructions:

Round 1- Field A Team

Cards/Team can be from any team sport and of any type. There must be a card for each position and the player depicted on that card must actually play or have played that position. If you choose baseball and use cards from an AL team, you must have both a DH and a P as well as the other positions. All players must have the same team on their uniforms.

Entries must be posted by 11:59 PM on Tuesday August 4th.

Let's Rumble.

Yeah OK. My first thought was to do a Redskins team, but Football requires too many offense and defense players. I'm pretty sure I could cover all the positions, but trying to decide on some of them would be difficult and for QB would I go with Sunny J. or Sammy B.? I also thought about the Capitals  My problems with them would have been to decide on some of the representatives for some of the positions. I also thought about using the Nationals but I had to make sure I had them in Nats uniforms, some of my Nats guys at the time I didn't have them in a Nats uniform. Long story short I decided to field a vintage Senators team. In the end it is sort of my Fantasy Pre-Expos All-Time Senators/Nationals Team.

I only showed the card fronts on the forum. I'll add the backs here as a bonus. I had scanned any backs and fronts I was missing at the time of the contest, but due to the image limit on the forums I had to leave the backs off. Note some of these cards I have already shown previously on this blog somewhere.

Here is my (two post) entry pretty much how it was posted (with the exception of the backs added here and slightly different format):

Dang what a way to start this thing. Sheesh. OK so I'm gonna kick it old school with my Homie Senators.

Da Pitchman: Tomorrow
Walter "The Big Train" Johnson

1994 Ted Williams Baseball 89 Walter Johnson

Da Catcher: Today
Paul Casanova

1969 Topps Baseball 486 Paul Casanova

INFIELD:
1st Base: Who
Mike Epstein

1970 Kellogg's 3-D Baseball 24 Mike Epstein

2nd Base: What
Bernie Allen

1970 Topps Baseball 577 Bernie Allen

3rd Base: I Don't Know
Eddie Yost

1950 Bowman Baseball 162 Eddie Yost

Short Stop: I Don't Give A Darn
Ed Brinkman

1968 Topps Baseball 49 Ed Brinkman

Uh Oh almost forgot the image limit. It's what only 10? 6? 5? Been ages since I've posted tons of pics here. [For the record the image limit at the TCC forums is 10 images per post. That was post 1 now post 2]

OUTFIELD:

Left Field: Why
Roy Sievers

1956 Topps Baseball 75 Roy Sievers

Center Field: Because
Whitey Herzog

1958 Topps Baseball 438 Whitey Herzog

Right Field: Nobody
Frank Howard

1968 Topps Baseball 320 Frank Howard

Even though the Senators (2.0) moved before the DH came about I wanted to have Killer in the lineup somewhere and since I had already used 3rd Base. Killebrew did have some at bats as the DH for the Twins in the last couple of years of his career.

DESIGNATED HITTER:
Harmon Killebrew

1960 Topps Baseball 210 Harmon Killebrew

MANAGER:
Ted Williams

1969 Topps Baseball 650 Ted Williams

COACHES:

Ellis Clary
Sam Mele
Bob Swift

1960 Topps Baseball 470 Coaches

Senators and Nationals mentioned:
Bernie Allen
Ed Brinkman
Paul Casanova
Ellis Clary
Mike Epstein
Whitey Herzog
Frank Howard
Walter Johnson
Harmon Killebrew
Sam Mele
Roy Sievers
Bob Swift 
Ted Williams
Eddie Yost

SeNators Singles: Al Evans 1950 Bowman

SENATORS SINGLES: 

This is the first post of what will hopefully be a regular series feature that will at least make this blog more active, and give me more work to do on it. I don't plan on making these too wordy just something that gives me more opportunities to show off more of my Washington "Curly W" Baseball Cards. It is also a good way to build up a bunch of "filler" posts for whenever I need to make a post but don't have any subject matter in mind.

If you follow enough team specific card blogs you will notice that many of them have a "card of the day" or "card of the week" feature. Some of those blogs are the feature. I don't think I'll ever get that enthusiastic for the daily route, it is hard enough for me to keep up regularly for weekly features. Hopefully I'll do this often enough to make most people think it is done more often.

Some of the cards I show for this feature might be repeats of cards previously shown and maybe sometimes cards shown here will get repeated in another feature. Who knows? It is all good anyway.

I don't recall which Senators card was my very first Washington Baseball Card or Curly W Card so I'll just have to show the card that (for now) is my oldest CWC in terms of its age not necessarily how long I've had it.

1950 Bowman 144 Al Evans Senators

(Front and back)

I was going to just mention that I think I got this card from Ebay a while back and leave it at that, but I went ahead and dug into my TCC blog* and found the entry working backwards from the oldest entries to the newest, I would have saved a few minutes starting the other way since I had gotten this card last year. I got it on Monday 14 May 2012 from Ebay as I said, and I only paid $4.75 + $1.00 shipping.

UPDATE: This card no longer my oldest CWC I recently got some cards from Ebay including an even older card from the 1933 Goudey set.

*My TCC blog I have been using as a card "mailday blog" for sometime now. I also duplicate the entries over at TCZ in my CaptKirk42's Mail Bag posts on their "Mail Days" board. The duplication came in handy over the weekend of 25-27 October 2013 when the TCC site was down. I do need to backup my entries in case both sites go down permanently.