Custom cards, series 1, page 2

 It's a whole page of Minnesota Twins, Cards as I See Them, see anything of note.

Minnie Mendoza-played in 16 games for the Twins in 1970.  He got 16 ABs, 3 Hits, 2 Runs and 2 RBIs.  

Joe Bonikowski-pitched in 30 games for Minnesota in 1962. He had a record of 5-7 and an ERA of 3.88.

Steve Barber-pitched in 22 games for the Twins in 1970-1971.  He had a record of 1-0 and an ERA of 5.08.

Mark Wiley-pitched in 15 games for the Twins in 1975.  He had a record of 1-3 and an ERA of 6.05.  He made it back to the majors in 1978 with the Padres and Blue Jays.

Mike Poepping-appeared in 14 games for the Twins in 1975.  He hit .135 

Tom Lundstedt-played for the Cubs in a few games in 1973 and 74. He appeared in 18 games for the Twins in 1975.  He finished his career with a BA of .092

Pat Bourque-Minnesota was his last stop in the majors.  He played in 23 games for the team in 1974.

Mike Kinnunen-pitched in 23 games for the Twinkies in 1980. He would reappear in the majors and finish his career with the O's in 1986 and 87

Boomer Wells-played in 15 games for Minnesota in 1982 after playing in 32 games for the Jays in 1981.

Padrographs, Front Office and others, Part 2

Kevin Towers-I first met Kevin when he pitched in the Padres minor league system.  I talked with him and he had gone to school with some of my cousins in his hometown of Medford, Oregon.  I got this card signed when he was in the minors.  He was the general manager of the Padres from 1995-2009.  He worked with several other teams. 

He passed away from cancer in 2016.

Tony Hawk- I got this off of ebay.  Skateboard icon Tony Hawk is from San Diego and threw out the first pitch.

Johnny Manziel-The Padres used the 837th pick in the 2014 draft to pick him.  He never played an inning and Topps decided to make a card.  I picked this off on ebay.

Agnes McKee- Agnes was 105 years old when she threw out the first pitch in 2014.  I found an article about her that mentioned where she lived and I sent her cards there and asked her to return one signed.  She obliged and this is that card.

Don Orsillo-Don is the play by play announcer for the Padres.  This is half of a bigger card that had Mark Grant on the other half.  I have one of the whole card signed by both of them.  I am not sure where that card is.

The Chicken-The Godfather of all sports mascots.  This card was not signed in '83.  I got it signed after a Portland Beavers game in the '90's.  I asked him to sign his real name but he said that would be like asking Santa to sign Fred.   Ted did sign his real name on a photo another time.

The Swingin Friar-This signed card was pulled from a pack.  I purchased it on Ebay.  

Next time, I will start on signed Manager cards.  

Plus one and minus one

 I added a Padrograph this week and subtracted one more card from my 1965 Topps want list.  I started a new custom card project this week, which I will share with you when I get the fronts done. It is a fifty card set.  Any guesses?

I added this 2025 Topps of Dylan Cease celebrating his no hitter.  I got it on Ebay.  I wish he would be a little more consistent this year.  I will revel in the fact, that as on this moment, the Padres are leading the National League West.  

With the arrival of Johnny Robinson I need just nine cards to finish the 1965 Topps Football set.  He played his entire career for the Texans/Chiefs, played in the first ever Super Bowl and was inducted into the Football Hall of Fame in 2019.

Thanks for stopping by.

Custom Cards, Series 1, page 1

 Back in 2015 I saw that an autograph dealer had a signing with Leon Everitt, who had pitched for the Padres in 1969 but never had a card with them.  We decided that if I made cards for the dealer I would get a free signature and he could do as he liked with the other eight cards.  We also reached terms on cards from other teams.  We are still making cards ten years later as ShoeBox Heroes.  

#1 Leon Everitt-Leons' entire major league career consisted of five games for the Padres in 1969.  He passed away in 2016 at the age of 69.

#2 John Sipin-John played in 68 games for the Padres in 1969.  He played in Japan from 1972-80.  Evidently he was a big fan favorite in Japan.  I tried many different addresses to get this signed and never received a reply.  I ended up buying an index card and making a cut signature card.

#3 Van Kelly-played in 111 games for the Padres in 69 & 70.  That was the extent of his major league career.  I used SCN to find his address and sent him cards, I asked him to sign one and keep the others and he did.  

#4 Rupe Toppin-pitched in 2 games for the Kansas City Athletics in 1962.  Other than those 2 games he played in the minors from 1960-1969.

#5 Ron Allen-I am not sure why this is a Phillies card.  Ron never made the majors with Philadelphia, he made his major league debut with the Cardinals in 1972.  He played 5 games in 1972 and that was the end of his major league career.  Early on in making the customs the photos came from the autograph dealer, which may be why it is a Phillies card.  Ron is the brother of Dick and Harry Allen.

#6 John Hairston- John played in three games for the Cubs in 1969.  He is the brother of Jerry Hairston, son of Sam Hairston, uncle to Jerry and Scott Hairston.

#7 Vance McHenry- Vance played in 15 games for the '81 Mariners and 3 games for them in '82.  He played in the minors in various systems until 1985.  

#8 Clint Compton-Clint pitched in 2 innings for the 1972 Cubs.  

#9 Charlie Walters- Charlie pitched in 6.2 innings in 6 games for the Twins in 1969.  

1969 fronts were easy to make, it is a just a matter of finding the right colors and fonts.  I used the back of Tom Seavers' '69 card for Leon Everitts, just superimposing things on it.  With John Sipins' card I started building the card backs.  The more I worked with Publisher the easier things became.   The '62, '81 and '72 cards involved an exacto knife and various other tools for the fronts.  

Padrographs Owners and Front Office, Part 1

My Padrographs are housed in three binders, from the LCS I used to work at from 90-95.  The first binder starts with owners and other front office personnel.  

Ron Fowler-was executive chairman of the Padres and part owner from 2012-2020.

Erik Greupner- is currently the CEO of the Padres and has been with the team since 2010.

Jeff Moorad-has owned part of the Diamondbacks and the Padres.  He is currently a sports agent.

John Moores-was the owner of the Padres from 1994-2003, when a divorce necessitated the sale of the team.

Peter Seidler-was the owner of the Padres from 2012 til his death in 2023.  He was much loved in San Diego and authorized spending that brought the superstar talent to the team.

Sandy Alderson-CEO of the Padres from 2005-2009.  I put the Chesty Puller stamp on the card to commerate Aldersons' time in the Marine Corps and he served in Vietman.

Buzzie Bavasi-was the president and a minority of the Padres when they became a major league team.  He left the team in 1977 to work with the singing cowboy, Gene Autry and the Angels.

Josh Byrnes-was the GM of the Padres from 2011-2014. He is currently the senior vp of baseball operations for the Dodgers.

Jed Hoyer-was the GM of the Padres in 2010-2011.  He is currently the president of baseball operations for the Chicago Cubs.

Thanks for stopping by.  See you soon.
 

1462, 1332, 10, 4, and 8

 It has been a minute since I last posted but Night Owls' post about the number of bloggers who post once is motivating me to at least try that. I have written 1,462 post since starting in 2008.  Back then I was working 40 hours or more (at a job I loved).  Now I work 25 hours a week for a friend, I like my job but oh boy some of the people.  Looking forward to school starting in two weeks.  I will try and stop in regularly from here on out.  

With the addition of two Padres autographs from 2025 I now have 1,332 different padres signatures.  

Sean Reynolds has pitched in 18 games for the Padres this year in relief.  He is currently pitching at El Paso.

Brandon Lockridge played in 47 games for the Padres this year before being traded at the deadline to Milwaukee for Nestor Cortes.

 I only have ten cards left to finish my 1965 Topps football set.  The remaining cards are Willie Brown, Len Dawson, Ralph Baker, Winston Hill, Joe Namath, Fred Blitnekoff, Ben Davidson, and three others I am bidding on.  It could be awhile.  This is one of the last cards I received, it has been a long time since I received a card in a screw down.

This is my latest custom card, Shoebox Heroes, Series 2, card # 496.

Tom Wiedenbauer played four games for the Astro's in 1976.  He has been a coach in the Cleveland system since the 80's.   

The other when I got the mail I realized that I had a return of a TTM card.  I have mailed any cards out for signatures for at least five years.  When I checked I mailed this card to Mr. Cahill in 2017.  It is a custom I had sent him.  He included an actual 2017 Heritage card with this one.  

Thanks for stopping by and hopefully I will see you in a week.  I am trying this Google link things.  

New Padrographs

I was searching on eBay and found some Padrographs I didn't have.  

 Randy Curtis was drafted by the Mets in 1991 and came to the Padres in a trade and then went to the Cleveland system.  He was out of professional baseball by 1998.  He has been President and CEO of ABD baseball for the last 28 years.

Euribiel Angeles was drafted by the Padres in 2018 and was traded to the A's in 2022 as part of the trade that brought Sean Manea to the Padres.  He is currently playing in the Texas League.

Nathan Martorella was drafted by the Padres in 2022 and is now in the Southern League in the Marlins system.  He was part of the trade that brought Luis Arraez to San Diego.

Nerwilian Cedeno was signed by the Padres in 2019 at age 17 in the DR.  He is currently playing A+ for the Ft Wayne Tincaps in the Padres system.  

Robby Snelling was drafted by the Padres in 2023, he is currently pitching in the Marlins system as he was also part of the Arraez trade.  

Two More Completed Pages & Card Show

 Went to a card show at Lloyd Center today.  I was able to bypass many tables because they were Pokemon or slabbed superstars, neither of which interest me.  I was surprised that none of the dealers had any 2025 Heritage.  There were several other tables that I was able to pass by because they had many unsorted 5,000 count boxes and I know I don't have the patience to go through that looking for cards I want.  I did pick up one free card of a minor league player for the Hillsboro Hops named Gavin Logan (guess who I picked it up for).  I dropped off some cards at his house this morning.

I must confess that I have never heard of any these guys.  This team no longer exists.

I have heard of none of these guys either and I used to be a Chargers fan, although these cards came out when I was eight years old and living in Newport, Rhode Island. 

I am now at 56% of the set, I have ninety eight of the one hundred seventy six cards.

2025 Heritage a first look

 When I got home from a boring cold day at work today, my wife greeted me with a hot bowl of spaghetti and in the mail I received my pre-ordered hobby box of 2025 Heritage.  I immediately opened it while watching The Rookie.

This is what it looked like after I sorted out the teams that I know I can send to you guys. In the bottom row second from the left is a stack of most of the inserts.  

This was the first card out of the box.

I got these two historical guys.  One of them is very well known in this part of the country.

It's hard to tell here but these are all chrome versions of the base cards.  Paul Skenes showed up so many times in this box I thought it was meant for Pittsburgh.  Luckily I have a friend here who is a Pirates fan.  

Blue borders, no serial numbers on these.

Blue Sparkly versions, no serial numbers here either.

A slightly different color blue sparkly, no serial number.

I did get one serial numbered card, blue chrome.  133/150

Watch for it in the mail Tom

I did get a 1976 Buyback card

These are some of the other inserts.  The Matt Olson relic is the guaranteed relic/autograph in a hobby box.  I was glad to get the Mel Ott he was one of my first baseball heroes when I was a kid.  

Hope you enjoyed this look.

Thanks for stopping by.

The Joy of a completed page

 

I completed a page of my 1965 Topps Football set build.  It is the first page of the set.  I only recognized two names on this page.  Nick Buoniconti, although I know him from when he was with the Miami Dolphins in the 70's.   He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2001 and passed away in 2019.  Gino Cappelletti played for the Patriots from 1960 to 1970.  Before joining the Patriots he played in the CFL and also played QB for a Rugby Team according to wikipedia.  He passed away in 2022.

Fuji helped me out with eight more cards to bring me to 49% completion of the set.  The only one of these guys I had heard of was Tom Flores and that was from the years he was the Raiders head coach.  Thanks Mark.

On a completely different note, I have a question for those of you who use Blogger.  I can only get my blogroll to show ten other blogs, but I notice some of you have many more than that.  Can you tell how to get more to show up.

Thanks for stopping by and any help you can render.

Ripping boxes

I recently opened some boxes.  A hobby box and a blaster of Series 1, two blasters of high number heritage and a mega box of Celebration of series one.  I have put together packages for some of my readers, they will be going out this week.  I thought I would share some of the inserts and parallels I got.  If you see something you would like let me know and we'll see what we can work out.  I am looking for 1990 chrome parallels of Tony Gwynn and Call to the Hall parallels of him.

Got a bunch of these.

Got four serial number chrome cards

Got a few of these.  Like seeing Juan Marichal, I used to have his Sports Illustrated poster on my wall in the 70's

The card on the left is a variation, it says white border on the back but the borders look to be green.

I would like to know if there is a Padres card like the Astros. I only got one Call to the Hall in everything I opened.

Got so many of these I didn't scan them all.

I got the inexpensive Skenes card.

Really?  

Several mascots but no Swingin Friar

And my guaranteed relic, at least the relic matches the picture.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day.

1957 Topps Non Sports

 I have started in on my 1957 Non Sports sets.  I am working on Robin Hood, Planes, Space, Hit Stars and Isolation Booth.  I managed to pick up a lot of forty cards for the Planes set.  I also picked up a small lot of the isolation booth cards.  The planes set comes in two different color backs, Blue and Red, I am making a combined set.  I don't card about condition, some are pretty bad. Here is where I am with each set.

17/88 for 19% of Isolation Booth

1/60 for 2% of Robin Hood

9/88 for 10%  of Hit Stars, this will be the third time I have built this set.

1/88 for 1% of Space

38/88 for 32% of Planes.

I was going to look for some more at the card show at the Oregon Convention Center but it was a big disappointment.  I waited in line to park.  I had a prepaid ticket but had to wait in line to get a wristband, then another line to get in.  When I did get in I basically  turned around and left.  The promoter severly underestimated the crowd.  The show was over capacity within the first ten minutes.  I couldn't tell what vendors were there or what they had to offer because the crowds were so thick.  

The actual joy of a completed set

COMC came through earlier than projected.  I received the last three cards for my 1965 Philadelphia Gum Football set yesterday.  

The third card refused to scan properly.  It was  Charley Johnson of the St. Louis Cardinals.  I have now finished the 1969 Topps set and this set.  Today I got some cards for my 1957 Topps Football build at the Local Card Show.  I missed seeing the Diamond King there. 

There is a big show coming up at the Oregon Convention Center in three weeks.  Looking forward to seeing what I can find there.

 

First 2025 card

 

The Joy of a Completed Set (kinda)

 My 1965 Philadelphia Football is kinda complete.  The last two cards I needed were Jim Brown and local hero Mel Renfro.  I used to work with a guy who went to high school with Mr. Renfro.

I say the set is kinda of complete, because before I bought these I ordered the other three cards I needed from COMC, I ordered them in late January and according to the website they will be shipped March 3.  This is the first time I have ordered from COMC, is this kind of delay normal?  So now that the Philadelphia set is kinda done I am working on the 1965 Topps football set.  Again I am looking for cards in poor to fair condition.  I found someone today who had one card at the card show.  So I guess it will be an Ebay quest.  

I met up with The Diamond King at the show today and he gave me a Blake Snell card I didn't have and the Bull Durham card featured in a recent post on his blog.  I mentioned that Fuji was coming to town and we are going to try and meet up with him.  Hopefully Gavin will be able to meet up with us also.  

Thanks for stopping by.