[Belated] March Updates

I just walked in the door two hours ago after visiting some of the museums in Washington DC. Here's my wallet card making an appearance in the Dinosaur Hall of the Natural History Museum.

I think I was due to post a collecting update here, but I was having too much fun to get it done on time. In the past month I learned new ways to analyze distances (Haversine and Vincenty's Formulas!), something that will soon come in handy for a card-related project that is nearly finished.

Real-world work has been taking up a chunk of time, with my closest co-worker having his schedule upended by a family member's health issues. The result is me filling in for him more often on some pretty high level stuff, so my mental bandwith is getting pulled in all kinds of exciting directions. As much as a I love card collecting, the opportunity to jump right into some professional mega projects is more compelling. Yesterday I hired a new intern to join my team. The guy is coming off winning a hackathon, has a 1580 SAT score, and already has a better resume than most full time job candidates that I see apply for openings. It's going to be a fun summer working with him.

So what have I been up to in the card collecting world when I'm not ingesting too much caffeine and wondering how I ever would have competed with the latest intern back when I was in school?

I wrapped up research into an insanely difficult to find card from 1990 Donruss and posted the results on my primary blog. The card in question is the Aqueous Test Issue of Jose Canseco, which I have come to believe has somewhere around 25 copies in existence. I came across this example by sheer happenstance and luckily did not have to compete for it against some very tenacious Canseco collectors or against a legendary collector of the set who already has a copy. In fact, prior to the emergence of this example the card was considered to be tied with a small number of others as the hardest to find name in this obscure issue. I am beyond excited about this one.

I don't care what people say. 1990 Donruss is fantastic if you can ignore the overproduction.

I sent a letter to former pitcher Bobby Shantz asking him if he had any memories of playing with a distant relative of mine. Shantz is his only remaining teammate and wrote back in March. The arrival of his letter coincided with the arrival of freshly graded cards, the results of which I included in my writeup of Shantz's response.

Early in the month I had a strong urge to open some junk wax packs, but I didn't have any on hand. A search of card shops within a reasonable distance revealed a longstanding one I had never noticed before. I paid a visit and came away with a complete set of 1997 Collector's Choice to sort through. There is a lot of interesting photography in the set, like the shot below of Phillies catcher Darren Daulton playing the outfield.

With all this going on, I didn't write as many card profiles as I would like. My backlog grew a bit after I came across some highly discounted vintage cards. Most were commons, though a few were 1952 Topps high numbers so the term "common" is a bit relative.  I think the ratio of incoming cards to outgoing profiles is going to become more favorable as the year progresses.

All right, let's wrap it up. Here are the card profiles posted for my set building projects within the past month: 

1952 Topps

• Shortly after the 1952 season concluded the biggest National League home run threats would join forces at Wrigley Field. The Mayor of Wrigley Field (and 1952 NL MVP) showed newcomer Ralph Kiner all the best spots, especially where he kept a hidden cache of tobacco in the outfield ivy.
  
• Did they run out of paint for covering up old logos? Topps decided to count the Phillies' minor league home run champ among the Chicago White Sox outfielders appearing in '52 Topps.
  

1993 Finest

• A dissatisfied catching phenom and perennial free agent once built a baseball card collection based solely on guys the San Diego Padres had let get away.
  
• Coors Field is known for high scoring ballgames, though it is not always the Rockies' bats that account for all the runs. The highest scoring game in team history showed off the baserunning talents of Colorado's speediest player.
  
• John Dealt, Went: This anagram of one of the '90s best relievers describes the player who was part of six different teams but only took the mound for four of them.