Five Years of CardBoredom

Fun fact: Today is the five year anniversary of my first public facing post at CardBoredom.com.   

Last year I set out four hobby goals, one of which was to add a card capable of joining my collection's "Mt. Rushmore" of cardboard. I am pleased to announce this goal has been successfully completed. I need to figure out a way to properly reveal the identity of the card. For now, I will settle for telling you that it is in poor condition and not part of one my set collecting goals. In fact, it is an anti-set collecting card in that its availability prompted me to break up my pile of '91 Donruss Elite cards. The latter had soared to prices that made wrapping up the set unappealing, and a further surge in prices early this year suddenly had them collectively trading at a similar price to the new pickup. Set side by side, I knew instantly which I would rather have.

This month I kept things confined to a fairly narrow window of baseball history, looking at cards produced between 1949-1952. The first cards that come to mind from this time frame are '52 Topps. I took a closer look at the nighttime card of Mike Garcia, who may not have been the bottom rung in a 4 man rotation staffed by 3 Hall of Famers. Of course, it is the high numbers that people seem to want to ask about. Thanks to a bit of failed tape removal I was able to add a low grade example of A's pitcher Johnny Kucab from the tough sixth series.

The stories behind player nicknames continue to fascinate me. Ted Williams hid his Mexican parentage while 10 years later Garcia came to the big leagues as "Mexican Mike." I wrote about Sid Hudson's 1949 Leaf card and how he became known as "Bucky's Boy." Read on for stories of kids working in grocery stores and coal mines.

The best nickname story emerged when I was going through old newspapers to piece together the story of how Charlie Bishop got to the Philadelphia A's. Bishop, with whom I have a family connection, originally was a prospect for the Cardinals and Giants before some twice being traded for missing people. He was called up from the International League a few months after he earned the nickname "Prince Charlie" while sacking the Syracuse Chamber of Commerce. Best of all, he has a minor league Canadian card issued right in the middle of all this.

Lastly, in honor of the fifth anniversary of my first post, I explored a rather unique card show.