1988 Little Sun Legends of the Minor Leagues - BIG Card Show Find

Last time, I showed off some of my vintage pick-ups from last weekend’s Milwaukee card show. Today, let’s look at the oddballs I found. These are some very odd balls indeed.

I love these Topps glossy cards. The all-stars, the rookies, the send-in sets. There is something reassuring about them. I got this 1986 set for a dollar. I think I might send this Boggs off to get it signed. Boggs is a very good TTM signer, charging five bucks a sig.

I also snagged this from the same seller. It was a small set, just twelve cards, from some maker I had never heard of. But for a dollar, what the hell? The set was produced by Little Sun, a company based in Monrovia, CA. According to this brief history of the company, they released a number of sets between 1988 and 1992. I didn’t think much of it when I picked up and didn’t expect much based on the weird cover card. But when I got it home and opened it up, I was quite literally stunned by what I found.

Holy shit! That is a great-looking card! Each card was illustrated by artist Michael Guccione and it very reminiscent of the iconic 1935 National Chicle football set. This is Luke Easter, who clubbed 269 homers in the minors.

Here is Frank Shellenback, who was a master of the spitball with the Hollywood Stars of the Pacific Coast League.

Jigger Statz had over 4,000 professional hits, with more 3,300 coming in the minors. Overall, he played in nearly 3,500 professional baseball games.

Meet Joe Hauser, a Milwaukee native who was the first professional hitter to ever belt more than 60 homers in multiple seasons. He topped out at 69 in 1933 for the Minneapolis Millers. He later retired to Sheboygan, Wisconsin, nearby to where I grew up.

Smead Jolley won six minor league batting titles, including marks of .397 and .404 for the San Francisco Seals.

Steve Bilko was six-foot-one and weighed as much as 265 pounds. One sportswriter said he resembled a “gigantic white eggplant.” In 1956, he smacked 55 homes and batted .360 for the PCL LA Angels.

This is instantly my favorite card of Pete Gray, who made history with the St. Louis Browns in 1945 by being the first MLB player who was missed a limb. He had limited success in the majors, but hit .380 with the Trois-Rivieres Renards of the Canadian-American League in 1942. He's shown here with the Memphis Chicks, where he batted .333 in 1944.

Lou Novikoff was a PCL MVP with Los Angeles. He saw action in a few seasons with the Cubs but loved to eat and drink and hated to meet curfew. He was a notoriously bad fielder and – per the bio on the back of the card – had a terrible fear of the ivy on the walls at Wrigley Field.

Ike Boone batted .370 during his 14-year minor league career and in 1929 hit .407 with 55 homers for Mission, His mark of 553 total bases that year set an all-time record (he played 198 games that season).

And then there’s Fidel Castro. Yes, THAT Fidel Castro. A very odd addition to the set, considering this “legend” of the minor league never played in the minor leagues, although was known as a huge fan of the game who played in his younger days. This set actually isn’t even listed in the Trading Card Database, but if it were, this would mark the only baseball card of Castro, who has appeared in a handful of non-sports sets. 

And here is an example of the set's backside, which includes a very nice biographical write-up. 

Anyway, those were my oddball adventures at the show. Next up, JUNK WAX!

Card Show Haul pt. 1: Vintage

I’ve added a lot of fun stuff to my collection lately that needs to be yapped about… primarily the results of a few nice trades and a trip to the local monthly card show. So I’ll break it into a few posts and hopefully will have some decent content to put up over the next week or so.

Let’s start with the card show! I had a pretty good haul out at Gonzaga Hall. As usual, the room was pretty full. That’s been kind of a problem for me in the past, as I am not terribly fond of crowds, and trying to nudge and dance around so many people (especially card show people, who tend to be a bit more, uh, expansive) while looking at tables and boxes is uncomfortable for me. Thankfully, however, I managed to visit the show during the auction, which sucks people to the end of the room, and during the start of the Packer game, which sucked them right out the door. So I spent a bit more time at the show than usual and got deeper into some of the more interested products.

I scored some very nice vintage stuff, both for my sets and just for fun.

Here’s a real sharp 1980 Nolan Ryan. I paid $4 for it from a half-off box. I actually picked up another one of these earlier in the show for a buck and had forgotten about it by the time I found this gem. The first one was pure filler, so it worked out.

I haven’t started on the 1977 Topps set yet. But when I do, I’ll have this great card of Lefty to start out with. Windbreaker, worn-out fence, mystery blue jeans… yeah, this card is a winner. I got it for a dollar.

REGGIE! Knocked this one off my 1980 want list. When I look at these old Topps designs, I always think of how much better they’d look if they used the team’s colors in the design. Red, orange, and sky blue for the Yankees? This was another buck card.

I added BIG ROOKIE #2 to my ’81 set. I was on the lookout for a Tim Raines as well, but came up empty. This beauty set me back all of 50 cents.

A second-year Wizard of Oz! Again, replace the green with Padre brown and how perfect would this card be? It’s still pretty damn sharp. I got it for two bones.

This Schmidt is a little beat-up, but for just three bananas, I snapped it up in a heartbeat.

When I get the money, I’m going to attack this 1972 set. It’s one of my favorite designs and has some very cool photography. Big Willie looks like he’s just about to pounce, dressed in those so-very-sharp Bucs unis. I paid three-quarters of a donut (75 cents) for it.

I just love the ‘movement’ in this photo. Brooksie twisted up after (I would guess) fouling one off. The tug of his jersey. The restless crowd behind him (dig the paper hat on the vendor). It’s a gorgeous card, no matter how worn it is. It was mine for two beans.

I’m torn on this card. It should be so much cooler. But 1969 was a dead period for Topps photos, with Marvin Miller having convinced many players to resist Topps photographers in order to secure a better licensing deal. This is actually the same exact photo that appeared on Morgan’s 1968 card. Topps was also, for some reason, still unable to use to logos or even the NAME of the Houston Astros. So, the result is this terribly dull card of an incredibly exciting player. It hardly even looks like a baseball card. Anyway, it’s got a big crease in it, and set me back all of one clam.

Now THIS is a ball card. From the same 1969 set, we’ve got a third year Tom Terrific. It’s a little gamey, with some paper loss on the corner, but set me back just five … dollars. It was the most expensive pick-up of the show.

Next up, I’ll share some of the ODDBALLS I found at the show.

Card Show Haul/ Stuff up for Trade

It had been a damn long time since I'd been to a card show when I finally managed to make it out to the monthly Milwaukee-area show at Gonzaga Hall. I used to semi-frequent the shows held at Serb Hall on the city's south side (George Wallace wowed them there back in '64). The Serb Hall shows were always pretty sparsely-attended, so I wasn't expecting much at Gonzaga. As it turned out, it was a pretty packed room - over 50 dealers and a few hundred people. I went with the intention of doing some dime box-digging, looking for fun or weird stuff or Brewers I don't have or maybe some set fillers. But with the crowd and the combination springtime cold/hangover I was nursing, I wasn't much in the mood for elbowing for space at the monster boxes with a bunch of @nycguidovoice look-alikes in Bart Starr jerseys. 

I still managed to have a pretty productive show visit. I snagged a quartet of factory sets for $5 each - '87, '91, and '92 Topps and the beastly bastard that is 1991 Score. The Topps sets were a nice pick, as I am planning long-term to build a series of Topps baseball sets as a far back as I can afford. These are three sets I fairly adore, but there is little sport in hand-collating them and buying them on eBay means paying three times as much for shipping as the actual product. And that Score beast... it's a set I've always been interested in, mostly because of the mass of subsets, but I really have no idea what I'm going to do with it.

When I'm a little more binder/9 pocket rich, I'll page the Topps sets up. But for now, they will live in the corner of the closet shelf I have cleared away for cards. Look at pic!!! I feel like posting it on craiglist with a "THOUSANDS OF BASE BALL CARDS MINT $500" title. 

I also managed to knock a few players off my All-Time Brewers project list. I picked up Heritage cards of Brent Suter, Hernan Perez, and Travis Shaw and scored a few old police team sets, which are always good for obscure relief pitchers or catchers.

O! The joy of a page completed! Huzzah! I love how these police sets still dole out 1950s advice to kids, "Look both ways before crossing the street!" "Eat less candy!" "Don't trust the Kremlin!" This 2011 set is also weird in that they apparently expected kids to cut the cards into little standee-type things. They're not perforated or anything, either, which would make it a pretty tough scissors job for a child. 

I might have stopped here if not for my BIG WIN - yes, my number was drawn for a $25 show credit. I used it on something I wouldn't normally have picked up - NEW WAX! There wasn't a huge selection there, so I settled on an already-discounted box of 2016 Topps update. With the credit, it only cost me $15, which is a win in my book. It was a productive box, too. With the small stack of update I already had, I managed to get within three cards (18, 20, 67, if you have them) of the complete set. I also got a bunch of inserts that I really don't want. So anything below is up for trades. 

 
Some gold things numbered from 2016. I might hang on to the Berrios, since it's a rookie and all. I dunno. 

This guy! Numbered out of 65. I got a Matt Kemp numbered out of 50, too, but that one is already out in the mail. 

 Foily-faces! 

A laundry card! This was the "hit" of the box, which doesn't do a thing to change my lack of interest in hits. It's actually a pretty good-looking card - I like the colors and the graphics a lot, but I have no interest in keeping it. 

Some "Fire" inserts. These actually look pretty bad-ass. I'm not sure how the fire theme works in, but still. Anyway, I've got this one as well as Sano, Synenyrddrgaarrd, and Correa. I want none of them. 

3000 Hits Club... Hits? I have never heard anyone call it the "3000 hits club." Isn't it usually 3000 HIT club? Anyway, there's this and Wagner, Kaline, Clemente, Carew, and Murray. Have at them. 

This isn't even a card... come on, it's a damn advertisement for Franklin. There's this one and Cespedes. Take them off my hands.  

 

First pitch cards. I sorta liked this concept at first, but then I began to remember how much I hate celebrities. This Jo Jo, according to the back of the card, was on one of those 'find someone to marry' shows. Barf-city. I also have Warren G, April Ludgate, Keith Urban, Jeff Bauman, and Burke Waldron. Marry as many of them as you like. 

I'm also working on another trade bait post, which I should have up tomorrow. I swear to hell, I'm going to trick someone into taking my old Pro Set football.