Collecting Goals for 2021

 I finally sorted a shoebox full of Sportscaster cards that I purchased in April.  Those take way too long to sort due to the large set size, the small card numbers and the thin card stock.  Can I even call it card stock when it is really paper stock?

Since I have next week off I will probably be able to spend more time with my Kellogg's cards.  

For 2021 I've got a few goals for my collecting.

1. Attend card shows.  That didn't really happen this year for obvious reasons.  

2. Attend flea markets.  The one I usually attend never did open.  Even if it did, I had no assistant for my golf course job so I probably would not have gotten any time to go.  Related goal - find an assistant to help me at the golf course once a week.  

3.  Attend the National since it is 30 minutes from my house.  One year I had already planned a team camp during the week of the National so I only got to go on Sunday.  I'd like to get two days since it is close.  That would give me time to actually dig through boxes to find things from my want list.

4.  Meet up with some bloggers at the National.  Let me know if you are going to attend.

5.  Work on my want lists.  This is way down the list because even though it is fun, it isn't a big deal how long it takes me to to get these items.

6.  Work on my other collecting interests - Sportscaster cards, Hostess boxes, Western Open items (golf) and Starting Lineups.

Are any of you going to the National if it happens and if the world is vaccinated by that time?

More Organizing With Hopes of Card Shows in 2021

I find it easier to keep track of what I am looking of by having it here on the blog.  With that in mind and with hopes of card shows sometime next year, I've been adding to the list of cards that I am trying to find next year.  I will keep adding to this as I get organized more.  It worked well at the last show I attended because the phone is easier to check than a bunch of lists.  

Why do I sometimes get extra sets?  I tend to buy cards in lots so I end up with doubles.  If that gets me close to a set, it gives me something to do while slowly trying to complete sets that are taking a long time - variations from 1971 and 1979, unopened packs and other items that don't show up often. 

I hope to be doing some trading and purchasing next year using these lists.  Let me know if you can help.

I love the strip of 1970 cards above, but I am trying to collect nice versions of the cards other than 1971s at this point.  Why?  It isn't my favorite set and it is so much more expensive than the others in nice condition.  

Maybe in 2021 I will at least start to track how many of the 1971s I even have in nice condition.  I would guess that the number will be less than 20.  I do have the entire football set in nice shape - to PSA-10 quality but I do believe that that are clean and uncracked.  

 

My First Free Weekend - What did I Do?

 I actually went to a card show.  Yeah!  That's the first one I've been to since maybe February?  I drove a little over an hour to have something to do.  The promoters did a great job of distancing the tables, even going so far as spreading the show into three different rooms, instead of the normal close quarters of one room.  Everyone I saw was wearing masks and staying distant.  

One of the reasons that I started this blog was to have a resource when I am at card shows.  Recently, I finally got around to listing the 1971 Kellogg's baseball variations that I needed.  That came in handy today since I found a dealer with about 10 cards from 1971.  

He had both variations of the McCovey.  The card is in nice condition, no cracks but certainly not perfect.

The Palmer that I needed had lots of cracks, but that's okay for my set.  

I couldn't pass up the Eddie Murray either.  

Since there is never anything to buy at the local stores, I bought five packs of 2019 Heritage because they were cheap.  At $1 per pack I knew there would be nothing special in the packs, but that was okay.  It was nice to open a few packs.  

I've read a lot about how store shelves are emptied immediately when cards arrive.  The prices of new boxes were way beyond what I'm willing to pay.  Related to people cleaning out the retail stores, I saw a few dealers whose entire inventory was Pokemon and cards directly from the retail shelves. 

30 variations to go for the 1971 Kellogg's baseball card set.    

Here is A Blog About the 1980s that Spent Time Talking About Kellogg's Cards

This was a nice read.  The site talks about a lot of 1980s cards that I remember well.

https://1980sbaseballcards.blogspot.com/2017/07/1980-1983-kelloggs-3-d-super-stars.html

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

I decided that I would stay away from my card room until I caught up with my grading.  I'm getting close to that.  I haven't stopped myself from buying online.  I guess being stupid and not buying online is probably more appropriate this week.  

I've probably made three big mistakes when not bidding properly on an item over the last few years.  Two of them happened this week.  What constitutes a mistake?  For me the mistake is that I was too cheap to bid appropriately on items that don't come up for sale often.  

To make matters worse, one was a Kellogg's display item that I never saw before.  It gets worse - it had a buy-it-now price and I didn't act.  Ugh. 

The second one was on some cards that don't show up much.  I needed about half of the lot.  It would not bother me as much if someone bid way up to win the lot, but it was just two of us so the other person got the lot at the next price higher than my top bid.  Ugh.  

I hope that this reminder stays with me for a while.  But I really wonder how long it will take for me to be able to find the items that are missing from my collection.  

Does everyone make these mistakes?  The one lot ended while I was teaching so that didn't help matters.

 

Still Searching for the Benanti Collection Cards, Sheets, Proofs, etc.

 It has been over six years since Beckett Auctions was involved with the Benanti Collection.  Some great items were sold and there were supposed to be many more.  Somehow, the remaining items never got to the auction.  I was told by Beckett that the family pulled the remaining items for some reason.  

Does anyone know more about this?

Has anyone seen these items anywhere?  

Does anyone know how I can get more information on the Benanti Collection?

Gehrig Card From the Benanti Collection

Has anyone else noticed proof cards that differ from the final product?

Kellogg's Individual Baseball Card Packs

 On the right side of my blog I list some of the unopened Kellogg's packs that I am seeking.  Is that a complete list of those that I need?  No.

I list the cards that I need from 1972 - 1974, 1976 - 1978 and the 1979 variation packs.  I already completed a 1978 set, but since I ended up being close to another I added them to the want list.    

Notice nothing listed for 1970, 1971 and 1975.  I still don't see much hope in getting these sets in their original one-card packs.  I am having trouble finding clean, un-cracked cards for opened sets, especially when trying to find the 1971 variations.

I don't expect to make any collecting goals for 2021 with the way things are going recently.  Will I go to cards shows or flea markets next year?  If so, when?  

  

Nice Kellogg's Conversation - I Hope to Add Some Pics

 Check this out on net54 - https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=291437

Anyone want to join in?

Nice Discussion of Kellogg's Variations

 https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=289258

Do you collect or care about Kellogg's variations?

Are you looking for any Kellogg's variations?  I need a bunch of 1971s and a few 1979s.

There are a few different types of variations.  

1.  Team logos

2.  Statistics

3.  Text write-ups

4.  Trademark and related

5.  Picture on the back

6.  Missing card number

Did I miss any types of errors?

Does Anyone Else Have Kellogg's Proof Cards?

I got these in the mail today.

These are from the Benanti collection.  Does anyone else have any cards from this collection?  I picked up a few over the last 10 years.  Beckett auctioned them off years ago and shared information about where these cards originated.

Does anyone have other Kellogg's Proof cards?  Do you know the history behind the cards?

I'll Be Back Soon

School starts next week and it should make me less busy than I am now.  I've got a few new things to talk about.  Stay tuned.

Are Card Shows Back?

There allegedly was a card show in suburban Chicago last weekend.  Did it happen?  Did anyone attend it?  How did it differ from shows in the winter?

Sadly, I was near the show, but I was working.

A Bad Time to Be Too Busy to Post - Nice Kellogg's Article

The coronavirus has really impacted all of my jobs.  That's okay, but it has just kept me busier than ever.  e-learning, communicating with athletes and working my office job have all become much more time consuming.  On top of that, one of my courses has a newly-designed AP curriculum for next year.  That will keep me busy all Summer long.

Speaking of Summer, my job at the golf course has changed due to the restrictions imposed on the golf industry for the safety of everyone.  That has resulted in a lot more time with e-mails, parental consents and kids who are itching to make some money.

If that wasn't enough, our school is converting to a new computer system next year.  That will add some work to my Summer too.

My dad was struggling with health issues this Spring.   He passed away a few weeks ago.  Add this to everything else and I haven't really checked out my cards in many weeks.  

No cards shows exist.  There are no flea markets either.  I haven't been buying much on ebay lately.  I haven't had much time to write, but then the best Kellogg's article I've seen in a while appears in the Sports Market Report - check it out here.  I was fortunate enough to have a few nice conversations with Kevin Glew about Kellogg's cards and some of the conversation made it into the issue.  

Here is the link again - 

https://www.psacard.com/articles/articleview/10125/psa-set-registry-baseball-cards-breakfast-collecting-1970-1983-kelloggs-trading-card-sets

Unopened Kellogg's Packs

I picked up a 1972 Willie Stargell in the package.  Here is a summary of those the numbers that I am chasing from each year.  The specific needs are shown on the right side of my blog.

1970 - too many to list now
1971 - too many to list now
1972 - need 5
1973 - 14
1974 - too many to list now
1975 - I have none of these
1976 - 20
1977 - 6
1978 - 4
1979 - 1 (Grimsley); more when variations are included
1980 - complete
1981 - 1983 do not exist in that format?

Does anyone collect these cards in the packages? 

How Baseball Cards Fit Into Stories with My Older Sisters

I was talking to my mother and two of my sisters today.  One is four 1/2 years older than me and the other is 6 1/2 years (exactly) older than me.  Even though we grew up in the same house, we obviously had different friends.  In addition, we went to different schools so we were telling each other stories about our schools and things in the neighborhood.

My oldest sister mentioned that she used to go to a store name S.S. Kresge.  I asked if anyone knew when the store closed.  I was surprised that there were no answers.  I got them rolling by letting them know that I bought baseball cards there from 1969 - 1971 at least.  I've mentioned seeing the over-priced 1970 Kellogg's packs there and never buying any.  Now that I think about it, I think I got cards there up to 1974 maybe? 

I know that when I started a paper route in 1974 the Kresge was not around.  How would I remember?  I had to find a new place to buy cards when I had my paper route money.  The Kresge would have been the closest place to do so.  Luckily, a new candy shop opened about 200 yards from the Kresge.  My family couldn't remember much more about the new place.  I will have to ask some of the others.

I did not know that the S.S Kresge Company became Kmart until just now.  Based on the type of products sold there it makes sense.

Even though I'm the ninth child I ended up having a teacher that was new to our family.  After telling some crazy stories about her, I realized two other things about her.  First, that was the last grade where Mike D. managed to listen to Cub games on his transistor radio while casually relaxing his hand over the earphone.  I was able to easily see his scorecard without drawing the attention of this teacher. 

Second, this teacher was the fourth and last one who took cards away from kids during class.  I just realized today that this was because after fourth grade kids didn't bring their cards to school anymore.  That's something I never thought about until I was telling stories about this teacher. 

My sisters probably think it is odd that I can relate these events to my baseball cards, but from reading other blogs and message boards I realize that I am not alone. 

Kellogg's Card Set Questions

In an effort to keep my brain going at home I came up with the following questions about Kellogg's cards.  See if you can answer them without looking them up.  Only one came to mind when I did this and it was correct for one of these.

1.  Which Kellogg's set has the most players that are also featured in another year (1970 to 1983)?

2.  Which Kellogg's set has the least number of players that were featured in another set?

3.  Since the number of cards varied in the sets, which sets featured the highest and lowest percentage of players that were also featured in another set?

4.  Do the sets with more repeats make them better in your opinion?  Do you prefer the sets with more players who appear in only one set?


Here is what I came up with for these sets.

Year	# repeats	# in Set
1981	57	66
1970	55	75
1980	53	60
1982	53	64
1971	52	75
1973	49	54
1975	47	57
1979	47	60
1983	47	60
1976	46	57
1978	46	57
1972	45	54
1974	41	54
1977	41	57

Do You Ever Go to Card Shows When Out of Town?

I've always liked going to card shows when I was out of town.   This was even more fun before the days of ebay.  It was also easier to do before having kids.  I could usually find a card show on vacations where I also ended up going to different ballparks. 

On my five-hour drive to my son's track meet I found that there was a card show in the Milwaukee area.  It was less than 100 miles from my house, but it was certainly a different show from those in Chicago.

This was the only Kellogg's card that I bought.  It is flat and not cracked, but it's color is just okay and there a few scratches.  Not a surprise for 1975 Kellogg's cards. 

There was a curled 1981 set, lots of 1979 - 1983 commons for $1 each and a small stack of older cards that I didn't need.  Even though I didn't need them I would have bought them if they were in my price range.

The show had lots of older cards and memorabilia so it was fun to spend 40 minutes wandering around.  I picked up about 25 1960s Post cards.  As I've been sorting my cards I'm noticing that I've got lots of these cards.  That might be a future pursuit, especially since I will be looking to get them in any condition.

How to Be Sure A Card is a Proof Card?

I did a search on ebay and COMC to see what was listed for Kellogg's proof cards.  It seems that sellers assume that all blank-back cards must be proof cards.  I have no idea, but I am guessing that they are not.

Others mention that the card is a proof card but there is nothing obvious to prove that fact.  Does anyone have a better way to determine this?

I don't know much, but I've mentioned the Benanti Collection before because Beckett graded them and had them in some auctions about five years ago.  There are currently a handful of 1970 Kellogg's football cards from these auctions on ebay/COMC.  I'm still deciding if I want any of them.

BCG added the text "THE BENANTI COLLECTION" to the grading label.  Does anyone have Benanti Collection cards or uncut sheets from those auctions?