A Very Burbank Birthday

Now that my latest birthday is behind me, it's time to revel in the spoils. My lovely wife gave me a Beckett gift certificate, and I also received some other funds which were partially used towards expanding the Rickey collection.

Most player collectors probably have a love/hate relationships with Burbank Sportscards, and I do as well. If you're looking for that hard-to-find 90's insert or parallel, there's a good chance that they have it. You'll also probably pay an arm and a leg in the process, so it all comes down to how much you want it. But, with a little digging, you can surprisingly find a few "deals" hidden among the $499 autographed relics.


1994 Stadium Club First Day Issue #654 (print run 2,000) -- I'm not sure why I haven't been able to track this one down already, as with 2,000 of them out there, it shouldn't have been too hard to find. But, 1994 Stadium Club finally complete, for a total of 9 cards including Golden Rainbow, Members Only, and First Day Issue parallels.


1996 Leaf Signature Platinum Press Proofs #142 (print run 150) -- I've never seen this card for sale on eBay, so even though the price was a bit high, I have a feeling it would have been much more had it actually been put up for auction. This now completes the 1996 Leaf Signature set, with a base card along with the gold and platinum press proofs.



1998 Circa Thunder Rave #87 #/150 -- It was nice to finally be able to track this one down, but the elusive Super Rave #/25 is still out there somewhere!


1998 Pacific Platinum Blue #9 (print run 67) $10.65 -- I now have all 3 of the 1998 Pacific Parallels which included the Silver and Red Threatt (yes, it's spelled with two "t"'s) versions.


1999 Upper Deck Encore FX Gold #58 #/125 $19.05 -- This is another card that I don't remember ever seeing for sale on eBay. It's also nice that 1999 Upper Deck Encore only had two cards, the base card, and this parallel.


2003 Donruss Elite Throwback Threads #25 #/250 $9.90 -- There are 3 "base" Throwback Threads in the 2003, all #/250, but this is the first one that I've picked up so far.


2003 Topps Chrome Refractors #186 #/699 -- I recently purchased the Gold Refractor #/449 as well, but am still looking for the Black Refractor #/199 and the Uncirculated X-Fractor #/50.


2003 Topps Tribute Contemporary Memorable Materials Relics #RH $15.45 -- Although not serial numbered, these 2003 Topps Tribute relics don't surface very often, as they are pretty nice looking cards. Plus, most of them feature Rickey in vintage A's gear, which is always a plus!

I had a lot of fun on my Beckett shopping spree, and the early holes in the collection are slowly dwindling. The thrill of the hunt in tracking cards down one-by-one is fun, but every once in a while, adding a stack of cards all at once can be just as fun!

September 1982 A's News Special Edition

A few weeks ago Oakland A's Collectibles posted a special edition of the A's Magazine with a great drawing of Rickey Henderson on the cover. I asked John, who runs the blog, for some more details about the magazine, and he said that the whole issue was dedicated to Rickey! He was nice enough to send over scans of the entire magazine, which I can read, but once uploaded to Photobucket, they don't open up large enough. (If anyone can provide any technical assistance, it would be greatly appreciated). You can at least enjoy the pictures in this great vintage piece of Rickey memorabilia.















Thanks again John!

2010 All-Star Legends and Celebrity Softball Game

During All-Star weekend in Anaheim, Rickey Henderson participated in the celebrity softball game, which was played on the Sunday before the game (although it was shown on TV tape-delayed after the Home Run Derby on Monday). Here's a clip of Rickey's lead-off homer (one of two homers that he hit) and the ensuing classic-Rickey home run trot.



Although I was not able to attend the game, a fellow Rickey fan was (thanks David!), and he talked one of the photographs on hand into e-mailing him some extra shots of Rickey. The photos below are courtesy of photographer Jon Gaede.


From what I saw of the game (the Home Run Derby ran over, and I forgot to extend my DVR timer), Rickey always looked like he was having a lot of fun!


Interesting group picture, MC Hammer (who also homered), actor Michael Clarke Duncan, and Rickey.


While attending the weekend festivities, Rickey was also signing autographs at the All-Star Fanfest. This ticket was recently sold on eBay, and surprisingly, also comes with an MLB authenticated hologram.

2009 Upper Deck 1989 20th Anniversary Buybacks

When I saw that Upper Deck was inserting buybacks of their inaugural 1989 set into packs of 2009 cards, I was intrigued, but didn't have high hopes of actually obtaining the Rickey. Buyback cards are notoriously expensive, especially among players with a large collector following such as Rickey. Since it had now been almost a year since they were first released, and I'd still never seen one, I was beginning to think the Rickey didn't even exist. That is...until last week!


Here's the Rickey buyback, which I finally got in the mail yesterday. Since this is the only one that I've ever seen, I'm not sure how many actually exist, but it has to be a fairly limited print run. I e-mailed Upper Deck to ask, but is usually the case, I've yet to receive a response. I know that the buybacks were inserted approximately 1 per box in 2009 Upper Deck Series 2 and 2009 Upper Deck SPX, and they were probably included in other releases as well.


In the lower left hand corner is the buyback stamp which states "20th Anniversary Buyback" in typical Upper Deck hologram form. I like the fact that they actually modified the cards to indicate that they were buybacks, which allows you to actually differentiate them from the initial release. Receiving a regular 1989 Upper Deck card (unless it's the Griffey rookie), would just not be that exciting.


The back of the card is typical 1989 Upper Deck, but it was pretty exciting when they were first released. I still remember how crazy I thought it was that they were charging over $1.00 a pack, if you could even find them in stores. As nice as the photos (on the front and back of the cards) were, I usually couldn't pass up buying a couple of packs of Topps for the same price.

If any player/team collectors know any more details about this release, I'd definitely appreciate the feedback. Has anyone seen more than one copy of the same card? I don't think that it's a #1/1, but would be interested in finding out how many there actually are.

Game-Used Additions in Recent Months: Part II

As a follow-up to my Rickey Henderson memorabilia post from last week, here are the rest of my recently acquired game-used cards, this time featuring those that are vertically oriented. As I did previously, I've kept the comments to a minimum, and let the cards speak for themselves.

I'm not quite sure why, but the horizontal cards were much more impressive than the vertical cards, but that's probably a coincidence. Dispute some fairly plain jersey swatches on a couple of these cards, they are all fairly well designed, and are nice pick-ups for the collection.































As always, if there's any questions on any of these cards, don't hesitate to post a comment, or send me an e-mail. I'm always willing to "talk Rickey!"

Oakland A's Turn Back the Clock

When to my first A's game of the year on Saturday, which just happened to be Turn Back the Clock night, in honor of the A's championship teams from 1972-1974. As an early birthday present, my wife surprised me with really great tickets to the game, right behind the A's bullpen.


This first picture is for Brian, who asked me a few weeks ago if Rickey's numbered had been added to the tarps in the upper deck. The answer...yes, but his jersey is also still on the fence in left field, along with the logo commemorating Braden's perfect game.


In honor of Charlie finely, the A's brought back Charlie O the mule, their mascot in the late 60's and early 70's. (The real Charlie O died in the mid-70's, but it is the thought that counts).


Since we had good seats, I wanted to get there early and watch warm-ups. I don't think Cahill stretches with a mule watching him from centerfield every night, but I could be wrong!




As they attempted to dodge the classic cars driving around the warning track, Cahill and Suzuki warmed up in the bullpen, with pitching coach Curt Young looking on.


Due once again to the awesome seats, I got a thumbs up from Ray Fosse (center), and he joined Vida Blue (left) and Campy Campaneris (right) with the 1972, 1973, and 1974 World Series trophies.


As the players stood for the national anthem, there was definitely plenty of yellow to go around!


The A's went all out with the throwback theme, even displaying the players astrological signs along with their stats.


The view from our seats. Definitely a great place to watch a ballgame.


Due in large parts to Cahill's impressive start (7.2 innings, 2 hits, 10 K's), we didn't get to see too much action in the bullpen. But, I was surprised to learn, that contrary to other sidearm pitchers I've seen, Ziegler actually starts his warm-ups overhand, and then drops down later on.


This was the last pitch of the game, when Andrew Bailey got Pirates catcher Ryan Doumit to pop up to Kouzmanoff at 3rd.


We were sitting right behind the bullpen phone, and could even here it when it rang. After the game was over, I stuck my camera down into the bullpen, and got a pretty cool shot.


Since this is a Rickey blog, I was actually able to get this pin, which I missed out on during my last trip to the Coliseum for Rickey's jersey retirement ceremony. I'd only seen one on eBay since then, so I was surprised to see they still had them in stock.

Overall, it was a great night out with my wife, and a perfect 30th birthday present!

Game-Used Additions in Recent Months: Part I

Now that I have my new computer up and running (the old one blew up a few weeks ago), and have attached my new scanner as well, I'm ready to get caught up on the huge stack of cards that are sitting waiting to be displayed.

Although I've said this before, I'm going to attempt to use the new computer as a clean slate, to keep me caught up on my scans and posts. The computer is super fast, and the scanner is much easier and quicker than my old one.

To start, here's a few Rickey Henderson game-used cards that I've picked up recently, including a couple of pretty sweet Oakland A's patches, and an awesome dual patch card with Lou Brock. I started to add descriptions to the cards, but I think it took away from the images, so I've left them out. If anyone has a question about any particular card, don't hesitate to ask.


































Stayed tuned for Part II of the game-used cards (In order to keep the look of the post as clean as possible, I've included all of the horizontally oriented cards in this post, with the vertical ones yet to come), as well as a post on inserts & parallels, as well as the couple of oddball cards I've recently added to the collection.