Recent Pick Ups

 It's been a little while since I shared some new pick ups.

I've picked up a few new cards since my last pick ups post, but I only have a few of them scanned at this time, so I'm just sharing five tonight. 

Also I'm working on a trade for some new E98s that I'll share with you when I have them.  I'm pretty excited about those ones.

Two of these recent cards are baseball and three are boxing.  You know me, I like those boxing cards.

We'll start with the boxing cards.  The first one is a not so commonly seen card; a W565 strip card of Ace Hudkins.  

Sorry about the blurriness of this one.  I like the huge borders on the left and bottom.  It was obviously on the bottom left corner of the sheet.  I picked this one up because of the borders and the fact that you don't see it very often.  I'm not saying this is a rare issue by any means, but it's not everywhere on eBay everyday either.

Next up is a pair of boxing cards from the same set.  These are W529-7 Big Heads.  I really like this set for the colors and the comic-like images.  These have the same checklist as the more common 529-1 set of 10 boxers.

I should clarify that I am not 100% certain these are the type 7 W529s but I think they are. These two examples are really nice ones too.  No creases and well cut long ago.  The colors just pop in person as well.  The bold solid backgrounds are striking.  The boxer's names are printed along the top of the card.

The next card to show you is a really cool little card from another set that you don't see all the time.  You can usually find some on eBay with ridiculously high buy it now prices, but not usually affordable examples.  

This is a 1933 E285 Rittenhouse Candy Co. card.  These are little cards with the design of a playing card, so it's no surprise there are 52 cards in the set.  On the backs of the cards in a letter that is included in the words Rittenhouse Candy Co.  The idea was that if you could spell out the full name you could win a prize, however even after all these years it has never been spelled out in full.  

My card has the U on the reverse.  Nothing special there.  Oh well.  There should be small borders at the top and bottom of the card and no borders on the right or left sides.  They come in several different colors but not in multiple colors per card. 

The last card to share is another E90-1 for my set in progress.  I'm (very) slowly working on this set, adding a new card every few months maybe.  This is one of my favorite sets but there are so many really tough cards in this one that I don't know if I'll ever complete it.  The Joe Jackson is a pipe dream for me.  

This example is of Bob Groom and you can see it is severely miscut to the right.  So much so that you can see the card next to Bob.  It's just a little tiny sliver of the next card, but I think it might just be another Bob Groom card.  Yes, there are two holes punched in this one, but you know I don't care about that.  I think the miscut is just too cool to make the holes matter.

Well, that's some of my recent pick ups guys.  I hope you enjoyed them.  Let me know what you've recently added to your collection.  I'd love to hear from you.

Enjoy the hobby all...it's a great one.

Recent Pick Ups

I recently raised my Kraken number by two points with the addition of these two beauties.

Nothing crazy but I'm very excited to have finally picked up an E90-1 Rebel Oakes.  I've always considered this card one of the best looking cards in the hobby and a must have.  A true classic in my opinion.

 

I've always liked how Oakes' glove breaks the border at the top of the card.  Another tough card from the set, the Jerry Upp card, also has this characteristic.  Only on Jerry's card it's his butt that breaks the left border of the card.  Another classic card in my view as well.

 

The next one I picked up was this trimmed (at least I'm pretty sure it is as it's very short top to bottom and has a wavy bottom edge) Blankenship.  I like the solid blue background on this one. 

 

 

So what exactly is a Kraken number?  I can hear a bunch of you asking this question and feel I should explain.  The T206 set is affectionately known as "The Monster".  So in the caramel card world, the E90-1 set has been dubbed "The Kraken" by some collectors. 

 

A Kraken number is your score on a scale of points related to the level of difficulty of obtaining the different cards.  This is all explained, talked about, and collectors are reporting their scores in this thread on Net54Baseball.com here.  Below is the list of the points for each card that total 250 for a complete set. 

 

20 Joe Jackson

10 Tris Speaker
10 Honus Wagner (throwing)

7 Hugh Duffy
7 Mike Mitchell
7 Honus Wagner (batting)
7 Cy Young (Cleveland)

5 Fred Clarke (Pittsburgh)
5 Ty Cobb
5 Willie Keeler (red background)
5 Jake Stahl
5 Bill Sweeney (Boston)
5 Ed Walsh

4 Peaches Graham
4 Christy Mathewson
4 Eddie Plank
4 Cy Young (Boston)

3 Bob Bescher
3 Patsy Dougherty
3 George Gibson (back)
3 Harry Howell (wind up)
3 Ed Karger
3 Willie Keeler (throwing)
3 Addie Joss (throwing)
3 Nap Lajoie
3 Tommy Leach (throwing)
3 Hans Lobert
3 Larry McLean
3 Dots Miller (sunset)
3 Orval Overall
3 Dave Shean
3 George Stone (left hand showing)
3 Jerry Upp

1 each for the rest of the 88 cards

A complete set of 121 would thus be 250 points

 

My Kraken number is only 12 (will be 14 when I get the two cards I won in the recent Brockelman Auction) but I'm having fun collecting the set and seeing my number (slowly) go up.

 

Feel free to post your Kraken number in the comments and on Net54 if you have any.  We need more people reporting in their numbers!

 

I hope you liked my recent pick ups as much as I do.

 

Enjoy the hobby all...it's a great one!