Sharing customs from a friend - Ryan's minis

A while back, Chris, from the Nachos Grande blog, posted about his friend's passing, and offered to share custom minis that his friend had made.

I received a nice envelope of Ryan's custom 2008 A&G minis with their Munnatawket backs.

This was the mini that really caught my eye! I do love Mr. Met!

I'm sure a smile will come to my face every time I see this card.

Here is the Munnatawket back for these minis.

I'll show some individual cards to comment on before showing other minis in groups.

Although I'm not a Cutch collector, I was happy to receive this mini. 

I've got a number of years on Andrew McCutchen, but we share the same October 10th birthday.

Being a Browns fan, I tend to read many online articles on Cleveland sports. I appreciate all the years that Carlos Santana spent with the Indians.

That isn't why I displayed his card to this post by itself.

The Bazooka back, numbered 1 of 25, is why! Woo hoo!

I'm always so impressed with the customs that bloggers and collectors make, especially when they go that extra step of having holographic stickers for the serial numbers.

As a kid, I started collecting sports cards before I got older and started collecting comic books.

I love getting a comic book character card, and was happy to get this Spider-Man mini.

I have to group these two great Canadian ballplayers together.

It's always weird seeing Morneau not in a Twins uniform.

I was hoping that Votto would be a career Red, but many of my local friends hope that the Blue Jays sign him to finish his career with a Canadian team.

I liked seeing King Felix pitch on tv, and would have loved to have seen him in person.

I still shake my head at the memory of Yasiel Puig licking his bat.

Bautista and Tulo were favourites of many of my local friends that are Blue Jays fans.

I'm very disappointed that Ben Zobrist won a World Series with Kansas City in 2015. Obviously, I was cheering for the Mets.

I had forgotten that Lance Berkman ended his career with a season with the Rangers.

I really don't like the Marlins franchise, but I guess I don't have anything against Billy the Marlin. I like mascots.

I golf left-handed, so always pay some attention to left-handed golfers. (Go Mike Weir!)

That being said, I couldn't miss a golfer with the nickname "Lefty", especially since he was a top golfer in the world for so long. I really appreciate Mickelson's YouTube instructional golf videos. However, I am not a supporter of the idea of the LIV tour, so I really haven't paid much attention to him recently.

Chris, thanks for sending me these minis to carry on the memory of your friend Ryan. 

They are great quality custom cards, and I'm happy to have them in my card collection.

Found at the local card store

I popped into my local card store the other day to pick up some card sheets to store those vintage tobacco sized card sets that I showed in my last two posts. While I was there, I saw they had some football monster boxes sorted by team.

I asked for the box that had the Browns cards in it, and was laughingly told that it was a pretty small section since I usually do a pretty good job of buying their Browns cards.

I sorted through the Browns cards there, and found the following cards that I needed.

I'm always happy to find some of the old refractors from Topps Chrome sets, and also to find a new Kevin Johnson card for my collection. This is a Refractor from 2000 Topps.

And I was also able to add two more Tim Couch cards to my collection.

The card on the left is a Player's Private Issue parallel, numbered out of 250, from 2000 Topps Gallery.

The card on the right is a Refractor, numbered out of 999, from 2001 Topps Chrome. It has a bit of a curl in the card which allowed it to pick up a little bit of light on the right of the card.

I had never seen one of these Platinum Medallion Edition parallels before from 2001 Fleer Ultra. It is numbered out of 50.

David Patten played one season with the Browns, after three seasons with the Giants. He then signed with the Patriots as a free agent before the 2001 season.

Patten died in a motorcycle accident in September 2021, at the age of 47.

Another shiny card with this Xtra Points Black parallel of Braylon Edwards, numbered out of 25, from 2005 Playoff Prestige.

A clear acetate insert card of Joe Thomas. I'm biased, but I definitely think he belongs in this Living Legends insert set from the 2020 Panini Illusions football set.

A nice simple brown swatch in a memorabilia card of Nick Chubb. This League Leaders insert card is from 2020 Panini Prestige.

And a couple of green parallels of Baker Mayfield insert cards to finish things off.

The top card is a Dual Threats Green insert card from 2021 Donruss Elite.

The bottom card is a Got Game? Mosaic Green insert card from 2021 Panini Mosaic.

As I left, one of the owners told me that he had some other Browns cards put aside for me, but they weren't up front in the store. He said he will text me at a later time to come look through them.

All in all, for that visit, I wasn't expecting to buy any Browns cards, and I came home with these nine, so it was a very successful trip.

Blog Bat Around - Post without words

Blog Bat Around started by Matt at Cards Over Coffee.

Old football, or soccer if you prefer

When I'm at a card show, many things catch my eye. I'll buy all sorts of things if they catch my eye, and the price is right.

A while ago, I was at my local card show, at a mostly non-sport dealer that I often buy things from, when another collector that I knew stopped by. The dealer greeted him, and pulled out a whole bunch of old tobacco type card sets for him to look through.

The other collector is mostly a military collector, but other history type card sets also catch his eye. He generally isn't interested in sports cards though.

As he was looking through the sets, certain sports card sets caught my attention, but I didn't think I would want to pay what I thought they would sell for.

The dealer then told the other collector that he got a very good deal on the whole box of sets that he had, and would be willing to sell them for $8.00 per set. (And that is Canadian dollars, so just over $5.00 US dollars a set.)

I asked if I could look through and grab some sets at that price, and the dealer had no problem with that.

Here is one of the sets that I bought: 1958 Football Clubs and Badges

The card on the left, with its black writing on dark green is West Bromwich Albion.

I really like the look of these cards. Most have partial looks of jerseys in the background, along with the team badge and colours in the foreground of the card.

I have casually followed English Football since I was in high school in the 1980s. A good friend's family was from Birmingham, and he was an Aston Villa fan. I decided to start following them as my team as well.

Aston Villa was one of three clubs to be founding members of the original Football League in 1888, and the Premier League in 1992.

Villa also has a commonality with the Cleveland Browns. Former Browns owner Randy Lerner purchased Aston Villa in 2006. Unfortunately, both teams had similar levels of success during his ownership.

Lerner sold the Browns in 2012, and Aston Villa in 2016 following their relegation from the Premier League.

The back of the Manchester United card makes reference to the Munich air disaster in February 1958. Eight United players and three team staff were among the 23 people to die in the crash. Two other players were severely injured and never played again.

Sir Bobby Charlton, a survivor of the crash, and one of the greatest players of all time, passed away a couple of weeks ago at the age of 86.

I find it interesting to see Burnley's colours listed as Dark Red & White. Their home colours now are claret and blue, and at a quick glance, I get them confused with Aston Villa.

I wasn't aware that Burnley had a stretch of thirty matches without defeat in their history. Pretty cool.

Seeing Arsenal's card here, I'm always reminded of a friend who would comment that you can't spell Arsenal without Arse.

Another good friend is an Arsenal fan. It is fun to hang out with the two of them when they start discussing football.

After over 20 years out of the Premier League, Nottingham Forest was promoted after winning the 2022 Championship final. Last season, they collected 11 points in their last six games to avoid relegation.

I will be cheering against Nottingham Forest this weekend when they host Aston Villa.

Aston Villa's last game was a 3-0 victory over Luton Town.

Luton Town was promoted to the Premier League this season, becoming the first football team to return to the top tier of English football after falling to the fifth tier of English football.

A number of years ago, I got to work with an elderly gentleman that grew up in London as a Tottenham fan. He told me many stories of attending games.

Even though he's lived in Canada for decades now, part of his life still revolves around the Hotspurs. I know he's happy seeing them on top of the table right now.

I can't say that I am really familiar with them other than seeing their name in the scores over the years, but Sheffield Wednesday was promoted back to the Championship League at the end of last season. And, yes, their nickname is The Owls.

Is it bad that when I see Blackpool, I now think of AEW's wrestling stable, The Blackpool Combat Club?

Looking for information on these teams, I saw in Wikipedia that Preston North End has been based at Deepdale since 1875. This makes Deepdale football's oldest ground in terms of continuous use by a league club.

The Wolverhampton badge on this card is the coat of arms of Wolverhampton City Council. Their current badge has a single wolf head design, and the team is commonly known as the Wolves.

I don't think I really need to say anything about Manchester City, after they've won the Premier League the last three seasons.

Colours: Blue & White x2

It's funny reading the back of these cards and then being stunned that Chelsea's card says that they were formed in 1905. That seems so new compared to the other clubs.

Chelsea is one of six football clubs that have never been relegated from the Premier Leagues since it was founded in 1992. (Along with Arsenal, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur.)

Colours: Blue & White x2 (Hmmm, that looks familiar.)

Of course, after pointing out that Chelsea seemed almost new, along comes Colchester United, founded in 1937. They currently play in League Two.

Leicester City was relegated from the Premier League at the end of last season. They currently top the table in The Championship division.

What? Only one Blue & White here.

Looking at the Everton back, it mentions how they were one of the original members of the Football League. They are another team that was also an original member of the Premier League.

I guess that I haven't pointed out the bottom of these cards. Unlike the tobacco cards, these ones appear to be from packages of tea.

From what I could find in a quick Google search, F. Lambert and Son Ltd, were tea merchants, tobacconists and confectioners in Norwich, Norfolk from 1762-1965.

Many different card sets seem to have been included with Lamberts of Norwich tea over the years.

Their team nickname is the Canaries. I love it!

And I guess they would be the home team of the card set sponsors.

Wikipedia mentions that Milwaukee Brewers owner Mark Attanasio was appointed a director of the club in September 2022, and is expected to buy a stake in the club. 

I'm thrilled to have found this set, and hope that you enjoyed this look at it.