TriStar Intermezzo

Time for a quick brief TriStar post-as usual the show had plenty of sports stars, HOFers, and local players to sign for a few days. This year Matt Williams and Goose Gossage were among them and spent some time talking baseball on stage with a TriStar interviewer. I heard some of it and it was interesting to say the least. Following the show I drove about 2.2 miles further in to San Francisco and hit two new breweries, to me at least. Mr. Haverkamp they were real close. First up-Laughing Monk. Solid lineup of interesting beers-I tried a Mango Gose and a Salted Caramel beer on nitro-have to say the second beer wasn't bad, but should have been a smaller pour since it was on the rich side. The day I visited it was their second anniversary-so I picked a 750ML of the anniversary beer and walked about 10 yards-more or less to Seven Stills Brewing and Distillery. Nice place, interesting concept-when they brew a batch they put half of it in a still to make some whiskey. The other half the finish off as beer. The beer I had was good-the glass even better, and the whiskey even better. I tried a sampler, picked up some whiskey-one made with Russian Imperial Stout,  a Framboise, an IPA, and a bottle of vodka and a four pack-then headed on home.

Tis the time for TriStar Part 1

Saturday was the annual TriStar show at the Cow Palace. This year it opened on Saturday at 930am which I really appreciated. When it opened I walked up a couple of isles on the look out for "Relic Guy". Relic Guy is at the thrice annual Serramonte show and always has a ton of Relics, Game Used, and Autos for three bucks, and less than that if you buy several. He also bought a sports card store out in Santa Monica so he has some better regular and insert singles. Honestly I think my approach to the TriStar and Serramonte shows is to think of them as an opportunity to purchase relics, game used, and autos at a reasonable price because there are no such thing as dime boxes here. What I see are quarter, fifty cent, and dollar boxes most often filled with base cards of recent issues. Sorry I am not that gullible. Below are the few singles I picked up.

So this show provided just a few modern singles to add to the collection some of my favs below. Of course adding a new Yadi is always good-Paul DeJong is exciting to watch and he will appear in a follow-up post. I bought in Nacho Grande's Heritage Break but didn't land the Brock and Carlton Flashback cards. Last card I want to show is the 2015 Stadium Club Orange Cepeda.

Yadier Molina 2018 Topps Opening Day OD-10

Paul DeJong 2017 Topps Chrome Update Target & 2018 Gypsy Queen Blue #113/250

Lou Brock & Steve Carlton 2018 Topps Heritage Flashbacks

Yep that is it. There are probably 20 more regular, insert, parallel cards I picked up but aren't as exciting. Next TriStar post will feature some game used/relics. I was able to chat with friend of the blog Mr Haverkamp-which is always a pleasure. I spent a total of two hours at the show.

Budget Season Sucks, but not these Gems

Since before our trip to ABQ budget season at my agency kicked off and since my return it has begun to crest-I haven't had the bandwidth to write. A few days ago I read an article on the 1910 Murad Tobacco Non-Sport Colleges and Universities set. Although I am not a non-sport collector the T51 1910 Murad cards are vintage pre-war design goodness and they spoke to me.

Murad was a brand of cigarettes from the Lorillard Tobacco Company. They were named Turkish because they used Turkish tobacco-as a non-smoker not sure if it is a premium type.  The cards were issued in 1910 in packs of Murad smokes. They are 2-1/16" x 2-11/16" and consist of a total of 150 cards divided up in  "series" of 25. The issue covers nearly every male and female university and college in the US and Canada at this time-at least it seems like it-Albright Lions anyone?

The fronts are a textured paper with gilt print with a white border framing the institutions' seal, a pennant with the schools name, and sometimes a person-always a guy- playing a sport-is horse riding a sport? For #s 1-25 the front indicates "College Series 1 to 25, 2nd Edition" Not sure what the first edition is? The successive series indicate "College Series X to X".

The backs are pretty straight forward-an alphabetical listing of the cards in the particular series. Some have a stamp indicating the number of the employee who packed the box. Which I think is pretty cool. The key is to make sure the stamp doesn't affect the printing.

The T51 cards are very reasonably priced-with excellent copies going for about $5-for some schools, Michigan? Can go for much more. I picked up three-and will pick up others here are there-spending a max of $6 per and in no big hurry. If you aren't picky I have seen lower grade copies going for a few dollars.

Which ones did I pick up?

Murad also issued these hecka cool cabinet cards (T6) in 1910 which were 25 in total and strongly resemble the smaller T51. Each could be had by sending in 15 Coupons from packs. There is a type two of the 25 cards-perhaps the font size is different. Murad also issued a set of University and College Silks.