A Fleeting Life – The Wayne Weinheimer Story

Minor league team sets are largely ignored in the baseball card hobby. It’s a niche subject that can be had for pennies on the dollar save for the rare sets or those featuring Hall of Famers.

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So often you can flip through a team set of 30 cards and recognize only a couple names. Go back 30 years and a set could include mostly names foreign in the present day. Names like Wayne Weinheimer.

After purchasing 41 Cubs minor league team sets from STB Minors, I began ripping through each team set to count and look at the different designs. Chicago Cubs minor leaguers that never reached the big leagues have always fascinated me.

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The 1988 Wytheville Cubs team set features a who’s who of….who? Kevin Roberson is the only player in the 26-card player checklist that reached the major leagues. Among the roster are names like: Bubba Browder, Benny Shreve, and Ronnie Rasp. And then there was Wayne Weinheimer.

On occasion I’ll come across a Cubs minor league name and throw it in a Google search to see whatever became of that player. As I was browsing through this Wytheville Cubs set I chose Wayne Weinheimer. The sole reason I chose this particular player was it was an uncommon name and the likelihood of finding the same Wayne Weinheimer in a Google search was seemingly much better than a guy like Sean Reed.

The end result was a sad one. Wayne Weinheimer is no longer with us. He passed away after a battle with cancer nearly 10 years ago. He was 38 years old. Life is fleeting.

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This not-so-new news struck me. You see, I flip through these minor league baseball cards and see them as a former pro baseball player posing in uniform for a baseball card. But there’s a story behind each and every one of those players on these pieces of cardboard. Stories like Wayne Weinheimer.

“Wayne Weinheimer had a wealth of athletic gifts and
talents.

However, those skills paled when placed against the
size and depth of his heart, according to those who
knew him best.” (written by Martin McNeal of the Sacramento Bee)

Weinheimer was a standout athlete at Sacramento High School when he was drafted by the Chicago Cubs in the 17th round of the 1987 MLB Draft. He would come back to his alma mater in the 2000’s as an assistant coach for the baseball team.

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Instead of signing with the Cubs right away, Weinheimer went to Sacramento City College before joining the Cubs farm system in 1988. The slugger made an immediate impact for the Wytheville Cubs. Weinheimer hit .355 capturing the Appalachian League batting title. During that inaugural professional season Weinheimer was an Appy League All-Star and was also named to the Topps Rookie League All-Star Team.

One of Weinheimer’s teammates in the Cubs organization would be Matt Walbeck, who would reach the major leagues. The two were also teammates at Sacramento High School.

“When we played (American) Legion, we were just
rolling people,” said Walbeck, who played with
Weinheimer for Sacramento High School in the
mid-1980s. “We played a game in Susanville, and
Wayne hit a home run that went over the bank of lights.
It was one of the longest homers I saw him hit.

“He just ran around the bases. When he got back to
the dugout, we asked him, ‘Did you get all of that?’
And he said, ‘No,’ and went to sit down. That’s how
he was.” (from the Sacramento Bee)

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A promotion awaited Weinheimer for the 1989 season for the single-A Charleston Wheelers. He played 107 games and hit just .228 with 6 home runs and 43 RBI.

By 1990, he spent just eight games in the Cubs organization, his last in organized professional baseball with the Peoria Chiefs. Weinheimer finished the season with the independent Miami Miracle and didn’t return to pro baseball until 1996 when he spent four seasons in the independent leagues. In five seasons of indy baseball he hit .311 with 35 home runs and 235 RBI.

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Weinheimer didn’t just excel at hitting a baseball.

“But Wayne was just an incredible athlete. There
wasn’t anything he couldn’t play. He was the best
I saw at ‘Asteroids’ (arcade video game). Suds and
Pub on 39th and J, the guy would just dominate.” (as told by Matt Walbeck to the Sacramento Bee).

The short life of Wayne Weinheimer was summed up best by Tim Roe, sports editor of The Reporter in Vacaville, California in a July 23, 2008 column.

“The memory often is fading, but some memories remain crystal clear. I’ve written stories on hundreds of athletes, from the Little Leagues to the major leagues, in 21 years with The Reporter. Few people were as genuinely nice as Wayne Weinheimer, and few stories were as wonderful as his comeback from cancer. That only made it harder last week when Weinheimer died at age 38 after another bout with the deadly disease.

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Willy, Javy, Rizzo, Ryno, and the Hoarding of a Former Cubs Prospect

Wednesday saw a pile of boxes on my counter as part of a triple mailday. Yesterday, I wrote about the nearly 2,000 cards that came from Vern in New York. Another trade that was conducted on Twitter was from Chuck in Ohio.

Chuck sent over a nice mix of 76 Cubs cards which included quite a few new cards for my collection. I’ll be sending out a package of Cleveland Indians to Chuck tomorrow.

There were a couple top loaded cards in this package including a 2017 Topps Chrome 1987 insert of Jake Arrieta. These are great cards because I love the wood border. The original set was released just before I started collecting cards. So, by the time my collecting was full speed ahead as a 7-year old in 1989 these wood-bordered 1987 Topps cards were “vintage” to me. I’m a fan of Topps using retro sets today, though I have tired of the Archives release. It used to be my favorite set of the year, but now it just seems watered down. I really like what Topps did with these 1987 Topps inserts.

Another top loaded card was this 2017 Topps High Tek Anthony Rizzo. High Tek is a set that I have very few cards from. I’ve gained a few Cubs from the sets via trades, and I have a couple stragglers from a box or case break I participated in last year. They are really cool cards, and I should pursue them.

Speaking of pursuing Cubs cards, I’m always on the lookout for Javier Baez. This is another new one for my collection. Baez will be the first player binder I put together when I get caught up on other card ventures. This is a 2017 Panini Chronicles. I’ll be meeting Javy on May 10 at Club 400. If you’ve never heard of Club 400, check out this blog post from my first visit in January. I’ll make sure to take a lot of pictures on my return trip to see Javy in May.

Willson Contreras is fast becoming my second favorite Cubs player (behind Baez). He shot from relative obscurity to a Cubs top prospect quicker than any other Cubs player I can think of. During his ascent with the double-A Tennessee Smokies I sent him a baseball through the mail (TTM) to sign. It was a cheap China baseball, and he returned a signed Southern League baseball. Very cool! Contreras is featured here on a 2017 Bowman Platinum. I love Platinum, and yes I’m one of those guys that hops from retail outlet to retail outlet in search of the product since it’s retail exclusive. Last summer I visited 11 stores and came up empty. Fortunately, my mom is a good sport and went to her local Wal-Mart and was able to find a collector’s box and some blasters to feed my Platinum fix.

From the “Who’s this Cubs player” department: Jhoandro Alfaro. I love finding these gems. I keep very close tabs on Cubs prospects and minor leaguers, but there are still several that pop up with cards that make me scratch my head. In cases like this Alfaro 2014 Panini Prizm Draft Picks card I get just as excited as seeing a Bryant or Rizzo card…actually probably more excited.

Here’s another new Ryno for the collection. This Ryne Sandberg is a 2016 Panini Heritage Collection. Love the design as well as the textured front.

And finally a player that I was collecting two years ago more heavily than Javier Baez. It’s Dylan Cease, and he was unfortunately traded to the Chicago White Sox last summer in the Jose Quintana deal. I was slightly devastated by this trade as I have accumulate close to 1,000 Cease cards. About 600 of them are his 2014 Bowman Draft cards. After dealing with some injuries he was really dealing on the mound in the lower levels of the Cubs system before the trade earning a lot of praise from Cubs brass. He was on several top 100 prospect lists in 2017, but has fallen off for 2018. Hopefully he can make it. This is his 2016 Bowman Chrome.

Thanks for the trade, Chuck. Your Indians package is ready to ship out and take a ride to Ohio tomorrow.

Bulk Trade Brings In Some Oddballs

After three days of an empty mailbox, Wednesday brought in three packages for a total of 1,899 Cubs baseball cards. Vern in New York sent 1,665 of the cards that added a few new ones to the collection in return for a box of New York Yankees.

Among the cards were a couple of Greg Maddux rookie cards: a Donruss rated rookie and a crisp 1987 Topps Traded.

Another rookie card came in the way of a 1977 Topps Bruce Sutter.

A rookie reprint came by way of a 2001 Archives of Lou Brock’s 1962 Topps rookie card. As a kid, this (original Lou Brock rookie card) was my white whale and was one of my first “big” purchases when I joined eBay in 1998.

I love Fleer Stickers. The logo stickers are great for identifying teams in those plain white storage boxes. This is a new one for my Cubs collection. I’ve never seen this sticker and judging by the back it’s from 1985.

The Cubs had some promising catchers by the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. One of the first prospect catchers was Damon Berryhill. This is a 1989 Score Young Superstars.

By the early 90’s Rick Wilkins was a top catching prospect and had a breakout 1993 campaign. Diamond Kings were always a great card in the Donruss series. By 1992, Donruss made them a premium card and Wilkins was included as part of the 1993 Donruss set. This card really pops.

Four new oddball cards for my collection came in Vern’s package. My favorite is a 1983 reprint of Dee Fondy. Also here is a 1977 Renata Galasso Hank Sauer, 1985 TCMA Ernie Banks, and 1987 Fleer Record Setters Shawon Dunston.

Also added were a number of oversized cards and the 1985 Donruss are new to my collection as well as the Donruss Champion Bill Buckner.

A great trade with Vern! I also had packages from Cameron and Chuck that I will blog about later.

Boxes or Binders: The Great Debate

An empty mailbox welcomed me home for the third straight day. With some incoming trades and one purchase in transit, the end of the week should be some healthy mail days.

So without any new cards to show off, I’ll build off my blog from yesterday I ventured to the local card shop to buy some monster boxes on Sunday, and this trip gave me some ideas on the direction of the One Million Cubs Project in terms of organization.

My collection is unorganized. No…that’s not a fair word to use. My collection is an unorganized disaster.

Unfortunately, my Cubs collection is also an unorganized disaster minus some of my favorite cards that are displayed on shelves or those 20-card frames that can be purchased at Michael’s.

As I was scoping out the supplies section at my local card shop, another customer walked in and grabbed some binders. He grabbed about a half dozen of the baseball card albums.

These are really nice albums, and I’ve never really zeroed in collecting anything specific to see the need to buy any of these. I just like cards, and I like to hoard them. Now, I feel that in my attempt to accumulate one million Cubs cards, there should be some sort of organization for this timely project.

How boring are plain white 5,000-count monster boxes. Sure, they are cheap, and can be dressed up by slapping an old Fleer Cubs logo sticker on the exterior. But that’s not cool. Two hundred white boxes. That’s no way to store an awesome Cubs baseball card collection. I want to see the cards. I want to flip through them and pick out favorites on each 9-card page. When I was a kid I would throw my cards randomly in binders. Then in my “announcer voice,” I would pick the first, second, and third place cards on each page. True geek here.

As I stood watching this other customer fill his arms with these albums, I couldn’t help but notice a piece of paper near the supply section. It was a tip sheet. Almost a “Baseball Card Supplies for Dummies” sheet. The tip was that binders are good for your better cards and cards you want to look at, while boxes are good to store your duplicates. That’s it!

And the price tag for these baseball card albums is only $5.95. This is a bit more than a generic black or white 3-ring binder from Staples, but less than the $10-12 I thought they sold for.

For a while I hoarded baseball cards AND 3-ring binders. In 2015 I began breaking several different products and purchasing large lots of recently released products to build sets. The plan was to resell sets, until I quickly discovered sets don’t sell. I have several binders filled with partial and complete sets from recent years.

Goodwill earned a lot of my money for about a year as I grabbed all the 3-ring binders I could find. And I found a lot of them. One of the area Goodwill stores would sell great condition 3-ring binders for $0.49 and often would tape together five or six of them for $1.49. Now I have about 100 binders and they have sat on this shelf since.

As the One Million Cubs Project enters month four I finally have a sense of direction for the organization of the cards. Here is the plan:

1) Team sorting – Trying to get ahead of my team sorting. There are several teams that I haven’t traded off many cards so I have a nice supply (Dodgers, Nationals, Indians) while some teams I have less of after multiple trades (Yankees, Tigers, Twins, White Sox).

2) Organizing Cubs in Monster Boxes – Once I have a comfortable amount of teams sorted, I’ll finish putting Cubs in 5,000 count monster boxes.

3) Cataloging the Cubs – This is a tedious process. Currently I have around 11,000 cards cataloged. They are in a spreadsheet with each monster box numbered (example: A1, A2, etc.) that contains the cards. This could get tricky once I move cards into binders.

4) Binders – Initially, I’ll begin with player binders such as Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo, Javier Baez, Ryne Sandberg, Mark Grace, Ernie Banks, etc. Then I will probably go into team sets.

The organization process will take some time, most notably due to the time spent cataloging the collection in a spreadsheet. The best thing about this is there’s no timeline, and it’s a hobby. I’d like to reach one million Cubs cards in five years, though there’s no rush. It’s a lot of fun!

Sunday Funday at the Local Card Shop

Since moving to Madison, Wisconsin nearly four years ago my card collecting hobby went from casual to hoarding. In a strange city with plenty of free time I jumped back in the hobby with weekly trips to Target for retail blaster boxes. Then Craigslist browsing for bigger collections.

Not only did I have more retail options in the larger city, two card shops call Madison home. I moved from Macomb, Illinois where the Wal-Mart was not well stocked with baseball cards, and the nearest card shop was nearly 90 minutes away.

The two card shops in Madison are about five minutes apart, and offer a much different experience for collectors. The Baseball Card Shoppe is in a nicer mini mall, though it neighbors a bunch of vacant spaces. It’s stocked with wax including a huge supply of junk wax. Unfortunately the 1990’s wax is still priced at 1990’s prices and it appears 99% of it is in the same shelf space it was when I first walked in the place four years ago. The Baseball Card Shoppe does keep up to date on all of the new releases with a great selection of recent wax. They are my go to for a quick hobby box fix.

Jim’s is tucked away in an older corner building on the near west side of Madison. It’s fairly disorganized, which gives it a lot of character. Jim doesn’t stock very much wax, but does keep up with the latest sets and singles. His wax prices and supplies are slightly lower than the Baseball Card Shoppe. He also had a cool selection of memorabilia and older magazines.

This past Sunday I wanted to get my One Million Cubs Project closer to organized and have run out of storage boxes to properly get this project started. I have plenty of storage boxes, but there’s been a lot of transferring as I sort so a few fresh monster boxes was on the agenda.

Normally I buy storage supplies in bulk, though monster boxes in bulk are very close to hobby shop prices. The last 25-count monster box buy ran me $80 (about $3.20 per box). The Baseball Card Shoppe has them for $3.99. I will gladly pay the extra dollar per box for convenience and more importantly it having to put the boxes together (for obvious reasons all of the pieces are shipped flat).

I bought four monster boxes which will give me a good start with the recent trades that have been sitting in the trade boxes that have been in my mailbox. One surprise was a couple boxes appeared to be unsorted. These boxes may have come on a busy day and I never got around to looking through them. Surely I would have remembered a stack of Ty Griffin Oddball cards. I’ve loosely collected Griffin over the past two decades and this stack included a couple new ones in my collection.

My initial goal is to get all of my Cubs accounted for in 5,000 count monster boxes and give them proper shelf space. Then I can continue cataloging them in my spreadsheet and eventually get them further sorted into player and set collections.

Another idea I have is to put the player collections in nice binders (Baseball Card Shoppe has them for about $5) and maybe find a book shelf to display them. At this point my goal is to hoard more Cubs cards (trade me your Cubs!) and set them in the monster boxes.

Largest Trade Hauls In Nearly 4,000 Cubs Cards

Many of my bulk team trades involve a medium flat rate box. Pretty simple to fill these boxes and I haven’t found too many collectors that have around 4,000 Cubs cards to quickly throw in a large flat rate box. Until now.

Rick from Dover, New Hampshire reached out via email a few weeks ago expressing interest in some large trades. In return, I’ll send him Montreal Expos and New England Patriots cards.

The large flat rate box arrived a couple weeks ago weighing just over 18 pounds and held 3,704 Cubs cards.

This large flat rate box was unlike any I’ve seen. A trip to my normal post office found none of these boxes. This particular box is a rectangle while the average large flat rate box is square. Rectangular boxes are much easier to fit storage boxes inside as the square boxes are not wide enough.

A couple days later I went to the much larger city post office and thought for sure these boxes were inside. They were not. From the post office parking lot I shot an email over to Rick inquiring how he found these flat rate boxes. He said originally they were in his local post office, but have since disappeared so he ordered them from the USPS website. That night I logged on and put my order in (they are free and come in 25 count bundles – so if anyone has about 4,000 Cubs to trade, I had plenty of boxes to fill your team needs). It took over a week for the boxes to arrive so I’m behind on this post. After arriving on my doorstep Friday, I was able to fulfill the trade and shipped out Rick’s cards yesterday.

I used the same storage boxes that Rick sent, so it gave me an opportunity to go through the Cubs a second time for blogging purposes. The first card that stood out was a young (he’s still young) Anthony Rizzo from 2014 Bowman. I was in attendance in the 8th row behind third base when Rizzo hit his first Home Run as a Chicago Cub in 2012 (his 2nd career home run – the first came as a San Diego Padre.

A young phenom about a decade earlier was Corey Patterson. He was a can’t miss 5-tool prospect. Those tools proved not very sharp at the big league level, though he did have a better career than many other Cubs prospects before him.

Two Mark Prior cards that are new to my collection. The future was so bright in the early 2000’s.

While Prior lived up to the hype before injuries set in, Juan Cruz didn’t have the career many had hoped out of him. I now have plenty of 2001 Bowman Cruz rookies.

I saw a young Cruz as a top prospect with the Lansing Lugnuts in 2000. My friend Seth was not so high on Juan, and when he had a poor outing at the game we attended against the Quad City River Bandits he continued to chide me. Cruz signed my ticket stub from that game. Probably should have opted for a blue ink pen instead of the thick sharpie.

A forgotten Cub Chris Stynes. This was a neat design. The trading places was due to the fact Stynes had come to Chicago from the Boston Red Sox.

Topps Gallery is a beautiful set. Always loved Gallery. I especially enjoy lesser known players, like Jose Hernandez, on Gallery.

And I have a pair of Jose’s game used cleats that he signed.

The 1990 Swell Baseball Greats was product I ripped packs of as a youth. It’s almost a forgotten set to me until I see a card and then it brings back waves of memories from spending 50-cents at the IGA grocery store on these packs. Strange that Robin Roberts was included as a Cub in this set. He played 18 seasons of Major League Baseball with just one with the Cubs. That came in his final year of his career, 1966.

Here’s a cool 1995 Topps Cubs Rookies cards. It was a short-lived “On Deck” rookie from Topps. Doug Glanville did well for himself playing Major League Baseball. Darron Cox not so much.

I’m becoming more and more a fan of different sized cards. Sure I prefer standard size, but I’m coming around to the minis. But I still despise 1989 Bowman.

Thanks for the bulk trade, Rick. Looking forward to future deals!

Saturday Morning Sorting Unearths a Stack of Hits

Among my favorite weekly activities is sorting baseball cards on Saturday mornings. It began a few years ago when I dived back into the hobby at full speed. I had bought a couple large Craigslist lots and had plenty of sorting to keep me busy.

My card area at our previous house was a section in the unfinished basement. It was dark and unsightly. It split me between two levels as my “business” transactions (eBay and Sportlots) were printed upstairs in my man cave and then I would head down to the basement to pull cards. When I sorted and pulled cards I would turn on the WWE Network on my iPad and the tradition began.

Fast forward to the present and I have my perfect setup. My own card room complete with computer/printer/scanner surrounded by beautiful boxes of cardboard. In the TV room I have plenty of room to bring out some boxes to watch old Raw episodes on the WWE Network, which continues to be my Saturday morning tradition.

This morning I was pulling some 800 count boxes for team sorting. Some boxes have never been sorted since those Craigslist purchases in 2015 and 2016. Other boxes were randomly filled with cards for whatever reason.

As I opened up an unmarked box I realized there were quite a few newer cards. Not just newer cards, but hits! Autographs, relics, serial numbered cards, rookies, vintage. Wow!

Some of the cards I don’t even remember owning. Others I recall pulling from boxes and setting aside for later. Nothing extravagant here. It’s not like I unearthed a pile of pristine tobacco cards hidden away for a century. Nonetheless it’s always a nice start to the day when you pull a stack of cards worth a couple bucks each.

The cherry on top? Cubs cards! There were nine Cubs cards in the box. A 2016 Opening Day Kris Bryant rookie cup.

A Greg Maddux 1987 Donruss The Rookies.

Some vintage Ron Santo. A 1974 Topps All Star featuring Santo and Brooks Robinson.

Heritage Minors is one of my favorite sets. Albert Almora was in the 2015 set with the Tennessee Smokies.

Kyle Schwarber 2015 Bowman Draft.

And another Heritage Minors from 2013. It’s a black border Gioskar Amaya 91/96.

This was a great surprise to add to the Cubs collection this morning as I’m not expecting anything in the mailbox today.

Friday Cubs Mailday With Some Sandberg and Maddux

Rachel in Washington sent a package that arrived today with 93 Cubs cards inside.

The package included cards from the 1990’s with a 6-pack of Ryne Sandberg.

Another superstar from the era was represented with 11 Greg Maddux cards.

I love oddball cards and these are great: 1989 Rookies. The National League Rookie of the Year and runner up from the Cubs are here in Jerome Walton and Dwight Smith.

Speaking of Dwight Smith. I largely overlook 1992 Donruss cards since I have so many, but I took a closer look this time. For the first time I noticed the great action image of Smith here. Take a look at the dirt flying up during his swing.

And finally, a mostly forgotten Cub. It’s Scott Bullett. Bullett was an outfielder in the mid 1990’s.

Thanks for the trade, Rachel!

Bulk Trade Brings In A Couple Cubs Autographs

Another flat rate box trade was completed this week. This trade brought in 1,774 more Cubs in exchange for Texas Rangers with Greg in Texas.

My favorite card in this lot was a 1985 Topps Tiffany Shawon Dunston rookie card. This is one of my favorite Cubs cards of all time, and I don’t have the Tiffany version. My collection is pretty void of most Tiffany cards.

A close second was a couple autographs he added. In yesterday’s post I had a couple 1996 Leaf Signature Series autographs. Here’s another one that’s new of Turk Wendell. The other auto is Vance Law on a MLB Showdown card. Law has a great signature and was another one of my favorites from the late 80’s.

There was a plethora of Ryne Sandberg cards. Here’s a small sampling.

1984 Donruss was a beauty. And the Cubbie blue really pops on these cards. Carmelo Martinez hit a home run in his very first major league at bat with the Cubs in August 1983. Just over four months later he was traded to the San Diego Padres.

Another newbie to my collection is a 2004 Fleer Platinum Portraits Insert of Mark Prior.

Another card I was unaware of was 1990 Score Scoremasters. Who knew 1990 Score junk era could be so sleek.

This Mark Grace Insert from 1995 Fleer Ultra has an embossed finish.

Finally, a Todd Wellemeyer Diamond Debut Insert from 2003 Fleer. It’s another new card to my collection.

Thanks for the trade, Greg. Looking for more trade partners of any amount. Send me an email (onemillioncubsproject@gmail.com) or let me know on Twitter.

Treasure Chest of Cubs

One of my maildays this week came from Rob in New Jersey. In total, 593 Cubs cards came in the box with a treasure trove of Cubs goodies.

Rob’s box came filled with anything and everything from 1970’s Cubs to my favorite early 2000’s prospect busts to Hall of Fame rookies.

What made this box break so great were the Easter Eggs hidden among the cards. I discovered a Ryne Sandberg rookie card mixed amongst Corey Patterson and Doug Dascenzo cards. And then a second Sandberg rookie. And could it be? Yes, a third Ryno rookie!

Sandberg wasn’t the only Hall of Famer rookie in Rob’s box. He also included a Bruce Sutter rookie card.

One of my favorite early 2000’s busts was Hee Seop Choi. Mainly because he was the trade chip that made Derrek Lee a Cub possible.

There were many new additions to my Cubs collection in this box. This thick Sammy Sosa card at one time featured audio from WGN radio of his 300th home run. Unfortunately, the audio no longer plays.

Greg Maddux signed with the Atlanta Braves during the prime of his career, but later returned to the Cubs. That made me happy because we get some cool and shiny Maddux Cubs cards. This 2005 Ultra has rounded cards like a credit card.

Topps Total was one of my favorite sets of the 2000’s. Great photography and I like the card stock they used. Plus, it gave us Cubs Collectors cards of relative unknowns like Ivanon Coffie.

Nomar Garciaparra also got a Topps Total card in 2005. I’ll never forget where I was the night the Cubs acquired Nomar in three-team trade. I was at Parkside Sports Bar in Macomb, Illinois (where you could find me most days in 2004). I was so happy with the trade I immediately went shopping for Garciaparra Cubs jerseys. I finally found one for $125. Not money well spent, and that jersey still hangs in my closet not worn in over a decade.

Eric Hinske was recently a Cubs coach. I had no idea his 2002 Fleer Rookie Flashback Insert existed.

Finally, several vintage reprints. During one of my Cubs collecting sprees a few years ago I was buying reprint sets. These are all perforated that I’ve never seen.

Great trade that added several new cards to the collection. It also gave me the chance to rid my collection of the hated St. Louis Cardinals cards. Thanks, Rob!