When I was younger my aunt in California would call us every Christmas Eve and ask "is it Christmas yet?" This was usually late (8pm or so) and usually lead to the ultimate traditions of setting milk and cookies for Santa, ensuring the stockings were hung, leaving an apple and carrot outside for the reindeer, etc.
I don't have much interaction with my aunt anymore, but every year that it gets closer to Christmas I think of those old phone calls.
This month I have been showing off some red and green cards and I have a few pairings that could knock your Christmas stockings off.
I want to show off these cards today because they remind me of a funny gift that I received one Christmas from an uncle who has spent his entire life collecting.
Back in the mid 2000s (2003-2005ish?) I was really into the toys from my childhood, specifically Thundercats. Well, my uncle literally made me cry one year....from laughing at the zany gift he gave me.
You may recall that I gave up on baseball because of the 1994 strike and that I hadn't attended a baseball game again until 2005. I told my uncle that I wanted to get back into baseball again, but was so confused with all the card manufacturers and different parallels that were being made at that time. Boy do those 2005 parallels seem simple compared to,what Topps and Panini are doing now.
Well on Christmas day 2005 I got a small box with tissue paper and inside was a baseball with a "Lion-O" signature. Yes, my uncle wrote Lion-O (leader of the 80s cartoon Thundercats) and drew a small paw print on the sweet spot. Somewhere I think I still have that ball and when I eventually unbox everything from the move, I am sure I will find it again. Hopefully the signature didn't fade from being in a box for 15 years.
Card manufacturers have attenpted to make baseballs part of their releases from time to time, the most famous being Sweet Spot signatures.
Panini used that concept for their 2020 Absolute Baseball product and Cutch was one of the featured signatures.
There were 3 parallels to chase
1/1 Red & Blue stitching
/6 Red
/5 Green
I missed out on the 1/1, but was able to grab both the red and green last year.
I guess it makes sense that the green stitches baseball (/5) would be lower numbered than the red (/6) as I have never seen a baseball with green stitches.
These cards look and feel very much like the Upper Deck Sweet Spot autographs. I have seen many horror stories of those cards fading over time.
What suggestions do you have for displaying the cards while preventing the signature from fading over time?
What are you looking forward to most for Christmas?
Do you have any baseball Christmas memories?
