Adventures in Bus Driving and a Package from Peter

I've mentioned a couple times here and on Twitter that this month has been busy for me for work. 

The last month of school, a lot of classes try to cram trips in so we get a lot of charters. 

So today is a little catch all.. 

This was the Lakefield Farmer's Market. 

It's much smaller than either one held in Peterborough, but still interesting. There was a guy selling kettle corn, another selling pulled pork tacos, another selling jams, and more. 

It was a rather warm day and the group ended up leaving early because of it. 

The above batch is from this past Saturday. 

There was a golf tournament at Peterborough Golf and Country Club that had something to do with the police's work on eliminating childhood cancers. 

The group I brought up did some drum line accompaniment for the police and cyclers as they got to the golf course. I took the pictures from my bus in the parking lot of the high school across the street. 

Today I brought a group to a place called Escape Maze. This really was just a farm near Peterborough. I didn't stay around so I just took the one picture. 

Well, with that out of the way, Baseball Cards!!

I took part in the Series 2 box break put on by Peter at Baseball Every Night.

Naturally, I scooped the Jays.. 

I love the 1987 set, but I think I'm getting to the point where it's getting too much.. Topps has been bludgeoning the horse too much.. It's almost dead... 

Earlier he had some Heritage he wanted to get rid of.. There were a couple Jays cards he put aside for me before even offering them. With not writing too much lately, I hadn't had a chance to show them off.. So two birds with one stone today. 

Thanks, Peter for the cards.. I will square up with you on Friday. 

Blog Bat Around: Origin of Your Player Collections

I have a little extra energy tonight, so I figured I'd write out something quickly on here. 

Eamus Catuli! and its owner, P-Town Tom, put out a question to the Blogosphere. That question is:

What is the reason you collect the players you collect?

Well, for baseball it's fairly straightforward. 

I collect Canadian born players aside from Jays and Expos. 

Now, in there I have to mention that there are a couple Canadian-identifying players (Parents were Canadian, born in US) that I've been collecting/thinking about collecting. 

I started collecting Reimer before Freeman, obviously. I read about Reimer in a book about Canadian Baseball in the 1990s. 

Freeman is a more recent decision. It was made easier with him playing on Team Canada for the WBC this spring. 

Fergie is a rather obvious choice, I think. The only Canadian-born Hall of Fame member. His rookie card isn't overly insane to buy either. Well, the ones asking $50+ might be too rich for my blood, but I could get one for $12.75. Not bad for a card from 1966.

Morneau is another fairly obvious one, I think. As is Walker below. 

Kirk McCaskill is a Canadian by birth only, really. He was born in Kapuskasing, but identifies as an American. 

So these are some of the baseball player collections I have. There are more, but I'm not going to cover all of them.. Basically, it's Canadian born players I collect. 

Hockey is slightly different.. There were two players from my hometown of Terrace Bay, Ontario to have cards made. 

Charlie Simmer and Aaron MacKenzie are both from Terrace Bay. 

So that's why I collect who I collect.. 

A COMC Arrival

A nice little surprise awaited me when I got home today. That surprise doesn't include me forgetting my phone in my bus at work and not realizing till I was home. 

No, this one was better.. I got a package in from COMC today. 

I have to say, I've gone on a bit of a binge there the last couple months. I think sites like that and Just Commons make it easy for us to grab a bunch of small things without realizing how quickly those numbers add up.. 

Anyway, enough chatter.. Let's look at the cards, right?

First is this oddity.. 

It's from 1977. Fleer made logo stickers like this for the league that year. There were, according to the TCDB, three variations for most: White background, Sepia Background, and Blue Background. 

You can tell it's from the 70s. It screams it from the rooftops, really.. 

Gary Carter rookie! I was able to find it relatively cheap, so why not? By relatively cheap, I paid $6.58 for it. I see some copies on there going for $25, so... I'm happy. 

Some OPC 77s. I had the Topps Jenkins, so now I have the OPC version too. 

I accidentally got two Alvis Woods and Bill Singer cards, so those duplicates will be packaged off for a trading partner. Same with the second Sportflix card I picked up on accident. I think I bought two because of it being Gary Carter (thought he was an Expo on it)/Al Oliver (Jay)/George Foster.

And lookie here... Tony Perez Nabisco.. I completed that set that I've wanted to since it came out in 1992.

Also, I can't not mention the Alan Ashby Hostess card. Another 1977 gem.. And it's a Topps photo because of the horrid airbrush.. 

With these cards, I'm down to needing a George Bell to complete the set. I believe I have the set proper complete now, it's the completionist completion I need the Bell for.. (Set and team) 

For that reason, I got two of the Dave Collins card.

Some cards to go into the Canadians binder here. 

The Nigel Wilson Fleer card... I didn't realize they have him labelled as a Marlin, so I got two. One for the Jays and one for the Canadians. I'm still thinking about keeping the second for the Jays collection because that's the uniform he's wearing. Alternatively, it's trying to find someone who'd want it.. Unless I sent it to Ajax to see if I could get him to sign it.. lol 

Rheal Cormier. I got two because he's an Expo here. I had to go back to the invoice to see what one I picked up. I didn't notice there were three variations to these: Bronze, Silver, and Gold. 

I decided to see if I could find some cheap autographed cards on COMC and I found some.. lol 

I got two Paul Spoljaric because again, Jays and Canadian. 

A Whole Lotta Shakin' Going on here. These Moseby cards are all from the Jays Fire Safety sets that they started in 1984. 

A Kirk McCaskill Triple Play card that, honestly, I think looks amazing.. I really liked the 1993 Triple Play cards, even though I didn't see many of them. 

The last card on the ones above and the first one on this group are both Japanese issues. 

Old Judge Rich Butler autographs. Rich and his brother Rob are Canadian and started in the Jays system. Rich ended up with the Rays 

The final part of this purchase..

I needed the Leyritz to complete the 1990 Fleer Update set. 

Brad Fullmer and Cliff Floyd were nice cheap picks. I have the non-autographed Floyd already, but here's the autographed version now too.. 

Kevin Witt. Not much to say about that one.

Two Then and Now cards from 2012 Heritage. Would have maybe liked some variety in the Bautista photo. I thought I got two of the same one by accident.. 

So for the next two and a half weeks, things are going to be fairly busy. School winding down means lots of trips and lots of work for me. I may even get a blog entry on Adventures in Bus Driving to clear it out at the end of it all.. 

Adventures in Bus Driving: Treetop Trekking

So this week started out with charters. I have charters all week, and will likely have for the next three until school ends. 

Yesterday I went someplace I've never been before. I brought a group to a place called Treetop Trekking Ganaraska.

It's a Zipline park in a protected forest. 

This is the building they went to. There's other buildings around as well, such as a canteen (that wasn't open) and an education/information centre.

There's the information centre I mentioned.

A bunch of different things that they have posted up there. 

It may not be a Toronto one, but it's a Blue Jay! Got a few pictures of that little guy. 

Now just to tie this in with baseball cards.. When I made that big purchase of 1984 OPC, I also bought these three 1978s.

Marc Has Puhl Here

Not long ago, Marc posted on his blog Remember The Astrodome  that he remembered reading a Canadian or ex-pat Canadian collected Terry Puhl. 

Being an Astros collector, he had a bunch that he set aside but couldn't remember who it was that collected. 

A commenter showed my player collection post for Puhl which reminded him that it was me. One e-mail later to give my address, a bunch of Terry Puhl cards were on their way.

I scanned the ones I needed from the pile he sent. Much 80s love here. 

Now that middle card.... That was a surprise for sure. 

In hand, the auto is hard to read due to the colour of the ink, but it's definitely appreciated. 

Thank you Marc! I just hope that at some point, I can help you out with your collection.