Duke Snider in My Collection

I've long had a certain slight fascination with the Brooklyn Dodgers.  The story of their win in the World Series in 1955 over the Yankees, where "Wait 'til next year" turned into "This is next year!," followed shortly after by the heartbreaking news of the move to Los Angeles, is the stuff of legends.  I think it must have either been the PBS documentary 1955 Seven Days of Fall, or part of Ken Burns' Baseball, that I saw that made such an impression on me.  Their move, and the Giants' move at the same time, seemed to close a chapter in the American experience.

1955 Red Man Tobacco Duke Snider, without tab.

My one good card of Duke Snider is this 1955 Red Man card.  I bought seven of these Red Man cards off a friend in high school; she had many more than that she got from, I think, her dad, but possibly her grandfather.  She had no particular attachment to them and was interested in selling, and I was happy to buy a handful of them.  I've shown my Casey Stengel, my Robin Roberts, and my Yogi Berra cards before.

Superstar.

Leaf Candy City Team.

These cards resemble one another, don't you think?  I've found out something about these cards from the Trading Card Database.  The Superstar cards are, in the database, called Seckeli Superstar cards.  Knowing that gives a little more information, I suppose.  I do know where I got my Superstar sets -- I bought them with a gift certificate that came as a prize for selling the most junk in a Boy Scouts fundraiser.  Dad sold the stuff, really; he took the box to work, and the people who worked for him bought it.  I feel a little bad about that -- if the boss tells you his kid is selling stuff, you might kind of have to buy it, I guess.  But that's how I got my Superstar, Baseball Immortals, 1981 Coca-Cola Phillies, and I'm sure some other cards.

The Leaf Candy City Team cards are somehow related to the Special Olympics.  The set has 12 baseball players (all of which I have) and 6 Special Olympics sports cards (none of which I have).  I have no idea where I got them.

Pacific Legends.

Baseball Immortals.

I already mentioned how I got the Baseball Immortals.

Near Dad's work in the 80s and early 90s was a gas station, a very ordinary Exxon station, where the owner got in on the baseball card boom of the time and sold a wide variety of cards.  They had a great selection, and I found some wax packs there that I didn't see anywhere else, especially Pacific cards.  I bought all of my Pacific Legends there, and this Duke Snider is one of them.

Hygrade All-Time Greats.

2017 Donruss.

I have approximately 50 of these Hygrade All-Time Greats.  I really don't know where I got them, but seeing that I basically have 50 of them rings a bell -- I suspect that they sold a pack of 50 of them at Toys 'R' Us, or a bookstore, or something, and I was always on the lookout for baseball cards, so I  would have bought something like that.  Like the Superstar cards, knowing that those are Seckeli Superstar cards doesn't tell me much, but it's something.  I don't know who Seckeli was, or who Hygrade was, but they were into nostalgia cards, I guess.

I now have exactly 20 cards in my approximately 30,000 card collection that were made post-1994, so it's easier to keep track of where I got them all.  I bought three packs of 2017 Donruss and one pack of 2016 Donruss at the dollar store last fall, and blogged about it; that accounts for 16 of the 20 cards, and one of them is this Duke Snider.

I haven't really said anything about Duke Snider here, because it seems unnecessary.   Thanks for reading!