triplets

He is a hitting coach in St. Louis Missouri and works at Balls n' Strikes. He has worked with Albert Pujols recently.

another crappy pen...

Stephen Russell Braun (born May 8, 1948 in Trenton, New Jersey) is a former Major League Baseball outfielder, third baseman, and designated hitter.

Drafted by the Minnesota Twins in the 10th round of the 1966 Major League Baseball Draft, Braun would make his Major League Baseball debut with the Minnesota Twins on April 6, 1971, and appear in his final game on October 6, 1985.

Braun was a member of the St. Louis Cardinals team that defeated the Milwaukee Brewers in the 1982 World Series.

He is one of the few players with over 100 pinch hits.

Nice card to have signed, but I've seen better pens...

Bob Boone

Very pleased to have this card returned. I remember Bob Boone losing a bat at Angels Stadium as a kid and it hitting a woman not far from where I was seated.

Frank Duffy

Spring Training

I've spent the last two months focusing on non-76 Topps cards for my sons. With the season started, it's back to 1976!

Three cards in the week and I picked up a Rod Carew off eBay.

Amos Otis TTM and a $.99 eBay purchase.

Amos Otis came through on Sunday, though he does charge $5 to sign a card. Well worth it as I was running low on 1976 Topps cards to send out and he was the least expensive of the players who charge. I'll get around the the other charging players soon enough, but I'd rather use that money to purchase more cards to send out. I did win 28 cards on eBay for $.99! Looks like I'll be able to send out some more cards soon!

Got this one today!

Two more arrived last night. Thank you Stan and Doug!

Purchased from eBay.

A scan of the collection so far

Two more signatures today

Today I received two envelopes (well three, but one had Wade Boggs signature on an UD card for Miles). Brent Strom sent back a card that I sent out on the 16th of January and George Throop signed his 1976 rookie card shared with Steve Grilli, Craig Mitchell and Jose Sosa. I sent George's rookie card out just five days ago!

Another eBay purchase

In November, I bought another 20 cards. These cards were not team specific. I have sent almost half of them out and have received some back. I also picked up a few single cards of players I liked as a kid. One example of this was Bobby Grich, who signed my cards in less than a week! The card on the right (a much better card) belongs to my son Miles.

Getting Started

Once I decided on the task of getting the entire 1976 Topps set signed I needed to pick up some 1976 Topps cards. I did not have a single one from my very small childhood collection. I looked at buying an entire set on eBay but that bored me. I wanted to build the set as I would if I could in 1976. A few cards at a time. Being a Dodgers fan, I did a search on eBay for "1976 Topps Dodgers" and found about a 20 card set for around $7. Perfect. Over the last few months I have sent out almost all of them and have had some returns. The returns are: Al Downing, LeRon Lee, Charlie Hough, Doug Rau, Andy Messersmith (did not sign, but wrote a note that he would not sign), Ron Cey and Ken McMullen. There are still quite a few out there and still a few that I need to send out. I try to send out some cards from other years so that my sons can enjoy getting the mail.

1976 Topps and then some

On October 18th, I revisited a childhood hobby when I sent out two cards to Jason Giambi and asked him to sign them and send them back to me. As a kid I did this all the time and have a pretty decent, if a little random, collection of baseball players. After spending some time on the internet looking for sites to help support this hobby, I got the idea to focus on the 1976 Topps set, for no reason other than it was the year I was born. Now, exactly three months later, I am going to update anyone who is interested in my progress.