1951

Once again congratulations to the winners of my contest.  Give me a week or two to do a little shopping and I'll have a really cool package for each of you.

I've often stated that the weakest part of my Pirates collection is vintage.  It is my goal one day to put some focus on the older Pirates, but will need to sell my Steelers collection first in order to afford some of the early issues of the bigger names.

Thanks to the blog I've already got a head start on starting my vintage collection.  Seeing all the great cards I've received over the course of this year has made me thirsty for more.  A couple weeks back I stumbled across a seller who was getting rid of a pretty significant vintage collection.  Here is what I got from him.

It was nice to add five 51 Bowmans that are actually in pretty good shape.  A few have some lines running through it, but no creases.  The Murtaugh was the gem of the bunch, but nothing cost more than $8,

Hope everyone is enjoying all the great football and baseball.  My Mountaineers played a crazy game against Maryland in which they hit a field goal as time expired to win.  The Buccos are getting crushed by the Cubs tonight.  I'll be in Pittsburgh tomorrow to root them on as they make a final push toward October baseball.

Thanks for reading!

Manager's Special

After a long time searching I finally came across the Danny Murtaugh auto.  Murtaugh coached the World Series champion 1960 and 71 Pirate teams.  Auto's are really scarce of the legendary manager as he died in 1976.  The Murtaugh auto is a cut signature and was from 2006 Topps Sterling.

Chuck Tanner coached the 1979 championship team. The auto is from 2004 Sweet Spot.  Coach Tanner passed away in 2011. 

Jim Leyland coached the successful early 90's Pirate teams.  The above auto is from 2005 Topps Retired.  Coach Leyland announced his retirement at the end of last season. 

I was trying to think if any new sets have manager signatures in it.  I know Topps had a few random GMs in it.  Pirates GM Neil Huntington was included in that set.   It would be kind of cool to see some active manager auto's make there way into some sets.