C.A.: 1991 Topps Desert Shield Kal Daniels

(Greetings, thanks for squeezing me in between postseason viewings. I tried to squeeze in a card show over the weekend, the monthly one. I left without buying a thing, partly due to having limited interests this time around, finding nothing that intrigued me that I could afford and, the clincher, a collector’s behavior that turned me off so much, I eventually left. This should be its own post, but I’ve actually griped about this same collector a few months ago. Time for something happier. Cardboard Appreciation. This is the 373rd in a series):

I added this 1991 Topps Desert Shield card of Kal Daniels last week thanks to CardBoredom, who was giving away assorted unwanted cards from his collection.

I didn’t know there are two CardBoredom collecting sites until Baseball Cards Come to Life noted the one site in which David was giving away cards. I just knew the more long-form blog, which is full of well-researched accounts and stories, so well-done in fact that it drew the attention of James Beckett and his podcast, regarding David’s 1949 Leaf research.

The other CardBoredom site is a more familiar — I guess “typical” — card blog — which I was delighted to find.

Anyway, this Kal Daniels Desert Shield card arrived mere weeks after I added another 1991 Desert Shield Dodger card as one of those throw-ins when one makes an ebay purchase and wants the discount.

This interested me because the only previous Desert Shield Dodger card (or Desert Shield card period) in my collection arrived ten years ago, in a package that arrived from P-Town Tom of Waiting ‘Til Next Year, a mostly dormant blog (except for one fairly recent post).

In my post I noted that “Operation Desert Storm first” in my collection and how I had known about the cards for quite awhile, knowledge gained my first 6 or 7 years of reading blog posts. I knew they were specially stamped cards issued in special packs intended for military personnel in the Persian Gulf War. I also knew they were somewhat rare as only about 7,000 sets were issued and many of them didn’t return from Saudi Arabia.

But I mentioned then, which is also the case now, that they are available on your favorite online selling site and the prices aren’t too bad, at least for the common players and semi-stars. Still, as you can see, after 10 years I have only three of the Dodgers (and after 9 years I only had one). So I’m not inspired enough to go a-chasing.

That’s probably because stamped parallels have never appealed to me enough to add them to the collection (1975 buybacks excluded). I do like the Desert Storm foil logo. It might be just me, but the gold foil seems to stand-out more than other ’90s gold-stamping, almost like you’d never have to worry about it flaking or wearing away. (Probably not true judging by my Scioscia example).

So, anyway, I think it’s neat that I have three of these now in the Dodger collection. I doubt that’s significant in the scheme of things, but there are a lot of cards that I wished I had during my first few years of blogging and when I get one, it does seem a little more special.

Thanks again to CardBoredom and his twin card sites.