Fairfield $5 box.

I finally made it into a Five Below store to check out their card selection. I found about a half dozen of those '100 cards + one pack' Fairfield repack boxes. Same thing I bought from a Walgreens a month ago which I didn't bother to post since it was so unremarkable.

I opened the box while I was out on the road and was hoping for something interesting which is probably a foolish expectation when dealing with a Fairfield repack. I was unimpressed that night and planned to vent about it in this post.

But as I went thru the cards a second time trying to pick out which ones to scan I found that there were a few 'gems' in the bunch as well as cards which filled in a gap or two in my card knowledge.

The 1994 George Brett at the top of the post is his last career card (I think). Any time I can do a little scoreboard detective work I dig right in. That photo is from Brett's second inning at bat in this 1993 game vs Milwaukee. Royals won it on a Chris Gwynn double in the bottom of the ninth.

The mid-90s are a baseball vacuum for me so I have few if any '94s. But at least I recognised the design as a Topps set. However this next card sent me to Google:

I'm sure that somewhere along the way I've been sent at least one 1996 Topps but I would have lost a bet on this being a Topps flagship set design.

The box covered a lot of ground. Oldest cards were 1981 Donruss....

...and the newest were from 2016. Yes, I got two of this card. It's (they) are from those team sets that come in hanging blister packs at Target.

Plenty of shiny stuff:

There were 17 Topps 2013 cards, by far the most from any set:

And that includes another pair of dupes:

El Presidente made an appearance. Too bad he isn't.

Here is a set that hasn't crossed my mind in a long time. Sportflics. This is Tom Browning from the '86 set. I had some Orioles because back then I bought everything Orioles-related. I'm pretty sure I tossed them out in the 'Junk Wax Purge' of 1993.

There were some other good players such as Andre Dawson....

...and a DK Barry Larkin.

I like the O-Pee-Chee Premier design.

1989 was Jim Rice's final year. Here is his Fleer card out of my box.

Greg Maddux out of an UD set I didn't collect. This was the card visible through the front of the box. Of the six boxes there I chose him as 'best available player'.

And Juan Berenguer. Juan looks like one of my brother-in-law's brothers-in-law. That guy is the life of the party, too.

There are nearly 90 others but none worth rolling my chair over to the scanner for. Now that I think about it the reason I was so down on the box at first was probably the pack that came out of it:

Ugg. ANY real card pack would have been better.

I've spent close to $25 or so on various repacks in the last six months. I think it's time to give it a break for awhile.

Batteries refreshed

I took a few days away from blogs and blogging (and just about everything computer related) after I got back from my road trip. Along the way I bought a few items including some Stadium Club. I realize that SC is now old news since Topps has released about four sets since then but whatever. It was new to me.

I'm just going to post the cards that are not plain old base cards that I got.....plus one or two that I liked.

Here's a gold foil Jeff Bagwell posing in Busch Stadium II (or was that III?).

Nolan Arenado reflector/refractor/3D version. 

Sc always has some neat pics of old school guys like this. Here Willie McCovey is waiting his turn to launch a few baseballs into downtown Phoenix during Spring Training.

Gold foil Todd Frazier.

I like catcher cards of catchers doing catcher things. And I like Stephen Vogt even though I never know how to pronounce his name.

This is a black foil card. One of these two guys is Danny Santana.

Washed out Brian Dozier card with bronze foil. I liked the old time babe Ruth set with the sepia photos. These modern pics done that way leave me cold.

Finally here are the SC and my '16 Topps Now cards of Joe Musgrove. I picked up the TN version when I nabbed him for my fantasy team last year. Interesting that they used the same pic. I don't look at many TN cards but I haven't seen this happen other than here.

So there you are, one and done for Stadium Club. It's easily my favorite Topps current set. I may pick up a few orioles here and there but as far as buying more retail I don't think so.

Next post...my disillusionment with repacks.

On the road again Part 2

I finished opening the Leaf 2016 Babe Ruth blaster box. To my surprise it had perfect collation. I received the complete base set, 1-80 and the two ten card subsets, Quotables and Career Achievements. Nice. I didn't pull a stadium seat or Ruth bat relic but that's OK. I found a cheap stadium seat card from the set on eBay and that'll serve as my 'insert example'.

It's a fun set to shuffle through. Lots of interesting pics of The babe. I am still relying on my phone camera so you'l have to excuse the pics. I'll just show a few. When I get home this will go into a binder.

There were several cards of Ruth with kids, his and others:

Wow, I need to take better pix with my phone. Anyway there were pic of Ruth messing around with other sports including these:

Gimmicky/publicity pictures:

But the best cards, of course, show the Babe in uniform on the baseball diamond. I chose some of my favorites for these two shots:

It's a neat set, especially considering I pretty much got it for free. I'm looking forward to seeing it in binder pages.

Oh, and I also opened the Sage college football jumbo pack. Here are the 'highlights':

On the road again

I'm out here in beautiful (but weird) Austin on the first leg of a summer tour of the I-35 corridor in central Texas. I'll be attending a Texas teachers retirement seminar. It's the first step to the end of a fun teaching and coaching career. And then I'll head south to attend my final coaches conference. It runs thru the middle of the week.

I don't plan on doing any sightseeing so I figured I'd grab something to occupy myself hobby-wise. A stop at Target revealed that nothing new had hit the shelves but by digging around the bottom shelf  I came up with a discounted blaster of the Leaf Babe Ruth set of a couple of years back. I also picked up the football pack for no apparent reason.

Now the Ruth box isn't something I'd pay full price for. But I had a pair of $5 Target cards I earned with previous purchases of Tide and Cascade (LOL). I also had a five dollar good-for-anything coupon I got as a 'make good' from the time the power went out as I was being checked out at the register.

All in all most of my purchase price was covered. The box has 20 packs of five cards each. I opened one pack tonite and I took pics. No way I'm going to blog every pack but if something really interesting pops up I will put it to the side for later use.

The cards are sepia toned obviously.

Of the first pack only the picture used in the card above looks familiar, which is a good sign.

The back relate to the fronts and use a small cropped version of the same photo.

I'm guessing this is one of the subsets. I haven't looked at the checklist yet. I have know idea what I'm getting into set-wise. Not that it matters...I bought this box for entertainment purposes only.

Career Achievements sounds like there are some subsets.

I'll bust a few more packs tonite. Maybe I'll come across the '1 of 1 Cut Signature' card. If so my retirement will be a bit more fun.

LATE EDIT: Here is by far the best card of the packs I opened tonite. It's just so Ruthian.

One last pic just because. Here is tonite's diner:

Yup, it was good. No, I didn't finish the pizza. But I did finish the brew.

Wrapping up the Batman sketches

These are the rest of the Batman sketch cards I've picked up to date. I've decided to add two more to fill up three full pages but I'm going to be patient and selective. I have one I commissioned that is on it's way to me (supposedly...it's a long story). 

Meanwhile check out the last of the bunch. Lots of variety and lots of talent in these. I'd be hard-pressed to choose a favorite.

I found some old threads on various hobby card forums that debated whether or not the AOJ Lithocards are prints or original work. Well, the two I have are original. And very good. I showed the other one in the previous post. BTW..the artist is Aaron Laidley who doesn't seem to have much of a web presence..

I have 2 sketch cards by Andy Duggan....

I really like this one from artist James Bukauskas aka Bukshot. It's one of a couple from the Rittenhouse Batman Archives set.

I didn't see the Batman vs Superman movie on the advice of my sons. But here is Ben Afleck as Batman. Card done by Javier Gonzalez.

This one is another insert from the Rittenhouse Batman Archives set. It was done by Steve Russell.

This next one is unique in that it was drawn around an official USPS postage stamp. Robert Kraus certainly has a unique still. Lot's on interesting stuff on his website.

Finally another great card, this from Eric Merced. He uses digital tools to draw his cards. Pretty interesting.

That wraps up my Batman sketch cards. It's been fun tracking these down. As I noted earlier I will add another card or two to fill up my three binder pages.

Right now slot #26 is occupied by an outlier from the DC Batman Legend set....the Joker:

1975 Fleer Pioneers

I bought this 28 card set at a card show a few months ago and had it sitting on my desk for awhile. I've tamed my scanner somewhat and figured I'd post a few of the cards. I had a couple of singles from the set that I bought way back when I began the first project of my second card collecting life. I was determined to have a card of every Hall of Fame player. Some of these were my 'placeholders' until I could get career contemporary cards. It didn't take me long to figure out that that project was going to be impossible both in cost and execution.

These cards were actually inserts in packs of a product I have no memory of, 'Baseball Patches'. In looking into these cards I found that Joe Shlabotnik and the Fleer Sticker Project have done the legwork previously. I'll defer to those two fine blogs. In fact it wasn't until I dug into the FSP blog the other day that my memory was jogged and I realized that I had several of the football versions of the patches in my Baltimore Colts collection. And I recognized the football version of this set as well.

Back to the cards at hand. As you'd expect the back has a write-up on the player.

These things are tall and narrow. Here is one scanned with a 2017 Topps for comparison.

Most, but not all, of the guys included in the checklist are Hall of Fame members.

Both the Cobb and Cy Young cards use familiar pics.

This one is my favorite.... Buck Ewing and the NY Giants' mascot. If the card's write-up is to be believed Buck always had the mascot spit on his bat when he went up to the plate. Well, OK.

A couple more.

I see that the set is available on eBay for between $15 and $18. Or you can go to Fritsch Cards and pay a bit more.

And finally the checklist:

1 Cap Anson
2 Harry Wright
3 Buck Ewing
4 A.G. Spalding
5 Hoss Radbourne
6 Dan Brouthers
7 Roger Bresnahan
8 Mike Kelly
9 Ned Hanlon
10 Ed Delahanty
11 Pud Galvin
12 Amos Rusie
13 Tommy McCarthy
14 Ty Cobb
15 John McGraw
16 Home Run Baker
17 Johnny Evers
18 Nap Lajoie
19 Cy Young
20 Eddie Collins
21 John Glasscock
22 Hal Chase
23 Mordecai Brown
24 Jake Daubert
25 Mike Donlin
26 John Clarkson
27 Buck Herzog
28 Art Nehf