Oh, the things we do as bloggers

So I found myself with time to kill one day last week while waiting for my son to show up for a lunch meetup. I wandered into the WalMart in the same block and checked out the card section. Alone among all the other usual packs and boxes was this little 'gem'.

A Graded Card!! Says it right there on the front. Now I knew damn well I wasn't gonna come away with a 1910 E98 Cobb graded 8.5 by Beckett. Here's a closer look at the label:

A couple of Ty's buddies are shown on the sides of the blaster.

The famous 'randon insertion'. I can just imagine how 'random' the E90s were inserted.

There was no price on it and I didn't see a shelf tag so I guessed $20 and figured at that price or lowerI'd at least get a blog post out of it. So, I found one of those 'check the price' thingys and sure enough, $19.99 was the tab. I added a couple of boxes of Peet's Decaf K-Cups to my basket and I was outta there.

I let this thing stew for a few days and opened it Tuesday night. Here's what was inside:

A graded card, six packs of actual cards, a 'bonus' item and two of those gawdawful Triple Play packs.



Did I spoil the surprise? My graded card is a 2011Topps Jacoby Ellsbury graded 10 which Beckett described on the label as "Mint or Better".

I'm not really sure what's better than 'mint'. Maybe we should consult rock legend and lead guitarist for Spinal Tap, Nigel Tufnel...

BTW...the Beckett label must be an old version. The only other one I have is silver. But I'm no expert on the grading companies. As for the card...well, whatever. I had a thought or two about sticing it up on the Beckett Graded Card Resistry. I figured a Better Than Mint 2011 would at least get me into a tie for the #1 spot among 2011 Ellsbury collectors. But in order to register that wanted my cell phone number. Not happening.

Back to those packs. I'm going to show just a few cards from each of the sets represented. They were mundane to say the least. Here they are in the order I opened them:


Upper Deck 2008 X

A-Rod is a die cut card.

 Ryan Howard is a shiny, chrome-kinda card. Whatever happened to him anyway. Gone in a flash.

That's the full pack, Four cards. The Mauer is sort of a nice card.  When i buy stuff like this I try to find a use for the cards and usually that means sticking as many as possible in my fantasy player binder. Even if I like the card that already in there I can justify (somewhat) spending on a blaster just for the hell of it. Mauer will go in that binder. And since I like having as many different kinds of cards represented it's a welcome addition.

Next, Pinnacle 2013 from Panini. Eight card pack.

It was an A-Rod hot box because here he is again.

These next two are going into the fantasy binder for sure. Since they are both catchers in full gear you don't notice the lack of logos/uniforms. Plus, they are actually pretty sharp.

Oh man, did this LaRoche special card scan poorly or what?

 From the one pack of 2017 Topps Series 2 comes an Albert P. Notheing else worth scanning.

There were three 2019 Topps packs. The Tucker and Ray cards are nice additions to the fantasy binder.

Adan Engel's card is pretty neat. Love the throwbacks. Sox wore these when I was at their place a couple of summers ago.

The 'bonus' item, as seen in the pick, was a generic pack. Turned out to contain three Topps cards of a set I was not familiar with. they were 2008 Topps Dick Perez cards. I think they were found in the complete set boxes but I could be wrong. Looking at Google gave me a headache and nobody really cares about this stuff anyway.  Plus, they are ugly. Perez mucy have knocked these things out faster than a boardwalk sketch artist.

The Triple Play packs remain unopened and I'll give them to my elementary PE teacher friends to use as prizes.

Well, that's it. My $20 experiment in blind blaster boxes. Worth it? Nope. Do it again? Heck no! But regrets? No, it was fun and as I suspected, I got a long blog post out of it.

Plus a couple of useful cards. Anyone want these Perez things?  

Shiny Things

At the last hotel card show I hardly bought anything for my collection (outside of the big ol' lot of '70 Topps). But I did do something I hadn't done there in a long time. I ventured around the meeting room scrounging through tables looking for 'stuff'. No specific goal, just 'stuff'. Normally I camp out at the promoter's table where he has some great cheap vintage or in the hallway where he sets up his dime and dollar boxes.

In a box of new and relatively new '25 cents or 5 for a buck' cards I found these two which caught my eye. They are 2004 Upper Deck Sweet Spot Classic base cards. I've discovered that UD loved to make neat stuff using old photos that didn't show up in every other set, put a bunch of foil on them and then give the sets unwieldy names.

I don't have anything to say about these except that I found the checklist and the apparently numbered them using the players' first names in alphabetical order which is unusual. There are 161 of them including 71 which are given a FF notation that stands for Famous Firsts.

Here is a look at the back of the Campy card.

I might go find the Elston Howard card. I'm adding him to my list of player collections. More about that in another post.

Monday Morning Quarterback #40 Tom Brady 2004 Upper Deck

In this ongoing series of posts I am going to feature cards from my fantasy football player collection, specifically the 117 quarterbacks I've had on my team's roster since 1980. I have one selected card for each player in my All-Time Flyers binder. Through the years I've tried to use as many different card varieties as possible while holding on to my preference which is: a card issued in a year I owned the player showing him in the proper team uni in a vertical format. Card availability and my whims have had a big impact on that standard as we will see. 

NFL Info: LOL, are you kidding.... he's Tom Brady.

• 3× Super Bowl champion (XXXVI, XXXVIII, XXXIX)
• 2× Super Bowl MVP (XXXVI, XXXVIII)
• 2× AP NFL MVP (2007, 2010)
• 9× Pro Bowl (2001, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013)
• 2× First-team All-Pro (2007, 2010)
• Second-team All-Pro (2005)
• 5× AFC Champion (2001, 2003, 2004, 2007, 2011)
• 2× NFL Passing Yards Leader (2005, 2007)
• Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year (2005)
• Sporting News Sportsman of the Year (2004, 2007)
• AP Male Athlete of the Year (2007)
• 2× AP NFL Offensive Player of the Year (2007, 2010)
• 3× AFC Offensive Player of the Year (2007, 2010, 2011)
• AP NFL Comeback Player of the Year (2009)
• PFWA NFL Comeback Player of the Year (2009)
• Most Career Playoff Starts For Quarterback (26)
• Most Career Playoff Wins For Quarterback (18) 
• New England Patriots All-time leader (Passing Touchdowns,Passing Yards, Pass Completions, Pass Attempts, and Career Wins)
• NFL 2000s All-Decade Team

Brady came out of Michigan as a sixth round(!) draft pick in 2000. He sat a season behind Drew Bledsoe and then in 2001 he took the job when Bledsoe was hurt. He never looked back.

Fantasy Impact: I had Brady in 2004 after a late season trade and used him as my starter for the last four weeks of the season. He had two decent games and then two stinkers as I faded from 6-3 (second best in the league) to end up 6-7 and missing the playoffs.

I drafted Brady this season and he was part of what I thought was one of my best teams ever post-draft. His sluggish start hurt me early and by the time he found his stride I was having other issues with injuries to key players. He's making his final start for me this week and it's also likely my final week as an active fantasy player. My interest in the current NFL is waning and after running my league for 35 years I'm pretty sure I'm going to hang it up. We'll see.

The Card: "Ladies and gentlemen, we have a split decision." The front of this Upper Deck card is just fine. Good picture of Brady filling the frame, a picture taken during the previous Super Bowl which the Pats won in Houston. I love that SB patch. The silver chromey typeface at the bottom is hard to read on the scan but it's not as obscure in hand.

The back however is another story altogether. All that empty space! I suppose four seasons of stats are not going to fill the card but there are dozens of guys in the set with similar experience. They all have that field of nothingness. Crappy design.

I'll Live To Cheer Another Day

Well, with the Orioles out of the playoffs I have some scans that I was planning to post for upcoming games just sitting up on Picasa. But why not post them anyway?

This is a Cal Ripken boxed set that was put out by Upper Deck in 1996. There are 22 cards and they are larger than standard cards, they measure 3.5 x 5. My scans don't do these cards justice at all. They are really great pictures. I believe UD included a card to represent each year of Cal's career and a 'header' card. I chose to scan a representative group because some are pretty similar. There are several batting stance cards, for example, with just different unis being worn.

The cards are slick, glossy and have gold accents. The scan just ruins the black bar across the bottom of each card. That's a shame because these are quality.

I scanned the box including the bottom and the top is what you see above.

A few were horizontal. This is one of the lesser pics in the bunch.

Throwback uni! I wish the O's would wear these '54 duds on Fridays instead of the nasty black ones.

I like this one. Cal's looking cool with the shades, the Orioles usher rocking that cool uniform, the Warehouse in the background.

Classic Cal, as I remember his playing days.

This is the back of a random card in the set. 

The bottom of the box:

I saved my favorite card for last. It's different from the rest and features Cal and Eddie Murray with matching 'bad ass' expressions.

Upper Deck Autographed Frank Robinson

Upper Deck sure had some tasty cards back when they had a licence with MLB. They used great pictures with nice designs in some of those specialty sets. I missed out on a lot of these because I wasn't collecting during the period that they were produced. Greats of the Game sets, Great Teams sets, whatever this is from set, all of them are nice additions to a binder, yes?

I have been trying to expand my Frank Robinson collection lately with cards showing him on the Reds. I may not have been a fan of the team but I sure do like those classic unis. Just beautiful. 

As simple and attractive the front of this card is the reverse is about as crowded as a card can be. My tired old eyes have a lot of trouble reading through the wall of stats, and the write-up in that tiny font? Forget it. 

No matter. 

This and that, Billy Pierce Style

Seemed like a good day to try to clear out some of the backlog of scanned cards I've been saving. Let's start with these. 

Top card is a Bill Pierce Topps Archives from 2001. I didn't really know Topps was doing these 'throwback' cards 13 years ago. Anyway it's obviously just a reprinted '64 with a gold stamp. I like the original '64 card, love that the color compliments the Giants' colors. But having said that I rally don't pursue these 'modern' Pierce cards wholeheartedly. I keep a list of the ones I have but I'm not tracking down a 'wantlist'. There are so many variations of these sorts of things I'm not sure a wantlist is even possible. 

There is a Heritage Pierce card on COMC that is signed. It is supposedly a 2013 card and it has a number of 18/64. I can't tell if its a 'signed through the mail' card of if it was issued like that. Either way for $25 the guy can keep it. I made him an offer of about half the asking price since the card has been there f-o-r-e-v-e-r but, just as I figured, it was rejected.

Next is another 99 cent Pierce card, this one is a variation of something I already had. It's an Upper Deck All Time Heroes card from 1994. I posted my original one awhile back but this one is "special"... it has a gold stamp reading 'Major League Baseball 125th Anniversary' along the right side. Why? I don't know. And I wouldn't have bothered with it had it cost more than a dollar or so. 

But along with the Pierce Upper Deck the seller included an extra card (don't you love it when sellers do that?). He stuck an '89 Fleer Tony Gwynn into the same case. I'm sure I have this card someplace and, yes, the '89 Fleer set isn't anything to be excited about but a Gwynn is a Gwynn. If nothing else it gave me the chance to flip over a card and be astounded at some player's stats.

I blew up the scan of the back, just because. Here are a couple of things I found out when this card prompted me to look at TG's Baseball Reference page: he was second in the NL in triples three times. Triples!  

In 1994 he won the batting title with a just plain silly .394 average but he also led the league by grounding into 20 double plays. He was in the top four in putouts by a rightfielder eight times and top five in fielding eight times. 

Mr. Padre, indeed.

Monday Morning Quarterback #2 1996 UD Collector's Choice Tony Banks

In this ongoing (weekly?) series of posts I am going to feature cards from my fantasy football player collection, specifically the 117 quarterbacks I've had on my team's roster since 1980. I have one selected card for each player in my All-Time Flyers binder. Through the years I've tried to use as many different card varieties as possible while holding on to my preference which is: a card issued in a year I owned the player showing him in the proper team uni in a vertical format. Card availability and my whims have had a big impact on that standard as we will see.

From the 'ying' of Dan Fouts in last weeks' initial post in this series we hit the 'yang'. This is the 1996 Upper Deck Collector's Choice card of Tony Banks. 

NFL Info: Tony Banks played for four teams over nine seasons and currently works as a sideline reporter for the Big Ten Network. He was the Rams' starter for three years and started about half of the time during 1999/2000 seasons for the Ravens. He started 14 games for the Redskins in 2001. He finished up as a back-up to David Carr in Houston.

Fantasy Angle: I had Banks on my bench in 1996. I never had to use him. Drew Bledsoe took me to my second EHFL title playing each week other than his bye when Jeff Blake filled in and got me a win. 1996 was a sweet season for me, the first of back-to-back championships.

The Card: It's a hellish mess. The front is better than the reverse but that's just damning with faint praise. It would make a nice Sports Illustrated for Kids card. But it is from '96 and it's got Banks as a Ram so it's in my binder. 

Orioles from the Jedi Guy

Jedi Jeff from 2 x 3 Heroes padded his 'Tis the Season' hockey gift with a pile of Orioles cards and I wanted to toss just a couple of them up here. It's been awhile Orioles cards were the focal point of this modest space.

1991 Upper Deck Cal Ripken. Pictures that fit the space, clean design, team logo. Maybe not 'cardboard art' but it's a good card.

 

Brady Anderson, same set. Five years later he hit 50 home runs. Previous high HR total? 21. Previous season's HR total? 16. Highest subsequent season HR total? 24. So 1996 was the year of Brady's homer-onic convergence. Think the ball was juiced post-lockout?

1988 Fleer Ken Dixon. I have a baseball he signed in Arlington for me a year or so before this card was issued. I saw him pitch in Yankee Stadium on one of my visits east. That was the game that Cal Ripken was thrown out at home by Dave Winfield which killed a rally. That's all I remember from that game, Dixon entering in relief and Ripken getting nailed at home. Oh, and the Orioles losing.

Finally, it's an Eddie Murray mini card from 1988.

I love the little cartoon. Hard to believe one family could have five guys play pro ball. Eddie obviously was the most successful.

His four brothers are Rich Murray who played for the Giants and married a woman I knew from my school district. I received an invite but didn't attend. I didn't know at the time that the groom was that Rich Murray and that Eddie was in attendance. I would have gone and brought a hell of a gift had I known.

The other three brothers are Charles who played seven seasons of minor league ball and played as high as the AAA level, Venice who played one season in the minors and later was a baseball scout, and Leon Murray who played only 20 games of pro ball.