A *rare, and I missed it

Super quick post tonight...

If you caught one of my recent posts, you might remember that there was a decent table with most cards priced at 50 cents or lower.  I picked up a bunch of Stadium Club parallels and some other nice cards.  I left out of my post that I grabbed a number of Corbin Carroll RC's from Topps Holiday form that same table.  They were all just sitting together, marked at 25 cents each and I grabbed them all without much thought.

 Well as I was putting them away today, I noticed that one was different....  a variation!

Turns out this is the 'Rare' variation for Carroll, these were seeded one in 20 packs.  Not bad for a quarter!

I can't say I am amazed with the effort Topps went to with these.  The added graphics (in this case, lights around his neck) are a little hokey.  But what do I expect from a Holiday set, I guess.

Blog Bat-around, quirky edition

In my opinion, Blogger Bat Arounds are great.  I always hope to participate when they come around, so thanks to Diamond Jesters for proposing one.... However, this one is going to be hard for me.  I'm supposed to list my 5 best pack pulled hits??  But I don't buy packs!  OK, it's not like I have never opened packs, I have been in the hobby for a loooong time.  But in the last 20 years, all of the packs I have busted have been given to me or won in contests.

So my top 5 might be a little different from what you see on other blogs, but without further ado, here is what I came up with:

#5

1993 Finest Refractor.  This isn't the one I pulled, but that specific card has long since been lost to me.  I assume I will never see it again.  If I remember correctly, mine was an Ozzie Guillen.  Man, I wish I still had that...

#4

Akeem RC - OK, I know this is supposed to be about HITS, and this is a base card.  But what a card!!  I loved it when I pulled it out of a 25 cent pack of 1986/87 Fleer waaay back in my childhood.  And I would love it still today, if it hadn't been stolen from me as a teenager.  This is one the pack I wish I could open again today.  I probably pulled a Jordan RC or two as well, since I opened maybe 30 packs of the stuff.  But I don't remember for sure.  I do remember the Akeem though!

#3

OK, #3 is also a base card.  I don't follow the rules!!  This one is special more because of the story than the card itself.  It was 1991, and Skybox basketball was the new thing.  All gold borders, oooohhh.  Looks kind of pedestrian now.  Anyway, My brother and I were in a card shop when I opened a pack of Skybox.  It had a Shawn Kemp rookie in it.  Nice card, I now collect these, actually.  But back then, I just wanted more Skybox.  The owner said he would trade me another pack for the Kemp, and I said yes!  The next pack had...... another Kemp RC!!  My brother and I laughed, and kept shopping for a while.  Then I decided to ask the owner if he'd make the same trade, and he agreed.  Sucker!  And by now, you probably guessed, I got another Kemp.  The owner and I made one last swap for another pack, and I failed miserably in my attempt for a 4th Kemp in a row.  But boy, was it a fun day!

#2

Kevin Love auto - This card is not so big now, but at the time, it was looking like it could be huge.  Love was turning into a perennial All-Star, and looked like he could blow up.  But he didn't, I shoulda sold it!  I got this out of a box that a blogger gave away.  Oh, and it is numbered /10.  I keep it around because nobody will give me much for it.

And #1.....

#1. Rickey Henderson Elite - #1!!  At a card show in a middle school gym, I was deranged enough to open a pack of 1991 Donruss.  At this time, there had never been anything like these, and my friends and I didn't even know what it was.  We hadn't even heard of these things, and it sure seemed out of place in a pack of Donruss.  We went to a nice dealer and he explained the concept of a serial numbered insert.  I don't even know if we knew what a regular insert was!  It was a weird feeling, holding that beautiful card for a few minutes.  I ended up trading it to that same dealer...  for a Julius Erving RC.  Man, I wish I still had that!

Cheap box returns

 Lately the cheap boxes have been disappointing for me.  I have still been able to find some stuff, but I have had to dig a lot harder lately.  This last show was a lot of the same until I was about ready to leave, and stumbled across a father/son table with a 'priced as marked' box.  Most of that kind of boxes at my local show are extremely overpriced, so I usually skip them.  Luckily, this one turned out to be worth my time.

I won't say they were really amazing deals, but I do like Stadium Club a lot, and there were a lot of them in there.

All foil variations here, Red, Black and Orange.  Some nice shots, and a lot of fun.

More of the same, I have seen that Berra on another blog somewhere, that's a photo for the ages!  Makes me wish regular Stadium Club had refractors, I would like a refractor of that.

There was some non-Club stuff too...

The Rutschman Candy Cane variation, serial numbered Acuna, #'d Reggie and #'d Munson all feel like steals to me.  The Bo Jackson is a ceramic card, and cost me a dollar.  The Deion in a Chicago hat is from Heritage Minors, and is kind of cool.  I got 2 of those, for a dime each.  Anyone want the other copy?

And my 'big' purchase of the day cost $3.

What a thick, heavy card this is, and serialed /736 to boot.  Fun addition.

Here it is from the side to show the thickness...

Thanks for reading!

Serial Contest winner

I'm going to take this opportunity to mention again that I have recently moved, so if you want my new address, let me know.  I really should get a mass email out to everyone, but I haven't yet, and I am not sure I will anytime soon, so... 

If you read this blog much, you just know I'm going to write a little about trivial numbers stuff before announcing the winner, so if you can't wait, shoot down the page and look.  But come back up and read my crap!

OK, we ended up having 23 total guesses.  Lots of good ones.  One huge outlier.  I am not sure if it was a fat finger, or a real guess, but Rod from Padrographs guess was larger than ALL of the other 22 guesses combined.  

If I take out Rod's guess, and average the rest, we come out a little higher than the correct number.  The average guess was 87250.  

And now, I guess I should just get to it.  The winner....  well I feel a little bad about this one.  I shouldn't, but I do.  You see, we had one commenter who made a guess.  Then updated his guess with another comment.  And then updated it again.  He specifically stated that the third guess was his official guess.  And.... no, he didn't win.

But his original guess WOULD have won, had he not revised it!

Which leaves the winner of the 140 serial numbered cards to be...

With a guess of 66555...

The Lost Collector!!!!!

The actual correct total of the serial numbers was 65707....

Thanks to everyone who participated, and AJ, if you don't mind shooting me your current address, it has been a while since I sent anything your way and would hate to send it to the wrong place!

Serial Contest

 Over the years, I accumulate.  Just stuff.  I'll be going through some cheap box at a show and come across a card and think "someone will want that", so I pick it up.  Unfortunately, I never get around to setting up trades the way that trades are done these days.  I hear TCDB is great for trades, but so far, I have been too lazy to enter all my cards.  I could scan and post trade bait, but in the past, that hasn't worked well either.  I hear X or Facebook can be good places for selling, but I am not really wanting to sell.  

So I keep ending up with stacks of cards that I wish I could trade off.  I have probably said it before, but what I really want is to go back to grade school days, where a buddy would bring his box of cards, and I would bring mine and we would go through the boxes and hammer out a trade.  Sadly, in person trades are mostly a thing of the past.

Anyway, one stack of stuff that I have accumulated is going up for grabs today!  Not as trade bait, but as a giveaway!  It is a real hodgepodge of serial numbered cards.  Probably wouldn't be interesting to team collectors or player collectors.  I am betting that every team in MLB in in here somewhere.  But if you are an omnivore collector like me, or want a quick way to accumulate trade bait, or just like serial numbered cards, this may be for you!

There are 140 cards in the lot.  If you want it, what you need to do is guess the total sum of the serial numbers.  So if there were three cards in the lot, one #/100, one #/ 999 and one #/125, the sum would be 100+1999+25 = 2124.  Obviously, with 140 cards, the number you will be guessing will be much higher!

Here is a pic to help you with your guessing...

The COMC.com value of this lot would be very high.... the real value is much lower of course.

The highest serial number is #/2025 and the lowest is #/5.  OK, that's all the hints, feel free to make your guess in the comments!  And I am going to go old school, so if you pimp the contest on your blog, you can have an extra guess, just put the link to the post in the comments with your second guess.

Guessing will close on Thursday, April 4th at 5PM Pacific time!

Show stuff - prices out of whack?

Recent card show finds...

This was a in a 50 cent box.  Maybe it's not even worth that.  But I had a moment where I just thought it would be fun to own a graded Nolan Ryan!

Some more...

These 4 were in quarter boxes (top 2) and 50 cent boxes (bottom 2).  Wonderful deals, especially with that Ichiro being numbered /46.  Cards of pitchers hitting have become a lot more common lately, but that Koufax is a gem to me.  Maybe I need a refractor of that...

When I was looking that Koufax up, I found this 'card'.  I didn't know these existed, but I really like that one!!

If anyone wants to send me this Koufax, or the Hank Aaron, Mark McGwire or any other nice looking card from this 'oversized' parallel set, go for it!

The Papa Vlad card above got me thinking about how I now have more Vlad Jr cards in my collection than Vlad Sr.  Possible post about that in the future.  But it also got me thinking about how out of whack the hobby pricing can be.  That Vlad above is numbered /10000, which is high today, but those are hard to find now.  I got it for 50 cents.  On COMC.com, there are 8 of them, starting at $2.64.  And I grabbed a Vlad Jr. card that really doesn't do much for me for comparison:

Now, this is the current market, but in my tiny, old man mind, there is no way in the world that these two cards should be similar prices.  I'd sure love to find trading partners who would trade me for my extra Vlad Jrs, and give me sweet stuff like that Rooke Diamond Kings card in return!

Custom coolness from Gavin

 I'm sure everyone who reads this blog also reads Baseball Card Breakdown by Gavin, but if not, he's a much better blogger than me, so check it out!  As everyone who does read him knows, he's also much more creative than me, with his many hand made customs as evidence.

We recently worked out a quick and easy (in person!!!) swap where I ended up with a whopping seven of Gavin's creations!

And while my scanner and camera pretty much fail to capture the excellence of these cards, I hope you can at least get a sense of the kind of work he does:

Go out and compare those to the originals.  A few of these just don't show well at all, especially top right and bottom middle, which are clear cut acetate-like cards!  I also LOVE the attention to detail Gavin put into the bottom middle card, adding a perfectly positioned 'top' to McGwire's bat that sticks out the top of the card.  Just great.

A couple more picture attempts here, which also pretty much fail:

Excellent shiny and tons of fun!  The acetate card shows a lot better here, I like the texture to the clear section.

And to top it off, the last of the seven was a bobble-head like creation!

And another angle...

So awesome and hilarious!  It reminded me of a stand up thing one of my old co-workers made of me, playing on the company softball team many years ago:

Gavin, thanks a bunch for the trade!!

I went to spring training and all I got was a Yankee

 Yep, I went to spring training for a couple of days in the Phoenix area.  It was my brother's way of helping me get away from my recent stress, I think.  He insisted on paying for most everything, which both was great, and kind of stunk.  I think you know what I mean.  

We saw the Mariners-White Sox and Giants-Rockies.  Not the most exciting teams, but we just wanted to see some ball.  Got to watch some batting practice up close, Julio Rodriguez mostly.

It was a great time.  One of the things my brother insisted on buying was a couple of packs of the new Topps flagship.  Since I don't buy packs, it was my first close up look.  I guess I agree with the majority of people I have heard, that the new design is kinda cool.  Mostly I just like that it is different, and not so boring as the last few years.

I didn't get much in my packs, but it is strange to me that I finally, after so many years of hearing about him, now have a Jasson Dominguez RC!!  Lol!

Unpacking finds

 Unpacking all my cards and slowly reorganizing them has been kind of fun.  I've poked my nose in corners of my collections that I haven't been in for a while.  I have found cards I thought I had lost, and cards that I don't really need.  I am sure anyone who has collected knows those feelings.

***Skip this part if you just want to see the cards, just scroll down to the break!!!

The reason I have had to do all that packing and organizing is that I sold my house, and moved into an apartment.  For the last 2 1/2 years, my wife and I have been slowly figuring out how to divorce.  The two huge factors that made it hard for us (and made it take so long) were the kids and money.

The kids are an obvious trouble spot.  But I have three pretty great kids.  I have worked really hard to create good relationships with them and to help them be strong human beings.  Two of them are out of the house and on their own, and the youngest is about to turn 17.  They are all doing well, almost shockingly well, with the situation.  We worked hard to help them through it.  I am as happy as I can be with that.

Money is a different story.  I don't make a bad wage, but I am nowhere near wealthy.  Alimony is going to hurt a lot.  Also, over the years, my wife has insisted on several huge financial decisions in our life that cost us huge amounts of money.  These were decisions I disagreed with, but wasn't ready at the time to walk out over.  She also pushed, over the years, to keep too much of our paychecks for today, and not nearly enough for retirement.  So not only will I be living tight from now on, but I don't see a path to a real retirement.

All of those issues are due to my own decision making though, I will own up to the decisions I made, and deal with their consequences.  If you are still young, make good decisions!!  And that's all I hope to write about that!

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So one of the cards I recently found, that I had thought was lost, is a Broder.  Yes, Broders are not the most sought after cards out there, but they are not bad.  But this one always gave me a kick, and I hadn't been able to locate it for the last few years:

Love it!!  Turn your back on crack!!  I will be keeping this card, and putting it somewhere that I won't 'lose' it again.

Then I also found some older non-sports cards that I just don't want.  Don't get me wrong, I love almost anything that is old.  Old coins, stamps, magazines and even small newspaper like things from the early 1800s are all in my collection.

But in the interests of streamlining the 'old non-sports' section of my collection, I am offering these up, one per commenter at first, for free in a PWE.  They are all what we consider these days to be mini sized.

The fronts:

The backs:

And the descriptions:

1932 De Reszke Real Photographs 4th Series, # 19,
1932 De Reszke Real Photographs 4th Series, #23, 
1932 De Reszke Real Photographs 4th Series, #24
1938 Gallaher Garden Flowers - Tobacco [Base] #44
1938 Gallaher British Birds - Tobacco [Base] #6
1938 Gallaher Army Badges - Tobacco [Base] #13
1925 Franklyn Davey - Hunting # 12
1939 John Player & Sons - Animals Of The Countryside #28
1938 John Player & Sons - Aircraft of the Royal Air Force #18
1914-1918 John Player & Sons - Army Corps and Divisional Signs #33
1933 John Player & Sons - Derby and Grand National Winners #45

So anyone want some 85-105 year old non-sports cards?  If so, comment on which one you want (shoot me your address!) and I will send it out.  If they are not all gone by Monday, you can claim another one on Monday, another the next day and so on until they are gone.

Thanks for reading!

Unusual pickups

I am still trying to get back into the swing of things.  Getting my cards unpacked after my recent move has been really slow.  The move didn't keep me from hitting a couple of card shows while all packed up though.  The shows haven't been great lately.  But still worth going to.  As usual, I stay in the cheap boxes mostly.  Here are a few unusual pickups I have made lately.

I finally completed my "Yastrzemski Generations" mini-collection.  Actually, I didn't know that there was such a thing to collect.  I think everyone knows that Carl, AKA 'Yaz' has a grandson currently playing for the Giants.  What I had forgotten, or maybe never knew at all, is that Yaz's son also played pro ball, though never in the majors.  He does, however, have 7 different minor league cards.  Here's mine:

All in the family...

Next, I got my first ever 1971 Topps Supers.  If you haven't seen these, they are over 5 inches tall, and are pretty thick, almost like a jersey card.  Mine are nobodies, Mays and Aaron are probably the big cards in this set.

Here are the backs, true to the 1971 Topps set.

 

And last but not least, I grabbed a bunch of older cards (1958-1967) in a quarter bin.  They were mostly in good condition, but commons.  The exception on condition was this:

A Jim Palmer rookie for a quarter!!!  Heck of a crease, but that's the kind of quarter but I will take all day.

Winner of the third cheapie hunt

 Thanks so much to the people who entered the little card show contest!  This will be a super quick post to randomize and select the winner.

As I said in the original post, I will take the entries and randomize them three times.  Here are the results:

Original list:

First randomization:

Second randomization:

Third randomization:

And the winner is defgav!!!

Looks like I will be searching the cheap boxes for refractors and cards for art projects.  Should be fun!

....

Again, thanks to all who entered, and have a great day!

From the grave - and cheapies

There are a couple of good reasons that I haven't posted in a looong time.  If I get the energy, I will do a post about that soon.  But in the meantime, please do not send me any cards to the address many of you have.  I have moved!!!!   If you need my address, ping me.  I will get around to sending it out to previous trade partners sometime...

And since that is lame content for a post, let's see if anyone wants to comment for a chance at card show cards.....  Super short window to enter, 5PST tonight will be the deadline!!

 I did this twice before and it was fun!  I didn't find AWESOME stuff for the winner, but decent stuff...So here's the deal:

I'm heading to a card show this coming Saturday (Feb. 24th), and if you are lucky, it might benefit you! 

This is a quick little giveaway with a prize that might be good, or might be bad, it depends on the cheap boxes at the show!  Here's how it works:

To enter, comment on this post with the players, teams, sets etc. that you want me to look for in the cheapie boxes at the next card show.

Examples:

"I want you to look for Francisco Lindor, Clayton Kershaw, any serial numbered under /1000"

"Please look for all Diamondbacks, any Panini colored parallels and Bowman cards of young up and comers"

"I'd like any cards from the 1950s, late 90s inserts, Tom Glavine and any O-Pee-Chee"

Feel free to be more or less detailed with your request as needed. Keep in mind that I am looking in cheap boxes, so some requests will be harder to fulfill.  Like the request for cards from the 1950s above!  If you ask for Roberto Clemente, and that is all, I may not find anything, and even if I do, they will likely be modern cards.

You can put other sports than Baseball if you like, but I spend most of my time in the baseball boxes, so take that for what you will.

I will take all the comments and use Random.org to select a winner (randomized 3 times).  For the winner, I will look in the quarter (or less) boxes for you, scanning for cards that fit your request.  You will receive up to 18 cards, depending on what I can find, PWE shipped to you.

This contest will close on Friday, Feb. 23th at 5PM PST!!

**No promises on what you will get.  I usually have good luck in these boxes, but I am looking for a really wide variety of cards.  Limiting it down to specific requests will certainly make it harder!

Recommendation - Yogi

 First, since this is a card blog, here are all of my Yogi Berra cards:

How about that 1953 Bowman Color??  I love finding beat up old cards like that, only way they fall into my price range.

And the reason for Berra cards today, is that I watched the new documentary on Netflix called "It Ain't Over", about one Lawrence Peter Berra.

If you read this humble blog very often, you may know that I really love it when new, decent baseball documentaries come out.  There are not enough of them!!  I want them to gain popularity so more are made!  Hence my plug, go watch "It Ain't Over"!!

Not much in the way of spoilers, but this documentary is pretty good.  It is narrated, and commented heavily in, by Berra's granddaughter.  She is a bit biased, and sometimes forceful in her views.  But if a girl can't gush over her grandpa, then I don't want to be a grandpa.

There are several touching segments to go along with all the baseball.  They are well done.  At more than one time, Berra reminded me of my own grandpa.  He passed 2 years ago, and like Berra, was loved by everyone, and underestimated by many.  Like Berra, he was short, funny, stubborn and had a unique way of expressing himself.

Have you seen "It Ain't Over"?  What did you think?  Are there other baseball docs I may have missed?  And most interesting to me, what subject would make the next big baseball documentary???

Quirky Show Pickups

 Well it looks like whatever Blogger was doing to keep my posts from getting seen is over, thank you to those who provided me some feedback.  Back to the normal...

The cheap boxes were not overly kind at my most recent show. I think the dealers in my area are either running out of stuff I like, or just putting it in the more expensive boxes.  But I will stick to my strategy for now!

Here are a few things that I grabbed out of a dime box:

The Koufax is a prizm, so that was a fun find.  The Judge is from the "2020 Topps X Super 70s" set and the Robert is from "2020 Topps Throwback Thursday's", supposedly 1665 produced. 

Other than the Randy Johnson, I don't think any of these will make it into my keepers, but they sure were fun for thin dimes.

The Alonso in the lower left corner is a custom art card #d /25 from Team Brinkz.  Here's the back.

It is not something I would want to pay real money for, but at a dime, it was a very fun find.

Then here are three cards from 2020 Topps Brooklyn Collection.  Whatever that is!!  Some kind of Montgomery Club exclusive.  I did a little math based on the info on baseballcardpedia.com and it looks like there are probably about 320 copies of each base card out there.  So these aren't super common.  I had never seen them before!

Again, not something I really need, but they are limited, and kind of cool.  Maybe I will throw them into the next card draft I put together (Thanks to Chris for reminding me I need to do that!)

Here are some of my favorite oddball type cards I got:

Yes that top row is more of the "2020 Topps Throwback Thursday's" set.  Weird.  I quite like the Molitor, we don't get that food issue around my part of the country.

What's up with a beat up Bud Harrelson, you ask?  Well, it is actually folded up.  When you unfold it, you get this:

Totally hammered, but a 75 Pete Rose in a panel for a dime?  Worth it just for the giggles!

Thanks for reading!

Another try...

 I am still not getting any page views on my recent posts.  I have posted a few times, but nobody ends up visiting.  It is definitely viewable on my site, but it didn't show up on anyone's blogroll, which is how I seem to get all my traffic.

Anyway, if you see this post, let me know.  I have some stuff I want to show/do/give away, but until I know the blog is 'working', I am going to hold off.

And since it's a card blog, here is a random card for you:

Anyone hear me?

 Hey, just testing blogger.  I posted a post earlier this week and it never got viewed.  So I posted it again.  Nothing.  And over and over.  It is definitely viewable on my site, but it didn't show up on anyone's blogroll, and the only person who visited it was someone who I told specifically about it.  The post is here if you care.

Anyway, if you see this post, let me know.  If not, I am not sure what to do to get my posts viewed!!

And since it's a card blog, here is a random card for you:

Quick Gwynns from Rod!

 ***This is the 5th time I have tried to publish this post.  Each time I try, it does not show up on anyone's blogrolls and I don't get any pageviews.  Trying again....

Real life blogger meetups are extremely rare for me.  I don't want to list the two I remember for fear of offending someone who I forgot, but even if it is more than two, I have been blogging (off and on) for over 10 years, so the number isn't large.

Well I recently posted that I would be going to a show, and who reached out to me but Rod from Padrographs!  He is a good example of the generosity of bloggers.  He's given away quite a few cool things over the years, including a few to me!

Rod said he had something for me and wanted to meet at the show.  We made the connection and had a few minutes of chatting, before he ran off to some good quality family time.  The box o' goodies he gave me held mostly Tony Gwynns!!  Who doesn't love Gwynn?  Quite a variety, just a few are pictured below that I threw on the scanner:

Filled some holes in my Mr. Padre collection.

Rod also dropped these three Project 2020 cards on me!  I love them!!  Bulky for sure, but a small price to pay for these fun slabs.

As cool as those are, my favorite card was (I think) a Rod custom creation!!  Check this out!

An autographed Frank Peters card!!  Who you ask?  He was the manager of the Portland Mavericks, the subject of the documentary "The Battered Bastards of Baseball".  I think you can probably catch that on Netflix if you haven't already.  Very fun watch!

Here is the back for some more info:

Thanks a ton Rod!!