Greed

For someone who isn't too into the hobby right now, I sure acted greedy recently.

No, I didn't go clean out a retail shelf. I'm not that greedy. But during Wes' recent trade-a-thon on Twitter, I was admittedly more greedy than I should have been.

For those who don't know about Wes' annual event, he basically posts a bunch of cards on Twitter. The first person to respond "take" gets the card. Participants are limited to claiming five cards. Wes simply asks for a surprise package in return that he waits until Christmas to open. For this round, he asked for wrestling cards in return.

I claimed three cards this time around, and as mentioned, was a bit greedy in my claims. But I do feel that what I sent back was fair, for whenever he does open his package.

The first card I claimed was an early Derek Jeter Upper Deck card. I didn't have this one, and figured it was a good one too claim. If nothing else popped up, I was happy.

Something else did pop up. This:

Oops, I claimed it. This card isn't super rare and can be had for about the price of a blaster. But I still took it. It's one of those cards I've never gone out of my way to buy, and maybe wouldn't do it if not for Wes' event. It's place in cardboard lore is well established, and I felt like I should own one to put in my "money box"...aka the box my wife knows to look for in case something ever happens to me.

Speaking of cardboard lore going into the money box, this was my third and final greedy claim:

Whoops. Yeah, pure greed. And I felt guilty as I hit claim. This was a wantlist card for me for a long time though. I even had a saved eBay search for a PSA 8, but right when I was looking to buy one a year ago the prices when up quite a bit. I never trusted to buy a raw, so the saved search just sort of sat there.

And then it popped up on Wes' timeline and I pounced.

Afterward I felt little icky, and hope I didn't take the fun out of it for others. As mentioned, I do feel that my package to Wes will be reflective of the cards he sent me. While I don't know a ton about wrestling cards, I made sure to pick out a few for Wes that had a story behind them.

Thanks, Wes. And sorry for being a greedy bastard.

New blog on the block sends some cards

One of the new blogs on the block is run by Jay overt Card Hemorrhage. Jay fired up his blog a few weeks ago, and we recently made our first PWE swap.

Jay collects SF Giants, so I shot him over a few I had laying around. I tried to make it an assortment of cards/sets he might not have seen during his hiatus.

In turn, he sent me some cool Yanks. My favorite of the bunch was this Aaron Judge:

Although a close second is this great card featuring Jeter's 3000th hit. I don't think I've seen this one!

Jay also hit me with a bunch of Heritage.

He also sent two cards for my son's HOF binder. I left the Nolan in it's case because the top loader actually has his name on it in foil. Too cool!

Jay, thanks for the trade, and good luck with your blog!

Thrifting again

I finally did find some Series 1 yesterday afternoon, so I'll share my thoughts shortly on those. It's really nothing earth-shattering. I think the design is cool, I think the inserts are pretty boring and the sets too large. But I'll show off a few of the cards in an upcoming post.

Prior to venturing out to Target, I did my usual Saturday morning walk to the church thrift shop. It's a two-three minute walk, so I'm not exaggerating when I say how close it is.

As custom, I made a bee-line to the area where the cards would be, and immediately saw a binder sitting there mark $6.

Their pricing seems to be a little inconsistent, but I suppose it just depends on the volunteer working there. Last time I found binders there for $1 a piece, although this one was a little larger. Still, $6 for this wasn't a horrible deal, as the binder and pagers were in good shape, which isn't always the case.

I quickly flipped through it to make sure it wasn't utter junk. Some junk = expected. Full of junk = leave it there for someone else. I saw plenty in there to make me grab it.

The binder was about 60% baseball and 40% basketball. Nothing newer than maybe 1993 or 1994. The real reason I wanted it was because there were quite a few Michael Jordan cards in there, mostly from the Playoffs, but a nice base Upper Deck as well. You can't go wrong with a handful of Jordans.

There were also a lot of Phoenix Suns cards, which makes sense because the Bulls and Suns matched up in the Finals in 1993, right around when most of these cards were from.

The baseball cards had quite a few HOFers, mostly from early editions of Stadium Club. While I think the 1990 Griffey is awesome, unfortunately it was in pretty bad condition.

Overall, very solid purchase for $6. Good entertainment value, good Jordans, good binder, and good Ultra Pro pages. Can't ask for much more than that. I'm impressed with how frequently this little church thrift store is delivering cards for me.

His parents' basement is now clean

Matt over at Summer of '74 recently held his version of the Big Fun Game, although in this instance the "B" stood for "basement". You see, Matt cleaned out some of his old stuff from his parents' basement and created a very unique BFG.

My prize ended up being two Sports Shots collectors books by Scholastic. I actually expected them to be a standard sized book, but they are actually quite small. They are barely bigger than an actual card, as you see here.

Impressive that Griffey was featured after just two seasons!

Matt was kind enough to throw in a few Yankees, as well!

I didn't know Danny Willett had a First Pitch card in 2017. The Yankees usually don't have many guys featured in these sets, so I don't keep a close eye on the checklist.

There was also a very, very shinny Mark Teixeira Heritage refractor. Pretty card!

Thanks, Matt! Hope the basement cleanup was as fun for you as it was for us.

It comes so Naturally

I think many of us collectors share similar traits. We can't remember what we had for breakfast or forget one of the three items we went to the grocery store for, yet we can recall exactly where we were when we got a particular baseball card.

Recently, I came across this set that I own: 1994 Pinnacle Naturals. This was a 25-card set that came in a box, as well as with a serial number showing me what a rare set I had.

I remember when I got this set. It was the summer of 1996, when I was between 6th and 7th grade.

I had traveled with a friend and his family to Rochester, NY for a few days to stay with some of his family members. I remember playing wiffle ball in their yard, and going for ice cream with my friend's dad when my buddy went to bed for the night after a teenage fight with his parents.

As we loaded up the car to leave for Rochester, his dad handed us an unopened box of 1996 Bazooka baseball cards. We split the packs in half, and I set my watch alarm to go off every 10 minutes. When it did, we opened a pack.

On our way home from Rochester, we stopped at some sort of outlet shops, and my friend and I went into some random toy store within the outlets. There, we found a few card-related items. We split a box of 1993 Upper Deck to open for the rest of the ride home, and I bought this:

A 1994 Pinnacle Naturals boxed set.

I doubt it ran me more than $5-7, but I definitely wanted it after seeing it in Beckett a few times. I remember being torn about whether or not to open it, but ultimately, I caved and opened it up.

I remember the cards feeling very cold to the touch. They still do. And while the checklist is decent, I can't help but notice no Yankee. No Mattingly or Williams or Boggs or O'Neill. I thought that was a curious choice. Undoubtedly, I would like the set even more if the Yanks were represented.

I'm glad to stay I still have the set intact, and in the box. And I still have the memories that go along with it.

Now if I could only remember to take out the recycling tonight...

Repack reward

On Friday evening, I ran a quick errand to Walgreen's. We had ordered a pizza that I was going to pick up, and on the way I stopped in the store to pick up milk and a bottle of seltzer. As usual, I swung by the toy aisle, and noticed three baseball repacks. One had Ken Griffey Jr in the window, one had David Wright, and the third had a Devil Ray I didn't even bother checking to see who it was.

I decided against snagging one, as I just didn't feel like dropping $5 that could go toward a newer release if I ever made my way to Target.

I went to check out, entered my phone number to get my Balance Rewards, and the cashier said, "Would you like to use your points?"

I asked how many I had, and she said, "You have $3 off." Luckily no one else was in line, and I said, "Uh, I'll be right back."

I dashed off to the toy aisle and grabbed the re-pack with Griffey on the front. While I didn't feel like spending $4.99, $1.99 sounded pretty good.

I know what you're thinking. That fate led me to this re-pack and it would contain something amazing.

Well, it didn't. It was a pretty standard repack, and even perhaps a bit more unspectacular than previous ones. It wasn't horrible, but contained a lot more junk wax than usual, which is saying a lot because they usually have a ton.

It only had a two Yankees, which is generally low for a repack.

Here are a few memorable cards. The Ripken is pretty neat - I hadn't seen a card from this set before.

 

 

The weirdest card was this 2013 Topps Brad Ziegler. It looks ok on the front, but check out the back.

That's not a blank back...it's a no back. It's half a card! This card clearly was never adhered to the proper back, so it's a very thin, paper card. Pretty cool!

Was this repack worth the $2? I'd say so. But I'm definitely glad I didn't drop $5 on it.

Is my kid a Griffey supercollector?

The Junior Junkie has decided to send about 200 Griffeys my way over the past few years.

First off, I did ask him for this specific card.

You see, back in 8th grade, I traded it on the AOL forums (along with a few other Griffeys) for a box of about 700 Tino cards, thinking that's what a Tino super collector needed. That was stupid of me, as most of the card were 1991 Donruss and the likes. It was a dumb trade, and I regretted it.

Well, JJ has helped me write a wrong by putting that Griffey back in my collection. I do still need the 1998 Ultra Fall Classics though.

But he didn't stop there. He sent about 80 other Griffeys. Perhaps this is a spin-off of Project Griffey? These will definitely go into my kid's binder, and between the last batch of Griffeys, we're looking at about 200 cards.

So there you have it. My kid is a Griffey collector and he has no clue who Griffey is. I guess I'll have to teach him one day.

Here are some that I particularly like. I feel like I found an error on the write-up of the one below, as it says he homered from both sides of the plate three times. I'm pretty sure he never batted righty.

Junior Junkie, I am going to send your son 200 Tinos. Cool?

A surprise Griffey Jr RC from the Junior Junkie

A few weeks ago, The Junior Junkie held a contest for a 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr rookie card. I really wanted to win. I've never imagined actually owning such an iconic card. For those of you who did not enter, you had to write three sentences about Griffey that satisfied what TJJ was looking for. He wanted to be brought to tears. I decided to try and bribe him by including my three sentences on a Ken Griffey Jr sketch card:

Well, I didn't win. It was a valient attempt, and for that I received honorable mention, which I was still proud of.

Well, yesterday I received a PWE with this hand-drawn marking on the back:

I've seen this marking on many blogs, but I've never been on the receiving end. When I opened it, a Griffey RC fell out! So what if it isn't the 1989 UD? It's a 1989 Donruss RC, and to me, is still a very cool card. I have Griffey's Fleer RC, and I'm not going to wasting any time adding this to my son's binder.

TJJ, thanks for your generosity!

Father's Day card haul

For my first Father’s Day, I received a few gift cards. The little lady wanted to buy me baseball cards, but she didn’t know how to pick them out, so she gave me strict instructions to buy them with the gift cards. I used part of one to buy a hanger box and two jumbo packs of 2012 Topps Series Two. I hadn’t gotten any Series Two yet, so I wanted to see what they were all about.

Overall, I didn’t pull anything out of the norm, but I got a nice assortment of cards represented in Series Two. I like the inserts a lot more than Series One. I did pull an Andruw Jones gold foil card that was damaged. At first I was thinking that I was going to send it to Topps to replace, but now that I think about it, I don’t really care about the damage. Not worth the hassle.

I did get three Golden Giveaway codes and unlocked three lame coins that don’t even have chocolate in the middle.

A card you should own - a Griffey Jr RC

What's a cheap (under $5), cool card you feel every collector should add to their collection?

San Jose Fuji asked about a cheap card that everyone should own. I thought about this a lot because all collectors are different. What's cool to me may not be cool to someone else. What is a must-own card for me, someone else might not give a damn about.

So instead of focusing on a Yankees card or a beat up piece of vintage (which I probably would prefer), I suggest owning a RC of likely the greatest player any of us have ever seen...Ken Griffey Jr. Junior's year with the Mariners were amazing. He killed the Yankees, and I hated him. I respected him, but didn't like him. Hate or dislike isn't the right word. Feared him. I feared him every time he came to the plate.

Once he went to the Reds and his career slowed due to injuries, I found myself missing the old days when Griffey was a dominant player. It was sad to see a player who once moved so gracefully hobble around the bases or struggle to play consecutive days. You'd still see a glimpse or two every now and then. A mammoth HR here and there. But it wasn't like early Seattle Griffey.

He unfortunately got overshadowed by the Bonds and ARods and Pujols and Sosas, but Griffey was the star in the '90s, and everyone should own his RC. The Upper Deck may be too pricey, but a Fleer or Donruss will run you only a couple of bucks. It's worth it.

Diamond Giveaway is cool, but not my favorite sweepstakes of all-time

Redeeming my Diamond Giveaway code last night made me fondly remember one of my favorite redemption programs of all time. Card companies have always held sweepstakes and redemption programs that make collecting a little more exciting. This was especially true when Upper Deck Collector's Choice hit the shelves in 1994.

Collector’s Choice was the Topps Opening Day of the ‘90s. It was Upper Deck’s $.99 pack that was the sister to their other higher-end sets. At a time when the prices of packs of cards really started to climb well above $1, this was a welcome brand for any kid who didn’t have a ton of money to spend on cards, like me. Packs were plentiful at the local CVS drug store. The base cards in the 1994 set were simple, and each pack also included a silver signature card, their version of the Topps Gold parallel set.

In 1994, Collector’s Choice had an instant win game called You Crash The Deck. It was a scratch-off card with a head-to-head game between players, and as a kid I remember being pretty amused by it. I don’t quite remember what the game itself entailed. However, there was also an instant win box with decent odds for a prize. Twice I won the same prize, an 8-card hologram insert set from the previous year’s Home Run Derby. The set was called Home Run All-Stars and featured some of the game’s biggest sluggers. I vividly remember sending in my two redemption cards and getting the sets back. I was a huge fan and it put the brand in good graces with me. In fact, I still have at least one of these sets.

In 1995, Collector’s Choice came out with two sets – SE and the regular base set. Unnecessary. But they morphed their sweepstakes game into the popular You Crash The Game insert series – in silver AND gold none the less. Not only were these insert cards pretty cool looking, but the rules changed from 1994. For example, if you pulled a Barry Bonds that said June 28 and he hit a home run that day, you could redeem the card for a prize. Remember, this was before the internet was mainstream, so if you pulled a card and the date had already passed, you had to do some serious legwork to see if you had won. I remember my local newspaper getting mad at me because I would keep calling and asking if Griffey or Bagwell hit a homer on a certain date. They legitimately told me to stop calling. 

They also had similar You Crash games for their other sports sets, and as a result, I ended up with quite a few redemption prizes from each of them. Usually it was a special card of the winning player, or even a 30-card set. In the coming years, they tweaked the rules from time to time, and one year their prize cards were even clear cuts (!!). I still have a Chipper Jones from that redemption.

Topps Diamond Giveaway is a fun sweepstakes, but for me, it hardly comes close to You Crash The Game. Although I could be singing a different tune if I unlock a 1952 Mantle. So I’d like to open it up to you. What’s your favorite all-time card redemption or sweepstakes?