The Odditorium

I'll admit. I was starting to worry. 

It was days before Christmas and I hadn't heard anything about my Secret Santa package. However, thanks to the magic of the USPS, it arrived two days before Christmas. I opened it on Christmas Day and found out my Secret Santa was Andy (aka bbcardz) of Stadium Fantasium. The box he sent was small and modest but packed a big punch consisting mainly of lots and lots and lots of oddball cards.

I'll start first with the two non-oddball cards he included. On the left is a 2018 Heritage Adam Duvall. Duvall was really good with the Reds and put up some good power numbers but after the trade to Atlanta, he bottomed out. On the right, is a 1969 Topps Jerry McNertney which will be added to my Seattle Pilots collection and knocks one more card off that wantlist.

Now on to the meat of the package, oddballs!

Andy sent over three complete sets of oddballs, first up this 1993 Post Cereal 30 card set. These are some really fun cards and cool looking cards. For now, I've put this in a team bag until I get the chance to page it up in a binder.

Next we have this 18-card set of 1992 Score Procter & Gamble featuring the starters from the 1992 All-Star Game in San Diego.

The last complete set Andy included was the 1992 Post Cereal set. Again, I put this into a team bag to be paged up in a binder soon. The first thing I noticed was that awesome Jeff Bagwell "Rookie Star" card on tip. Maybe I'll go through the two Post Cereal sets in future blog posts. Not sure yet.

There was also a bunch of miscellaneous oddball cards thrown in. I'd ordered the Cap'n Crunch Tony Gwynn in my COMC Christmas order so now I have two of them! Oh well, I'm not going to complain. 

There were also a bunch of Post Cereal cards from the early 90s included. First these from 1990.

Then these from 1991. What is it with cards and yellow borders in 1991? (I'm looking at you Fleer.)

Finally, some cards from my favorite Post Cereal set, 1994. The design on these is great with the green marble-ish borders, the red stripe at the bottom with the name and team, and the players signature in gold. These are just some great looking cards.

Here's some Hostess cards from 1993. I always liked how Hostess was able to use the team logos and hot have to airbrush anything off the cards.

Here's two cards I never knew existed, cards from the California Jumbo Sunflower Seeds company. I tried sunflower seeds once when I played knothole baseball and hated them. I was more of a Big League Chew person. These cards claim that they are from the "autograph series" but I only see an autograph on the George Brett card. Also, the pictures are pretty bland and Brett looks more like a generic high school coach. However, they're oddballs so I still like them.

Lastly, there were these three 3-card packs of Jimmy Dean cards. I couldn't resist cracking these open so here's what was inside.

Pack #1 had Kevin Mitchell, Dale Murphy, and Nolan Ryan.

Pack #2 checked in with Dave Winfield, Rickey Henderson, and George Brett.

And the final pack featured Jose Canseco, Frank Thomas, and Dave Justice. That's a solid nine cards right there!

Big thanks to Andy for sending these cards over as my Secret Santa present and for the nice note that I showed at the top. I really appreciate it! Also, thanks to Jon at Penny Sleeves for stepping up and running this years festivities. It was great to participate in again.

Two Packs of 1990 Upper Deck

Included with the most recent repacks I opened were these two packs of 1990 Upper Deck. Typically in repacks is stuff like Donruss from 1988-1991, so these are a bit of a neat surprise. I'm not expecting anything ground breaking from these so let's see what these packs contain.

Pack #1

No real notable names here aside from Omar Vizquel. I always did like the artwork on the checklists Upper Deck put in. I think that's Von Hayes on the Phillies card. I always liked the design on these cards as well, it's clean with the team logo on the bottom and the name right below that. The photography as usual on Upper Deck cards is great.

The sticker is hard to be seen but it's a Mariners sticker. Some decent players here in Lenny Harris, Gary Redus, and Bob Melvin. Pretty neat to get a card of the current A's manager. 

Last batch from the first pack. I have to say, that's a great photo on the Bill Doran card. The only other name I recognize from this batch is Bret Saberhagen. Also, don't know why, but the Bill Schroeder card kind of reminds me of Tom Berenger as the catcher in Major League.

Pack #2

A Hall of Famer in Alan Trammell is a nice way to start the second pack. Also, there's a card of Jose Bautista .... no, not that Jose Bautista. This Jose Bautista only won one game for the Orioles in 22 relief appearance in 1990.

There were actually two stickers included with the second pack but with it but when I did the photos for this piece, they looked awful. So, I left them out. This is probably the best batch of all with Fred Lynn, Jim Abbott, Doug Jones, and Doug Drabek.

And the final five. The last three cards of Joe Girardi, Benito Santiago, and Willie Wilson are a great way to close out these packs. Girardi was actually in line to be the Reds manager before he withdrew and they went with David Bell instead. 

Again, these packs weren't anything special but they scratched the pack ripping itch so there's that.

What I Got For Christmas

Happy Christmas everyone!

I hope everyone had a fun holiday with their family and loved ones. Here at the CCHQ (Cardboard Clubhouse headquarters for short), my family came over last night for Christmas Eve and we exchanged presents with them. I would share what I got but I've already put all of that away. Plus, my mom was sick so they didn't stay but a few hours. It didn't help either that the kids were sick, my wife was sick, and I was starting to get sick as well. 

Anyway, this morning the kids woke up to a giant haul from Santa complete with Paw Patrol toys, Peppa Pig toys and other things that we'll have to find room for. My wife then went to the kitchen and starting making lunch which consisted of a giant ham, mashed potatoes, roast potatoes, corn, baked beans, dressing, mac and cheese, carrots, and gravy. It was a good thing too because my stepmom and her friend/neighbor/handyman came by to visit for an hour or so. We hadn't seen them in a while so it was good to catch-up.

After lunch we did presents amongst ourselves (me, my wife, and the kids).

This may seem a bit odd for a Christmas present but my son actually picked it out for me from the Santa Shoppe at his school. He knows how much I like breakfast sandwiches so while I'm off work for the holidays, him and I will give it a try.

I always lump my blogger Secret Santa package in with the family gifts. I won't give away who my Secret Santa was quite yet but it was a very neat haul with a very nice notes which I'll devote a post too soon.

Now I'll dive in to what my wife got me ...

I got a new blu-ray player from my aunt so naturally I asked for some blu-rays to add to my collection which I'm trying to build up. These six should definitely keep me entertained for a while. 

I ordered some cards from COMC over Black Friday weekend which I saved for Christmas so I could have some cards to open up under the tree. I could have opted to have gotten blasters and packs from Target but I figured it'd be a better idea to use the money set aside for that to use on cards I actually want. Again, I'll cover these in a separate post later.

Pop Funkos!! The Big Boy Funko I wanted because in the Cincinnati area, Frisch's Big Boy is an institution. Some Big Boy chains do theirs with red relish but Frisch's does theirs with their own trademark tartar sauce. The Lindor Funko was on my list because he's one of my favorite Indians players to watch. It's nice to see MLB getting into the Funko game finally.

I got these awesome new shirts as well from the Cincy Shirts website. I was kind of amazed they had a Cincinnati Stingers shirt. The Cincinnati Gardens shirt I just had to have because of my love of that historic arena.

I told my wife about the $9 DVD sale at Cornette's Collectibles so she told me to order what I wanted from there. So I did. These were the DVDs I wanted most from the sale (and yes, the 5-disc set was included in the sale) and they came autographed which is super cool as well! I'm really looking forward to diving into these.

Finally, I got some more books to add to my library. I've already read "Up Up and Away" and I highly recommend it if you haven't read it before. The "Nitro" book was voted the best wrestling book of 2018 by the readers of the POST Wrestling website and "Death of the Territories" was runner-up (I think, regardless it's new as well). The Golden Seals book I heard about during an episode of a podcast I listen too and I thought it'd be a fun read.

So that's what I got for Christmas. What about you? 

Birthday Repacks

My birthday was last week, the 19th to be exact. So as a present to myself, I decided to try out some Walgreens repacks seeing that I haven't torn into one of them in a while. I won't break down each repack but I will cover some of the neater cards found within. I wonder if the new design on the box means a refresh of content?

The cover cards and both are 2018 Stadium Club. This is good because ... 1) I don't have much 2018 Stadium Club aside from the dime singles I picked up at the card show back in the fall and 2) Seeing 2018 cards right off the top should be a good sign, hopefully.

More 2018 cards! The Bowman design isn't bad this year to be honest.

The repacks had a plethora of 2016 Topps (probably 24 total between the two packs), these are the best cards from the stack. The more I see these cards, the more I think it's not one of Topps better efforts.

80s and 90s cards were prevalent too. How can you go wrong with cards of "The Cobra" and "Murph". 

I can always dig some 1987 Donruss. 

My favorite card from the literal gobs of 1988 Score that I found. This is just such a cool card.

A new card for my Dennis Eckersley collection that I'm pretty sure I don't already have. So weird to see him in a Cubs uniform.

Wait, early 80s cards in repacks? Unexpected but nice.

Vintage in repacks? Ok sure, why not? I can see a 1978 or a 1979 card winding up in repacks but a card from 1973? Hey I won't complain.

My favorites of the 1986 Donruss I found. I can't put a finger on it but there's something I really like about these cards. One of the cool things about most Donruss cards from the 80s, is that they use the team logo, which I always though added a neat touch.

I have to show the Reds cards that I got. The Rich Gale will be used for my 1984 set and the Score "Hot Rookie" Hal Morris is new to me as well.

Some newer cards. I can't believe that 2017 Topps will already be two years old this coming January when the 2019 cards hit. It's a design I definitely still like. 

Now on to the coolest cards of the repacks .... I did some research online and for the life of me couldn't find any information on this Nick Anderson character. It's neat to get a hit out of these but they're never really anything great.

What is this doing in a repack? It's a 2018 Topps Chrome 1983 Tribute of Giancarlo Stanton. I spent roughly zero dollars on Topps Chrome this year (as I do every year) but this is a really, really cool card.

And I also got these two Topps Chrome base cards. I must say that the 2018 design chromes up pretty nicely

So there we are, two repacks. When I opened these, the collation was pretty much the same and there were a lot of duplicates included, strangely enough in the exact same spot in each pack. While I did get some cool cards, these were largely a miss thanks to the sheer volume of junk wax cards. I did also get a pack of 1990 Upper Deck in each box, so there's that as well. I'll cover those in a future post.