You've Got Mail #68: Night Owl Cards

Photo: Wikipedia

As anyone who followed this blog last fall knows, I'm a big fan of Halloween. As such, today is the official "halfway to Halloween" point on the calendar. The official name for this is Walpurgis Night, which is a celebration observed in Germany, Sweden, The Netherlands, Czech Republic and other countries in that region to usher in the start of summer. This night is said to be the final time witches and other evildoers to cause havoc before spring woke up the land. To ward off evil spirits, citizens would burn bonfires, sprinkle holy water, and put blessed palm leaf in their homes. 

While the card blogging world does not have and evil spirits (at least none that I know of), there is a resident nocturnal creature we all know and love as Night Owl. Last Monday a nice little package showed up on my doorstep from the Owl and as usual, it was stuffed with some pretty neat cards.

As I mentioned, Walpurgis Night is a time to celebrate the start of summer. However, in these parts, the start of summer the beginning of baseball season. When I saw that this card was in Opening Day, I knew I had to have it. Luckily, Night Owl was nice enough to throw it in. 

Speaking of evil things, I used to think minis were evil and I would immediately throw them into the discard pile. However, my stance has definitely changed on them and I'm building up as many of them as I can. These definitely helped bulk up my stockpile.

Of course, any trading package coming my way includes Reds cards and these are definitely ones I didn't have. These are from the 2006 Topps release, of which I opened a pack recently for my ongoing "Back Packs" series, a look at which will be coming up shortly.

There was also a good amount of miscellaneous stuff thrown in from another Eckersley card for my collection, to some Bengals cards, and even a completey random Jake "The Snake" Roberts card, of which I will not complain.

The majority of the package though was loaded up with these 2015 All-Star Update cards. I still need to add my want list for these to the blog but there were about 14 cards included in the package that I needed. I'm getting close to halfway on completing the run of these in 2015 Update and these additions were much appreciated. 

A big thanks to Night Owl for sending over these cards and helping ward off any evil spirits that will hopefully stay away all through baseball season.

You've Got Mail #13: This Way to the Clubhouse

Right after the first of the year, as I was showing some of the stuff that came out of the Topps Update holiday boxes, Mark from This Way to the Clubhouse contacted me and was interested in a Mets gold parallel. We exchanged addresses and a few days later a nice envelope full of Reds, Indians, and miscellaneous goodies managed to escape the great blizzard and land in my mailbox.

I'll kick this off with the most recent stuff that was included. These all-star game cards are definitely welcomed and I really need to go through what I have and post a want list for the remainder. 

Mascot cards are always cool! I'm planning on picking up a box of 2016 Opening Day as I've gained a new appreciation for it based on trades I've made since starting up this blog.

This Johnny Bench card is really cool but I'm not sure what set it's from as I couldn't quite but a finger on it. I'm pretty sure that the Perez Lineage card is a duplicate though, but regardless, it's still awesome!

Here's two guys that will hopefully be shining spots of the Reds this year, Billy Hamilton and Brandon Phillips. One of my other goals with the Update set is to put together the remainder of the Reds throwback cards.

A bunch of older Reds. Bret Boone was a really solid second baseman for the Reds teams in the mid-90s, Sean Casey was always fun to watch play and earned a spot in the Reds Hall of Fame a few years ago.

Mark also threw in a nice mess of Indians cards and these were the best of the batch. I was really excited to find the Bob Feller insert card in the mix and Manny Ramirez Indians cards are always great.

Thanks for the great trade package Mark! Hope you enjoyed the return!

2015 Topps Update Holiday Box #2

Just a quick post today as I'm heading over to a friend's house in a bit for some deep dish pizza, salad, icebox cake (which is quite possibly the most amazing dessert on the planet), and perhaps some white russians that The Dude would approve of.

Here we have the second of two of the Topps Update retail boxes. I'm hoping this is a little better than the first box. You should know the drill by now ... 5 update packs and 2 update chrome packs. Let's dig in.

Let's start off with the best of the Chrome packs. All four of these are super nice and I'll be hanging on to these. I was surprised to pull the Fisk insert as a Chrome card as I thought going into this that the only cards that were chromed were the base cards.

The insert cards from the regular Update packs. Pulling out the Josh Gibson card was really cool as I had no clue that stars from that era were even featured on this set. I just realized something ... both the Gibson and the Dunn cards have the same date, September 27th.

Finally, the all-star insert cards I got from the main set. The DeGrom retail insert I think I've already found a good home for, the rest of these will be going into my all-star game set. I really should start a checklist of some kind for these so I know what I have and what I need.

As for the regular base cards, I didn't really get any cards that "wow"-ed me. Would I get another box like this? Maybe if it was on sale or on clearance somewhere. This was certainly better than the first box I opened but it's not something I'll go out of my way to get.

2015 Topps Update Holiday Box #1

Before getting too far along, I want to wise a Happy New Year to all my readers and issue a big "thank you" to everyone for reading this humble little blog. Since I started this blog at the end of July, I never imagined it would reach the popularity that it has with just under 5,000 views since launch. So, again thank you for reading and also thank you to all the great people that I've traded with such as Brian, Julie, Kevin, Matt, Adam K, Jeff, Tony, Gavin, and many others I know I'm probably forgetting. Thank you all for your support in 2015 and here's to a great 2016!

Now then, with that out of the way, as I noted a few posts back I got a nice haul of cardboard for Christmas, most of which was from my wife. Back in November, these Topps Update boxes were all the rage and I managed to procure two of them from my wife. Five packs of Update and two packs of Chrome Update. Here we go ...

No, you're not seeing double, that's a regular Evan Gattis Update card and it's Chrome brother. I found it sort of strange that I got both the regular and chrome versions of the same card. Oh well, if nothing else, these will display nice next to each other in the 2015 binder.

The best of the Chrome cards that were included. The Plawecki is a numbered parallel and pulling a Joey Gallo rookie card was probably the highlight of this box.

Moving along to regular Update, there honestly wasn't a lot to share when it comes to the base cards that were included. However, I did get all the cards shown above for the All-Star Game set I'm putting together, including a foil parallel of the Darren O'Day mystery man card. I'm not sure what the Jose Altuve card on the right is but it appears to be some sort of insert.

Overall, I'd say this was a pretty average box. I'm hoping that the second box might have some better stuff in it but we'll see.

Christmas Goodies!

I hope everyone had a good Christmas! My in-laws came and went, Christmas Eve was a blast with 14 people at the house and my uncle and I making and emergency run to the liquor store for Limoncello. Today was the day that my wife and I exchanged gifts to ourselves and judging by the above pictures, I'd say I made out pretty good.

First off, I got this box of 10th Anniversary Allen & Ginter from my family. It came along with two bonus packs. I'm really excited to crack into this soon.

My wife got me a bunch of packs and blasters from Target, including Allen & Ginter, WWE Heritage, two of the Topps Update holiday boxes, and two jumbo packs of Panini Prestige football.

With some of the money my in-laws gave us, I picked up this Panini Contenders blaster during a post-Christmas Target run.

Finally, to store all of my "good stuff" (autographs, relic cards, vintage, and stuff I just generally like), my wife got me this awesome Reds themed storage box.

I go back to work tomorrow and am working 8am-11pm for the next three days but I'll be breaking into this stuff soon. Stay tuned!