Hit Me

In my last post, I showed off some cards in a box set from the old Hills department store from 1989. Well, the next year, Hills came back with one of my favorite oddball sets ... Hills Hit Men (not to be confused with the "South Side Hitmen" of the 1977 Chicago White Sox). Like its predecessor, it's a 33-card set featuring some of the top sluggers in baseball at the time. 

Here's the back. I have to say this box is in much better shape than the other one. It was still in the shrink wrap too. Remember, this was only a buck from the April card show. Here's the cards as they came out of the box.

Starting off good with Cal Ripken, Kevin Mitchell, Eric Davis, and Eddie Murray. The design on this I think is pretty eye-catching with the Hills logo, a baseball bat featuring the words "Hit Men" and the yellow name-plate at the bottom.

Really the great thing about these sets is that you never know who you'll actually find. Fred Lynn is a good example as 1990 was his last season.

As I mentioned with this sets counterpart, I'm planning on putting this in order and sticking it in my "oddball sets" binder as I think it will just look tremendous when paged up.

More good stuff here, including Dave Parker with the Brewers.

The last batch of nine. It's good to see most teams get representation but the Angels and the Indians didn't have anyone in the set. Yet the Padres had three (Joe Carter, Jack Clark, Fred Lynn). I love the Andres Galarraga Expos card, that blue just pops out.

Somehow I also wound up with and extra of the Kevin Mitchell card so that will be going in the trade bin. I figured I would at least get some use out of it and scan the back.

If I had one complaint about this set, it'd be the back. It's very minimal and only features the career stats and a formula for figuring slugging percentage.

Anyway, that's another set of Hills cards. I think these two were the only retail sets that Hills put out through Topps. Next time I go to a card show, I'm definitely going to be picking up more retail sets like this as these are a blast to go through.

Surprise Mail from Stealing Home

I got home the other night and much to my surprise, there was a PWE from Stealing Home sitting on the counter. I haven't sent any mail out in quite some time so to get trade mail from another blogger was quite unexpected. Here's what Oscar sent over ...

Here's a couple Joey Votto cards. I'm still not sure the point of the Opening Day cards from Series 1 but the Jackie Robinson Day card is pretty cool.

Here's a Barry Larkin card from this year's Donruss that I didn't know existed. The picture pretty much obscures the fact that the team name and logo has been removed from the uniform. I might give 2018 Donruss another shot if I find some cheap packs.

A few Eric Davis cards. I think I have the 1990 Fleer card but I'm almost positive the 1987 Donruss card is new to me. Also, pardon the lighting in the picture, I wasn't able to use my usual set up when taking these.

And a few random cards to close out this PWE. While the Lee Smith card isn't a Reds card, he's still someone I won't complain about when I get cards of his.

Thanks to Oscar for the surprise PWE. I'll put you on my list for getting a return out.

Mystery Boxes From a Mystery Yard Sale (continued)

As promised in Tuesday's post, here's the continuation of the cards from the mystery yard sale boxes with my favorites of the 90s cards I found in the haul.

With the 90s cards, Dime Box Nick would've had a field day with some of these. Some cool double play cards and Trevor Hoffman fiddling with a camera.

Some nice rookie cards and early career cards. Ramon Hernandez might be someone I eventually add to my player PC as I always liked him when he was with the Reds. Finding a Konerko Dodgers card was a treat as well although I'm not a big fan of Pacific.

Eric Davis and Joe Oliver are two former Reds shown here with two teams they definitely don't belong with. Davis spent two seasons as a member of the Orioles, 1997 and 1998. The 1997 season wasn't all that great, with him only appearing in 42 games. However, he had a bounce back season in 1998 with the last great year of his career hitting .327/.388/.582 with 28 homers and 89 RBIs in 131 games. He even finished in the top 20 of AL MVP voting that season.

Joe Oliver spent one season as a Brewer in 1995 after playing in only 6 games with the Reds in 1994. He had a nice season appearing in 97 games hitting .273/.332/.439 with 12 homers and 51 RBIs. After the season, he signed again with the Reds as stayed with them for another two years.

More "short term stops" cards including Tom Candiotti as a member of the A's, Joe Carter as an Oriole, and Eddie Murray as an Angel. Terry Steinbach spent three seasons at the end of his career with the Twins, so that doesn't count as short term but I didn't remember it at all until I saw this particular card.

I thought Sportflix cards were just a fad of the 80s, turns out they lasted until the mid 90s. In case you can't make out the players pictured, left to right its Pedro Martinez, Don Mattingly, and Jeff Bagwell.

A couple of neat Jim Thome cards for my collection of his.

Oooo! Shiny cards!!! I really like the Delgado card but the Kenny Lofton All-Star credentials card is really a cool looking card.

These cards scanned like absolute crap but there were a boatload of Roger Clemens Blue Jays cards in the boxes. Juan Guzman is a press proof card numbered 1 of 2000. I'm not sure if that holds much weight but here's the proof ...

Again, not sure if it holds weight like numbered parallels in today's world. Regardless, it's still a nice card.

I wasn't expecting to find Devil Rays cards in here, especially not first year Rays cards. Seeing Wade Boggs in a Rays uniform is still a weird sight.

Diamondbacks cards were in more supply than Rays cards. I don't have many early cards from either team so these definitely will fit in nicely.

Nearly time to wrap this up so I'll show some stuff rapid fire .... first, some Pinnacle Xpress Peak Performance cards of Randy Johnson and Mike Piazza.

Two Pinnacle Mint Collection cards of Cal Ripken Jr. and Andruw Jones.

And I'll put a bow on this treasure trove of a yard sale haul with some 1997 Fleer.

For three bucks, I'd say that I definitely got more value than that out of this, especially due to the sheer number of 90s cards I found that I didn't already have. I really appreciate my step mom picking these up for me. 

Retail Repack Adventures #10: Return to Walgreens

I told myself that I wasn't going to buy anymore of these. 

After the last two packs being less than stellar plus loaded with duplicates, I had sworn off of these for an undetermined length of time. However, thanks to a heads up from AJ over at The Lost Collector, the card blogging world was notified of a sale on these for $3.99 each. Never have I wanted to go to Walgreens so bad. When I stopped by there were three of these on the rack, I grabbed two, mainly because the cover card on the other pack did nothing for me. Curiously, they were the regular price. I asked someone who appeared to be managerial about it. Turns out there was an error and the price was wrong but was promised the right price would show at checkout. It did and I brought the packs home ready to tear into them.

Here's the cover card, a 2002 Fleer Focus Jersey Edition Alex Rodriguez. I've never understood the point of calling cards "jersey edition" or the like if they don't actually have a piece of a jersey in them. Regardless, this will go with my 2000-2009 cards for now. I'm not sure I like the way my cards are sorted though, but that's another story for another day.

As with any repack, it's rife with 2012 Topps. These are the best of the lot. A few things to check out here, first there's James Shields in a Rays uniform, a team I'd forgotten he played for. Second, look at the celebration on the Neftali Feliz card. I'm not sure what game it's from but it's definitely a keeper.

There were a ton of 1988 Score cards, nearly 20 to be exact. Again, these are the best of the batch. My favorite here is the Steve Bedrosian, simply because of the way everything just seems to fit perfectly. Plus, it's a night card so that works in its favor too.

1989 Topps ... yay. Interesting little side note, how strange was it that the Twins had a player in the late 80s named Greg Gagne and the AWA, which was based out of Minneapolis, had a wrestler during the same time named Greg Gagne. I wonder if they ever got confused for each other?

As with any repack, it was loaded with junk wax and commons. These four are the best of the junk wax pile that was in the middle of the pack. I'm still baffled as to why Lee Smith isn't in the Hall of Fame. He ranks third all time in saves (478), was a 7-time All-Star, holds a career ERA of 3.03 and appeared in over 1000 games in 18 seasons. Perhaps the fact he was a career reliever might be a strike against him but then again, so was Bruce Sutter and he's in. So why not Lee Smith?

Ah yes, minor league cards. For the longest time, I didn't think twice about these and either added them to my trade box or my discard box (for donations and misc stuff). For some unknown reason, these just spoke to me and I think I'll have to start adding them to my binders. For a fun exercise, I though I would explore the careers of three of the four pictured, the exception being Jon Woodworth because he's listed as a trainer.

Ken Greer - Spent 10 seasons in the minors with various teams. He did make it to the majors though. He only appeared in 9 games combined over the 1993 (Yankees) and 1995 (Giants) seasons. On this particular card, he's featured with the Ft. Lauderdale Yankees, which was the High A affiliate for the Yankees in 1990. During this particular season, he was 4-9 with a 6.45 ERA in 38 games.

Keith Schmidt - Played 6 seasons in the minors from 1989-1994, never advancing above single A ball. Here he's pictured with the Bluefield Orioles, the Rookie League affiliate of Baltimore. That particular season he had a .278/.356/.462 slash line in 55 games.

Larry Walker - No, not that Larry Walker, the other one. I didn't know there was more than two. This particular Larry Walker got into 79 games with the Greensboro Hornets of the South Atlantic League in 1990 hitting .230 with one homer and 15 RBIs. Two years later, he was out of the game, only playing six games at any level above high A.

Two more cards to show off here. First this Sportflics Eric Davis card. I think this might be the first Reds Sportflics card in my collection. I was pretty thrilled when this came out.

Dave LaPoint isn't normally someone I would think about showing cards of, mainly because I'm not familiar with him but this isn't any ordinary 1988 Donruss card. It's from the 1988 Donruss Baseball's Best set. I'm not sure what the distribution method of this set was but I really dig the orange borders. 

The back is nice too as it presents the career stats in an easy to read format with a lighter color and a different orientation that the regular 1988 Donruss cards. 

Had this repack not been on sale, I wouldn't have purchased it as I prefer the 4-pack, 50-card repacks found at Target. However, this wasn't a complete waste as I got a few fun cards and some trade fodder.

You've Got Mail #22: Bump & Run Cards

I haven't been at this card blogging thing for a year yet and already new bloggers are reaching out to me to set up trades. That's exactly what Trevor of the recently conceived Bump and Run Cards football card blog did. While I didn't necessarily have much in the way of his needs, I asked if he would be interested in taking all the unwanted football cards I have since I'm not much of a football collector except for Bengals cards and a few others here and there. He agreed and I received a nice little mailer from him.

Bronson Arroyo is a guy I always like when he played for the Reds. Over the offseason, he was really close to returning but chose to sign with Washington and play for Dusty Baker instead. Can't say I blame him, Washington has a really good chance to make the playoffs, while the Reds are going nowhere fast. Regardless, since I've added him as a PC guy to my list, I've been getting some nice cards. Pretty sure I have multiple copies of the Heritage card now but it's all good!

One of the odd things I like to collect as it relates to the Reds is Big Red Machine players post-machine. A prime example are these Tony Perez cards. The first card of him "in action" is from his days in Boston, the next is him with the Phillies. Seeing Perez in any uniform through aside from the Reds is still really strange.

Hey look! More Hal Morris cards! Always nice to get more of his stuff!

These Leaf Metal cards I had no prior knowledge of but they are really cool. Yeah, they went overboard with the foil (it's the 90s, everything went overboard!) but still, these are some pretty cool cards and fill in a nice hole in my Reds collection.

We close on a nice variety of stuff. From The Cobra to Eric Davis, Reggie Sanders to Juan Francisco, there's a little bit here of everything, including what looks to be an IP auto of Keith Glauber. Really hard to pick a favorite in this batch.

Thanks for the trade Trevor and good luck with your blog. I've got some unwanted football cards ready to go out when I get to the post office in a few weeks that you will hopefully enjoy.

The Nutter Center Sports Card Show - Part 2: The Good Stuff

In my last post, I talked about my experience at the Nutter Center Sports Card Show. Now it's time to dive in and take a look at my purchases, starting with the good stuff ...

These are the two "non-hit" singles I bought. I've been searching for an Eric Davis rookie card for a while now and I'm finally happy to have one. The Bench card was a spur of the moment purchase and I'm really glad that I decided to pick it up, it's a beautiful card.

The first hit I purchased was this Joe Oliver autograph from this year's Topps Archives set. This came from the same guy I got the Davis and Bench cards from. Just need the Jose Rijo card to go along with this. 

Until I saw these, I wasn't sure what my opinion was of the manufactured relics. Some people hate them, some like them. I was indifferent until I saw these. The Palmer was priced at only 50 cents and the Kiner was $2. I had only planned on getting the Palmer but once I noticed that the Ralph Kiner one was commemorating Ebbets Field, I grabbed them up.

I collect pretty much anything that catches my eye and this certainly did. With the orange patch and the fact is was George Springer, I had to get this.

I love memorabilia from old ballparks that no longer exist so I think that's probably why I picked this card up. It's a seat relic from old Crosley Field where Big Klu reigned supreme in the 50s. 

Here's the aforementioned Reds team set from Topps Update. The player selection is so-so but at least I've got a Michael Lorenzen rookie, a few All-Star and Home Run Derby cards, and a nice card of one of my favorite players right now, Tucker Barnhart.

My final major purchase were these factory sealed hockey sets from 1990. The guy I got these from had about five of the 1990 Topps hockey set he was unloading at $3 each. On top of the stack of these sets was a plain white box. Curiously, I asked if it was another Topps hockey set, he opened it up and much to our surprise, it was a factory sealed set of 1990 Score, so I bought that too. Not sure what I'm going to do with these now though. I'm not one to leave cards in their rectangular prisons for too long  as I'm of the opinion cards need to be able to be seen, not stuffed in a box. I'm thinking these will go into a binder and I'll save the boxes for extra cards.

Now that you've seen the best, the third and final part is coming up in a few days about the rest of my purchases from the dime and quarter boxes. Stay tuned ...