Pick A Pair

Getting cards in the mail in nice.

It's also nice when said cards are from longtime trade pal and blog reader Julie when she does her famous "pick pockets" grab bag on her blog.

Her most recent one was over the holidays (that feels like forever ago) and I got in on the tail end of the action as I just came back into the card and card blogging universe at the time. I was lucky enough to nab the pair of Francisco Lindor cards above to add to my Indians collection (side note: it's gonna be weird to see him in a Mets uniform in 2021) but those weren't the only cool pair of cards I picked out.

I also got a pair of these shiny cards of some Hall of Famers. Not only do these fit into the Hall of Famers category that I collect, they also fit into the defunct teams category as well. Both of these cards have interesting attributes and not just because they're shiny. The Gary Carter card proudly displays itself as an Expos card, complete with the old-school blue uniform and red and white batting helmet. The Satchel Paige card mentions him with three different teams on the front. The background picture is him with a St. Louis Browns hat, the foreground photos is him in an Indians uniform, and at the bottom it lists him as a member of the Kansas City Monarchs.

Neither of these two look exactly thrilled but I couldn't pass up this pair of 1974 Traded cards that were offered up. Let's look at each trade here...

Lindy McDaniel was traded from the Yankees to the Royals on December 7, 1973 for Lou Piniella and Ken Wright. Lindy's last two years in the bigs were 1974 and 1975. In those two seasons for the Royals, he appeared in 78 games, primarily as a reliever, and went 6-5 with a 3.75 ERA. Meanwhile, Piniella would spend the next ten seasons in pinstripes (and several more after that as a manager) and Ken Wright pitched in all of three games for the Yankees in 1974.

As far as Jimmy Wynn goes, he was shipped off from the Astros to the Dodgers the day before the Lindy McDaniel trade for Claude Osteen and minor leaguer David Culpepper.Wynn only played two seasons for the Dodgers (1974 and 1975) becoming an All-Star in both seasons and finishing in the top five of NL MVP votes in '74. In Houston, Osteen didn't even make it the full season before being flipped to the Cardinals in August of 1974 for the dreaded "player to be named later" Fun fact, did you know that both principles in the deal, Wynn and Osteen, were both signed by the Reds as amateur free agents?

Pairs weren't the only things I picked out from the pick pockets. I also grabbed this trio of interesting cards. Is there anything that these three cards have in common? Not really aside from the fact I thought they were neat. The Ned Yost card I grabbed just because it's an early 80s Topps card, Bobby Bonds because it's an oddball, and Eugenio Suarez because ... well, it's just a neat card!

I was pretty happy to add all of these to my collection and thanks to Julie for doing the pick pockets thing! I look forward to participating in the next round.

The Well Traveled Envelope Arrives in Ohio

So there's a thing going around right now amongst the blogs called the "Well Traveled Envelope". The gist of the whole deal is to re-use the same envelope and the supplies contained within as many times as humanly possible. There's also an ongoing log and note to fill out as well. I was lucky enough to have been selected by Chris of "The Collector" blog as the next recipient of the envelope.

When I opened the envelope, this was the first card I saw. After that, I knew things were going to be good because it's not every day that your open a bubble mailer and find a Renata Galasso Warren Spahn card starting back at you. 

Here's some 1984 Topps I can put towards the set build. Frank Robinson was canned by the Giants 106 games into the 1984 season with an awful 42-64 record. 

Some 2019 Diamond Kings and my first Carl Hubbell card. The Al Simmons I think might be a duplicate as I'm pretty sure it came out of a pack that I ripped a few months back. 

The package was also littered with team collections on the baseball side ... Reds and Expos most notably. I've never seen this Gary Carter card and it's got to be definitely one of my favorites now. I think I've mentioned this before but I really like 1992 Pinnacle. It's got to be the black borders though.

More Expos with the bottom row featuring some 1994 Fleer. About a week or so ago as I write this, the 25th anniversary of the 1994-95 baseball strike just passed which many argue effectively doomed baseball in Montreal. I believe that 1994 Expos team would've made it to the World Series had it been played that year as that was possibly the best team they ever had in Montreal.

Some Reds cards now and we've got some super shiny ones to start with. Blandino hasn't played a single game for the club this year after appearing in 69 games last year as a utility infielder. The Suarez card is one of the refractor variety

Nice mix of cards here, including a somewhat early Joey Votto card. I'm admittedly horrible at placing the year on Bowman cards. The most interesting card to me here is Scott Feldman. It falls into both the "short term stops" variety and the "sunset cards" variety. Feldman pitched the 2017 with the Reds going 7-7 over 21 starts including Opening Day of 2017. His last start for the Reds (and final MLB appearance in general) was August 17, 2017.

Another fun batch of cards. I love it when Topps includes manager cards in the Archives sets. I think they're just fun additions to the checklist. The Scooter Gennett card is pretty neat but again, I'm horrible at placing the year on Bowman cards.

Baseball wasn't all that Chris included in the well-traveled envelope. He also hit me with a bunch of new hockey cards. All five of these Marty's are new to my collection. I particularly like the "hockey heroes" and the shiny Leaf card on the left.

Some cool new Devils cards. I can't place the Travis Zajac card but it looks like it's from a throwback set of some kind. Scott Stevens and Patrik Elias were part of the awesome Devils teams of the early 2000s. The Devils this season should be fun to watch with the addition of P.K. Subban and Jack Hughes.

Oooh! Shiny Coyotes including a really neat card of Oliver Ekmann-Larsson. Speaking of fun teams, with the Coyotes dealing for Phil Kessel, and him joining Oli, Clayton Keller, and Derek Stepan on offense, that should be quite the team to keep an eye on.

By far my favorite hockey cards in the batch were these old school O-Pee-Chee cards. I'm not too familiar with John Anderson but Blaine Stoughton I know because he's a former Cincinnati Stingers player. 

I appreciate Chris including me in the Well Traveled Envelope challenge. My next mission is to figure out who I'm sending it to next and to dig out cards for said individual. However, it might be a bit before I get to that as I'm working roughly 65 hours this week between two jobs. Should I not fall over from exhaustion by the end of the week, it'll be on it's way to the next recipient soon.

Highlights of a Box of 1989 Bowman

It was pretty miserable outside when I decided to open this. It was raining buckets and the wind was blowing hard. A pretty awful way for a Saturday to be in my opinion. I needed something to keep me busy and remembered I had this box of 1989 Bowman. My five year old son was going a little stir crazy too so I sat him down in the living room floor with me, split the box evenly and took turns ripping. While the contents were pretty much what I expected them to be, that being unimpressive, I did find a few keepers in the bunch.

As I'm sure everyone had seen 1989 Bowman before, there's nothing new here to be discussed. Besides the size issue, the biggest problem I have with this set is the signatures on the front are terribly hard to read at times, especially if the player is wearing a dark uniform (see the John Smiley card above). Nine times out of ten I had to flip the card over to see who it was on the front.

My favorites here are the Gary Carter card (in between Brett and Clemens), Fred McGriff in a Blue Jays uniform (bottom left), and Bert Blyleven (next to McGriff). 

A couple more keepers including Jose Canseco, Eddie Murray, Joe Carter, some guy named Ripken, and Wade Boggs. 

The big prize of 1989 Bowman is the Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card. I was lucky enough to pull two out of the box. While 1989 Bowman is lower on the list of desirable Griffey rookies, it's still neat to have two pack pulled Griffey rookie cards. One of these will most likely be offered up for trade soon.

Would I buy a box of 1989 Bowman again? Not really but it was fun enough to kill about 20 minutes on a rainy Saturday afternoon and provided some good father/son time. Can't ask for much more than that.

Retail Repack Adventures #2

The weekend before Thanksgiving, the family and I had to stop in to Walgreens to grab a few small things for the giant gathering we're hosting at Christmas, plus I had to pick up a refill of my prescription. While we were there, and since I needed to break a fifty anyway, I decided to try my luck at another one of the repacks they had hanging on the shelf since the last one was lots of fun.

Starting off with the two best cards in the pack. I was pretty surprised to see this Biggio rookie in the pack. The Frank Thomas was the cover card and I think it scanned in better than it looks in person. Two Hall of Famers at the start can't be bad.

More cards of Hall of Famers! This Mike Schmidt definitely has to be one of his last, if not the last, regular Topps card of his. I'm pretty sure this is at least the third copy of the Gary Carter card that I own.

Apparently, this was a Terry Pendleton hot box! Kind of strange that I got three cards from the same player in this but it's a retail repack, I guess I probably should have expected it.

Two of the newer cards that were included. I have zero memory of Trevor Hoffman pitching for the Brewers and pitching in 2010!

The rest of the box was littered with stuff like this and lots of stuff that felt like filler. Suffice to say, this pack wasn't as good as the first one but it was still fun to open regardless. I probably won't get another repack until after the new year though.

Retail Repack Adventures #1

The family and I had to pick up a few things from Walgreens the weekend before Halloween. We went there mainly for the giant sale on trick-or-treat candy ($1.75 a bag!) and few odds and ends. While we were there, I decided to grab one of the $4.99 repacks that have been hanging on the shelf since we moved back to town in the spring of 2014.

The best card in the box, this 2014 Topps Chrome orange parallel of Carlos Beltran. Not really big Beltran or Yankees collector but this is a really nice card and it'll be kept with my stash of "good stuff".

This repack had a little bit of everything. This was some of the cool junk wax, an Electric Diamond Marquis Grissom and a weird Dave Hollins card that resembles a credit card.

More late 80s/early 90s stuff. I don't care much for the term "junk wax" as it makes cards like these sound as if they are just useless. I believe the Gary Carter could be a sunset card but I'm not sure.

There was also some new stuff. That Jeremy Moore card is really neat, especially with the retro uniform. I always get 2013 and 2014 Topps mixed up as they look pretty similar to me.

Can't forget about these old-timers. I'd forgotten how awesome the Colon collection cards are.

A pair of Padres.

And the obligatory Reds to finish it off. I'm thinking the Griffey might be a sunset card as well.

Busting this was pretty fun, if nothing else for the randomness that was contained within. I might pick up more of these on occasion just for the heck of it.