Cards and Snow

It snowed this weekend .... a lot.

According to the local National Weather Service office, my town received 8 inches officially. I felt every bit of that 8 inches as well when I went out this morning and shoveled and salted the driveway for three hours.

But I know you didn't come here to read about my adventures in the snow. No, you came here to read about cards. 

I received cards a few weeks ago from Marc at Remember the Astrodome. Marc is from Texas, someplace where it's warm and they don't have to battle with snow and salt. Let's see what Marc sent.

First off, Marc hit on a bunch of my player collections. There were about 18 new Jeff Bagwell cards included, which helped increase my Bagwell collection substantially. The nice thing is too is that they're from all rages of Bagwell's career.

There were also some Craig Biggio cards.

Some new Nolan Ryan cards as well.

And finally some Eddie Taubensee cards. These are two brand new cards to me. I also

Moving on, from the player collections, Marc included a great number of other cards, including this Cesar Cedeno card from 1981 Fleer. This may seem like just a random card but it's a nice card of a former Red.

There was also a good pile of Reds cards, including these cool cards from the 80s. I really like 1981 Topps and feel like it's a forgotten set. 

90s cards! These are right in my wheelhouse as I love collecting Reds from the 90s. They had some fun teams and lots of great players on those teams like Hal Morris, Reggie Sanders, and Benito Santiago.

I remember this card from my initial foray into collecting when I was a kid. At the time, I'd never heard of Eppa Rixey but I came to realize he was a star for the Reds in the 1920s. In 13 seasons with the Reds, he appeared in 440 games with a 179-148 record and a 3.33 ERA. Before the Reds, he spent 8 seasons with the Phillies and was just as dominant. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1963 by the Veterans Committee.

Closing out the package from Marc, here's some more recent Reds cards, including Johnny Cueto and Billy Hamilton, two Reds who are no longer Reds. Hamilton was non-tendered by the team this winter and signed with Kansas City as a free agent.

Lastly, here's some 2018 Allen and Ginter Reds cards. I spent exactly zero dollars on A&G packs and such last year and I intend on continuing that trend this year. Castillo and Mahle will be battling for a spot in the back end of the rotation this season that looks to already be vastly improved from last year.

There were also some cards that Marc sent that I didn't include here, like some additional Bagwell cards and some Ken Griffey Jr. cards mainly because when I took the pictures, they didn't turn out all that well. I appreciate Marc sending these over. I'm building up some Astros to send back in return, once spring hits and all the snow melts.

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.

Around the Horn: Houston Astros

Time for another entry in the "Around the Horn" series! This time, the Astros are up to bat!

The Astros were founded in 1962 and spent the first three years of their existence as the Colt 45's before moving into the Astrodome and being re-christened the Astros. 

The Astros has a plethora of great talent in the 70s ranging from Joe Morgan and Cesar Cedeno (two future Reds) to young fireballer J.R. Richard. The picture on the Jesus Alou card is just fantastic. Side note, I can't wait for Topps Heritage two years from now when they pay tribute to the 1971 set.

The great pitching carried over into the early 1980s when the Astros made the playoffs three times during the decade (1980, 1981, 1986). My favorite of this batch has to be the Lee May Swell oddball. Funny thing I just realized, I have cards of two players from the most important Reds trade in the 70s in Astros uniforms, Lee May and Joe Morgan (in the first batch). 

Here are four of my favorite Nolan Ryan cards I have covering his stint in Houston. I'm not a big Nolan Ryan collector by any means but these were all found in quarter bins or pack pulled and if I can find stuff of his cheap, then I'm all about it, especially stuff of him when he's not in a Rangers uniform.

Here's a curiosity ... two Phil Garner cards from 1982 Donruss. I was confused as heck when I found these in the giant box of 1982 cards I bought at the community yard sale last spring. It turns out the one on the right in a reverse negative error card. Pretty cool!

Moving towards the 90s now and the "Killer B's" of Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell. Instead of taking pictures of all my cards of a certain player/player collection, I'm just going to narrow it down to my favorite 3-4 cards of a particular player.

These Craig Biggio cards are my four favorites of his and I really, really like the Panini Diamond Kings cards. I'd honestly forgotten I had it until I was digging out cards to show off. I've got two copies of the 1989 Donruss rookie, I can't remember how I acquired them but I know one of them was pulled from a 100-card repack.

Jeff Bagwell is someone I really don't have a lot of cards of but he's definitely someone I need to acquire more cards of. The 1992 Topps card is the actual one, not one of the numerous reprints floating around out there.

I love collecting Reds players from the mid-90s regardless if its before or after their run with the team. Eddie Taubensee was the primary catcher for the Reds from 1994-2000. I always liked watching him as a player and he was pretty solid behind the plate.

When I'm sorting through cards trying to find stuff to talk about, I always come across a few curiosities, like this Miguel Tejada card. I'd completely forgotten about him playing two seasons in Houston towards the tail end of his career.

Same goes for J.D. Martinez, who is absolutely crushing the American League right now. I'd completely forgotten his first big league team was the Astros. That was during the lean years where losing at least 100 games a season was almost a guarantee.

Speaking of the lean years, Jose Altuve came along in 2011 for an Astros team that lost 106 games that year in what was their second to last year in the National League. He's always a guy that I see playing with a smile on his face and seems to enjoy every minute of every game. I've started a small Altuve collection as he's one of the players on the Astros I really enjoy watching.

Here's one of my favorite cards from Topps Archives last year. Everything on this picture just works, the orange of the uniform, the green of the railing on the dugout ... everything. It's too bad Archives this year really couldn't come anywhere close to this.

As far as short-term stops go, I honestly don't have too many as far as the Astros go. I think this Carlos Beltran card would probably be as close as I can get though. He had a full year stint in Houston in 2017 and another half-season with the Astros way back in 2004.

I think this card in particular is one of my favorites of this year. Not only does it show him as a member of the Astros, it's also a sunset card (meaning the his last regular issue card after his final season), plus look in the background, there's actually a sunset! It's a perfect card for a player that went out on on top and will eventually be in the Hall of Fame someday.

Last year, the Astros stunned everyone and won the World Series, their first. They'd been to the World Series one other time, in 2005 against the White Sox and got swept. I honestly didn't think they had a chance against the Dodgers last year but I was really happy to see them get their first championship, especially after all the city went through last fall with Hurricane Harvey and the catastrophic flooding thereafter.

That's another edition of "Around the Horn" in the books. On deck .... the Toronto Blue Jays.

Back Packs: 2001 Donruss

I consider my "lost years" of collecting to be in the neighborhood of 1997-2011. During that time, I collected barely any, if at all. Right in the middle of that time period around late 2002 through 2003, I started doing a little more collecting, mainly because I was working two jobs (one of which was at a card shop) and had some disposable income for the first time in my life. So despite this Donruss pack being from 2001, I have no knowledge of this product whatsoever. The pack touts this as being the "20th Anniversary" which technically would be correct, even though this was the first Donruss release since 1998. 

This pack isn't exactly a behemoth, clocking in at only five cards and one "2000 Retro-Active Pack" all contained within one foil wrapper. Speaking of the wrapper, it definitely screams "Texas Rangers" with A-Rod being the cover boy, red as the primary background, a blue star smack in the middle, and small silver stars vertically on each side. 

#1 Alex Rodriguez

Each card has a border around it matching the team's primary color. Also, each card is stamped with a "20th Anniversary" stamp. Something I just noticed as well, each card has stars throughout the background and along the white inner border in each team's secondary color. The logo and nameplate at the bottom have a very similar look to 2000 Fleer Impact. As for this particular card, I'm guessing this was one of A-Rod's early Rangers cards as it's just him against a black background.

#10 Jeff Bagwell

2001 was the first season since 1997 where Bagwell's batting average dipped below .300 and he would finish the season with a .288/.397/.568 slash line along with 39 HRs and 130 RBIs and finished seventh in the MVP voting. The card stock its worth noting feels pretty flimsy. Also, this picture seems a bit off, almost like the image of Bagwell following through on his swing was super-imposed on a background with a Cubs catcher.

#49 Adam Piatt

Perhaps the least notable name I pulled out of this pack of five, Adam Piatt only lasted four years as a back-up outfielder in the majors, the majority of which where with Oakland. The most action he saw in a season was 61 games split between Oakland and Tampa Bay. In the 2001 season, he only logged 36 games and put up a .211/.300/.284 slash line.

#204 Chipper Jones FC

At first I though this was some type of insert card but come to find out, it's actually part of the base set. Cards 201-220 are part of the "Fan Club" subset. The design is quite different in that the photo is cropped to fit inside a home plate. The stars in the background are gone, replaced with vertical lines in the primary background and two stripes with the primary color of the player's team on each side. This particular card has a red 20th anniversary stamp on it unlike the normal base cards that have a silver stamp. I'm not really sure that makes much of a difference though.

#111 Chuck Knoblauch

After orchestrating a trade from the Twins to the Yankees in 1998, Knoblauch was on the downhill side of his career come 2001. Primarily a second baseman, he was moved to left field when his defense started to slide and he developed problems throwing the ball to first base. 2001 would be his last year in the Bronx, hitting a meager .250 with 9 HRs and 44 RBIs in 600 plate appearances. 

Here's the aforementioned "retro active" pack. Since this was a retail pack, it contained one card labeled as Donruss 2000. Hobby packs contained cards labeled as 1999 Donruss. Regardless, there's only one card in here so it's tantamount to opening a one card pack from a cereal box. Anyway, here's what's inside ...

#2 Alex Rodriguez

And wouldn't you know it, another card of A-Rod, this time representing the Mariners. The design on this isn't bad and I like the concept of getting cards from the "lost years" but maybe those could have been insert cards instead of a bonus pack. I'd say this was a nice comeback effort from Donruss but it felt kind of generic and heavy on star power (and I don't mean star players). Donruss would hang on for a few more years, putting out one final release in 2005 before MLB limited their licensing options. Panini would eventually acquire the brand in 2009 and it would stay stagnant until a third relaunch under the Panini banner in 2014. 

For 50 cents, this was a fun rip but I wouldn't really pay any more than that for a pack.