Ten Cent Twitter Cards (and more)

I finally did it. I participated in my first Twitter dime sale, courtesy of everyone's favorite Twitter trader, Jenny Miller.

While I never followed Jenny until recently, I've seen lots of fellow bloggers buying stuff from her. So, I decided to jump in on the end of summer dime sale she ran on Twitter back around Labor Day.

If you're not familiar with one of Jenny's sales, the concept is simple. She posts cards, you claim what you want, then she gives you a total (which includes $3 shipping no matter how many cards you buy) at the end of the sale, and you pay via Paypal. Simple, easy. Just the way I like stuff to be online. 

These are my two favorite Reds cards that I bought. I'd had my eye on the Konerko card but never really pulled the trigger on it. I'm a huge, huge fan of the Heritage Collection cards from Diamond Kings and I try to always grab a few if I can find a good deal on them.

I don't collect much in the way of minor league cards, only cards of Reds affiliates. Probably my favorite team out of that group is the Dayton Dragons, mainly because they're just up the street in downtown Dayton but their games are literally impossible to get tickets too (and I mean that in a good way) as they have the longest consecutive sellout streak in professional sports currently. Topps doesn't include the Dragons in every set so when they do make cards of them, I kind of have to jump on them.

Some 1994 Fleer Reds, including Kevin Mitchell. The Reds got Mitchell in the 1992-93 offseason from Seattle in exchange for Norm Charlton. Mitchell's best season in red was 1994 with 30 homers and 77 RBIs in 95 games. With the Charlton trade, that left Rob Dibble as the only one remaining from the 1990 "Nasty Boys" bullpen. He got injured in 1994 and signed with the White Sox to attempt a comeback. It didn't fare too well. Neither did his last stand with Milwaukee later that year as well.

I couldn't resist these either. Tyler Mahle has been a bit hit and miss this season. I'm hoping he'll have a better season next year as he's a pretty decent pitcher when he's doing good. 

Who can resist some Triple Play cards for a dime each? I know I can't. I think of all the Triple Play cards issued in the early 90s, the 1993 design has to be my favorite, mainly because of the black border.

Some choice cards from 1994 Collector's Choice? Yes please.

I couldn't resist the Roberto Clemente card from 1987 Donruss, it's just so cool looking. I know pretty much everyone rags on 1990 Donruss but I find joy in the weirdness that it is. I always liked the Diamond Kings cards as well, and they look even neater with the red border. 1986 Donruss is always a hit as well, heck pretty much anything is from Donruss glory years (except 1988). This gives me an idea for a future post.

Hall of Famers were in plentiful supply. I don't have too many 1994 Topps cards so I had to nab the Griffey and the Thomas. I consider 1991 Donruss to be the last of Donruss "glory years" as in 1992 they completely flipped the script on everything.

More HOFers. That Al Kaline card is just beautiful.

Two Craig Biggio cards found their way into my stack as well. 2007 was Biggio's last season and I guess this could be categorized as his "sunset card" as he didn't have a card in the regular issue Topps flagship in 2008

Shiny cards are always fun. 

2018 Stadium Club is much nicer in person than it looks on paper. 

Some more cool Stadium Club cards. 

Yay for team cards! The Nationals card I believe is their first team card ever after moving from Montreal.

Complete randomness will close out the baseball portion. Three guys with really nothing in common.

Baseball wasn't the only thing Jenny was offering. She offered some football cards outside of the regular sale. I nabbed these fancy Bengals cards for 50 cents each. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I am I the only blogger out there that collects Bengals cards?

This Johnny Unitas card was part of the ten cent sale. It was way too good to pass up.

And my most expensive card from Jenny, this Tyler Eifert card which set me back a whole dollar. While he's been often injured during the past few seasons, when he's on the field he's a force. I really dig this whole chrome retro design thing.

So that's it, my first experience with buying cards through Twitter. Thanks for the great cards Jenny! I hope to buy from you again soon.

Random Cards from Random Repacks

A long while back, the spring to be exact, I opened a whole bunch of 100-card repacks from the local Walgreens. I had every intent to share the findings in posts of their own, but now it's three months later and pictures of these cards have been haunting me ever since. So, instead of doing individual posts, here's some of the best from four random repacks.

Here's a 1983 O-Pee-Chee of Phil Niekro. I never really had an appreciation for O-Pee-Chee until I started reading card blogs. Now, whenever I get an OPC card, it instantly goes into the collection.

Paul Konerko is well know for being the first baseman for the White Sox for what seemed like forever but did you know he had a very brief stint with the Reds in 1998? Yep, the Dodgers sent him and Dennys Reyes to the Reds for Jeff Shaw on Independence Day 1998 and he appeared in 26 games as an outfielder and a corner utility man. After the season, the Reds sent him to the White Sox for Mike Cameron and the rest is history. I love cards like this that recognize a player having a brief stint with a team, especially ones that no one barely remembers them being with.

Oh, also, did I mention this is the Gold Medallion Edition of Fleer Ultra? That's pretty cool. 

Yay! 1981 Donruss! I always liked the design on these cards with the colored frame around the photo and the yellow team name on the lower right. The photos are also something else I enjoy on them. I definitely think between them and the debut issue of Fleer the same year, Donruss is the better overall product.

Here's a nice Warren Spahn card that was a cover card on one of the repacks. Also, bonus points on this for it showing him as a member of the Milwaukee Braves.

This isn't weird at all. I always think this is a Rockies card because the mascot takes up more of the card than the featured player but it's an Astros card of Brad Ausmus. You wouldn't know it though just by looking at it.

I'll take an Andrew Benintendi 2017 Topps card out of a repack, yes please! While this is just the regular version and not a variation, it really doesn't matter to me. While Benintendi isn't someone I've put on my player collection list, I don't mind adding a card of his here and there.

Some glossy Topps cards from the 80s. I love that Willie McCovey card with him in the old school Giants uniform and the fact that it says "captain" as his position.

Cards of Hall of Famers, mostly junk wax but the real standout here is the 1999 Topps Wade Boggs, the final year of Boggs' career. His sunset card would come the next season in the 2000 Topps set

It seems like every repack nowadays has a plethora of 2012 Topps, which is a set I really enjoy. I've mentioned previously, packs of 2012 Topps were the first packs I bought when I got back into collecting. The first two, Jim Thome and Manny Ramirez are interesting as the Thome card is a sunset card (meaning his final card issued during his career) and Ramirez is a zero-year card (meaning a card issued of a player featuring him on a team with which he never played). Darvish and Cespedes were two of the bigger rookie names that season and both came out of the same pack. Finally, the the Ichiro card has a fantastic picture on it. 

Finally, a pretty trippy card of Javy Lopez, known primarily for being the Braves catcher during the dominant run of the 90s. I'd had no clue he played with the Orioles but looks like he played out the last few seasons of his career there. I don't think I've ever seen a Donruss Zenith card before but in person it's pretty neat.

In regards to repacks, I think I might be done with them for the short term, unless I decided to go for the 50-card, 4-pack variety at Target. I will say that I really enjoyed throwing the best cards from multiple repacks together instead of reviewing the repacks one by one and talking about filler cards.

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. 

You've Got Mail #14: 2x3 Heroes

The 2016 baseball card season may be upon us but 2015 still lingers, especially with the contest winnings I got from proprietor of the 2x3 Heroes blog and noted White Sox enthusiast, Jeff. I entered and much to my surprise won a nice bubble mailer full of 2015 Topps.

Since Jeff is such a fan of the White Sox, let's start there. The Konerko card is a great send-off card and I really like Abreu in the throwback Sox jersey.

The north siders are primed for a huge 2016 after making it all the way to the NLCS this year and Rizzo is one of the guys I'm looking forward to seeing on a regular basis, since the Reds and Cubs are in the same division. It was awesome to see the Correa rookie in the batch! Even though I'm not much of a rookie collector/prospector, it was a card I was secretly hoping I would pull. 

Here are a few more main set highlights. That catch that Moustakas is making looks painful. Russell is another of the great batch of youngsters that the Cubs have.

These were the only inserts in the batch. The more I see of them, the more I like the tape measure blast cards. Can't say I've come across the rarities insert in the packs of 2015 flagship I opened but its a pretty cool card.

Finally, as is no secret, I'm putting together the set of all the All-Star Game and Home Run Derby cards. Besides the ones shown above, there were probably 5-7 others that I didn't scan in. 

Big thanks to Jeff for the great envelope of 2015 Topps. I haven't opened any 2016 Topps yet but I will eventually, although I'm sort of leaning towards Heritage being the first 2016 packs I buy. It's going to be hard to beat 2015 though, especially since there is so much cool stuff from then yet to discover.