Nick's Knick Knacks

I'm not sure what this 1970 Topps Mike Hershberger card did to warrant getting written on. Nor, am I sure who "Rick" is or what that phone number is for. What I am sure about is that this came in an envelope from Nick at Dime Boxes, who loaded me up with a bunch of cards. 

This all came about when he was looking for a home for the Aristides Aquino card below he'd pulled from Stadium Club.

He mentioned there was a little peeling at the bottom, which didn't really bother me at all. I just think this is a really cool card of one of the Reds young stars. Despite a really down season in 2020, he raked in 2019 when he was called up and hit 19 homers over the last 56 games of the season.

Did I mention it was also numbered 16/25? That's pretty cool! Hopefully Aquino can find his form again this upcoming season but we'll see.

Aquino wasn't the only autographed card that Nick included. Here's another one from Stadium Club of utility player Josh VanMeter, who was shipped to Arizona in a deadline deal last year for reliever extraordinare Archie Bradley, who only appeared in six games for the Reds and was then non-tendered this offseason.

Nick also threw in a pair of Expos cards. I love getting Expos cards from pretty much any era. 

Now for the meat of the envelope, lots of cards to fill out my Indians and Reds team binders. These were some 2020 issues I didn't know I needed until I saw them, although by the time the Clevinger card came out he was with the Padres.

A couple horizontal goodies. Bowman was never my thing as I'm not a prospector but I just love this shiny Bowman Chrome Tyler Freeman card (you'll see another card from this shortly.)

A few more cool cards. I'm writing this just days after the blockbuster deal that sent Francisco Lindor to the Mets. I'm sad to see Lindor leave Cleveland and I know the trade was purely for economic reasons but he was by far my favorite Indians player.

This may look like a 1975 Topps card but it's not!! It's actually a 1975 Topps mini (I think that's the right terminology)? It looks like a 75, smells like a 75 (no I didn't actually smell it), but is a touch smaller.

Anyway, Jim Perry was at the tail end of his career here and was only with the Indians for about a month or so before he was traded to the A's where he finished out his sunset season. The previous season, 1974, he paired up with his brother Gaylord to form a decent 1-2 punch in the Cleveland rotation for a club that finished 77-85. Fun fact, did you know that the Perry brothers accounted for 38 of the 77 wins for Cleveland that season? 

This was probably my favorite card of the package that Nick sent. I'm definitely gaining an appreciation for 1959 Topps and might consider picking up more players like Herb Score here. Upon looking up his info for this piece, I had no idea he was the 1955 Rookie of the Year and was a two-time All-Star. I think the coolest thing about this card though is the photo. It just has that 1950s "feel" to it and I can totally dig it.

Reds were also included starting with this trifecta of Nick Senzel cards. 

There were also a few vintage Reds with this 1961 Jim Brosnan, who pitched will enough in 1961 for the NL Champion "Ragamuffin Reds" to earn some MVP votes.

This is probably my second favorite card in the batch, a 1976 Hostess Tony Perez.

Can't go wrong with cards from Johnny Bench either. I think the Starting Lineup card might be a duplicate but I'll have to check my binder.

These 2020 cards filled in a bunch of holes as well and highlights the Reds significant additions from last offseason in Shogo Akiyama, Nicholas Castellanos, and Mike Moustakas. If you look at the Moustakas Archives card, I find it curious that Topps squeezed "Second Base/Third Base" as the position when they could've just as easily put "Infield". Also, there were come cool Bowman Chrome cards (see I told you those would come back).

This was another great package from Nick and I appreciate him sending all this my way. 

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.

Variations on a Theme (aka Five Packs of 2018 Donruss)

Despite the fact that Panini doesn't have an MLB license, Donruss is one of my favorite releases of the year, mainly because every time you open a pack, there's usually something neat included (parallels, numbered cards, etc.). I had to stop by the card shop for a friend to see if they had any more bowling coupons as she was taking her son and a bunch of his friends bowling for his birthday. The coupons were all gone but I just had to make a purchase. There were two different pack prices on the box, $3.49 and $3.99. I asked the shopkeeper about it and he said "well, I'll just let you have as many as you want at $3.49". Fine by me. I grabbed five packs plus two Pokemon packs for my son to put in his Easter basket and headed home.

The first card of the first pack and it's Nolan Ryan. Pretty cool! Two other things that make this a really neat card, at least to me. First, it's a throwback 1984 design and the other is it's Nolan Ryan pitching as a Met against the Reds at Riverfront Stadium. How can I tell it's Riverfront Stadium? Check out the color of the seats in the background. Riverfront was the only stadium I knew that had blue outfield seats above the right field wall. I managed more of these 84-style cards but thought this was the best one by far.

A handful of base cards. Donruss is finally getting to the point where I can actually differentiate the respective sets. The first few issues looked pretty much identical but last year with the 1990-ish design, Panini finally got out of the basic designs and put a little more effort into it. This year, it's a completely crazy and wild design. I dig all of these cards, especially the Cozart card and it lists him with his new team and the old school uniform on Odubel Herrera.

The lone Reds card, if you could call it that, from the packs. With the background and no official logos, it looks more like Tony Perez and Davey Concepcion at an old-timers softball game.

Can't say I'm a big fan of the Diamond Kings design this year. I much preferred the old school style of Diamond Kings in previous releases.

The thing with Donruss is the variations and the parallels and, oh boy, do we have those this year. First there's the "nickname" variations. The only one of these I've ever heard of is "Iron Man" on the Cal Ripken card. I honestly think the other two are made up.

Here we have a parallel of the same and a parallel of the Kirby Puckett variation as well. We now have parallels of the variations, are you keeping track yet?

This Bryce Harper is numbered 01/25 ... you'll just have to believe me as I tried to take a picture of the serial number as proof but it was pretty much impossible. This must be one of the Mother's Day Ribbon cards.

I though this Jose Abreu was weird because it's in black and white, it turns out it's just a variation of the base card. My head is now officially spinning because of all these.

So, thoughts on this year's Donruss ... it's, well, different. I don't mind the base cards and the 1984 style cards but the crazy parallels, variations, and parallels of variations I could do without. Normally, Donruss is one of my favorite issues of the year (I really enjoyed last year's cards) but I think I might have to stray away from most of these this year, unless we're talking the 1984 style cards.

You've Got Mail #80: Two Surprise Envelopes

Last week must've been designated "card week" for me by the cardboard overlords because in addition to the 2018 Topps that I splurged on, I got two small, unexpected packages in the mail early in the week, followed by another mailing a few days later. The two unexpected ones were from Peter at Baseball Every Night and Matt at BWTP and since each one was fairly small, I figured I would just combine these into one post.

First up, Peter's envelope consisted of primarily Indians cards from 2018 Topps. I know I pulled some of these went I ripped into the 2018 Topps packs the other day but one card I know for sure I didn't pull was the Jay Bruce card. It's nice to see that he got a proper Indians card, even though Panini put one out in their Chronicles line last year. 

Also included, that appeared to be more for backing on the cards than anything else, was this 1989 Bowman Luis Aguayo card. After looking him up on everyone's favorite research site, Baseball Reference, it turns out this is a sunset card of Mr. Aguayo as he finished his career with the 1989 Indians in a bench role, appearing in only 47 games.

Matt's envelope contained only three cards but what three cards they were. First, there's this autograph card of Wladimir Balentien, a name of Reds past I haven't heard or thought of in years. He only played 40 games with the Reds in 2009, his final season in the majors. He spent the 2010 season in Triple-A Louisville and then signed with the Yakult Swallows in Japan, where he's been ever since.

Autograph cards are neat and all but I've always been a fan of relic cards more than I have been autographed cards and getting a bat relic card from one of the heavy hitters of the Big Red Machine is super cool.

This was the gem of Matt's envelope, a nice Tony Perez card from Panini's 2012 Prime Cuts line. Sure, the card looks a little bit plain but in person, it's really nice and a great piece to add to my collection.

A big thanks to both Peter and Matt for the surprise envelopes. I really appreciate it fellas!