You've Got Mail #50: Cards on Cards

Kerry over at Cards on Cards is one of the good guys around the hobby, despite him being a Cardinals fan. Recently, he dropped some unexpected mail on me loaded with good stuff. 

One of my favorite sets of the 80s is 1986 Topps, mainly because of the design. The Tony Perez card in the middle is a card I didn't think I needed until I actually got it. Now that I have it, I don't need it anymore. It's a nice sunset card and I like the image of Perez high-fiving Eric Davis. It's sort of symbolic of the old celebrating with the new as Davis would be an anchor of the Reds outfield until he was traded to the Dodgers following the 1991 season.

These three guys are poised to be part of the future for a Reds team that was pretty bad this past season. Peraza came over as part of the Todd Frazier deal last offseason and after getting some seasoning at Triple A early in the year, made his mark by being able to play a handful of different positions. Garrett should be with the team either in 2017 or 2018 at the latest and Stephenson is probably the top catching prospect the Reds have.

Reds cards weren't the only thing included in the package though as there was a plethora of St. Louis Browns cards. The Browns were one of the worst teams in the American League, consistently finishing at the bottom of the standings and making one World Series appearance in their history. After the 1953 season, the Browns were sold and moved to Baltimore to become the Orioles. Since then, the Orioles have pretty much distanced themselves from their past at the Browns. Even though the Browns were pretty miserable for most of their existence, they still had some pretty notable players, including Hall of Famer George Sisler, who isn't exactly a household name, except to historians of the game, and Rick Ferrell who started his career with the Browns in 1929. 

Not only are these Browns cards, but they are Conlon cards as well which makes them doubly appreciated. Of this batch, I think the only one of these people I've ever heard of before is Jimmy Austin.

These cards are curious. They are definitely Conlon photos but I've never seen this particular set before. According to the Trading Card Database, these are part of the Conlon World Wide Sport series. I like the fact they are full bleed photos but there is no name on the front of the card, plus it seems like there is a brown hue over them when compared to the black bordered Conlon set.

Reds and Browns ... I'd say this was quite the colorful package.

You've Got Mail #41: Waiting 'Til Next Year

Back in the early spring, I entered a contest that P-Town Tom was running based on what he had pilfered from an estate sale. I'd forgotten I won a prize until he emailed me and the other winner informing us that our prizes were in the mail.

When I think of the term "Endless Summer", I think of the summer of 2003 when I was fresh out of high school and my friends and I were working as shift managers and projection booth operators at a run down dump of a dollar cinema on the west side of Hamilton, Ohio. Our pay rate was just above peanuts and the place was falling apart but we had a lot of fun while trying to keep ourselves entertained since no one came to see movies as the nice theater was just around the corner and we had little to no business being in charge. I still look back fondly on those days, just as I'm sure that some people do during the summers that the Big Red Machine was clicking on all cylinders when Johnny Bench, Tony Perez, and all the others were winning NL pennants and World Series titles. Those days are looked back fondly by most, if not all, Reds fans, just as the summer of 2003 is for me. 

While this card won't cause me to go on a deep thought stream of consciousness like I did with the first card, this is still a really fun and unique card from 2001 Topps Chrome. It captures Johnny Bench and Joe Morgan from the 1970s and then Reds stars Ken Griffey Jr. and Barry Larkin. Too bad Griffey would miss nearly the whole 2001 season when he suffered a bad leg injury during the opening week of the season and Larkin was only three years away from retirement. Still, this is a really cool looking card and I'm curious to see what other combos there were like this for other teams.

My Sean Casey collection is slowly growing thanks through trades such as this. Never was a big fan of Stadium Clubs insert cards simply because they put so much thought into the photography and the base card design, it feels like the insert are simply afterthoughts. The Topps Finest card though I really dig and believe me it's better in person than it is in the scan.

This card, though, is the new winner in the Sean Casey collection. On the eve of Opening Day 1998, the Reds traded off Dave Burba, who had been one of their most consistent pitchers, to Cleveland for a kid no one had ever heard of named Sean Casey. I love everything about this card, the young Sean Casey not knowing the huge impact he'd have on the Reds, the red pinstripe jerseys before the Reds went crazy and put black into their logo, and cavernous old Riverfront Stadium with the green of the astroturf, the different colored levels where if you went to a game and someone asked where you sat, you simply said "the green seats" or "the red seats", and sitting in the big old stadium watching a team just playing to break even with not a care in the world. Those were some great days and some good times and this one Sean Casey card brought a huge smile to my face when I saw it.

I picked up the standard version of this card last year at a card show, so I was pretty surprised to find this in the package. Last year's Archives had two Reds players in their "Fan Favorites" autograph line, Joe Oliver and Jose Rijo, and I'm trying to track down both of them. This is the silver parallel version (side note: I had no clue there were parallel versions of these) and the signature is a bit better than the standard version. I'm still on the lookout for the Rijo but it's proven difficult to find.

Speaking of Jose Rijo, here's a card of his along with a few others from 1993 Flair. I never really got many of these cards during my initial run of collecting as a kid but the ones I did get were really cool. All these years later, they still hold up quite well. The Reds in 1993 were still a fairly sold team, having some leftover parts from the 1990 World Series team along with some veterans from other club and younger players.

The Griffey Jr. Reds collection slowly grows. It seems like most everyone has forgotten about his time in Cincinnati but I haven't. Yes, his star faded while he was here but the championships that were promised never materialized, mainly because the pitching was incredibly suspect. 

These are certainly an interesting lot. I like the framed design on them but what's with the word on the side of the card? If it's supposed to describe emotion, it failed. None of the words are anywhere near some sort of emotion, such as "torque". Imagine if torque was an emotion? "How are you today, Al?" I'm just torque, Pete." Doesn't quite work does it.

A good smattering of cards from many different years and sets. I'm not sure if the Ron Gant card would be classified as a refractor or not but he definitely had a huge year and won the NL Comeback Player of the Year in his only season with the Reds. He defected to the nasty Cardinals after that year though. The Tyler Stephenson card is from this year's Topps Pro Debut set, of which I'm sitting on four packs that I have yet to open.

Getting new Barry Larkin cards for the Reds binder is always welcome. I seem to have a good number of cards from his early days and the mid-90s but I don't have a lot from his later years. The Flair is a super nice card and features a Barry Bonds cameo and the SPx card is a nice later year addition.

This card though is one of the best cards in the package. I have zero of these Topps Finest cards as I was never really much of a Finest person. This card is super cool and it's definitely going to have a featured spot in the binder.

Last thing I'll show off here is this box topper from last year's Allen & Ginter. This was wedged in between two pieces of cardboard that I thought was just there to protect the cards during shipping. I almost threw it away but then caught a glimpse of this hanging out in between. Good thing I didn't toss it in the trash because this is really cool. I'm not too big on oversized cards but this will be a nice thing to put in my box of good stuff.

This was a really great trade package and brought back a lot of fun memories for me from days gone by.  There was other stuff included that I didn't show off but believe me, it was just as good as everything that I showed here.

You've Got Mail #31: Waiting 'Til Next Year

I'm nearly caught up on Super Trader trade packages at this point, just a few more to go, like this box of awesome from Tom at Waiting 'Til Next Year!

This is going to be long so just bear with me ...

This was my favorite card of the package and just goes to show that you don't need an autograph or a relic to get enjoyment out of cards. The beauty of this is its simplicity, where just a simple shift left or right makes everything move. Simple, yet effective. Also, very reminiscent of the old 3D Kellogg's cards.

Next up a whole giant mess of K-Mart cards. The number of K-Mart stores seems to diminish by the day. The nearest one to me is in Springboro, Ohio (about 30 minutes up the freeway) and is closing down later this summer. You can bet that I'll be there trying to score some cards for next to nothing. Cards from retail chains are always a guilty pleasure of mine and these definitely fit the bill.

Some Griffey Jr. Reds cards! I like the one from Topps 2000 as it's probably his first card as a Red and Topps made sure to get an actual photo of him in a Reds uniform instead of doing some airbrushing. Also, Topps Total next to it. The world needs more bargain sets like that.

Josh Hamilton as a Red. Oh, what could have been if they hadn't traded him away. That Opening Day card looks like a night card as well.

Some nice 1993 Topps cards that I think I was missing, although the Sabo might be a duplicate. Not sure though. I really need to catalog the Reds binder.

More Topps 2000. The more I think about it, the more I like that set.

Some cards of Eric Davis. Check out the one on the right. I'm not exactly sure what's happening with him in that picture but it looks like he's asleep.

Some Swell oddballs that are well ... pretty swell featuring three pretty well known players in Cincinnati circles. Milt Pappas was acquired by the Reds in the Frank Robinson trade, George Foster mashed 52 homers in 1977, and Johnny Vander Meer, the only person to throw back-to-back no hitters.

Also, included were these Team USA cards, both regular and the foil versions seen here. If Jesse Winker (on the left) is going to be ready for the majors next year, the Reds will probably have a nice logjam in the outfield, especially the Adam Duvall has been knocking the cover off the ball this season.

Some more oddballs, this time of the Starting Lineup variety. These cards are always the next best thing if the figures themselves are too pricey for me (and believe me, from the prices I've seen on Starting Lineup figures at some places around here, they definitely are).

Panini Classics is quickly becoming one of my favorite brands to collect. I really like the Tony Perez card and it's him in the old school, sleeveless Reds jersey, the one they had right before the uniform Pete Rose is sporting on the left.

A good collection of Larkin cards were included, these were the best of the batch. I forgot how cool those Upper Deck Ovation cards were with the raised stitching of the baseball.

A couple of youngsters in Tyler Stephenson and Nick Howard. Stephenson's cards are going for a pretty penny on COMC and I refuse to pay a rather large sum for a base card. Getting it in a trade is much better and fits my budge perfectly.

I'll close this out with a dash of Expos cards to add to my ever growing collection of them. 

Tom, I'm not sure what card show bin or card shop you raided but these cards were awesome and definitely filled in some holes for me! Hopefully you don't have to wait until next year (see what I did there?) for a return package from me!