Cards on Cards Dumps Extra Cards

Everyone's favorite Cardinals fan, Kerry at Cards on Cards, was looking to shed some excess cards recently and I was the beneficiary of a nice bubble mailer a few weeks back. The only thing he asked is that a PWE or something gets sent back his way.

The bubble mailer was quite the eclectic package. Lots of Reds and lots of other stuff. Here are some shiny Reds that will definitely find a home in my Reds binder once it's re-organized. The Johnny Cueto card is some sort of shadow box card from the revived Pinnacle line a few years back.

I've never really been much on the Turkey Red cards but I really like that Frank Robinson card. All of these will also land in my reorganized Reds binder.

And two more shiny cards. Let's look at the threesome on the "Talent Pipeline" card. Hunter Greene was out all of this year after having Tommy John surgery, last I checked Shed Long is still with the Mariners, and Nick Senzel is the Reds everyday center fielder.

Keyvius Sampson has not resurfaced in the bigs since appearing in 18 games for the Reds in during the 2016 season. He was a decent pitcher and pretty much filled a gap in the bullpen and made spot starts as needed. For 2019, he spent the season with both the Giants Rookie League and Double-A teams appearing in all of six games. Here's a fun fact though...he was the KBO league's (as in the Korean League) strikeout leader for 2018.

Here's a nice Billy Hamilton relic card. I was not expecting this but I'll take it.

Speaking of Billy Hamilton, here are some cards of his when he was with the Royals. He didn't fare too well in Kansas City this year and hit a paltry .211 over 93 games. He was picked up by the Braves on waivers in August and has made 17 appearances for them as of this writing.

I love me some shiny cards and these certainly fit the billy. I've really, really liked what I've seen from the Panini Prizm line this year.

Oddballs are always appreciated as well. I've already covered Hills in a post this past summer but this is the first I've seen of cards from the True Value line. For those not familiar, True Value is a chain of independent hardware stores throughout the US (for those in the grocery business, kind of like an IGA) that sell tools, appliances, lumber, paint, etc. The Buddy Bell card above is from their 1986 set, which was the only mainstream set that the company ever produced.

Diamond Kings cards of Hall of Famers. I think it's great that card companies create cards of Satchel Paige with the Browns as that team it nearly all but forgotten about.

A few great cards of Juan Marichal including a card of featuring both Marichal and Bartolo Colon. How can you really go wrong with that?

Some fun Willie Mays cards from 1993 Upper Deck. That checklist card is super cool.

More Hall of Famers, this time from various runs of Allen & Ginter.

And finally, a nice random batch of cards that I couldn't find any place else for in this post. 

Lots of great stuff here from Kerry. I appreciate him sending these over and I'll return fire here soon with some Cardinals cards.

You've Got Mail #76: Red Cardboard

I'd heard rumors of Matt at the Red Cardboard blog doing a mass cleansing of his collection. So I found his blog and those rumors proved to be correct. I found a few cards I was interested in and emailed him. It turns out that most everything I was interested in had been spoken for but there were a few things I'd asked for that were still left. Along with the cards I'd asked about which I'll get to shortly, Matt threw in a ton of extra Reds cards as well.

I'll start off with some oddballs. The 1977 Burger Chef Fun Meal disc is one of the more neat pieces of the package. To me there's just something about cards from restaurants and stores that aren't around anymore. To me, they tell an interesting story about the time when they were popular and more importantly, what happened to them? My favorite part though has to be the back with the Frankenstein-esque character "Crankenburger". The Johnny Vander Meer and Paul Derringer cards are from the 1983 Cramer Baseball Legends set. I'm not sure who (or what) Cramer was but these are definitely some neat cards of two of the top Reds pitchers from the late 1930s.

Here's a interesting card from TCMA. If you would've guessed this was anyone but Billy Martin then you would've been wrong. I wasn't even sure who it was when I first looked at it. I'd always read that Martin anchored second base for the Reds in 1960 after being acquired as part of a deal that sent Gordy Coleman to the Indians but I never could find the 1960 Topps card that noted this for a decent price. This card will nicely suffice in its place although I'm adding that 1960 card to my most wanted list. As far as his single season stats for the Reds, he played 103 games, and hit .246/.304/.334 for a Reds squad that finished 6th. 

I love early 80s cards, especially those of the Big Red Machine players. Concepcion was the last link to those days for the Reds as he kept playing until 1988. 

At first I thought these were just simply Topps cards from the "junk wax" era and I flipped past them because I've seen them dozens of times. On a second glance, these are O-Pee-Chee cards! The giveaway for me was the "Now with ..." text on the Martinez and Power cards. It's always great to add some O-Pee-Chee to my collection.

More oddballs, this time of the Pepsi and Diet Pepsi variety. I had a few of these as a kid but I'd forgotten about them until now, plus I get to add a new card to the Sabo collection and that's always a plus.

I had really hoped this card would've scanned better but it was not to be. However, this Jose Rijo card was issued by Upper Deck in conjunction with Denny's. The lone Denny's in Dayton closed down a few years ago and has since been demolished. The food was ok the few times I ate there (although I remember the Slamburger being pretty awesome) but going there wasn't about the food as my friends and I would go there late at night after going to wrestling shows across the street at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds and it was just some time for us all to unwind and chill out together.

Another card I'd wished would've scanned better was this but it's a Gold Rush card with foil so I sort of expected it. Anyway, this is a perfect shot of Riverfront Stadium from the 90s when the Reds were still hanging in there as far as winning teams go. As a kid going to games, the place was cavernous, having to wind through tunnels to get to the field level seats but I have some good memories there and saw so many games. I even saw my only Bengals game to date there but don't remember much of it.

Matt threw in a whole slew of Barry Larkin cards, so many in fact, that it was tough for me to figure out which ones to scan. Instead of scanning a bunch, I figured I'd just scan in one of my favorites. As I've mentioned in prior posts, I don't have a whole lot of late career Larkin cards. Going through all those Larkins and weeding out dupes may take me a while too.

Some early 00s Upper Deck and a really neat card of Johnny Bench accepting his Gold Glove award. Upper Deck made some really good quality cards during this time, too bad they're pretty much nonexistent now.

I love this card of Big Klu, everything about it screams "cool card". The way the red stripe blends with the tan border and the black and white photo make it just a mesh of awesome. Plus, it's Big Klu in his trademark sleeveless jersey. How can you get better than that?

I'm not hip to the whole rookie card thing so if this classifies as a rookie card of Joey Votto then that's super cool. This is easily the earliest card of Votto that I own now.

Here's a few more random cards of George Foster and Joe Morgan from the early 2000s from the Upper Deck Decades set. I would love to track down as many more of these as I can as I'm fascinated with baseball and the 70s. Which reminds me, if love this period of baseball check out the book "Big Hair and Plastic Grass". It's easily one of the best baseball books I've ever read.

Matt was also nice enough to include more modern cards as well, such as this Frank Robinson. I can't remember exactly what set this is from (perhaps Topps Tek or something like that) but it's nice to see Topps make a card of Robinson as a Red as it seems like he gets more love from the card companies as an Oriole.

Here are three more Votto cards I didn't have. The clear one again looks like it's be an insert from Topps Tek, Topps Fire, or one of those late season releases that I don't pay much interest to.

More Reds randoms including a Anthony DeSclafani (or Tony Disco for short) purple parallel and an Amir Garrett minor league card.

The Reds portion closes with some rookie cards from Heritage high number. Jesse Winker should be in the mix for an outfield spot this season as he was pretty impressive last season in the playing time he did get.

Moving on to the cards that initiated this whole deal. These were all that was left from the 1979 Topps cards that were up for grabs. I'd figured someone would've claimed Steve Carlton but hey, I'll take it.

Starting Lineup cards are always a fun addition to any collection. The Lou Gehrig one is super cool.

But here's the card I really wanted the most out of the deal, this 1991 Kellogg's Willie Mays. I've had a newfound appreciation for Kellogg's cards over the past few years so I grab them up whenever I can, provided they're in decent shape. Sure it didn't scan all that well but it doesn't matter, it's still an awesome card of a legendary player. 

Card Show Report Pt. 2: Miscellaneous Baseball

Along with the 2016 cards I detailed in part 1 of this report, I grabbed a bunch of recent stuff of all from the bargain bins. There was more I wanted to get but I didn't want to get cards just for the sake of getting cards. All of these cost less than a dollar each.

A couple framed Gypsy Queen parallels of Frank Robinson and Steve Carlton from years past. I always like it when I can find cool stuff of Hall of Famers in the bargain bin and these definitely fit the mold. The Robinson card is a real beauty.

I generally don't buy Babe Ruth cards. Nothing against the guy but most of his cards really don't fit my collection. However, this particular card has him as a member of the Boston Braves and that's something that seems to be not necessarily an easy find. One of my side collections is cards of players with teams you don't normally associate them with. Speaking of which, the Griffey card has him in a Mariners uniform but listed as a member of the White Sox so that's a bit strange.

A few random cards from the early to mid 1980s. Getting the Hrbek RC for about 75 cents was a pretty fun find. The Seaver card scanned like crap but it's a Sportflics card so it's about what I expected. 

These Gypsy Queen base cards came from the same guy that I picked up the majority of my 2016 singles from that I detailed in part 1. Can't beat 10 cents a piece for some hall of famers!

Now we come to the two really awesome finds from the bargain bins. First was this Anthony Rizzo sepia parallel from last year's Topps Chrome. This came from a box where a guy said all cards in the box were 50 cents each. This is the first one of these sepia toned parallels I have in my collection and, honestly, their pretty cool. Am I going to actively go out of my way to collect them? No. Will I jump on one of a star player found in a bargain bin? Absolutely!

This card is by far the gem of my bargain bin searching. It came out of the same bin from the same seller that had the Rizzo card above. High end stuff like Museum Collection, Triple Threats, etc is way out of my price range but should the odd card find it's way into a 50 cent bin, I'm all over it, plus its Willie Mays so it makes it that much better. I love how the background is all black and while but Mays is completely in color, makes it really stand out. 

This wasn't a bad haul of cards at all but wait ... there's more. Part 3 coming up soon featuring nothing but vintage!

2015 Topps Update Retail Pack

Quick post tonight as it's late and I need to get to bed but I finally decided to jump on the Topps Update bandwagon and take a gamble on a retail pack. I'm not really expecting much out of this so I might as well just dive right in.

The best card I pulled out of the whole batch, this Anthony Rizzo throwback. I really dig these and might end up trying to locate more of them but it's low on my list right now.

I've heard a lot about Brock Holt so it was nice to get this. Here's hoping he's able to contribute nicely in Boston in 2016.

The two best rookies from the pack, Addison Russell and Steven Matz. Matz made his MLB debut against the Reds in June and completely overmatched them.

All-star cards! This is a subset I probably will end up putting together since the game was in Cincy and I think it'd be pretty nice to have the set to remember it by.

More All-Star goodies! Will the real Darren O'Day please stand up?

I consider Home Run Derby cards to be part of the All-Star set as well.

Finally, the inserts. My favorite one here is Wille Mays in a Mets uniform as you don't see much of that these days. Not a big fan of the Whatever Works insert set though, just something about it strikes me as cheesy.

I wouldn't say this pack was a bust, but it wasn't great either. I haven't gotten too deep into Update to really make a fair judgement one way or the other but it's not bad ... and yes, I do plan to get one of the holiday mega-boxes and maybe another retail pack of it.

Side rant: if you look closely at the top right corner of the Darren O'Day card from above, you'll see it's been dinged! This happened to a few other cards as well, including the aforementioned Steven Matz card. This is what happens when a retail pack doesn't want to cooperate and open properly. Grrrr.