You've Got Mail #45: Night Owl Cards

It finally happened, something I've been waiting on for a long time. I finally received a trade package from the legendary Night Owl. It arrived rather inconspicuously the day after the July 4th holiday, along with the water bill and a circular for Kohl's.

I can smell the chocolate and cream on this card (not really) but this is my first hand cut Hostess card.  I'm not entirely sure who Mike Jorgensen is but regardless, I immediately threw this in a penny sleeve and top loader. Suddenly, I want a pack of Ding Dongs.

Even though my want list may state that I collect a lot of players, it's mean to be solely used as a guide. However, my one main player collection would be Dennis Eckersley. I'm not sure what drives me to collecting his cards but I think it might have something to do with the crazy photos on his cards, case in point, the Upper Deck 70s card.

Some new Expos cards for my team collection were thrown in as well. It's amazing how much the 1996 Pinnacle cards look the same. I have enough Expos cards now to where I need to start combing through them for duplicates. 

Speaking of duplicates, I know these are not. Hoover and Sampson have been major contributors to the Springfield tire fire that has been the Reds bullpen this year. Hoover seems to have lost any idea on how to actually throw the ball over the plate and Sampson hasn't shown great stuff, but managed a nice outing in a spot start recently. I don't remember Paul O'Neill having to pitch for the Reds but I guess I'll have to take Topps' word for it.

As much as I was into Heritage last year, this year has been a complete bust for me. I opened exactly three packs and got next to nothing in terms of cards I was interested in keeping. Archives however, which is where the Father & Son insert is from, was really great this year. It has me wanting to by more packs as I really want to get my hands on some of those 69 Topps Super inserts but I really don't want duplicate base cards lying around the house.

I'd forgotten what a nice clean set 1996 Score was. This came out right about the time I was slowly growing out of collecting. While I had a few cards from this set in my original collection, it was nice to recover cards like this that I lost a long time ago.

The Sean Casey card I find a bit odd as he's listed as a member of the Pirates but is shown in as Reds uniform. Strange. Speaking of strange, I'm not really sure what that Dodgers card is but regardless it's pretty cool. The Joe Oliver card from the acid trip that is 1995 Fleer was thrown in because I had made a comment about that card on a post a long time ago.

To round things out, a nice batch of 1984 Topps was thrown in as well, which means I need to take a few minutes on a weekend to cross check and update my want list. You'll have to excuse the scan, I was in a hurry when I scanned it and forgot to trim the photo.

I feel like a member of the cool kids club now, having received my first (and hopefully not last) awesome package from Night Owl. As far as a return goes, there's one card I'm looking for specifically that I need to get before I start loading up a bubble mailer to send back.

You've Got Mail #44: Waiting 'Til Next Year

I received another package from the ever generous P-Town Tom of the Waiting 'Til Next Year blog after I commented on a recent post where he asked why there weren't any Indians collectors. While the primary team I collect is the Reds, I also enjoy collecting Indians and Expos cards. A few short weeks later, a box that was literally crammed full of Indians and Expos arrived on my doorstep, much to my delight.

There was a really good batch of Manny Ramirez cards included, so much so that I could've easily made a whole post out of just those alone. However, I picked these out as they were the rookie cards included in the batch and long before the phrase "Manny being Manny" was uttered in the baseball lexicon. The photo on the Collector's Choice card makes him look like an extra on the set of Major League 2 while most of the others feature him a road uniform. I really like the parallel of the Pinnacle card. I believe its called a "dufex parallel" by most people out there but I could be wrong. If someone knows for certain what those are called, by all means let me know in the comments.

I love me some oddballs and I love oddballs even better when they include old timers such as Lou Boudreau and Cy Young. Looking at these two things jump out at me immediately. First, I had no idea that Ralph Kiner played for the Indians. According to Baseball Reference, he played 113 games for the Tribe in 1955, his final season in the bigs. The second thing is that I have no clue who Andre Thornton is. Going back to Baseball Reference, Thornton carved out a pretty serviceable 14-year career, ten of which was with Cleveland, was a two-time all-star (1982 and 1984) and a Silver Slugger award in 1984.

USA Baseball cards seem to be a staple of Tom's packages, although they were missing from the last package. Seeing the card of Francisco Lindor in the package was definitely one of the highlights for me. Justus Sheffield was sent to the Yankees just recently by the Indians for Andrew Miller in the hopes that Miller can be a dominant closer for them down the stretch.

I may have mentioned this before but I never was a big fan of Albert Belle. He always came across to me as having no respect for the game and being in it just for the money ... but could he ever launch some homers. When playing knothole baseball, I started emulating his swing just because it looked easy to do. Pictured above are a few Donruss cards. I always liked 94 Donruss, mainly because they used a full logo.

Here's three people, Dave Roberts, Doc Gooden, and David Justice, who I'd forgotten had played for the Indians. Does anyone really remember Doc Gooden's stint in Cleveland? I don't.

This batch is a good representation of the variety that Tom's brick contained. There was both new and old, new stuff featuring old guys, reprints, etc. Just a great smorgasbord of cards to feast on. It's not every day that I get an Early Wynn card in the mail either.

I'll round this out with a sampling of Expos. About 3/4 of the brick was Indians with the remaining 1/4 being Expos cards. These were the ones that immediately jumped out to me. I'm pretty sure I might be able to use that Raines card in my 84 Topps set.

A big thanks to Tom for all the great stuff. Its always nice when I can add quality cards to my team collections.

Happiness is a Box of 2016 Donruss

Along with the box of Ghostbusters cards I reviewed a few weeks ago, there was also a box of 2016 Donruss that came along with them. I opened a few packs back in the spring, pulled 3 hits out of four packs, and was really blown away at how great the cards were, even for a logo-less product. While this won't be a super thorough review like the Ghostbusters cards, there were still lots of highlights to be had.

Everyone has probably seen the base cards for this by now as it was the first release of the year from Panini. There's a healthy mix of current players, up and coming players, and retired starts, not to mention the San Diego Chicken. Even with the fact that there are no logos or team names on the cards, these are still some pretty good shots and Panini did a fairly decent job of hiding the fact that there are no names or logos.

Like they did last year, there are some throwback cards, this time from 1982 Donruss. It seemed like there was one in every pack. I really like the Rickey Henderson cards of him, well literally, stealing bases.

Now here comes the fun stuff, the inserts! I haven't seen the Masters of the Game inserts talked about a lot, if at all, but I really like these two cards. They have that artistic look like Diamond Kings and have a really nice design to boot.

There are photo variations although, unlike Topps, you can actually pick out the variations without having to consult some sort of online repository. The photo variations have a nickname, such as the case of the Ken Griffey Jr. card above, or some sort of note like "NL ROY" or something to that effect. I was expecting more than one of the pink parallel cards and for what they are, they're okay but not really my thing.

Rookies were plentiful and these are three of the best that I pulled. I like how the Rated Rookies are a different design from the base set but the "Rookies" subset seems like overkill.

Now we're getting into the good stuff. First up these 82 parallels of some sort. The design on the Prince Fielder card looks like the ink blotches from one of those visions tests while the Donaldson has some sort of 80s zebra print thing going one. The Elite Dominator and the Elite Series cards are one per box inserts. While I like the Elite Series DeGrom card, it feels almost unnecessary as Panini does the Elite cards as one of their late season releases.

Ok, now the very good stuff. This Dansby Swanson parallel is numbered out of 400Swanson was flipped to Atlanta last winter as part of the ridiculous Shelby Miller trade. When all is said and done, I think Atlanta will come out the winner as Miller has been a complete disaster for Arizona.

Speaking of Arizona, the hits from the desert continue with this Peter O'Brien autographed jersey card. I really like the concept of this series with jersey pieces and signatures from up and coming players. The patch itself is no small piece either which makes it that much better.

This must be some sort of Diamondbacks hot box! First the Dansby numbered card, then the O'Brien autograph jersey card, now this Archie Bradley jersey card. For lack of a better term, this is the "base" card design as there are different versions of these in both red and green (each of which are numbered). The design on this is a bit dark and I personally think this card would have benefited from a jersey swatch from a color other than black. 

Nola is one of the top pitching prospects for the Phillies and when I pulled this out I was pretty happy. You can't really tell from the scan but it's numbered as well, even though it's a sticker autograph, which really doesn't bother me as it blends in pretty well with the white. I like the blue background and the general design a lot on this. 

Here's another jersey card set that I think is pretty cool where it's a jersey piece from a team of a current player, in this case Jake Arrietta being represented as a member of the Orioles. This is my first Orioles hit I've had in a long time and I'll gladly take it, especially since he's one of the best pitchers in the National League, well at least until he cooled off recently.

I'm not sure this card could be classified as a hit but I'm going to put it in that bucket anyway. This is a test proof card of Alex Rodriguez numbered 9/10 as this is apparently the magenta version. There are other versions of the test proof cards in cyan, black, and yellow. Needless to say, I was pretty happy to pull this out of the next to last pack when I broke into the box. This sucker went right into a top loader.

Overall, I would say this was a really good product to tear into. You get a lot of stuff, be it numbered cards, hits, inserts, and base cards, as evidenced by the picture below. Whatever you're into, I don't think you could go wrong with this. It's moderately priced too. Counting the A-Rod test proof card, I pulled five hits out of a box that guaranteed three.