Night Owl Sends Cards

I found an unexpected package in my mailbox the other day that arrived from the one and only Night Owl. Somehow, I find it very appropriate to get cards from someone with that title during the Halloween season. Let's dive right in and see what he included.

I'd say about half of the package was made up of Dodger cards, of which I would expect nothing less. I've mentioned in the past about how much I enjoy these Fleer Greats of the Game cards with their simplistic look and full career stats on the back and these six are excellent additions.

I think this may be the first card of Jim Gilliam I've had in my collection and maybe the same for Burleigh Grimes too. It's definitely not the first Harmon Killebrew card I've added though.

I didn't buy any Stadium Club when it came out but I've received some via trade and I really like it. Probably better than some previous years. Suarez had a monster year for the Reds this past season and finished just shy of 50 homers. I hope he gets some MVP consideration because of that.

Some Hall of Famers from Archives. I'm good with that. One of the many issues I had with Archives last year was that some of the pictures just seemed dark or had a dark feel (like the Pedro). There were also some cards where the signatures were completely hidden by the darkness of the picture.

Some nice new cards to add to my Reds binder. Tanner Roark falls into the quick stop/short term stop category pitching only half of the season with the Reds before being shipped off to Oakland. My guess is the Reds might go after him again as a free agent.

Finally, a couple new additions to my Pilots team collection, which were really unexpected and quite welcome as it feels like I've kind of stalled on that recently.

This was a really great package from Night Owl. I do have a small PWE I'm putting together that I'll have out soon in return.

Opening Some Donruss on Opening Day

It's Opening Day today so it only feels natural to rip open some packs.

Since Panini relaunched the Donruss brand back in 2014, I've always enjoyed it. I've been sitting on these five packs for about three weeks now, so it's finally time to tear into them.

The design this year is reminiscent of 1990 Donruss with the name written in script at the top. Of course, since Panini doesn't have an MLB license, the team names and logos are airbrushed out but that really doesn't bother me since the photos they use usually seem to hide that fact. 

Not only are there current players but there are Hall of Famers and retired stars as well, including players you don't see a lot in Topps products like Dave Winfield and Ryne Sandberg.

Since the 2015 issue, Panini has been doing throwbacks to past designs, this year it's 1983. It's not really my favorite design but it's still neat to get these in nearly every pack.

Variations and parallels are strong with this. The Mike Trout card is one of three different versions of his card and Duke Snider is a parallel "cyan back" card although it looks more pink to me.  Have a look below.

See, pink right? Still really cool though regardless of what color you settle on it actually being.

Here are some of the inserts I pulled. Too bad for Cardinals fans that Reyes is out for the year. I really like the Rated Rookie design this year.

Numbered parallels are awesome. I'm leaning toward using these as a base to officially start my "shiny card" side project.

Oh, I got an autograph as well. I'm not exactly sure who Zack Godley is but his numbers last year with Arizona weren't exactly stellar. As usual, I really enjoy Donruss and this is no exception. I'm definitely going to get more of this as I come across it.

Hope everyone enjoys the games today! Baseball season is officially here!