You've Got Mail #57: Three Christmas PWEs

It's been nearly a week since I've had time to sit down and write about cards. If you follow me on Twitter, then you'll know why. Last Thursday, my three-year-old son had to go in the hospital with an intestinal blockage. We went in to the ER, thinking they would take care of it there. They did but there were other issues the doctor was concerned about so they admitted him. He was there from Thursday night until Saturday afternoon and my wife and I spent the whole time there with him (save for the hour or so it took me to run home and gather up overnight bags for each of us). I'll save you the details but suffice to say he had to be "cleaned out", as the nurses put it. What that means, I'll leave up to the imagination. Saturday afternoon they released him and now he's doing much better and is back to his normal little self. So, aside from my "Four Favorite Cards" post that was already scheduled before the hospital stay happened, I've been nowhere near the blog scene. I'm just now getting all my bearings back and having time to get writing again. 

Since I'm behind on everything, I figured what better way to start getting caught up on stuff is to combine a bunch of PWEs I received during Christmas time into one post. Yes, I know it's nearly mid-January and I'm just now writing about cards I got at Christmas. Heck, we still have our tree up! While no presents will be going under it anytime soon, here's what I was gifted by fellow bloggers when the Christmas tree was still relevant.

The first PWE was from Oscar over at ATBATT. Actually, he sent me two PWEs, the second of which I'll cover next. The first one though was stuffed with what else but Reds cards. Some of the early 90s ones are duplicates but that's fine. The Tony Perez Gypsy Queen card though is something else. The artistic style of Gypsy Queen is always nice but take a look at the background of that card. It's great isn't it? I'm not sure what ballpark that is but I'm almost certain it's not Crosley Field as Perez is in the road grey uniform. Regardless, it's a pretty awesome card.

The second PWE was more focused on some of my side collections and they were all touched on. First, there were two nice additions to my Dennis Eckersley PC and then two Expos cards, but the ones I were really excited about were the bottom three. I had no recollection that Manny had ever played for Oakland so I took to the ever helpful Baseball Reference to confirm. Turns out that he didn't. He signed with Oakland in February of 2012 and was released later that summer. Guess what, that makes it a zero-year card! The other two cards are parts of collections I'm just starting up, that being buybacks and throwback uniforms. The Valbuena card you've already seen in the latest Walgreens repack.

Next, we have a small four-card PWE from Trevor at Bump and Run cards. The two 1984 Topps cards will help out toward the set build. It's one of my collecting goals to either finish or nearly complete that set this year. I still need to track down the Don Mattingly rookie but I'm waiting for a decent price before I grab it. The other two cards will help out with both the Reds collection and the aforementioned Eckersley PC. 

Closing this out is a nice selection from Adam K. at Infield Fly Rule, the man who benefits from all my unwanted Rockies cards. There were some Indians cards, a nice card of Harmon Killebrew, and some Reds "cameo" cards, which I have to admit are pretty cool. One card I need to touch on though is the 1993 Donruss Freddie Benavides. I've mentioned before that 1993 Donruss is one of my favorite sets but almost everything I have is from Series 1. Being that it's an expansion draft card, it's from Series 2 and I really like the fact that he's sporting a Reds uniform while having the Rockies logo and colors on the nameplate.

A big thanks goes out to Oscar, Trevor, and Adam K. for the great additions to my collection. Hopefully things will settle down some and I can get back to a regular posting schedule and possibly even get my Christmas tree down.

My Four Favorite Cards of 2016

I'll admit, I'm probably one of the last to jump in on this. Oh well, better late than never, right? To come up with this list, I went back through my posts that featured cards from 2016 to help refresh my memory. I wanted to find five cards but in all honesty, I couldn't. So here are my four favorite cards from 2016.

This Johnny Bench card that I picked up at a card show over the summer comes in at fourth place. While it may not be the most exciting card, I really like the way that it has that sort of artsy look to it. I wasn't too keen on the Gypsy Queen design this year when I first saw it but I've definitely warmed up to it.

Coming in at third place is Samoa Joe and a relic card nonetheless! One of the best things about buying WWE blasters is that you get a guaranteed relic card in every box and it allows you to get some neat wrestling cards at a decent price. I got this out of a random blaster box I picked up from Target. While I wasn't the biggest fan of the Topps design this year for baseball, I think it worked perfectly for wrestling.

You'll have to forgive the somewhat blurry images on this card and the next card. I was crunched for time when writing this and cropped them from previous scans.

This was the card I initially had penciled in for card of the year. From the first time I saw this card on the blogs, I knew I had to have it. The red border, the old school Indians uniform, and the 70s Indians script at the bottom. I was lucky enough to find this for a dime at the card show I went to this past summer and everything about this card just screams awesome.

And now, the winner for card of the year ... 2016 Archives Carlos Gonzalez! Everything about the 1991 style Archives cards this year was just perfect. If there was a category for subset or partial set of the year, then it would win hands down. This picture on this card is just great as Car Go is scoring and the bright yellow of the left field pole is in the background and the green of the wall blends in the background perfectly. Everything about this card just works and I knew I had to have it as soon as I laid eyes on it.

There's my take on card of the year. I'm waiting patiently for the 2017 cards to roll out, which will be soon, and hopefully some of the cards will be as good as these.

Retail Repack Adventures #6: Quality Control Fail

Happy New Year everyone!

I had planned on getting a post up right after Christmas but the combination of getting back to work and not having much free time caused my holiday hiatus to be a bit longer than anticipated. However, things are finally starting to settle down and I'll have more time to write. With it being a new year, I figure what better way to start things off with than with another lovely repack from the local Walgreens.

Dont panic! It's just the cover card of one Joe Panik from the 2015 Topps Update All-Star Access set. When I first got one of these in one of those holiday boxes from Target, I was confused. They weren't the normal All-Star cards I was used to seeing in Update. Come to find out, they were a retail only insert set. Even though I'm just a few cards shy of completing the All-Star cards from 2015 (I really need to check on that), I'm not planning on going after these.

A repack wouldn't be complete without a giant lot of 2014 Topps. I only opened 3-4 packs of it at the time so I'm definitely making up for it now. The Luis Valbuena card is pretty awesome with the throwback Cubs jersey.

Some nice cards from the 2000s which have since been added to my binder. Does anyone else remember Impact? I didn't until the Jim Thome card revealed itself. 

More recent Topps cards, this time from 2012. I like that set, no matter what anyone else says. It's the set that got me back into collecting.

Anytime I can pull some 86 Topps cards from a repack, it's a good day. One day I might decide to put together that set but I have some other projects I want to work on first. 

1989 Topps was well represented with cards not only from the main set, but also from the Traded set. I've always sort of liked the design of these cards as it felt kind of fun but it also stands out because it followed a very bland 1988 design. Also, I had no idea that Buddy Bell had played for the Astros.

This is interesting. It's a 1994 card of Alma Ziegler from the Ted Williams card company. Ziegler was one of the top stars of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League during the 40s and 50s. She played for the Milwaukee/Grand Rapids Chicks from 1944-54, won the 1950 Player of the Year award, was a four time all-star, and was the official team captain. This is a pretty cool card that will have a nice home in my 90s binder.

Getting oddballs out of repacks is always neat. I'm always a fan of these Post cereal cards from the 90s as I had a pretty extensive collection of them back in the day. I don't think I had this Bonds one though. I've never been a fan of Bonds in all honesty but an oddball card of him as a Pirate is one that I'll hang on to.

Here's where things get a little screwy. First there were two of these Tom Brunansky cards ....

... then two of these Alejandro De Aza cards ...

... then two of these Todd Hundley cards ...

... and then this! What happened here I wonder and how did this get past quality control? Also, how did this, what was once a Dan Plesac card, get so horribly damaged?

Puzzling right? 

Anyway, that lays to rest this Walgreens repack. I've got one more of these left that I picked up and hopefully it doesn't have the egregious issues this one had.