Monday, May 29, 2017

My Top 10 PC cards for Joe Sakic

Nothing like leaving a contest entry to the last minute, right?  As many of you may know, Joe Sakic has been my longest running, and favorite Player Collection.  I haven't counted in a while, but I'm sure that 600 cards is a good estimate for what I have that features Sakic right now.  Lots of parallels in varying colors, shapes or signature styles (think MVP) account for quite a few of those cards. 

Limiting this post to 10 was tough.  But I managed to do it, and here they are...

2010-11 Score #1  Joe Earns a Spot in the Rafters

Colorado didn't delay raising Joe's #19 into the rafters, retiring his number opening night October 1, 2009.   Part of Joe's history with the Nordiques/Avalanche was the great battles that they had with their Western Conference rivals the Detroit Red Wings, featured on the next two cards.


1993-94 Upper Deck Next In Line #NL3

A pair of 19's, both the leader of their franchises.  If only Upper Deck knew what was coming over the next decade, they could have named this card differently.  Yzerman was the reason that Joe wore #91 for Canada in international tournaments.


2013-14 Panini Totally Certified Red #CC-YS

What better way to show off a pair of legends than with a piece of their jerseys!  I picked this up not too long ago from COMC for less than $10, and I'm very happy to add it to my Sakic collection. 


1994-95 Upper Deck Electric Ice #404

One of the cards that suckered me into the parallel collecting monkey that still exists today for me.  As I mentioned earlier, I have so many different parallels of Joe they probably account for a 1/3 of my Sakic collection.  But this is one of the first, and will always be one of my favorites.   I'm still trying to collect that set.


2008-09 O-Pee-Chee Retro Rainbow Parallel #369

Getting this card from fellow blogger GCRL (Jim) was one of the highlights of my holiday season last year.  Upper Deck going out on a limb and using one of Topps designs was also a great thing to see.  The 79-80 Topps/OPC hockey set was one of the best designs of all time, and seeing Sakic on one of those cards is just awesome for me. 


2003-04 Topps Lost Rookie Cards #LRC-JS

I had Gavin from Baseball Card Breakdown make me a custom card using this design as well.  I loved the push pin set from 88-89 and would love to see a company re-use it a la Topps Heritage. 

1994-95 Parkhurst You Crash the Game Gold #19

I was never very big on redemptions, my mistrust of the Postal Service having a lot to do with that.  But getting a gold set of these back in the day was one of the biggest joys of my collecting career, and having the Sakic was the icing on the cake.


1996-97 Upper Deck #240

Here's what it's all about, raising Lord Stanley.  How can you not like a card featuring your favorite player raising the greatest trophy in sports. 


2006-07 Upper Deck MVP Gotta Have Hart #HH5

Look at the hardware on the table in front of Joe.  Stanley Cup.  Hart Trophy.  Lady Byng Trophy.  What shocks me about the whole thing is that this is on a MVP card.  MVP was never known for their great insert sets, but this card to me is something else. 


1989-90 OPC #113

Have to end this post with the ultimate Joe Sakic card, his OPC rookie.  I once had about a dozen of these, but in need of money a long time ago, I sold a bunch of them.  I don't regret the decision as I kept this one, the best of the bunch.  It's also one of a few cards that feature him wearing the #88, which he did only in his rookie season before switching to #19 in year 2. 

A quick thanks as well to the Collecting Cutch blog for the contest and allowing me a chance to go over my Sakic collection again.   There's a lot of good stuff there and any chance to look over it is well worth the time for me.

thanks for reading, Robert

The Great Reorg #100: Goose Gozzo


I'm sure that there even a few Jays fans out there who would have to think long and hard to remember Mauro "Goose" Gozzo, who only pitched in 9 games for the Blue Jays in 1989 before being traded to Cleveland in 1990 as part of the Bud Black rental (Black only pitched 3 times for the Jays in 1990). 

Those 9 games were enough to get Gozzo a card in each of the Donruss, Score, Fleer and Topps sets in 1990.  Mauro would only have one more card in a MLB set, 1991 Score as a member of the Indians.  His 23 games in his final season with the Mets in 1994 wasn't enough to get him a card in the '95 sets. 

Mauro now runs Goose's Gamers, a team of high school age baseball players who receive advanced coaching and development for Mauro and other coaches.  You may recognize former students Matt Cain and Drew Pomeranz as a couple of names that progressed through his academy.

The stack of sorted cards is starting to progress a little.  The cards in the first box I'm entering into the spreadsheet are from various years and in no particular order, so it will good to see these get sorted after the first few days. 

It'll be even better to watch the numbers grow and show off more cards on the blog as well...

Thanks for reading, Robert

Sunday, May 28, 2017

Inbound and down #14: Sportscards from the Dollar Store pt. 2

Wound up not doing anything blog related yesterday, as I finally received my new corner computer desk and spent part of my Saturday putting that together.  By the time that got finished, a nap was in order before heading out to my friends birthday party.  That gobbled up the remainder of my Saturday, so here we are now posting the 2nd half of the great box that Doug from Sportscards from the Dollar Store sent my way.


The first of two horizontal cards shows up on the first scan, courtesy of the 2010/11 Panini Luxury suite release.  As with many of the other high priced releases, you get a lot of fringe rookies such as the Blues Drazenovic you see here. 


There had to have been a blowout of the SP Game Used authentic rookies somewhere at the show.  Doug sent me a boat load of them.  Maybe 25 cents apiece?  Of the 4, David Perron is so far having the best career, with 652 games and 139 goals to his credit.   Carter Ashton spent parts of 3 seasons in the blue and white and is now plying his trade in the KHL.


Seems like forever since Dion Phaneuf was a Calgary Flame.  Barring major injuries, Dion should hit the 1000 game milestone in the 2018-19 season.  Tyson Barrie is the only other big name in this group of 6, it's kind of sad that he's stuck in the train wreck that is the Avalanche right now. 


Cody Goloubef has played bits and pieces of the past 6 seasons in Columbus.  A trade or a claim by the new Vegas team might just be the ticket he needs to getting a full time gig in the NHL.  Quinton Howden spent parts of 3 seasons with the Panthers before signing as a free agent with the Jets this past year. 


Rick Dipietro was a name I'd forgotten about until I saw the Hot Commodities card in the top row of this scan.   Alex Tanguay had a good NHL career, playing over 1000 games and winning a cup with Avs in 2000-01.  I didn't know this until now, but Jason Zucker led the NHL in +/- this year with a +34 rating.  Mike Peca had a solid NHL career, winning two Selke awards as the NHL's top defensive forward.  I'm hoping that the Leafs will re-sign Curtis McElhinney to backup Frederik Andersen for one more year.


The only player on this page that has had any kind of NHL career so far is Jared Boll, and that has been mostly as a 4th liner/tough guy.  Michel Ouellet is an interesting player, scoring 52 goals in his first 3 NHL seasons, then in his 4th season he plays just 3 games and then drops right out of the league altogether. 


Some notable names in this scan, including Kovalchuk (again), Ted Donato who had a solid career over a dozen NHL seasons, Thomas Vanek is still kicking and should hit the 700 point plateau should he play in the NHL again next season and Mikko Koivu is the current captain of the Minnesota Wild.  Between he and his older brother Saku, they have almost 2000 games in the NHL. 

There you have it, I'm now 84 cards closer to completing the set.   Many thanks to Doug for this great box of cards, they are really appreciated!!

Thanks for reading, Robert

Friday, May 26, 2017

Inbound and down #14: Sportscards from the Dollar Store

Now that I've moved about as far south in the continent as you can get, I've forgotten about the big Hockey Expo shows that are held twice annually out by the Toronto airport.  If you're Doug from the Sportscards from the Dollar Store blog, it's a chance to really go to town since that show is probably a smaller version of the NSCC.

Doug has been very gracious to send me stuff in years past from the Expo, but this time, he really outdid himself.  I was originally going to show all the serial numbered hockey cards he sent me in this post tonight, but then I probably would have been up 1/2 the night scanning and thinking of stuff to write about each card.  So I decided to do half of the cards today.   6 at a time.  7 scans.   Here we go.


The Leaf Limited award winners is a great looking set, you'll see a couple more of those in the next few scans.  The Rob Blake card goes all the way back to 2001-02.  The rookies on this page still haven't done a whole lot so far in the NHL..

This group of 6 cards actually had me cursing at the scanner (should have been cursing at the cards), since the O-Pee-Chee Platinum cards, although they look great, have succumbed to a bit of warping.  The Red Prism Zach Parise card is the prime example of this, but it's still a great card and won't be replaced for any reason. 


This package definitely wasn't short of the Platinum parallels, there's 3 more on this page alone.  The Eric Fehr and Matt Carle RC's are from 06-07 SP Game Used.  Fehr's just 4 wins away from a Stanley Cup, even though he's been hurt for the entire playoff run.


Had to take a second look at the card in the upper left of this scan, as I wondered who the Penguins player was.  Surprised that it was Brooks Orpik, as I'd forgotten just how long Orpik has been in the NHL.  Daniel Sedin part of the SNI hockey set?  Love it.  Boy was it interesting to see how Twitter jumped all over Jonathan Bernier (especially Toronto fans) and placed a lot of the blame for the game 7 loss to the Preds.  Maybe if people took another look at the replay of the 4th Nashville goal in game 7 to see how shitty the Ducks defensive play was there they would have thought twice before jumping down Bernier's throat.



More Artifacts.  I'll take those parallels any day of the week.  I'm sure that the serial numbered rookies from half a decade ago were in the discount bins, as a lot of these player's careers have already fizzled out.


An Owen Nolan Artifacts card to add to the Avalanche team set.  May have to see if I can add a couple of more Nordiques cards to the set.  Juuse Saros had a pretty good first full season in the NHL, and will probably take over for Pekka Rinne in a couple of years.  Spencer Abbott got into his 2nd career NHL game with the Blackhawks this year.  It came just 3 years after his first game which was with the Leafs in 2013-14.  Still 2 more games than I ever played...


Big name on this page is Ilya Kovalchuk, who has been rumored to be headed back to the NHL this season.  If New Jersey is smart, they trade his rights and continue their rebuild.  Don't have too many Winnipeg cards so far, and anything Atlanta Thrasher related will be part of the Jets 40 cards.  I'd also like to see the Flyers keep the orange jerseys as their full time home unis, rather than the black. 

That's the first 42 cards, I'll show the other 42 in the next post.  Oh, and don't ask me when the last time I wrote 2 posts in the same day was.   I have no idea....

thanks for reading, Robert

The Great Reorg: #50---Anthony Gose


99 Mile per hour fastball in his first pitching appearance in the minors?  Boy the Jays could have used that a few years ago when their closer problems were keeping them in the lower half of the AL standings.

Best of luck to Anthony, here's hoping that his career change is a good one.

Every so often as I mentioned yesterday, when I hit these milestones I'll throw a quick post on the blog to show off a Jays card.  Maybe this will motivate me to A) keep sorting and adding cards to the spreadsheet and B) post more often on the blog.

This is only card #50 that I've put on the spreadsheet, so there's a long way to go.   At least I've got it started and we're only 5 months into 2017!


Thanks for reading, Robert

Thursday, May 25, 2017

The Great Reorganization begins plus a few cards from a great source

I finally did it this week.  Started the long road to getting all the Jays cards I have sorted by year.  The previous spreadsheet I was using was just not doing the trick, so I found a template, changed the column titles and started the process to cataloging the several thousand cards of Blue Jays that I've amassed over the past few years.

It'll probably take a while, but along the way I plan to post a few Jays cards when I hit milestones, such as every 100 or 200 cards. 

Cards such as these:


Those who watch Blue Jays telecasts on Sportsnet will know Pat Tabler, who has been doing color for quite a few years now.  The first thing that caught my eye on this card?  The catchers glove.  Off to Baseball reference I go and find out that Pat never caught even an inning behind the dish.   Hats off to the photographer that caught this on film and to Topps for putting this on his '93 Stadium Club card. 

Check out these Roberto Osuna cards comparing the before and after...


2013 Topps minor league card #132.  Looks like he has a few extra pounds on his frame compared to this next card.


I would say a 30 pound difference just by the photos alone.  I also wasn't aware until this evening that Roberto is the nephew of 11 year MLB veteran Antonio Osuna, who played between 1995-2005 with the Dodgers, White Sox, Nationals, Yankees and Padres.  I hope that the Jays have him for their closer for at least the next decade and his arm stays healthy. 

Needless to say, my pursuit of all Blue Jays has been helped greatly over the nearly 6 years of this blog by a lot of people in the blogosphere.  Dozens and dozens of envelopes, some from trades, some just from sheer generosity have graced my mailbox.   I've also received a few boxes here and there stuffed with mounds of cards.

The latest box that I was fortunate to receive was from Doug at the Sportscards from the Dollar Store blog, a regular sender of some great cards.  This box was no different as there was over 100 cards from various want lists.  Today I'm going to show off the Jays portion, which I will add to my spreadsheet right after this post.


Seeing these cards reminded me that I still have a lot of want lists to add to the Blue Jays page.  The Triple Threads card of Josh Donaldson is one reminder.  The Spring Fever and Jays team card also remind me that I need to add Opening Day sets to the want list.  The Shawn Green Skybox Thunder card was the only card that I could actually remove from the long list of needed card numbers.


To be honest, I don't have any idea whether I have any 2014 Bowman Jays in my collection.  I definitely know that I didn't have  a want list up for these, so I'll see as I go along whether these are doubles or cards that I actually needed.

I'm hoping to spend 15 minutes an evening trying to type out all these cards onto the spreadsheet.  Might take a month or 3, but what I'm hoping to have in the end is a list of every card that I own, and whether I have 1 copy or multiple copies of each.  While I'm adding them, I'll be sorting them by season and by set, hopefully making it easier to find a card or cards that I'm looking for.

By the way, the cards you see above represent roughly 10% of the box that I was sent.  The rest of the cards put a major dent into the SNI hockey set.  You'll see on my next post about 80 serial numbered hockey cards that Doug was very generous to send me. 

It'll probably take me more than 15 minutes just to scan them...

Thanks for reading, Robert

Sunday, May 21, 2017

Inbound and down #13: The Lost Collector

Haven't seen any Topps Bunt down here in South Florida yet, but thanks to a PWE from everyone's favorite Tino Martinez collector, AJ from The Lost Collector blog, I now have a good start on the '17 Bunt Blue Jays team set.

AJ even mentioned in his note that he has that special knack for pulling Blue Jays that I don't seem to have...


I like the look of the inserts, the Infinite has a pretty good photo of J.A. Happ and tells the story of him growing up in Peru, Illinois, which is about 100 miles SW of Chicago. 


Glad that they used a photo from last year's pink weekend for Bautista.  It would be cool to see more cards featuring the pink bats/pads, etc.


It's definitely not hard to tell the parallel cards when they come out of packs, as evidenced by the Marcus Stroman blue parallel that made the ride down here to the swamp.  For those that are into chasing rainbows, there's also black, green, purple, red and orange parallels to keep you busy.  I think the blue looks great for the Jays, I may have to grab the remainder of that parallel for the team set as well.

Maybe one day I'll get down to getting my Jays want list updated with the boat load of '17 sets that have already been released.

Thank you for the PWE AJ!  Much appreciated as always.

Thanks for reading, Robert

Saturday, May 20, 2017

Serial Saturday #15: Slacker

I haven't posted since Monday, largely because I've been so tired every evening that I didn't have the energy to sit and think about a worthy post.  Even having a 1/2 day vacation on Thursday and a full day on Friday didn't help, as I found enough things around the house to take care of that by the time the evenings rolled around I just didn't feel like getting behind the computer to write a post.

Also, it's been almost a month since I've posted any pages from the SNI baseball set.  So I guess you could say that I've been slacking in more than one area.  These SNI posts don't take a lot of thought, so it's probably time that I spent an hour or two and put a few of these in the drafts folder. 

OK, enough of that, let's get pages 42 & 43 out there for everyone to see...


Card 370:  Ronald Guzman, 2013 Bowman blue parallel #370/500.  Texas card #14
Card 371:  Trevor Hoffman, 2010 Topps copper parallel #371/399.  Milwaukee card #8
Card 372:  Victor Martinez, 2009 Topps Unique #372/1199.  Boston card #11

Card 373:  Derrick Penilla, 2013 Bowman blue parallel #373/500.  Minnesota card #12
Card 374:  John Buck, 2012 Topps gold parallel #374/2012.  Miami card #14
Card 375:  Troy Glaus, 2006 Topps update gold parallel #375/2006.  Toronto card #19

Card 376:  B.J. Upton, 2008 Topps Heritage chrome #376/1960.  Tampa Bay card #15
Card 377:  Andrew McCutchen, 2009 Bowman blue parallel #377/500.  Pittsburgh card #5
Card 378:  Julian Javier, 2002 Topps super teams #378/1967.  St. Louis card #18

Victor Martinez has been with the Tigers for so long that I've forgotten him as a member of the Red Sox.  I'd also forgotten that the Pirates wore a sleeveless jersey for a time about a decade ago.  Would love to see more catchers use and paint the hockey style masks as John Buck did a few years back.

Card 379:  Magglio Ordonez, 2010 Topps gold parallel #379/2010.  Detroit card #6
Card 380:  Adam Laroche, 2007 Topps gold parallel #380/2007.  Pittsburgh card #6
Card 381:  Tony Sanchez, 2010 Bowman chrome #381/999.  Pittsburgh card #7

Card 382:  Yovani Gallardo, 2012 Topps Heritage #382/1963.  Milwaukee card #9
Card 383:  Matt Cain, 2012 Topps gold parallel #383/2012.  San Francisco card #8
Card 384:  Johnny Giavotella, 2013 Topps gold parallel #384/2013.  Kansas City card #14

Card 385:  Johnny Stolz, 2013 Bowman blue #385/500.  Colorado card #13
Card 386:  Mike Wright, 2012 Bowman blue #386/500.  Washington card #17
Card 387:  Cody Eppley, 2011 Bowman blue #387/500.  Texas card #15

3 straight cards were all Bowman blue parallels, each going back one year (13, 12, 11).  After having just 4 cards in the first 41 pages, Pittsburgh has 3 cards in the past 2.  I remember when Tony Sanchez was the next big thing at the catching position for the Pirates.  He got stuck behind ex-Yankee catchers (Martin, Cervelli) and is now in the Anaheim system. 

7 out of the 18 cards on these 2 pages were bought by myself, many of the others were from bloggers who are no longer blogging.  Yep, it's been a while since this started.

Thanks for reading, Robert

Monday, May 15, 2017

1453: I've said it before, people collect some great stuff

Remember about 2 months ago, I tortured a bunch of people into writing 100 word posts so I could send them five cards?  Yea, I'm sure about 20 of you do...

Well, I learned a lot from that little exercise, the main thing being that collectors collect a lot of great stuff.

I learned a little more about a couple of collectors this past week in celebrating my 1500th post.  Both Don and Nick sent me lists of cards that they wanted for their COMC store credit.   It was interesting to say the least to see what they were after.

Don's list?  4 cards.  Quick and painless.  The key card was this one...


According to Don's email (if I read it correctly), this Frank Robinson card finishes off Don's 1970 Topps set.  Congratulations Don!

The other 3 cards were a 64 Topps Kaline, a 1952 Topps Frank House and a 1979 Kellogg's Tom Johnson.  Great stuff, and 4 cards for $20 made the shopping easy on me.


Now, I didn't want to give away the entire envelope for Nick, but I figured showing off these 3 '73 Kellogg's Pro Super Stars cards couldn't hurt.  I'm hoping that the purveyor of the Dime Boxes will take the time to show off the envelope he's getting on his blog, because there are some cool cards in there (and not all of them baseball!). 

Needless to say, I added some extra credit for myself to buy some cards during the spring cleaning promotion.  I bought cards for 3 of my PC's and still have quite a bit of credit to play with for some future needs.


Playoff contenders is a product that I'd never buy a pack of.  Never had any interest in it.  But adding the cards to my player collections is a no brainer.  This is one of 5 cards I added to my Joe Sakic collection, which I believe is closing in on 600 if it isn't there already. 


Love this card.  Can't mince words here, this card is a fabulous photo of Andrew McCutchen post swing.  Same as Playoff Contenders, Stadium Club is a product I never bought many packs of over the years, but adding cards to the PC's from this product is easy.


Felix Potvin is one PC that I would really like to build up a bit as I currently only have about 40 cards of his.  I bought 4 on this last order, with this 2003-04 Pacific Prizm card being the one that stands out the most.   The only thing that could have made it better is if Felix was still in a Leafs jersey at the time.

I've been pondering hitting a few want lists again by grabbing a handful of cards off of COMC and sending them out as a surprise.  Learning what people collect has been great so far and I'm looking to learn some more...

$1528-$75 COMC credit = $1453 left.  On pace to spend $1479 for the year.

Thanks for reading, Robert

Sunday, May 14, 2017

1528: I never go home from the card show with this much money

Yesterday might have been a record breaking day for me.  I couldn't tell if I've ever only spent $25 at a monthly card show here in Florida. 

I did it on the cheap for sure.   Only picked up stuff that was necessary for PC's, SNIH, and set building.  Nothing fancy, just cards I needed.


Serial #'d cards.  If I need them, they'll come home with me.  The Potvin Totally Certified was an exciting find for me, I hadn't seen one before so there was no delay in adding it to the pile.  Don't yell at me, but Donruss/Panini is growing more and more on me.  2-LO jumped onto the pile as quick as Felix's card did.


This is another reason why I'm enjoying Panini more by the day.  Yes, they are missing logos, but the cards/photos that they are generating in a lot of cases don't make me notice.   This is a perfect example, and the high socks make it an even better picture.


A couple of cards for the Serial #'d Hockey set.  I didn't want to go too crazy with these, as I know Doug from Sportscards from the Dollar Store has a few to send my way.  I have a sinking feeling that Winnipeg will be one of the more difficult teams to complete, which is the reason why I grabbed the Pavelec.  I'll grab any Leafs serial #'d card quickly as well, even if I already have it for the SNI I'll just add it to the Leafs collection.


Hall of Famer jersey cards for $2.50 apiece.  On the pile they went.  Very quickly...

Sometimes I'm absolutely amazed by what I find at this show.  I had 0 intention of adding anything to my sets yesterday, but when the dealer told me that he'd make me a sweet deal for a stack of cards from the 83-84 OPC set, I went digging.  46 cards later (I mistakenly bought 3 dupes as my list on the web page was not properly updated), he asked for $5.  Can't go wrong there.

I scanned the Lanny McDonald card to show the NHL that they shouldn't worry so much about advertising on their jerseys.  Check out the Molson logo right above the Flames "C" (Rejean Lemelin is sporting the same jersey in this set as well).  Teams in sports all over the world are selling advertising on their jerseys, maybe it's time for the NHL (and other N. American leagues) to make a little more $$.

$1553-$25=$1528 to go.  Still a quite a bit of money left as we've already passed the 1/3 mark for 2017.  Still on pace to spend $1285 this year, so still quite a bit of breathing room just in case something pops out later in 2017.

Thanks for reading, Robert

Friday, May 12, 2017

30 Day baseball card challenge Day 6: A card you spent more than $10 to get

I had to skip day 5, which is a certified autograph of one of my favorite players.  I've never been a big autograph chaser, and I don't own any for my 5 PC's.  So it's on to day 6.

I have quite a few cards that have cost me more than a sawbuck, and since I just showed the entire '64 set last week, I decided to pick something from another set.  This card came quickly to mind.


I bought this card at the first National that I attended way back in 2012.  Anything 1969 was nowhere on my radar, but I remember when sitting down at this table, this card was one of the first that I saw.  The price tag was $12, which I thought that was an absolute steal for this card.  It was one of the few purchases from that show that didn't fit into my collecting needs back then, but now that I've got a bit of a start on the '69 set, it is a great card indeed.

Someday down the road I may show this card again, likely when the '69 Topps set has been completed.  Don't expect it anytime soon though...

Thanks for reading, Robert

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

1553: Heritage

Finally getting around to posting the 5 packs of Heritage I bought while on weekend errands a week and a half ago.

I'm trying to get a good chunk of the base set done before I go into an extended Heritage hibernation, meaning hunting down the SPs for the set which total 100 this year (sigh).

Let's have a look at each pack and see if there's anything interesting.

Pack 1:

The first of 2 1/2 and 1/2 packs...


1/2 of the pack is horizontal, 1/2 is vertical.  Not a bad pack, the Jameson Taillon is a SP card.   Best of luck to Jameson btw, here's hoping he recovers successfully from his testicular cancer diagnosis.  The Darwin Barney card will go into the Jays collection.

Pack 2:


 
Melvin Upton Jr. goes into the Jays collection as well.  The unknown Padres RC Home Run card is available to anyone out there who might want it (it's actually Hunter Renfroe).  No SPs in this pack. 

Pack 3:


Pulled the New Age Performers Kyle Hendricks card, available to anyone who may want it.  The 9th card was a horizontal one, the Royals team card.  No SPs in this pack as well. 

Pack 4:


The missing 9th card is Craig Kimbrel of the Red Sox.  The Then and Now Marichal/Porcello card is available if wanted by anyone out there...

Pack 5:


I'll probably end up sending the Topps Game card of Tyler Glasnow to Matt of Bob Walk the Plank fame.  Wonder how Topps gets away with placing RC designations on insert cards.  The missing 9th card is the Reds team card.

I showed off a "bonus card" in yesterdays post, a 2010 Topps Vladimir Guerrero card which was stamped with the Rediscover Topps brand.  I'll have to find a Vlady collector out there and see if he wants it...

Just one SP, so I still have 92 more of those to go.  It took me 6 years to collect 75 SPs from the '11 Heritage set, so simple math says that at that pace I should finish this set in 2025.

Looking forward to it already...

$1569-$16=$1553 left to spend.  That is going to drop below 1500 real quick with the contest giveaways from this past week.  Stay tuned for those...


thanks for reading, Robert