30 Day Baseball Card Challenge

Sunday, December 20, 2015

Cardboard Medicine

Being a teacher has its perks during the holiday season.  Homemade Christmas cards and cookies.  A handful of Target and Starbucks gift cards.  And of course the annual two week holiday break.

Unfortunately... mine hasn't gotten off to a very good start.  On Friday... with less than ten minutes left in my final period... one of my students revealed a key spoiler in the latest Star Wars film.  In short... I wasn't amused.


Then yesterday, I woke up with a sore throat and a stuffy nose.  Hopefully it's nothing a little Vitamin C and some hot tea can't fix.  Although... I've already missed two holiday parties I planned on attending.

The good news is my body could use the rest... and the past two days I was able to catch up on Elementary, The Blacklist, Arrow, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., plus watch small tidbits of the Packers and Seahawks' games.


I also had the opportunity to finally open up a few packages that were sitting in my office from fellow bloggers.  Tonight... I'll be showing off a nice stack of Oakland A's cards that were sent to me from Julie over at A Cracked Bat.


First up is this beautiful manufactured patch card of Big Mac:


2003 Sweet Spot Classics Patch Card #PMC1

This card is exactly how I prefer my pizza crust... THICK.  Speaking of thick... I was really excited to find these two packs of 1987 Sportflics waiting to be busted:




Upper Deck often gets credited as the industry's first high end trading card.  But actually... Sportflics were my first experience in opening up expensive packs of baseball cards.  If I remember correctly... they were almost twice as expensive as a pack of Topps and you only received three cards per pack.


Julie also threw in a bunch of Reggie Jackson cards featuring him as an Athletic:




Not gonna lie.  I have mixed feelings towards Reggie, because of the time he spent with the Yankees.  But I'm glad that card companies recognize his two stints with the A's.  I especially like how Topps managed to capture most of Jackson's swing in that Topps 60 insert card.


Another former Athletic who spent some time in New York wearing pinstripes is Jason Giambi:



1993 Stadium Club Murphy #200

Although this isn't his true rookie card, I'm pretty sure it's one of Giambi's first cards where he's featured in his Oakland uniform.  My buddies and I had a lot of fun watching him launch home runs back in the late 90's and early 2000's.  Sitting at my desk... holding this card... helped me relive some of those good times.


Thanks Julie for the awesome package of cards.  I hope you and your family enjoy a safe holiday season.


Happy Sunday and sayonara!

11 comments:

Nick said...

It's always odd seeing Giambi as a youngin' because I guess I got so used to the sight of him as a grizzled old veteran.

Laurens said...

There is something about seeing Giambi as an average sized guy as an amateur and his early years in the minors before he beefed up in the late 1990s.

Xavier Higgins said...

Stadium Club Murphy anyone is alright in my book. Who'd you pull from the '87 sportsflics?

Xavier Higgins said...

Stadium Club Murphy anyone is alright in my book. Who'd you pull from the '87 sportsflics?

Zippy Zappy said...

Bummer about the Star Wars spoiler. If it's any consolation, I was spoiled more than 24 hours before the movie came out to the public.

But then again, I knew that Vader was Luke's dad before I saw the original trilogy and I knew that Anakin was going to turn into Vader before I saw the prequel trilogy to being spoiled before seeing the movie(s) has never been a problem for me before lol.

Big Tone said...

That's a great Giambi card!

Matt said...

Nice stuff. The McGwire is really sharp. I like the design of some of the manu patches

The Snorting Bull said...

Love the Big Mac card. I have that same card in my collection.

BobWalkthePlank said...

I'm fortunate that I really don't work with many people that can spoil it for me. I just have to be careful about what posts I read online.

That Big Mac card is pretty sweet.

Jon said...

Hopefully you feel better soon. Also, those Reggie Jackson inserts are pretty nifty.

Fuji said...

nick & laurens - lol. yeah. weird to see him without the extra bulk. pretty sure i never actually watched him play when he was this skinny.

xavier - haven't busted them yet... but when i do, i'll make sure to post my results

zippy - the information the student told me actually was something i had predicted... but the whole situation still annoyed me.

big tone - agree

sport card collectors & snorting bull - thanks. it's an excellent addition to my a's collection

matthew - yeah. i had several students go out and watch it. all of them were considerate enough to not share details (except one).

jon - feeling a lot better. believe it or not... only the one in the upper left hand corner is an insert... the other are base cards. regardless... they're still great stuff.