Posting While Driving

I'm writing this post while driving home from Lake Tahoe.  Well... I'm not driving.  My brother is.  But I'll talk about our family vacation a little more tomorrow.

Today I wanted to continue the spirit of Thanksgiving and send a pair of shoutouts to Chris (The Collector) and AJ (The Lost Collector) for the care packages I received earlier in the week.

Chris hooked me up with a PWE packed with variety:

I'm always glad to see San Jose Sharks and new additions to the Japanese Athlete PC thrown into a care package.  But the highlight was this Oakland Athletics team leaders card:

2009 Upper Deck #444

Kurt Suzuki led the A's with 148 hits in 2008 and was third among American League catchers that year.  As his "self proclaimed" number one fan, I'm don't remember this.  But that's the beauty of cards.  You can learn something new every day.

Actually this card is packed with information, but I don't know anyone else out there who actually cares about Oakland A's trivia, so I won't waste either of our time.

Next up, AJ sent me a few team bags filled with Oakland A's cards.  Here are my favorite nine:

Topps loves Josh Reddick.  And although the A's haven't owned the AL West for a few years, I still wear the same shirt Doolittle rocked back in the day.

But if I had to pick a favorite card, it'd be this one:

2014 Topps #8

If I had to guess, I'd say that this card has been featured on at least 25% of the baseball card blogs out there.  It's the Oscar Gamble of this generation.

Coco might have been my favorite card, but my favorite item in AJ's care package was this homemade bookmark:

Pretty awesome, right?  I immediately inserted it into my copy of Dynastic, Bombastic, Fantastic:  Reggie, Rollie, Catfish, and Charlie Finley's Swingin' A's.  Unfortunately, I forgot to bring the book with me to Tahoe, so I can't show you guys how awesome they look paired up.

In case you're wondering... AJ used a 1990 Topps baseball wax wrapper for this  bookmark.  Hmmm.  Or was it a 1987 wrapper?

Thanks Chris and AJ!  Both of you guys have been added to The List.

And here is today's question of the day:

Where's the weirdest place you've written a blog post?

Happy holidays and sayonara!

Giving Thanks

In the spirit of giving thanks, I wanted to let all of you know that I am truly grateful for everyone who has taken the time to read my blog posts over the past nine and a half years.  During that time, I've exchanged hundreds of trade and care packages with probably close to fifty different collectors.  If that weren't cool enough, I've actually had the pleasure to meet and hang out with four bloggers.

One of those bloggers is Ryan over at Japanese Sumo Wrestling Cards and Menko who I've really bonded with the past few months.  In October, he took the time out of his busy schedule to fly into San Francisco, so we could hang out and hit up a card show in Sacramento.  Now that's some serious dedication to our hobby.

He came bearing gifts... which I've written about here.  One of the items he gave me was a box of 2017 BBM True Heart.  If you're not familiar with this product, they're Japanese women's pro wrestling cards.

The box had twenty packs with each pack containing seven cards.

The base set contains 135 cards.  I pulled 117 of them, which leaves me with 18 cards to go.

As some of you may have read, sorting cards hasn't been on my list of favorite things to do.

However... after opening all of these packs, I have to admit... it was nice to sit down, sort these cards by 10's, and build this set the old-fashion way.  It was true cardboard therapy.

Here's a look at what the base cards look like:

I have no idea who this girl is, but she makes a great Harley Quinn.  The Cutest Kitty Award goes to:

Meow.

But here's a look at a Frankenset dream card...

She's angry, she's tatted, and she's flipping us off.  How awesome is that?  Billy Martin would be proud.

But the on-card signatures were definitely the highlight of this box.  I'm not sure if I had a hot box or if this is the standard, but I managed to pull seven autographs... and each one was pretty unique.  See for yourself:

Each of these autographs are so awesome... and it's obvious that they take pride in their signatures.  Unfortunately, I don't know if any of these women are big names or not.  But that's okay.  They make excellent additions to my Japanese Athlete PC.  Here's my personal favorite:

I'm not sure if she's suppose to look like Princess Jasmin or Pocahontas, but she's doing the traditional Japanese tourist pose.  She also incorporates a heart into her signature, which is really cool.

I also received two care packages this week from two famous collectors:  The Pedestrian Collector and The Lost Collector.   The plan is to blog about the stuff they sent this weekend.  But right now, I've gotta go hang out with my family and grab some more food.

Thank you Ryan for this generous box of cards.  And thank you all for taking the time to read this post.

Happy Thanksgiving and sayonara!

Advocating For Booger

When I'm tired, lacking motivation, yet interested in publishing a post... I turn to fellow bloggers for inspiration.  The past few days, I've found myself commenting on other blogs about Larry Walker on three different occasions:

1st Time:  The Collector's All-Time Rockies Team
2nd Time:  Diamond Jester's Build-A-Lineup
3rd Time:  Not Another Baseball Card Blog's Expos Frankenset

If that wasn't enough Mr. Walker... my buddy and I were just having a conversation about future Hall of Famers and of course I was advocating for him.  Simply put, he had one helluva career and I don't believe players should be penalized for playing in specific ballparks.

Okay enough of that.  Let's check out my favorite Larry Walker cards from the collection:

1990 Leaf #325

I picked up this card back in September of 2018 for $17.49 on 4 Sharp Corners... and boy am I glad that I did... when I did.  Since then, this card has skyrocketed in value.

1998 Score Artist Proof #PP117

This is the first of three very shiny 90's parallels...

1999 Topps Finest Refractor #205

1995 Select Certified Mirror Gold #89

The 1995 Mirror Golds are gorgeous... and very affordable.  Speaking of affordable cards, this card is just your everyday Topps base card:

1993 Topps #95

But isn't it awesome?

2005 Donruss Champions Impressions Materials #67

I have a few memorabilia cards of Walker featuring him with the Rockies, but this is the lone Montreal Expos memorabilia card I have sitting in the collection.  And this is the only autograph of Walker I own:

 

1990 Score #631

Anyone else notice that this guy doesn't have a lot of certified, pack pulled autographs?

Moving along, here is one of my rarest Larry Walker cards:

1996 Leaf Studio Silver Press Proof #78

There's nothing too fancy about this card, but it is one of the Silver Press Proofs.  Donruss only produced 100 of each of these parallels, which back in the day was like pulling a needle from a haystack.

And I'll go ahead and wrap things up with probably my most valuable card of Walker: 

1990 O-Pee-Chee #757

This card looks like just another ordinary, overproduced Junk Wax Era rookie card, but there are much less copies of Larry Walker O-Pee-Chee rookie cards floating around compared to its Topps counterpart.

In fact, according to PSA's Population Report... there are 424 PSA 10 graded copies of the Topps rookie.  The O-Pee-Chee?  Only 19.  I found this little gem back in November of 2018 on 4 Sharp Corners for $26.39.  I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess I won't find one for that price ever again.

Okay peeps, it's your turn to chime in...

Larry Walker.  Cooperstown worthy?  Yay or nay?

Even though we may or may not agree on this topic, I'm always looking forward to reading everyone's feedback.  In fact there have been more than a few times in my lifetime when people actually persuaded me to change my opinion on certain matters.

Well that's it for today.  Happy Saturday and sayonara!

Sorting Sucks

Once upon a time, sorting was therapeutic.  It helped take my mind off of things.

This week, going to work helped me take my mind off of the four Super Monster Boxes filled with cards sitting in janky penny sleeves.

On the bright side, I should be done removing all of the cards from the penny sleeves by this evening.  However I'm sorry to inform you that this post will be cut off right here.  That last Super Monster Box is calling my name.

Happy Thursday and sayonara!

Too Good To Pass Up

After hitting up the Branham Flea Market on Saturday, I made a pitstop over at my buddy Ben's house.  He asked me if I wanted to buy the rest of the low-end baseball rookies, inserts, and parallels.  I honestly did not.  I'm still sorting through the stuff I bought off of him back in September and October.

But this was one of those "too good to pass up" cases.  I haven't done an exact count, but I'd estimate that there are 3,500 to 4,000 cards here and I paid $100 for the four boxes.  That breaks things down to less than 3¢ per card.  In terms of value, it's a great deal.  But when you factor in how much time I'll need to sit down and sort... the deal loses its luster.

I spent three hours on Saturday going through this stuff... and three more hours yesterday removing these cards from the penny sleeves.  I'm sure I've mentioned my OCD before on this blog.  But if I haven't, I'll just say that I have a thing about using old or dirty card supplies.  Anyways... I'm only about halfway through the penny sleeve removal process.  I'll try and wrap things up this afternoon when I get home from work.

Until then, here is today's question of the day...

If you bought some cards that came in old or dirty penny sleeves, would you keep them in there or swap them out?

I'd say 90% of these cards will be put into one of the new 5,000ct. boxes I picked up two weekends ago without the use of a penny sleeve.  The nicer and more valuable cards will be definitely be re-sleeved.

Well that's it for today.

Happy Monday and sayonara!