30 Day Baseball Card Challenge

Monday, December 27, 2021

Plastic & Packs

One of my favorite holiday memories involved flipping through Sears and Service Merchandise catalogs and circling all of the toys I wanted.  These days I'm a little too old for toysOr am I?

1992 Topps #40

As I approach the big five-oh... I still enjoy the occasional Lego build.  This Christmas I received a few sets from my best friend, her niece, and her nephew.  Figured I show off one of the sets and tie it into some other plastic items that have recently entered my collection... along with a quick pack break for those readers who only care about cards.  Spoiler alert... the Ripken shown above (used to lure readers) was the best card I pulled.  But before we get to the packs, let's show off the plastic first.

Here's the Lego set I received and built on Christmas:

Lego 75312: Boba Fett's Starship

This is the third Slave I Lego set I've owned (also have Lego sets 75243 & 75060), but it's the first one I've taken the time to build.  Although it's too small to be considered minifigure scale, I think the Lego designers did an amazing job with this set.

The build itself went smoothly and provided a little over two hours of entertainment.  My only concern is the brick built stand that comes with this ship is pretty flimsy.  I hope it doesn't tip over and knock over some of my other Lego Star Wars ships.

As for the other two Lego sets I received... I haven't built them yet.  One of them I plan to take into my classroom.  I'll build and display it there, since I think some of my students will get a kick out of it.

Let's move along to some other plastic items I received recently...

First up are some new decorations for my team shelves in the office:


These trinkets were part of a much larger care package sent to me by my buddy Woody who I met on the card forums back in the day.  I'll share some of the other goodies in a future post, but for the time being... these mini-helmets and TeenyMates were more appropriate for today's post.

These remind me of items you'd find in those quarter machines at the grocery store back in the 80's and 90's.  Although these days, I'm sure they'd charge a buck or two for these novelties.

And rounding out the plastic items are these fantastic looking samurai models that Ryan (SumoMenkoMan) sent me last week:


When I was growing up, my parents would go to this small grocery store in Japantown called Dobashi where they sold little model kits that would sometimes contain a piece of candy.  This appears to be the modern day version of those model kits.


According to Ryan, he found them at the flea market and he generously sent me the duplicates from this purchase.  Each model came with a little sign and a trading card.

Dobashi closed their doors back in 2006, but the next time I go to Nijiya (another Japanese grocery store) I will definitely see if they have anything like these plastic samurai warriors.

Thank you Woody and Ryan for these cool display pieces that have already been added to my office.

And rounding out the post are six packs of baseball cards for all of the card collectors out there.

The first one was included in the box from Ryan with the samurai figurines.  It's a 2021 Leaf Holiday Bonus Pack:


I'm not sure how these were distributed this year, but in the past Leaf would offer collectors these packs as a bonus when they purchased Leaf products.  According to Blowout, each pack is guaranteed to contain either an autograph, a relic, or a printing plate.

Here's what I pulled:

2020 Leaf Ultimate Draft #BA-RS2

It's an autograph of Raimfer Salinas, who appears to be a prospect in the New York Yankees organization.  I'm not familiar with him, but maybe Kenny can give us a prospect report in the comment section.


The final five packs are Junk Wax Era packs that I picked up back in November when I purchased a small collection from my buddy.  He originally purchased this collection from a guy at a card show, pulled out the nice cards he wanted, and sold me the leftovers.

One of these days, I'll sift through the box and pull out some of the more interesting "stuff".  Until then, here are the five packs I chose to open:



Before opening the packs, I thought about the one card I was hoping to pull from each pack.  Here's my list:

1.  1988 Topps#360 Tony Gwynn (Pulling a playing era card of my favorite player would be cool)
2.  1989 Donruss#33 Ken Griffey Jr. RC (Figure this is a pretty obvious choice)
31990 Fleer#74 Jose Uribe (This will probably be the only way I'll ever acquire this notorious card)
4.  1991 Donruss#NNO Nolan Ryan Legends Insert (I've never been afraid to dream big)
5.  1992 Topps #380 Barry Bonds Gold Parallel (Hard to believe that I still need this card)

Did I pull any of them?  Of course not.  Here is my favorite card from each pack:



Out of all of them, the Fisk and Ripken are the two I'm happiest about.  They'll be going towards a project that I will eventually reveal.

Until then... happy Monday and sayonara!

16 comments:

Dennis said...

I'm digging the Lego set and samurai figures! Hope you had a Merry Christmas, Fuji!

The Lost Collector said...

The current toy books that come definitely aren't the same, trust me. I remember circling Starting Lineups in the Service Merchandise catalogue!

Johnnys Trading Spot said...

Can't wait to see what else is in that box. Happy New Year!

Elliptical Man said...

I thought Boba got a raw deal in Return of the Jedi.

Cool samurai figures.

Glavine wins the card contest.

Both Cal and Fisk are Hall of Famers, but Glavine is too. All three played to 40-plus. I'm stumped.

Elliptical Man said...

I'll guess it has something to do with Topps.

Nachos Grande said...

Love the LEGO (but you knew that already). Now I'm curious as to what the other two sets were!

bbcardz said...

Very cool stuff--all of it! Have a Happy New Year!

Bo said...

Interesting that Lego calls it "Boba Fett's Starship". I looked it up, apparently Disney is trying to quietly retire the "Slave I" name, I guess because they want Boba to be a more sympathetic character.

I have some extra Uribes, I'll throw one in my next package for you.

gregory said...

Wow, you got some great stuff to display. Where do you find the space?

Matt said...

I miss those Sears Cats. I always stole my grandmothers to check out the new Ghostbusters toys

Chris said...

You're never too old for toys or junk wax-era packs :)

I used to love going through catalogs and circling things I wanted. Miss those days.

Jongudmund said...

I haven't got that Boba Fett ship but I built one that came out a couple of years ago that seems quite a bit bigger. (Possibly is minifigure scale)

The new Boba Fett series on Disney Plus is off to a great start imo

The Snorting Bull said...

I love the Lego set. My son gets them every year for Christmas, but he has gotten to the age where is independent with building them. The past two or three years I have still gone and sat at the table with him while he's worked on them. This year he got a Harry Potter set, not exactly sure what it is, and the spaceship from the Mandolorian. Both very cool.

That Pedro Guerrero Diamond King and Cal Ripken card are both awesome. Pedro Guerrero for obvious reason as a Cardinal. Not a Ripken collector per se, but that's a great early 1990s card.

Happy New Year, Fuji!

Big Tone said...

Happy New Year and Merry Christmas, Fuji🎄💥💥💥😊

Sean said...

Those samurai figures are pretty cool. They aren`t just generic figures, they depict famous historical figures who dueled each other. The first pair is of a guy named Shishido (carrying the kind of odd shaped weapon) on the left, and Miyamoto Musashi on the right. Musashi is probably Japan`s most famous swordsman (its worth Googling his story). The second pair is Musashi again, this time paired with Sasaki Kojiro, another famous swordsman. Musashi won both duels.

Fuji said...

dennis - hope you and your family had a merry christmas as well. glad you dig the legos. there's a chance i'll have another one built in the next month or so

the lost collector - glad to hear that store still send out toy catalogs. the only one i receive is the lego catalog. i'd love to go back and look through some of those service merchandise catalogs.

johnnys trading spot - there's nothing high valued, but some oddball stuff. it'll provide material for at least one more post (maybe two)

elliptical man - yeah... no boba fett fan is going to argue with that call. not sure if you watched book of boba, but they addressed the sarlacc pit. and you guessed right about it having to do with topps

nachos grande - there's a speed champions set.. and another star wars set

bbcardz - thanks. hope you have a happy new year as well.

bo - i remember a lot of peeps on youtube talking about the set name. it'll always be slave i to me. wait... don't you want to flip those uribes for $50 each?

gregory - honestly... i don't have the room. i had to redesign my star wars lego shelf (there's no more room for anymore big sets). as for the samurai... they don't take up too much space. side note... i clear up some space a couple of years ago when i put away about 50 kenner slus

matt - what people circled in those catalogs definitely show our age. i was a little too old to play with ghostbusters toys.

chris - i agree 100%. the way i see it toys keep me young

jongudmund - pretty sure the ucs slave 1 is minifigure scale. that was out for a long time. the other one (20th anniversary) is a little smaller, but a lot bigger than this one. both are awesome sets.

the snorting bull - good news... i've seen a few sets where lego offers multiple instruction manuals so that multiple people can build at the same time. maybe you can find one for you and your son to do together.

big tone - hope you had a great christmas... and a happy new year!

sean - wow. thank you for the background history on those samurai. i actually mix-matched the two samurai in the second scene. i'm kind of curious... when a samurai would lose their duel, did that equate to death?