Multiple Meanings

As many of you know... 2023 was filled with a lot of ups and downs.  It will forever be marred by the loss of my father and my friend Mike in a span of a month.  But it wasn't all bad... these two tragic events brought me closer to my siblings and strengthened the bond between close friends.

The hobby also helped me get through that rough patch by serving as a healthy distraction.  One of the most therapeutic things for me outside of building Lego sets is sorting cards and building sets.  Walking around flea markets and card shows also helped.

Back on Saturday, December 16th... I was able to do both.  Today's post covers a pair of purchases... one from each.  Both of these purchases were BIG... but in different ways.

Let's start with my most expensive hobby purchase of 2023 and a BIG addition to my Ichiro PC:

2023 Finest Flashbacks Auto #183

I was hanging out at the Silicon Valley Card & Collectibles Show at my buddy's table.  And within minutes... my eyes were drawn to this gorgeous card that took me back to the 90's when autographs were on-card and rare.  I wanted it.

Right next to the Ichiro was the other 2001 Rookie of the Year Award winner:

2023 Finest Flashbacks Auto #179

I wanted this card too.  The only problem is my hobby budget doesn't allow for BIG purchases like these.

After watching two other collectors show an interest in the Ichiro, I decided to pull them out of the case and have him hold them for me.

When things settled down... he offered me the pair for $450.  Yeah... that's BIG money (to me).  But a month has passed and there has been zero buyer's remorse.

He tossed in this cool refractor to sweeten the deal:

2000 Topps Chrome Combos Refractor #TC5

I know this particular insert set is polarizing among collectors.  You either love it... or hate it.

I obviously love it!  In 2000, Nomar, Alex, and Derek were the BIG 3 among American League shortstops and although we crossed into the aughts, refractors were still reasonably tough pulls.  These inserts were seeded into 1:80 packs.

The other BIG purchase I made that day took place earlier in the morning at the Branham Flea Market.  I stumbled across a guy with a binder containing a bunch of oversized cards.  He wanted $10 for the binder, but was focused on the quality of the binder itself and not the cards.

So I asked him if he'd take $5 for the pages and cards without the binder.  He accepted.  I had taken a photo of all of the stuff, but accidentally deleted it.  However I did scan the highlights of the purchase which were these BIG inserts and parallels from the 90's before putting them all away.

Since most of you are baseball fans, here's the only baseball card of note:

1995 Score Rules Jumbo #SR25 (#'d 2,489/3000)

This is a BIG (7.5" x 10.5") parallel to the pack inserted counterparts.  Back in 1995, Score produced Baseball Collector Kits that contained twenty-six assorted packs of Score Series 1 and Series 2 baseball, a binder, ten collector pages, and one of these oversized parallels.

Based on how many are available on eBay, they aren't very common... even though 3,000 copies of each card was produced.

The next card was the key to the purchase:

1997 Donruss Studio Stained Glass Stars #15 (#'d 0318/1000)

This BIG acetate insert is gorgeous!   Once I saw this card, I knew I wanted the entire lot.

There were two BIG names featured in the lot:

1997 Donruss Studio 8x10 Gold Portrait Proof #29 (#'d 0115/1000)

1997 Donruss Studio Red Zone Masterpiece #20 (#'d 0853/3500)

The Elway is a BIG addition to my Stanford PC... while the Moon is a BIG Seahawks pickup.

Well that wraps up my two BIG purchases from back in December.  Gotta love multiple meanings... and overpriced and oversized card purchases.

Happy Tuesday and sayonara!

All Good Things

If all good things must come to an end, then that's something I can live with... because it makes me appreciate those things a wee bit more.

The perfect example is the advent calendar Ryan sent me last month.  Advent calendars have a built-in end date.  So today, we'll see what goodies he put together for me for Day 19 through Day 25.

We left off with blaster box of 2022 Topps Series 2 baseball.  We'll kick off this post with another blaster box...

December 19th

2023 Topps Athletes Unlimited Blaster Box

Until I opened up this present, I had never seen or heard of this product, but according to Topps it is the first product of its kind as it features the best athletes from all four Athletes Unlimited sports leagues.

Based on their website, it's a network of professional sports leagues made up of elite women softball, volleyball, basketball, and lacrosse players.  This should be an interesting break, but I might sit on this box until I can figure out who I'm looking for.

December 20th

The unopened box streak continues...

2022/23 Topps NBL Hobby Box

This time it's a hobby box of NBL athletes.  If you're not familiar with the NBL, it stands for the National Basketball League that's located in the land Down Under.  Unlike the two previous boxes that Ryan sent me... I think I'll add this one to my unopened box collection.  I feel like this one will be more fun to open down the line if some of these guys eventually cross the Pacific and play in the NBA.

December 21st

The box streak might have come to an end... but the foreign sports league trend continues with twenty-one packs of 2022 Epoch JLPGA cards:

Looks like there are ninety cards in the base set... so there's a good chance I'll be able to complete it with these packs.  Ryan included these cards to help me get started:

Here's a closer look at one of the singles:

2022 Epoch JLPGA Top Singles #22

This should be a fun set build.  The best part is any duplicates will be added to my Japanese Athlete PC.

December 22nd

Ryan wasn't sure if I collected Garbage Pail Kids cards.

Well... of course I do.  I started buying them back in 1986 when I spent the summer working in Hawaii for my uncle.  One of the things I'd spend my money on was packs of this stuff.  Unfortunately... I didn't keep them after purging my collection in the early 2000's.

But in 2012, I purchased a collection at a card show for under $100 and it included complete sets of Series 2,3,5,6,7,8,9, and 10.  Plus a partial set of Series 4 that was only missing 5 cards.

Although I haven't purchased any of the newer products, I look forward to opening up the 2022 Topps Chrome GPK Series 5 hanger box in hopes of finding some cool refractors.

As for the micro figures, I already popped those open:

Each of them came with tiny variations of the original cards:

2021 Topps GPK Micro Figures Cards #3b

2021 Topps GPK Micro Figures Cards #10a

Super tiny... but super nostalgic and super duper cool.

December 23rd

Next up are the first packs I opened in 2024:

2023 Topps Big League Baseball

Ripped these open on January 2nd and pulled these:

It was nice to pull a Tatis base card, but this was my favorite pull:

2023 Topps Big League Roll Call Wildstyle #RC-13

While these were the first packs of the new year... next up were my final packs of 2023...

December 24th

The 24th present was this box of 2022 Topps Chrome NPB:

The actual box was a little damaged... but the cards were just fine:

Here are the inserts I pulled:

I recognize Masataka Yoshida (in the middle), but it looks like the hit of the box was this card:

2022 Topps Chrome NPB 1958 Gold Refractor #58-20 (#'d 37/50)

As much as I enjoy collecting NPB cards, I don't really know much about their players.  This is one of the exceptions.  The card show dealer with those Godzilla cards told me about him and his ability to hit the long ball.  The only problem is if he does eventually play in the MLB, it won't be for several years.  I guess the waiting game begins now.

December 25th

Japanese Beastie Boys Hello Nasty Advertisement

Many of you know that I'm a huge Beastie Boys fan, so this is quite the Christmas present.  I've never seen this before, but I love that it combines my interest in the group and my heritage.

It's printed on glossy poster paper with the following measurements:  7.125" x 10.125".  Not exactly sure how these were distributed, but Ryan thinks these were passed out at their concert in Osaka back in 1999.  If so... that's pretty flippin' awesome.

Not 100% sure how I'm going to display it... but this is way too cool to be tucked away in a binder somewhere.  I'll figure out something.

Holy smokes.  That was a ton of fun.  But like I stated at the start of the post... all good things must come to an end.  As bloggers, we're constantly reminded by the extreme generosity passed around our community of collectors.  This custom built advent calendar is just another reminder.

Thank you Ryan for putting this together for me.  I truly appreciate the time, effort, and money you put into such a generous care package.  Looking forward to getting together soon and catching up.

Happy Tuesday and sayonara!

The Weekend Sort

Woke up early on this cold, but lovely three day weekend... and finally caught up on my blogroll.  There are hundreds of posts that I missed during 2023, but I've accepted the fact that I need to let those go and focus on the present.

I'm still catching up on some care packages that were delivered as far back as five months ago.  Normally I'd check them off chronologically... but outside of Ryan's advent calendar... I'm saving some of the larger boxes for the end.  This decision primarily has to do with time... and right now it's easier to summarize a PWE or padded envelope than a medium or large flat rate mailer.

Luckily the holiday weekend allows me to lock myself in my office, open some packages, and sort some cards.  Today I wanted to focus on a few sets I'm working on and show you all the help I've received from a pair of bloggers.

Let's start off with my 2002 Topps Archives set build:

2002 Topps Archives #169

I've always wanted to own this set and over the summer, I found a cheap starter set at the flea market.  Jim over at cards as i see them sent me a package that crossed off four set needs which included a 1977 Topps reprint of his favorite player: Steve Garvey.

Here are the other three cards for my set build:

These four cards bring me 2% closer to completion...

Unfortunately... this is one of those set builds that will probably take me a decade to complete unless I start finding these pop up in dime boxes at the local shows.

Before I show off the rest of the cards Jim sent my way... here are a few other sets I've been working on recently...

Over the Christmas break, I found a box of these NFL Flintstones cards sitting in a Rubbermaid tub.  I hopped on eBay to see if I could find some cheap lots and discovered a vendor with the four inserts for a reasonable price.

1993 Cardz NFL The Flintstones Hologram #H1, H2, & H3

The vendor forgot to include Dallas Cowboys Tekchrome card, but he said he'd ship one out next week.

A separate eBay purchase helped me get four steps closer to completing my 1982 TCMA Baseball's Greatest set build...

Four years ago, I received a huge care package from Woody over at Sports Card Forum and inside was this starter set.  That year Jon helped me out by sending me the Jimmie Foxx.

I'm down to needing only two cards... both of which were part of my most recent COMC shipment that should arrive by early February.

And the final set build for this post is another one of those sets that may or may not ever be completed:

The 2011-12 ITG Enforcers Autograph set is a monster set build that I started over a decade ago.  It contains 85 cards and I'm lucky to add a few cards at a time.

A few months ago Dennis over at Too Many Verlanders sent me these two cards for my set:

2011-12 In The Game Enforcers Auto #A-GB & A-MB

I need to do a better job of monitoring cheap singles for this set build... but currently the cheapest one on COMC is over $6.  If I only needed a handful of cards to complete this set, I'd dish out the money.  But I've accepted I won't be completing this set anytime soon.

Getting back to Jim's care package.  Here are nine other cards he tossed into the padded envelope:

Seven of these were brand new to my collection... including the three Gwynns on top.  I was especially excited to see that Topps Chrome Heart of the City insert of Matt Olson.  I'm not 100% sure, but I think that's Jack London Square featured with Olson.

The last card he included was the newest addition to my Damaged Card PC:

2009 UD Spectrum Red #53 (#'d 208/250)

This shiny parallel was originally featured on Jim's blog back in 2022 when it was involved in a USPS mishap.  If you look closely you'll notice it has some creases and a soft corner.  The card design isn't the greatest... but it's a relatively low serial numbered card that depicts Kershaw at the plate.

The card now resides with other damaged cards in a 9-pocket page... where it will be loved, appreciated, and cared for.

Thank you Jim and Dennis for helping me with these set builds!

Oh and before I forget, I wanted to quickly share this blog inspired purchase:

1996 Topps Ted Williams Opening Day #9

This card was produced by Topps to commemorate the opening of the Ted Williams Tunnel in Boston back on 12/15/95.  He shared this card on his blog a few weeks ago as part of his retired number collection series.  I had never seen or heard about this card before that post, but apparently collectors could purchase a copy directly from Topps that year.  Anyways... that morning I went over to eBay and picked up a few copies.

That wraps up another post.  I hope all of you have a safe holiday weekend.

Happy Saturday and sayonara!

Extra Innings

I almost forgot... the reason I led this post off with Steve Garvey is because on this date back in 1988... he announced his retirement from baseball.