30 Day Baseball Card Challenge

Tuesday, January 9, 2024

Things Are Taking Off


If you're into unique collectibles like this Frank Robinson hotel key card, Japanese anime, video game cards, or baseball stamps... then you'll enjoy this round of Ryan's awesome advent calendar.


December 13th

Let's blast off with some space stuff...

U.S. Naval Research Laboratory Bookmarks

Growing up in the 80's... watching space shuttle launches was kind of a big deal.  That's why I'm always intrigued by NASA related collectibles.  My collection is pretty small... but I have patches, Lego sets, postage stamps, 8x10's, and of course trading cards.

Here are fourteen new additions:



It's kind of funny, because my Christmas care package to Ryan included several space related items too.  Great minds, right?


December 14th

For every minute I spent
sorting cards as a kid, I spent almost the same amount of time playing video games.  This carried over into the 90's

2023 Cardsmiths Street Fighter Series 1
Convention Exclusive Box

And Street Fighter was big among my college buddies.  We wasted countless hours battling each other while chowing down on Jack in the Box tacos.  The thing is... while I was king of those tacos... I sucked at the game.

Regardless... I'm pretty stoked to open these up.  Maybe I'll get lucky and pull an E. Honda card for my Japanese Athlete PC.


December 15th

Ryan truly is a good friendWhy?


Because good friends encourage you to use protection.


December 16th

I recently cancelled my subscription to Hulu (as well as Peacock and Paramount).  Unfortunately one of the shows I had on my watchlist was Demon Slayer.

2021 Ensky Demon Slayer Sticker Packs

If these look familiar... Ryan sent me a batch of these last year too.  Hoping to watch the show one of these days, so I can truly appreciate them.


December 17th

When I was growing up, my mom would fill up our Christmas stockings with trinkets catered to each person's interests.  The 17th present reminded me of one of those childhood stockings.

Let's begin with the click bait photo for this post:

2023 Graduate Hotel Key Card

Is this the coolest hotel key card or what?  This year's advent calendar has been full of awesome oddball items.  It's going to be hard to top this one.

Next up were a pair of baseball stamps:

1983 USPS Babe Ruth 20¢ Stamp
1939 Centennial of Baseball 3¢ Stamp

Stamp collecting doesn't seem to be as popular as it once was.  Yeah right.  I'll collect stamps like these until the day I stop collecting.

How about some ice cream mini-helmets?


Love those too!  I already have the same A's one in my office, so I'll take that into my classroom.  The brown & gold Padres mini helmet was added to the office shelf though:


As for the San Francisco Giants helmet... I'll either pass it along to my brother or co-worker... both of whom are Giants fans.

I might have already had the helmet, but I didn't have this A's oddball item:

1990 Superstar Action Marbles #NNO

I tried to put this up on my A's shelf in the office... but it kept rolling off.  Until I can find permanent place to display it, it's part of my desk decorations.

Rounding out the December 17th present are some snack packs:

2022 Bandai Heaven Burns Red Series 1
2023 Bandai Heaven Burns Red Series 2

The very first care packages from Ryan took place when he was stationed in Europe, so they were always filled with interesting treats.  This is kind of a throwback to those days.  Each of these packs contained a delicious vanilla wafer and a trading card:

2022 Bandai Heaven Burns Red Series 1 #18

2023 Bandai Heaven Burns Red Series 2 #08

I'm not familiar with this show, but it must be pretty popular if they're producing trading cards for it.  Both of these will be added to my Japanese non-sports binder.  Wow... that present sure packed a lot.  I could have dedicated an entire post to it.

But the show must go on...


December 18th

Rounding out the third post documenting Ryan's awesome advent calendar is a blaster box of 2022 Topps Series 2 baseball.  Between my Black Friday Dave & Adam's Card World purchase and the plethora of packs from Ryan... my rainy day pack stash is sitting pretty.

2022 Topps Series 2 Baseball Blaster Box

This box will be tossed into the mix.  Looks like I could potentially pull rookie cards of Josh Lowe, Spencer Strider, and Wander Franco ðŸ˜¯.

Stay tuned for the final segment of this series... which will hopefully be up on Thursday.  Until then...

Happy Tuesday and sayonara!

12 comments:

  1. Oooh, space stuff is cool. My dad worked for McDonnell Douglas in the 70s-90's and was always bringing home space and aviation stuff; stickers, posters, lithos, pins. I still have some of it, particularly an Apollo patch decal sheet and some Skylab brochures.

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  2. That Frank Robinson is one of the coolest hobby items I've seen and I can't say I've seen another one like it!

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  3. That Frank Robinson is excellent! I don't think I've ever seen a hotel key with a ballplayer on it.

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  4. When they said Canseco lost his marbles a while back I didn't want to believe it. Now I'm convinced 😉

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  5. The Frank Robinson is incredible!!! That is one of the oddest oddball items I have ever seen.

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  6. Those Artemis cards are really cool. Would fit nicely in my Space/Moon Landing binder

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  7. What a cool collectible that frank robinson is! A few years ago I saw someone selling a Steve Garvey boarding pass on eBay. I had no interest in that but a hotel key like this is really interesting.

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  8. Ryan really does seem to go out of his way to find eclectic items for these calendars.

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  9. the angels in order - that's awesome! you should show some of that stuff on your blog. i'd love to see it.

    dennis - it truly is awesome. that hotel actually has used a bunch of different celebrities on their keys. i found them on ebay. there's even a barry larkin one out there.

    nick - first time seeing that too. more hotels should use this idea

    johnnys trading spot - yeah, ryan really goes out of his way to pick up specific things for this advent calendar.

    big tone - lol. nice

    the snorting bull - i figured that would garner the most attention. it's definitely unique.

    gca - i'll talk to ryan to see if he has extras.

    jon - he truly does. advent calendar or not... i'm grateful to be able to call him a friend

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  10. What I like most about the blog is your engaging writing and discovering new things - excellent post. I never heard of Graduate hotels and the concept of key cards like this is unique and cool. Thanks for sharing and good one Ryan for sending that.

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  11. steve at 1975baseballcards.com - all of the credit for that awesome and unique robinson goes to ryan. it's even cooler that hotel key was from one of his trips there.

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