Late on Multiple Levels

This morning, I finally finished my "summer sort".  The plan was to have everything finished by Sunday, but life happens.

Unfortunately... the same philosophy doesn't apply to a care package I received back in January from Eric over at The Snorting Bull.  On Wednesday, I found it sitting in a box with some magazines, two Lego sets, and some stuff from my father's house.

Inside there were these three cards...

2017 Choice Durham Bulls #21

I'll start with this one, because the Durham Bulls and Blake Snell are the two things I associate with Eric the most.  Sorry Mr. Lankford.

Blake had stints in Durham in 2015, 2016, and 2017, so he's been following Snellzilla longer than me.  Personally he popped up on my hobby radar after winning the Cy Young Award with the Rays in 2018.

2023 Topps Update 1988 Silver Pack Mojo #T88CU-32

I became an even bigger fan when the Padres acquired him in 2020.   His first two seasons were solid, but his stats were far from his 2018 numbers.  Then last season he hooked up the organization and their fans with a second Cy Young Award performance.

2022 Topps Five Star Autographs #FSA-BS

This season he signed with the San Francisco Giants as a free agent and last week he pitched his first no-hitter against the Cincinnati Reds.  Dang it.  One week late.  If I had only opened that banker's box a little earlier.

Thank you Eric for these three new Snell cards... especially the sweet on-card autograph.  Sorry it took me eight months to write about them.

While I'm on the subject of being late... I have been sitting on care packages from Dennis @ Too Many Verlanders, Wes @ Area 40, Gregory @ Nine Pockets, Bo @ Baseball Cards Come to Life!, and two boxes from Reader X.  These arrived in my mailbox starting in May and scattered here and there up through earlier in the week.

The game plan is to open all of these up in the next two to three weeks.  Fingers crossed.

Okay... let's wrap up this post with a quick box break that probably should have been opened back on July 29th when Yuto Horigome won the gold medal in street skateboarding.

One of the Olympic event I was most excited for was skateboarding and I remember Yuto winning the gold medal four years ago.  So when I discovered back in mid-July that he had trading cards, I picked up this box over at ABD Collectibles for $126.90 (+ $11.90 tax).  Each box contains ten packs:

Each pack contains two cards and one contest card, so twenty cards in total... and ten chances to win a prize.

The only reason I even considered this purchase was because each box is guaranteed to contain one signed card.  I pulled this one out of the third pack:

Two pack later, I beat the odds and pulled this one:

I also won one of the prizes... which was one of these Jamie Foy boxes.

As for the base cards (based on their IG post), there appears to be three cards on the checklist:

A.  Hollywood 16

B.  Portrait

C.  Franklin Switch Tail

Each of these cards have four versions: English text, Japanese text, English rainbow foil, and Japanese rainbow foil.

I pulled all four versions of the portrait, three versions of the Hollywood 16 (missing Japanese non-foil), and two versions of the Franklin switch tail (missing English non-foil and Japanese rainbow foil): 

I also pulled 9 duplicates.  Not sure how many bloggers out there will be opening a box of this product... but if they do, maybe we can help each other out.

By the way, I scanned what I pulled out of the first pack.  My plan is to write a post for A Pack To Be Named Later as soon as I finish publishing this post.  But don't be surprised if I'm a little late.

Happy Friday and sayonara!