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 friend.  Why?

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 😯.

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

Happy Tuesday and sayonara!

Sad, Annoyed, and a Tad Bit Satisfied

My friend had surgery last Wednesday so I took a half-day and picked her up.

They were running a little behind, so I had an extra hour to kill.  As luck would have it, there was a card shop located a few miles away.  So I headed over there to pick up some storage boxes.  I was very fortunate to hit up the local distributor and stock up on different supplies right before the pandemic hit.  In fact, I have enough top loaders and plastic slider boxes to last for years.  Sadly they had just started selling cardboard boxes in bulk lots only.  At the time...  it wasn't too big of a deal, because my LCS always had them at a reasonable price.

But I made the mistake of waiting until I actually needed some to grab some.  This is what I discovered...

Now I'm not sure exactly what that price was in 2019... but I know for a fact that I didn't pay $1.75 for a 200ct. box.  Holy cow!  The bargain hunter in me sobbed when I saw this sign, while the collector who waited until the last minute to buy storage boxes was annoyed.

Some collectors probably would have walked out and figured another way to store their cards.  Unfortunately, my OCD requires sets destined for my personal collection to be housed in brand new boxes.  So I picked out twenty (a variety of sizes), but avoided the 200 and 300 count boxes.  Figured there was no way I could justify spending $1.60 for boxes this small.

Card supply prices are ridiculous, but it's not the card shop's fault.  That's why I figured I'd support them and buy some actual cards.  The best bargain I could find was this...

It's a 1000ct. TCG box (never heard of these) filled with baseball cards for $9 (with a 10% discount)...

Free time is a luxury I don't really have, so I won't be counting these anytime soon (seems to be slightly longer than a 660ct. box).  Instead, I'll spend a few extra minutes to scan ten of my favorites from this mystery box...

#10:  1992 Score #489

Play at the plate with the Kid in a Dodgers uniform sets the tone for about half of this box, because there was a nice stack of Junk Wax Era cards.  Not surprised, but not displeased either.

#9:  1990 Donruss #390

Love him or hate him, Belle was a beast.  It's not worth anything, but I'll happily add another one of his rookie cards to my collection.

#8:  2018 Topps Home Run Challenge #HRC-KB

I never pulled any of these in time to actually participate in the challenge, but kudos to Topps for inspiring collectors to interact with the game.

#7:  1989 Score #322

Did you really think I wasn't going to include at least one well-cropped action shot to this list?  Plus... check out that unibrow on the back.  The back is also proof that Score had some of the best card backs in the late 80's.

#6:  2018 Topps #183

Thumbs up to whoever at Topps decided to use this photo for Matt Kemp's card.

#5:  1996 Pinnacle Denny's #18

Here's your random baseball card fact of the day.  Cecil Fielder launched eleven grand slams during his career and Tony Phillips was on base for seven of them.

#4:  1990 Topps #210

This card was a very pleasant surprise.  The guy at the LCS warned me that this box was filled with commons.  He wasn't wrong.  On the other hand, there were a few hall of famers tossed into the box like this Sandberg, which is the latest addition to my Topps Base Card Run Project.

#3:  1988 Fleer #518

As an A's fan, I should hate this card.  Hershiser dominated them in the World Series and took home the MVP Award.  I did a quick COMC search for 1988 Orel Hershiser cards and discovered card companies hooked him up that year.  But I still think this card is one of the best looking.  It's almost like Fleer knew the Dodgers were going to win it all, so they dedicated the set's colors to them.

#2:  2018 Topps #68

If this photograph of Hamilton doesn't do anything for you, then you and I have very different tastes in cards.

#1:  2017 Panini Donruss #190

How much do I enjoy collecting Tony Gwynn cards?  Well... I chose this Panini logo-less card as my favorite card in this mystery box.  

So there you have a $9 LCS mystery card box.  What do you think?  Worth the price?

Personally, I was satisfied with the purchase.  After sorting the box, I pulled forty-three cards for my collection... which comes down to about 21¢ each.  Only a handful of those cards are worth that much, but after you factor in the entertainment value... I don't have any regrets.

Plus there's the storage box...

Due to the tape damage, my OCD prevents me from using this box for sets.  But that doesn't mean, I won't use it to transport cards to shows or something.

And don't forget... there were over 500 other cards that I'll offer up to people or take to my classroom for next year's Civil Rights Movement trading card project.

Not going to list every single card, but here are fourteen sets that I have reasonable sized stacks of:

1989 Score, 1990 Donruss, 1992 Score, 1993 Bowman, 2011 Bowman Chrome, 2012 Topps, 2015 Topps, 2016 Finest, 2018 Topps Gypsy Queen, 2018 Topps, 2021 Topps Allen & Ginter, 2021 Topps Archives, 2021 Topps Heritage, 2022 Topps Heritage

If you're building any of these sets, send me an email with your set needs and maybe I can help.  As long as you don't mind PWE's, I'll send them your way for free.

Happy Tuesday and sayonara!