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!

Turn The Page: Beckett Baseball (8/91)

Sorry Seger fans.  This post won't be focusing on his classic song... which happens to be one of my all-time favorites.  It will however showcase a periodical that arrived from east of Omaha.

Sometime last year, Dennis over at Too Many Verlanders sent me three issues of Beckett Baseball, two issues of Baseball Weekly, and a copy of Sports Collectors Digest with one thing in common.  They all featured Mr. Padre on the cover.

Today's rainy day forecast cancelled my trip to the De Anza Flea Market and opened up my schedule, so I figured today would be perfect to show them off.  Unfortunately... after writing for about thirty minutes, I came to the conclusion that summarizing all of these would take an entire afternoon.

My solution?  Let's start a new series on this blog.  In addition to what Dennis sent me, I have tons of other periodicals laying around with interesting stuff waiting to be unveiled.

Today's subject is Tony Gwynn's first Beckett Baseball Card Monthly cover appearance:

Beckett Baseball August 1991

By the time this issue was published, Gwynn was a 6x NL All-Star, 4x Silver Slugger Award winner, 3x Gold Glove Award winner and had won four NL batting titles.  It's kind of a shame he wasn't given the honor by Beckett a little sooner.

2000 Topps Finest Finest Moments #FM3

The article about him covered everything from his rookie cards to his brother Chris.  Gwynn also talked about 3,000 hits being attainable (he was about halfway there at this point in his career) as long as he maintained his consistency.

But the one thing that really stood out was Jack Clark and Mike Pagliarulo accusing him of not being a team player:

This took me by surprise.  I also learned a little about Babe Ruth in separate article:

It's hard to believe it took the New York Yankees twelve years after his retirement to honor arguably the greatest to ever play the game.

2002 Fleer Fall Classic HOF Plaque #1

A year later (on June 13th, 1948) the he returned to Yankee Stadium and was honored again by having his jersey number retired.  It was his last trip there.  Three months after that (on August 16th) he passed away in his sleep.

2020 Topps Chrome Update A Numbers Game #NGC-15

Gwynn would eventually have his jersey number retired in 2004 almost three years after playing his final MLB game.

Getting back to the issue, here's a quick peek at Beckett's Hot & Cold lists from the summer of 1991:

It's no surprise that Ken Griffey Jr. and Frank Thomas were at the top of the hot list and Pete Rose was on top of the cold list.

2002 Upper Deck #734

I was surprised that Gwynn was nowhere to be found on either of these lists.  At least my other favorite player made it on the list.  Rickey Henderson had just broken Lou Brock's all-time stolen base record a few months before this issue came out, so his cards were pretty hot.

By the way... if you're wondering why I'm not featuring one of the cards highlighting this record, that's because all of the cards featured in this post were part of a Christmas care package from Dennis (not to be confused with the package containing the periodicals).

Yup.  He sent me that Babe Ruth insert (above)... which completes my 2002 Fleer Fall Classic HOF Plaque set build (which I seem to have misplaced).

When I write another Turn The Page post, I will do my best to include cards from the periodical's era to help make things more relatable.

I'll go ahead and wrap up this issue and post with the inside back cover art:

Chris Modarelli is responsible for this beautiful artwork, but Beckett might have misidentified the card.

Not sure if they were just stating a fact about Cobb's T-206 card or referring to the card in Modarelli's piece which features his T-205 card.

And yes... here's a card relating to the Georgia Peach:

1997 Upper Deck UD3 #35

Upper Deck pointed out that the only players to have more batting titles than Gwynn were Honus Wagner and Ty Cobb.  However Gwynn would capture his 8th batting title at the end of the 1997 season... tying Wagner... and leaving Cobb as the only player with more batting titles.

Thank you Dennis for providing this issue of Beckett and all of the cards featured in this post.

And here you go Seger fans...

#hopethisworks

Hopefully Blogger and/or YouTube allows me to include the song.  If not... click here.

Happy Saturday and sayonara!

Stocking Up for a Rainy Day

The advent calendar adventure continues with the next six days of presents from SumoMenkoMan.

On Thursday, we left off with a bunch of packs and we'll continue with more...

December 7th

1997 Team Vans Pack

Although I've never seen these packs before, I am familiar with the set... because it features Steve Caballero's first card:

1997 Team Vans #1

I'm a big fan of him and his collectibles.  During the lockdown, I discovered this card and picked it up on COMC for $12.75.

It'll be fun to see if I can pull one for myself when I get around to writing another APTBNL post.  

December 8th

The next two packs contain eight Ben Baller cards:  

2021 Topps Chrome Ben Baller Packs

Three years after hearing Ben Baller's name... I still have no idea who this guy is.  But I do own a couple of singles from this set.  Never had the pleasure of opening up a pack.  Now I get to bust two.

Here's what I pulled:

Pretty happy to pull a pair of guys I collect... and a decent rookie card.

December 9th

Day 9 features nine packs of Holiday Inn baseball cards from sixteen years ago:

2007 Upper Deck Holiday Inn Packs

Kerry reviewed this product back in 2011 on APTBNL.. but his pack only contained four cards.  These packs contain eight cards:

The first five cards were the five Ripken inserts, while the final three cards were singles from the sixty card set.  The remaining eight packs will go into the rainy day pack stash.

December 10th

Next up are two packs of 2021 Topps.... only these were the ones sold in Japan:  

2021 Topps Japan Edition Packs

I'll be keeping one sealed for my unopened pack collection... while the other will eventually be reviewed and inserted into my Japanese trading card binder.

December 11th

The next present isn't something you open... it's something you wear:  

At first glance, this looks like an ordinary tie featuring some San Jose Sharks logos, but upon closer inspection... it was actually designed exclusively for the 1995 NHL All-Star Game.

What's special about that?  Well that game was cancelled due to the 1994-95 NHL Lockout, which makes this collectible kind of unique.

Another interesting thing about this tie is that it's individually serial numbered to only 360... which makes it a pretty rare collectible. 

December 12th

The last advent item of the day is this figure produced by Topps in the late 90's:

1999 Topps Action Flats Barry Bonds

This oddball issue sort of flies under the radar.  I remember the card shop I worked at had these.  A decade later, I purchased a complete set of the 1998 Topps Action Flats football set, because it contains a Peyton Manning rookie card.  But this is the first baseball version to enter my collection.

Here's a peek at the back of the box:  

When you open it up, there are two parts.  First is the trading card:

1999 Topps Flats #S1-6

Topps used a different photo from the one used in the flagship set.

Then there's the flat figurine:

I love how it's modeled after the player's photo on the card, so when you put them together it look like this:

This oddball issue is kind of cool and since they were overproduced... they're really affordable.  The only thing that's preventing me from picking up a complete set is the lack of storage space.  But I have added it to my saved eBay searches, so who knows... you might see a few more pop up in future blog posts.

Well that's another day of awesome stuff from SumoMenkoMan.  There are still thirteen days worth of goodies to go, so stay tuned.

Happy Thursday and sayonara!