1990 Leaf

I went to a card show this past Saturday. It was a bit of a dud, but I did have a unique experience that I will share in a later post. After the card show I went to The Batter's Box card shop and looked around for a while before I found anything. I was about to check out when one of the dealer that has a case there came in. He always has hand collated sets and a few other cards priced affordably, so I decided to wait to see what he added to his case.

I went over and struck up a conversation with him while he added items to his case. He put in a box with a 1990 Leaf set for $24.99. I recently picked up the Frank Thomas rookie card and posted about it here, but I've always wanted the entire set. It was the first modern Leaf baseball card set and was a premium set at that. I liken it to 1989 Upper Deck and 1991 Stadium Club.

$24.99 for the set. Hmmm. He ran out of space and couldn't put everything in his case, but I asked to see what else he had. He pulled out another box labeled 1990 Leaf with a $9.99 price tag. 

He told me the reason it was only $9.99 is because the Frank Thomas was damaged and it didn't have the complete puzzle. I already have the Thomas and I already have the puzzle, so I bought this one.

I already put it in sheets. Turns out is was actually missing one card; a common, #208 - Johnny Ray. I'll have to see if I happen to already have it. If someone out there has this handy and would like to trade, let me know.

The Frank Thomas is damaged. It has an indent, but it still works for me in the binder. The Sammy Sosa, Larry Walker and Ken Griffey Jr. are in good shape. I'm very happy to add this set to my collection for $10!

I used to hate, but now I don't.

My favorite player as a kid was Ken Griffey Jr (he's still my favorite player of all-time) and as a kid I was a loyal reader of Beckett. Each month I would check the Hot List and it felt like every month it was either Griffey or Frank Thomas at the top. Because of that I came to despise Frank Thomas.

Over the past year or so I've been reading and watching Patrick of Radicards.com. Patrick is a Frank Thomas supercollector, but he has a love and respect of all things baseball cards. If you aren't familiar with him already you should go check him out.

Being exposed to some great Frank Thomas cards through Radicards has softened my opinion of the Big Hurt and I've picked up several of his cards recently.

When it comes to relic cards, you see a lot of jersey and bat cards. You don't see many gloves, especially these days, so when I saw this 2001 Upper Deck Gold Glove Leather Bound insert for less than $10 bucks I grabbed it.

Frank Thomas was to Leaf, what Ken Griffey Jr. was to Upper Deck. So seeing this seeing this 1995 Leaf Frank Thomas was not surprising (I think I have a few of the base version), except I'd never seen this particular version before. Some it's hard to read, but on the left side it says "Frank Thomas Big Hurt Baseball So Real It Hurts". Looks like these were included inside the 1995 Acclaim Sega Genesis Frank Thomas Big Hurt Baseball game. I got this one for 50 cents.

I've always been fond of this particular insert from 2000 Fleer Gamers. I just like the design. I picked up this card for $1. 

I picked these three cards up at my LCS over the past couple of weeks.

Christmas Cards

On my side of the family we drew names this year for Christmas. This year we included some of my older nieces and nephews and my name was drawn by one of my nephews. 

He bought me baseball cards. Not sure where he got them. He bought me a 600 ct box and a few packs from the late 80's and early 90's (1989 Score, 1990 Upper Deck, 1991 Fleer, 1991 Stadium Club, 1993 Leaf, stuff like that).

This was the best card from the packs.

It was fun to open a few packs and go through a bunch of cards on Christmas. These were the only baseball cards I got for Christmas.

Check out a small sampling of what I got.

Here are couple cards that I thought featured cool photos.

Sweet shot at the batting cage.

Check out all the umbrellas in the stands.

There were cards for my mini collections. This is from the 1991 Upper Deck Final set and I don't remember ever seeing it before, but it fits my doughnut collection.

The oldest cards were from 1981...

...and the newest are from 2017.

There were some Hall of Famers.

Cool rookie card of Leon Roberts.

I went to the same high school as Tim Salmon, so I've always been a fan. Thought this was a cool photo!

I remember when this card was a really sought after card.

Like I said, it was fun going through a bunch of cards on Christmas!

Another Box of 2010 Topps 206

I couldn't help myself. After getting such a great box of 206 on Wednesday, I went back to the card shop on Saturday and picked up another box. This one was not as good as the first, but could have been worse. Since I showed off some base and bronze parallels in my previous post, I'll spare you this time around. Here are the mini's, SP's and hits. Enjoy!

Piedmont Minis

Basebal Carmels Minis

Polar Bear Minis

Old Mill Mini

Cycle Mini /99

Historical Events Minis

SP's

SP checklists

Julio Borbon - Hat (but not a SP)

Piedmont Frank Thomas Jersey

Polar Bear Pablo Sandoval Auto

Card Show Purchases Part 2: Random Rookies

I picked up a few random rookie cards at the show as well. Again, these were all in the 5 for $1 boxes.

1992 Bowman Cliff Floyd - Just an awesome photo! I love everything about, from the purple shorts to the dunking of the baseball!

2005 Topps Chrome Carlos Gonzalez - Carlos is having such a great season that I saw this and just had to have it, especially for 20 cents!

1999 Bowman Chrome David Eckstein - I've always liked Eckstein so I decided to add this to my collection!

1990 Topps Frank Thomas - Not sure how I didn't already have this card, but I am happy to have it now. I have almost bought it a few times recently, but this time I pulled the trigger!

That's a lot of bats!

The Gooch of the blog In the Ballpark read my 2010 card collecting goals post and was nice enough to go through his collection and see if he had any cards of players with more than one bat. He found a bunch and we traded. Here is a list of what he sent me and scans of my three favorite. He also included a few D-Backs out of the goodness of his heart. Thanks Gooch!

1. Willie McGee 1986 Topps

2. Gary Ward 1987 Topps
3. Dave Clark 1988 Topps
4. Mike Macfarlane 1989 Topps
5. Craig Biggio 1990 Donruss
6. Dan Gladden 1991 Topps
7. Carlos Quintana 1991 Leaf
8. Tom Brunansky 1991 Upper Deck

9. Cedeno & LaCock 1991 Pacific Senior Baseball

10. Jerald Clark 1993 Topps
11. Rock Solid Foundation 1993 Upper Deck
12. Dan Gladden 1993 Fleer
13. Frank Thomas 1993 Topps
14. Jose Canseco 1994 Pinnacle
15. Johnny Damon 1999 Metal
16. Jeff Baker 2004 Donruss Studio
17. Todd Helton 2005 Donruss Diamond Kings

1999 Fleer Metal Johnny Damon - Damon, before Boston and New York.

1990 Donruss Craig Biggio - A young Biggio in an old school Astro's jersey.

1993 Topps Frank Thomas - Is it just me or do these bats seem a little small. Maybe Frank Thomas is just huge?