PWE and Package Preview

Yesterday I got mail from two bloggers, well one blogger and one former blogger. Kenny hit me up out of the blue with one of his awesome PWEs and Matt gave me a heads up through Twitter. Big thank you to both of them!

Let's see what Kenny sent and then I give you a sneak peak of what Matt sent me.

I mentioned recently that I haven't been buying cards recently, so even though I've seen it plenty online, this is the first 2020 Topps card in my possession.

This Mike Leake card is my first 2020 Topps Heritage card as well. Leake was the first player to announce that he has opted out of playing the 2020 season. 

This 2020 Topps Utz card of Ketel Marte is fantastic! I really like the look of it and like that it is completely different than the regular 2020 design. Last year I spent several months checking various stories around the Phoenix are for Utz chips with no success, so this year I haven't even looked. That made getting this card even better! Now I just need the Zac Gallon.

Kenny also sent me this Topps coupon, possibly knowing that I haven't purchased any cards this year (well no packs anyways - I just recently bought a small lot of basketball cards off a Facebook group, but they haven't even come in the mail yet). Thank you Kenny!

Here is a sneak peak at the cards that Matt sent me. Don't mind the laundry in the background. 

I think this was the oldest card in the package, so when I share the rest of the package I'll go in chronological order. I figured the bat (wood) card paired well with Groot.

Thank you to both Kenny and Matt! My question for you is do you have access to Utz chips and the Topps Utz cards?

100+ Don Mattingly Cards

Don Mattingly has always been one of my favorite players. I've talked about that several times on my blog. Most of my player collections though are just a cumulation of cards pulled from packs and more recently adding cards from dime boxes. So for me to accumulate 100+ cards of some of my player collections is quite the accomplishment for me.

The stack of cards on my desk that had some Mattingly cards yielded 6 cards, 5 of which ended up being new to my collection. The only dup was the Heritage card at the bottom.

My favorite of the 5 cards I added to the binder is the Triple Play card. I know Triple Play has always been a low end brand and I'm not a fan of the Panini reboot, but I really like the look of the early Triple Play cards, especially black borders of the 1993 cards.

While adding these 5 cards to my binder I realized that I now have 111 Mattingly cards in the binder. I've got a few rookie cards in other places and an autograph, so I'm probably around 115 unique Don Mattingly cards. 9 year old Daniel would think my collection is amazing. 38 year old Daniel, still thinks it's pretty cool.

What are your thoughts on the early Triple Play cards? Love um or hate um?

Murphy, Joyner, and LANCE

Let's put away some more cards from my desk.

There was a stack of cards on my desk that contained some cards for other player collections that I have.

I don't know anyone baseball fans that grew up in the 1980's that didn't like Dale Murphy. He was a great player and a great guy and was on the Braves, who were on TBS all over the country.

Of the 10 Dale Murphy cards shown, I was able to add just two to the binder with my Murphy cards. I added the Allen & Ginter card and the 1993 Upper Deck Community Heroes card. Everything else was a duplicate.

Sometimes you go into this process knowing that a card is a dup, so it's no big deal. Other times you go into it thinking that you'll be adding to your PC and so when you determine that cards are duplicates it's really disappointing. Such was the case with these two 1982 cards.

Thought I would get Groot into the post for P-Town Tom and also give you a little insight into my life. The Red Vines were purchased for an upcoming road trip, but we couldn't wait to break them open. In the background you'll notice that I'm watching the Lance Armstrong documentary. While I knew the premise, I found the details of the documentary super interesting and enjoyed it.

Next up are cards of Wally Joyner. I batted .500 on the Joyner cards by adding two of these cards to my binder. The Triple Play and the Leaf card were new to my collection.

That's it for today. Prove me wrong about Dale Murphy. Is there anyone out there that doesn't like Dale Murphy? If you watched the documentary, LANCE, what did you think about it?

More From the Box

I finished my post yesterday around 7:30 am on Saturday morning. After publishing it I checked my phone and I had a text from one of my Supervisors at work with bad news. Even more reason that I need to be blogging right now.

Let's take a look at some more cards from that 330 count box from my desk.

First up are some cards of Randy Johnson. Because Randy Johnson spent the bulk of his career with the Diamondbacks, I have a ton of Randy Johnson cards, almost just by default. Because of that, I've set up a binder specifically for Johnson. I have them sorted by year and by my count I have around 350 different Randy Johnson cards. So I wasn't expecting to be able to add many to the binder from this small lot of 7 cards, but I actually was able to add the bottom 4 cards to the binder.

Here is another card that made it into a binder. The corners and edges aren't great, but that's probably because they are dark and it has been floating around in this 330 count box for a while, so now it will be saved from further demise in the binder with the rest of my modern Hank Aaron cards. Aaron is another guy that I want to collect all of his Topps cards, similar to my Nolan Ryan pursuit that I mentioned yesterday. The difference between my Nolan Ryan and Hank Aaron collecting goals is that I want all Topps cards of Aaron including his base, all-star, league leader, etc. cards and I collect his modern day stuff as well. With Nolan Ryan, I really just want his base Topps card from his playing days.

Who do you collect by default, like I do with Randy Johnson? Do you have players that you are going after all their Topps base cards or all their cards from their playing years?

If 2020 was a card collector's desk

I decided recently that I wanted to get back into blogging regularly. I need to. I need to take a step back from everything going on right now in the world and focus on something that brings me joy. Baseball cards.

2020 has been a crazy year. I took this picture the other day and I think it represents 2020 fairly well.

I've got a lot of work to do. Good thing I bought a laptop late last year or blogging wouldn't even be an option at this point.

I'm going to take some time going through everything; sorting and putting it where it goes or getting rid of it. So, let's get started.

I grabbed the 330 count box the is next to Groot. These are cards that I got as part of a Paul Goldschmidt collection that I bought shortly after he was traded to the Cardinals in 2018.

First up is a small group of Bryce Harper cards. Harper is a polarizing player. Most people either love him or hate him. I like him. I "collect" him. When I say "collect" Harper, I mean that I keep his cards when I come across them and I will pick them up in dime boxes when I come across ones I don't have. I don't have any relic or autographed cards. I do have an autographed SI magazine that my brother got for me. When my brother lived in Las Vegas he knew the Harper family.

Let's see how many I don't already have and put them away. Okay, so out of the 13, I needed 10 of them. That gives me 54 total Bryce Harper cards.

Here are the dups. If you need one, let me know.

Let's finish up today's post with a small group of Nolan Ryan cards. Is there anyone out there that doesn't like Nolan Ryan? I know there are some people who don't think of him as a great pitcher, but he had a great career and his statistics are staggering.

Because Ryan pitched for so long, for the longest time I have always wanted to have one of each of his Topps cards. It's something I've thought about since I was a teenager. I think it has something to do with the fact that his cards during his playing career spanned from 1968 - 1994, so not only would you get to see the player, Nolan Ryan, evolve on cardboard, but you would get to see the cardboard itself evolve. I'm sure I already have the 1990 - 1993 Topps base cards, but I'll save these just in case. Everything else is up for grabs.

I've always loved this 1994 Stadium Club card of Nolan Ryan showing him tipping his cap as a final farewell to baseball fans and card collectors.

How about you? How is your card area looking these days?

The State of the "Hobby".

Hope all is well with everyone out there. It's been a crazy last two months or so. The world has transformed. So has the sports card industry and "hobby". I put hobby in quotes because it feels less and less like a hobby every day. Sports cards are more popular now than they have been in a long time and that's a good thing, right?

With everything going on in the world due to the coronavirus, I think most people would have assumed that spending on things likes sports cards would decline drastically. They would have been wrong. Boy, would they have been wrong.

I mentioned in a previous post that I stopped spending money on cards in January, so I haven't been buying during this sports card boom, but I've been taking advantage of the extra dollars in the market by unloading some of my duplicates and other unwanted cards.

One of the contributing factors to the surge in sports card sales has been the ESPN documentary The Last Dance. I've always been a big Jordan fan and had a bunch of duplicates that I've been selling on OfferUp. I've sold several lots already and each buyers has mentioned The Last Dance and how it has brought them back to their youth and the hobby that they had left behind. I love hearing this and I love unloading my dups for a nice profit.

The Jordan effect has spread from Michael Jordan basketball cards to Michael Jordan baseball cards, to 90's inserts of all sports to "junk wax" gems. Cards that you could routinely find in dime boxes, are selling for dollars. Unless they are graded and then they are selling for hundreds of dollars.

Topps and Panini are selling certain products exclusively online and have so much demand that their websites can't handle it. Retail outlets can't keep their shelves stocked with toilet paper or Mosaic.

Then you have the Topps Project 2020 cards. I haven't bought any. Not just because I'm on a strict budget. I just don't really see the appeal. To each their own though. The dollar amounts they are bringing in the secondary market are mind blowing. The last sports card boom lasted about 10 years. I'm not sure that this one will last more than 10 months.

Why do you think about all the craziness that has recently transpired within the "hobby"?

How do you store 10 card insert sets?

I hope everyone is doing well. Things are crazy right now. So let’s talk about baseball cards and maybe take our focus off of the fear and uncertainty that we are all feeling right now, even if for but a brief moment.

One of the collections I bought last year contained a couple of binders filled with various insert sets. I enjoy theorizing about how the collection that I bought came to be. Today let’s look at 1994 Fleer Ultra insert sets. Did this person buy packs and boxes to put together these sets? Did they buy singles at shops and card shows to pice these sets together? Maybe they traded with other collectors to fill their needs. I supposed they could have bought the sets off eBay, but that doesn’t sound as fun as the other options.

1994 Ultra came in two series. The insert sets that were part of the collection I bought are all from Series I. Boxes contained 36 packs and each pack contained 1 insert.

First up is the Second Year Standouts. This is a 10 card set that was inserted at a rate of 1:11 packs. This means it would take 110 packs or 3 boxes to complete this insert set and that’s if you didn’t get any dups.

The biggest name in this set is Mike Piazza, followed by fellow 1993 Rookie of the Year award winner, Tim Salmon. I remember Aaron Sele and Jeff Connie being popular for a bit, but Piazza was and still is the biggest name in this set.

With this being a 10 card set, the previous owner chose to display it in one 9 card sheet with the 10th card on the back. How do you store 10 card sets when you put them in sheets? Do you double them up or start a new page? If you start a new page, do other cards get put in that second page?

Growing up I didn’t purchase enough boxes to put together many complete insert sets. I bought packs and boxes way more than I do these days, but even then I would rarely focus on completing full insert sets. I’d just buy the singles of players that I liked. So deciding how to store a 10 card insert set back in 1994 wasn’t something I had to deal with. These days when I come across a 10 card insert set, I Will give it two pages and don’t fill in the rest of the page, which bothers me, but it would bother me more to have other cards on that second page so I leave it vacant. How about you?