COMC Black Friday Contest

For anyone new, or for those who just don't remember, I ran a contest earlier this year in which I gave away some of my earned COMC credit. After the contest was over, I mentioned that I would be doing it again later in the year for the Black Friday sale.

So now that it's later in the year, and the sale will be starting in less than two weeks, it seems like a good time to get this contest going.

Who's eligible: EVERYONE! It doesn't matter which part of this wonderful planet of ours that you happen to live, you're invited to enter.

How to enter: Just a leave a comment, simple is that. You can also earn an extra entry for promoting the contest on your blog, and for those who don't have a blog, a Twitter plug will be accepted as well --just be sure to leave a link in the comments.

The prize: The winner will get $15 in credit to use on whatever you want during (or before if you want to) the sale, but you will have to let me know what you want sometime before Monday (the 27th) night, that way I can put in my free shipping request. Oh, and that $15 total isn't set in stone, so don't worry if you end up going over by a buck or two. A prize will also be awarded to whoever comes in last place, I don't know exactly what it will be yet, but I will try to come up with something that will be of some interest to you. I should probably mention too that since moving to Tennessee a couple of years ago, I seem to be for whatever reason, just about the last person to receive their post Black Friday shipment. The last two years, I haven't received my shipments until a couple of day before Christmas, so whoever wins the grand prize, probably won't see their item(s) until after Christmas.

The rest of the details: The contest will run from today until 5pm (EST) next Wednesday (the 15th), at which time I will randomize the list of names six times, and announce the winner(s) later that night.

I think that covers everything, so to anyone who decides to enter, I wish you the best of luck.


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Pastels on baseball cards?

Today's post, which features a smattering of '54 Bowman, has been in the works for well over a year now. And that isn't because it's super great or anything, it's just because I started the draft for it... and never came back! I would imagine I'm not alone (I hope), when it comes to doing that sort of thing.

Even though I'm not actively collecting the set, I'm still not going to pass up an opportunity to acquire some singles on the cheap, which is exactly what everything shown here today was:

Paul had the distinction of serving up Frank Robinson's first career home run.

By all accounts, Clint was the first catcher to wear glasses during a game.

"Mandrake the Magician" is one of the coolest nicknames ever!

The '54 set contains some really wonderful trivia, this tidbit on the back of Sal Yvars' card is a perfect example.

Billy is among a long list of once great players who's names are rarely, if ever, mentioned in this day and age.

Pitched games one, five, and seven (won the first two) in the 1947 World Series for the champion Yankees.

 Here's another great trivia question. Since the release of set, there have been eight more unassisted triple play's recorded, the last one being by Eric Bruntlett in 2009.

A member of the 1948 championship winning Cleveland team, who is probably best known for the photograph showing his locker room embrace with teammate, Larry Doby, that came after his game 4 World Series victory.

I can't really think of anything to say about Bobby "blue eyes", that hasn't already been said before. So instead I will just return to trivia well, and say that I had no idea that Lon Warneke became an umpire after finishing up his near(?) hall of fame playing days.

All these cards came from a COMC seller that was having a fire sale (the kind that don't happen on the site anymore) in early 2016. I think I got to it about 20 minutes after it started, and even though the port had already been cannibalized by other sellers, I was still able to pick up a few things, including these 54's. The best part of those now non-existent fire sales, was of course... the prices! Eight of the nine cards shown here fell into the 0.90 to $1.20 range, Bobby T. was the only exception, for him I had pay around $2.50 -- which at the time (and still now) seemed like an excellent price.


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35 years too late

Oh well, maybe next time!


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TTM Triumph: Rich Wingo

I sent out a couple of football requests about a month ago, Friday saw the first successful return from that batch:

Rich played his college ball at Alabama, winning two National Title's along the way. In 1979 he was part of the famous "Goal Line Stand" that would lead to a victory over the Nittany Lions in the Sugar Bowl.

After college, Rich played five seasons with the Green Bay Packers before retiring. He is currently serving is first term as a representative in the Alabama House of Legislature.

As always, many thanks go out to Mr. Wingo for taking the time to sign my card.


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Another rare pack?

I took a trip to my favorite antique mall yesterday. I haven't really been going anywhere as of late, so it was kind of nice to get out and go somewhere fun.

As per usual, there was a lot of cheap and interesting stuff to be had, some (or much) of which came home with me. I have like the last five trips worth of purchases currently sitting in scan folders just waiting patiently to get their own series (soon!), so I will eventually get to most of the stuff I got on this visit as well, but for now I just wanted to focus on one particular item.

I don't know if anyone remembers the post I did a while back in which I wondered whether or not I should open a strange repack-esque pack that I found in a booth during my last visit. Well, apparently the owners of that booth decided to try and stump me again with yet another pack that, according to the internet, doesn't exist:

There were a few different packs that been added to the booth since the last time I was there, but this 1994-95 Upper Deck Collector's Choice Preview Pack was the only one that was of interest to me.

I knew right away that this was something different, and when a quick on the spot search via my phone yielded no results, I really knew this might be a bit of a rarity. There is absolutely nothing on the internet about preview packs from this years Collector's Choice, and I know that I had never heard of them either, which is strange, because I opened up a lot of this product way back when.

It's really interesting too that, as mentioned on the front of the pack, there are four Collector's Choice series 2, and two cards from the Upper Deck flagship series 2. Also the pack graphics are horizontal, as opposed to the normal vertical graphics as seen by this image I took from one of Kerry's APTBNL posts:

Even though there isn't much too that can be gleamed from it, here's the back of the preview pack:

This "mystery" pack set me back a whole 50 cents, and until I find out whether or not there are anymore of these floating around, I will not be opening it.

I have never had any intentions of being an unopened pack collector, but thanks to the owners of this booth and all their damn packs that aren't supposed to exist, I now have two in what seems to be a slowly growing unofficial collection


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Simpler times

This 1989 comic book ad is just too darn quaint not to share:

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Face painting

It feels like it's been awhile since I did an all baseball post, so in an effort to rectify that, I've got a sextet of '53 Topps for you today.

A couple of minor injuries, and Casey Stengel being hired to manage the Yankees would, despite his solid play, result in Gus losing his starting position at catcher to Yogi Berra in 1949.

Going into the '53 campaign, Hank was coming off his best season to date, a season in which he had been named the N.L. MVP after having led the league in home runs and runs batted in (37 & 121 respectively).

Gus Bell would have arguably his best season in '53, when he hit .300 with 30 HR's and 105 RBI's, and also making his first all-star appearance.

Awarded a Purple Heart after being wounded by shrapnel in the Battle of the Bulge.

 Best dugout quiz of the bunch?

Jim is the first athlete that I can recall reading about who worked for the FBI prior to playing professional sports.

At some point I would like to focus on this set a little more, but for now I will just stick to what I've been doing, which is to try and pick up singles that are in decent shape, and more importantly... low in price. As usual, all these were gotten with earned credit on COMC, and I believe all but one, were under $1.50 each.


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