Are you ready for some more football?

Like it or not, I've got another post here of more football cards from November's card show, on the plus side though, there's a lot more variety today than my previous Prizm only post.

The guy that I got all of the Prizm in the previous post from, had two 3200 ct football dime boxes, and while they weren't the best dime boxes that I've ever gone through, I was still able to find some gems (at least to me) amongst all of the early 90's base cards that made up the bulk of these boxes.

Ten cent refractors are always fun, doubly so when they're of player's that I'm actually familiar with. And the Witten is an Xfractor, so I guess I should say that ten cent Xfractors are always fun as well.

Between these two guys, there's almost too much handsome for one post! Even though I wasn't familiar with this set beforehand (2013 Topps '59 design minis), I couldn't pass up the opportunity at getting my first Tom Brady card.

The scan for 1000-Yard Club Dickerson does not do it justice at all. It is such a cool card in hand, I don't know how to describe it, but it's got a refractor-like quality, but the background, which moves, feels like there depth to it - kind of like a hologram, but not a hologram, if that makes any sense.

The Sayers did not scan well at all, and the Shuler is supposed to have a greenish tint to it... at least the Boz turned out alright though.

A couple of miscellaneous inserts and serial numbered cards here, my favorite being the Red Grange, which I initially thought (because of the shine and depth) was a Prizm insert of some sort, turns out it wasn't, it's from the 2016 Panini Rookies & Stars Great American Heroes insert set.

I was kind of surprised to find a pair of semi-vintage hall of famers, and an autographed semi-vintage hall of very gooder in these boxes. I am fond of autographs, so the Morton was pretty cool, but I really dig the '74 Larry Little - it's just a nice looking card.

It's not every day that you find such clean and sharp cornered 61's in a dime box, I'm not working on the set anymore, but I'll take them just the same. Not only are these in really great shape, but none of these guys were slouches either, both Mutschellar and Patton earned rings with their respective teams, and all three were selected to Pro Bowls.

This would be it as far as my dime box purchases went, but this guy did have a $1 box as well. Not a great box, but I did find the Carter and Tarkenton purple prizms from the previous post in there, as well as this beauty:

Other than being slightly crooked, this photo turned out really well, which is a good thing, because I really wanted everyone to see how neat this Frank Gore gold refractor was. One of my favorite cards from the day for sure, and in case anyone cares, it's also #'d to 50.

Between these, the Prizms, and some of the baseball from the first post, I did pretty well with this new seller, hopefully I'll see him there again some time.

Now, if that wasn't enough football for you, I also got a few things from Jim's 6/$1 boxes:

You can never go wrong with lenticular, unless you're scanning it, then apparently you can wrong with the Collector's Edge Quantum Motion cards.

People seem to either love or hate Colin Kaepernick, me, I'm indifferent towards him (as I am with most athletes), I do however love acetate inserts, so Colin wasn't about to be left behind. And it's hard to tell, but the Dez is a mini sepia refractor, who knew that there even was such things?

Some cool miscellaneous 90's (and 2000) inserts/parallels, please forgive the wonky scan.

Here's something that was new to me, 1993 Pro Set Power Combos Prizms. I will fight anyone that says that these aren't the coolest thing you've seen all day!

As interesting as these are, they're also a bit confusing. The backs are being shown with both cards being right side up, but you can tell that the Chargers isn't oriented properly, also the numbering is different. At first I thought it was an error of some sort, turns out it isn't, as they're from two different insert sets - Power Combos Prizms, and Power Combos Prizms PC. From the front, they look the same to me, so other than the numbering, I have no idea what the difference is.

How about a 1970 Kellogg's for just 15 cents? I don't ever see any Kellogg's at shows, so to find this one, which is in absolutely mint condition, was a real treat. This is actually my first ever card from that set as well, now if I could just find a few more at this price...

I did pick up a few basketball cards at this show as well (not nearly as many as usual though), and had intended to show them in the next post, but after looking at the scan again - which didn't turn out too well - I think I'll just wait and dump them in an odds and ends post somewhere down the road, I don't have much to say about them either, so they'll be better suited for that kind of setting.

If all goes well, I'll be attending one of the twice a year mega shows this weekend, so I just might have another series of card show posts in three months time :)


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These colors don't run

Today's post is going to be a perfect example of three things when it comes to me and my collecting habits: a) I'll apparently buy just about anything at a card show if the price is right, even though I'd be much better off just saving my money. b) My recent interest in collecting duplicates of things has really taken hold. c) Try as I might, I just can't do "best of" posts, especially when it comes to card show spoils.

As far as the "best of" posts go, I tried to do a few for the last couple of card show recaps, but I'm just not feelin' those, so it's back to anything and everything for me (unless it doesn't photograph or scan well, then it's out), my apologies to everyone who told me, because I asked, that they prefer the "best of" approach when it comes to show recaps.

If you saw my last post, you might recall that I mentioned that because I arrived so early to the show back in November, there weren't too many dealers set up yet, so I didn't have a lot of options right off the bat. Thankfully there was a guy who I hadn't seen before, who just so happened to have a pretty impressive spread, most of which was of the football variety - in fact, he had so much, that you'll see spread across two posts.

The first thing that caught my eye was a box of Prizm parallels, mostly from 2014, oh, and by the by, this is probably a good time to mention that all of this post is going to be Prizm football parallels, with the red, white, and blue's being the dominant color (hence the title).

Anyway, the stuff in the box wasn't priced, and when I asked about them, the guy gave me the old "just pick out what you want and we'll work on a price", which is normally a big no no for me, but again, I didn't have a lot of other options yet, so I took a chance.

There will be a few non-RWB's below, but the bulk of this shoe box was those, I started taking so many out that I had to remind myself that I was interested in working on the set, and to just try and focus on the guy's (duplicates and all) that I actually wanted.

Noticing the duplication yet?

Even though both Panini and Topps have used this Frank Gifford photo on more than enough cards, I still really like it, especially in this format.

Lance Alworth rainbow alert! I can't help but wonder if anybody else would have bought these that day if I hadn't, I sort of suspect that the answer is no, but that's okay, I don't mind buying stuff that nobody else wants... I do it all the time.

 

All of these guys were chosen because I either didn't have any cards of them, or because I only had 1 or 2 cards of them, but wanted more.

Retired star power.

Mostly still playing star power.

These were for the newly started Eric Dickerson collection.

These were my two favorite Prizm pick ups, purple prizmed Vikings just look so damn cool! It's funny too that their the same purple backgrounds, yet when scanned next to each other they came out as two different shades (the actual color is closer to Fran's background).

As mentioned, I found a few non-2014's that were of interest too, including this pair of blue 2013's. Quizz is probably my favorite Beaver of all-time, he was just so fun to watch, it's just too bad he wasn't able to do more in the NFL.

And finally, rounding out the post with a nifty 2015 blue Gronk, and a much less attractive 2016 green Steve Young. I really don't like the 2016 Prizm set, but it's hard for me to turn away a cheap Steve Young parallel.

When it came time to figure out a price for all of these, I was quoted a semi-decent, but not great, price - which was countered by me, and accepted after a few seconds of thought by the dealer. I think the only reason that he did accept it was because I was purchasing so much other stuff from his ten, and 25 cent boxes, some of which was shown in the last post, and the rest of the non-Prizm football will be seen in the next card show post.


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Backlogged baseball

I used to be so good about showing off my card show spoils in a timely manner. When I first started the blog a couple of years ago I would have everything photographed and/or scanned within a day or two, the recap post(s) would then be up within another day or two - fast forward a few years, and now I feel like I've accomplished something if I'm able to get all of that done within the following 30 days.

No sense of accomplishment this time though, as I'm just now getting around to the goodies that were gotten at the last show that I went to, which only took place at the end of this past November! Yep, only 2 1/2 months ago, that might be a new record for me?

I hadn't originally planned on going to this particular show, but I had plenty of Secret Santa shopping to do, and this was going to be my best opportunity to find some stuff for Billy and Mark, stuff that hopefully wouldn't suck.

Since it's been a couple of months now, some of the details are a little fuzzy, but I do remember that the weather was supposed to be nice that day, so I was trying to get there and back as quick as I could, I hate wasting nice days away from home. Because of this, I ended up getting there about half an hour earlier than normal. Usually things are jumping at that these shows around the crack of the dawn, not this time though, in fact, there was only about half a dozen dealers set up when I got there, but things did get going pretty quick.

Everybody's favorite seller, Jim, wasn't even there yet, so I had to bide my time by going to one of the few guys who was set up, a guy I've never seen before, who had pretty expansive spread. Much of his offerings were of the football variety, which worked for me, since that's what I've been most interested in lately, at least cardwise. After going through all of his football cards (those will be in a separate post), I noticed that he had two 3200 ct baseball dime boxes, so I went to work on those.

The first row I started in on had around 100 Griffey's grouped together, a lot of it was stuff that I already had at one time in my original Junior collection, stuff I don't really want again (early 90's base), but there were a few things of interest. The Gallery PPI up in the right hand corner is one of those auction points cards:

I remember these from the 1999-00 basketball set, but I never knew that they did them on the baseball side too. The basketball points were literally just points cards, these are actual baseball cards, which are apparently collected as such. I already showed this card to somebody via the interwebs, who didn't hesitate to make me an offer for it, supposedly a 100 points Junior is somewhat desirable, who knew? I think this is pretty nifty card, so I didn't take the offer, tempting as it was.

Of the dozen or so Griffey's that I got, this 1999 Tek is probably the coolest. Looks like these tend to sell for a bit on COMC, so that's always fun to find something like that for just a dime.

Found a run of Ichiro cards as well. I already had a copy of both the Lineage refractor, and the green Bowman, but they're both pretty, so I certainly didn't mind getting another of each. Even at a dime, the gold Bowman probably should've been left behind... it's not a very interesting card.

Here's just some random shiny.

And here we have some random... random? The Thome Clippings card is kind of neat, I don't recall ever having seen one of those before. I have quite a few Triumvirate's on the basketball side, but this was my first baseball one.

I have wanted one of Dan(ny) Ainge's baseball rookies for a long time, I say that, but I've never actually took the time to look for one, so I guess you can say that I wanted one in spirit. This one's got a punky corner, but it'll do until I can find a better one.

I had just finished getting through the first row of this dime box when Jim finally got there, so with the prospect of being able to get in on his stuff right away (that never happens for me), I quickly settled up with this guy - with every intention of coming back and seeing what else his boxes had to offer (spoiler: I didn't) - and made my way over to Jim... just as he was putting out mucho stacks of vintage!

I got there just in time to secure a spot before the feeding frenzy officially began, because of this, I was even able to go through three whole stacks before anybody else, plucking out four cards along the way. The first of said four cards was this really fantastic '62 Al Kaline, numbers two and three were...

... these guys! As far as vintage all-star subsets go, '68 is probably my least favorite, too much wasted space for my liking - that being said, it's not very often that I come across an affordable vintage Aaron or Clemente, in this kind of condition.

At $5 apiece, these last three cards were my "big ticket" items from the show, although the fourth card I had picked up, a creased '64 Mantle, would've been a little more, but Jim and I were a bit off with what we thought it was worth (I was most certainly being too cheap in my assessment of the card's value), so I didn't end up getting that one, which is fine, as there's plenty more of them out there.

While making my way through what was left of the "good" stacks (HOFer's, high numbers, etc.), I overheard someone asking about a couple of unpriced stacks, as it turns out, those were the 25 cent piles, which were made up of mostly "commons". There wasn't much left for me to look through by the time I got to them, but I did find one biggie...

... ANOTHER 1961 BILLY MUFFETT! This pretty much made up for not being able to get the Mantle (I'm only half being facetious btw).

Jim didn't have any dime boxes this time, but he did have some 6/$1 boxes, and those rarely disappoint, so after the vintage had been gone through, I hit the bargain boxes:

Jim had an awful lot of these 2018 sepia refractors, had I known that I would be owing a couple of people return packages, I would've bought more than just these three.

I've been buying any, and all, cheap copies of the 2011 legends variants (in parallel form) that I happen to come across, the Koufax Cognac for 15 cents might just be the best deal that I've found on one so far.

Tim must've just hit a homer, good for him! Normally I'm not a big rookie guy, but even so, I'm not gonna pass up a cheap Freddie Freeman. The McGwire is a sample, so that's something?

The last of my baseball purchases from Jim's bargain boxes is kind of interesting, and I have no clue as to what it is. The front is done up to look like a '58 Hires Root Beer (even though Mantle didn't have a card in that set), and the back...

... well, I don't what the back is supposed to look like, but it's certainly not a Hires back. I don't think it's a Broder, feels much different than those usually do, so I guess if anybody know what's going on here, please let me know.

By this time, it was getting kind of late, but since I hadn't found anything for one of the two people that I had to find Secret Santa gifts for, I decided to hit up one more table, and I'm glad I did, because not only did I find enough SS stuff, but I also found...

... a couple of much needed Golden Age inserts in a dime box! Unfortunately, that's all I found in these particular dime boxes, but just finding these four cards alone made the dig worth it.

I was now done for the day, there was still plenty of tables that I didn't even walk by, but I didn't care, it was time to go... so I went!

There was plenty of basketball and football cards gotten as well, especially football, so you can expect to see those coming soon to a computer (or phone) screen near you.


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Coming up short

Back in December, or was it November? Hmm, I guess I don't remember exactly when it was, but at some point in the not too distant past, Jared, the seemingly tireless trader from CMMDTO, had a post of nothing but trade bait that been acquired from a recent card show - and despite my disinterest in formal trading, I saw two cards that I really liked, so I went ahead and staked my claim on said cards.

My fears of any sort of formal trading were quickly dashed as the cards arrived in my mailbox less than a week after Jared's initial post, apparently this was going to be an informal trade, I can do that... at least most of the time!

A small problem ended up occurring on my part, in that after much searching, I only ended up finding one card that Jared needed (he has a much larger collection than I had realized) - this is what happens when you don't open any current products, and you've never had any reason look for cards of Diamondbacks at shows (I do now of course).

To Jared's credit, he wasn't bothered in the least by my unexpected lack of trading material (I really did think that I'd have multiple things for him), and didn't seem to mind waiting until I hit up the show at the end of February. It's going to be one of twice yearly giant shows, so thankfully I will have absolutely no difficulty in finding some stuff for him, as well as the other two people that I owe a return package (I've really been falling down on the job).


1997 Fleer Ultra Hitting Machines #18

 1710 hits over 15 seasons... I think that qualifies you as a Hitting Machine.


1998 Topps Tek #29 Pattern #27

I had stopped collecting baseball cards by 1998, so I never got to experience the original Tek brand. In fact I didn't even know that Topps had done any Tek sets during the 90's until just a couple of months ago when The Snorting Bull did a post about them. These cards are really nifty, and given the opportunity, I can definitely see myself picking up a few more somewhere down the line.


1995 Leaf Limited Bat Patrol #5

As mentioned already, the first two cards were from that initial trade post, this Junior came from Jared's TCDB trade bait, which I was encouraged to take a look at. Since I'm still not entirely sure as to how to use that site, trying to look at people's pages on there is a bit of chore, so I didn't end up looking at everything (that was probably a good thing in retrospect), but this particular card jumped out at me almost immediately... much like the foilized Bat Patrol does when looking at the card in person. A very nice addition to my recently restarted Griffey collection.

Thanks again for the cards, Jared! I really appreciate you not giving me the business for not having anything to send you right away, but I will, and hopefully it'll be good enough to have warranted the wait :)


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Never judge a book by it's cards

 

I've already mentioned more than a few times now that I was the beneficiary of some very generous packages during the month of December, a couple of which I'm still trying to get caught up on.

I've also already said on multiple occasions that they were all equally great, none being better than any other, but if I was going to give an award for "most uniquely packaged", well, that gold star, or MUP award, would most certainly go to my friend, Marc!

This is where we as bloggers usually add a link to the sender's blog, I can't do that though because Marc isn't a blogger (yet), although you can take my word for it when I say that he should be blogging, and hopefully will be at some point. If you happen to be on the Twitter though, you can find him @477marcbruins, who knows, maybe a few of you can help me to convince him to give the blogging a try... or just go follow him because he's a good people to know.

Marc had already asked me if I would be interested in the book shown above (I was), but when he told me that something was on it's way, there was no mention of the book, so I had no idea what might be on it's way. Once I received, and opened, the box that arrived, I obviously saw the book -- which was very nice, because it looks like it'll be a good read -- but upon removing said book from box I knew that something was amiss, because books aren't generally known for their lumpiness... and this was one lumpy book!

From the side here, you can definitely see that something's going on with this book, or rather... something's going on inside this book!

And there you go! It's cards... in top loaders... held securely in place by the pages of the book!

Now if anyone says that they've ever received cards packaged in this manner before, I will call shenanigans, because it takes a very unique personality to think of something like this, and Marc is most certainly in possession of a unique personality - I think I can safely say that this truly was one for the books :)

I'm pretty sure that no one came here to see me wax poetic about how the cards were shipped, so let's see what was hidden in the pages of this book:

1996 Pinnacle Trophy Collection #76

I've mentioned a few times recently that I stopped collecting football cards in either '92 or '93, so I ended up missing out on all of the great products that were put out by Collector's Edge/Pacific/Pinnacle during the rest of the decade - now that I am actively collecting football again, I seem to find myself drawn to these particular brands, especially the inserts and parallels. At this point, I know it's too late to make up for all of the lost time, but when I'm able to get a card like this Herman Moore, it helps take the sting off of that realization.

2003-04 Bazooka Comic Strip #15

Since I wasn't collecting cards at the time, I had no idea that Topps had ever done anything like these comic strips before. Considering how thin they are (like a film negative), I am kind of amazed that they would have ever been inserted into packs, as it would not take much to damage them.


2010 Topps Chrome Refractor #C87

It's kind of weird to look at a card like this and think "wow, this guy right here was personally responsible for the deaths of multiple people". But don't get me wrong, I still like it a quite a bit. As of six months ago I didn't own a single Aaron Hernandez card, and now I own three, this rookie refractor being by far the best of the three.


2013-14 Panini Select #189

I remember reading an article a couple of years ago that was all about Matthew Dellavedova being voted, by the players, as the dirtiest player in the NBA. If memory serves, Steph Curry was quoted quite a bit in this article, giving examples of said dirtiness. My only takeaway from this piece was that modern players are apparently softer than I already previously believed (well, that and Steph is a bit of a whiny b*tch) - he elbowed you in the ribs one time... OMG!!!!!! If that's what makes for dirty player these days, this current generation should thanking their lucky stars that they're playing when they are, because it sure doesn't sound like most of them would've survived a single game from the 1950's through the early 1990's (not that I didn't already suspect that).


1999 Press Pass X's and O's #XO2

Even after twenty years, these are still one of the most innovative inserts to have ever been released.


1995 Pacific Prisms #98

I know that he's been retired for a few years now, but there's a part of me that was under the impression that Kerry was still playing, so much so that I had to go double check - retired in 2011, shoot... that was like a week ago.


1996 Pacific Dynagon Dynagon Duos #DD-9

More Pacific! This is probably my favorite card of the bunch, but it sure was giving me fits trying to get a decent scan or photo, I ended up going the photo route though, still can't see the colors though, maybe if I tilt the camera a bit...

... there we go! I don't know if all of these Dynagon Duos have a blue and green color scheme, but this one sure works well with the Lions colors.


2000 Topps Stars Green #150 serial numbered to /299

I know that I've been away from football cards for awhile now, but since my interest in them returned, I have encountered a number of perplexing things, one of which is that the cards of Jamal Lewis don't seem to be of much interest to very many collectors. Why is this? He was a very reliable back for quite a few years, he was a big part of the Ravens winning a Super Bowl, and he seems to be a fairly decent person in real life... yet his cards can be had for next to nothing? If anybody out there is interested in super collecting someone, Jamal might just be your guy!

Thanks you again for the book, and the cards, Marc! The variety of items that you sent were just that, a variety, and for someone like me, things don't get too much better than opening a package like this.


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