Recent Royals: 2006 Bowman Originals Billy Buckner

I have very few card collections given my limited resources and space, but I did decide some time ago to begin collecting on-card Royals autographs. It’s been a blast so far trying to track these things down and this is the latest addition to my collection. To view the cards currently in the collection, take a look at the Gallery or the other posts in this series. I’m working on getting a legit want list together on my trade page but, in the meantime, if you have any on-card Royals autos that it looks like I don’t have, don’t hesitate to drop me a line!

"Oh Billy! I wish we'd never boosted that car!"

Funny thing about Billy Buckner. Oh wait, two things actually.

1. He’s not related to Bill Buckner the baseball player. His dad’s name is Bill Buckner but he’s not a baseball player.

2. The guy who posted this auction called this a Billy Butler auto. I didn’t look at the photo at all, so I bid accordingly and thought I got a pretty good price on a Billy Butler auto. Whoops!

As it turns out, the seller was a solid dude and admitted his mistake. I told him it was no big deal- to just refund me a couple bucks and it’d be all good. He slipped a finski into the package and we were square in my book. Sometimes you eat the b’ar, dude.

Billy Buckner was supposed to be a starter in the majors by now. Highly drafted (the Royals took him over Dustin Pedroia) and highly touted for much of the early part of his career, he just can’t seem to have the breakout season he needs to kick him into a rotation somewhere. He’s currently at AAA for the Rockies and I’m guessing this is his last shot to prove that he’s majors-worthy as he’ll turn 28 this year. That’s right. 28 is old. That makes me feel awesome.

Incidentally, the Bowman Originals set it way lamer than Topps Originals. For one, Bowman cards all have fake signatures on them to begin with, which makes these look lame. Secondly, Bowman doesn’t have the history that Topps does (even though it starter earlier). I got a 1989 Topps Dale Murphy auto as an NPN from Topps Originals and was stoked. A 1989 Bowman Dale Murphy auto is approximately 10X lamer because nobody has any fond memories of 1989 Bowman. The math is simple!

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