How about that Walking Dead season finale? The first half of the season was terrible, and still not wild about all the inconsistencies and random changing of the rules on the fly, but at least we got a nice action packed ending.
Oh, right. Cards. This is going to be a big one. Get ready.
I worked out a massive trade with Offy from Sports Syzygy several months ago. He sent over 81 NBA stickers (5 of which ended up becoming dupes thanks to the separate trade I showed a short time back), including 3 or 4 shiny ones and 2 of the cloth stickers which I absolutely love. It knocked off a huge portion of my still very large NBA Album want list, but the best part is that he helped me complete my first 3 teams. That may not sound like much, but when the album is 378 stickers long and each team has 11 stickers, it’s a taller task to complete a team than in the MLB book.
That's a lot of sticky
Smack dab in the middle is one of the half-picture stickers. You can see the left border is missing. You won’t get to see the finished product yet, because that page isn’t done. Those multi-sticker pictures were always my favorite as a kid. I really enjoyed trying to line them up perfectly in my He-Man book. I hope Panini gives us some 4 sticker pictures next time.
Rockets Before page 1
Luis Scola is horrified at the emptiness of the page. Each team has a top player and an international themed sticker. The Top Player is in reflective foil and the International just has a country flag. You’ll see.
Rockets Before Page 2
You can see they include a large portion of the roster.
Rockets After Page 1
Luis Scola is ecstatic with the full page! Aaron Brooks is the top player? I guess that’s true, but my gut would have said Yao Ming. Ming must have been injured too much.
Rockets After Page 2
I caught a couple Bulls games on TV when Brad Miller still played for us. I liked what he brought to the court. Also, why was Chase Budinger in the Slam Dunk contest this year?
Hornets Before Page 1
I’m not terribly familiar with current players. I think that’s David West?
Hornets Before Page 2
I don’t know some of these guys. I like the stats for each player. The background design is minimal, but who needs exciting when it’s going to be covered up? What’s left of the space is utilized well.
Hornets After Page 1
The Team logo cloth stickers have 3 parts to them. Half goes in the upper left. Then there’s a part that goes in the front of the album. The last part is supposed to go on your text books or locker or whatever else kids put stickers on. I put it close to the head coach since they don’t get stickers.
Hornets After Page 2
I don’t know about you guys, but I still consider the Hornets a Charlotte team. I completely dismiss the Bobcats as a franchise, despite Jordan’s involvement.
Nuggets Before Page 1
Any Oz fans out there? Who else thinks he looks like Augustus Hill? All he needs is the wheelchair and some crazy 90’s camerawork.
Nuggets Before Page 2
As you can see, the International players aren’t always on the first page. Oh yeah, I forgot there’s also a Leaders sticker.
Nuggets After Page 1
Can I say that Chris Andersen annoys the piss out of me? He’s probably a nice guy, but I can’t get past the physical appearance. I’m not a fan of the Birdman nickname, either.
Nuggets After Page 2
No Dikembe Mutumbo sticker, unfortunately. I missed the boat on that one.
Most of you guys aren’t here for NBA stuff, but it is March Madness time and I do enjoy the game of basketball, even if I don’t currently collect a whole lot of it. How about I make it up to you by showing off some of the baseball portion of our trade?
That dugout scene behind him looks messed up. What are they doing?
The magic of trades and want lists. When this and the next card I’m about to show arrived, I thought for sure they were doubles. I remember Diamond King sent the entire 10 card Commemorative Series set in our swap. Thankfully, I looked at the back because I had no idea there were 2 “Special” cards as well. Just goes to show how perceptive Offy is. Much more so than I.
And with that, my non-autographed 1992 Gwynn Commemorative Series is complete
According to baseballcardpedia, These were available by sending in 10 wrappers and $1. Not a bad deal. I wonder why I didn’t do that myself when I was a kid? S1 talks about his copious notes and hours spent watching film to constantly adjust his swing. S2 is an interview with Fleer where Gwynn explains that Nolan Ryan is the toughest pitcher and that Kent Mercker, Chris Gwynn and Darryl Kile are players to watch.
When you see it: Only you can prevent doubles.
I chose this card to feature, because it’s one of only 4 cards I have in the binder from 1993. That just doesn’t seem possible. How is that possible? Is that possible? I don’t think that’s possible. I guess it’s time to go back home and raid the parents’ basement and see if I can rectify this oversight.
Glorious
You know…if Topps does anything with their Gold themed year in 2012, they should strongly consider bringing back Black Gold. Look at how awesome these cards still are! I coveted these cards with a passion back in 1993. If they revisited this look again, I bet a lot of people would feel the same.
Reminds me of a "Coming Attractions" bumper at the theater
More gold. This time with special guest star Crime Dog, Fred McGriff. The All-Star golds always felt a little lacking to me. If it were me, I would have put that text at the top in gold foil as well. Maybe that was too expensive for them back then.
If anyone ever pitches three balls at the same time, he's ready
3 bats = 3 gold cards! I’ll tell you right now, Offy really came through big time on the Frank Thomas side of things. All sides, really, but you’ll see that there’s some especially cool stuff for FT on deck. I’ll need 3 bats to hit it all.
Beam him up
After showing off 3, now 4, gold cards in a row, is there any question that I’m a shiny things addict? This is part of a 24 card set that fell one per pack. While not incredibly rare by today’s standards, it is incredibly shiny.
Don't forget Jazz Hands while running to 3rd or it's an automatic out
The back talks about how the Big Hurt hit 30 home runs in the first half of 1994, one of only 12 players to date to do so. He ended with 38 in 113 games. Imagine what might have been if it were a full season.
A little more head room on the die cut
Die cuts don’t come along every day. Die cuts from the mid-90s certainly don’t cross my desk frequently. SP Championship was a slightly cheaper alternative to the SP line of cards, but they were still a little too rich for my young blood. My 15-year old self is jumping up and down with it’s perceived scarcity and confirmed badassness. Fun fact: The die cuts have a silver hologram while the non-cut have a gold hologram in order to thwart potential fake die cuts.
It looks the same size on here, but it's not
I’m going to need a few 5X7 pages. I’m also going to need to find me a box of these Zenith cards some day. If you don’t know, this is essentially a common rip card. There was a normal sized card snugly tucked away in Frank’s belly. Someone played doctor with an exacto knife and C-sectioned the card out.
The presence of the Cubs runner in the background confused me for a bit
There’s those blackened, soul-less eyes again. Even in a larger format, you can barely see the whites. I’m becoming more and more convinced that he’s an alien. Of course, his offspring has busted out of the card’s chest (which for the purposes of this analogy is on the back) and is running lose in the spaceship as we speak.
Jazz Hands out of their holsters...steady....
Whoever extracted the cards did a good job. There’s minimal damage to the back. I hope they found something worthwhile, because I don’t know if I would personally risk cutting up any of these players only to find a Neifi Perez inside.
It's shinier and cooler looking in person
These Impulse parallels fell 1:7 packs (there’s also a Gold Impulse version /100). I don’t know if the parallel 5X7’s increased your chance of finding a rarer parallel or insert inside. My guess is no. Offy, if you were the one to open these up (and you make it this far down the post), let us know if you remember.
Uh oh. Also need the Maddux
Even with the 5×7 cards and the cloth stickers and the black gold, I think this is the coolest part of the trade. I don’t think this made it past the Inaugural Edition. Hope my computer is qualified to run this thing.
Baseball cards on the computer? That's crazy. You're crazy, Donruss
Here’s the actual card..er, I mean disc. I didn’t throw it into my CD-ROM drive. The shape scares me. I’m afraid it would rattle around and fly out and break something. It looks cool. Maybe if I get a spare one of these days, I’ll try it out. If that happens, I’ll be sure to find a way to record it so everyone can see what’s on this puppy.
Still, it’s really cool to have this in my collection. I’m not exactly sure how to store it, but no matter. It’s still one of the most unique pieces in my collection.
Which begs the Free Box Break Question (if you made it this far, you deserve a reward, right?): What is the most unusual card or item in your collection? If you’ve posted it on your blog at some point, please feel free to link it up so we can all ooh and aah.
Again, a big thanks to Offy for the amazing trade. If any of you get the chance, I highly recommend dealing with him. Send some Mike Piazza’s and Boston stuff his way, will you?
Offy is a good guy to deal with. That’s a great lot of cards he sent you. I’ve got a couple of those Upper Desk Power Deck things that were for the computer. I don’t remember what year they were from, but I’ve always been leery of putting them in my computer. I wish I could think of something more unusual, but I’m drawing a blank on anything but those.
I’d say my unusual item is a Baseball Bucks Ubaldo Jimenez from 2011 Heritage. Sure it’s newer, but the thing is just hard to store so that makes it unusual in my book. Other oddities are my 93 Rockies team set Diamondmarks, the 94 Fleer Extra Bases team set, and the Topps Giant Tulowitzki from 2011 Lineage.
Looking back on my list makes me a little depressed. I need something really strange and goofy. I will have to start looking immediately.
Hmmm….that’s a tough one. I have a few vintage cards with pieces missing, but I guess the oddest/most unusual thing would be a Storm Davis TriStar encased cut auto. I’d link to a post on it, but I never even got around to posting on it. It was just dirt cheap, so I picked it up haha.
mine is a tiny orlando cepeda playing card. it’s the 10 of hearts and its printed on thin paper. almost seems like it’s home made.
Most unusual item in my collection so far would have to be my birthday present this year:
http://dawgbonesaphilliesphan.blogspot.com/2012/01/birthdays-aint-so-bad.html
I need to snap a picture of the pitcher that arrive a couple weeks ago too.
Probably the most unusual item is my 2000 Upper Deck Powerdeck Cal Ripken card. It’s a CD-ROM but it’s shaped like a card.
The most unusual is probably the box topper from ’11 Allen & Ginter. I have no way to store it and it will probably end up damaged and thrown away.
I think the most unusual part of my collection is probably my 2010 Ginter and 2011 Ginter relics. I’ve got bits of dominoes, ropes, and travel day wear in the collection.
Cool flashback to the 90’s! I remember having exactly one of those huge 5×7 cards as a kid. I don’t know who was on it and I was so afraid of ripping it. I guess thst counts as my most oddball card. Awesome post!
I’d say card wise, the weirdest card I ever got was a blank card from 2007 Donruss Elite. It had all the foil on the front and was white on the back, but didn’t have any writing on it whatsoever…
on the temporary front, I’d have to say a rubber “evil baseball” mask sent to me by a fellow blogger. This thing fits over your entire head and has a very maniacal face.
I say temporary because my wife took one look at it and said “No.”
So now I have to find somewhere to send it to.
I traded it away recently because I really wanted to get rid of it, but I’ll mention it here. It was an 2008 Finest Topps TV Autograph of Alan the Rip Master. Who? Apparently he opens product on Topps TV. He signed it with the words “Rip Master” and “Wow.”
http://www.checkoutmycards.com/Cards/Baseball/2008/Finest_Topps_TV_Autographs/RM/Alan/3960365
For some reason, I was obsessed with Sportsclix when they came out; I have the complete factory set of the 2005 version…
I would have to say the most unusual card or cards that I have is the compete Montreal Expos set by a game company APBA. They look like playing cards with rounded corders but no pictures of the player. All that is on it is the player’s name and some stats in black and red ink. It’s from the early 80s and I have no idea how to play the so called game but that would be my most unusual card.
My most unusual item for baseball is my 1991 or 1992 David Justice Topps candy dispenser. Overall it is my Bayern Munich concentration game featuring Franz Beckenbauer and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge.
my Emilio Bonifacio card from the 2011 Bowman Platinum series because its the thickest card I have
I usually limit my collection to just cards, but I was in a thrift store about a year ago and found a Strat-O-Matic type game called “Longball” from 1977. I paid 50 cents for it, and I was surprised to find all the player cards were in really good shape. The cards themselves are like Strat-O-Matic, no pictures or anything, but ’77 was the year I started collecting so it was a pretty cool find.
I think the most unique item in my collection is my 1903? or so tobacco card. It is of Rube Oldring “fielding.” What I love about it is that Oldring was a Philadelphia A!
As a collector of Robin Yount I’m always looking for new stuff and one thing I found a while back was an old good humor popsicle stick shaped like a bat with Yount’s facsimile auto on it. My wife really shook her head at that one.
Man, all my stuff is tame. I guess it would be several copies of a flyer for a Dodgers old timers game with shots of Koufax, Campanella, Jackie and others.
i have a jeff frances rip card that i haven’t ripped yet…..
Most unusual? I guess a hunter pence bobblehead depicting him planting a tree.
My most unusual is probably one of my most favorite. Its a Peanuts card of Linus playing second base from a box of Zingers. I pulled it sometime in the 70’s and have had it ever since.
Unusual item…
I’m going to limit this to my Red Sox collection since that is my main focus. In that case it would be some sort of a cube from a long forgotten Pinnalce set. It looks like a Rubix Cube but has pictures of Red Sox on each side.
I have a baseball card printed on a 2 1/2″ x 3 1/2″ slab of bubble gum !
I’d have to say a Peyton Manning coin. I want to say it’s from Pinnacle. I don’t have much that is unusual.
I have a Topps Doubleheader card of Rickey Henderson that is in a plastic stand with a small copy of his rookie card on one side and his base card from the year (I think 1989 Topps) on the other.
I still like my Denny’s Griffey Jr. refractorish card from the mid 1990’s.
I just bought a KG Jr. yo-yo in an antique store. I haven’t even posted about it yet.
Boy, I tell ya, between you and Waxaholic and all the comment requirements — I’ve got a job you know.
Most unusual card in my collection? That’s a tough one. Off the top of my head I have a Moments&Milestones autograph card featuring Joey Votto, but the autograph is of the Braves’ Brandon Jones.
I’d go with my Steve Sax autographed TriStar card. It’s suppose to be a cut autograph, but it’s just a white index card with a white sticker (with Sax’s autograph on it) attached to the card.
http://sanjosefuji.blogspot.com/2011/04/chronicles-of-cardfoolery-1-2008.html
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