A PWE from a Blogger on Hiatus

Recently my good buddy Mark Kaz over at This Way to the Clubhouse decided to say goodbye to the sports card blogging world, at least for a little while.  I prefer to think of it as a "hiatus" rather than a permanent goodbye, and am still hopeful that he'll make a return someday.  Call it denial I guess!

In any event, Mark has become my most frequent trade partner over these last few years, and while he may not be actively blogging I have no doubt that there will continue to be a flurry of PWEs traversing the East Coast between Rhode Island and Delaware for the foreseeable future.  Here are the contents of the latest PWE Mark dropped on me a week or two ago now...

First, the lone non-Red Sox card of the package.  I've said it about a hundred times now over the lifetime of this blog, but the '94 Pinnacle Museum Collection parallels are some of the more visually appealing cards to come out of that decade as far as I'm concerned.  Always pleased to pick up a new one regardless of player or team!

Here's one of those Hometown parallels from 2014 Bowman.  These are far more interesting to me than their base card counterparts.  On this particular card we get the North Carolina state flag.

I wasn't collecting in 2003, so I had no idea that Upper Deck went with the playing card style rounded corners for their '03 Victory set.  An odd decision, but I actually think it kind of works for whatever reason.  This one is an orange parallel, in case it wasn't completely obvious.

If there was ever a set that was quite obviously designed to showcase a relic or autograph, this is surely it, right?  I always get a kick out of cards like these.  I mean how much work would it have been to do something with that negative space on the cards that don't have a relic like this one?  Way to mail it in, Donruss!  In all fairness though, Donruss is definitely not the only company to produce cards like these.

This Carlton Fisk card is one of my favorites from this particular PWE.  The 2001 Upper Deck Decade 1970s release is one of those sets that makes me wish I had been collecting at the time.  I would have been all over a box or two from this set for sure.  I guess collecting the singles after the fact is the next best thing though.

To me it seems like only yesterday that I was opening packs of 2008 Topps, yet all three players on this AL Home Run Leaders card are now retired.  A sure sign that I'm getting old.

This one is from the 2003 10th anniversary SP Authentic set.  I guess this Rookie Archives card stems from the fact that Trot was breaking into the bigs around the time the inaugural set was released.  Whatever the case, it's a new Red Sox card for me, and serial-numbered to a comically high /2500 as a bonus!

Slightly more rare than the Trot Nixon is this Prestigious Pros Blue parallel of Curt Schilling, which is numbered out of /900 on the reverse.  From looking on COMC it appears as though there were about 15 versions of this card, with the only difference being the color that you can just barely make out around the very top and bottom edges of the card.  No wonder Donruss was stripped of their license.  I would never chase after all of these, but it is nice to have this one example at least.

Finally, a 2004 Cracker Jack sticker of Dick Hoblitzel.  The original 1914/15 Cracker Jack cards might be my absolute favorite pre-war release.  I've been very fortunate to track down a couple of them for my Red Sox collection, but not Hoblitzel.  In fact, this card is very high on my "white whale" Red Sox want list.  Who knows if I'll ever encounter an original, and if it will be within my price range if I do.  In the meantime it's nice to have this reprint.

Mark, if you see this thanks as always for the great batch o' Sox!  I'll be returning fire shortly!