Card Room Cleanup

As we prepare to turn the calendar over to a new year, there's a natural tendency to organize.  My desk in my office and my Blogger drafts folder are no exception, so here's a bunch of stuff that's been waiting for some time to be posted up here...

Starting off with a couple of mid-'70s hockey cards of HOFers.  I'll never turn down a new Lanny McDonald, especially one from early on in his career with the Leafs.

Accompanying Lanny in today's post is the great Stan Mikita.  If memory serves these both came from the dollar box at my LCS, which I haven't been to in probably close to a year now.

This Rusney Castillo is a Sapphire parallel, #'d to 25.  I think I stole it off eBay for just a couple bucks when Rusney was a rising star.  Given how he panned out (or didn't), looks like the joke's on me with this one.

I completed the entire run of '80s Topps hockey sets a while back, but this past year I circled around and re-filled some holes I was missing in the sticker insert sets.  This Patrick Roy was the result of that, love those brown pads!

This one also came from a dollar box at the LCS.  As a rule, I'll generally pick up any of the 2011 Topps Legends variations (or their Diamond Anniversary parallels) that I don't have yet for a buck or less.

Here's one I'm really happy about.  I really dig box bottom cards, and this Gretzky from the '90-91 OPC set was a real bargain at just a couple of dollars.  Not the easiest card to find, and expertly cut from the box bottom in this case.  Plus...

...it came with Super Mario from the same set!

No recollection of where this one came from, but it's a new Nomah and it's see-through, so there's that.

Next up, my two favorite cards from a Stadium Club rack pack ripped long ago.

Shouldn't be a shock that both feature retired stars.  This Brock is simply fantastic, almost a perfect card.  Possibly my favorite overall Lou Brock card out of the subset that I own.

I picked up quite a few of these Star Wars buybacks from last year's 40th Anniversary set.  A mix of two of my favorite things, Star Wars and buybacks, proved too tempting to resist.  I think this is my fifth one, more than halfway to a completed page now!

Way back in April I picked up two rack packs of the 2017 Donruss release from Panini.  I was just in the mood for something to rip, and as a child of the '90s the throwback to 1990 Donruss appealed to me.  I posted my first rack pack here.  Unfortunately, due to terrible collation, my second pack was almost entirely dupes.  I did score this new Bogaerts card at least...

...as well as a pretty sweet Dave Winfield.

On the insert front I did okay as well, with this throwback Kris Bryant...

...and this really nice serial-numbered card of the man who had a fantastic 2017.  Not my finest Altuve card, but it'll do.

Relics don't do much for me, but as I mentioned the other day I will occasionally pick up a framed mini relic, like this Manny bat from T205.  Especially when it costs me all of a dollar.

I've got a few more Bogaerts cards to get to in today's post, beginning with this purple parallel of his very first Bowman release.  Xander had a down year in 2017 no doubt, but he's still my favorite player on the current roster and I'm hoping for a bounce-back campaign this coming year.

One more towards my burgeoning '59 Topps set, and a high number at that!

The Legends variations from the earlier Topps releases are even more scarce than the ones in the 2011 set.  I'd been after a copy of this great Yaz from the 2009 set, featuring a signing session for the fans, for some time before a seller and I agreed on a price for this copy on COMC.  I shelled out a full $8 for this, and I don't regret it one iota.

Full career stats!

One more Legends variation, a nice Cognac version of the Sultan of Swat from his early days as a hurler with Boston.

Let's take a peek at three more Xander cards as we wind down here.  The black parallel of his throwback insert from 2016 Donruss.  The photograph on this one does a good job of masking the fact that Panini doesn't have a license.

Here's a serial-numbered two-player insert from Elite that pairs Bogaerts with one of the best pitchers of the current era.

Last Bogaerts card for today, from the 2016 "Throwback Thursday" online release.  I stayed away from the Throwback/Topps NOW stuff this past year, but only because I went overboard with them in 2016.

Speaking of which, here's another from 2016, featuring the great Mookie Betts.  This one is based on the design from a "Baywatch" non-sport set if I'm not mistaken.  I'm not sure how well it works honestly, but it's a relatively rare Mookie card either way.

Well, I'm about out of steam (and time), so we'll cut it here for today.  Feels good to finally see these neglected cards get their moment in the sun.

Thanks for stopping by!