Friday Flagship Bonanza

Just a random smattering of Topps flagship baseball cards to share on this sunny Friday...

While I don't buy a lot of new, unopened product, I do get the urge to rip packs from time to time just like most collectors.  My answer is to sometimes pick up cheap, older wax, which I use to maintain a small stash of unopened product for when the urge to rip hits me.

Last year I picked up a box of 1993 Topps Series 2 cello packs.  I remember using what little funds I had as a kid to buy a pack or two of this stuff after Little League baseball games at the concession stand, so I figured this would be a fun walk down memory lane.

Series 1 boxes are actually more expensive than you'd think, I assume because of the allure of pulling a Gold parallel of the Derek Jeter RC.  Series 2 is more in my price range (the entire cello box cost less than $20), and still provides some fun and great cards, like this Griffey All-Star or the great Bo Jackson portrait that led off the post.

I never really got around to opening any of these the first year or so that I had them in my possession, but in my recent fit of purging cardboard and shrinking my collection I've started cracking a pack or two open from time to time and only keeping a couple of cards from each pack that really speak to me.

I'll gladly accept any and all new Julio Franco cards for my small "ageless wonder" collection of guys that hung on well into their 40s.

From just the handful of packs I've opened so far I've already landed a couple of new Red Sox cards for my team collection, including this Tony Sheffield Draft Pick card.

Here's one I recall fondly from back in 1993, pretty awesome to pull it fresh from a pack again more than 25 years later.

I've had a buyback version of Mike Piazza's Topps RC for a while now, nice to supplement it with the everyday version.

Recent Cooperstown inductee Mike Mussina!

A classic shot on speedster Rickey Henderson's card...

...and rounding out the cards I decided to hang onto from the first couple of cello packs, another new Red Sox card in Jack Clark.  I'm sure I'll be posting some of the other highlights from the box if and when I get around to opening the remaining packs.

Now, let's look at some other new-to-my-collection Topps flagship cardboard...

One last '52 that I grabbed from the batch at the small antiques store near my house that was available at $6 per card.  This is the highest number card that I grabbed out of those boxes, at #307 on the checklist.

When I was in Baltimore with my wife for a weekend a few weeks back, they had baseball cards for sale in the pro shop at Camden Yards.  If I'm going to grab any kind of souvenir, sports cards are pretty high on the list, so I grabbed a single hanger pack each of Series 1 and Series 2 of the 2019 Topps set.

The Series 1 pack didn't yield a whole lot of note, though I will hang onto this Shohei Ohtani All-Star Rookie Cup...

...and this Mitch Moreland, a new card for my ever-expanding Red Sox collection.

The Series 2 pack was quite a bit more successful, as it landed me not one...

...not two...

...but three new cards for my Sox collection.  I found a select few other cards that I'll be hanging onto as well inside the wrapper...

...like this Willians Astudillo RC.  Like many baseball fans, I've gotten a kick out of watching this guy play.  This is my first card of his, and while I don't plan to chase any others I will gladly hang onto this one.

I enjoy the stadium shots used on the team cards in the flagship set this year, and this is easily one of the more beautiful examples among that subset if you ask me.  Photographic perfection!

On the other end of the spectrum, this has to be the worst photo from the group, right?  The only reason I'm hanging onto this card is because my wife and I have been to this stadium, though it was in March the year that we went to San Diego, and as such we weren't able to catch any live baseball.  Still, kind of cool to get a card of a distant stadium that I've been to, pulled from a pack acquired at a different distant stadium!

The Series 2 pack also yielded this Ted Williams Greatest Moments insert.  Sort of a tenuous Red Sox card at best, but it does say the team name along the bottom, so it counts!

Closing it out for today, a '57 Dale Long in "well-loved" condition.  I didn't pick this one out specifically, instead it was included as a bonus card packed along with a recent eBay win.  Regardless of condition, I'm certainly not going to complain about eBay sellers including freebies from the '50s in their packages.

That's all I've got time for today, thanks as always for stopping by!