Coronavirus Packages Episode V - The Dimepire Strikes Back

Nick, of the famous Dime Boxes blog, and I have had a pretty great back and forth exchange of cardboard going for years now.  I send random mailers of cardboard his way every so often, and every so often I find an envelope or mailer stuffed full of Red Sox in my mailbox with his return address on it.  It's a beautiful thing, and I'm honored to have awesome friends like Nick in this hobby.

A couple of months ago now (I'm embarrassed to say), I showed off the first and second parts of a three-part package Nick had sent my way.  Today, I finally have the third installment to go through, featuring some amazing cards like the Tris Speaker T206 above...

...as well as this Bill Carrigan, also from that infamous set.  These are Dover reprints from the late 1970s, and they're seriously appreciated because these just happen to be two of the final Red Sox cards from the T206 release that I do not have an authentic copy of.  I'm not sure if Nick chose this pair for that reason, but if not it was certainly fortuitous!

Those weren't the only Dover reprints to be found in this particular delivery.  Harry Hooper's Cracker Jack release is next.  Again, while I have a handful of original Cracker Jacks, this one has always eluded me (and likely always will, it's an expensive little bugger on the rare occasion when one surfaces).

The Cracker Jack cards are probably my overall favorite pre-war set, so I'm grateful to have this reprint in lieu of an original.

Another Dover reprint, and another card I do not own the original of.  This one is more surprising, as a '50 Bowman Dom DiMaggio wouldn't be cheap, but wouldn't exactly be outrageously or prohibitively expensive either.  One that maybe I'll target some day when I'm not on a spending hiatus.  Speaking of which...

...of the half dozen Dover reprints that were included in the package, this is the card that I actually almost felt a sense of shame for not having tracked down in vintage form yet!  I absolutely adore 1952 Bowman, and Vern Stephens has a particularly pleasing card in the release.  It's inexcusable that I don't have one of these given that they can be had in condition that would be more than good enough for me for less than ten bucks.

Finally on the Dover front, a Goudey Fritz Ostermueller.  A fun selection there, and given that I have a decent amount of pre-war stuff it's amazing that Nick went 6-for-6 in terms of sending reprints that I do not have the original card of.

Of course, there was more to be found inside this particular team bag...

First up, a couple of Nomar Garciaparra additions, with this 2000 Upper Deck MVP "Drawing Power" insert...

 ...and this Statistical Champs, courtesy of 2003 Donruss Champions.  Always happy to land any and all new Nomah cards!

Some hot off the shelves new stuff (at the time, before I sat on it for two months anyway) here with a Rocket 1985 Topps-themed insert from 2020 flagship Series 1.  Certainly looks a lot different than his original '85 Topps RC.

My first look at this year's Turkey Red inserts as well!  Pretty much look the same as Turkey Red cards from all years.  I like these cards, and pretty much always have with the exception of one or two sets.

Even though it appears to be pink in the scan, this 2020 Donruss Christian Vazquez card is actually a "Holo Purple" parallel.  Pretty comparable to a Purple Refractor from Topps Chrome, if maybe slightly less vibrant.  With the tools of ignorance covering up most of the uniform you really can't even tell that this is an unlicensed card.  Looks pretty great to me!

Alright, I did a double take at first when I came across this one in the stack.  Relic cards may not be what they once were on the whole, but I really dig the design of the Clubhouse Collection relics in this year's Heritage set.  That tequila sunrise color scheme is really doing it for me, especially on a set that's paying tribute to the glorious '70s.  Getting my favorite active player, completely unexpected, was just awesome!

More Nomar.  This one's a Gold mini from last year's release.  I've really grown to appreciate tobacco-sized mini cards over the years.  These days I'll even seek them out purposely from time to time, in fact I have a few nice Allen & Ginter minis in my backlog of cards waiting to be shown on the blog.  I like this one quite a bit.

Here's another mini, from the 2011 Topps Update Kimball Champions insert set.  A nice new Babe with Boston card.  2011 Topps Update stuff isn't all that easy to come by it seems like thanks to Mike Trout, so I'm excited to receive this one.

How awesome is this 1975 Hostess Luis Tiant?  There are so many great cards it's hard to say, but this honestly might be my favorite card in the entire package.  I actually love that it's rough cut and has clearly been loved in its 45 years of existence, yet the photograph is crystal clear and completely unblemished.  I'm not exaggerating at all when I say that I actually prefer this card's character over a mint copy.

Nick never ceases to amaze me with the sheer variety in his trade packages.  I'll confess that when I first flipped to this Tony Pena card in the stack I had no idea what it was.  Turns out to be my first 1994 Panini Sticker.  Very cool.

Another great oddball here, this Wade Boggs is from the 1998 Fleer Superstars boxed set.  The predominant red, white and blue is very 1988 Fleer.  Don't recall ever having seen this set before, either.

Here's an older Turkey Red card from the 2000s, back when it was a dedicated set rather than its modern day insert format.  Again, the design is nearly identical year to year.  I do love this Yaz painting.  Also, I had the red parallel of this card previously, but never landed the base version until now.  Thanks Nick!

This one's from the 2019 Topps National Baseball Card Day promotion.  I have not been to a hobby shop in longer than three years now, so I obviously did not participate in this.  Really appreciate Nick thinking of me as a destination for this card.

A Season Highlights Manny from one of Upper Deck's later releases before they lost their MLB license...

When I think of Topps Total, I inevitably think of the well-known and rightfully-loved base cards.  Turns out there were inserts too!

Big Papi saluting the fans on this 2017 flagship insert.

I always love acquiring new SI for Kids cards of athletes or teams that I follow.  This JD Martinez is the latest of a handful I have now, and not the first one that Nick was responsible for sending me out of that small grouping either.

Not much to say about this Jay Payton, which was released during my break from collecting (1997-2007).  The background photo is pretty much exactly where I have worked once or twice each month in downtown Boston for 15+ years now.

Here's a nice one from last year's Topps Heritage release.  A great cardboard representation of Steve Pearce's 2018 World Series MVP win.

Second Nomar insert in today's post that comes from 2003 Donruss Champions.  This one's called Total Game.

Probably should have grouped this Michael Chavis insert with the Steve Pearce above, but here you go.

At first glance, this looks like an ordinary Topps Nomar Garciaparra.  Flip it over, though...

...and you'll soon see that it's something special.  This card is actually from the 2003 Topps Kanebo Japan release!  What an unbelievably random and totally cool addition to my Sox collection.

Oh, and as if the Nomar weren't generous enough...

...Nick also sent along a copy of the most dominant pitcher I've ever seen pitch with my own two eyes, Pedro Martinez!  These are fantastic.

Is there anything more '90s than the 1998 Pacific Online set?  Love these.  "bigleaguers.com" redirects to the MLB Players Association website, so I guess my dream of acquiring this domain name and standing up some type of site for curious collectors who enter the URLs from this release into a web browser is officially dead.

This incredibly shiny insert is from 2019 Topps Fire.  I love shiny cards, and this one does not disappoint in hand.  In general I'm a fan of the Topps Fire release I have to say.  In fact, I have one or two really nice Fire parallels to show off whenever my COMC order finally shows up here.

A nice, standard, Finest Josh Beckett.  Nothing flashy to this design (2006), but all the red works well at least.

Another card from one of those late '80s boxed sets from Fleer.  This one is the '87 Fleer Baseball's Best Pitchers vs. Hitters release.  That's a mouthful for sure, but a cool early-career Clemens card.

Sweet!  I showed one of these 1989 Pacific Cards & Comics Superstars cards in a previous post, and now I can pair Mike Greenwell with it.  For an amateur/unlicensed set I really like the design.

Rickey Henderson-as-a-Red Sox cards aren't all that plentiful.  I will happily scoop up any and all of them that I can.  Rickey was the man.

Closing out the standard card portion of the package is this super shiny, refractory Topps Archive Reserve Jim Piersall.  Simply a fantastic card for a lover of shiny like myself.  I gifted Nick an entire set of this stuff a while back that I'd received from John Miller, just paying it forward.  I'm not sure if this one is from that same release or not, but either way I'm happy to have it, as I'd like to complete a Sox team set from this release and did not have a copy prior to going through this package.

Last, but certainly not least, this fantastic oversized Exhibits Ellis Kinder!  These were printed for about a 20-year run beginning in 1947 and are generally categorized as one large "set".  Absolutely love the photograph here, a truly unique item for my team collection.

Nick, thanks once again for this great batch of cardboard, AND for the most recent PWE that arrived last week.  I promise I won't take many months to get that one properly scanned and featured here!

To everyone else, I hope you saw some cards that interested you, and thanks as always for stopping by.  Enjoy your weekend!

Stained Glass Yogi

A short while back I showed off a sweet Sandy Koufax Gallery of Heroes insert from 2013 Topps Archives.  Today I've got an awesome old-school Yankee to pair with Koufax as far as these beautiful inserts go...

Not bad, huh?  I'm fortunate to have a couple of playing-era Berra cards in my collection, but I'd have to say this card is a strong candidate for my favorite modern card of the HOF Yankees backstop. 

I talked enough about these 2013 Archives Gallery of Heroes inserts in that initial Koufax post, so I'll forego that here.  Suffice it to say these are made to look and react like small stained glass windows.

For the sake of thoroughness, here's the back.  Again, not much different than the front given that these are acetate.  A mirror image of the front photo, with the Topps legal-speak at the bottom rather than the subject nameplate.

As I said when I showed off the Koufax though, there's only one way to truly appreciate these little works of art, and that's holding them up to the light. 

Check out Yogi in his new home with some nice back-lighting!

These are absolute stunners.  Off the top of my head, quite possibly my favorite insert set of the 2010s, period.  I have absolutely made it a goal to track down the remaining thirteen of these at some point in time.

I've got a third one that came in the same order with Sandy and Yogi a while back, so I'll be featuring these stained glass beauties again here on the blog in the near future.  In the meantime, thanks as always for stopping by!

Grabbing Gretzkys - Another Box Bottom!

Here's another really cool box bottom card that I picked up a while back in my bid to acquire a bunch of Gretzky cards for a future "Top 99 of #99" card countdown here on the blog...

This particular card was cut from the bottom of an '86-87 O-Pee-Chee wax box.  In addition to featuring a different photo than Wayne's standard '86-87 Topps/O-Pee-Chee release, there's also a difference to the outer border of the card.  In the base set the borders are white, on these box bottoms they have a grey and white effect that looks almost like a sheet of ice.

Here's Wayne's base card from the '86-87 Topps set for comparison's sake.  I don't yet have an O-Pee-Chee version of this card, but it's got the same design and photograph, just different branding in the upper left corner there.

I'm not sure if I prefer the box bottom or the standard card, both are really nice.  We'll call it a draw I suppose.

Here's the box bottom back, in typical fashion these are assigned card letters rather than numbers.  Complete career stats up to this point in time, including WHA totals!  No matter how many times I see a 200-point season, I'm still in awe.

Well, that's my latest Gretzky addition for you.  It always feels good to pick up any new cardboard of The Great One, but it feels especially good when I can land a new '80s card of Gretzky like this.

Thanks as always for stopping by!

The Itch to Rip - More 2018 Stadium Club

Sometimes you just get the itch to rip.  So, let's tear into the next two packs of the 2018 Stadium Club blaster that I picked up on eBay to tide me over in terms of pack ripping during the pandemic.  The first two packs were a bit underwhelming, though I'll gladly hang onto any base card I don't already have from this release.

Five cards per pack, let's tear into pack number three...
 

Jose Ramirez of the Indians starts us off.  This guy really struggled last year, particularly at the beginning of the season.  Pretty "meh" card, but needed it for my set anyway.  Moving on...

A nice enough shot here of Twins slugger Miguel Sano.  Love the shades.

Eric Thames showing us his best smile.  This guy was an absolute beast for a while when it came to mashing home runs.  I'm too lazy to look it up and verify right now, but I believe that power surge occurred after a return from a season spent overseas in Japan.

Shortstop Brandon Crawford is next.  These are all nice enough cards, but none really display the over-the-top photographic quality that this brand is known for.

That's a little better at least.  The jubilant fans in the background really make this one.  Not the most exciting pack you could rip as far as Stadium Club goes, however I am pleased that all five cards were plain ol' base cards.

Have yet to pull even one retired legend, pretty surprising to me after three packs ripped.  Let's check out pack number four...

Longtime KC Royal Eric Hosmer leads off the pack, now with the Padres.

I couldn't tell you a single thing about Troy Scribner.  His MLB career consists of 11 total games between 2017 and 2018.  Appears to now be a free agent.  I assume Topps' rookie card fervor is the only reason he made the checklist for this release.

Alright, finally a nice retired star, and a HOFer no less!  Great shot of Raines in the bleu, blanc et rouge!  Definitely my favorite card in today's post.

Pack four yielded an insert, this Justin Verlander Special Forces.  Not a big fan of most modern Topps inserts, and this one is no different.  Like the Bellinger insert from the first couple packs, I'll throw this one on the pile for an upcoming card giveaway.

I am a Justin Verlander fan for sure.  He's pretty much a lock for Cooperstown, especially after his incredible late-career revival in Houston.  I picked up a nice rookie card or two of his during the beginning of COVID sheltering, before I curbed back my hobby budget.  If you're a rookie collector I highly recommend grabbing Verlander now because he's still surprisingly affordable for a multiple Cy Young winner, MVP, Rookie of the Year and World Series Champ*.

The final card for today is also the final card on the checklist, #300, Hideki Matsui.  This guy was a Red Sox killer back in the day.  In fact, I think that might be Boston backstop Jason Varitek all fuzzed out in the background there?

Not a bad couple packs all in all, nine new cards for my set and my first couple retired stars of the blaster.  Halfway through the blaster now, with four packs still to go.

Thanks as always for stopping by!

Buybacks on Ice - More from the Inaugural Upper Deck Set

Happy Monday!  Let's take a look at another ten awesome buybacks from the inaugural Upper Deck hockey release, courtesy of the 2010-11 Upper Deck French 20th Anniversary buyback program.

These ten come from the same large lot as the ones in the last post, acquired at a price point that was well below $1 each...

Here's a really interesting one to start things off.  For those who don't know, there was some controversy when a 31-year-old Makarov won the Calder Trophy for Rookie of the Year in 1989-90.  True, it was his first year in the NHL, as he had been permitted to leave the Soviet Union, but he'd played professionally throughout the '80s.  His winning the Calder resulted in an eligibility change that now requires a player to be 26 years old or younger in order to be able to receive the award.

Pretty cool to have this Makarov "RC" in buyback format, given the significance that his first season had on the Calder Trophy alone.

1989-90 was Tom Laidlaw's final NHL season, so this is actually a "sunset" card.  After his hockey career wound down he became a motivational speaker, and also appeared as a contestant on the Survivor television show.  True story.

Patrick Flatley spent the latter half of the '80s and the first half of the '90s with the Islanders.  1990-91 was actually his second and final 20-goal season.  Other than that, not much to say about this card, as it's not exactly one of the more interesting ones on the checklist as this iconic set goes.

Kings defenseman Tim Watters is next up.  Watters was known as a stay-at-home defenseman who was not flashy, but obviously provided a lot of value.  You don't last 15+ years and 700+ games in the National Hockey League without bringing some talent to the table.

Like Sergei Makarov, defenseman Kjell Samuelsson began his NHL career at a relatively late age.  Kjell had been playing professionally in Sweden for years before making his NHL debut at age 26.

Did you know that Troy Murray had a 99-point season with the Blackhawks back in the mid-1980s?!?!  I don't believe I knew that, or if I ever did had long forgotten it.  Too bad he couldn't have notched just one more assist that year to be able to say that he had a 100-point NHL season.

Here's a cool one, mainly because I already had the 20th Anniversary buyback of Kevin's young brother Derian.  Nice to have the pair of brothers in buyback format, both of whom are inducted into the United States Hockey Hall of Fame!

Steve Weeks was the second string goaltender for my beloved Hartford Whalers throughout a good portion of the '80s.  He doesn't have a whole lot of Whalers card representation though, in fact offhand I want to say his only Whalers cards are from the team-issued Junior Whalers releases possibly.

Awesome look at the "skate blade" Canucks logo here!

This one is a nice addition for me personally, because it just so happens that Doug Smail shares my birthday!  September 2nd isn't exactly chock full of stars as far as "athletes born on this day" lists go, so I'll take what I can get.

Last but not least...

...a checklist.  Sort of an anti-climactic way to end today's round of ten I suppose.  Hey, every card in the set got the buyback treatment for this program in 2010-11, so I expected to find at least a couple of these among the cards in my large lot.

That's a wrap for today, thanks as always for stopping by.  I'm up to quite a few of these 20th Anniversary buybacks now, 38 in fact, so I decided to create a virtual album for them.  You can check out the whole batch here if you're interested...

Signature Sundays - Willie Wilson? Yep, Willie Wilson

2020 has pretty much sucked so far, but it's still the 30th anniversary year of my favorite Topps set of all time, and the first baseball set that I ever ripped packs of as a kid.

Continuing my year-long celebration of all that is 1990 Topps, I've got my latest hard-signed autograph from the set to show off today...

Willie Wilson of the Royals graced his '90 issue with a large, bold signature here.  Love the penmanship, those W's really have some style points.  This one has been waiting for its time on the blog since last year, when I scooped it up off of eBay for $10.70 with free shipping.

1990 was Willie's final season with the Royals, ending a stint in Kansas City that began all the way back in the 1976 season!

Wilson was known for his speed and defense.  As you can see, he was much more likely to hit you a triple than a home run.

A really cool addition to my collection for around $10, and a unique way to continue enjoying the 1990 set.  I'm up to 14 cards now in my Topps Baseball Autographs of My Youth collection, which you can see here if you're interested.

I'll be back with more cards this week, until then thanks as always for stopping by!

Shiny Cardboard - The Other Half of the Vlad Equation

Happy Fourth of July to anyone reading this in the United States!

A few weeks back, I featured this sweet Vlad Guerrero refractor from the "Best Performers" subset of the 1999 Bowman's Best release:

Love this card, and it immediately became my new favorite Vlad.  It also made me very much want to track down the standard Guerrero refractor from the release so I could form a pair, as I recently did with Sammy Sosa.

Well...

 ...mission accomplished!  I've talked about these refractors a few times on the blog over the course of this summer, so I'll spare you that again here.  Suffice it to say a simply beautiful piece of cardboard that looks even better in hand.

Here's the back, serial numbering (to /400) is at the bottom of the color photograph there.

Just a quick and dirty single card post for today, but I'm now up to half a dozen of these refractors in total.  These two Guerreros are the only HOF cards from that small bunch, but I'll have at least one more guy from this set who's enshrined in Cooperstown to show off whenever my latest COMC order finally gets here.

Thanks for checking out my shiny cardboard.  I'll be back tomorrow with a Signature Sundays autograph post.  Until then, stay safe and enjoy your holiday weekend!

Stained Glass Kou-fax

Landed a really sweet new Sandy Koufax while sheltering in place these past few months, and want to take an opportunity to show it on the blog today as it's truly one of the more beautiful cards I've acquired in some time.

Love this one!  These Gallery of Heroes inserts are from the 2013 Topps Archives set, and pay tribute to the insert set of the same name that Topps produced for a few years beginning in the late '90s.  These are fashioned after the 1997 release in particular.  They're die-cut at the top and feature an acetate-type material, in order to give the semblance of a stained glass window.

These were relatively tough pulls back in 2013 as well, as the odds of landing one were 1:31 hobby packs.  A hobby box of 2013 Archives has just 24 packs, so you weren't even guaranteed one of these in a box necessarily.  Roughly speaking they were found about four per five hobby boxes.  The black borders take an absolute beating condition-wise, but if you aren't super picky you can still find these at a decent price.  I paid $6 with free shipping for Sandy here...

Here's the back which, given that the card is acetate, is basically just a mirror image of the front.

There are fifteen cards on the checklist for this insert set, featuring a mix of current (circa 2013) stars and retired legends.  To me, this is what makes this new revision of Gallery of Heroes so awesome, as the late '90s/early 2000s Gallery of Heroes inserts that Topps did across all sports only featured active players if I'm not mistaken.

Alright, all of that is nice and everything, but there's truly only one way to appreciate the sheer beauty of this card.  Put it in an UltraPro One Touch magnetic holder, and hold it up in the sunlight!

Wow!  Look at how that card just pops to life when back-lit.  If it wasn't for the fact that the Mike Trout is so expensive, and that I'd fear the sun would fade them over time, I'd love to acquire all 15 of these and make some type of window display for my home office/hobby room.

I think I can say with complete confidence that this is the most visually stunning card I've acquired for $6 or less in a long, long time.  If you're a fan of acetate baseball cards I cannot recommend this set enough.  If your favorite player or team is included in the short checklist go out and grab one now, you won't be disappointed.  With a little hunting you should be able to find 14 of the 15 subjects for $10-$15 each, or even less.

Mike Trout is the exception, as I mentioned.  A few weeks back two copies of his Gallery of Heroes insert went up for sale at the same time on eBay, both with some border chipping like you see on my Koufax here.  I made a play for one, but lost out when they each climbed above $40.  I guess if you're a Mike Trout collector you're probably used to paying that kind of premium, but I'm certainly not.

For now, I'm pleased and grateful to have Sandy here anyway.  I grabbed a couple more of these before I went on my newly announced spending hiatus, so I'll get around to posting some company for Sandy soon I'm sure.  In the meantime, thanks as always for stopping by!

31 Days, 31 Posts, No New Cards

For reasons I won't get very deep into here at the moment, I've decided that it's time to curb back my spending on cardboard big time, at least temporarily.

During my first decade plus back in the hobby as an adult, I held myself to a very strict monthly budget that was, for most of those first ten years, well under $100 a month.  There was an occasional treat to myself if I got a work bonus or something, but for the most part I stuck to this pretty religiously.  In fact, I still have fairly meticulous records of what I spent my hobby budget on going all the way back to my return to collecting as an adult in 2007.

After experiencing the unexpected and shocking loss of an extremely close loved one towards the end of 2018 though, I noticed a definite change in my mindset related to my collecting.  I was reminded that life is short, and decided that with the job I'd done paying down all of my debt, buying a home, and saving throughout my 20s and early 30s I could loosen up a little and treat myself to some cards that I might never have an opportunity to land "someday in the future".  Life is precious, and I decided that as long as I did so responsibly, that "someday in the future" might as well be now.  No time like the present, that kind of stuff.

In the wake of that experience, a new scheme was born as far as my budgeting.  For the past 18+ months I've allowed myself to effectively spend whatever I want on cardboard, as long as A) all of my bills and life obligations were dealt with first and I remained debt free other than my mortgage, B) I'm saving a good deal of money in my 401k towards eventual retirement, and most importantly C) I saved or invested a dollar outside of and in addition to my 401k for every dollar I spent in the hobby.

For better than a year and a half now this approach has treated me really well, allowing me to focus on landing some bigger fish that I hope to cherish as cornerstones of my collection for decades to come if life cooperates.  As I said though, there is more than enough concern on the horizon related to my career, the economy as a whole, and this damn pandemic, that I don't feel comfortable with this approach any longer.

The solution?  The dawn of a third phase in my financial approach to collecting, in the form of a challenge to myself.  I'm going to try, a month at a time to start here since this will be very difficult for me, to stop spending any money on cards.  This sounds extreme, but I'm actually excited about it because the other side of the challenge is that I want to increase the appreciation for the cards I've already acquired, and in turn churn out more blog content.  So, not only am I challenging myself not to spend any money on cards in July, but I'm also going to attempt to post to this blog every single day for the entirety of the month!

This is going to be a hard habit to curb, but I'm confident that I can get there for three reasons.  First, I'm highly motivated to do so because living through these past few months has really changed my perspective again about what's important in life.  Secondly, I've built up a really large backlog of amazing cards over the years that are still waiting for their moment in the sun here on the blog.  Finally, I will grant myself two exceptions that will allow my hobby to continue to feel "fresh".  I have an eBay Bucks certificate from Q2 for a little over $70 to spend, and I also will allow myself to use any profits I can make from selling cards to land new ones.  While I won't be spending any additional money on cards, I will allow myself to use money generated by my existing collection to pick some up if that opportunity presents itself.

So, there you have it, a challenge to myself.  31 days, 31 posts, no money spent on new cards.

Thanks for reading along with me, I know this was a somewhat personal post that is probably not all that interesting to most, so I appreciate it.  Because I think every post on a sports card blog should ideally include a sports card, here's just one example of the type of awesome cards that I have backlogged and will be showing off during my new acquisition hiatus!

Ain't she a beauty?  I've shown off a few of these somewhat rare Blue Cubes parallels now, from the inaugural O-Pee-Chee Platinum set released back in 2014.  They were hard to come by at the time of release, and at just 65 copies each are even harder to track down now a few years later.  I'm really pleased to have Ovie's card from the set in hand.

Like him or not, Alex could hang up the skates today and already have cemented himself as one of the top scorers in NHL history.  I certainly don't player collect the guy, in fact with one or two exceptions I don't really player collect anybody these days.  Nonetheless, this will make a nice little trifecta of Ovechkin cards when I group it with my Young Guns RC and the sweet acetate Ovechkin I shared last month.

Here's the back, with the serial-numbering up top.  Amazing that Alex had already surpassed the 400-goal plateau even years back!

That's all for today.  Thanks for reading my ramblings about the hobby, and I hope you'll check in throughout the month of July as I start posting through some of the awesome stuff that deserves some long-overdue blog love!

Have you adjusted your hobby spending or otherwise cut back in the face of the current economic uncertainty?  Everyone's situation is obviously different, but if you're comfortable sharing I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Thanks as always for stopping by!

Shiny Cardboard - Slammin' Sammy Sosa

It's time for another installment of Shiny Cardboard, featuring...you guessed it...shiny cardboard!  Today we have a really shiny card featuring the man who was the man at least for a short while back in the late 1990s, Sammy Sosa!

Yep, it's my latest addition from the 1999 Bowman's Best set, refractor style!  I got turned onto these beauties from a YouTube video a couple of months back, and have been on the hunt for cheap examples since.  At 400 copies each, they're rare enough to be fun to hunt, but not so rare that they are impossibly frustrating to find out there.

I just started the 30 for 30 "Long Gone Summer" documentary yesterday, and while I only made it about 15 minutes in due to a work emergency I can't wait to get back to it.  The early portion that I saw largely focused on Mark McGwire, but I know Sammy Sosa is coming as well.

As for my stance on their historic home run race...let's just say that I personally feel that Roger Maris and Hank Aaron are the true single season and career home run kings.  With that being said, I've mellowed out a lot as I've gotten older, and guys like Sosa/McGwire/Bonds don't really bother me like they did 15-20 years ago.  Like it or not, tainted or not, this is what baseball revolved around for one summer there in the late '90s.  That home run race was historic, and as a high schooler at the time I absolutely remember seeing each highlight blast, and checking Sportscenter each morning that summer to see if anyone had clubbed one the night prior.

In retrospect, were we naive and did we have the wool pulled over our eyes as fans?  Sure, I'm not disputing that.  For better or worse though, that home run race happened, and so these days I actually want a couple of Sosa and McGwire cards in my collection just to remind me of that summer of my sophomore year in high school.

Here's the back, you can see the serial-numbering there at the bottom of the color photograph.

While I was at it though, and because it made perfect sense to pair them, I bid on and won an auction for Sammy's "Performers" subset refractor from this same release:

I think I like this one even better than the base card.  It looks absolutely amazing in hand, and the write-up on the back...

...is perfect, as it mentions Sosa's 66-HR campaign in 1998 specifically.  This one is serial-numbered to /400 as well, as all standard refractors are in this set.

With these two officially tallied, I'm now up to five of these refractors in my collection.  I've got a couple more inbound though, so you can expect to see this release featured in at least one or two more Shiny Cardboard posts at some point.

I don't think scans do these cards justice at all, so here's a pic I snapped with my phone to give you a better idea of just how well these guys catch the light.  Simply stunning.  The attention to detail is really noticeable, with Sammy's shoelaces even being painstakingly etched on the base refractor.

These are so much fun, and honestly other than a 1990 Topps buyback RC for my '90 buyback set, and maybe a copy of his '90 Leaf rookie, this is really all the Sammy that my little old collection needs.

Thanks as always for stopping by, and stay safe!