Mark Kaz Strikes Again!

Just before I took off for vacation a couple of weeks ago, I received a bubble mailer from a familiar address in Delaware, and I knew that my friend Mark Kaz had struck again!

Inside were a whole bunch of new cards for my Red Sox collection, more than 130 to be precise!  Among my favorites was this great team card from 2005 Topps, which depicts the 2004 team that "reversed the curse" and brought a World Series championship to Boston after so many decades of futility.  I'm not sure why Topps removed the team checklist cards from the flagship effort, but I wish they'd put them back.

Mark takes the time to look over my collection on Zistle when sending a package, so I know that virtually every card that falls out of the envelope is one I need.  Like Carlos Quintana here, and eight of his buddies that were also included from the '92 Topps set.

There were also half a dozen cards I needed towards the '91 Topps team set.  I bought so much of this as a kid, and while I didn't appreciate the set much at the time it's really grown on me.  This is one I'd like to pick up a factory set or wax box of sometime...

Yes, even the ugly releases like early '90s Fleer are welcome in my collection.

Mark really hit on a bunch of sets that you'd think I'd have finished off by now, but inexplicably haven't.  I'm many steps closer now on quite a few fronts.

I really like this Leaf card featuring a bat donut and some mean facial hair.

I swear I have like 60 unique Red Sox cards from the '94 Score set, but I didn't have this one.

Mark really hit a home run with variety in this package, covering many different years (decades for that matter).

This '91 Donruss Carlos Quintana is so ugly you just have to love it.  Carlos seems about as enthused for this photo as your average collector would be when pulling this card from a pack.

For whatever reason I don't seem to come across much '86 Donruss, so I really appreciated this Rich Gedman.  Just my second or third Sox card from this release.

This is one of those '77 Topps Cloth Sticker inserts from 2012 Archives.

1988 Donruss Rated Rookie!

The Red Sox are one of the few teams who actually look decent on the '88 Donruss design.

Any trade package with a new Oil Can Boyd is a successful trade package.

A couple of Rockets.  Not sure which one is uglier!  Despite Roger being a gigantic D-bag, Clemens cards are hard to come by for whatever reason (for example, they're almost always removed from bulk Red Sox lots that I've bought online).  Glad to have these two in hand.

This Steve Avery is a nice looking card but it's from one of those sets that's got to be annoying to collect, as its card number is something like "Section 2 Row 4 Seat 135".  No, I'm not joking.

Really like these Varitek and Nixon cards as they're from an era that's very under-represented still in my baseball card collection.

Who didn't love the Pinnacle Team 2000 inserts back in the day?

Another Jody Reed Rated Rookie, this one Leaf style!

A half dozen from the '97 Topps set were included in this envelope, the best of which was this awesome shot of Mike Greenwell.

Before the infamous Janet Jackson Superbowl Halftime Show, there was Heathcliff Slocumb 1997 Topps.

Man, card companies would try just about anything by the mid '90s.

Another much-needed Clemens.

Varitek was missing out of a good number of sets over the years due to contractual issues, so I'm always excited to land a new one.  This Donruss RC is pretty sharp looking.

Killer shot of Danny Darwin on this one from 1994 Upper Deck.

A great photo of the Wakefield knuckler in action.

I'll always remember this guy for charging the mound with a bat in the minor leagues after his MLB career had ended.  Anger issues.

Pedro Martinez is still the best pitcher I've seen in a Red Sox uniform during my time as a fan (was really too young to know what was going on during the Clemens era of the mid to late '80s).

Here's a great retro card featuring a somewhat creepy photo of Dante Bichette.

Middlebrooks has been kind of disappointing so far this year, but so has most of the team really.  I'm not sure if he'll ever get back into the form he was in a few years ago when it looked like he could be a 30HR/100RBI guy at the MLB level, but I still get excited whenever I get a new card of Will...

...or two!

2009 SP Legendary Cuts is a set I really liked and wouldn't mind getting some more of.  The stamp style design really works in my opinion.

Some more very nice Pedros, including this one from a set I'd never seen before, 2003 SP Authentic.

Mark also tossed in a couple of cards from this year's Heritage release...

...both of which I needed!

Finishing things off is this fantastic mini from last year's Archives set.  I've had my eye on this card a few times and nearly pulled the trigger on COMC once or twice, but now I can cross it off the list.

Mark, thanks again for the awesome package of Sox!  The cards you sent now have me on the verge of crossing the 3,000 unique Red Sox card threshold.  I got a return package sent yesterday, but I definitely need to send you some more cards to offset this one...

Quick PWE from Jeff

Recently Jeff from 2x3 Heroes commented on a rack pack I opened of 2014 Topps Heritage asking for the White Sox.  I gladly shipped them off, along with a few other White Sox cards I had laying around, and in return Jeff hooked me up with a handful of 2014 Heritage Red Sox:

Holding out for more money really worked out well for this guy, currently a free agent a month into the season...

I wish they'd bring manager cards back to the flagship set.

Here's one I've wanted since I first saw Heritage being busted on the blogs, such an odd play, glad it's forever commemorated on cardboard.

Thanks for the quick and easy swap Jeff!

Back in the Office

Well, I didn't exactly succeed with scheduling a bunch of posts to run while I was out of the country for over a week.  Too many things to do and prepare for in the day or two leading up to our departure, so all you got is one lousy post featuring a gimmick David Ortiz card.  I'm back home, but after spending all that time in places like this...

...it's been kind of difficult to get back into the swing of things and to work up enough motivation to scan or post a card.  So tonight I'm mailing it in and you get just a single card post.  A few weeks back I snagged this one immediately when it was listed for $20 Buy-it-Now and triggered one of my saved eBay searches:

Billy Goodman here is my sixth 1949 Bowman Red Sox card, and I'm very happy with that number given that there are a total of just fifteen Sox cards on the checklist.  40% ain't too shabby for a set this old.

Goodman was actually a very solid player in the late '40s and early '50s before beginning to fade in the latter half of the decade.  He made the American League All-Star team for the first time the year this card was produced, and the following year he'd finish 2nd in AL MVP voting thanks to his swatting a league best .354!

Well, that's all I've got for now.  I've got a couple of great trade packages that I need to properly thank folks for, so I should be back tomorrow...

Red Sox Collection - Hypocrite Edition

I've ranted many times about Topps and other companies just destroying the concept of the simple base set with an overload of bland inserts, multi-colored parallels, photo variations and other nonsense.  Because of this, I felt somewhat hypocritical when the friendly neighborhood mailman dropped off this card just last week:

I guess I just couldn't help myself.  Total impulse buy while trolling through eBay very late one night.  Since the major brands all but crushed the set collector out of me long ago, these sorts of things don't bother me as much as they used to.  I'm not sure why they couldn't have simply used this photo as David's base card in the set, but what do I know.  For $2 and change I thought this shot of Ortiz celebrating the 2013 AL East Championship with the fans in front of the Green Monster (donning beer goggles I might add) was worth adding to my Sox collection.

What really threw me off when scanning it in was that it's card #475, yet 2014 Topps Series 2 has not even been released yet.  Sometimes I wonder what goes on over there at Topps corporate headquarters...

That's Why I Don't Buy Blasters - Volume VI - Hank & Nolan

Leaving for vacation tomorrow, hectic day of packing and preparation so here's a quick one.  You know the drill, pretty self-explanatory...

Instead of buying a blaster like this one, I take the $19.99 plus tax and do some collecting damage elsewhere.  The Goudey blaster image above is a bit of foreshadowing, because for this installment I am once again going back to the 1933 Goudey well...

Henry Johnson becomes the third '33 Goudey Red Sox card to fall in my quest for a complete team set.  I like this one the best of the three I've got so far, as the first two contained tightly cropped portrait shots but with Hank we get a little throwing motion.  I am really not sure why this was graded just a 1.5, nor do I care.  There's a little bit of fading in some spots within the background and the corners are rounded, but the visual appeal is still really good and there are no major creases or eyesores.

Here's a better look at the front.  This is a great vintage Red Sox card because it contains about as much red ink as you could possibly put on a baseball card.  I love the pinstripe hat, too.

As a player, Hank Johnson actually came up with the Yankees in the late '20s, and as a result got to pitch with some of the greatest players in the history of the game as teammates (names like Ruth and Gehrig).

Here's a look at the back, a couple of surface wrinkles near the bottom but totally legible and more than enough to pass my quality test!  With this card in hand I've got five more '33 Goudeys to track down to finish a Red Sox team set (a couple of them being Hall-of-Famers).

Because of the poor condition, I was able to land this card for just $14 via Buy-It-Now.  Not too shabby at all, especially given that the seller charged a reasonable $1.40 for shipping.  You know what that means?  $5 left in my "virtual blaster" budget.  I looked over my eBay watch list and it didn't take me long to figure out how to fill the gap:

What a bright-colored beauty!  This is my first '74 Kellogg's card and is one of the nicer cards I've added to my humble little Nolan Ryan collection in quite some time.  I'm sure I could have bargain hunted and maybe landed this one cheaper eventually, but I've done quite a bit of eBay business with the seller in the past so was happy to go with this example.  The card's in really great shape with no signs of cracking or other condition issues on the front...

...and just a touch of discoloration around the borders on the back.  This set me back and even Abe Lincoln with free shipping.

So there you have it, instead of dropping a $20 at Target I've got an 80+ year old Red Sox card and a '70s Nolan Ryan made by a cereal company.  I'd call that a win!

Signature Sundays - Brad Marchand

Just a quick one tonight, featuring an autograph I picked up a while back on the cheap.

It's hard to tell from the scan, but these Trilogy Ice Scripts autographs, which have been around a few years now, are very thick.  They've got rounded edges and are made of an acetate, plastic-type material, very solid cards.  Brad Marchand here, who really needs to pick up his play a bit after the first couple of playoff games, set me back just $8 and change.

The white area containing the signature is actually transparent, which is more obvious when you look at the back of the card and see the reverse of the signature from the front:

In addition to annoying the hell out of opponents, Brad has been a consistent scorer for the Bruins in his early career.  He's topped 20 goals in three of his first four seasons (the only time he came up short of that was 2012-13, when he missed nearly half the season due to injury).  This year he played in every single game the team had, and topped the 25-goal and 50-point marks.

For around $10 shipped I'm happy to have just about any autograph from the 2011 Stanley Cup Championship team!

Topps Botches Premier League

These past few years I've become completely obsessed with Premier League football.  Every Saturday and Sunday morning (and sometimes into the afternoon), my poor wife has to put up with soccer on the TV.  This season has been particularly enjoyable given that my favorite team is atop the table with just a few weeks to go (and got a tremendous amount of help from last-place Sunderland again today!).

I would love to build a half-way decent Premier League soccer card collection, but there just hasn't been much out there.  I'm collecting the 1960 A & BC Gum set, which features many of the clubs currently playing in the league, but those are extremely difficult to come by and I can go months or longer without seeing one I need.  The majority of recent releases have been sticker sets with corresponding albums, and I'm just not a big sticker guy.  So, you can imagine my excitement when I heard about this:

The 2013 Topps English Premier League Gold set is exactly what I've been looking for.  Full-size, standard, licensed trading cards of the Premier League's top players.  Sign me up for a box or two!  Wait, what's that?  $200 a box?  Yes, Topps decided to make this a high end product where it's all about the hits (just 10 packs per box, 5 cards per pack but you get an relic or auto in every pack).  Not only does that drive unopened product way out of my price range, it even makes the lowly base cards tough to come by since you get less than 40 in an entire box.

Luckily I was able to win a decent size chunk of base cards for just $1.04 plus a couple bucks shipping on eBay.  Included in the lot was the man who scored the biggest goal of the season for Liverpool last week:

That Liverpool/Manchester City tilt was probably the single best soccer game I've seen since getting into the sport.  It had everything a sports fan could ask for.  Anyone who thinks soccer is too boring or slow should go find a recording of that game and give it a shot.

Back to the cards...I really like these, and if Topps had made this about the base set they would have had a winner in my book.  The card stock is nice and thick, the design along the bottom really fits with the Barclay's branding, and you get a great team crest along the top.

The backs are simple, but contain a good, brief write-up, stats and essentials.

Here's one more from the lot, a player who got on the scoreboard earlier today with the first goal of the match for Tottenham Hotspur against Fulham.

I would love to say that I'm collecting this set, but I don't think I'm going to find another bargain on base cards like I did with my first lot anytime soon.  I would be interested in trading for any singles though.  Anyone out there buy any of this stuff?

Vacation and Stanley Cup Playoffs - A Match Made in Heaven

This evening I start a two week vacation from work.  This card, which I won recently on eBay and which has instantly become one of my favorite hockey cards, pretty much summarizes how I feel about that:

It also seemed like the perfect day to post this one given that the Bruins kick off their quest to capture Lord Stanley's Cup tonight with Game 1 of their series against the Red Wings in Boston.  The photo on this card is proof positive that the NHL has the single best championship trophy in all of sports.

The back is a bit anti-climactic after that fantastic front, so let's get back to the good stuff:

Going to do my best to schedule some posts out ahead of time before I leave the country on Tuesday, but if the lights go off for a few days here at Shoebox Legends headquarters now you know why.

Also, whether your team's still in it, or whether they finished last in their division, why not add to the excitement of watching the playoffs unfold by entering in my buddy Casey's Stanley Cup Contest.  Act quickly, not many spots left!

Go Bruins!!!