Inbound and Down #48: Dimeboxes -- The Low End Baseball Collector's Journey

You just have to smile when you get an email from Nick asking for your address.  When that happens, something good is bound to come your way.  For me, my latest envelope from the dime box king was full of Jays and also contained quite a few cards of a couple of our player collections that overlap. 

This was the first collectible I saw.  I recognized right away that it was Big John Mayberry, so I knew it was from the early 80's.  I'm thinking Topps or Panini, so I'm hunting and I don't find this sticker listed under either company.   So now I'm looking in 1981, and was surprised to see that Fleer made stickers like this as well (I had no knowledge of this).  Check one item off the list that I likely would never have found in my travels.

Nick knows I'm a parallel freak, and so these 2 cards I'm sure had no problem making their way into the envelope.   Another "new to me" fact, this is the first time that I saw a yellow parallel from the Topps Rookie Cup set.  I know very little about this set, and have had a few of them come my way. 
If there are any true "hardcore" Shawn Green collectors out there, this card is #'d 15/299, which is his jersey number.   Lucky me!!

More colorful parallels.   Love em.

More stuff I know very little about.   The Golden Grabs of Kevin Pillar is the gold version.  The Encarnacion is the Walk Off insert, which is much shinier in hand. 

Mr. Donaldson.   He was fun while he lasted in Toronto, and he was quite popular as well.  It's a shame that they traded him for very little.  Gold Label has always been one of my favorite Topps sets, so I was glad to see that particular Donaldson card.

Another set I know nothing about, 2007 MLB Trade Up.   Appears to be another game card type set release, unfortunately I don't even know who the manufacturer is.

 

One of Nick's top tier player collections is of John Olerud.  I imagine that this page worth of cards was all doubles for him, but thankfully I needed them all.  This brings my meager Olerud collection up to 68 cards. 

Ichiro is another of Nick's top tier guys, and he sent me 2 dozen that I needed.

More learning here, as I now know....

The Ichiro Stadium Club in the first scan was a 1st day retail parallel.  Had no idea that there were retail parallels of that type in SC.
The Ichiro 2010 Topps card in the upper left corner of scan 2 is a factory set version.  I'd never seen any cards from the 2010 flagship that had these stamps.   The card # is RS2 (guessing RS = retail set) and something else that I likely would never have come across myself.  

All in all, a fantastic envelope of cards, great fun to look through. 

Thank you Nick, the cards truly are appreciated!!

Thanks for reading, Robert