$5 for a Cavan Biggio RC

Now before you start wondering why I paid a straight $5 for Cavan Biggio, even though it's a Topps Chrome card, and a Blue Jays player, know that this was one of 100 cards in a Fairfield repack that I decided to pickup about a week ago on a trip to Walgreens.  Everybody has talked about packs of cards from Walgreens, and pulling some kind of yellow parallel, but the Walgreens near me had no such packs, so I decided to grab one of these based on the card visible in the window.

Fair enough, if he turns out to be anything like the player his dad was, this $5 will be well spent.  The front of the pack also says that 1 in 4 repacks contains a "hit".  To pull an autograph card out of one of these was a bonus, even though I had never heard of the player on the card.

Now what I was most curious about was the rest of the cards inside.  Figuring on a healthy dose of what we all kindly refer to as "Junk Wax", but when going through the cards I found what was inside most interesting.  What I noticed the most was the number of different sets that was represented.

Each of the 34 cards above represent a single card from a particular set.  Seeing recent Stadium Club, Archives, Topps Fire and Opening Day was kind of surprising to me.  Also Heritage and Bowman Platinum as well.

Now, the sets that have multiple cards in them seem more along the lines of what I expected.

Early to mid 80's here with 82 Donruss, 83 Fleer and 84 Topps, 2 apiece.  The Doug Gwosdz is actually a Tiffany parallel.  Didn't expect to see any of these represented.

86 and 87 Donruss along with 89 Topps.  2 apiece.  Now we're getting along to more the kind of stuff that I expected inside.

90 Upper Deck, 92 Topps and 93 Topps Stadium Club.  Was a little surprised to see a pair of Stadium Club inside, but I'm sure with the copious amounts out there that it's not going to make any kind of dent in the overall inventory.

Finishing off the sets that were represented with 2 cards each are 2007 Topps and 2009 Upper Deck.  Decent adds to the box.   Glavine probably the biggest star in the box so far.

Now the sets that were represented 3 times.

87 Topps, 90 Leaf and 90 Topps in the first scan.  Surprised a bit on the 90 Leaf, but I'm sure that it's still in the overproduced classification so in the end it kind of makes a bit of sense

Scan 2 has 91 Fleer and 91 Topps.  I'm sure that there is a few thousand repacks out there that have more than 3 each of these.  Still won't put a dent into the overall supply.

Four each of 89 Donruss and 92 Donruss.  Very, very interesting that the 92 Donruss has 2 cards each of Rick Honeycutt and Dave Henderson.  I didn't even notice this until I was putting the cards on the scanner to scan.
This is probably what I'd expect to see out of most of these repacks.

5 from 91 Donruss.  No real huge names in the group, 3 blues and 2 greens.  The number of Donruss cards in the box slowly starting to take over the lead as far as # of cards total.

8 cards from 88 Donruss.  That's the 3rd straight scan where Donruss is the sole manufacturer.  21 cards from the box just from Donruss.  The first scan up top of all the single card sets had the only 90 Donruss card, which was the set that I would have thought would be represented the most.  But this next scan of 8 is the set that surprised me to see the most of...

2019 Topps represented 8 times in the box!!  Some good names in there, such as Buster Posey of the Giants and Jose Berrios of the Twins.  I was very surprised to see this many modern cards in the repack, pleasantly surprised.

The Biggio will go into my rookie card binder, and the others will all be up for trade, if anyone is looking for any of them.  I highly doubt it, of course.

For $5 though, this was fun, and a bit educational as well.

Enjoy the hobby and stay safe!

Robert

Inbound and Down #18: A Cracked Bat: Baseball Cards and a Hot Dog

It had been quite a while since I traded with Julie at the A Cracked Bat, etc etc blog.  Recently, I had the good fortune (for Julie anyhow) of pulling a few Tigers that were tradeable, and I contacted Julie to let her know I wanted to send them her way.

In that email, I did something that I've been doing quite a lot lately.  I made sure I had the correct address. 

Good thing I did.  Julie politely informed me that she moved 2 years ago(!) and was now up north, much closer to her beloved Tigers.  Over 2 years is a long time to go between card swaps, but the package that she sent me made up for the time lost (I hope hers did as well).

Let's start with some shiny cards....

Love the Aaron Sanchez gold parallel from the 2016 Update set.  Some folks have lamented their teams players being displayed in the Padres brown and gold, but Aaron looks good to me.  I've managed to obtain a couple of the Press Proof cards from past years Donruss products, but the J.A. Happ is the first from this year that I've received.  Another Dalton Pompey card also enters the fold, as the Donruss Preferred RC from 2015, #'d to 299 is now in my hands.

Another Dalton Pompey RC, this time from the 2015 Museum Collection set joins a Edwin Encarnacion card from 2015 Triple Threads.  I don't lament the Jays losing EE as much anymore since Justin Smoak has more than replaced him at first base stat wise. 

Finally, a double dose of 2015 Museum Collection Jose Bautista cards.  The copper on the left is not numbered, but the blue parallel on the right is limited to 99 cards.  I don't believe I have any copper or blue Museum Collection parallels in my collection, so these were a welcome sight as well. 

Julie mentioned in her note that she hoped that I enjoy these cards half as much as what I sent her way.  No chance of that, as I'm sure that I'll enjoy these 7 easily as much as she's enjoying her cards.

Maybe even more.

Thank you for the cards Julie, they are greatly appreciated!

Thanks for reading, Robert

Lump Day

It's not too often that I'm fortunate enough to spend an entire day doing nothing.  That is what I did today though, because I felt I deserved it.  Every day since my vacation started last Saturday, I had driven for at least one hour during the day. 

I finished reading a book, and just spent the entire day doing what you should do when you're on time off. 

I enjoyed myself.  Part of enjoying myself was cracking a hobby box of this:

As you can see, I'm still having trouble with the phone, but the box you see is a 2002-03 Pacific Quest for the Cup Hobby box.  I picked this up at Target (yes, you read that right) when I visited my mom the other day.  Now, why I can't seem to pick up any boxes like this at the big box stores in the US is beyond me, but I was quite happy to plunk down $35 Cdn. in order to bring this home.  (EDIT:  I would end up buying 2 of these)

I'm not going to make an attempt to take any more pictures with my iPhone, and since I'm heading back home tomorrow, I'll be sure to post some pics from an actual scanner. 

I did do quite well on the box break, beating the odds on both the rookie cards I pulled (Ryan Miller and Rick Nash), along with 3 jersey cards. 

You'll get a breakdown on the break tomorrow, these cards do really look nice and I am really looking forward to showing them off.

Thanks for reading, Robert

J.P. Arencibia: Forever a rookie

Good Wednesday evening to you all, hope that your weekend is going well.  In perusing cards this evening searching for a topic to write about, I stumbled upon a couple of cards that I had thought about in the past when I had received them, but had not given them a second thought, until now.

Here's the question of the day, how long can cards receive a "RC" stamp on the front of the cards by our friends at Topps.  Naturally, since he's mentioned in the post title, J.P. Arencibia is the culprit here.

Exhibit A:  2010 Bowman Draft # BDP 103

Legit RC

All of the other cards listed in the magazine for this set have RC designations, so naturally this must be an RC as well.  I wondered since this card was from a draft pick set, it might be considered an XRC or an RC*.  But not in this case.  I also looked at the Topps Update (US-210) card from 2010, it has the RC tag on the front of the card as well.























Exhibit B:  2011 Topps Chrome # 182

Still has the RC designation.

Can't miss it, this card has the RC designation as well.  Now I realize I was out of the collecting game on a full time basis for quite a few years, but have the rules changed regarding the RC designation, or is Topps making the rules up as they go?


























I was under the impression that by allowing the RC stamp that collectors would be able to identify true rookie cards and not be worried about what unscrupulous dealers/sellers would tell them.  For me, this kind of throws a wrinkle to that theory.   Has anybody noticed another situation like this, where an RC stamp appeared on multiple years for the same player?  Or am I just missing something here?

Comments here would be much appreciated.

Thanks for reading, Robert

(Words on this post:  314, total as of now, 915)