Post-Season 2/14s

With the regular season over, and a day with no baseball on the TV, it seems like a good day to show off the baseball additions to the 2/14 collection that arrived in the latest COMC mailer.

Here's the only newcomer to the collection. It is perfect that someone with the last name of 'Love' is now a member of the collection. And you know he has uttered the phrase "Call me Sly", at least once.

I'm on a minor league kick to start this post off, so let's continue this with not-the-pitcher Barry Jones, and the short-lived independent Abilene Prairie Dogs. This is my 6th card of Jones, all of which are minor league issues.

Another minor league card, but Sanchez is the first of the players today to receive major league cards. He totals 7 at this point.

Do Bowman cards of players who have yet to reach the bigs count as minor league ones? Ryan McKenna is climbing the system for the Orioles, and finally made it into the Topps minor league releases this year. He also landed some autos in Bowman, and I really should be adding some of those to my collection. He's now at 5 cards.

A pair of cards of former Reds farmhand (and Canadian) Philippe Valiquette doubles his total in the collection. Both of these are /500.

But that printing plate of Damaso Marte has a slightly lower print run than those Valiquettes. Not only is it a 1/1, but it is surprisingly my first numbered parallel of his in my collection. That's no way to treat someone who is a perfect match to myself, not only being a 2/14 baby, but also matching with the year.

Here's my first 1993 card with one of those Marlins/Rockies inaugural season stamps. Scott Scudder jumps into the 30s with 31 cards after adding these two.

And here's the big winner in terms of volume. Larry Milbourne now stands at 26 cards in the collection with these. The bottom two cards are regular-issue base cards, both of which I was surprised I didn't have.  The top 3 are Tiffany cards!

There you have it!

2019 Adventures in Repacks: Part 26 - My Repack (Still) Has Fleas

When I grabbed the hockey repack at the Flea Market last time, I also grabbed a baseball one. It had this card on the top:

A Diamond Kings insert? SOLD! That gave somewhat of an indication as to the content, as of the 55 or so cards in the brick, 40 were from 2018 Diamond Kings.

But here's a short tease of what wasn't from '18 DK. There's a couple of cards from Gypsy Queen.

There was about a dozen cards from '18 Topps Series 1, including a pair of rainbow foil cards. It is far more obvious on the Martinez, but in hand, the Cargo is obviously a foil card as well.

The non-DK portion was a strong repack for Diamondbacks collectors, as there was also a photo variation among the Series 1 cards.

Like with hockey, there's one hit per brick as well. Here's a sliver of bat, also from Series 1.

But, as I mentioned above, Diamond Kings were the majority in this repack. And here's a taste of them.

 

Namely, all 18 players that were part of the retired/legends portion of the set that were in the repack. That's such an interesting checklist as well, with many names that you don't see a lot of in recent products, especially from Topps. I mean, Dom DiMaggio? Kiki Cuyler? Herb Pennock?

And even a few inserts for good measure.

This repack ruled.

One Card Only: Pucking Nice!

I landed this a couple months back in a group break, and am finally getting around to scanning it and showing it off. On "thing" autographs are always fun, and they're especially nice when they feature ink from a HOFer.

Mailbag!

My second trip to the mailbag in a week! I'm getting efficient at this!  This one arrived from Greg @ Night Owl Cards in the past week.

Set building is a good way to start off a post, and with this, a pair of cards dropped off that list. Last year's Optic had Justin Turner removed from it.

Joining it in the set binders is this SP from this year's Heritage High Numbers.

And here's a random addition to my 2/14 collection.

A Sportflics team card is a perfect way to segue over to the team portion of the mailer.

Here's a scanner bed of Expos that were in the set. There's a couple nice buybacks from '75 and an Andre Dawson gold parallel in the mix. But the big winner here, as can be expected from me, is the hologram. I miss those.

The Stadium Club I've busted this year stands at a super disappointing 'zero'. So, I didn't have a chance to pull cards of either Vlad. Such as this one.

I always love coming bat relics for pitchers.  I really don't have a lot of relics in the ol' Expos binder - mainly autos, so these are nice little additions.

If I work horizontally, there was also a scanner bed worth of Mets. That might be one of Mookie's least flattering Mets cards.

More Stadium Club content in terms of parallels. PNC Park looks so nice in sepia.

Nothing too notable among the Blue Jays stuff, although that's going to be one of Marcus Stroman's last cards in Jays gear.

And there you have it! Thanks for these goodies, and I'll be scanning for Dodgers or you for a future mailer.

Murray Mania

Mostly from my COMC-to-be-posted box, here's some of my latest acquisitions of local NBA product Jamal Murray.

I might be the only collector around that really enjoys these towel relics. One benefit from these is that the material allows for it to attract random pieces of fluff on the card that turns these into a multi-colour relic.

Here's some base cards from various sets. The Aficionado design has aged remarkably well, and I really wouldn't mind seeing it return, even if it was part of a Chronicles release.

Parallels in Panini releases generally mean shininess and that's what you get here. The winter parallel on the bottom is the odd man out in this grouping of loudness.

I'll end it with some numbered cards.

Getting Down with O-Pee-Chee

It has been almost 3 weeks since 19-20 O-Pee-Chee hockey dropped, and despite busting boxes the day of release, I've been slacking on showing off the cards contained within. Finally, I'll do so today.

Here's the regular base design. It is typical of the product with a perfectly acceptable, if not generic, photo. DuClair is making his Sens debut in this release, so that is a good a reason as any to lead with one of his cards.

Your backs. It looks like 20 seasons is the max they can fit on the backs of these. And that's with the micro font.

The SP portion of the set continues the subsets seen in previous years.

The silver border parallels from last year are gone, and replaced with blue borders this year. They do seem a little less common this season than in previous ones when it comes to the most common of the regular base parallels. And I do realize how little sense that sentence made.

The glossy gold parallels also make their return this year. There were also preview cards for the mid-season Platinum release, but I didn't land any of them in my boxes, so this was a shiny as these boxes got for me.

Retro parallels also return this year. If the 2010 release mated with the 1971 release, this would be the result. In retrospect, perhaps I shouldn't have opted to showcase a card with that much green on it as an example. Much like in previous years, the background colour changes throughout the set.

And your backs, just basically a flip of the front.

And the black parallels also make their return, and remain /100.

Playing cards? They're here as well. While I did land the Ace of McDavids, I'm probably going to need to come across another ace (they're SPd to about 2 per case) in a pack to decide to build the playing card set again this year.

They are not minis this season. They are caramels. Normal height. Mini width. At least they don't fall out of packs as easily as last year.

I opened 3 boxes of these to start, and landed one of the rare pulls from each of them. These wood parallels were originally unannounced, and aren't numbered, but I haven't seen a lot of them appear. So I guess they count as SSP.

Manupatches returns as well. The individual trophy winners on the whole fall at 1:937 packs, but you probably end up with 3 or 4 per case among the various subsets.

And finally, the team logo patches. These have been in the sets for the past several seasons, and they continue to update the original release. If you're building the set, this is card #329. They have to be running out of logos by now, you'd think.

And there you have it. I'll probably have my wantlist updated with the new OPC within a week or so.

Even More Chronicles

I had so much fun with the group breaks of Chronicles, why not do a box on my own? I'm not going to highlight every card, but will be sure to show off the hits, numbered cards, and shininess.

But one thing I won't be slagging off on showing is the big head Score inserts. I'm not a big fan of the Aaron Judge one - he looks some hesitant on his. The others are perfectly fine, though.

Ascension, and is colourful backgrounds, became another one of my favourites in the release.

The only other cards in the box that I'll show off multiple base cards of are the Spectra base cards. They're considered to be the pack hits in the packs that don't have actual hits.

I like the green sorta borders on the Limited. Probably because it would only make an appearance on Oakland cards.

I'm not sure if Ichiro is the only retired player in the product, but there really aren't a lot.

The unnumbered shininess was Cubs intensive.

Here's the last of Titan cards, more accurately, this is a Blue Ice parallel, and it is out of /99.

And another /99 parallel, blue without the ice, provides the only Timeless Treasures content in the box.

Here's numbered blue parallel #3.

And the final numbered parallel isn't blue, but a Blue Jay. If I'm going to rank a card from the box as being the most valuable, this one probably surpasses the actual hits, at least locally. Technically, this is a Mojo Purple /75.

I'll start the hits with a couple swatches that will probably wing their way to Night Owl at some point. I'll repeat my complaint that Hometown Heroes should be for autographs from players who don't have a lot on the market, as opposed to swatches.

The first auto? I had no idea who this player was. He's played in a handful of MLB games over the past few seasons. At least the photo doesn't show the lack of MLB logos.

But I've heard of this Padres prospect. And the last hit?

Womp. Womp.

But it was still a fun break.