Mailbag: Night Owl

 I realized I'd putting this one, which arrived last week, off for too long when a really massive mailer from Dennis @ Too Many Verlanders showed up this week. After also receiving a 'shipped' notice from COMC the next day, maybe I should show off these before the backlog gets even larger.

It was mainly a baseball one, but there were still a couple of new Bills cards for their binder. Despite the fact he had much more success after moving on to Detroit than he had with the Bills, Joique Bell still hits a nice little sweet spot for me.

Entirely because his name makes me think of MST3K.

Volume-wise, Vlad Jr. was the king of the package. I was certain I'd already landed that Team Future card in a previous group break, but on closer examination, I'd landed the other Jays in this (Manoah, Bichette), but not the Vlad. That's a random way to wrap up a team insert set. I don't think I saw any Fire or Gallery on the shelves up here this year, so any PC cards from those sets are always welcome.

Here's a handful more Jays, with a definite leaning towards parallels here. With the Delgado being an insert, the only true base card here was the Gausman from Chrome. 

Lots of variety in the Mets content. While that 'Big' Nolan Ryan would probably win the battle here most times, I've got to pick the Janikowski as my favourite in this grouping. It is for the simple reason that his only Mets cards will probably be in Update, and that I actually had this one on my COMC watchlist for that reason. Adam Ottavino also made his first Mets card in '22 Update, but I can still hold out hope that he'll make a second appearance.

Vintage!

And the Rusty Staub reminds me of one of my favourite quotes of his:

Timeless! 

I know these are gimmicky, but I don't care. The Pete Alonso portion of my Mets collection is disappointingly small, so something like this feels like a great opening card to that portion of the collection, at least until I add an autograph of his. 

It might have taken me a little longer to get to than I'd like, but there you have it!