2024 Adventures in Repacks - Part 9 - Picked!

 

This particular pick of the week promised 5 rookie cards, 5 'star' cards and one hit. 

Here's the rookies portion. I guess these all count, even if some of them are probably not 'true' rookies as per some collectors. I guess Austin Hays is the most successful of this grouping, with another one (or half) in Colton Murray looking to be completely out of baseball as an active player, having not, as per baseball-reference, seen the field anywhere since 2018. That's DJ Stewart with the name hiding in foil on the lower right.

The stars. Miguel Sano is pretty questionable in this format, but at least it is an interesting photo for his card. Betts and Judge do the heavy lifting here, but their status as stars is hard to dispute, especially when the latter's card is from the All-Star game portion of the set.

And the hit! A piece of Juan Gone's Cleveland Pants! 

Perfectly average repack experience.

Opening Day Jays

 Courtesy of the TMV box.

Cards from a box deserve a box topper, or at least an oversized card as their opener.

Here's a whole pile of Archives-intensive base cards. The Chris Baker is one of those numbered prospect base cards. He never made it above AAA with Toronto. Kirby Yates didn't get too many cards during his Toronto stint, so his appearance is nice. Seeing Roger Clemens get post-career Toronto cards just seems like an odd choice, considering there may have been more to his 'revived his career there' than just a new location.

Some colourful, and not so colourful parallels. 

Inserts! Naturally, the Bazooka Joe-esque comic strip of Bichette wins this battle.

Kevin Smith was definitely a mainstay of 2022 releases, either with Toronto or with Oakland, who he was traded to as part of the Matt Chapman deal. Smith has already moved on from there, and is now in the Yankees system as of the spring.

At least Tucker Toman is still around with the Jays farm system, and at 20 years old, still has plenty of time to develop. At least the early version of his signature is pretty legible, even on the sliding scale of modern penmanship.

 

Start with Vladdy! End with Vladdy! Even if the end is a cheesy manufactured item hit. It's still a Vladdy!

There you have it. Excepting a few stragglers, I did manage to get through the box just in time to send a return package to Michigan this morning. Watch your mailbox, Dennis and thanks for all these additions!

Fun Football Photos

There's no connection between these cards or the players on them other than I found the photo choices interesting. 

Paul Krause is a Hall of Famer. I'm going to wager it is for his role as a safety, and not for his role as a holder. But, this does make for a more interesting photo for a 70s card than having him standing around helmetless so the logo isn't visible. 

Cartoon on the back as well!

I'm going through this list chronologically, so up next out of 1990 Score Update is Rich Karlis. This might be the last appearance of someone kicking barefoot on a card. That's worth adding to the binders!

Not only does this card offer up two types of weather elements, with both the snow and the mud, this was also the only card Eugene Seale would get over his 6 year NFL career. That's kinda disappointing for someone that got his start as a replacement player during the 1987 season. But at least his only card has a memorable look to it.

Both this and the next card are from 1994, so it now becomes alphabetized. Ice bath photos are definitely another rarity on cards, even moreso when the bath actually looks to be a jumbo sized plastic trash can, and the bather in question has to supply their own ice.

Not only is this an interesting photo of an upside down player, but this also utilizes the design of the set so nicely as it is perfectly framed so James Jett's entire body seems to crash down on himself.

Proof the player's face doesn't need to be visible in order for a card to have a great photo, and it can be enhanced as a horizontal card. I just hope that he actually brought down Garrison Hearst on this play. 

If this photo was less-tightly cropped, I could have added it to my 2-14 collection. The person that gave Antonio Pierce to the Key to the City? 2-14 baby Michael Bloomberg. The Giants got a nice number of interesting Super Bowl victory themed photos in this set.

And I'll end on another faceless photo. But we do get a touchdown dance on a shiny parallel. And it includes his nickname, although its location means that any actual white shoes aren't visible.

There you have it!

Back to the TMV Box with 2/14s

 Here's all the 2/14 content in the box.

One and done with the baseball portion, as this becomes my 31st Yermin Mercedes card. 

Also one-and-done for hockey with this OPC of Petr Mrazek. Now this one, I likely do have already, but have as part of a set-build. So this is new to this collection.

Basketball did a little better, with a pair of cards. 

And it provides the first hit of this post. For a card that is part of the 'Lights Out' insert set, the design elements are pretty bright. Rip remains the only basketball member with those numbers, and will probably remain that way for a long time. 

Football was the king in this mailer for 2/14s, but I'll keep the one-and-done theme with the only Jadeveon Clowney appearance, coming out of one of the best sticker-dump sets ever - Field Access.

I was legitimately surprised that I didn't already have all of these Alshon rookies in the collection already.

In terms of volume, there was a tie for first place with 10 new cards each. Drew Bledsoe got there with 4 base cards and 6 numbered cards.

With Steve McNair reversing that with 6 base cards and 4 numbered cards. All the team names he's played for over his cardboard career are shown - Braves, Oilers, Titans and Ravens. So that's kinda nice.

To wrap things up, here are some numbered cards. Much like how Hamilton is locked into the top spot in terms of basketball, Hackenberg will get the football top spot when it comes to the highest number of cards in relation to downs played. 36:0

Here he is for the finale, in a jersey swatch card that doesn't need any sort of "not game-worn" disclaimer on it.

There you have it!

Why?

Why would I add this particular card into my collection via COMC? It's not because Craig was a 2/14 baby. He never made a juniors stop with the Kitchener Rangers.

It is because he might be the only guy, outside of perhaps some soccer player, who would have Brunei listed as their birthplace on a card. 

Anything odd like that appeals to me. 

PS: There is no need to share a list of cards featuring others born in Brunei. I'm not that obsessed.

Just One Card: A new 2/14 Auto

 I'm not feeling to verbose today, nor do I feel like cropping a bunch of scans. So, you get just one card today.

But you will get my complaint about a "Prime Numbers" insert set not being numbered to a prime number. 3*73=219.

There you have it!

Bills! Bills! Bills!

 Sure enough, just as I get done scanning all these, a mailer from Night Owl shows up filled with Bills content. So, that just incentivizes me more to pile through all the Bills content in the TMV box, my COMC to-be-posted box, and some Cards on Cards PWEs.

Sure, this COMC entry might look like just another insert card, but this one gets selected from the site and put in my inventory thanks to the write-up on the back.

It highlights his 2 kickoff return game against New England. The Bills did sport blue uniforms that day, so I can also pretend the photo is from that game. 

There were only 3 Bills cards in the box from COMC - the first being James Cook on a rather loud Gridiron Kings/Chronicles entry, and Justin Shorter making his collection debut with a /175 entry from Luminance.

With all the Raptors content in the CoC, I appreciated the slight break from it with 2/14 guys and these 2 Bills entries.

And now, over to the TMV box.

Starting with the base cards (or perhaps that Watkins was an insert). In fact, I think those All-Pro cards were as well. Too late to change things now, and at least they can provide positive memories about some decent talent on the team during the playoff drought years.

The best thing about Jim Kelly appearances is that while they might be dupes in the 2/14 collection, they're not in the Bills collection.

Some colorful parallels, none of which feature players currently are on the team. I really hope that wherever White ends up, he is able to shake off all the injury issues that plagued him with the Bills and re-reach the level he was at when healthy in Buffalo.

Inserts! The Andre Reed one is disappointing, in that while the back write-up does feature the game against the Oilers, it doesn't mention the comeback in the game. Which, any card referencing that game pretty much has to.

Inserts of the horizontal variety. 

Numbered cards. The best thing I can say about Manuel and Johnson is that they weren't the worst QBs over the past 20-or-so years.

Some relics. When I saw that Travis Henry, I wondered what happened in the game that manu-ticket represented. Turns out I was wrong, as the Bills shut-out the Patriots in that game. They'd blow out Jacksonville the next week.

And then proceed to go 4-12 the rest of the way. Because Bills.

I also thought that Brown was a dupe. It turns out I had the cracked ice parallel /25 of it. And since that is the only parallel there was - RAINBOW! WOO-HOO!

If you want some ink to go along with some player worn swatches, here you are! Thankfully, they created a smoky background for the Williams card and auto, because that would not have been visible otherwise. If any card called for a plain white swatch, that's the one. 

And there you have it!