Mailbag: Baseball

Here's the baseball content from the bubblers!

This is the oddest of the bunch, a card from one of Kerry's Free Card Fridays. I just thought it would go nicely with the Northern Lights card out of 15-16 Champ's.

And I can place it in Principal Skinner's kitchen and he'd be none the wiser.

I've never seen Utz on this side of the border (or even heard of the company), so this food-issue DeGrom is a nice add to my Mets binders.

There were a lot more Mets stuff here (a theme for both envelopes, and both the Mets and Jays) but here's a scanner bed worth of them. I really should have replaced that McNeil with the Donruss "Polar Bear" variant. Thankfully for the Mets PC, that one was far more common than the Topps one.

For some reason, these Vlad Jr inserts were Target exclusives. I say "For some reason", since wouldn't these be a better exclusive for Walmart, which actually exists in Canada?

And here's your Jays sampler. The Ed-wing!

As with the Cards on Cards mailer, I'm starting the recap of the TMV envelope with the oddball. Does this Larry Walker go into my Expos PC? Or my Cancon PC? Or did I hose things up completely by not including it in my hockey recap?
Either way, we've got a pair of Hall of Famers meeting on this card.

It might not be a Diamond Kings card, but this Bonilla is close enough.

 

Here's a numbered salute to the '86 squad. Hernandez is great and all, but I might have used Series MVP Ray Knight instead. That's still a minor beef for a great card.

The TMV Mets Sampler.

And the Jays Sampler.

With a bonus of some swatches and slivers to go along with it.

That only leaves football! Next post!

When In Doubt: Chronicles

Sometimes, it is good to have a box worth of busted cards around when you don't just want to post a single card, but don't want to get to verbose. So, here's another box worth of my favourite 2019 product.

Pack 1:

While sometimes you might see two cards from the same design in a single pack, this might be the first time I've received three. But, they are all different parallels, with Vlad being the base design, Kieboom being a holo parallel, and Tucker being the hyper parallel /299. There's also the first of the two Spectra cards that appear in packs without hits.

Pack 2:

And, there's the first hit. Eventually. The gold parallels are /99 in that set. A big head Score card? Those are always welcome. The Chavis is another Hyper parallel, and like with Crusade is /299.

Pack 3:

The first actual auto is of Michael Perez, a catcher for Tampa. I hadn't heard of him aside from cardboard appearances. Apparently he was supposed to see more time than he got behind the plate last season, prior to Travis D'Arnaud signing and living up to his original potential.

Pack 4:

That's really what I like to see with a relic card with multiple windows. Three different designs for a relic. Two plain swatches, albeit different colours, and a pinstripe. Not a lot of variety in terms of teams, with 3 White Sox and 2 Angels cards in the pack.

Pack 5:

And there's the final hit. And another Chicago-intensive pack. But we've also got Vlad showing up again, and Ruby Wave /199 of Tatis, so not bad at all.

Pack 6:

That's a nice way to end it - a Pete Alonso hot pack with both a numbered and non-numbered card. That hot pink of Arraez is also numbered, being /75.

Not bad at all, even if I would have preferred not going back to back boxes with a redemption.

Pack Sampler: 2019 Gallery

Because sometimes you just have to pass on the repacks at Wally World and get a fresh new product on the shelves. They obviously passed on thick material for the packaging, as the first card is very visible.

So, we move Willie Mays out of the way to see Pedro Avila.

The back of the cards are pretty much exactly what you'd expect based on previous years of the product.

Here's the remainder of the base cards. I think this year's release features the debut of horizontal base cards. The Artisans distinction on the card isn't a variation, but it does show that this card is a SP. The set is 200, with the final 50 being SP. I think I'll pass on the set build. My fave portrait in the pack among the base is the JD Hammer, because stadium background > generic background. And there's a Joey Votto for my Cancon collection.

There were two wood parallels in the pack, and they'd indicate this pack maybe should have ended up on the shelves far to the southwest of me. But, the Naylor is also a CanCon card. So, maybe not.

And definitely not when it came to the Heritage insert. A drawn card of Vlad Jr, with the always classic 1965 design! I may like this card even better than the Richard Urena auto I pulled from my one pack last year. And despite the fact he's all over every late release this year, it is still a lot of fun to pull any of his cards.

There you have it! If it were not for the SPs, I could see myself going for this set. Alas, 1/4 of the set being such kinda kills the urge.

Chronicles Box Break - Part 1

While the singles really weren't there as much so as some years, there was seemingly more baseball wax on the floor. With my personal favourite, Chronicles, being one of the boxes available, I had to take a chance with that. Here's what it contained:

Pack 1:

I enjoy this product for the same reason I enjoyed busting Rookie Anthology. Variety! Only the Reynolds card is a base card. All the rest are insert sets featuring various designs. The Rated Rookie is an update of sorts for Donruss.

And here's the first of the hits, getting the relic in the first pack. I'm somewhat disappointed that a gold parallel, numbered /25 only contains a single colour swatch. 

Pack 2:

A killer pack for rookies. Eloy! Tatis! Vlad!

And let's throw in an appearance of the Polar Bear as well. To make this rookie intensive pack even better, this Red Mosaic Spectra Pete is numbered to an ebay 1/1 friendly 01/25! What a keeper! And this isn't even close to the best card in the box.

Pack 3:

This box has been a hot box for Kyle Tucker so far, as he makes his third appearance so far. Other than that, there's a big head of Mike Trout from Score.  

Here's another numbered parallel, done in a red that works nicely with the Padres colours. Unlike the Spectra, this ruby wave is /199. 

Auto #1. I had no clue who Justin Williams was. He got 1 AB with Tampa in 2018, then went to the Cardinals as part of the Tommy Pham trade. He was all over 2013/4 Bowman releases after being a second rounder of the Diamondbacks. 

There's three packs worth of Chronicles. The next 3 show up tomorrow, with another contender for my best pull this year.

A perfect day for Expos cards

I was lamenting to myself that I really didn't have any 'scary' cards for a 10/31 post. And then the World Series happened. And that allowed me to head through my COMC to-be-posted box in search of Expos cards to post.

And all was well.

Does a Montreal based World's Fair card count? The World's Fair is an Expo. so obviously that's a yes! The Biosphere is now an iconic part of  Île Sainte-Hélène/Parc Jean Drapeau in Montreal.

Gotta include a new Vladdy!

Two legendary Expos! One card! Perfection!

El Presidente - El Perfecto. That's probably the greatest moment in the lineage of the Franchise until about 8 hours ago as I type this up. And since this is a card from Topps Kids, scanning the back is mandatory.

And for those who still desire a little baseball action, enjoy Vin Scully audio from the perfecto.

I'll open the mailbag again tomorrow.

2019 Chronicles Case Break Random Goodies #4: Blue Jays

Vlad chasing!

Amazingly, there were players on the Jays team checklist other than Guerrero. The second-generation love does continue with Cavan Biggio, one of the Jays three-headed monster of second generation talent.

The best thing about catcher cards in Panini releases is they can use photos where you don't notice the lack of MLB logos.

You couldn't have a 2019 release without an appearance of Rowdy Tellez RCs.

And if you would rather see some ink and some swatches with the hit, then here you are with those, all in one card. While I did prefer last year's design, with the infield-ish square in the background, the pattern still has a ballpark feel to it.

Let's keep the second generation greatness going with a second one. I seriously had no idea that Bo was even part of the set in any form, but there he is! I also love how the swing is perfectly placed between the swatches both here and with Tellez. anyhow, this is my first Bichette hit, and given that I'd already landed a pair of Vlads in a case break of Optic, I might be more excited about this one than the Vlad content in this.

But here's what you want to see when you have the Jays in a product like 2019 Chronicles - lots of Vladdy! Big head Vladdy, in fact!

And here's some more Vlad!

If numbered cards are more your thing, here's some of those. The Red Phoenix is /199, the Hyper Phoenix is /299 and the blue Crusade is /99 as well as being a perfect parallel for the collection.

3 of 4 posts in this had a hometown heroes dual relic card. Here's Vladdy's!

And yup, there's an autograph as well. He may have had some issues with staying on the sticker, but there's #3 for the ol' collection.

There you have it! This weekend, I'll be hitting the mailbag!

Because I Got High

If I put together the 1-500 Heritage base set, I might as well put together the 501-725 High Numbers base set. I busted two hobby boxes of the first one to go with various singles/lots to finish Part 1, so let's see what I can do with two hobby boxes of this.

No buybacks this time with the box topper, just a pair of oversized cards.

Topps didn't bury all the big names among the short prints this time, meaning that I did get 2 of pretty much the entire 200 card regular set. That means a pair of Vlads.

That also means a pair of Polar Bear Petes. So, if you're one of my regular trade partners, don't go out and get a base set from this of the regular base set, as I'll be hooking you up in some sort of future mailer.

You really can't look for amazing photography in Heritage, but you do get a nice sidearm photo for Cimber and Scott Alexander looking like one of Joe Walsh's roadies.

This is pretty intimidating, but it is a shame this is hidden among the SP portion of the set.

This kinda-shiny Bryce Harper was in the first box.

The second box had this really shiny Danny Salazar. That's it in terms of numbered parallels.

Back to the first box, which had two other parallels in it. The Senzel is the action variation, which fall at a rate of about one per box. Hiura is the team name colour variation, which is 1:154 packs. And such an exciting variation it is!

I completely forgot to scan the action variation in the second box of Byron Buxton. Here's an ebay link if you care what it looks like.

My favourite of the inserts is the one commemorating Hank Aaron's famous home runs. I'll give this the nod over the one commemorating #500 since Brewers cards of Hank are far less common in my collection than Braves appearances.

That's despite Mets appearances among the inserts.

That's also despite a second Vlad Jr appearance highlighting his first plate appearance.

Hit time! The first box should probably have been Wisconsin-bound, with the Hiura variation, and the relic both being Brew Crew cards.

The aim was far better for the second box and its hit. A Mets auto! It might not be an Alonso, but the squirrel has been having a pretty solid season as well, being at or near the top of the batting average leaderboard for much of the season. It's always great to land a keeper!

And there you have it! I'll probably do some repack stuff next post.