Free Cards!

I've been summoned out of my TCDB hidey-hole so I'll take a break from cataloging my collection and show off some of my newest acquisitions. 

In February I bought a bunch of supplies on eBay, taking advantage of a "bonus bucks" day to boost my eBay bucks. A few small purchases later I had a total of $22.03 to spend. I searched for the best PSA-graded 1956 Topps single I could afford - and scored this Harvey Kuenn card for $21.95:

Thanks to this eBay "freebie" I've now got 156 of the 340* cards in the set (you'll see a couple more in my next post.) My goal is to have 50% of the set by the end of the year.

*two unnumbered checklists make the set 342 cards but I'm not counting them as part of my set (yet)

Here's a look at the back. Someone can correct me on this, but I believe the white backs and gray backs are equally common in series 1, but series 2 white backs are tougher to find than the grays - which would explain why all of my cards numbered 100-180 are gray backs.


As many of you know Dennis did a livestream of The Packening where he opened stacks and stacks of packs - the majority of which came from the overproduction era. I was able to witness some of the fun but my wife was out with her girls that night and I had to put the kids to bed just as Dennis was wrapping up. As a result, I had no idea that I'd won ten free "junk wax" packs just for popping in:

not pictured: one pack of 1991 Fleer Ultra

There's no chance of pulling a Mookie Betts RC out of one of these, but there were a handful of Hall of Famers and stars:

 

Still can't believe Harold Baines is/will be a Hall of Famer. (Then again, I wasn't sold on Bert Blyleven belonging in Cooperstown)

 

Some notable names including Big Mac, Doc, Darryl, "Oil Can" Boyd, and Chris Sabo (I'm assuming Dennis already has this card)

 

Ryne Sandberg appeared frequently in the five Fleer packs. I'd consider the Larry Walker RC a good pull regardless of value. Jody Reed was the only Red Sox I pulled out of the ten wax packs...but it was far from the only Sox single I received.

Dennis was kind enough to send me a bunch of the Boston ball cards he pulled from the Packening. A couple of these were dupes, but not as many as I expected.

One of my favorites in the stack is this Jason Varitek Upper Deck card, which appears to be from the 2007 victory parade.

 

Horizontal heroes. I'd never seen the Tim Wakefield at the top left before; it's from something called Topps Hot Button. 

 

I probably have more Nomar inserts than any Sox player but I'm always happy to add more.

David Ortiz appears in my collection more than any baseball player. I have 220 cards of Big Papi. Dustin Pedroia checks into third place with 163, thanks to this OD single. (Pedro Martinez is just ahead at 169.)

In case you were wondering, I now have 3,533 Red Sox cards - the most of any single sports team (but I'm expecting my Devils collection to surpass that total)

Whatever that number is, Dennis just added three to it with a pair of Martin Brodeur cards and a Kyle Palmieri parallel. These were not part of The Packening (..or were they?)

Dennis, thanks once again for this generous gift of cardboard. I plan to return the favor sometime this summer. 

I'll show off some more free cards (courtesy of COMC) in my next post. Thanks for reading!

~