Free Stuff Friday / Completing a 1990s Donruss run

I'll have to postpone the second half of my 1956 Topps set build yet again, because I have not had enough time to scan the cards. Maybe next week I'll be less busy... hopefully..

Also, thanks to some idiot at the office, I am really in the mood to talk hockey. So here's a look at the five flagship hockey card sets produced by Donruss in the 1990s - and my potential for completing the run. 

 

The 1993-94 Donruss hockey set is the largest and looks exactly like the 1994 Donruss baseball set. I have 39 of the 510 cards. We'll come back to this one.

The 1994-95 Donruss set is comprised of 330 cards and is even less legible than is predecessor (at least in hand).

It's time to play Name That Goalie!

If I hadn't already completed the set when it was new I would not start now. This is my least favorite of the five Donruss hockey sets you'll see here. For comparison, 1995 Donruss baseball has tough-to-read names in silver foil - but without that giant seal in the corner.

My favorite of these five sets is the other one I didn't complete - 1995-96 Donruss.

Mrs. Collector had about 40% of this set, which is too much to carry in my 'assorted hockey cards' box, so I decided to try and complete it. Thanks to TCDB, Sportlots, and a couple packs I purchased on eBay, I've more than doubled the size of our set build. I still need 70 singles out of 390, plus a couple of the checklist inserts. 

This design does not resemble Donruss baseball or football sets from that same year. The '96 set was the first flagship football set released by the brand, and presages the 1996-97 Donruss hockey set.

 
I found a cheap box of 1996-97 Donruss hockey in an outlet mall a couple years after its release. The compact 240-card set was easy to complete from one box.


Finally we have 1997-98 Donruss, one of six hockey card sets released under the Donruss banner that year. (I do want to spend some time discussing Donruss Preferred but we'll focus on flagship for now.)

Weight, I'm on this card, too.

Arnott.

This is the smallest set at just 230 cards. I've completed this one as well. Which leads me to this question: should I attempt to assemble the first Donruss hockey card set and complete the run? I do have some space in my binders - though I'd need some extra pages.

A box of the 'main' set (cards 1-400) is within my price range. But I'd either have to buy an Update box or try to acquire them through trades and Sportlots purchases. Seems like a lot of work/money for a run-of-the-mill set -- though the chance of pulling an Elite insert is certainly enticing.
 

What would you do? Buy an already completed 510 card set? Buy a main set box and piece together the Update portion through other means? Buy both boxes? Neither? Your advice is appreciated. 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Since I've barely had time to read/write any blog posts this month (birthdays, school starting, soccer practice, concert, etc...) I'm inviting everyone who has commented on one of my last four posts to select up to 12 cards on the Free Cards! tab. 

Dennis, Nachos Grande, Johnny, Bo, Night Owl, Jon, Jafronius, Tom, Matt K., Gregory, Fuji, A.J., Brett, Capt. Kirk, and Trevor... come on down!

I replenished my stock with some goodies from the ShopRite vending machine :)

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!

 

 

~

 

 

Free Stuff Friday - Time Capsule Cards

Last weekend I was at my mom's house in Connecticut, for the first time since February. Since then Mom has informed us that she's moving out of the house that she moved into when I was 18 months old - which would be the spring of 1982. Mom can't climb up and down stairs any more because her back and knees are beyond repair. She'll be 78 in September - which is when she plans to move into her new first floor apartment on the other side of town.

I was asked to help her clean out the attic crawl space, but I had so much fun up there that I just did it all myself. By the time I was done more than four hours had passed, and I swear it only felt like two. The attic was my sports card and memorabilia room, before I moved out and my nephews moved in. While the room itself was a mixed bag of my stuff (which is still there) and my nephews', the stuff in the crawl space was all mine. Or so I thought.

The big thing that had to come out was my brother's old weight bench. I remember pushing that thing around the room as a kid; we must have stuffed it in the "hole" at some point. Once that was unbolted and discarded I pushed everything within reach to the mouth of the crawl space. I sat on the floor and sorted through the pile of sports cards that had been sitting in there for over 25 years. The newest cards were from 1993-94. I wasn't expecting to find anything older than 1986 - the year I started collecting - forgetting that even in the pre-internet days I was able to acquire older cards than the current year. Duh.

The attic room is always hot, especially in summer. I had a bottle of water nearby and an open window ten feet from where I was working. I was sweating and dirty and I couldn't have been happier. Some of the things in that crawl space were a tad embarrassing, but most of them brought back great memories. 

I uncovered things that had been buried in there for so long I'd never seen them before. My sister's toy horse collection was strewn about the crawl space. Larger horses were in one box, and glass/porcelain miniatures wrapped in newspaper were buried in the fiberglass. My mom was not going to look past the wooden bars, but I didn't want to leave anything behind. There were some cards and books sticking out of the fiberglass fields, too.

Along the inside wall I found more of my mom's books, at least six boxes worth. I'd barricaded myself inside at one point and called for someone to help move them out of my way. No one heard me, so I pushed them out myself. One of them was an old World Book volume that I wanted to take home (I loved encyclopedias as a kid and I miss them) but I was too concerned with the sports stuff and forgot to bring it. Oh, and I found this:

 
As soon as I saw it I laughed out loud. Mom, were these my diapers? I'm not sure what a box would cost today but these were $6.99. My sister (who has grandkids now) saw this and joked that Mom should have stocked up on Pampers at that price. 


Anyway.. you're not here to see 40 year-old diaper boxes, am I right? You're here for cards. We'll get there.


Among the reading material I found were some record store ads. One was from 1992, when I first started purchasing CDs, watching MTV every day, and checking the Billboard chart whenever I was in a music store. 

The funny thing about this particular top 40 chart is that my boss gave me the nickname "Chris cross" when I started working there - and then asked me if I knew who Kris Kross was.

Yep, I knew. He even played "Jump" at full blast one Friday afternoon. We all had a good laugh. He still calls me "Chris cross" sometimes.

This is not mine. Queen released Hot Space in May of 1982, so this flyer has been sitting in the attic for about as long as that diaper box.

Here's a magazine from 1981 with a boy playing baseball on the cover (remember when kids played baseball?) I skimmed through it and found a Quebec tourism ad, which I found funny considering the cover headline of "America, America!"

This was also published in 1981. Apparently I acquired it at a library bookmobile some years later. Take a look at these rankings, it's kind of a time capsule within a time capsule:

Please excuse my scribbles. I scribbled on pretty much everything back then. 

I could go on and on about the things I found in the crawl space, and perhaps I will discuss them further in a separate post. But I've made you read enough for now unless you scrolled through just to see the free cards - if so, shame on you! :P

About half of the time spent "cleaning the crawl space" was actually spent sorting through the hundreds of cards scattered on the floor. 90% of them were damaged; I only kept about 30 cards for my own collection. Most of these were overproduction-era singles that weren't worth saving considering their condition. I brought home the rest, in case any of my readers could use some of them. 

None of these "time capsule cards" are in near mint-mint condition, but they are free for the claiming. All I ask is that your comment includes more than just your claim (and limit 9 cards per customer, please.) Since I'm giving away cards that would have ended up in the garbage I'll do my best to throw in some more modern cards, in better condition. 

Let's start with some oddball items. Here's the Iron Man and Stan The Man:

Along with these Starting Lineup cards I found three figures and the backer board of another figure.

I remember buying the Rite Aid boxed set but had no recollection of the Fleer sets until I found the empty Award winners box in the crawl space.

Griffey is one of five Collect-a-books I found. The others were Robin Yount (keeper), Jeff George (damaged, one page had scotch tape across it), Joe Dumars, and Charles Oakley.

Non-sports anyone? There were more salvagable non-sports cards than football, basketball, and hockey cards combined.  

Yo! Anyone like old-school hip hop? 

Some all-time greats in decent shape...

..and some all-time greats in not-so-great shape.

Some early '80s commons:

And a few notable names:

We'll end this giveaway with the oldest card - and perhaps the most well-loved:

Hardly a historic find, but hopefully some of you can use some of these.


Thanks for reading, and happy 4th!



~

PWEs from Fuji and Jon

Quick post today because I'm planning a much longer one for Friday and I still haven't returned to regular commenting.

I've been scouring eBay looking for that big piece to add to my collection and so far I've been much too cautious. The prices are higher than I expect (which usually happens with auctions) and the one card I really want hasn't come back down to the price it was before i had the money to buy it. 

I saw a nice Pee Wee Reese 1956 Topps card just before I left work yesterday. I added it to my watch list, but by the time I got home someone bought it. It's just as well. I probably would have delayed a decision on it until it sold - like I've done with the Hank Aaron and Willie Mays cards that were on my watch list. 

You know what would be great? If there was a major sports card and memorabilia convention nearby with both high end and low end cards that I could purchase all at once without paying tax or shipping fees. Sigh...


Thankfully I've been perked up by a pair of PWEs from two of my favourite* bloggers.

 This Kevin Youkilis mini is one of 15 Red Sox cards in the latest care package from Fuji.

This PWE was full of neat inserts and parallels. 

Some Han-Ram here, and a purple refractor of blogger favorite Henry Owens.


Here are some cards I picked from Jon's Free Stuff Friday offerings:

Williams, Chesbro, and Bonds will go into my All-Time Teams binder (I'm rebooting that series when the 2020 baseball season starts -- assuming it starts on time.) I used to have a bunch of those Brett Favre NFL on Fox booklets and it's nice to have it back in my PC.

Thanks for the cards fellas, they were a nice surprise when I definitely needed one.


*Today is Canada Day, ya hosers. Here are some Canada-centic memes that made me chuckle.

Thanks for reading, eh.



~

Free Cards from Brian and Jim (plus bonus content)

I keep trying to resist the siren song of the Free Stuff posts, and I keep giving in to temptation. Even after I declared that I would no longer claim cards.. I kept on claiming cards. Gah I really need to stop!

I've claimed freebies from Jon, Rod, Julie, and Brian - and sent something to each of them recently*. However I'm going to owe Julie again, and I didn't send nearly enough to Brian. 

*also I claimed cards from Kevin but I'll settle up with him after the Big Fun Game is complete.


This Highly Subjective batch of cards arrived today. I started to worry when I saw the polybag wrapper...

..but one small hole in the side of the envelope didn't affect any of the cards inside - including the Jackie Robinson at the top of this post. 

Some Red Sox needs and a Nieds for my Devils binder. Hockey Kazi hoards all the hockey Brian offers up, but I was able to snag a pair of Allure singles. They are exactly as nice as I was expecting - very similar to OPC Platinum or Chrome.

On that note, I claimed this Brian Anderson auto because I love 2018 Topps/OD/Chrome, and because our biggest client at the office is a guy named Brian Anderson. I didn't think anyone else would be clamoring for a Marlins card anyhow.

As if that's not enough Brian sent some bonus Devils since I was openly poking around for some current cards:

Woo-hoo Hughes! I've had his Allure RC on my COMC watch list for a while, and haven't pulled the trigger yet. But! This is the short-printed Jack Hughes RC, which is sold out on COMC! Brian, I cannot thank you enough for these great cards! My next ten Twins hits are going to you ;)

This next batch of freebies did not come from a blogger. If you shop on the Beckett Marketplace I highly recommend you order from Jim at 7th Inning Stretch. In addition to offering Free Shipping on any order over $25 Jim offers 15-20% discounts off any order over $20 -- and on top of that he tucks in some extra cards. The first time I bought from his store I thought I got the wrong order; there were so many extra hockey singles.

Perhaps that's his calling card as this order included a similar helping of early 90's stars and an IP auto (this one is Patrick Lalime, I got Petr Nedved last time.)

Much of my order was baseball (which you'll see in my next post) and so he tossed in a couple Carl Yastrzemski cards as well. Oh, and this:

That is a well-loved (but not creased) rookie card of Hall of Famer Billy Williams. For free.

I did not place a big, expensive order (it was under $40) though I did order three Williams cards because the only card I had of his was a 2017 Topps Heritage insert. Can't use that in my All-Time Teams binder.

I sent Jim an e-mail thanking him for this card and he explained that he had it sitting on his desk and threw it in based on my order (of three Billy Will cards.) Hopefully I can send some more business his way as a thank-you.


As for that All-Time Teams tournament.. the Yankees won. Shocker, I know. But kudos to Nachos Grande's Reds for pushing the series to seven games. 


Are any of you guys (or ladies) a fan of actress Saorise Ronan?

She's quite talented and lovely in an understated sort of way. And I adore her Irish accent.

If I ever met her I would ask her to say the name and position of one of my favorite baseball players. And I imagine it would sound like this:

Thot's Rah-fee Day-vurs, thard base-min o' the Bah-stin Rayd Sooks 

Honestly I would be happy to hear Sair-sha pronounce literally anything. 


Here's one more thing I haven't been able to work into any other post. I was going through some scan folders when I came across a card that I don't own, but saved it because it looked so... presidential:

He might be a Ranger, but he's a leader and a winner. #Leetch2020.


Thanks for reading!


~