Birthday Cards

Jon left a comment on my birthday post asking if I might have a JBF-style stockpile next year for my 40th birthday. I don't think I could ever do that (wasn't that Wes's farewell to the hobby?) but I did accumulate a solid pile of cards this week:

This was just today's mailday; cards and card packages have been filling up my mailbox for the past week. I'm struggling to keep up with all of them. After cataloging and organizing every card in my collection I made too many trades too quickly and I'm actually kind of burnt out. Not sick of the hobby or anything, but I'm mentally fatigued by the volume of cards coming and going.

The Legend of Shoeboxes sent me a well-traveled envelope and I was very happy to receive it. But I still haven't cataloged every card into my TCDB collection, I haven't scanned a single one, and even though I bought a new binder and 9-pocket pages for all these new cards they're still in random piles on my card table.

This hobby is so time consuming!

Perhaps the idea of leaving the hobby on my 40th birthday with a grand finale isn't so bad. I'll never be able to walk away for more than a week or two, but if I did have that kind of commitment..

..spending a few hundred bucks at the National would be a good way to go out. It's tempting to scratch my Cooperstown plans and do AC instead. Look at this list of potential inductees:

I say this as someone who once cheered for half of these guys: yuck!

It would take me way too long to scan and discuss every card from my birthday-adjacent haul - especially if I'm including trades and purchases. So here's a quick highlight of each package:

 

Some of the eighty-plus Red Sox cards Shane stuffed in the in the Well-Traveled Envelope, including a 1987 ProCards Pawtucket team set. Nice touch from the RI guy; does that mean I should send a Norwich Navigators team set to Shane?

I sent Dennis some Tigers from the surplus box and, as always, his return fire packed a much stronger punch: a handful of Red Sox and a pair of Pristine refractors. Very nice!

More Packers freebies from the TCDB community. Thank you for your service - and your sports cards.

Nachos Grande offered up a nice stack of cards to anyone who could cross a card off his wantlist. Luckily I had three cards for him - and I got thirteen in return. Thanks, Chris!

I sent some Mets cards to TCDB user The_Sandlot in exchange for a bunch of Big League, a neat Robin Roberts insert I've never seen before, and a Brett Favre Legendary Contenders. But wait! This Favre is a gold parallel #d/199. I had only asked for the 'base' Brett. :O

The thickest mailer pictured at the top comes courtesy of TCDB user BigOinPA. This is my second trade with Tom, and I'm happy I could get this one hammered out before my self-imposed trading freeze. In exchange for 64 surplus set fillers I asked for 46 baseball and hockey cards - the former were also flagship set fillers, so I'll show off the latter:

 

Stickers! These are from the 1983-84 O-Pee-Chee album. I got another Devil(Carol Vadnais) but that one appears to have been peeled, wrinkled, and re-stuck. Oh well.

The Vachon and Bridgman are Topps issues, and they're both in nice shape. Not as nice as those shiny inserts though!

A trio of HOFers capped off by a shiny Shanny. Turning 2018 Topps dupes into these beauties is worth all the time spent on cataloging, pulling, packing, and shipping. I'd make these kinds of deals all day long if I could. 

While I'm not happy about being a year older I sure can't complain about all the cardboard loot that has come my way recently (along with birthday cash that paid for even more cardboard loot!)

Thanks for reading!

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39

I remember opening a pack of Bowman baseball cards in a parking lot and freezing time when I read the back of one. Whoa - this guy was born in the 1970s! And then it occurred to me - Someday I'm going to have a card of a player who was born this year!

That was thirty years ago. There are now baseball cards of players who were born after Y2K. Heck, there are even a few prospects who were born after 9/11. 

Six active major league baseball players are older than I am. Eight NFL players are listed as active - though half of them are kickers and rosters won't be finalized for another three weeks. 

And now that I feel sufficiently old, here are some items from a box my mom recovered last time I was in Connecticut:

This was a birthday gift from someone named Jacob. I honestly do not remember ever knowing anyone named Jacob. (And apparently he didn't know me too well, wither. He wrote my name as "Cris")

I had a Nintendo Power subscription for about three years. This is the only issue I found in the box. Not sure why it was saved; I never played Lemmings. There's a Zelda comic inside though.

My mom saved my Upper Deck binder! Unfortunately it's a wreck. I wrote all over most of the tabs, but one or two were left unmarked:

Inside the binder I found about a dozen pages of homework - and some notes of far greater significance:

I had a habit of predicting winners based on how well the teams' starters matched up. Vancouver was really overmatched on paper; it's a near-miracle they pushed the Blueshirts to seven games.

At some point in 1994, Ken Griffey, Jr. was on pace for 67 home runs!?!

Going back in time a bit, here are a couple pamphlets from my visit to the Basketball Hall of Fame:

Thanks for writing on them, Mom. No, really. If she hadn't done that I would have trouble remembering exactly when we went. (Still can't find any pictures from Springfield, though.)

Mom also wrote my name on my Pop Warner playbook. (I also found a playbook my friends and I made up..for touch football or something?)

Oh! That reminds me...a West Haven card was TCDB's card of the day yesterday:

Now back to the box...thirty years ago this summer I completed a computer programming course.

If I'd stuck with it, who knows - maybe I could be working for Google right now. (I was really interested in computers at the time, but my mom couldn't afford one. And so that interest withered and died..) I'd show you what I was working on that summer, but uh...yeah.

Unable to spend my time coding as a kid, I became so obsessed with baseball that I chose baseball-related subjects for school reports whenever possible.

I used a birthday card from 25+ years ago to cover up some personal info. There was a book report on baseball in the Upper Deck binder..but it's not the one this teacher was referring to:

I got an A- on my Jim Abbott report because (and this only makes sense to me as a more experienced "writer") I stated that Jim is not only a great pitcher but a great person.

This might be the report in question. It's unmarked but it's 4 pages long (and I promise it's the last loose leaf scan you'll see in this post)

This report was found inside what I believe to be the first baseball book I ever owned. If my mom had not saved it I would have completely forgotten the name of it.

I had to steal this from the internet because the front cover of mine is long gone. See the sliver of red peeking out from the bottom? I can't even scan that cover because my eight year-old self wrote all over it (apparently I was really excited about Nolan Ryan's 5000th strikeout.)

A fair amount of the pages have been scribbled on and edited as well. Kind of like when kids from the '60s and '70s "updated" a player's team to reflect a recent trade. Well, I made some updates to the record book. I won't show you that mess, though. 

Here's a clean page - with a photo of Frank Robinson as a Dodger. (Now we need a page for rookies with 50 or more home runs. good lord.) 

Anybody know who this Brooklyn Dodger is? Because it's definitely not Billy Williams.

Hey, I'm not so old after all. There's still plenty of time for me to become a major league ballplayer!

Robert Smith wrote this song on his 39th birthday. I wrote this blog post.*

And now I must return to TCDB, where there are trade offers waiting for me because I'm turning off trading for the rest of the summer. For real this time.


*actually I wrote this a day before my birthday since I will have to work tomorrow.  



Thanks for taking a few minutes to flip through my time capsule!



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The Mystery Mailer

I mentioned in my last post that three packages were waiting for me when I got home from work on Friday. One from Julie, one from Wes..and a third one I was not expecting.

The sender's name and return address were unreadable:

But the postage sticker narrowed it down considerably:
 

By my estimation there are only 2 or 3 Canadian collectors reading this blog. There was no note inside the mailer; the cards would have to provide clues.

O-Pee-Chee Devils! Lucky for me Brian Boyle was not included; it's the only one I have from '18-19.

More Devils, including Zach Parise, Brendan Shanahan, and Cup-winning Capital Devante Smith-Pelly. My Devils collection has been nearly dormant, since almost everyone on the blogs sends me Red Sox and I haven't been able to upload my hockey traders to TCDB (working on that this weekend.) These are most appreciated - but a Canadian sending hockey cards isn't helping me solve the mystery (although it rules out Mike Matson.)

A-ha! Now this is a clue. Three Khris Middleton cards, an Antoine Walker, a Delanie Walker, and a Chris Chambers card. Whoever sent these has an eye for special mini-collections of players who share one's birthday.

  

Which is what all these players have in common with me: August 12 birthdays. Ian Happ was born the day of the MLB players strike, in 1994. Rafael Araujo was born on my exact birthday. And Plaxico Burress was..a grade-A idiot who once shot himself in a nightclub and probably cost the Giants a Super Bowl. That said, an Ultimate Materials relic #d to 99 is a welcome addition to my collection. (had Plax shot someone else I'd feel differently, obvs.)

But who would know this? Who would have cards of all four sports, including a gold parallel from 2013-14 Score hockey and an obscure Raptor and be generous enough to send a care package of players who have a very specific birthday?

I'm going to go out on a limb here...it has to be Douglas, author of Sports Cards From The Dollar Store, and collector of players who share his 2/14 birthday.

Doug, thank you very much for this surprise package! I'll be sure to send you some return fire as soon as I can.  

Have any of you received a surprise package from a fellow blogger/collector lately?

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Collecting players who share your Birthday?

I'm not sure if this should be a "Question Thursday" or a "Blog Bat Around" or what...but do any of you collect cards of players who share your birthday? The topic came to mind from a care package between bloggers so I know there are at least a couple of you who do.

I had never thought to collect cards of players who were born on August 12. That is, until about three years ago when I was still collecting prospect cards.

Dodgers lefty Julio Urias was born August 12, 1996 - exactly two years after the MLB players strike started, and sixteen years after I entered the world. Boy, if that doesn't make me feel old..

Half of my Urias collection comes from the same set, 2014 Bowman Platinum.

I haven't bought any of his cards in a while, but I'd be open to trading for a few or picking up any I see in a dime/quarter box at a card show. If I ever get to another card show.

Obviously my birthday buddy is not the highlight here.

Earlier this week I made the somewhat difficult decision to include this triple relic card in a blockbuster swap. Parting with this card (and reading Night Owl's latest post) got me thinking about what other players were born on my birthday.

Zack Cozart is probably the best active player in baseball with my birthday. I pulled this Mother's Day Pink (I think?) parallel from a birthday-related purchase. 

Two Hall of Famers were born on 8/12 (in the 19th century): Christy Mathewson and Ray Schalk, who was one of the not-crooked members of the 1919 "Black Sox." I'm going to try and add a Schalk card to my collection but he has very few modern cards.

Pete Sampras has even fewer cards than Schalk. I'd always assumed he was the greatest athlete born on 8/12, since he was active and dominant while I was growing up (PTI saluted him on their Aug. 12 shows for about a decade) I don't have any of his cards but I definitely want to get one. Does anyone know of a tennis card collector?

Chris Chambers was born exactly two years before me. Plaxico Burress was born a year before him. Titans tight end Delanie Walker is the best active NFL player with an 8/12 birthday. 

 

Basketball Hall of Famer George McGinnis also shares my birthday. I don't have any of his cards. Perhaps I should add a couple to my wantlist.

Here's a guy who shares my exact birthday. Brazilian baller Rafael Araujo was born August 12, 1980. I don't have any of his cards in my collection, either. Khris Middleton and Antoine Walker are bigger 8/12 names who are represented in my basketball box.

Colin Hemingway was also born the same day as me. He played only 3 NHL games, and appears on 54 cards. I have at least one in my collection - but the Black Diamond Update card is part of my set and it doesn't scan well anyway, so I used a card I don't have. This serial numbered SP Authentic RC is now on my TCDB wantlist.

Todd Marchant won a Stanley Cup with Anaheim in 2007 and played in more games than any NHL player born on the twelfth of August. He was one of my favorite Oilers of the late 1990s-early 2000s. I hadn't been aware of any (team) sports stars who shared my birthday before collecting his cards at the time.



Which pro sports stars were born on your birthday? Do you collect their cards?



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2018 Topps Chrome "Monster" Blaster Box Break

Before I get to my box break I want to thank all of you for the belated birthday wishes, and I hope you enjoy your prizes. Reading your reactions to each gift will be more exciting than cracking open a dozen packs of cards. 'Tis better to give than receive, after all.

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I was in Connecticut this past weekend, visiting my family for what amounted to a second birthday. On Sunday - after having lunch with my mom - I popped into Wal-Mart to check their card aisle, since I don't have a Wal-Mart near me here in Jersey. I've read that some bloggers have had better luck there anyhow. 

The sports card selection at the West Haven Wal-Mart wasn't great, but they did have fat packs of 2018 Topps series 2. I bought one of those, and with my last $40 I grabbed this:

This "monster" box of 2018 Topps Chrome was dented (hence the lousy scan) and it was the last one on the shelf. But that's one more than my Target has had, so I gave it a shot. 

I assume that these are called "monster" boxes because they are the physical size of two standard blasters. But the contents aren't that different: 10 packs plus two X-Fractor packs. The four-card packs allow me to scan the complete contents of each pack two at a time. 

Packs 1 and 2:

A pair of Dodgers, a pair of Phillies, and a pair of star third basemen. Are the purple refractors a Wal-Mart exclusive? 


Packs 3 and 4:

Gleyber Torres RC! I'm obviously not a Yankees fan, and Miguel Andujar has sort of stolen the hype from him, but I'm not complaining about this pull. Chris Taylor starts a trend of pulling the same card in base and refractor form. 


Packs 5 and 6:

A little bit of everything here - the first insert of the box, a Conforto prism refractor (I think?) and a Victor Robles RC. Also another Rendon, and another Yankee. 


Packs 7 and 8:

Manny Machado in back-to-back packs. I really like the '83 insert in Chrome refractor form. This Rafael Devers Freshman Flash insert is the only Red Sox card in the box. 


Packs 9 and 10:

Not a great finish here, the Buehler RC is nice and the Eugenio Suarez completes the base + refractor trend, joining Taylor and Rendon. Good thing I've got the X-Fractor packs to fall back on...

There are five cards per pack here. I've scanned them all together:

Wait...that's only nine cards. Where's the tenth card?

There's your 2018 American League Rookie of the Year right there. It seems like he's had a clutch home run in just about every Yankee win this month. I'll probably hold onto this until the season ends but it will eventually end up in the hands of a Yankees fan. Most of the other cards in this post are available for trades (except the Devers of course). If you're interested in anything, let me know.


Thanks for reading!


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