Monday, March 18, 2024

1988 Topps pack rip

Quick pupdate: Happy to report Ruby is doing a lot better now. The tube is out and the stitches are scheduled to come out this weekend. She's always such a happy, high-energy dog that it was tough seeing her so miserable/drugged-up for those few days, but she's doing a whole lot better now.

Just wanted to cleanse the blog with some better vibes after a stressed-out previous post, so let's grab something from my little stash of unopened packs and make a quick post out of it.


Here's a pack of 1988 Topps. It's a set I like to work with for cardart because, well for one thing all 792 cards are essentially commons since they printed so much of it, so they can all be scored for the site minimum price at Sportlots. And the blocky white borders make for good canvases for drawing on or cutting around.


Seems the last several old Topps packs I've opened have had shattered and/or gross-looking gum, so it was a nice change of pace to see a full stick of enticing pink gum.


Not a lot of starpower in the pack, but the Fernando and the rookie cup Greenwell are ok pulls for me.

Welp, that was a little anticlimactic, so let's see what else I've got available to rip.


1990 Upper Deck. Another good cardart source for me with plenty of iconic cards that aren't worth much because there are so damn many of them in existence.


Nice! Nolan Ryan and a Larry Walker rookie make this pack an easy winner.


Sammy Sosa would have been a decent pull, too, but the surface wear on the cap kinda ruins this particular example. So much for "pack fresh"! lol

That's it. Thanks for stopping by.

Friday, March 15, 2024

Incoming Cards™

All is not well at Baseball Card Breakdown HQ, with my dog Ruby getting a serious injury in a dust-up after she playfully surprised a mean dog at the park. Not life-threatening, but there's a pretty nasty gash on her side, now stitched up with a tube. It'll likely be a rough couple weeks of healing but she should be back to her over-the-top self soon. I'm pretty exhausted from all the stress and hours waiting at the emergency vet the other day, but glad that day is in the rearview now.

I've been meaning to do another one of those posts where I get around to showing off some incoming cards I've gotten recently, specifically non-purchases this time. (The post title is joke referencing Penny Sleeve's latest post.) So let's do that while I keep one eye on the dog (We try to give her plenty of time not in the Cone of Shame, but that means we need to make sure she doesn't mess with the area or get into any trouble otherwise).

When the Diamond King ran a quick contest where he'd try shopping for some cards for you at an upcoming card show, I tried to keep my entry comment request simple, asking for refractors of notable players or cheap star cards for cardart if I won.

Lucky me, my name came out on top and before long I received a pair of PWEs with my winnings.


Really nice selection of shiny stars, heavy on Padres. And here's a better look at that center Khris Davis...


Christmas Card! Kevin mentioned this was one he had set aside for me for a while.


The non-refractors were way better than I was expecting. I needed the Jim Palmer for my '76 setbuild, and the others are all nice PC additions. I think only the Betts is a dupe for me, so maybe that one'll get defaced in the name of art at some point.

Big thanks, Kevin! I really enjoyed these!

-   -  - --o

Looks like Zippy Zappy is still working on slimming down his collection, as I got another recent package from him.


Three baseball autos, a couple cards of a lovely lady, and a hockey printing plate. Not too often somebody drops a random 1/1 on you!


Some little Star Wars canisters from Japan (once containing cookies?) along with sleeves n' such (not pictured) that I'll find a use for.

Thanks again as always, Kenny! I hope you keep mailing me random cool shit for years to come. lol

-  - - - ---o

John Miller surprised me with a nice bunch of cards a week or so back.


A nice group of Gavins here.


Big Brian Giles lot. I should sort out the PC one of these days and enter it into TCDB as I bet I'd be a contender for the top spot with so much help from traders like John over the years.


Love whenever I can add to the Caminiti collection.


A few other highlights from the package. Thank you, John! Always appreciated! I need to find some Braves for you or at least make some more bubble customs for you and Bob like I've been meaning to.

Thanks for reading, and thanks again to Kevin, Kenny, and John for the cards.

Monday, March 4, 2024

Lyman Bostock (guest post!)

Eight years ago today, I posted about some Lyman Bostock customs whipped up in collaboration with a reader named Nolan. I'm delighted that he's taken me up on my call for a guest post to talk about his experience collecting this fascinating ballplayer with a tragic story.

 - - -

Lyman Bostock

When I was around 12, baseball cards were my obsession. My life revolved around collecting. Didn’t matter what sets came out, I wanted everything. I was so excited when I found a very small stack of mid to late 1970s cards in a green plastic box at my grandparents house. The only card I can still picture was Lyman Bostock of the Minnesota Twins. I looked it up and saw that it was a rookie card. I figured he was probably pretty good and excitedly looked through my thick Beckett price guide looking for him in other Topps sets, but saw that there was nothing after 1978. I asked the owner of the local card shop if he ever heard of Lyman Bostock. He said something like, yeah I think he died in a car accident. I remember being disappointed, and moved on to collecting some of my favorite players, Cal Ripken, Rickey Henderson, Andy Van Slyke, and my new favorite player, Gary Sheffield. 

Something about that name stuck with me even though I eventually lost that card. 


Fast forward to 2008, I was scrolling ESPN one day, and I saw an article called Fifth and Jackson. I recognized the face with the article. It was the man I was curious about in 1992. Lyman Bostock has the unfortunate distinction of being the only Major League baseball player to be murdered during a season. 

There is so much more to Lyman than the fact that he died just as his career was taking off.  He was remembered as a great ball player, role model, activist, and mentor to children. Rod Carew said that he had a chance at multiple batting titles and possibly the Hall of Fame.

Have you ever heard of a player signing a big free agent contract, struggling for an entire month, and then offering to return his salary because he felt like he didn’t earn it?

Lyman Bostock did it. When his offer was refused, he donated his salary, nearly $40,000 to charity. 


The more I learned about him, the more I became fascinated with his story and decided to track down his cards.

Aside from his regular Topps cards and a few food issue oddballs from the 70s, there wasn’t much to collect. I eventually decided to track down authentic signatures. After collecting authenticated signed cards from 1976 and 1977, the one I wanted the most was a 1978 Topps, harder to find since that was the season he died. 

After many failed bids, offers, and hunting I finally found my white whale. Other great autographs followed, other memorabilia, but I’ve always been partial to the cards. 



The 1976 card is by far my favorite. Lyman Bostock hit .311 in his short career, and as a tribute to that, I decided to try to collect 311 copies of that card. I’ve gotten to about 200, but it’s getting difficult. There’s many over priced cards out there. If anyone out there reading this has any Lyman Bostock cards or memorabilia, I’d love to trade. You can reach out to me by email at pezboy30@msn.com or through the Lyman Bostock Facebook page. 



I hope that this post shines a little light on Lyman. For anyone who wants to learn more about him, there’s a great podcast called “Wesley” hosted by Fox Sports reporter Tom Rinaldi. The National Baseball Hall of Fame recently published an article about Lyman as well. 



Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Where do I sign?!

I'm now up to 7 "sign here" cards.


Tino in center is my latest pickup. (Jealous, Lost Collector? lol) The seller first put it up at a hefty Buy-It-Now, but as the weeks went by he dropped the asking price and eventually I got it off him for a fair best offer.

I'm thinking I'll try to add a couple more, then call this quirky collection good at an "even" 9 cards.

Well, this is a short post, so here's some bonus content I may have posted on Twitter already.


Check out this tree in my neighborhood with an attitude problem.

Ruby had a great time out with the family at my wife's birthday lunch this past weekend. She's a cutie but a hellraiser.


Transferring the contents of the old car's glove compartment to the new car is kinda like opening up a time capsule. Found some goodies such as a vintage Kentucky Fried Chicken towelette I've had on hand since the 90s. I've also had that Gwynn since the 90s; Back in the early days of this blog I posted about The Worst-Condition Card I Own. I had forgotten that Tony was even still in the car, honestly! Looks like it lost a chunk at some point in the past decade. I think I'll "retire" the card to my Gwynn PC now before it disintegrates further.


Whoever ends up with my collection after I die is going to have a lot of "WTF?!" moments when they go through it all. LOL

Saturday, February 24, 2024

1987 Topps pack rip

I've got a small cache of rainy day unopened packs that I'm making a point of finally opening. I figure there could be cards in there to put towards my #cardart activities, so might as well. Let's get a quick post out of one.


Here's an old pack of 1987 Topps that fell into my lap at some point. I'd most like to hit a Bo Jackson or Barry Bonds. McGwire, Canseco, or even Will Clark would be some other potential good pulls.


Looks like this pack may have been through some inclement weather at some point in the past 37 years, as all the cards seem to be a little warped. Might not make for the best cardart canvases to work with. Ron Hassey here is a textbook "gum stain variation" with a prominent pink silhouette. I put it in a sleeve right away to quarantine the mess. The gum itself had cracked into a bunch of small pieces long ago, but left a memory of its heyday as a viable stick of gum for some kid to chew. I've gone on record on this blog as being a guy who is liable to "eat the gum" from vintage packs, though now that I'm older (and the gum is older), those freewheeling days of throwing digestive caution into the wind are behind me.


I pulled a Griffey and a Trout, so there's that.


The pack wasn't without some star power. These 4 are my best bets to turn into something crafty. The Dwight Gooden already seems to be an "unofficial variation" what with printing flaw making it look like Doc spilled Froot Loops on his jersey.


Welp, the best rookie I pulled was Doug Drabek, but still a fun way to spend a minute or two.


Bonus "wood border" action before ending the post...


Maybe you remember last year when I was doing a lot of "border art" for a minute? Can't believe at the time I didn't think to draw a simple wooden frame. That might be a little boring by itself, so a blackened background helps give the card a more distinctive look.


I even score the borders a bit to give them some texture. It's a neat effect in hand, mimicking an old wooden frame. Nothing incredible, but yeah, just another style to add to the repertoire. 

That's it for today. Thanks for reading.

Wednesday, February 21, 2024

A pack and a couple boxes

I still haven't bought any retail since covid, and while I like what I've seen of the 2024 Topps flagship design, I haven't been compelled to go out and buy any. But thankfully I still get the thrill of new-to-me cards with a little help from my blogger buds.

Actually CardBoredom was a new one for me, under my radar for these past few months. But it's a really well done site/blog. I've been going back to read David's old stuff and interested to see what's next from him.


I had read about David's attempts at replicating a wax pack, and was thrilled to receive one after he reached out about wanting to send me a few cards I'd probably like. The wrapper looks familiar and in fact it's a riff on the 1972 Topps wrapper.

Personalized and everything! Not pictured, but yep, there's even a stick of gum.

And here's what I pulled:


A pack of 1972 Topps high numbers for my setbuild! These are all from the toughest 6th series. I've never ripped a real pack of '72 Topps (several packs of '82 Topps from my LCS back in the early 90s is the closest I've come), so it's pretty incredible to get a simulation such as this. Big thanks, David!

Thanks to this pack, I'm up to 88.94% complete, with 88 cards left to check off.

(a band called The 88)

I think I'm rounding third with this set, not too far away from coming home. That high-number series is a bear, though. Pretty incredible to get this many at once, and from a #RAK mailing no less.

Thanks again to CardBoredom for the awesome surprise!

-  - ---o

The same day I received that pack of '72s in the mail, Padrographs Rod stopped by my house with a couple boxes of cards for me. It was a good day! Let's take a quick look at some highlights.


Smelling like goats over here, lol. Some of the biggest names you could hope to pull from Goodwin Champions.



Lovely ladies are always nice to see when thumbing through cards.



Looks like Juan Soto will go down as a great player who had a brief layover in San Diego during his HOF career, joining the likes of Rickey Henderson, Mike Piazza, Greg Maddux, and Willie McCovey. Oh well, glad he suited up for my favorite team, however fleeting. Still probably my favorite active player or at least high up on that theoretical list.

Here are some other dudes I like/collect who are currently still with the Padres. Hope those big contracts work out. (I could die happy with just one damn championship in my lifetime. I wouldn't say no to a dynasty, but really, just one is fine.)

Thank you, Rod! Always very much appreciated.

BTW, Rod, expect to see a new vehicle in the driveway next time to stop by. Everyone is fine, thankfully, but my wife had a collision on Presidents Day, and crumbled up the hood of our trusty old Mariner just barely to the point of it getting "totaled" by insurance. We're buying a new Subaru Crosstrek. I generally have a negative impression of Subarus, but that's just because I seemed to get cut off by Outbacks all the time back when I had a nasty daily commute. I haven't driven the new car yet as I write this, but I will have by the time you're reading.

-  - --o

Late addition to the post.

The last time I won a contest on Twitter, it was actually named Twitter still. I don't "RT" stuff much, and as such I don't enter many giveaways there. But Mashing Dingers ran one where all you had to do was like the tweet to win a random lot of sportscards, so I clicked the heart icon and next thing you know I won. Mashing Dingers seems like a good dude. We had even chatted a couple/few years back about him writing a guest post on Baseball Card Breakdown, but he got cold feet. (I suppose I have a blanket offer out there to any cool hobby folks who want to write a random interesting blog post but don't want to start their own blog just for one thing they want to talk about one time.. yeah, feel free to get in touch with me about writing a guest post. Lord knows I don't make blogging a top priority for myself these days, so I could use occasional help keeping the cobwebs away.)

Anyways, took a while to get the cards (giveaway was back in mid December), but they were fun to go through.


I'm not a big collector of basketball or soccer, but I don't mind sprinkling some diversity in my collection here and there, such as in a lot of random winnings like this. Cool to check out the crazy designs with various shine/sparkle stuff I haven't seen in-hand before.


Of course the highlights for me were the baseball cards included. I think it was seeing the powder blue Killebrew in the tweet that made me throw my name in the hat for the giveaway. A bunch of rookies and some shine here also. I think that's my first card of Jasson Dominguez.. I'll be curious to see how he performs after he heals up. Also hoping former Padres prospect CJ Abrams puts up some good numbers.

Alright, calling the post good here. Oh, yeah, the new car handles well, btw, though I kinda miss being higher up after so many years with the SUV.. moved up from San Diego in that car, so I guess I'm a little sentimental about it, but it was about time to move on from it anyways, so it's all good. Gotta go pick up the dog from daycare now. Thanks for reading.

Sunday, January 21, 2024

Iced Cards

We're still thawing out from an ice storm here in Portland. Other than 24 hours without internet and a few days without mail delivery, we've gotten by just fine... just cold and a little stir-crazy stuck with a high-energy dog. There are a lot of fallen trees and branches in the neighborhood from the high winds. A house just a block over ended up with a tree sticking out of their roof, apparently getting a little national attention via Reddit.

But yeah, once mail service resumed, I got some cool cards in the mail and so let's make a blog post.


Boom! Here's my first "big card" landed in 2024. Happy to check Albert Pujols off my 2004 Chrome black refractor chase.


Also recently acquired the Ivan Rodriguez. I've only got about 30 of these cards left to go. That'll be nice if I'm able to finish that project, hopefully in the next couple years or so.


The other refractor setbuilding I focus on these days: Topps All-Time Fan Favorite refractors. I finally scored my first of Ripken's three such cards.


Great looking Rod Carew card. The photo was used on the cover of Time magazine's July 18, 1977 issue.

image from Google


I'm not set-collecting ATFF autographs (thankfully for my wallet, the autos are not refractors in those sets), but coincidentally picked up this Garry Templeton auto from 2003 ATFF. He was one of my very first "PC guys" as a kid growing up in San Diego, and while I don't collect him that hard these days, I had been wanting to snag one of these Archives autographs for a while, and finally did so recently. Now I've got both of the Garry Templeton certified autographs Topps has released to date.

-  - - o

A couple posts ago, I talked about Zippy Zappy bequeathing me much of his non-personalized TTM returns from over the years. One personalized card had slipped through in that lot, and I was happy to return it. The generous guy he is, Kenny wanted to send over a PWE for my trouble.


A couple certified autos and a forever stamp, not bad. But the stars of the party were the lovely ladies.


Thanks again, Zippy!

Some wintery pics to close out the post. Thanks for stopping by. Stay warm, everybody.


Here's that house I mentioned at the top of the post. I hope everybody was ok.

Ruby loves walking in this weather even more than she normally loves walks, and she really loves walks. I guess it's the husky in her. She just loves being out in the cold.