Surprised by cards that were sort of expected

Time for an incoming cards roundup for the past week or so.

Brian of Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary was already on my I-O-U-cards list after he sent me an awesome 12/25 prospect auto a while back. Now he's gone and surprised me with an awesome "repack" of cards as part of the celebration for his blog's 1000th post. (I suppose it wasn't exactly a "surprise" since I was first to comment on the post offering cards to the first few people who commented.. but that was back in early March, so who could be expected to remember way back then? lol)

Love this crazy As-seen-on-TV Tatis!

Juan Soto cards are always very appreciated.

Some more active guys I collect. Good stuff.

Hey, Matt Chapman is celebrating his 27th birthday today. A bit of a late bloomer, but he's been pretty good since his 2017 call-up.

Snellzilla in the house. I started collecting him after his dominant 2018 season. Also seems like fun dude.. I see him doing video game stuff online.

Former teammates Xander Bogaerts and Mookie Betts were well represented in the package.

Kris Bryant and Pete Alonso. Noice.

A glorious baker's dozen of Trout! Honestly, these cards alone would have been a fine "thanks for reading my blog" gift/prize. The guy's like the greatest player since Ruth, damn it! One of the worst things about the virus is it's slowing Trout from moving up the all-time WAR leaderboard.

I seem to get sent a lot of Rhys Hoskins cards and I am totally cool with that.

That Wil Myers is the glued-on-glitter snowflake parallel. Michael Lorenzen worked his way up my wantlist impressing me with his 2-way playing. Speaking of Ruth:
On September 4, 2019, Lorenzen became the second player in baseball history to hit a homer, earn the win as the pitcher and play in the field in the same game when the Reds defeated the Phillies, 8–5. The other player to achieve the feat was Babe Ruth on June 13, 1921. (wiki)

A year or two ago I had an epiphany that I love Dave Henderson and I was upset with myself for not collecting him sooner (had a little PC for him when I was a kid, but took me a while to start it back up as an adult returning to the hobby). So yes, please send me all your available Hendu cards, regardless of how "junky" they may be, because they'll likely find a loving forever-home with me. (Ha, we're looking for a new dog these days, so the term "forever-home" pops up a lot.)

Some favorite old-timers of mine.

A pair of big boppers, Vlad and Crash.

And Brian even hit some setbuilds of mine with a smattering of '88 Fleer needs, including an unopened pack. I'll probably save the pack for a rainy day, but chances are it's got a card or two I need as I round the home stretch with this set. Oh-- the Joe Magrane caught the light as I was checking it off my list and turns out is a glossy version. Welp, close enough for my set!

Big thanks, Brian! Terrific stuff! Keep up the great work on your blog. I'll shot you over a few cards soon.

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Next up is a great surprise* PWE from Sport Card Collectors at Snagging Cardboard with nice looking cards of a few dudes I collect. (* Again, probably shouldn't have been a surprise, as he had tweeted out a heads-up a few days earlier.)

Right on. The fiery orange Hoffman is numbered 12/299.

Thanks, Man! I'll put together a return PWE for you shortly (update: mailed out today).

-   -  - ----o

Tom at The Angels In Order had a bonus Kellogg's card he got from a recent cardsphere giveaway and offered it up if anyone wanted to call dibs. I did, and we had a quick PWE trade in the works.

I'm not sure if I had this yet or not-- I've only now begun sorting my several Kellogg's cards by year; expect wantlists up soon!-- but even if I did have it, well hey I've got a modest Freddy Lynn PC going, so I guess technically I want two of them in my collection anyways.

Tom also threw in a bunch of '79 needs to surprise me with! I recall he mentioned in an email that he had some set needs for me too, but sometimes it's not till you open up the envelope that you're like, "..oh yeah!"

I'm now down to just 27 needs left to finish off 1979 Topps (plus several more upgrades to worry about after that.. and a few wanted dupes for PCs.. but not too concerned about that stuff right now).

My '79 Topps needs as of 4/28/2020:
 5 Ron Guidry / Gaylord Perry LL W
 6 J.R. Richard / Nolan Ryan LL SO
39 Dale Murphy
49 Vern Ruhle
115 Nolan Ryan
187 Mark Lemongello
244 Pittsburgh Pirates - Chuck Tanner TC
313 Dyar Miller
316 Milt May
340 Jim Palmer
349 Jim Wright RC
353 Checklist 243-363
369A Bump Willis ERR TOR
391 Al Oliver
412 Hank Aaron / Hack Wilson ATL RBI
414 Ty Cobb / Rogers Hornsby ATL BA
415 Lou Brock ATL SB
457 Bruce Sutter
464 Joe Nolan
481 Skip Lockwood
540 Greg Luzinski
551 Chicago Cubs - Herman Franks TC
602 Checklist 485-605
610 Mike Schmidt
648 Lou Piniella
659 Seattle Mariners - Darrell Johnson TC
700 Reggie Jackson

If you can help with any of those, feel free to get in touch about hammering out a trade! Would love to knock this one off before I dive into the old Kellogg's sets.

Anyways, thanks a bunch, Tom! I dropped a return in the mail for you the other day, so expect that soon.

End of post.

Retired Refractor Review: Red Sox Royalty

It's Easter, so that's as good a time as any to post some lovely pastel rainbow-looking cards. My Topps Retired refractors are among the top jewels of my collection. As a theme to tie them together, the three guys I'm featuring today all first made a name for themselves in Boston, though not all of these are Red Sox cards.

This is a cool shot of Carlton Fisk, apparently shouting to second base or perhaps giving direction to a cutoff man. Those 80s White Sox uniforms with the number on the pants are pretty funky.

That's a long time behind the dish. I didn't realize Fisk had such quick legs for a catcher, swiping 128 bases in his career and leading the league in triples during his ROY campaign in 1972.

Here's a nice posed shot of Fred Lynn from his days as an Angel. I always love picking up 2003 Topps Retired refractors when I can find them for a good price. They don't seem to pop up as often as their 2005 counterparts.

Freddy put up great numbers during his Red Sox days, but leveled off a bit once he moved on to California and later Baltimore. I know it sounds like a joke everytime I say it, but I think of him first and foremost as a Padre, since 1990 happened to be the year I first really got into baseball as a kid in San Diego.

(Update: I've since sold the Fred Lynn for twice what I paid for it. Sorry to see it go, but couldn't pass up that deal.)

This Jim Lonborg card is another instance of a seller screw-up lending itself to a good deal. The listing neglected to mention that this was a refractor parallel, or that it was serial numbered out of 25. But I could tell by the rainbow sheen in the photo that it was definitely a refractor, so I was able to score it for the opening bid. Not that it would have been considerably more expensive had the seller properly listed it, but I bet he could have easily gotten a few bucks more, perhaps even twice as much if a couple BoSox fans got into a bidding war over it.

In a happy coincidence, I'm posting this on Jim's birthday. As the red stats indicate, he was at his best in 1967, helping the "Impossible Dream" Red Sox reach the World Series. As the sentence on the back states, he did very well in his first two WS starts, but then they put him back out there on short rest for Game 7 and well, you know how that ended for Boston. He won the Cy that year, and had a few more solid seasons in his career, but was never quite as dominant.

A fun fact about Lonborg is that he's the real baseball player in the "Sam Malone pitching" photo hanging in the bar on the show Cheers.

Good enough excuse to revisit the fun TTM return last year from the great Wade Boggs.

That's gonna do it for today. Happy Easter, everybody!

Christmas in July: Fred Lynn decks the halls

I collect any card serial numbered 12/25.. "Christmas Cards" as I call them. On the 25th of each month, I like to pull out something from this eclectic minicollection to show off on the blog.

This monthly feature might be getting a little tired. I don't necessarily like having a "deadline" to get a post out. And it's not like this feature gets many views/comments either. I suppose I'm committed to finish out 2014, though at this rate I'm planning to drop it next year. But I still like collecting Christmas Cards and I'm sure I'll continue to show them off from time to time. Anyways...

Here's a nice Fred Lynn auto. The green and red in the design give it some bonus holiday cheer in addition to the serial number prominently displayed on the front. There's even a "snowy" area for the on-card signature.

A very festive card indeed! It's from 2014 Topps Tribute, which is a high-end set in no way distinguishable from Topps' other high-end sets.. Five Star, Museum Collection, Tier One, Supreme, Pristine, Triple Threads, One Star, Tier Five, Triple Tier, Five Thread Tier Star Collection, whatever.. pretty much all the same set. And when I say set, of course I mean product.. since it's in no way designed for set collectors.. just an option to pay a lot of money for a pack small box with a mystery hit or two. But who am I to complain, since I enjoy picking up high-end singles from time to time, such as Freddy here.

Fred Lynn is a guy I would lump together with Graig Nettles, whom I ranted about Topps' obsession with a little recently. Solid careers, but both fell short of the Hall, and a typical collector probably isn't going to get too excited about pulling one of their cards these days (essentially "commons" in sets you find them in today). Yet, likely due in part to playing their prime years on a legendary big-market team (Yankees and Red Sox, respectively), Topps finds a way to squeeze them into many sets that feature retired players.

I may be the only person alive who thinks of Fred Lynn as a Padre first and foremost (another similarity with Graig Nettles). He played just 90 games for San Diego, all in his twilight season of 1990. But that season was when I first really got into baseball as a youth, so it was sort of the ground floor in my eyes. Fred Lynn is a Padre. Joe Carter is a Padre. Bobby Thigpen is the Save King.

So anyways, it's nice to have his autograph now.. made doubly sweet by being an attractive Christmas Card such as this.

As I mentioned at the start of the post, this feature typically doesn't get a lot of views or comments. So here's that last (for now) contest I had mentioned trying to sneak in. Just leave a comment on this post to enter, then we'll do the usual routine of randomly selecting a winner. The prize is one of the remaining lots of certified autos (which can be found here, though the Ernie Banks lot is now gone). The window to enter will be short.. less than 24 hours, most likely. I want to keep this contest hush-hush, just a little way of saying thanks to the small handful of loyal readers who bother reading my blog even when it's not particularly sexy and exciting, like Fred Lynn up there. So, yeah! Thanks for reading! [7/26/14 UPDATE: contest now closed! Thanks again.]