This is 2020

I almost forgot to switch out my wallet card like I've done every year since I began keeping a wallet card in 2015. Seeing as I haven't left the house all week thanks to this brutal stomach flu, I haven't actually had my wallet on my person yet in 2020, so no harm done. Let's switch it out now.

2019's wallet card was a lovely specimen of 1991 Topps featuring Mr. Tony Gwynn. It looks great! He didn't get to go on many great adventures, but he was with me through the ups and downs of 2019.

From checking the wallet card label on blog, looks like I only tagged a couple posts as having wallet card photos in 2019, the first of which being a recap of a beach trip where Tony got to dip his toe into the Pacific.

The only other wallet card appearance on the blog for the year was a 4th of July walk to grab a couple beers. Snapped a pic of Annie with the card and a dog toy she found. Man, she was a great pup and my wife and I miss her a ton.

Here is the "Before" picture from last year.

I was stressing out trying to pick a new wallet card for 2020. I'm running at diminished capacity due to the illness, so it's no easy task. Sometimes when I stay home sick, I can still be productive and do stuff around the house, maybe work on custom cards in my "to do" list (Haven't forgotten your dad, Nick!), but this time I haven't been able to do much besides sit on the couch. Even typing this post is pushing my limits right now! Let's seque now into this post going off the rails a little bit.

Check out these Moana stickers that were available in Kellogg's cereal in 2016. Oh, and they glow! I'm not sure if I should count these in my list of glowing trading cards. They are as wide as a card, but not as tall. Hey, they fit in my glow-in-the-dark cards binder, so they've got a home there, at least.

They look pretty good glowing.

My wife surprised me with some Kinetic Sand for Christmas. This stuff is a TRIP! It even caused Chewbacca and Cobra Commander to broker a peace treaty while the Han Solo Brothers look on under the watchful eye on Boba Fett. It's like sand but weird and clean, almost like wool or something. Pretty fun.

Speaking of Star Wars, the 2019 Festival of Lightsabers concluded yesterday. That was a late end. Usually it takes place during the week between Xmas and New Years. (My "x" key has been sticking on this laptop so I have to really pound it.. annoying. (
I used to keep track of the festival in a text file, but I seem to have lost it, so now I use my blog as a journal and keep in here. So you can scroll down past this; it's just for my records.

FESTIVAL OF LIGHTSABERS : history

2007 - 1st Annual Festival of Lightsabers
I, II, III
IV, V, VI - special editions

2008 - 2nd Annual Festival of Lightsabers
I II III
IV V VI - original theatrical versions
Ewok movies

2009 - 3rd Annual Festival of Lightsabers
I II III
IV V VI - theatrical

2010 - 4th Annual Festival of Lightsabers
I [The Phantom Edit fan edit]
II [Attack of the Phantom fan edit]
III [regular]
IV V VI - special editions
Robot Chicken star wars special I
Family Guy - something something dark side [empire]
Star Wars Holiday Special w/ Rifftrax commentary

2011 - 5th Annual Festival of Lightsabers
Family Guy - It's a Trap [Jedi]
Clone Wars II animated film
III
IV V VI - original theatrical versions
Family Guy - Something, Something Dark Side [Empire]

2012 - 6th Annual Festival of Lightsabers
Rifftrax prequels
Trilogy special editions

2013 - 7th Annual Festival of Lightsabers
New Hope [original]
Empire [original]
Clones
Sith
Family Guy (New Hope)
Jedi [original]

2014 - 8th Annual Festival of Lightsabers
I, II, III
IV, V, VI - special editions

2015 - 9th Annual Festival of Lightsabers
IV - special edition
V - special edition
II "Attack of the Phantom" fan edit
III
VI - theatrical
VII (in the theater, IMAX 3D)
+ All 3 Family Guy specials
+ Fanboys

2016 - 10th Annual Festival of Lightsabers
25 - Rogue One (in the theater, IMAX 3D)
26 - A New Hope (special edition)
27 - Empire (special edition)
28 - Attack of the Clones
29  - Revenge of the Sith
30 - Jedi (special edition)
31 - Force Awakens

2017 - 11th Annual Festival of Lightsabers
24 - Force Awakens
25 - Last Jedi (in the theater, IMAX 3D)
26 - Family Guy Blue Harvest + Robot Chicken SW Episode I
27 - Rogue One
28 - IV (theatrical)
29 - Family Guy Something Something Darkside + Robot Chicken SW Episode II (I also watched the Star Wars episode of that Netflix "Toys That Made Us" show)
30 - V (theatrical) + Robot Chicken SW Episode III
31 - VI (theatrical) + Family Guy It's a Trap

2018 - 12th Annual Festival of Lightsabers
26 - Solo
27 - Rogue One
28 - A New Hope (special edition)
29 - Empire (special edition)
30 - Jedi (special edition)
31 - The Force Awakens
1/1 - The Last Jedi

2019 - 13th Annual Festival of Lightsabers
Force AWakens
Last Jedi
Rise of Skywalker (imaxx 3d on xmas day)
Star Wars Holiday Special (first time watching it without funny Rifftrax commentary. My wife was like WTF?)
New Hope (SE)
Empire (SE)
Return of the Jedi (SE)
..also watched Empire of Dreams, the behind-the-scenes SW doc (via Amazon Prime). Also started watching Clone Wars and the Mandalorian on Disney+.

No prequels this year. Almost watched Rogue One, but something came up. Watched 2001: A Space Odyssey on NYE (just like Tom Hanks always does!). I got that onn Blu-ray for mas (XXmas). That's a great and strange film. I also got the Back to the Future trilogo on bluray but we haven't watched them yet. I'm going to not fi typos for the rest of this post as it is off the rails and therefore I don't need to.

I love Pee-Wee's Playhouse. In 2019, the "big post I need to finish" was the glow-in-the-dark cards post. Didn't finish that one until made it my mission to finish it as a tribute to my pup, plus it gave me something to take my mind off things during that rough time. In 2020, I think the post that'll be my new albatross will be my big Pee-Wee cards post. It'll be a lot, but I hope to publish it "soon".
I mentioned it on Twitter, but in that above shot, you've got legendary Dave Letterman prop Calvert DeForest (Larry "Bud" Melman), plus the girl of the left is in this video..



And the boy is in the Mighty Ducks and the girl on the right is in Orange Is The New Black and other stuff.

I've been neglecting my List of cards in movies and TV (I guess with all the time spent on my big list of glowing cards it's hard for me to keep up 2 different lists of cards at once! klol)

But yeah, here's a baseball card in Friends.

I wish I knew how to add an outline/border to my pictures I put on blogger. The white borders of this card get lost. When you see cards on my blog, I pride myself on also showing you the corners and edges. I don't crop cards too close because then you lose some of their story. This image was taken from TCDB, I believe.

Back to Friends.. we were binggging it a bit trying to get thru as much as we could before it was taken off Netflix streaming when the calendar changed. We made it to Season 6, Episode 17 "The One with Unagi". That Duane Ward '92 UD card appears in a few Season 6 episodes back on the bulletin board in Joey/Chandler's place. Matthew Perry (Chandler man) was raised in Canada (born in US), so maybe that's the significance of the Blue Jay on the corkboard.

My wife has watched all the Friends many times, but me, I watched the first few seasons back when they were new, but I lost interest and stopped sometime in the final few seasons. I've still never seen the finale, though I know generally what happens (NO SPoilers but Ross and Phoebe Buffay end up together, I'm pretty sure! lol)

Shoeless Joe makes an appearance too!

RIP Don Larsen.

How'd I do on my goals in 2019?

I don't think I made any. I didn't finish any of my big setbuilds I'm working on, but made a lot of progress. As I've got several builds going at once, I'm ok with taking my time. I should hopefully finish off a set or two from the late 70s or early 80s this year. But again, I'm not in a hurry. I just want to keep on enjoying collecting, and for me that includes having a lot of pokers in the fire. Lots of sets to build, lots of players to collect, and minicollections that grab my attention for a while at a time.

I picked up some big dream cards in 2019. Clemente auto! Cognac Trout! Mantle auto! Nothing specific on my mind for 2020 yet, but we'll see how it shakes out. I will likely focus on non-sports a little. like the Simpsons stuff I mentioned yesterday. Also, MST3K autograph cards are hitting the market as we speak and I will probably try to go after them all if I can. I hear some are short-printed and may end up being very expensive to bring home.



BEERMAS!
I know a couple readers kinda care about my annual thing where I get a beer-a-day from my wife leading up to my bday/xmas eve.

Attn: Fuji, check out the Beastie Boys inspired label among these!

I haven't had the last 3 in this photo yet. Beermas has had some delays this year and will wrap up soon after I recover fully. And yes, I've decided to not to a "dry January" this year after staying away from booze the previous 2 or 3 Januaries. I will make an effort to drink less, though, but overall I've been fine lately and not drinking too much (plus the big annual work party is in late January this year, so trying to have a dry month ain't gonna fly), though I really want to lose some weight. I weighed myself at the in-laws over the holidays and was at my heaviest ever by several pounds. Yikes.. tummy got away from me! But hey, a silver lining of this stomach flu is it starts the diet off strong! lol

Anywyas, these are good beers,. I don't have much "reviews" to give about them this year. Sorry the photos are great and I'm too lazy to type up what these are (but feel free to ask with any questions). The peach IPA was the only one I didn't like, which is surprising since it seems it'd be up my alley.

UPDATE to stress that my wife is super awesome. I feel bad that she caught my stomach flu and has been going thru all the same hell as me but a day later.


Hey, but back to TCDB... I've achieved #1 COLLECTOR ranking for a certain pl;ayer!

This is not a joke. Yes, according to trusted info source The Trading Card Database, yours truly is the world's top Luis Torrens collector.  Feels good to be the best!



BACK TO wallet card!
I was looking for a card among my Padres dupes but I had trouble remembering what cards I've already used. I know I've saved my old wallet cards, but I don't know eactly where in my collection they all are. But I turned once again to my blog's archives to remind me of my life.

my wallet cards thru the years:
2015 - 1988 Topps All-Star Gwynn
2016 - 1987 Topps All-Star Gwynn
2017 - 1987 Fleer "Limited Edition" Gwynn
2018 - 2008 UD Masterpieces Gwynn
2019 - 1991 Topps Gwynn
2020 - ?,,,,

2020 is 30 years removed from 1990. I began collecting in 1990, and ignoring my many years away from the hobby, I'm celebrating 30 years as a card collector this year. I figured I'd throwback to 1990 for this year's wallet card.

I considered taking a break from Tony and giving the honor to Bip Roberts, though ultimately chose to stick to Gwynn. I was about to settle for his base '90 Topps card, though my first choice was his '90 Topps All-Star card, but I could have sworn I already used that one as my wallet card.. it's just so imprinted on my brain. But nope, consulting that list I posted a couple paragraphs up, the A.S. card has not been picked yet!

Here it is! I've got like a dozen of this one. I tried to find one already in rough condition, but they were all decently sharp.
The card is a perfect encapsulation of my first entry into obsessing over cardboard during the awesome summer of 1990. It's a beauty.

Wishing this Wallet Tony and all you readers a very happy 2020!

Contest recap, Beermas, and the Festival of Lightsabers 2018

I recently added another piece to my Darth Vader custom booklet.

Here's one of the sides when it's folded up.

Here's the other side.

And here it is opened up. Jake Lloyd as lil' Anakin is the new addition. I didn't have to make a custom overlay for it, as the original card works well enough.

I'm still on the lookout for a Hayden Christensen auto card that'll work (and at a good price), and after that I will consider the booklet complete, as those are the 4 main guys to portray the character.


This year is the 12th Annual Festival of Lightsabers in my house. It's where I have myself (well, my wife is along for the ride) a Star Wars film festival during the week between Christmas and New Years. I've actually kept records on the Festival throughout the years, so in case anyone is curious, here's how it has gone down:

FESTIVAL OF LIGHTSABERS : history

2007 - 1st Annual Festival of Lightsabers
I, II, III
IV, V, VI - special editions

2008 - 2nd Annual Festival of Lightsabers
I II III
IV V VI - original theatrical versions
Ewok movies

2009 - 3rd Annual Festival of Lightsabers
I II III
IV V VI - theatrical

2010 - 4th Annual Festival of Lightsabers
I [The Phantom Edit fan edit]
II [Attack of the Phantom fan edit]
III [regular]
IV V VI - special editions
Robot Chicken star wars special I
Family Guy - something something dark side [empire]
Star Wars Holiday Special w/ Rifftrax commentary

2011 - 5th Annual Festival of Lightsabers
Family Guy - It's a Trap [Jedi]
Clone Wars II animated film
III
IV V VI - original theatrical versions
Family Guy - Something, Something Dark Side [Empire]

2012 - 6th Annual Festival of Lightsabers
Rifftrax prequels
Trilogy special editions

2013 - 7th Annual Festival of Lightsabers
New Hope [original]
Empire [original]
Clones
Sith
Family Guy (New Hope)
Jedi [original]

2014 - 8th Annual Festival of Lightsabers
I, II, III
IV, V, VI - special editions

2015 - 9th Annual Festival of Lightsabers
IV - special edition
V - special edition
II "Attack of the Phantom" fan edit
III
VI - theatrical
VII (in the theater, IMAX 3D)
+ All 3 Family Guy specials
+ Fanboys

2016 - 10th Annual Festival of Lightsabers
25 - Rogue One (in the theater, IMAX 3D)
26 - A New Hope (special edition)
27 - Empire (special edition)
28 - Attack of the Clones
29  - Revenge of the Sith
30 - Jedi (special edition)
31 - Force Awakens

2017 - 11th Annual Festival of Lightsabers
24 - Force Awakens
25 - Last Jedi (in the theater, IMAX 3D)
26 - Family Guy Blue Harvest + Robot Chicken SW Episode I
27 - Rogue One
28 - IV (theatrical)
29 - Family Guy Something Something Darkside + Robot Chicken SW Episode II (I also watched the Star Wars episode of that Netflix "Toys That Made Us" show)
30 - V (theatrical) + Robot Chicken SW Episode III
31 - VI (theatrical) + Family Guy It's a Trap

2018 - 12th Annual Festival of Lightsabers
26 - Solo
27 - Rogue One
28 - A New Hope (special edition)
29 - Empire (special edition)
30 - Jedi (special edition)
31 - The Force Awakens
1/1 - The Last Jedi

I was a little bummed to not have a new Star Wars movie out this holiday season to carry on our recent tradition of watching one in the theater on Christmas Day. I think they should have held onto Solo until December instead of releasing it back in May, where it was a bomb by Star Wars standards. Looks like Episode IX is due out 12/20/2019, so that's cool.

I wasn't all that excited for Rogue One when it first came out, but in hindsight, it's probably the best of the new films.

My wife's big Christmas gift from her folks was a new TV-- a 55" 4K resolution behemoth (and obviously I benefit from the gift too!). And she also got some LED striplights for a neat backlit effect. So we practically have a damn "home theater" thing going on now. Nice to watch the Star Wars movies on a high-end, big-ass TV.

-  - - ---o

Here are the results from my recent contest/draft:

1. Chris the Collector - Prize U - Luis Tiant 2003 Topps Retired auto
2. Brett Alan - Prize Q - 6-card lot of shiny Topps Fire parallels
3. The Turrdog - Lot Z - Tom Brunansky and Daryl Boston Topps Retired autos
4. CrazieJoe - Prize C - 5-card oddball lot
5. Nick Sheren - Prize S - Priority Mailing of various baseball cards
6. Bo - Prize B - Willie McCovey lot
7. night owl - Prize W - a pair of 2018 Tribute Dodgers. Jansen and Sutton.
8. Jafronius - Prize D - Jorge Soler auto/relic
9. John Miller - Prize R - 4-card vintage lot
10. Rod (Padrographs) - Prize V - "Neglected Hall of Famers" custom set
11. Larry Presnall - Prize I - pair of Orioles autos
12. Nick (Dimebox) - Prize E - Sandlot lot

Does that look correct to everyone? Let me know, if not. I think I have all your guys' mailing addresses except for Jafronius. I'll try to get the prizes out soon, but it might be a couple weeks. Thanks again to everybody for reading, commenting, and whatnot!

-   - - ---o

Beermas 2018

Every year, my awesome wife gifts me a fancy beer for 12 days (of Beermas), culminating on Christmas Eve. Here's a quick recap of this year's beers.

1. Omnipollo - Mango Margarita Slush IPA
Almost like a sour beer. Weird, but good.

2. Founders - Frootwood
Nice sweetness.

3. Evil Twin - Breaking the Waves
The lactose smoothes it out, hard to believe it's so boozy (10% ABV)

4. Breakside - Coming Out Party
Nice enough beer.

5.  North Jetty Brewing - Ledbetter Red Scottish-Style Ale
Smooth, full body.

6. Grimlock - Rye Porter
One of my favs this year.

7. Snow Cave - Wintertime Ale
I'm not a big Belgian style beer fan.

8. Hopworks Urban Brewery - Kentucky Christmas
Another favorite of the bunch.

9. Decadent - Black Raspberry Cream Pop
Not as sweet as you might expect from the name, but not bad.

10. Megafauna - IIPA
Tastes pretty boozy, but ok.

11. Pelican Brewing - Cherried At Sea
Wasn't crazy about this one. (Again, I'm not big on Belgian-style ales.)

12. Stone - Woot Stout
Stone is one of my favorite breweries, and this one didn't disappoint. I share a little taster glass of each beer with my wife, and this one was her favorite.

Another excellent Beermas in the books!

Thanks for swinging by.

From Portland to Portsmouth: My first trip out East

This past weekend I took a nice little vacation to Portsmouth, New Hampshire with my wife and her family. My wife has an aunt and cousin out there, so it was a family get-together. It was my first time ever visiting the east coast (assuming you count Florida as the south, as I've been to America's wang a few times). It was a lot of fun. This post will show off some pictures from my trip, with some wallet card photos to keep us roughly on topic.

Here's a dusk shot of the incredible house we rented. All 3 sections.. It was huge! My wife found a great Airbnb deal on it.

Here's an interior pic of the living room area.

Great little neighborhood. I think the city was technically Rye, just outside of Portsmouth.

The weather was great on Friday, our first full day in town. We took a little cruise tour in the Bay of Maine to the Isles of Shoals (a group of small islands and tidal ledges situated approximately 6 miles off the east coast of the United States, straddling the border of the states of Maine and New Hampshire). Once we arrived to our island port, we each got an ice cream cone (which we pretty much all agreed was the best we'd ever had) and played some frisbee.

I was a little hesitant to go on the cruise at first, since the last time I was on a boat I got seasick pretty bad, but this little voyage was totally fine. Smooth sailing.

Old lighthouses are always cool to see. The tour guide had plenty of reasonably interesting stories about the area.

Then later Friday evening, it was time to hit the shore. It was just a short walk down to the beach from the house.

One silly little thing that I was super excited about is I achieved my dream of having my wallet card dipped in both the Pacific and the Atlantic oceans (the westmost of which was checked off back in May). While I like the "arty" feel, this isn't a great photo, with the sun freshly tucked in for the night, but I would give 'er a re-do later in the weekend (to follow below).

Saturday, we trekked into downtown Portsmouth-- "we" being my wife and I and her brother and his wife (the "kids" of the group). We grabbed lunch at an Irish pub and I went for the authentic experience and got a Guinness. (Of course, with the time change, I was all turned around. Basically felt like having beer for breakfast. But hey, I was on vacation, so anything goes.)

The pub was in a place that used to be a bank long ago. Beautiful old building. Really cool glass window on the roof.

Happy to catch a few innings of a Red Sox game in New England, as they've always been a "second tier" favorite team of mine, I guess. (David Price struck out a season-high 10 batters as Boston beat Baltimore.) Definitely saw a ton of Sox and Patriots gear during my stay.

Then we walked around downtown and checked out some touristy shops. We preferred the shops with silly nicknacks and gags (the only thing I bought was a jaw harp), and everybody also really liked a kitchen gadget shop that had wine tasting and cheese samples. Oh, and the real star of the trip was Port City Pretzels.. man, those are some excellent snacks. Brought home a couple bags: one for us, and one to share with my co-workers.

Before heading back to home base, we grabbed a cocktail at a restaurant that used to be an old library. Another neat building. I ordered a Hot Almond Joy and it was very enjoyable on a cool, misty day.

Saturday's dinner was at a cool local place called Petey's. I think I got the potato skins and a beer. (Lots of eating and drinking, as with most vacations. Time for a diet.)

Ah, here's a clearer wallet card photo of Tony bathing in the Atlantic. Sunday afternoon we headed back to the beach. Unfortunately the weather was overcast and a little drizzly, putting the kibosh on our tentative plans to do something like kayaking or boogie boarding, but still had a nice walk down the beach.

I had ponied up for a new pair of Keen's for the trip so I'd have some good amphibious footwear. (Haven't bought shoes this expensive since I was a teenager buying new Nikes in a vain attempt to be cool.) I hope to get many years of use out of these on my occasional trips to the beach and river.

I dug this particular seagull. Reminded me of Walt "No Neck" Williams.

Then we returned to the house and had a "hootenanny" jam (I didn't take any pictures until we were wrapping up). Steph (guitar) and Ted (violin) are legit musicians who get paying gigs to perform bluegrass, so I was out of my element, and may have slightly embarrassed myself trying to keep up with them, but had a lot of fun regardless. Ted plays a mean fiddle, and he and Steph sound great singing together. They lent me an acoustic guitar and I did my best to join in. The set consisted mostly of bluegrass standards I wasn't familiar with, plus other stuff like Ringo's "Don't Pass Me By", and I dusted off a couple originals which was nice as it's been a few years since I really played music with anybody.

Then Sunday night was a birthday party/dinner for my cousin-in-law. Great food and good times. As with the other nights of the vacation, much beer and wine was consumed late into the night (well, late Eastern time, at least.) My wife and I split this Whoopie Pie porter. Good stuff. This microbrewery is called Friar's Brewhouse, so good enough excuse to take one last wallet card photo with Mr. Padre.

Squeezing in a little more baseball content, Boston's Logan International Airport has a chain of Jerry Remy's bar & grills. Remy is a former Red Sock and beloved local broadcaster. We grabbed a Sam Adams while waiting for our flight home.

A neighborhood bunny welcomed me back home Monday evening. Our dog Annie was pretty happy to be reunited with us too. Great trip all around. We took Tuesday off as a buffer day, then back to work here on Wednesday.

That's it. Thanks for reading! Back to cards next time.. a bunch of neat stuff to show off.

T.G.I. February (Into the Stratasbeer)

I've really been looking forward to February 1st all year. After a boozy December/Beermas, I decided to dry out but cutting out alcohol all January. Apparently this is "a thing" that many people do, though I didn't realize it at the time I made the call. I nearly had a hole poked in my plan when I remembered my work's big annual party was scheduled for late January (my work goes all out for their party every year, and it's not even up for debate that I would drink at the party), but fortuitously for me, the party was then rescheduled for February, keeping my alcohol-free month intact.

My wife sort of went along with me for the month, giving up beer, but allowing the occasional cocktail or glass of wine. Maybe I'll try that next time. I thought I might lose a little weight over the month thanks to cutting out "liquid bread" a.k.a. beer, but I actually ended up gaining a couple pounds. Probably because I had a lot of fudge, brownies, cookies, etc during the month. (I never claimed this was entirely a "sober" month.. there were weekends where I had a couple bites of special brownies, something I don't normally partake in.. and it turns out I'm very susceptible to "the munchies" which caused excessive snacking and was likely a key factor with my weight for the month.) Plus, instead of beer, I'll drink sugary stuff like Hawaiian Punch or strawberry milk, neither of which is very good for you. One of these days I'll get serious about dieting and try to get back down to my ideal weight of 145.

So anyways, I'm happy with my resolve of sticking to the plan, and now I'm looking forward to rewarding myself with a big pumpkin beer with dinner tonight. And of course the other reason I was looking forward to 2/1 is that I get to open my Black Friday box for the month.. and it's a good one, 2016 Strata. It's one of those risky 2-card boxes, though the price point isn't as high as a lot of what Topps has been turning out these days.. sort of a "low high end" product. Each box has one auto and one memorabilia card. Fingers crossed for something good!

Ok, not bad. Aaron Nola is a solid young pitcher. His autographs are plentiful (I think this is the 3rd one I've pulled), but he's good enough to where I'm not complaining. Love the acetate window autographs Strata is known for.

Nice! My promised memorabilia card is also an autograph! On-card too! Steven Matz is another solid young pitcher. He had a down year in 2017, battling injuries, but hopefully he comes back strong this season. Seems to be a green parallel #'d /75. The jersey features a couple nice pinstripes and has an authentication hologram. Let's look it up online to see the details:

Swatch of STEVEN MATZ Game used Jersey, WASHINGTON NATIONALS v NEW YORK METS on 10/4/15

That was the final day of the 2015 regular season. The Mets topped the Nats in a 1-0 pitchers duel. New York used 7 pitchers to shutout Washington, though Steven Matz wasn't one of them. The Mets went on to beat the Dodgers in the NLDS and then the Cubs in the NLCS before losing the World Series to the Royals.

So there you go. Nothing to be over-the-moon about, but to pull 2 autos from a box that only promises one (and neither was Henry Owens), I'd count it as a success, even if the value of the cards is probably less than half of what I paid for the box, even at a deeply discounted Black Friday sale price (a pair of blasters). Still a fun quick break.

Thanks for reading!