I'm finally a respectable Padres collector! Part 1

I wasn't searching for anything along these lines, but I stumbled upon a big lot of 700+ Padres cards on eBay. It looked intriguing-- lots of RCs, inserts, and even a few certified autos-- so I made the guy a "best offer" of $20 (w/free shipping). I was a little surprised, but he accepted, and yesterday I received a big ol' Priority box full of Pads.

I think the number of Padres cards in my collection tripled with these additions. One thing I was most excited about was finally getting cards of up-and-comers that other Padres bloggers talk about with high hopes, like Jedd Gyorko and Andrew Cashner. There are other names I'm still working on. But give me time and hopefully I'll be able to name off the gist of the 25-man roster.

So yeah, I almost kinda feel like a real, respectable San Diego baseball fan now. Maybe 2014 will be the year I start actually paying attention to the Padres again. I'm sure it will be very exciting to follow them and watch wide-eyed as they vie for heights of second-to-last-place instead of dead-last. Keep the Faith! Keep out of the cellar!

In addition to cards from the past few years, there were cards stretching back through the 80s. It's always fun taking a trip down memory lane looking through old cards of your hometown team.. Lots of guys I remember fondly.. plus lots of guys I remember as sucky chumps.. and lots of guys I don't remember at all. But I definitely beefed up my PCs for Gwynn, Hoffman, and Peavy, to name a few.

Anyways, indulge me for 2 or 3 posts to show off a few of the cards from this lot I'm most happy to welcome into the warm confines of my collection.

Thankfully the guy didn't stick to strictly "Padres cards" so I got some Cashner Cub rookies. Rizzo is gone, but he's still semi-hot, so nice to get some decent cards of him.

I feel like I need to better diversify my collecting focus of "former Padres in the Hall". I've got tons of Gaylords and Winfields and Rollies, but not a lot of Robertos. And always nice to add RCs I needed of fan favs Bip and Benito. A Tim Flannery rookie card is also a long-standing want of mine. He didn't put up great numbers or anything, but us Padres fans like him because he surfed and played guitar.. Cool! Went on to be a great 3rd base coach for a while and I think followed Bochy to the Giants in that capacity still, right? It's funny that Topps seems to have colorized a black & white photo for his picture. Maybe in '80 they were planning to go B&W for their multi-player rookies like they did in '79, but changed their mind after Timmy here got his picture selected.

And lastly for today, a dream realized: I finally own a "Johnny Padres" card. Love it. I received this card yesterday, the 6th anniversary of his death. He was a good one. I've got a couple Dodger cards of his, but this is the first one I got with his near-namesake team.