Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Beach Boys and bikini girls

I've been doing a lot of ripping here in early June. In addition to my two boxes of 2017 Archives (check out that post if you missed it.. fun break), I also had a couple boxes waiting for me from my Black Friday stockpile.


I had scheduled these for June to celebrate the start of summer. (I know technically summer doesn't start till around the end of June according to the calendar nazis, but we all know summer really begins with Memorial Day.. or June 1st at the latest.)

Both these boxes combined ran me just a little over the price of a retail blaster thanks to the sale, so that works out to a lot of packs to rip at a low per-pack price. While generally there aren't gonna be much in the way of mojo hits, there's definitely a possibility to land something real nice.


First let's do the Beach Boys box. I've loved them a long time. One of the first albums I ever got as a little kid was a greatest hits cassette of the band. I think it was specifically the use of "I Get Around" in the movie Flight of a Navigator (a favorite of mine) that really sparked my interest in them. So I've grown up on their fun surfin' hits. A few years after that (high school age or so), my mom picked up Pet Sounds on CD, and that got a lot of play around our house. Eventually I dug a little deeper and discovered some great lesser known stuff like the Holland album and bootlegs from the ill-fated SMiLE recordings. Oh, and The Beach Boys' Christmas Album has been a staple in my household every Christmastime since I can remember. It's cool that they're still kinda going. That recent That's Why God Made the Radio album was actually pretty solid!

Anyways, the box promises a couple hits, but they're most likely relics. Autos are a tough pull, and are really the only thing with solid resale value, as is my understanding.


Here's a typical base card. This one is actually a parallel (gold foil surfer at the bottom), which are pretty common to pull.


These die-cut, metallic-looking inserts are pretty cool.


I also really like these inserts celebrating hit singles. You'll notice some of the inserts also have the gold foil surfer parallel.


My first hit of the box is a Bruce Johnston relic. Cool. The Etchings cards seem to be one per box, and have sort of a dufex type thing going on. I was happy with pulling this Brian Wilson.


A look at a few more inserts. (Hey gcrl, do you need that Dodger Stadium card? It's the gold surfer parallel.) And while not really an insert, I was amused to pull a stray piece of cardboard trimmings (lower right).


My other hit from the box was a good one, apparently a piece of a Hawaiian shirt worn by Mike Love.


So that was a fun box. I'll double back to the Beach Boys in a minute, but first an intermission for some pretty ladies.


Here are some of my favorites from the Benchwarmer box. I suppose I've got "PCs" going for Spencer Scott and Jaime Bergman at this point, as both have made at least a couple prior appearances on my blog.


A cool thing (gimmick) about this hobby box is that each pack came with a piece of bubble gum.. Just like the old days! kinda. I tried a piece, and I'll just say that it tasted like they had some extra silicone lying around.


A few more that caught my eye enough to go into the "keepers" pile.


Always get a kick out of the backside of the cards.


Oh hey, Michelle here is also a minicollection hit for me, sharing my birthday. Plus she's also from San Diego County.. Man, we're a good match. If my wife and I ever split up... oh wait, she says she loves traveling. I'm more of a homebody you might be able to drag onto a plane (domestic only!) maybe once a year. I guess our romance was just not meant to be.


My two promised autos were solid. I hadn't heard of Caitlin O'Connor before, but she a cutie. According to her wikipedia, she's an actress who's had small parts in a lot of stuff. Here's an error card for you: Bench Warmer misspelled her name "Caitlan" on the card.. ouch! She would have been totally justified to refuse signing those cards. But I guess she was a team player and swallowed her pride.

As for Buffy Tyler, she was Playboy's Playmate of the Month for November 2000. Nice.


So again, no low-numbered mega hits, but another fun box to rip through.

Now back to the Beach Boys. Padrographs Rod gave me an opened box of those cards in the big bag he handed me at the April card show. I held off going through them until I had ripped my box, just to keep my break fresh. Rod's box seemed to be a nearly-all-still-there hobby box break, with likely just a small handful of inserts picked out.


I was happy to find a near-complete, already-in-order base set in there, and it only took me a couple minutes to find the missing numbers to complete it. I think there are some gold foil surfer parallels mixed in, but I'm not OCD enough to be bothered by that at all.



Between the rest of the cards in Rod's box and my box, I could probably build another base set or two without much trouble. You can bet that some of these dupes will end up in the 1000+ card prize package.


Here are some more inserts from Rod's box.

But the real highlight..


Brian Wilson relic! Sweet! Barring an autograph, that's what I was hoping to pull from my box, so I was very happy to see Rod let me have this one.

Well, there you go; A bunch of boys and girls on cardboard.

Bonus Entry Opportunity: What's your favorite Beach Boys song? Maybe you have a few favorites? Let me know in the comments and you might luck into a bonus entry in my big 1000 Posts contest. Thanks!

19 comments:

  1. my all time favorite is God Only Knows, but I like Pacific Coast Highway on That's Why God Made the Radio

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  2. hey gavin, i do have that dodger stadium card - it was featured in this post (http://cardsasiseethem.blogspot.com/2017/02/im-still-looking-for-cards-that-feature.html), but not the gold surfer parallel! would be happy to add it to my dodger stadium collection.

    god only knows is my favorite song by the beach boys, but wouldn't it be nice is a very close second. pet sounds is an amazing album!

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  3. Love the Dodger Stadium insert, as it melds my love of baseball with classic rock radio. I only wish that they'd performed the Anthem at Wrigley - it'd definitely be going in with my Cubs cards.

    As for my favorite Beach Boys song... that's a toughie. The first one I remember hearing was Wouldn't It Be Nice, from it's ironic use in Michael Moore's documentary about Flint, MI. However, I think my favorite would have to be Sloop John B.

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  4. I have yet to meet anyone around my age who likes the Beach Boys, but they've always been one of my favorite bands. "God Only Knows" is my personal favorite from their catalog (and perhaps the most beautiful song ever written), with "Wouldn't It Be Nice" and "Don't Worry Baby" as runners-up.

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  5. "Help Me Rhonda" is my favorite although they have a lot that I like. The Pet Sounds LP is just so great.

    I saw them a couple of times in the 70s. Both times at big festival type shows where the heat and drugs combined to do a lot of folks in. I'm pleading the 5th, Your Honor.

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  6. Neat stuff. I've been a Beach Boys fan for many years...I found out in December that I am distantly related to the Wilsons and Mike Love. It's really distant, something like 20th cousins, but hey, it's still blood. I've always been partial to Little Deuce Coupe but I like pretty much everything they did.

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  7. You sure made me scroll a lot before I got to the girls! I think the Dollar Tree store near my home carries packs of those Beach Boy cards.

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  8. I have to go with Wouldn't It Be Nice as my favorite

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  9. I've always been partial to Barbara Ann, but you can't go wrong with the Boys!

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  10. Definitely Sloop John B! I can never get tired of hearing that song!

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  11. I'll go with Kokomo. It was pretty popular when I was a kid so it's the song I most associate with them.

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  12. I don't know that I have a favorite Beach Boys song, so I'll pick "Catch A Wave" because it was the name of a friend's cover band back in the late 1980s/early 1990s.

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  13. Lots of favorites, but I'll mention "Good Vibrations" because only people my age or older know what a stunning song that was. The Sunkist commercial (that is so old that people probably don't even remember that) kind of ruined it. But a really great song.

    Pet Sounds was one of the first CDs I ever bought, back when people were first buying CDs.

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  14. I used to listen to the Beach Boys all the time (fun fact: my first CD was the Beach Boys). I always loved "Wouldn't It Be Nice" but Sloop John B is a close second. I didn't realize they had a new(ish) album - I'm checking it out on Spotify right now, thanks for the heads up!

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  15. The Trader, but that's boring now that you linked to it. Runners up are Funky Pretty, Feel Flows, Don't Worry Baby, Sail On Sailor, and Surf's Up. I even sing along to Disney Girls with only trace amounts of shame. I'll say Funky Pretty today. Feelin' funky.

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  16. Also you got one of the better hits. I saw Brian a couple of months ago here in NOLA and he is out there now, but the show was great! I ended up with Mike Love and I think Bruce Johnston relics in my box.

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  17. Last thing: I'll so trade you for those One The Record inserts. I love those things!

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  18. Love the Beach Boys...my top 5, in chronological order because I can't choose between them, is "Girl Don't Tell Me", "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times", "Sail On Sailor", "It's OK", and "Somewhere Near Japan".

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  19. I know where the extra silicone came from...ha. I've always liked 'God Only Knows' but am also fond of 'Long Tall Texan.' My dad played their music all the time when I was a kid. I thought the song was funny.

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