I wanna be your backdoor man

I'm back with some more "backdoored" stuff for my collection purchased from a certain eBay seller with a large selection of internal proof cards and whatnot that were never intended to make it out into the world.

These Ring Leaders inserts from 1995 Topps Stadium Club are ostentatious enough as they are-- but a slightly oversized proof?! Even more intense! I wanna make this image my desktop background. Looks even better in hand, all nice n' shiny.

For comparison, here's the packed-out version. You can see the edges have been trimmed off of the original artwork. The proof has more of the eagle wing and a bit of Crime Dog's shoe.

I also got a similar Gwynn, but this one has a color bar attached to it too. The googly-eyed Bip is there for scale (and comic relief). These are both blank-backed, btw.

My way of thinking is if you're gonna do the oversized card thing, make it a shiny card. The more shiny, the better.. right? These Power Players inserts from 2000 Topps are pretty cool looking.. and the untrimmed proofs add a little more to the story. These have standard backs. The Nomar was picked up as trade bait, so if any of my Sox-collecting trade buddies want me to set it aside for you, just let me know.

The 2009 Bowman red parallel is an unnumbered proof (regular size). The packed-out versions of this parallel are 1/1. Just a neat little addition for my Xavier Nady PC.

Basketball even got into the action, picking up a pair of shiny untrimmed Tim Duncan proofs. These look great.

Foil-less, untrimmed proofs of Dwight Evans (1992 Stadium Club) and Eric Owens (1996 Topps Gallery).

Some Fleer stuff too. More slightly oversized proofs. 2005 Fleer Classic Clippings Gavin Floyd, Khalil Greene, Brian Giles, and Adrian Beltre.

Some of the big names are priced a bit steep-- occasionally outrageous even-- but Bagwell and Thome here were just a buck each, so I added them to my cart, spicing up those little PCs with an out-of-the-ordinary item. Most of the cards in this post were a buck or two. The Gwynn Ring Leader was the priciest card at $3.

The Hoyt is a blank-back of his 1991 Archives card, a 1953 Topps reprint. Not very exciting, but happy to add another Hoyt to the collection as I work toward my goal of 100 different cards. And yes, I definitely count these backdoored cards in my PC totals, though some collectors may choose not to. Cards like this obviously aren't listed in Beckett or TCDB or whatnot, but I just consider them bonus oddballs. Maybe a step above customs and unofficial sketch cards.

Rod Beck was the star of the order with 8 different cards. As for the two cards that look like dupes, one is blank-backed and the other has a standard back. The 1995 Topps Finest refractor (bottom right) isn't a proof or anything.. just a regular card the seller had that was a good price and I needed it, so I threw it in the cart. It is possibly a backdoored card, but no real way to tell the difference with a packed-out version in this instance, I guess.

Let's close out with a Bip Roberts lot, another of my favorite under-the-radar guys to collect.

Here are the backs. Again, just some quirky PC additions.

Typically, I'm not a fan of oversized cards as they're more of a pain to store, but these cards that are only slightly oversized are still small enough to fit in boxes with the rest of my cards, so it's not too bad. I might just have to put them in team bags instead of penny sleeves.

Have a great weekend, everybody.