a couple cheap cards

I received this Tony Clark card in the mail yesterday, coincidentally the same day he shockingly resigned as executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association. My understanding is that he was being investigated for financial curiosities, and that investigation revealed naughty emails with his wife's sister, whom he had given a job with the MLBPA. These days, it seems powerful people just "ignore/lie/power-thru" after they get caught doing something they really shouldn't have (*cough* Epstein files *cough*), so good for Tony Clark for showing himself out, I guess.

I don't PC the guy, but rather I'm trying to complete the full set of Bowman refractor reprints from 1998. The insert set is 50 cards, featuring highlights from the original run of vintage Bowman, plus the Topps' revival from '89 through '96 (Bowman Chrome began in 1997, so these inserts are like a greatest hits of their pre-Chrome years.. "Refractors that never were (of base cards that were)" if you will, so to speak). Tony Clark is an odd choice to reprint with the hindsight that he was never a big star, though at that point he had just followed up a third-place ROY campaign in '96 with a solid 1997 that saw him garner some down-ballot MVP votes. He was an All-Star in 2001 and also had an impressive 2005 season, but he only accrued a dozen wins above replacement in his career, all said and done.

Anyways, I've still got a ways to go with this set, but will be bumped past the 50% threshold once my latest COMC order arrives later this spring. But yeah, I've still been hunting down refractor reprints from the late 90s and early 00s, actively building various runs that I'm excited to post about after completion.

I'm reluctant to say this is the final COMC order I'm waiting on, but I've definitely been trying to avoid buying from them since this batch. You'd figured after tripling their shipping rates that they would use that extra money to hire an additional order picker or two, but nope, they seem to be backed up again maybe even worse than they got during the pandemic, with shipping estimates pushed out for several months. The vibe I'm getting isn't "wow, COMC is doing lots of business" but rather "wow, COMC is struggling and folks are rushing to get their cards out before the site owners pull the plug and complete the transition to eBay-consignment account only". But I don't really know. Times are bad everywhere, it seems, as society is sapped of humanity and herded into an AI curated existence whether we like it or not. But back to bitching about online card shops, Sportlots keep updating their site to make it harder to use. That Canadian online card shop folded (I never got around to ordering from them, but they seemed to get positive marks from the bloggers who did). I've tried to get more active trading at TCDb but it's been an uphill slog and my successful transactions there seem to be few and far between. (I've recently finished sorting a monster box with my available Archives/Ginter/Heritage that I plan to enter in my "For Trade" list soon and hope that helps improve my trade-matching.)

Oh, and the USPS has been sucking lately, too. I had a Nolan Ryan reprint refractor show up in the tracking as delivered that I never got. :( And that Tony Clark card that arrived yesterday took 2 whole weeks to get to me from Florida.

And back to that. the eBay seller had a promotional discount offer to entice you to buy more than one card from him, so I took a quick browse of his inventory and found another card that caught my eye at a good price:

This is the 102nd Dick Allen card of mine to be logged at TCDb, and forgive the language but I'm still downright tickled pink to be his #1 ranked collector there, even now a ways into his HOF inclusion, causing him to default into being a guy that Hall of Fame collectors now collect. I figured a more focused supercollector would have knocked me off the top spot by now. But nope, second-place is currently a 3-way tie with 84.

Back to the card, this is a Blue Ice Prizm parallel of Dick Allen's 2025 Panini Prizm card. It's my first of the 33-card rainbow, though I also have a Red Pulsar Prizm and Ruby Wave Prizm pending in that eventual COMC shipment. I didn't remind myself of that fact until after snagging the Blue Ice one, so I got lucky not to double up. I like that the card shows Dick in his later Phillies stint, something you don't see on many of his cards, especially an action shot. On the downside, lawyers have instructed the cardmakers to remove logos and wordmarks from the photo due to the fact that another cardmaker paid a lot of money to have lawyers say that only they can make cards that have those special logos and words. Man, everything bad in this world always boils down to greed. Humans be greedy, put that on our headstone.

LOL, I'm sorry this quick post showing off a 2-card mailday turned into a lot of negative ranting! I just thought it was a crazy coincidence the random Tony Clark card showed up in my mailbox the very day his career took a sudden tumble. 

For a more positive coincidence, I'll mention that this past Monday I was out walking the dog making our way home and I saw what I first figured might be a crow with a big piece of bread in its beak (lots of crows around here), but as it flew closer, it became clear that, no, it was a bald eagle! Came in kinda low but it was quick and I didn't want to take my eyes off it to fiddle with my phone, so no photos. Don't see those very often in my neighborhood, and so to get a bald eagle flyover, on Presidents' Day no less, was a neat experience.

Oh, and another happy thing to mention.. I was supposed to have jury duty today, but thankfully I got an email yesterday saying nevermind I'm not needed. I wouldn't mind being on a jury, but what had me stressed is waking up early enough to get downtown by 8am. I'm a night owl like Night Owl and don't usually get to bed until around/after midnight. But instead of being sleep-deprived waiting to see if I get called in, I got to sleep in and then ramble out a blog post with my morning. So that's cool! :)

Rod rules

Remnants from Padrographs Rod's holiday pack ripping have been popping up on the blogs recently, and I've again been fortunate enough to be included on his Nice List. Rod swung by my house last month with a reusable grocery bag full of goodies including north of a thousand cards, mostly recent stuff. Took me a while, but I've finally got it sorted enough to pick out some highlights for a post.

After this instant-PC, looks like I'm rooting for Marcelo Mayer to breakout as Boston's next superstar. And he's a fellow San Diego area kid, so that's cool.

My Blake Snell PC pretty much doubled thanks to the stack from Rod, with the eye-catchingest ones pictured above. 

Elly De La Cruz is a fun player to watch/collect.

Tatis additions are always welcomed, especially fun stuff like this.

More shiny cards of guys I collect.. love it!

Funky stuff here with a modern Manny Machado oddball that has a nice gold swirl effect in-hand, a Corbin Carroll card you could play with if you're brave enough to pop it out, and a Jackson Merrill mini parallel.

Big ol' box o' Gwynns! By the handwriting on the box, looks like it originated from a local card show dealer I've bought from in the past (back in 2019, boxes of 1970 and 1972 Topps with similar writing on them). Sure, this box is mostly overproduction era, but there are undoubtedly a few needs for me in there, plus other modern Gwynns were mixed in with the other cards from Rod. So yeah, I'm due for a Gwynn PC update (he's one of the few guys I try to keep logged at TCDB). And I don't mind restocking on extra junk dupes because they often come in handy for cardart ideas.

I tried to get cute with this photo of some of the more visually interesting football cards of the lot. That's Adam Thielen in the back, Nick Bosa and Justin Herbert in the front.

My first pass through the boxes, I didn't know who Drake Maye was, just to give you an idea of how little attention I've been paying to football in recent years. But I've since ascertained that he's had a great season and helped lead the Patriots back to the Super Bowl, which is happening one of these days coming up, probably on a weekend, I'd assume. lol  But yeah, cool additions for my modest pigskin collection.

Excited to find a bunch of 2025 Topps Chrome Disney cards in the boxes, as these are all the rage with a certain segment of card collectors, right? I seem to recall I tried bidding on a Christmas Card of one of these things and getting blown out of the water. Remember how canary diamond was a 1/1 parallel back in 2011 or so? Well, this pair is unnumbered but I'll pretend they're really rare. Cheshire Cat is a nice pull. That Alice in Wonderland is one of my favorite Disney flicks, with the original Mary Poppins and sleeper pick Bedknobs and Broomsticks rounding out my top 3.

Last thing to show today isn't a card but a nice replica jersey of Yu Darvish's City Connect uniform.

Very cool item to diversify my collection a bit, not just my Darvish PC, as I don't have much stuff like this. (I still have the partially cut-up pants that I used to make some custom Brian Giles game-used relic cards years back. I should really do something with what I still have unused. Maybe I could make cardart cards out of the pants or something?) But I'll resist taking a pair of scissors to this jersey. Yu is out for the year and likely to retire rather than slog through another long rehab as he pushes 40, but his agent wants to make sure he milks the Padres for all they can get before he walks away from that contract. Oh well, he had a solid career but collectors who've been keeping his cards in their "maybe HOF?" box will likely be cutting bait if they haven't already. I still luv Yu, though, and really dig this jersey.

Thanks again for the cool stuff, Rod! 

New HOF guys / 9-pocket PC binder

Now that top-tier PC guys of mine Fred McGriff and Dick Allen are finally in Cooperstown, I'm much less emotionally invested in Hall of Fame drama. It's a refreshing change of pace. I remember stressing out the year Larry Walker barely broke the threshold, keeping a close eye on the ballot tracker data for weeks. These days I happily don't give much of a shit-- though yeah, it'd be nice to see holdovers Mattingly and Murphy make it in someday (Don't you think the "character clause" should also swing the other way? Like if a guy spends decades being a stand-up humanitarian and positive ambassador for the game, as both Donnie and Murph are, shouldn't that be factored in along with the stats and help push them over the top? Tiant too. But here I am working myself up again! lol)

Anyways, I've never full-on collected this year's HOF inductees, though the 3 of them each have a page in vol. 1 (last names A-L) of my "9 Pocket PC" binder. In recent years as I try to rein in my collection and figure out the keepers from the non-keepers among cards not in specific buckets (PCs, setbuilds, or other collecting projects/themes), I've started the old hobby standard of filling a 9-pocket page per player. These are players who might strike a sentimental chord with me or something, but I don't feel strongly enough about them to officially christen them a "PC guy" of mine. I also try to get a page filled for every HOF guy (that I don't already PC) (from the "Topps era" [as in not including old-timey players I'm not really familiar with]).

When I come across a 10th card of a "9-pocket PC" guy, I've got to make a call whether to reject a card into my non-keepers, find a home for it elsewhere, or if I just can't narrow the PC down to 9 cards, I'll promote the player to a full PC guy, moving his cards to my PC boxes. 

I figure showing off these 9-pocket PCs makes for an easy blog post. (It seems most of my post ideas kicking around have heavy lifting I need to do that makes me procrastinate instead of working on them, and next thing you know two weeks have gone by without a post.) I'm tempted to do a thing like The Diamond King where I list off names and readers tell me who they want to see.

But for now, here's how the new HOF guys are looking in the binder.

Carlos Beltran's page is heavy on Kansas City cards and there's not much here that wouldn't be on the bubble if nicer Beltran cards fall in my lap. Again, these are just random cards gathered from my collection, so it's not really a curated spread. Ideally I'd love to have a card for each team the guy played for, but hey this isn't my Vagabond Binder, so those rules don't apply. But chances are it won't be long until I work in Mets and Astros representation on Beltran's page. Funny thing, I had been gearing up to make him a full PC guy, but then the 2017 Astros cheating scandal broke, scuttling that plan.

I also have one other Carlos Beltrán card that's too thick/nice for the binder.

Pretty sure I landed this auto in a Nachos Grande mixer group break a decade or so ago. 

Next up, Andruw Jones.

Nothing too eye-popping here, just some random Braves cards. I should try to mix in a couple later cards of his. Andruw was in his prime when I wasn't collecting, and by the time I returned to the hobby his career was stumbling to the finish line. So yeah, just didn't shake out that I ever collected him much, despite the Braves being a second-tier favorite team of mine (I wear my Braves hat out more than my Padres hat, but it's really just a comfort thing).

 

As for Jeff Kent's page, it's still incomplete. 

The pair of cardart superfractors at the bottom are things I made for a buyer who ended up flaking, so guess I'll just hang onto them. The '92 Leaf black gold in the center is a dupe from that parallel set I completed a year or two ago. Happy I had an extra of that, as it's probably his most desirable pack-pulled rookie card (ie, not from boxed sets). And I gotta point out that the Donruss Rookies card at the top was plucked directly from the small percentage of my collection that I've had since childhood. There's something nice about pulling a card as a kid, thinking "I should probably hang on to this one", and then 33 years later, that becomes a Hall of Fame rookie card. Justified! :)

Out with 2025 and onto 2026

GOALS 

I don't think I assigned myself any blogging/collecting goals last year other than to keep posting. And while I didn't post a lot, I did keep posting, so I'll grade myself an A- there. I hit my quota of 12 posts on the 1991 MusiCards blog (though I did miss one month and had to double up later). A couple late NYE posts got Baseball Card Breakdown up to my goal of 37 posts for 2025, one more than 2024, and two better than 2023's all-time low of 35. So my goal for 2026 is 38+ posts to keep trending upwards here and another dozen on the MusiCards blog, adding up to a nice round 50 post goal for the year. If you're reading this, then I've got 49 to go! ha.

-   -  -o

WALLET CARD

2025's wallet card didn't see much action. This was my first year using an Upper Deck card (wait no, I used a Masterpieces card before, but that doesn't count), and as I suspected, it didn't really wear down in a very interesting way thanks to the glossy/UV stock keeping it together for the most part.

 
I think the only trips I took out of town in 2025 were coincidentally a couple flights to Kentucky midyear. First to Bowling Green (above) for a funeral on my wife's side, then to Versailles for a wedding on my side of the family.

I tried to take a wallet card photo among the fireflies in action on the evening of the reception (fun times), but none of the pictures really came out, so here's a water tower instead. But yeah, other than that, I didn't think to take many wallet card photos last year.

I'm going with 1986 Donruss for my 2026 wallet card. While not a favorite set of mine, it doesn't bug me as much as it does Night Owl. I remember ripping my share these cards (actually the Leaf version) back in the early 90s because my childhood LCS had an old box with packs at a decent price. Figured I'd celebrate the design's 40th anniversary with a wallet card nod. And as far as junk-era Gwynn cards go, it features one of the more unique photos, with Tony taking a knee on deck.

-  - -o

CHRISTMAS WRAP

Gone are the days I'd ask for new boxes of cards for Christmas and my birthday, but I still received gifts that could fit in the scope of this blog.

My mother-in-law surprised me with a cool Petco Park framed print.

Hard to get good photos of it thanks to the reflection on the glass, but you get the idea.

Nice to get more San Diego love on my walls.

Also received a $50 ebay giftcard from the in-laws, which will of course most likely go towards cards.

Technically speaking, I did get cards for Christmas/my birthday. While not an official/wrapped gift, my wife's brother's wife was kind enough to ask if I had any interest in a stack of cards they got from a local pizza joint.. I guess the place sells repacks for a buck at the counter or gives them away with certain orders or something. I'd never turn down free mystery cards, even knowing they're probably just junk, and indeed I found a few cards I could use.

A few 2025 Topps cards mixed in with the older stuff.

I've always been kinda fascinated by Fleer's dual rookie cards, even when neither dude really goes on to do much.

Several of the cards were in rough shape and, gasp, I tossed a few damaged junk commons in the recycling, but figured I might be able to salvage the Grace and surface-dented Brett appearance by cardart methods at some point.

So yeah, thanks to my sis-in-law for the cards. One year I gave her a few random Oregon Ducks cards because she's a big fan of that football squad, so now I feel like I've officially "exchanged cards" with a family member. Neat.

-   -  - -o 

ANIMAL LOVERS CORNER 

I haven't posted much cute animal content in a while. Still seeing neighborhood bunnies occasionally. At one point last year I saw a coyote during the day while walking my dog near the golf course! Also had some coopers hawks in the area for a few weeks over the summer. Needless to say the rodent population was booming over the summer too, but let's not get into that unpleasantness (I lost count of how many dead critters I disposed of in 2025, but I'm sure it was my all-time high. So gross.)

I also recently decided to start up the hummingbird feeder again after a couple years break. Yeah, I had seen a couple tiny young hummers buzzing around my front lilac lavender in November or so, and figured I'd try to help them out. Lucky for me, one little guy quickly took to it and set up homebase in a close by bush where I have a great view of him from my living room window. So even if I don't catch him at the feeder, I can often peep him in the bush five feet away, just being cute looking around, occasionally grooming, but mostly keeping watch over "his" feeder. It'll be tough getting through these next couple of cold months, but hopefully I can help the little guy make it to springtime.

Howbout some cute dog pictures to close out on? 

Ruby always has a blast at the holidays. 

Silly family tradition of decking the dog Christmas morning. Ruby takes it like a champ.

Five-and-a-half and still not much sign of slowing down. Blame her for me not blogging more, as she takes up a large chunk of my available time and energy.

But on the plus side, walking the dog is my main source of exercise these days, so I suppose she's trying to help keep me healthy and not sitting on my butt all day. Gah, that reminds me, I really need to schedule a colonoscopy this year. :(

Anyways, thanks for reading, folks!