Repack "Hits"

Coming soon to a bubble mailer near you. 

Repacks are my weakness, especially these days. They are my bonbons if you will. My pizza rolls, if I was still unemployed and in my early 20s. They are bad, bad, bad... rarely good. Sometimes, I manage to find stuff that's interesting or tradeable, and sometimes you find out there's actually a dude named Polin Trinidad.

Here are some cards that came out of recent dalliances with the Fairfield Company. It's probably a good thing that I can't find anything they sell online, or this little obsession might turn into a full blown problem. Some of the cards seen here are the incentives thrown in for buying this stuff, while others (like Correa's card up there) were pack pulled.

There's a 20 packs for $19.99 product that Fairfield sells, which includes a bonus relic for the first time that I can recall. This was actually one of the better prizes I found, and after some careful examination of the card I discovered that it was manufactured for the Topps 2015 factory set rather than one of those one-per-blaster toys.

The 4 packs plus an autograph deal is one of the sketchiest looking things you can find at the Target aisle. Unlike all the others, there's no catching a glimpse of what lurks inside one of these. At least Mr. Avery is seen here wearing a major league uniform, even if he's just pretending.

Here's a pack pull, and a fine card. Topps Archives makes me consider what a do-over would look like in card collecting. If I could suddenly gain back all of the money I've thrown towards Heritage and Ginter, might I consider investing instead in being a Topps Archives super-collector? There's something I really love about these no frills on-card autographs of retired guys that you don't see plastered all over other sets all the time. This was definitely my best pack pull in terms of interest to me, even though it's very much up for grabs.

Another pack pull, a blue parallel (numbered to 150) of Punchin' Miggy.

Brad Peacock is in the midst of his best season in MLB this year. He's been in the Astros rotation of late, which is a good place to be on such a winning team. This was another one of the relic bonus cards.

So, yeah, this was apparently a real guy. He spent most of his career in the Astros organization. He has the cap to prove it, I guess.

Pryor was a former M's prospect and this is the worst kind of guaranteed autograph by far. Even James Avery is shaking his head.

This isn't numbered, or swatched or inked or anything of the like, but it's a Bryce Harper rookie. Well, sort of? I actually still have a huge problem with the 2012 Panini Prizm set, which was released in 2013 with 2012 stats only to be followed by 2013 Panini Prizm just months later. You would think that a "premium" Bryce Harper rookie card would be more sought after than some crusty old flagship Topps card on thin white paper stock, but it's not. Still, I guess it goes into the box of trade bait cards in top loaders, the most secure box of cards I probably own.

Up For Grabs: The Kid

Inspired by my favorite new blog on the block, The Junior Junkie, I thought I'd choose Ken Griffey Jr. as my latest "Up For Grabs" selection. As always, these are cards pulled from my binders that I'm trying to get rid of as I make an effort to get more organized and leaner in the area of stuff I don't really collect. As always, the full list appears at the end of the post. Contact me if you need any of this stuff.

Griffey was the player I had in mind when I was still a teenager and just starting my "star" binders. Junior was an amazing talent and fun to watch play, but I was never as interested in him as the hype surrounding him built him up to be. He's one of the best examples I can think of as a "money grab" in the height of the early '90s sports cards frenzy.

You wanted Griffey cards because Griffey cards meant money. Even my proximity to Seattle did little to make me feel like he would ever be my favorite player. He was easy to root for, sure, but if he had failed to perform on the field or even became someone who was just better than adequate (J.D. Drew comes to mind) I think there would have been a massive backlash.

Instead, we were left with a very talented player playing in the remote corner of the country for his formative years. That remote corner also happens to be just a few hours of driving down the road from where I live, and locally televised baseball has always meant Mariners baseball in Portland. The thing is, I was never a Mariners fan.

This all makes it sound like I was never much of a Griffey fan. That's not really true. I just never felt like I was excited about pulling his cards for the right reason. A lot of people have their Griffey Upper Deck rookie card story. Mine came down to how much I was able to sell one for ($50 cash) when I was only 15 years old. That was a TON of money to me back then. My hands would nearly shake if I held a $20 in my hand, so when a high school girl I worked with bought my cash cow off of me, I had little regrets.

Plus, I had plenty more Griffey cards in my possession than I knew what to do with, even though there were no more Upper Deck rookies to be had. To this day, I've never had a problem pulling his cards. (The man does have a ton of baseball cards, so I don't envy guys like The Junior Junkie.)

My Griffey supply has been tapped quite a few times since I've started this blog, and yet I knew that I would still have quite a massive list to pull together when I eventually made this post. I'm sure I have at least a dozen of his cards that never made it to the binder for any number of reasons, so consider this just a partial list for now.

When Griffey returned to his home town to play ball for the Reds, I remember it being a big deal but I was definitely not nearly as in tune with the game as I was in high school or am now. I'm sure that not collecting cards at the time had a lot to do with that, but at the time I know I was floating through life without a job or much of a care in the world. It did make me sad that Griffey started to suffer some serious injuries in Cincinnati that cost him large amounts of games into his 30s.

The Barry Bonds so-called twilight years made it a lot easier to root for supposedly "clean" guys like Griffey. It was a drag to come to the realization that the massive amount of time Griffey missed in Cincinnati made it impossible for him to compete for the career records that other more monstrous players would achieve. He still ranks very high on things that probably shouldn't matter as much like the All-Time HR list, but he didn't quite have the same late career peak that no one should physically ever have.

I still remember my Jose Canseco 40/40 poster that stood proudly on my bedroom wall. I don't regret not being Junior Fan No. 1, but I guess in hindsight I could have chosen a better player to be awestruck by.

I'm not the biggest Mariners fan, but I like when there's more interest in baseball locally. That could certainly improve with an improved Mariners team. I wouldn't hold out hope that there's another Ken Griffey around the corner, but with Ichiro having moved on, Seattle could really use a brand new superstar to inject some life into their franchise.

The list:

1996 Bazooka #1
2008 Upper Deck Starquest Un-Common #SQ-51
1995 Sportflix (Checklist) #168
2002 Donruss Super Estrellas #26
2012 Topps 1987 Mini #TM-97
1991 Mother's Cookies Father & Son #1 of 4
1991 Mother's Cookies Father & Son #4 of 4
2006 Fleer Ultra Diamond Producers #DP4
1998 Skybox Dugout Axcess (Nameplates) #139
1991 Score (Dream Team) #892
2004 Upper Deck #326
2010 Topps Chrome #28
2008 Topps #580 [3 2 available]
1991 Score #2 [2 available]
1991 Score (The Franchise) #858 [2 available]
1990 Donruss (Diamond Kings) #4 [3 available]
1996 Pinnacle (Chase Program Checklist w/ Frank Thomas, Cal Ripken Jr., Greg Maddux, Chipper Jones, and Mike Piazza) #399
2008 Upper Deck First Edition Starquest Common #SQ-51 [2 available]
1994 Topps Stadium Club Dugout Dirt #7 of 12
1991 Fleer #450
1991 Fleer #450 ERROR ("bat around .300")
1991 Fleer (Super Star Specials w/ Barry Bonds) #710 [2 available]
1991 Topps #790
1991 Topps (All-Star) #392 [2 available]
1992 Score #1 [2 available]
1992 Score (All-Star) #436 [2 available]
1991 Donruss #77
1991 Donruss (All-Star) #49
1991 Donruss (MVP) #392
1994 Topps Stadium Club (AL West Leader) #529 [2 available]
1991 Score (Rifleman) #697 [2 available]
1991 Bowman #246
1990 Donruss #365 [5 available]
1990 Post #23 of 30 [2 available]
2007 Topps (All-Star) #UH230 [2 available]
1990 Topps #336
1990 Upper Deck (Team Checklist) #24
1991 Score (All-Star) #396
1991 Upper Deck #555
1995 Topps Stadium Club #241
1992 Leaf #392
1995 Score #437
1990 Upper Deck #156
2002 Upper Deck MVP #279
2002 Upper Deck MVP (Checklist) #295
2010 Upper Deck #445
2007 Topps Opening Day #104
2008 Upper Deck Documentary #2776
2008 Upper Deck Documentary #73
2012 Topps Gypsy Queen #250
2009 Upper Deck X #79
2008 Topps Stadium Club #35 [5 3 available]
2012 Topps Golden Giveaway Code #GGC-20 [code is used]

[updated 1/8/13]

Bonus! Here's some crappy unlicensed card if you want it.

Same deal here.

Troll Box o' Fun Part 2: The Packs

As previously mentioned, The Collective Troll sent over some interesting unopened packs in a box of cards and card-related things and I thought I'd show off a few of them here. These packs were all eliminated as potential APTBNL candidates because the Troll had already posted some examples.

First up is 1995 Donruss Top of the Order. You can read all about this product here. My take: I find it rather amusing that companies have been trying to make a TCG/baseball product for decades now. In fact, if you go back to the vintage years, baseball card games have existed for much longer than my lifespan. I'm just not convinced that stuff like Topps Attax will ever truly be a successful venture. The cards are unnumbered as far as I can tell, but I will list them out anyway.

- Jacob Brumfield

- Todd Hundley

- Erik Hanson

- Woody Williams (Another early Woody card for me. He looks more like a math teacher than a baseball player here.)

- Bob Hamelin (mid-'90s staple.)

- Eric Karros (This one has a weird blurb at the top of the card that none of the others in the pack have.)

- Darren Daulton

- Alex Rodriguez (Ha ha, no scan for you. I don't even care if you are the only active player in this pack.)

- Andujar Cedeno

- Ryan Klesko

- Jaime Navarro

- Joey Cora (Teal era M's. I just got to see the Mariners in person over the weekend. Live baseball is underrated.)

Next up is 1993 Donruss Masters of the Game.

The wrapper is reminiscent of the 1993 Donruss look, and each pack contains 1 card out of a series of 16. Images are not to scale unless you click on them.

8 of 16 - Ken Griffey Jr. (Nice! I at least know someone who will appreciate this, hopefully.)

The back looks like a postcard, with a place for a stamp and plenty of room for writing.

Finally, there was a pack of 1985 Topps Super. Oversized cards are always hard to store, but I'm growing to appreciate them now that I am old enough to avoid destroying almost everything in my path.

Once again, cards are not to scale unless you click on the images. 3 cards out of a 60 card set means this pack should have 5% of the entire set in it. Isn't math wonderous?

28 - Juan Samuel (Samuel was the biggest star of the Phillies-affiliated Portland Beavers team of the '80s.)

33 - Dwight Evans (I don't know... Red Sox... some people seemed to like him.)

14 - Rickey Henderson (Rickey!)

The main difference in the backs of the cards as compared to the regular set is the boldface type that explains what is notable about the player to justify their inclusion in such a Super set. In this case, Rickey was the 1984 A.L. Stolen Base Leader, but you don't need to tell Rickey that. Rickey already knows how many bases Rickey steals.

There were a few more packs in the box, but they're going into the queue of stuff that I can post about on APTBNL at some point down the road. All I can say is that I always appreciate it when people toss in goodies like this.

Baseball Cards and Crunchy Cookies

I wanted to post about baseball cards tonight, for once, and then I read this sad news over at Cardboard Junkie. Mother's Cookies is no more, and with that goes their legacy of large bags of cookies that are slightly easier to chew than jagged rocks. I still made a point to buy their cookies especially when free baseball cards were involved, and took a weird liking to the wax-flavored pink animal cookies. Here are images of every Mother's Cookies card that I have in my collection, or at least what I could find in about 15 minutes of searching.

1991 - Ken Griffey Father & Son (I actually had several of Griffey Jr.'s Mother's cards from his rookie season, but I believe that I sold or traded them away in the late 90s. I also at one point owned an ad panel from that set that I stole from a Safeway, but I don't know what happened to it.)

1990 - Nolan Ryan 5000 K's



1991 - Nolan Ryan 300 Wins

1993 - Nolan Ryan Farewell Set (Unlike the sets above, this one featured 10 cards instead of 4. Imagine how many $3.50 bags of cookies you'd have to purchase to collect the entire set.)

1990 - Matt Williams (The card backs didn't really change, much like the fronts. I'm not sure who in their right mind would get a card autographed on the back in the space provided.)


1990 - Jose Canseco (At the time, my bedroom wall proudly displayed a Canseco 40/40 poster.)



1985 - Seattle Mariners (Alvin Davis) (This is the only card I ever owned that wasn't from one of the player sets, but was from a team set. I don't know how or why I ended up with it, but here it is. Sadly, there were no Mother's Cookies Cardinals cards ever made as far as I know.)