2005 Upper Deck Series 2

2005 was a weird year. I don't feel like anything significant happened, and I also feel like it was a truly unremarkable year for music. Sleater-Kinney put out their breakup album, Spoon released the worst album of their career and Pitchfork decided that Sufjan Stevens and Kanye West deserved the 1-2 billing on their year end chart. Also weird was baseball cards. You could buy them at 7-11. Here's a series 2 Upper Deck pack of truly unremarkable cards.

302 - Darin Erstad

313 - Sidney Ponson (I'm quite convinced that Sir Sidney has not done anything that you couldn't consider awkward looking in his entire life.)

317 - Keith Foulke (Does anyone wear Foulke jerseys to Red Sox games? Nice free blurry FOX ad on this card.)

421 - Cristian Guzman

- Upper Deck Rewards dummy card

484 - Mike Sweeney Team Checklist (How does anyone keep Mike and Mark Sweeney straight? Has anyone ever seen them both in the same place at the same time?)

457 - Ivan Rodriguez Bound For Glory (Oh, Pudge is "Bound For Glory" alright... just as soon as he's finished up collecting caps from every single franchise in the league.)

444 - Andy Phillips Star Rookies

476 - Mark Prior Team Checklist

2004 Fleer Inscribed

Tonight I am presented the extremely difficult task of following up a post about Saved by the Bell cards. I will try to do my best. Here's a pack of 2004 Fleer Inscribed that must have come to me in a repack configuration because I certainly don't remember buying it on its own.

49 - Hideki Matsui (Matsui is having his worst season of his MLB career to this point in the 2010 campaign, but you can say that about a lot of players right now. This has been reflected in my dismal fantasy baseball performance this season. I can't explain why others have had success, however.)

11 - Miguel Tejada (I've actually been tempted to add Tejada when he's available in the free agent pool. That's not a good thing, even when you consider his two position eligibility.)

37 - Shawn Green (Honestly, the only good thing I can say about this card is that it's on Night Owl's want list, so it means that it will soon be leaving my possession.)

- Fleer dummy ad card

34 - Jeff Bagwell

24 - Omar Vizquel (Apparently Vizquel is still hanging around at age 43. Good for him.)

1992 Pacific Saved by the Bell

At one time, "Saved by the Bell" was arguably the most popular tweenie show on television.  Of course, this was before the word "Tween" was even invented.  This card set features 110 cards sold in packs of 5 for a quarter.  Unless you wanted to send $10.95 and get the whole set in one shebang.

The cards are glossy Pacific for sure.  They sport a marbleized border os varying colors, the Pacific logo, the SbtB logo and whatever featured text on the front.  The images are generally large and make use of the space provided (not always, though).  The first card in this pack is Mark-Paul Gosselaar.  He is sporting the Miami Vice look.  Of course, so was everyone else at the time.

My guess is that one could line up all the cards border-to-border and find the pattern.  The backs of the cards feature a secondary picture and a write-up about the features person or scene on the front.

Lisa comes up third in the pack and features a "Did You Know" question on the back. What's Lisa's Last Name? (answer is below for those that can't remember or care to see).  The back of the card also features Lisa wearing a floral bikini top and skirt/wrap-thing, in case you were wondering.

The back of this card explains that certain scenes (school hallway, principal's office, classroom, etc) don't change, but each week a new set was designed for added flair.

 

 

The last card in the pack is Tiffani-Amber Thiessen.  The back of her card features a "Report Card" that reads like a description from a certain male-market magazine.  Food: Cuban, Chinese, and Japanese.  Music: Any music except country.  Between takes: Does school work.  On Hiatus: At the beach, movies or mall.

The quality of the cards is actually pretty good without feeling or looking like the cardboard cousins of the '91 Topps baseball set.  My son watched the re-runs of this show. Now that he is a teenager, he might appreciate having the girls' cards.


*Lisa's last name? Turtle.

1983 O-Pee-Chee Baseball

In Honor of the Phillies playing the Toronto Blue Jays, who hail from Canada - home of the O-Pee-Chee Brand - we are today presenting a pack of 1983 O-Pee-Chee Baseball Cards.

The '83 O-Pee-Chee set is basically an abbreviated version (396 cards) of the Topps set (792 cards) of the same year. The cards have identical fronts except for the logo is different. The text on each side of the card is written in both French and English.

The key players that we are looking for out of this pack are #83 Ryne Sandberg (rc) and #143 Tony Gwynn (rc). I do not believe Wade Boggs (Topps #498) is included in the 83 O-Pee-Chee set. The Sandberg and Gwynn cards are #83 and #482 respectively in the Topps Set.

The Wrapper
Yep that right back in 1983 this bad boy went for one Canadian Quarter. I picked this 10 card pack up for $3.99 off the bay. The 83 O-Pee-Chee pack are 10 cards, while the Topps packs from the same year offered 15 cards. Low recent auctions for 83 topps packs came in at $4.49.

The Wrapper (b-side)

There is an offer on the wrapper to get a Ball Strike Out counter for a buck and a quarter. What a bargain!! I wonder if there is an "app for that"

The Cards (click each to enlarge)

#368 Richie Zisk
#56 Reggie Jackson
#36 Super Veteran Rollie Fingers

#62 Jim Gott (A Blue Jay!!)
#57 Tim Blackwell (les Expos)
#340 Larry Gura

#250 Bill Buckner
#213 Tom Burgmeier
#112 Luis Pujols

#386 Rod Carew All-Star
#386 Rod Carew All-Star (b-side w/ Gum firmly attached)

No Sandberg or Gwynn, but a solid pack, Unfortunately one of the better cards has the gum pretty much permanently affixed to the back. As I said this is a pretty good pack 3 Hall of Famers including a super vet insert. Rod Carew was always a childhood favorite of mine, and it is really hard to argue with a Reggie card. Regardless it was a fun to open an 27 year old O-Pee-Chee pack for for $4 and the HOF talent was just a bonus.


Compare
1983 Topps #728 Ron Reed

for comparison sake I have featured Ron Reed's 1983 Topps card above, Gotta love the old powder blue road unis.
1983 O-Pee-Chee #56 Reggie Jackson (b-side)
1983 Topps #43 Bob Dernier (b-side)

B-sides for comparison - note the Text in French on the Reggie card (click to enlarge).

1983 O-Pee-Chee #36 Super Veteran Rollie Fingers (b-side)
1983 Topps #491 Super Veteran Jim Palmer (b-side)

And the B-sides of the Super Vets. That is a lot of info to cram on the Rollie card.

As noted above a fun pack to open - I'll be keeping the HOFs and probably the Buckner card. If you don't have an '83 O-Pee-Chee from your favorite team, and you see a care you need here, let me know - we can likely arrange something. My address is on my profile over at Phungo.

2005 Donruss Baseball

There are days that I miss Donruss...then there are days that I open 2005 Donruss and I don't miss their products so much anymore.

Here are two that I enjoyed from this pack:

I like this one because there aren't a lot of bunting cards out there. It's a lost art.

#208 Morgan Ensberg

Why do I highlight this Luis Matos card? Is it because there aren't a lot of cards highlighting a batter that just whiffed? No! It's because of the wonderful action shot that is happening behind him. The Tigers catcher is "diggin' for gold" so to speak and it's just magnifique!

#109 Luis Matos

There is absolutely nothing more boring than people complaining about non-player cards included in baseball card sets...but a side character from Curb Your Enthusiasm on a card? That's pushing it Donruss!

#FG-3 Fans of the Game Susie Essman

And the rest:

#168 Garrett Atkins
#114 Sidney Ponson
#231 Rickie Weeks
#302 Craig Wilson
#303 Jack Wilson
#219 Eric Gagne
#183 Eric Munson

2008 Press Pass Basketball

Tonight is NBA Draft night, so I felt like there was no other more appropriate time to post a pack of draft pick cards that I found in a cheapo repack box awhile back. I'm not familiar with Press Pass, HIT, Tristar or any of that sort of thing, so this is all new to me. Michael Beasley is the wrapper subject. Let's see if I can pull a card of that guy.

33 - Sonny Weems (Weems was drafted #39 in the 2008 Draft. Check out this little nugget from his Wikipedia entry: "Weems has the distinction of assisting a slam dunk competitor in back to back All Star Games: J.R. Smith in 2009 and DeMar DeRozan in 2010.")

11-8 - Kevin Love Insider Insight 144/199 (Love was a local high school star who didn't get a lot of "love" from the fans in the area when he snubbed in-state schools to go to UCLA. That's never a popular decision.)

35 - D.J. White Reflectors (White was a late first round pick - #29 - who has played sparingly for the franchise that moved to Oklahoma City. I'm not sure what makes this a "Reflector" card, but I won't question it.)

7 - Patrick Ewing, Jr. (Ewing Jr. has some sweet headphones.)

2010 Topps Series 2 Walmart Retail Version

This is the first I've seen of Series 2 and so I picked up a few packs.

I guess I never realized that these 2020 inserts are almost like the Sportsflix cards of the past. They are the nicest inserts I've seen from this year's set and while I think the base set is shit I will make a go at collecting these inserts.

#T4 David Price 2020

This is a pretty nice photo to "waste" on a checklist card.

#637 Babe Ruth/Lou Gehrig Checklist

If I've got this right the blue backs are from the Walmart set and the red backs are from the Target packs.

1951 Topps Blue Back #28 Chipper Jones

And the rest:

#624 Carlos Beltran
#544 Kevin Kouzmanoff
#395 Jenrry Mejia [Rookie Card]
#417 Dallas Braden
#472 Toronto Blue Jays Team Leaders
#564 Houston Astros Team Leaders
#507 Francisco Rodriguez
#628 Ross Detwiler
#356 Anaheim Angels Team Leaders

2010 Panini Adrenalin XL FIFA World Cup UK Edition

Here's a second pack of Panini Football cards from Jolly ol' England. It's another game pack from Panini. This one is called Adranalyn XL, like the basketball game inthe US, but it is the same gameplay as the Super Strikes game cards.Once again there are 350 cards, 100 of which are short printed from 1 in four to 1 in 24 packets. These are still Football players but instead of club teams there are the World Cup nations instead. This is the UK edition which means SPECIAL ENGLAND CARDS but I didn't get a Brit in the entire pack so I couldn't tell you what they were. Here's da pack:

Nederland - Nigel De Jong

I don't have a lot of stickers in my World Cup album, but it is a good reference guide. In it I learned that Nigel plays for Manchester City. Or played, at least, I've read a couple of articles stating that after the Cup, players are going to be transferring from team to team like there's no tomorrow. Football hot stove, perhaps?

Nederland - Dirk Kuyt

This dude plays for Liverpool.

Brasil - Maicon

I missed the Brasil - Ivory Coast game, but from what I heard it was a big load of Kaka. This guy plays for Inter who just won the Champions League.

ITALIA!!! - Gianluigi Buffon

Goalkeeper for Juventus. Also this:

USA - Benny Feilhaber

Benny plays for AGF Aarhus whatever that is. I took 3 years of German and I'm pretty sure Feilhaber means "One who has Fail" in Deutsch. Are we sure we want him on our team?

USA TIM HOWARD SHIIIIIIINY

WOOOOOO! SHINY YANK GOALIE!!! I'll bet I get more trade offers for this than my Strasburg Chrome. WELL YA CAIN'T HAVE IT. This goes directly into the kickass binder. Tim plays for Everton which is now on the short list of Premier League teams I will consider rooting for.


Well, that pack kicked booty. I might have to engineer a swap with someone across the pond for some baseball packs for a bunch of these.