2005 Upper Deck Sweet Spot

High end cards become a weird thing when you're picking them up out of a bucket on the floor, but that's what exactly here. I might be challenging the label of "high end" here a bit, but I believe that Sweet Spot was historically a premium brand name and that these packs use to go for more than a dollar and weren't always tossed in with early '00s WNBA packs and some sort of Pro Set stuff. Here's one of the five packs that I bought. I probably should've bought them all.

23 - Mark Prior - It's an inauspicious start. Prior was already showing signs of fallibility at this point.

64 - Adam Dunn - Dunn is retiring. In 2005, he was coming off of a breakout season where he hit 46 HR and drove in 102.

MM-AJ - Andruw Jones Majestic Materials (45/75) - That first $1 pack of Sweet Spot revealed a fairly low numbered jersey card of a guy who rode high for Atlanta for a bit. I know this card doesn't bring the big bucks at the local card show anymore, but I'd expect that many Braves fans wouldn't kick this out of their binders/top loaders.

84 - Richie Sexson - After seeing Sexson's card, however, you can't help but think he's dated and from a different era. Sure, Sexson's name wasn't necessarily thrown in with the steroid monsters a la Bonds, Sosa, Palmeiro and McGwire, but he's a guy who wasn't really productive after those other names were out of baseball. And he hit a lot of HRs for a spell.

Here's the obligatory peek at the reverse.

1992 Classic Draft Picks Football

 Let's take a time machine way back.  1992, I graduated high school, started college that fall and to be honest don't remember any of these guys.  I found this pack while rummaging through the discount pack box at Bosco's on trade night.  It's hard to pass up a classic football pack for a quarter.

 Spoiler, I didn't get one of the ten limited production foil stamped cards.  According to the checklist at Trading Card Database there were also autos and gold parallel cards in the packs.

So lets have a look at who I got.  I had to look all these guys up on the interwebs.

 Quentin was picked #2 overall by the Colts in the 92 draft, he retired in 1999.

 Derek Brown was drafted 14th overall by the Giants and also retired in 1999.  He missed the entire 1995 season after taking a vicious hit in the pre-season that lead to a collapsed lung and damage to his spleen and kidney.  Yikes that fact that he came back to play again at all is pretty amazing.

 Greg Skrepenak here was drafted 32nd overall by the Raiders. He retired in 1997 and went into politics.  He is was now a convicted felon, found guilty of taking kickbacks in 2010.

 Alonzo Spellman is the only name I really recognize. Alonzo was drafted 22nd overall by the Bears and played in the NFL till 2001.  After that he got into mix martial arts fighting and due to his bipolar disorder ended up in jail in 2008.

 Couldn't find too much on Tony Sacca, although I didn't look hard.  He was drafted in the second round by the Cardinals and only played one season and spent some time in the World Football League with the Barcelona Dragons.

 Couldn't find anything about Luke Fisher.

 Kevin Smith was drafted 17th overall by the Cowboys and played his entire career with them retiring in 2000 due to injury, and as far as I can tell is not a trouble maker.

 Not much on Derrick, he only played a couple years in the NFL.

 Tim Lester was drafted #255 by the Rams.  He played though the 1999 season.

 At least these two yahoo's I know.  Ty was drafted by the Packers back in 1992 and got to back up Brett Favre for 4 years, before moving on and having some success with the Eagles. Desmond Howard would play for the Packers as well, but only for the 1996 season, but that was enough, he ended up taking the Super Bowl XXXI MVP award that year.

1993 Skybox DC Comics Bloodlines

 I've got another comic card pack for you. This time it's DC Comics Bloodlines.  The Bloodlines storyline ran through 23 of DC's titles annuals in 1993.  It was a major crossover that pretty much spanned the entire DC universe and created a host of new characters and spawned 7 new titles all of which were pretty short lived except for Hitman, which was pretty good and written by my favorite comic writer Garth Ennis.

I find it funny the pack says "Because great cards are hard to find", because these really aren't that great. As a matter of fact I think the whole point of this set was simply to cash in on the trading card craze going on at the time.  These card add absolutely nothing to the comics or the story and are pretty pointless. The set is pretty small with just 81 cards, but there was the possiblility of getting a foil embossed Superman card or a mail-in card for the 5th "Real Superman" card. Remember this is around the Death of Superman storylines too.  I think there was also the very slim possiblity of pulling an autograph of the some of the writers and artists. The first 54 cards are like the ones below and feature some cool comic art on the front and a puzzle piece on the back. Cards 55 - 72 are character cards and at least have some information on the New Blood characters.  Cards 73 - 79 are cards featuring the alien parasites, and the last two cards are checklists.  For the full checklist and pictures of the main set you can go over to Trading Card Database.

2014 Topps Series 1 Retail

Greetings!

Hope everyone's enjoying their weekend.  This pack was sitting in my scan folder and for some reason wasn't posted in a timely manner.  The Jedi posted a hobby pack at the beginning of the baseball season, so we need a pack from a big box store.  It's 2014 Topps Series 1!

12 cards in the retail pack as opposed to 10 cards in the hobby pack.  Everyone knows the design and read each others' opinions by now, so let's just fly through the cards:

#261 – Michael Brantley

#208 – Dayan Viciedo

#324 – Elvis Andrus

#142 – Zack Greinke

#185 – Howie Kendrick

#UC-41 – Jacoby Ellsbury Upper Class

#48 – Jarrod Saltalamacchia (Target Variation)

#177 – Esmil Rogers

#188 – Mark Melancon

#155 – Daniel Murphy

#133 – Xander Bogaerts (RC)

#136 – Will Middlebrooks

An east coast / Red Sox heavy pack.  I'm sure someone's pleased with it.  Here are some backs:

 

Anyway, that's the pack.  Have a safe and happy Thanksgiving, and don't get hurt grabbing those Black Friday deals.  More later...thanks for reading!

2014 Topps Update Jumbo Hobby Pack

A big old handful of this years update from a 50 card jumbo pack.

First up is the pack hit, I guess, and base card example of Jason Giambi.  This is Jason's photo variation.

The rest of the base.

The parallel inserts.

I'm unclear to why Topps decided to change all their card labeling systems for Update and moved from basic numbering to lettering, on all their inserts.

An Ironman Fond Farewell.

89  Die Cut Mini - also no lettered not numbered.

My favorite insert in the set.