2019 Topps Archives Baseball Hobby Pack

Did my after work Thursday stop into Don's Sportcards here in Anchorage.  He's got a huge selection of junk wax he recently picked up and lots of other goodies floating around the shop right now.  I also picked up a sample pack of this year's Topps Archives.  This year's set features players on the 1958, 1975 and 1993 designs. 

 Here are the pack odds and NPN address.

 Let's have a look at the cards.  I will say I got a Tigers hot pack.  First up the 58's.

 The 1975.  I will say it's kind of cool to see Cobb on the 1975 design.  My biggest peeve with the set is they included my all time favorite player Robin Yount again, but put him in the 1993 design, a set he was featured in as an active player.  It would have been neat to see him on the 1958 design.  Ahem.

 If you're counting that's 3 Tigers in the pack of 8 cards.

 The 93's.

 Fergie!

I also managed to beat the odds, especially since I literally only bought one pack to try out.  And hit one of these Expo's 50th Anniversary autos.  They're not all that rare.  As a matter of fact I think they're the most common auto in the set falling 1:54 packs.

1999 Fleer Tradition Football Hobby

Greetings...

Hope everyone is doing well.  I'm off tonight so I figured it's time to put up another quick post from the National $1 packs.

10 cards per pack, 300 cards in the set.  Here's what I got:

#32 - Garrison Hearst
#25 - Derrick Alexander

Ah, pure turn of the century Fantasy Football awesomeness.  I'm very sure both of these guys saw some time on my teams' roster at some point.

#277 - Edgerrin James (RC)
#266 - Antwan Edwards (RC)

Another turn of the century Fantasy stud here in Edgerrin James.  Other key rookies back in 1999 were Daunte Culpepper, Torry Holt, Donovan McNabb, and Ricky Williams.

#70 - Joey Galloway
#114 - Leroy Hoard

Here's the checklist for those who are interested.

#50 - Stephen Boyd
#193 - Muhsin Muhammad

The design of the 1999 Fleer football release matches it's baseball version.  I don't think the baseball release color-coded the player's name and team however (here, the AFC teams were red, the NFC teams were blue, and the rookies were gold).

#284 - Shaun King (RC)
#84 - Marvin Harrison
No # - Checklist

Ah yes, 1999 was the draft where there were 5 QBs taken in the first 12 picks.  Shaun wasn't one of the 5; he was the 50th pick. 

The checklist was at the end of the pack.  Here are some backs:

Anyway, that's the pack.  Not a bad pack for the time; lots of solid players and a couple recognizable rookies as well.  No inserts, but a nice design makes this a winner in my book.  Thanks for reading!

1992 Classic Draft Picks Baseball

I stopped by one of my local LCS's Don's Sportcards here in Anchorage, Alaska and he had a just started putting out parts of a huge collection of miscellaneous stuff he had acquired. Lots of early to mid-90's junk but cheap. He had a ton of random packs in a box for a quarter a piece and among those packs were a bunch of 1992 Classic Draft Picks.  I figured for a quarter a pop I'd snag them all.  This was the best pack out of the bunch.

 While the checklist isn't stellar there is one stand out rookie in the set.  You also get one foil parallel card per pack. Only 20 of the 125 players were featured in the foil parallels.  Here's what I got.

 If your wondering who a lot of these guys are you're not alone.  Most of the players in the set, like most draft sets, had very limited major league careers if any.  Although there are a few names I recognized while sorting though the cards.

By far the best card, or rather the biggest name in the set is Derek Jeter, who manages to make an appearance in the pack. I managed to pull 3 Jeters from the packs I bought.

 Here's a look at the backs.  As far as backs go Classic did a great job with a huge back photo.

 As luck would have it the best foil parallel you could pull also happens to be Dereks and that's why this was by far the best pack I opened pulling this. 

 The backs for the foil parallels are slightly different, with different card numbering.  The backs also have a matte finish, while the base cards have a glossy finish.

Not bad for a bunch of quarter packs.

2019 Topps National Baseball Card Day Gallery Previews

These packs are found in specially marked Bowman Platinum hanger boxes at Wal-Mart.  There is the possiblity of finding autos in these as well.

There is also a coupon card for the upcoming Gallery set  Lets see the four preview cards I got.
The art looks great like always with this set.

 The Kid

 Wolverine!

 And it gets rounded out with Yadi.

2006 Topps Series 1 Hobby

Greetings!

Hope everyone is doing well.  The National Sports Collectors Convention (aka National) wrapped up it's 40th edition over the weekend.  By all accounts it was a successful one.  I was able to partake in the festivities Sunday afternoon, taking my two boys with (Note to self: You get in free if you show up with like 5 hours left in the convention).

It was everything I was expecting the National to be...rows and rows of vendors of various sizes with various sports things to sell.  Part of me was expecting to see all sorts of Sunday sales (because those smaller vendors wouldn't want to bring everything back home with them).  On the contrary, a lot of those smaller vendors were starting to pack it up within the first hour we were there.

The boys did well for their first appearance.  The younger one was none too pleased when he found out where we were going and played Dr. Mario World on his phone for most of the time we were there.  We did find a couple of vendors who had Pokemon cards, so seeing Pikachu with Japanese text was his highlight.  The older one was predictability quite excited to look at memorabilia and wanted to spend my money as much as possible.  I told them they can get 1 reasonably-priced item each.  The younger opted for a couple of Pokemon cards (not the Japanese ones I would have rather him pick up).  The older one chose an autographed picture of Jason Heyward over one of Jose Canseco.

As for me, there was no time to sift through the dime and quarter boxes since I was more concerned about making sure the boys didn't wander off too far.  The Beckett booth had their price guides at half off so I picked up the baseball, basketball, and football issues (I haven't bought a basketball or football issue in probably well over a decade).  At the end of day, we passed a couple of booths that had various packs for a dollar each.  The boys were tired so they found some chairs at the next booth to use while I got to peruse.  After a while I decided to find packs that have yet to be posted on APTBNL.  Enough of the rambling...for the inaugural National post, here's a pack of 2006 Topps Series 1!

Madding posted a retail pack a long time ago, but this is a Hobby pack.  What did I get?  Well, there's a reason why this is the first pack:

#206 - Edgardo Alfonzo
#276 - Jack McKeon

Back in 2006, the National was held in Anaheim.  From what I understand, the convention hasn't been out to the west coast since.  I'm surprised this year's National wasn't out in California since that's where it all began.

#12 - Coco Crisp
#102 - Xavier Nady

Coco's shown here with the Indians, but signed with Boston for the 2006 season.  He did return to finish his career with Cleveland in 2016.

#85 - Hank Blalock

I always enjoyed Blalock.  I was surprised to find out he retired back in 2010.

#TA-JJ - Josh Johnson

Woo!  National dollar pack mojo!  Sure it's a Marlin, but an auto from the discount bin is an auto nonetheless.  I'm not sure about the odds of pulling the Johnson; there are odds on the wrapper, but there are 7 groups to choose from.  I'm assuming he's in the one of the lower groups.

Overall, not a bad auto to get.  When he retired at the end of the 2013 season, he had a record of 58-45 with an ERA of 3.40 and a 24.2 WAR.

#250 - Ichiro (Rawlings Gold Glove Award)
#257 - Andruw Jones (Rawlings Gold Glove Award)

Always good to pull an Ichiro.

#244 - Mark Teixeira (Rawlings Gold Glove Award)
Checklist (1 of 3)

Don't know if the Checklist counts as the 10th card or if I got one less because of the auto.  Anyway, here are the backs because National:

Anyway, that's the pack.  Overall, a nice experience down at the National.  Hopefully next time I can sift through the singles boxes.  Thanks for reading!

1997 Upper Deck Collector's Choice Series 1

Welcome back to the '90s, the greatest decade there ever was. Way back in the year 2012, I posted a pack of 1997 Collector's Choice Series 2 and have been constantly harassed about a possible follow-up project. At long last, here is the prequel to that legendary pack.

14 - Sammy Sosa The Big Show - We kick things off with a truly Big card. Sosa would become even bigger the following year.

41 - Alex Rodriguez The Big Show - These packs really deliver on the inserts, with a second Sportscenter-related insert found here. If the super-hyped A-Rod had hit a million home runs in 1998 (he hit a paltry 42... what the hell?), no one would have batted an eye. The formerly slight Sosa going toe to toe with the massive McGwire was weird, though, wasn't it?

154 - Marty Cordova - Finally, a base card. I can breathe again.

110 - Travis Fryman - Whenever Ignignokt (and maybe Err?) called Frylock "Fryman", it made me think of this guy. That's probably not totally fair, because he was a pretty solid player for a lot of years.

233 - Joey Cora - I think this is going to go in my girlfriend's "flying guys" collection.

144 - Scott Karl - He's stretching and just trying to catch a break, man.

16 - Brady Anderson Stick-Um's - Stickers, for the kids!

5 - Darin Erstad Rookie Class - I think this set has one of the better Collector's Choice base designs, but I am not a big fan of these Rookie Class cards.

200 - Ozzie Smith - Upper Deck was paying a proper final tribute respect to a legendary player here, something Topps could probably never will learn from.

156 - Rick Aguilera - Here's a look at a card back. Stats and a factoid!