Impulse Buy Pays Off

I was shopping at my local Walmart when I had racked up a total of about $16.00. With four Lincolns in my wallet I decided to take my chances on two 2009 Topps packs rather than save the four bucks. If you don't already know I am attempting to collect the whole set. I am at the point where I am starting to get numerous doubles per pack except for the rookies and high number cards like classic combos, postseason highlights and Pro Bowlers.





The first pack was odd from the start. Generally I have noticed that the rookies are the first three cards, but this time I had Samari Rolle as my first card, and found only one rookie in the middle of the pack (Sammie Stroughter) Then, I saw something familiar; A Walmart exclusive All-American insert. My first two have been of Javon Ringer and Jeremy Maclin. This one was of 1st overall pick Matthew Stafford. Check it out:





I also got a gold version of the Peyton Manning Topps Town interactive card. Other than that it was just commons (Charles Woodson, Laverneous Coles, Torry Holt to name a few). The second pack started off with a bang as the second card was also of the first pick in the Draft. That's right; moments after pulling the All-American Stafford insert I pulled his base set rookie card! I also got an Everette Brown rookie and I got a nice classic combos card of Chris Johnson and Lendale White "Smash and Dash".


These were some nice pulls that will help me complete my set, so I am pretty pumped. I don't think Stafford will be the QB that everyone is hoping, because he is going into a pretty bad situation. It may be the worst situation in proffessional sports probably right behing playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates (atleast if your good you'll get traded). This does however help me complete the set and I am rooting for him to revive the Lions. Anyway, I'm glad I took the chance.

1994 Fleer Ultra Series II

I'm not even sure anymore where I bought this pack, but I certainly didn't buy it at any place called SAX/SAV-MOR or pay $1.99 for it. Also, the price tag is actually red but it scanned white for some reason. I wonder if there's some setting I should tweak.

427 - Duff Brumley (Yes, there's a guy named Duff Brumley. He played professional baseball, apparently.)

556 - Ravelo Manzanillo (The odd thing about this card is that I discovered that this is actually the second Manzanillo card I've scanned.)

506 - Domingo Jean

496 - Pat Rapp

432 - Chris James

498 - David Weathers (Do the Marlins ever break out the teal anymore?)

597 - Jaime Navarro Checklist (I had to look this one up to figure out who the player was.)

477 - John Burke

494 - Charlie Hough (This is officially the Marlins Pack.)

332 - Harold Reynolds (It's Mr. MLB Network again, only this time in an Angels uniform.)

491 - Jeff Conine (Marlins!)

347 - Eddie Murray (Great player, but weird to see him playing for Cleveland.)

305 - Sid Fernandez (I would have assumed that Sid was always a Met.)

4 of 5 - Ryne Sandberg Career Achievement Award (The king of the Small Bears in the '80s and '90s. These inserts are some of the more difficult ones to get in this set. I do like the idea of getting a guaranteed insert in a pack.)

2009 Topps Football Hits Retail Shelves

The base Topps set is generally one of the most widely respected and collected sets in the industry. At two bucks per pack it’s a great set to collect. This year over recent years I actually like the base set design. I disliked the black 2007 design and last year’s was just ok, but I really like something about the design this year.

I bought two packs of 2009 Topps football at my local Walmart, which is dreadfully the easiest way for me to get cards these days. In total I received three rookies in each pack. First pack had rookies of : Jason Williams # 381, Jamon Meredith # 377 and Rey Maualuga # 386. In this pack I also received a gold bordered Marc Bulger numbered to 2009. The gold card could have been better and definitely could have been worse, but it’s nice to get one in two packs. The gold bordered cards are randomly inserted in every four packs.

In the second pack I also got three rookie cards, one of which was an All-American insert of Javon Ringer. The All-American inserts are a Walmart exclusive and inserted in every four packs on average. The other two base set rookie cards where; Stephen McGee # 432 and a LeSean McCoy # 400. I like the McCoy rookie card. In fact, I generally like the Topps rookie cards that feature the players in their NFL team uniform and a professional design. Although Score came out before Topps and featured NFL uniform rookie cards it has a borderline childish design, which is also needed in the industry.

Also featured in the packs are one interactive Topps Town cards. I got Trent Edwards and Jamarcus Russell. In all, you get 12 cards; three rookies and a Topps town card, plus eight other commons. I got commons of players like; Reggie Bush, Hines Ward, Brandon Marshall and Greg Jennings.

I generally do not try to complete a set of cards, because every time I try to start it winds up becoming a waste of money. I find it hard to find commons for cheap, because I do not have access to a card shop within thirty miles and when I do they only sometimes have a common box of the set I am looking for. This year is different. I am going to attempt to collect the Topps set. If you have any commons to offer me in a trade for anything let me know, just leave a comment.

Weird Pack Of 2008 Goudey

I've been buying a couple packs of '08 Goudey that are 50% off at my local box store every chance I get and I've been pulling short prints and inserts at an above average rate I would say. One of today's packs is a prime example. The retail version advertised eight cards and here are my six regular base:

#103 Warren Spahn
#91 John Lackey
#20 Jeremy Guthrie
#155 Chris Young
#195 Ryan Zimmerman
#72 Magglio Ordonez

Card Seven was a black-lettered short print:

#215 Harmon Killebrew

And the fun doesn't stop there...Card Eight and Nine [yes, Nine! I got an extra surprise in this pack] were not one, but two Sport Royalty insert cards.

#301 Bo Jackson Sport Royalty

#315 Mark Messier Sport Royalty

Nine cards in an eight-card pack and three short printed cards. This is about as good as you can get without pulling an auto or relic.

2006 Fleer

Whew, it's been a while since I posted anything here... sorry 'bout that. The last pack I posted was 2006 Fleer Tradition. This post features 2006 Fleer, ummm, regular.



Already I like it better than Tradition. The pack features a much more subdued photo of Griffey over a blurred background. Other than the occasional action shot, I’m a subdued baseball card kind of guy. I like things that are simple and clean, so I’ve got a hunch that I’ll like this pack more than the Tradition pack no matter who or what I pull.

Like its 06 Tradition couterpart, there are no insertion promises on the back other than a random assortment of 2006 Fleer Baseball trading cards.

Also worth noting is that this is a hobby pack (as opposed to retail), even if it only means that I’ve got a slightly better chance of pulling a nice insert. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like I get more bang for the literal one buck this pack cost me this way.

#137 Brad Penny, #222 John Patterson, #1 Adam Kennedy. Woah – I didn’t realize these had the “matte” finish of the Fleer cards from the late ’90s. I won’t have to worry about smudging if I send any of these away for a TTM autograph attempt. Kinda cool that both Penny and Patterson are looking right at the camera, and you gotta love Kennedy’s flip-up shades!



#256 Billy Wagner, #35 Jason Kendall, #366 Travis Bowyer. Two of the three are pictured in old uniforms… just an observation.



#LC-7, Bobby Abreu Lumber Company. One of my favorite Fleer insert sets over the years, especially when the entire back ground looks like a bat. I’m a sucker for cards with faux wood on ‘em.



#145 Jeff Kent, #400 Tino Martinez, #179 Felix Hernandez. I bet Kent is making some sort of snide comment to the runner, to which the runner is politely smiling and nodding even though he’s thinking, “Man, this guy’s a tool.”



Sorry about the mini pics, I must've selected the wrong file sizes. Blogger can be a bit of a pain when it comes to shuffling photos around so instead of re-doing the whole thing on a Friday afternoon, click on the scans for larger images if you're interested!! I can’t say the actual players were better than those pulled in the pack of Fleer Tradition, but I do like the cards themselves more. Most people seemed to really like Tradition, but I’ve always preferred a cleaner look. Like I’ve said before, the fact that there’s so much variety out there is what makes the hobby great… or at least what used to make it great.

2009 UD Spectrum

"Purple rain, purple rain... purple rain, purple rain..." Come on, sing along, you know you want to.

Welcome to quite possibly the most-purplest post ever produced for a Pack to be Name Later. And you don't even get to enjoy it all! See, these are V-E-R-Y purple cards that come in a VERY purple pack. And my scanner freaked out when I tried to feed these to it, so it took prismatic nature to heart and forced blue in there, though there is no blue on the cards themselves. That's the thing to remember: there is no blue.


The first two cards are a pair of Carlosesesessss. Carlos Beltran (Mets) and Carlos Zambrano (Cubs). You see where the blue is? On the card, that is silverish. In fact, if these cards were GREEN, you would instantly think "The Mask" because they give off that same weird shine the inside of the mask did in the movie.


The next two cards are BJ Upton (Rays) and Dan Haren (D-Backs). Haren is pictured in an A's uni. No airbrushing here, boys and girls. But, we do have a bit of background removal. The players are featured cut-out style with only the purple "lights" behind them.


The last card is not a Spectrum at all. Thank goodness it is not another Yankees Legacy card either. This time, it is a 20th Anniversary card. This one celebrates Griffey Sr's retirement after 19 seasons. Good gracious that is a long time to play ball.


The card backs are pretty straight forward. The back of Upton's shows he played for the Devil Rays, Devil Rays, Devil Rays, Rays. Heh-heh, that's funny. Maybe next season, they'll just be the Ra's or move them to Canada and they could the Ay's. Really, I should stop sniffing the packs...

*Note: I want to give a big shout out to Matt who not only lets me create goofy wrappers for the header here, but then actually POSTS them! Thanks!

1994 Fleer Jumbo

Let's face it. I am interested in pretty much anything that was released after 1993, the year that I stopped collecting, no matter how terrible it is. This looks like a set I might have been interested in collecting. I'm not entirely sure how "it's a whole new ballgame!" but I'll take their word for it. Here are all 21 cards in the jumbo pack, marked down about 75% from the SRP.

34 - Greg Harris

10 - Alan Mills

47 - Bob Zupcic (You don't mess with someone named Bob Zupcic. You just don't.)

129 - Travis Fryman (This looks like a pretty decent set, with nice photography, full color fronts and backs and a simple yet memorable design. It beats the hell out of 1990, 1991 or 1992 Fleer, that's for sure.)

87 - Mike LaValliere (Yikes.)

68 - Luis Polonia (Just buntin'.)

39 - Carlos Quintana (I wonder if the ball is already at the base and the 3rd baseman is just waiting to apply the tag.)

17 - Harold Reynolds (Mr. MLB Network)

79 - Joey Cora

56 - Steve Frey (Steve Frey's pullin' the ol' Hidden Arm Trick.)

16 - Kirk Reuter Rookie Sesnsations (The '90s sensation - Rookie Sensations! I was never cool enough to get many of these back in my youth. I swear that these started in basketball and Fleer tried to apply them to their baseball line.)

439 - Alex Cole (The other impressive thing about this set is the full color photos on the back that are totally not the same as the front. Current manufacturers - er, I guess there's really only going to be one soon - could take a lesson from this.)

506 - Brett Butler

686 - Dave Burba (Reminds me of my Giants-loving friend from high school.)

498 - Mark Portugal

551 - Jeff Shaw

361 - David Justice (Justice was coming off of a 40 HR, 120 RBI season. Impressive. I couldn't stand watching Atlanta's baseball team, though, with their constant tomahawk chop thing that they did. To this day, our state's newspaper will not print the nickname of this team or Washington's NFL team as a matter of principle.)

539 - Lou Frazier

564 - Eric Hillman

661 - Mark Davis (Davis was a great reliever with the Padres at one point and then completely fell of the map with the Royals. I'm not sure what happened to him after that, but apparently he reappeared with the Padres as documented here.)

350 - Steve Avery (Avery was supposedly better than Glavine, Smoltz and Maddux... until he wasn't anymore. It didn't take long.)

As usual, these cards are all up for grabs, especially if you have any crummy mid-'90s Cardinals to send me in return.