Done

I am not cut out to be a blogger, I will just enjoy my time collecting and reading others blogs. So long.

1984 Topps Rack Pack

I had never really been a huge fan of this set, until i broke this pack open on Saturday night. Looking at the cards with more of an apprectiation now of just how mice this set looks and less of an emphasis on how much I can sell a PSA 10 for on Ebay, has now made this probably one of my favorite sets of the 80's, and one that I am going to try and finish off this summer now. So after ripping 72 packs of the set that should have been aborted, I had great fun tearing through this pack with my grandfather looking at some cards of the guys I remembered collecting as a kid.

366 Padres Team Leaders
203 Matt Keough
48 Julio Franco - Everyones favorite journeyman in his first regular base set Topps card.

13 Scott Holman
44 Jim Morrison
534 Pete O'brien
598 Rusty Kuntz - Every joke has already been said about this poor guy. Here is a great article on him

45 Jerry Mumphrey
696 Pirates Leaders
124 Damaso Garcia
604 John Lowenstein
177 Jerry Hairston
386 George Hendrick All Star
174 Juan Berenguer
32 Bobby Ramos
484 Ozzie Virgil
489 Dave Von Ohlen
208 Jose Oquendo
608 Bobby Johnson
271 Moose Haas
465 Mookie Wilson
654 Bob Bailor
339 Roy Lee Jackson - He looks pissed

427 Rick Leach
610 Steve Sax
360 Willie Randolph
309 Tony Phillips - His best years would come much later. During the "steroid era", hmmm.

520 Bob Boone
378 Bob Brenly
560 Carlton Fisk - Three catchers in a row, saving the best for last.

153 Dick Tidrow
493 Mike Norris
55 Dave Concepcion
641 Mike Richardt
765 Ken Forsch
476 Tom Tellmann
460 Dave Winfield - He either homered or hit a can of corn.

20/22 Gary Carter Glossy All-Star - Never a fan of these growing up, but I am excited to get them all now.
137 Earned Run Average Leaders
601 John Tudor
466 Gene Garber
498 Rich Gedman
518 Greg Walker
600 Rod Carew - Rod looks intense even playing first base.

492 Tucker Ashford
204 Bobby Meachem
722 Bob Welch
532 Eric Show - R.I.P. even if you did bean "The Hawk".
525 Willie Wilson
638 George Vukovich
711 AL Active Career Hits Leaders
745 Dennis Eckersley - Hall of Famer number 4 in this pack.
543 Craig McMurtry - Holy shit it is Napoleon Dynamite with a moustache.

302 Barry Bonnell
52 Paul Splitorff
678 Chris Spier

All in all this wasn't the greatest pack for star power, but I had a lot of fun opening the pack. final rating 6.5/10.

1988 Donruss Goodness Part 7

So I cracked open that 2nd wax box I had. I think I got more dups then cards I needed. I was expecting that though, I did pull a Glavine finally though. This will be my final post on this topic for a while as I have no more packs to open. Here is my wantlist for the set.

2,16,26,32,34,37,48,49,50,51,63,64,65,66,67,74,75,76,78,174,175,
176,177,178,179,188,210,291,336,347,348,351,352,353,355,406,
407,408,416,422,423,424,425,440,444,479,480,502,512,513,514,
515,516,517,521,522,525,526,536,556,557,558,559,560,570,611,
612,617,618,619,620,621,626,627,628,630,632,635,636,637,638,
639,640,653,658,659,660

BC2,BC6,BC8,BC9,BC10,BC13,BC18,BC22,BC24,BC25,BC26

1988 Donruss Goodness Part 6

I just couldn't do that pack by pack breakdown anymore...I was killing off my one reader, myself. Anyway, packs 19-36 were a lot of the same but I did pull 2 Mark Grace rookies. I have yet to pull a Roberto Alomar or Tom Glavine rookie. I have started to collate the set and I expect to be around 200 cards short, so it looks like I get to rip another box. Sweet!

1988 Donruss Goodness Part 5

Well after a 3 pack of shit, this box needs to redeem itself quick. Lets see if we can finally pull a Glavine or Grace and make this worth my time.

Packs 13,14,15

Pack 13 brings us back with both of the Bash Brothers! A regular base Jose Canseco and a Mark McGwire DK graced the wonderful innards of this wax pack. Also, two of my favorite cubs from the 80's were in there, Rick Sutcliffe and Keith Moreland.

Pack 14 gives us the base card of Mark McGwire and the DK Checklist. Yeah, it is sad, a checklist was worth mentioning.

Pack 15 Kirby Puckett and Dale Murphy MVP's where the highlights. The last 7 cards were all dups. Damn!

Again, you have all seen these, I will save the pictures.

1988 Donruss Goodness Part 4

So here we are again for our latest installment of my 1988 Donruss Wax Pack Opening Extravaganza.

Packs 10,11,12:

Pack 10 yeah this was a complete pack of shite. The biggest stars in the pack were Chuck Finley and Rick Reuschel. Nothing more can be said of this pack except that it sucked.

Pack 11 another craptastic pack. Joe Carter and Dave Winfield were the only minor stars in this pack. Too bad I don't need Winfield. I did get a Tony Fernandez DK though, which I needed.

Pack 12 man I should have just kept these wrapped in the pack. A Kal Daniels DK ends up being the "hit" of the pack.

No pictures for this post, it doesn't deserve the time it takes to take and resize one. Pathetic!

1988 Donruss Goodness Parts 2 and 3

Another day and some more 1988 Donruss to rip open. Lucky me. See I have all this other great stuff to open, but I won't allow myself to do it until I am done with 88 Donruss and done sorting my 1985 Topps into numerical order. Okay here we go.

Summary: Packs 4,5,6:

Pack 4 gave me hall of famer Wade Boggs, a Jose Mesa rookie, and a Paul Molitor Diamond Kings. What it also gave me were duplicates of Calvin Schiraldi and Kem Caminiti though, so 4 packs in I know have dups of 3 players.

Pack 5 was by far the most solid pack in terms of star power so far. It included Don Mattingly, Eddie Murray, and a Ripken Baseball Family card. Again though, in classic Donruss fashion I received duplicates of Mark Langston, Harry "Who the fuck are you" Spilman, and Lance Johnson.



Pack 6 well I pulled the "hit" rookie of the set in this pack, Gregg Jeffries. Well at the time it was the hit rookie, now that would probably fall to Mark Grace or Tom Glavine, but at the time this came out, that was a big money card (for me who was 7 or 8 ripping this stuff as a kid). I also pulled a Paul Molitor MVP and Bert "Why am I not in the hall of fame" Blyleven. But to keep the tradition of duplicates going i pulled dups of Mel Hall, Mike Schmidt MVP, Jose Gonzalez, and Buddy Bell. That brings our duplicate count to 9 after 6 packs. Great Ratio.



Summary: Packs 7,8,9:

Pack 7 starts off with a bang! First card in the pack is newly inducted hall of famer Rickey Henderson. A couple of cards later is a Rated Rookie of Jack McDowell, who was a good pitcher for the White Sox for a little while. Only 1 dup in this pack and that was Reds "great" Ted Power.

Pack 8 wow this takes the cake as the worst pack yet. Biggest star is Carlton Fisk who actually was one of my favorite players growing up. Other than that, an Ivan Calderon Diamond King was the only other card of note. Duplicates included Neil Allen and Bob Boone.

Pack 9 ends the day with another decent pack. Included is a Barry Bonds 2nd Year and a George Brett. Also included was a Billy Hatcher Diamond King. I am wondering what the hell was the criteria to be a Diamond King in this set. Billy Hatcher, Devon White, Ivan Calderon, as Diamond Kings, Really? WTF?

1988 Donruss Goodness - Part 1

Okay as I stated in my last post I would be opening some of everyone's favorite set of the 80's, 1988 Donruss. I will be tearing these bad boys open until I finish the set, so at a rate of 3 packs per post, we could be looking at 24 posts of this crap. Lucky for me no one reads this any way so I at least won't be scaring any of my (non)readers away. Actually there is no way I am blogging about every pack of this I break. I am going to do these first 3 and then I will open the rest in 3 pack bunches but only summarize them and not go into as much detail.

Pack 1

394 Ernie Whitt - A solid catcher for the Jays back in the 80's.

#384 Denny Walling - Utility player extrodinaire.

#374 Charles Hudson

#38 Jose Lind - Rated Rookie, was a bit of a flop in the league but not as much as the next guy.

#33 Shawn Abner - Rated Rookie and Super Flop, never played more than 97 games in a season or hit more than 3 HR's in a year either.

#90 Ted Higuera

#573 Don Robinson

#441 Greg Gagne

#308 Ken Caminiti - Rookie card of a guy who had a couple great steroid fueled years.

#298 Dave Winfield - Finally a hall of famer. A damn good one too.

#537 Charles Puleo

#528 Greg Cadaret

#395 Juan Berenguer

#385 Don Carman

375 Calvin Schiraldi

233 Dick Schofield - Solid SS for the California Angels in the early to mid 80's before he went from team to team to end his career.

Pack 2

#206 Buddy Bell - A solid player for quite a few years, and actually my first baseball glove had his signature in it, so bonus points for him.

#318 Keith Atherton - Look at those glasses, I still have a friend that rocks those transition lenses.

#306 Bill Long - 10.29 ERA in 1985 ouch.

#418 Mark Williamson

#31 Lance Johnson - Rated Rookie, a damn good leadoff hitter for a while with the White Sox and then in '96 had a banner year with the Mets hitting .333 while compiling 227 hits.

#284 Pete O'brien - A good 1B for the Rangers in the 80's. I remember looking at his stats as a kids and admiring his consistent 20 HR seasons. Pretty meaningless nowadays.

DK-18 Andy Van Slyke - One of my favorite players of the generation in all of his Diamond Kings glory.

#495 Mark Knudson

#384 Denny Walling - Look at that 2 packs in and already a duplicate.

#607 Harry Spilman - Who???

#597 Neil Allen

#93 Dave Righetti - All you Yankees fans know him.

#205 John Kruk - Solid player who weighed #190 on this card. Probably closer to #390 now.

#317 Mark Langston - One of the top "B" level pitchers of the generation. Great strikeout pitcher early in his career and had a couple real solid years later then with California.

Pack 3

#118 Sid Fernandez - One of my favorites from the '86 Mets. The first team I really loved.

#230 Alan Trammell - One of my favorite players of the 80's.

#342 Mel Hall - A solid contributor for a short while.

#606 Jim Gott

#104 Scott Bailes

#216 Dwight Evans - One of Boston's Greats

#327 Jeffery Leonard - Another good all around player

#316 Keith Hernandez - 1B for that '86 Mets Team I loved. A guy that really should get some consideration for the Hall.

#427 Greg Harris

#520 Jeff Ballard

BC-4 Mike Schmidt MVP - A Schmidt insert that really isn't an insert.

#615 Scott Lusader

#117 Chris Bosio - A solid contributor to the Brew Crew for a little while.

#229 Mike Marshall - My favorite Dodger growing up, and I didn't even like the Dodgers.

#341 Jose Gonzalez

Summary

So three packs in and I can't complain too much. I didn't pull many superstars, but I did get 44 different cards toward my set, and I bagged 2 HOF's, 3 Rated Rookies.



That is it for today, summaries for packs 4-9 will be posted tomorrow. Now everyone enjoy the rest of your night by ordering the Penn Vs. St. Pierre fight. Hopefully it lives up to the hype and is the fight of the year.

Holy Mail Day(s), Batman!

So yesterday/today turned out to be a great couple of mail days for me. Yesterday i received a big package from ebay seller mhazelto79. In that package were 2 83 Topps Baseball Grocery Rack Packs, 1 1985 Topps Baseball Rack, 1 1984 Topps Baseball Rack, 1 1981 Topps Baseball Grocery Rack (this was supposed to be an 82, hopefully we can work that out), and 2 1982 Topps Football Grocery Racks. To make things even better, today I received 2 1985 Donruss Racks from travatsea and then I got the grand daddy of them all. 2 Wax Boxes of 1988 Donruss Baseball from upbeat53_123. I paid a whooping $3.99 for both of these wax boxes, wow what a deal. If I am ever lucky enough to be able to contribute to A Pack A Day I will bust some of them on there and possibly run some contests.








Anyway, I am trying to put together a set of 88 Donruss, so I am going to be opening some of these today and I will post what I get. Hopefully I can finish this nasty beast without having to tear through 72 packs of this crap, and who knows maybe I will actually pull a Glavine and Grace rookie.

It's Official, No more new cards for me.

I was at Target buying some make up for the wife last night (I've been married for 7 years, I gave up any manhood I had years ago) and decided to pick up a couple packs of cards. One was a pack of 2008 Topps Baseball Series 2 and one was 2008 Playoff something-another. I busted them open, didn't get anything, and the pondered why the hell I just wasted $5.25 on some cards that I have no desire to ever build a set of. So while out on my nightly newspaper route where I do my best thinking, I came to an agreement with myself to stay focused and build some sets and that they are the only cards that I am allowed to buy from this point forward. So instead of aimlessly buying cards that will just go to waste, I can now only buy packs from the years that I set out to collect in the first place. So here we go, after 3 revisions, these are the sets I am planning on collecting. I have a 7 year plan on these, I want them all done by the time I am 35. At that point I can then decide if I want to continue with the hobby, or give it up, but I am now in it at least for the next 6.75 years. These are some lofty hopes, but many of the less expensive ones I either have or can knock out for under $10. So without further ado, here are the sets I will be finishing.

Baseball Sets

Topps 1973-1993 (I really like 72 but it is too costly at this point in my life. I start with '73 because I have a bunch, including a nice Schmidt rookie.)

Fleer 1981-1990 (I am stopping at 90 on this one, because 91 Fleer is one of the ugliest sets that I remember as a kid and I don't want to look at those awful cards ever again)

Donruss 1981-1992 (I can't believe I am going to actually do 81 Donruss. What a shitty set with some of the worst photos of all time, but what the hell. 92 was the year of the first really cool glossy inserted diamond kings, so I am really only doing that set because of them.

Football Sets

Topps 1973-1993 (Pretty much the same reason as baseball on these, 72 is great but too expensive, and I have a Franco Harris rookie that is just about gem mint. 76 will be fun because Payton is one of my favorite players, too bad I sold the rookie I had of him a couple of years ago when I thought I was going to become this great card flipper)

Score 1989 (This is a great set that I never had any of, but always wanted some of so this one will be a treat to myself.)

Pro Set 1989-1990 (I always liked the 89 set, and 90 I am only doing because after going through a bunch of my old cards I found boat loads of them so I might as well make a set of them)

For now there will not be any basketball or hockey sets. The ones I want to do for those sports are not in my budget right now so they will have to wait.

Pack Break: 08-09 Bowman Draft Picks and Stars "Hot Pack"

So this is my first time buying a "hot pack" off of Ebay. I bought a couple others at the same time and probably won't do it again. To me it kind of kills the fun of buying a pack at the store and seeing if I get lucky. I am not a basketball collector at all, so unless I pull a huge rookie auto, if anyone is interested in any of these let me know.

Okay first card.

Yi Jianlan

I don't know much about this guy except that when my home state Bucks drafted him, he wasn't too happy. One mediocre year here and then they send him out to the Nets.



Dwayne Wade Jersey Relic

This is a decent looking one color jersey card. Nothing great and definately doesn't pay for the pack, but I guess it's better than a Ben Gordon jersey. Again if anybody collects these let me know and I will send it to you.




Mike Dunleavy Chrome

What can I say about this guy except that he is a mix between Danny Ferry and Christian Laetner. A decent white forward from Duke who is a journeyman in the NBA.



Brooke Lopez base rookie

I don't know much about this guy. I am sure he will end up being your run of the mill big guy in the NBA.




So the pack was okay, I did get a Dwayne Wade jersey. We will see what happens with the other 2 hot packs I bought, they are both 08 Leaf Rookies and Stars football. I also have a cello of 1984 Topps Football that I will be busting this weekend.

Pack Breaks coming soon

In the last week I have won 11 packs of cards off of Ebay. As they come in I will start breaking them. I received an 08-09 Bowman Draft Picks and Stars "Hot Pack" that will be the first thing I open. I don't collect basketball really, but I had to see how these hot packs worked so I picked one of them and a couple leaf rookies and stars football up off of Ebay. I am sure I will end up with a bunch of junk, but thats okay, at least opening them will be fun.

Not all the way back

I was rummaging through a hobby shop yesterday and I couldn't quite bring myself to purchase anything. Being out of serious collecting for 15+ years, I was shocked to see that there were certain packs of cards (new ones,not vintage), that were going for $20 a pop. This said pack had 5 cards in it with the guarantee of either auto,relic, or some kind of crazy rookie card. Let me tell you, I better pull a Wayne Gretzky auto out of this pack or its not worth my money. I just purchased a cello pack of 1984 Topps Football on Ebay for $6.99 ($11.94) delivered. That is even more than my cheap butt usually likes to spend, but I wanted to splurge a little. At least in that pack I have 10 chances to pull either a Marino or Elway rookie which pretty much have no chance of ever losing their value.

My return to collecting

I left the hobby of seriously collecting sports cards about 15 years ago. I have bought the occasional pack and thought about getting serious about it a couple of times since then, but then never stuck with it. This past Christmas my grandfather was looking for some 08/09 Victory hockey cards and I hunted and hunted for them but never was able to find them. Just the thrill of the search has caused me to want to get started in it again. So I am going to both buy cards to collect as well as some to sell to try and fund my hobby.

While surfing through the interwebs the other day I came across a blog about opening wax packs and from there found many others that were similar. I found it fascinating to read about other collectors opening 1984 Topps or 1988 Donruss, etc, it brought back so many great memories. I had some packs on the way from Ebay, so I decided I was going to start blogging about my adventures in collecting as well. My wife thinks I am a dork, but thats okay, thats why she married me.