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.