Opening Yay!

Yesterday was the day baseball fans waited for, Opening Day.  Well, besides the series in Japan a week earlier but still.  The last couple years I haven't opened new baseball cards so I have to admit its a bit sad starting the season and not having cards in your hand.  In full disclosure though, I haven't got to watch much baseball the last couple years either and without a regular radio in the house, its been tough to even listen to a game.  While I don't like the MLB blackout rules, I somewhat understand them.  However I hate the fact that you have to jump through hoops just to LISTEN to a game online.  I can't listen to the local broadcasts online because they can't broadcast the games, so I'm stuck listening to country music when if I had a radio nearby the game would be on.  Though enough complaining because I do like the fact TuneIn let's you listen to a ton of Minor League games and soon I'll be listening to the Royals farm teams, and also the Gwinnett Stripers, largely because of how Tony Schiavone calls the games.

However, yesterday after a couple hours of rain delays and a couple hours of searching, I found a stream to listen to the Royals game from the 5th inning on... then I fell asleep in the bottom of the 6th.  I'm happy the Royals won though, so I can't complain.

Speaking of not complaining, I got out yesterday and went to my local second hand store.  WAIT!  This isn't random stuff.... IT'S BALL CARDS!

Whew, hope I didn't scare you off.  I was browsing and hit the area where cards have been displayed lately, but hey, I'm not in the market for 1991 Fleer picked over and 2 bucks for 10 cards.  But I didn't see those this time.

This time I saw three boxes.  Two boxes of what appeared to be complete sets, and one box which was more of a plastic tub that had cards tossed in, corner damage be damned.  I looked at the prices first, because hey, its gotta be cheap, or at least interesting.  10 cents a card, or 25 bucks a box.

Hmm, 25 bucks for a box of cards?  Wait, I can just open these?  Welp, that means they aren't complete sets, so no need to buy a whole box of 1990 Bowman slightly picked through.  Plus I could probably find them online cheaper (I don't know I didn't look, and don't want to).  To be fair, I spent a good 10-20 minutes going through the other two boxes that I didn't look at the Bowman cards but long enough to see they were pretty curved.  I might go back Monday and see if they are still there, but this time with a checklist to see what I have so I don't buy dupes.

All in all I found 50 cards, and spent 5 bucks.  I even bought some from the tub, but you'll see why in a bit.  First let's look on what I bought that I already had.

As you can probably tell, the other box was Upper Deck Collector's Choice.  I really liked these cards, but I liked the 1994 set better.  It was almost a full box, but realized no Cardinals cards were in it, so it was either picked through already or the donor kept them back.  It didn't bother me either way, because I would have likely just got a couple- Ozzie Smith, and maybe Ray Lankford or someone.  As for these cards, I knew I had the Ventura card, but it was his rookie card, and figured it was worth 10 cents, plus I saved it from worse damage in that tub.  The Chen card I thought I had but wasn't sure.  I like Chen anyways, so I didn't care.  The UD cards I wasn't sure on, but no big loss on getting 4 doubles.  In total I got 6 doubles out of picking 50 cards, I think I did really good.

So what else did I find?

Holy cow, a George Brett AND Robin Yount card?  Don't mind if I do.  It seems odd to find in a 1995 product though, but I guess the baseball strike likely got them worried they needed as much star power as possible.  Also seems a bit odd to have a best of the 90's cards when the decade is half over and the two depicted on the card only played 3 of those seasons.  Oh well, I own it now.  I also own pretty much the rest of the Royals set, which I actually didn't have.  1994 I have I think all of them, but the 1995 set I had pretty much just the ones I showed earlier that were dupes. 

More amazing in that box was a couple Gold signature cards of Royals Mike Macfarlane and Vince Coleman.  I know the Coleman card has a big crease in it probably from other cards crammed into the box sitting on it, but I don't care.  I didn't have any of the Gold signatures, so I was happy to find them.  There was another on in the box too, but not a Royal and I forgot who it was.  It wasn't a hall of famer or anyone so I didn't want to spend 10-20 bucks on cards, so I didn't get it.

In the tub I found two more Royals cards, the Clinkscales I was pretty sure I had, but turns out I didn't.  I have one of his other Classic cards though I think.  The Karns card was a huge surprise to me because it shows that while the two other boxes are 90's cards, the tub has potential to have modern ones I didn't have.  I think this was the only 2018 card in the tub, but still a good find.  I'm thinking the tub was a kids collection a mom donated or something do to the carelessness of the cards, plus you'll see why later they might not have been dumped just to clear space.

Even if the Collector's Choice box was picked through, I still found plenty of other non Royals cards to make me happy to find these.  On the surface the Pat Mahomes card seems out of place with these others, but for those not in the know, he is the father of current Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes.  I have a couple of his cards already, but for a dime it was hard to pass up another. The rest are guys that I like or wanted to expand my collection of.  If I think I don't have it, I will rarely pass up a Lou Whitaker, Alan Trammell, or Kirk Gibson card.  Its hard to believe I like so many Detroit Tigers being a Royals fan.  The Schilling card I think I had at one point but I don't now, so its good to have it (possibly) again.  I picked the Jack Morris first because I have a small amount of his cards, but I don't think I have any with him on the Reds.  Lastly I found Pudge and knew that was a keeper.

At this point I'm worried I'm going to spend a lot of money so I did actually put some back, but forgot who they were.  My next trip I might get some more, but we'll see. 

Let's start with the first three.  More from the first box I looked at, all former Royals.  It's good to build up my Bo Jackson collection, and even better its one without him wearing a White Sox uniform.  I was happy to find all three.

So in the tub I found the rest of these in this scan.  In fact I think the rest of the cards I show came from the tub.  The Joe Crede I got because he went to school fairly close to where I live, and if I ever resume work on my Missouri collection (not to be confused with the Mizzou collection), it will be a good card to showcase.

I never saw the Mattingly card before, but I really like it, so I couldn't pass up for a dime.  The Joe Morgan card is a bit plain, but since I don't have many of his cards, it was a good one to add.  The Yadier Molina card I was reluctant to get.  The corners are dinged pretty bad, which is why if the Cardinals collector dug through passed it up.  I'm also not a big fan of Yadi.  I mean I think he's a really good catcher, but I just don't care for him.  The reason I got him though is despite that, I think he'll go in the Hall of Fame, and this card will be a good card to display if I ever start a Hall of Fame collection which I've wanted to start for a while but never have.  The Robin Yount card I got because... IT'S ROBIN YOUNT!  Plus its a smaller sized card so I had to get it.

These next card were dinged up, but still shocked I found them and got them.

Mike Trout and Bryce Harper?  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  Sorry, just had a Don West Shop At Home flashback.  Anyways, sure, dinged corners, but I don't care.  I'm not planning on building a PC of them, but having a few of their cards won't hurt.  Recently I did some sorting of cards and saw that I have a Bryce Harper rookie.  Just sitting in a random box with other cards.  So I have that going for me.

The bottom row is more Cardinals, but I ones I liked.  First the Wainwright card I might have.  I haven't looked all the way, but remember a similar card my sister got when she bought me some cards from Saver's in St. Louis that had quite a few Waino cards.  Either way, its still a nice card.  The Matheny one though was one I was a little more excited to find.  I love oddball cards and this one fits that bill.

Christian Day at the ballpark card is pretty cool.  I went to Christian Day at the K in Kansas City a few years ago, and it would have been cool to get a card or something from it.  Someone on the TCDB already asked if I found others and wanted to trade, but this was the only one I found and I'm happy to hold onto it for now.

I also found another oddball, but this was a hockey card.  In fact, the only hockey card in the entire tub.

I was happy to find a Blues card to add to my somewhat small collection, and might be one of a couple Adam Oates cards.  When I got home I noticed the banner on the side indicating it was from a card show.  That made it an oddball card and made me happier.  After some TCDB sleuthing, they found out they had four cards given out, and at some point they should be added to the database.  I think my Blues collection is somewhere around 50-60 at this point, and no real desire to expand it.

Before I go on, I realized I left out another scan of baseball cards.  So I'll show them here.

Two things I take away from this scan.  First, its good to have another George Brett card.  Second, David Cone must have been pitching on a St. Patrick's Day themed night or a tribute to the Kansas City A's game because his hat is green.  Seriously though, I think there are only at most 1-2 Royals from the base set I might not have, so COMC or a trader on TCDB should help finish it at some point.  That makes me happy.

Okay, so back to the tub.  This tub had it all, even basketball.  Possibly half the tub was basketball.  I don't have a high interest in NBA cards because I hardly watch anymore, but looked anyways because I hope to find a former Mizzou player or two.

No Mizzou guys, but still happy with what I got.  I want to build up my Otto Porter collection little by little so finding this one was great.  He went to high school near the bootheel of Missouri and his team won the class 1 basketball championship.  I know this because in either the final or semifinal he played my high school (a few years after I graduated as you all likely know), and he crushed us.  I mean it wasn't pretty.  By then there had already been NBA talk, so I knew I had to get at least a couple of his cards if he had any.  I might have about 5 now, so its a start, but no rush to add more.

When I did watch the NBA, I was a Kevin Garnett fan.  This was during his T-wolves years and I always hoped he'd win a title for them.  When he went to Boston, I still followed the NBA but to a lesser extent.  I was happy when he and Paul Pierce (yes I like him despite his Jayhawks roots) won a NBA Title.  By the time he went to the Nets and eventually back to Minnesota, I hardly ever watched the NBA so I didn't care, but its good to add a new Garnett card to the collection.  Also glad to find an Allen Iverson insert card.  I liked him too, even before he was talking about practice.  As blah as the NBA Hoops base cards are, their inserts I always liked.  Overall some nice pickups.

To be honest though, after seeing the first handful of cards from the tub being so dinged I was about to stop looking and pretty much all but maybe one of those cards would still be in that tub.  However I found one of these cards in the next scan, and knew it was time to dive in.

I just about gave up and got to the end of a short second stack of cards and already shifted my weight to pick up what I had when I saw the Anthony Rizzo card.  Some may not be a fan of these manufactured patch cards, but I'd never imagine I'd find one in a dime tub.  It has some serious dinging issues, but I figured at worst I could always use it to make a custom card of a Cubs player if I wanted.  But I doubt I do that.  Rizzo isn't a PC yet but if I decide to keep it it will be displayed nicely.  If not, I'm sure a Cubs fan or two would be interested.

As I got to one of the last stacks of cards in the tub, I started to notice dirt on my hand.  It was when I pretty much decided that these came from a kids collection.  He probably laid these out in his front yard or something.  Before deciding if it was worth it to finish going through them or stop and check out so I could get to the car and use some wet wipes I came across the Markieff Morris card.  First let me say I'm not a germaphobe to the point of Howie Mandell, but I will say I keep my hands clean.

Anyways, the Morris card was a nice finish to the tub.  I don't know a lot about him, but do remember the name.  Again a card like this for 10 cents is a no-brainer.  If I wasn't ready to go at that point I might have looked at the Bowman box, but since I already had 5 bucks worth of cards, I was happy to leave.  As for the rest of the store, I didn't see much like I usually do, so finding the cards was a nice salvage of a trip.

Before I wrap it up I figured since I scanned them, I'd show off the newest SI For Kids cards I got in the mail recently.

I got a Lebron card with the Lakers, so there's that.  Not much more though.  The Mookie Betts is good too, but this months didn't do much for me.  Still glad I get them though, and I still like the variation of sports.  I thought they'd have an extra baseball player this month though since MLB was the them of the issue. 

So with that its time to wrap it up.  Overall I think I did a pretty good job finding cards, and being able to get new cards on Opening Day.  I don't think I'll open much 2019 product this year, so days like these will be fun.  Thanks for reading everyone, and have a great weekend.