Mostly a 1986 Topps Traded repack brick

The highlights of this may have been the XRCs of fan favorites like Wally Joyner, Andres Galarraga, Bobby Bonilla John Kruk and Bip Roberts - I'd prefer a repack with a lot more variety as far as brands and years go, but there is a good mix here and I'm just glad the 'bulk' wasn't mostly junk wax era flagship Topps.

1986 Topps Traded

#51T Wally Joyner XRC

2020 Topps Finest James Paxton #96

1986 Topps Phil Niekro #790

#126T Bobby Witt

#6T Don Baylor

#68T Mickey Mahler

#67T Steve Lyons

#125T Mitch Williams

#37T Terry Forster

#34T Mark Eichhorn

#54T Bob Kipper

#25T Mark Clear

#17T Tom Candiotti

#5T Scott Bailes

#62T Rudy Law

#4T Paul Assenmacher

#55T Wayne Krenchicki

#124T Dick Williams

#128T George Wright

#41T Ken Griffey

#116T Alex Trevino

#52T Charlie Kerfeld

#45T Billy Hatcher

#102T Ted Simmons

#109T Tim Teufel

#61T Dave LaPoint

#57T Mike LaCoss

#111T Andres Thomas

#108T Danny Tartabull

#87T Dan Plesac

#15T Steve Boros

#16T Rick Burleson

#92T Bille Jo Robidoux

#120T Bob Walk

#97T Joe Sambito

#72T Andy McGaffigan

#103T Sammy Stewart

#98T Billy Sample

#76T Jerry Mumphrey

#129T Ricky Wright

#17T Bill Cambpell

#119T Ozzie Virgil

#131T Paul Zuvella

#36T Scott Fletcher

#77T Phil Niekro

#63T Rick Leach

#73T John Cerutti

#99T Dave Schmidt

#21T Carmen Castillo

#9T Juan Berenguer

#33T Mike Easler

#78T Randy Niemann

#39T Jim Fregosi

#101T Tom Seaver

#44T Moose Haas

#88T Darrell Porter

2007 Topps Felix Hernandez #435

2007 Topps Mike Mussina #452

2007 Topps Craig Biggio #517

2007 Topps Jim Thome #481

2007 Topps Tom Glavine #410

2007 Topps Gary Sheffield #470 

1981 Fleer Rod Carew #168

1992 Topps Stadium Club Eddie Murray #795

2007 Topps Carlos Beltran #200

2007 Topps Andy Pettitte #32

2007 Topps Gary Sheffield #133 - I realize it just happens, but why are there two Sheffield base cards in the 2007 Topps set? 

2012 Topps Chris Sale #149

2018 Topps Chrome Stephen Strasburg #185

2014 Topps Opening Day Stephen Strasburg #21

2014 Topps Opening Day Chris Archer #153

2014 Topps Opening Day Chris Sale #151

2014 Topps Opening Day Patrick Corbin #68

2014 Topps Opening Day Hyun-Jin Ryu #213

2014 Topps Opening Day Yu Darvish #148

2014 Topps Opening Day Josh Donaldson #11

2016 Topps Opening Day Gerrit Cole #OD-163

2016 Topps Opening Day Stephen Strasburg #OD-194

2009 Upper Deck Goodwin Champions Mini Gary Sheffield #138

2009 Upper Deck Goodwin Champions Alex Rodriguez #64

1996 Upper Deck Collector's Choice Mo Vaughn #480

#100T Ken Schrom

#69T Candy Maldonado

#117T Manny Trillo

#91T Bip Roberts XRC

#12T Bobby Bonilla XRC

#130T Steve Yeager

#66T Jim Leyland XRC

#40T Andres Galarraga XRC

#19T John Cangelosi XRC

#31T Rob Deer

#2T Neil Allen

#7T Steve Bedrosian

#13T Juan Bonilla

#123T Bill Wegman XRC

#107T Chuck Tanner

#59T Mike Laga

#81T Bobby Ojeda

#113T Robby Thompson XRC

#56T John Kruk XRC

#115T Wayne Tolleson

Auxiliary boxes

Fighting the apathy - with auxiliary boxes.

During a given year, I'm adding, subtracting and basically moving baseball cards around - organizing them gives me an opportunity to play with my cards in a creative way, keeping up to date. How do I see the collection of trading cards I have as a farm system of sorts, where there is classifications [and levels] like a Major League Baseball team has its AAA, AA, A and short-season teams?

A.) Collecting topics box – my bread and butter collecting activity because it is sort of a scavenger hunt, where every card matters. I try to put all the cards I've picked up into a database.

There is no official checklist, so if I see a card fitting the description, I have to grab it or else you may lose for a while - I have to look for baseball card images online to see if there is a card I can find in-person through common bins.

When you sort through cards in-hand, it is nice watching unique theme come together as I am able to classify cards - I'd otherwise overlook.

B.) Cards for autographs box – arranged by ABC order and team, constantly updated.

I need to stick to picking up cards of younger players - guys who are more willing to sign.

As far as veterans who can still be accomodating - I'll see if I can stick with the high-brow set builder products like Topps Allen and Ginter.

C.) Free agent/no-team transaction box – this stack of cards feature players who have bounced around and may still be looking for a team. To thin it out, at any particular time, players' cards can be removed from this box if the player has been MIA long enough, where he isn't likely to appear anywhere.

D.) In-season/off-season update box – traded/free agents/et al; one a set of cards for a particular year covers in-season transactions and another set covers off-season transactions up to the next season's opening day. It probably isn't realistic to cover every update made, but I hope to cover 50-100 updates through individual players' cards.

I figure I can always add on a card of a player I missed later on, though I make to make updates as they happen - I want some kind of cap on the number of cards I have for any particular year at probably around 100-150, without missing any of the 'big moves,' but also covering the more obscure ones [with Major League and minor league players].

E.) Baseball rookie box – I hope to have about four or five rookie represented for all the teams, though I probably don't have cards for every player and may have to hunt them down the following year. Any card before a particular players' actual MLB rookie season is ideal to use and any card released the released after the rookie season. There will be cases where a handful of cards used in a given year's collection will be autographed; the goal is not to have an autograph set, though it is nice to have autographed cards to use for the particular box.

F.) Auxiliary A-Z box – I dump the cards I'm not going to use for autographs [within a season] here and once there is some 'build-up,' the cards are broken apart to be put in the main A-Z archives of cards.

G.) Team box – I dump the cards I'm not going to use for autographs [within a season] here and once there is some 'build-up,' it is sometimes fun to see a handful of assorted cards of one Major League team, sometimes featuring players of different eras, various brands of baseball cards and different years.

H.) Star A-Z box – I've got many cards of 'stars' from the last 20 years in binders, but when I get lazy, this is where I dump base star cards.

I.) Semistar A-Z box – have an 1980s/before section and a 1990s/present section; may lump in cards of the eras' stars if they aren't in plastic sheets yet.

J.) Award winners – I don't want something just cobbled together on the fly, though that may have been the idea. You haven't tracked down certain players and maybe the card types are too broad: non-certified autograph cards, retro cards, maybe beaters, GU cards, ugly subset cards, non award-winning year appropriate cards.

Featured pick-ups
1.) I think the card companies left on the block gouge the consumer - you have these boxes for $75 or more and you know the only thing in them are token hits i.e. maybe common GU cards and common AU cards [featuring no-name rookies]. I'm not going to say what anyone wants to bust, but busting boxes to pull single-swatch jersey cards, maybe a couple of autographs and a patch card of a lousy player isn't my centerpiece 'activity' in my collecting life.

2.) At a card show I was at over the weekend, I dug through some commons bins in order to look for unique cards - it dawned on me that a lot of brands of really nice looking cards were conceived and printed through the late 1990s. I was enamored by the featured premium quality technology [glossy, foil stamping], graphics, full-bleed images that told the story.

3.) You probably would have never seen these cards if you weren't standing there at that moment, flipping through them - you end up realizing however, since these cards are so 'old' [i.e. from years like 1994 Upper Deck Collector's Choice, 1997 Topps Stadium Club, 1998 Fleer Tradition, 1998 Fleer Ultra, 1998 Upper Deck, 1999 Fleer Tradition, 1999 Fleer Ultra, 2000 Fleer Ultra and 2001 Fleer Ultra] and years have gone by so fast already.

I'm sure someone busted them for something back in the day - but I got the sense these cards are about as worthless to collectors as those printed during what seemed to be the the golden years[1986-1991] of overproduction.


4.) I ended up picking up an initial 75 cards for $3 - was bored and eventually got around to picking up another 75 cards [maybe two extra] for $2 [looks like the guy at the table shaved off a buck from the total].


5.) For some collecting topics, the cards and/or players fitting the criteria don't always appear to be obvious - you have to scrutinize every card, because you don't want to miss one you can add. You have fun, you scan them, you put them in a database and there is your hobby. These days, we all want hits, but sometimes it is nice to be a little low-end, a little retro, get something good and plenty.