Blog bat around - junk wax favorites

1990 Upper Deck - I don't know if I thought Upper Deck was anymore special than the other sets of the day, but it had nicer production quality than Topps, Donruss or Fleer.

I think I wandered into a video store selling cards and picked up a copy of the Ryan for $0.50 - when I was just starting to collect as an adolescent.

1987 Topps - I felt like the commons from this set was perpetual repack fodder, where I have no lingering nostaglia for it as a whole.

For at least for a small period of time in the early 1990s however, the McGwire, Will Clark and Jose Canseco were still worth $2-$4 - as the most accessible early MLB cards for those junk wax era stars.

Maybe at a random stop mall show one time as a kid - I may have bought a few packs of the O-Pee-Chee version and ended up pulling a Barry Bonds rookie.

1990 Leaf - I remember a childhood friend coming over and showing me his trade box, where I was triggered by this card, a Ron Gant and Kevin Mitchell.

Admittedly, this was a set I did not get a chance to heavily collect - where the Frank Thomas and David Justice rookies ended up being out of sight, out of mind, I remember coveting a Carlos Baerga rookie since it was a $10 card of rising star second baseman.

1992 Fleer Ultra - I felt like after a boring and drab inaugural Fleer Ultra release the previous year, Fleer came correct with a jazzy, UV coated, foil stamped masterpiece.

Maybe I could not get enough thumbing through the stars that were teased in the base set as well as various insert sets - where I thought cards from this set would somehow be valuable for a long time.

1991 Fleer Ultra Update - it was not until this late season boxed set was released did I warm up to 1991 Fleer Ultra, with key rookies of the day like Jeff Bagwell, Mike Mussina and Ivan Rodriguez.

1990 Fleer - this was a basic set I had access to and there was a certain quaintness that appealed to me; maybe it was the effect where the image is coming through the card.

1991 Upper Deck - I remember blowing gift money to buy a box for $36 from a Thrifty's Drug Store, where the trading cards were locked up in a display case by one of the cashier counters.

Maybe this had some crossover appeal where there was a Michael Jordan baseball card inserted in packs - while the High Number version featured a Jeff Bagwell rookie.

1991 Bowman - I probably didn't care for the junk wax era Bowman sets, but I guess the 1991 set had rookie cards of Chipper Jones, Ivan Rodriguez, Jim Thome, Kenny Lofton, etc.

I end up giving the set credit for allowing me to discover my first card of an Angels prospect named Tim Salmon - when thumbing through the bulk cards a friend had a accumulated in a row within 3,200 count monster box at his house.

1990 Score - this was the first complete set I bought, probably from a Target and I used to thumb through the cards once in a while.

1992 Upper Deck - I kind of feel like this was the first Upper Deck set from the early 1990s that was everywhere regular packs, boxes, jumbo packs, team set blisters probably put together and sold by a third party distributor, etc.

At some point, I may have gotten tired of seeing the Ken Griffey Jr. multiple exposure card - where it was forever going to be a card worth $0.50.

I've come to appreciate the Bloodlines subset, featuring some of the more prominent Big League families of the day - I don't know if I'm misremembering things, but a neighborhood kid I used to play with used to pronounce 'bloodlines' as 'blood-lee-ness' and I used to get a chuckle out of that.

2006 Upper Deck Ovation Andre Ethier (RC) #125

I had an image of this card saved for at least the past 10-15 years and wanted to see if I could buy it outright - it looks like Ethier doesn't have much bat left after being sawed off, so it's was a neat broken bat shot I could slot into my themed mini-collection.

I assume this serial #'d (RC) of a longtime, if now retired Los Angeles Dodgers fan favorite is not hard to find - presumably I could have bought it at any time, but it might be a case where there might not be as many copies posted on sale at one time.

It was only during one random eBay search, where I remembered the card - did I feel comfortable paying a couple of dollars for the card and another couple of dollars to have it shipped to me, where I was able to scratch the itch.

Card shop trip - some odds and ends

I needed a good number of penny sleeves for various loose card projects, so I finally decided to make a card shop trip - I could literally be making weekly visits to my closest card shop, but I've been weird about it, where I don't want to make it a habit.

Of course if I'm at a card shop, I can't just be worried about card supplies - when I have the opportunity, I want to dig around and rummage a little, especially at the quarter bins.

Go figure the last time I was at the card shop, my priority was getting penny sleeves as well - but after I was completely done with my rummage, paid up and left the store entirely, did I realize that I'd forgotten my precious card sleeves.

As I hovered around the counter to go and pay for what I'd gone through this time around - I'd made sure to look for the penny sleeves and ended up grabbing one of the 1000-count bundles [rather than individual packs] that were being sold for $8.

This is just a tease of the cards I ended up with from the quarter bins - I've mostly bought bulk cards online, but there is nothing like building up a card shop or card show pile.

Building up 50 card stacks, I ended up with exactly 125 cards / items - where to make things easier, I always try and make sure I count out exactly the right tally.

In the quarter bins, I also found an oddball pack of 1993 Topps Stadium Club teams with only Colorado Rockies and Florida Marlins cards - maybe this was handed out somewhere and/or sold regionally, rather than a national pack release?

Florida Marlins portion
#11 Cris Carpenter
#16 Ryan Bowen
#17 Ramon Martinez
#18 Bret Barberie
#22 Mike Myers
#24 Darrell Whitmore
#23 Geronimo Berroa

Colorado Rockies portion
#2 Quinton McCracken
#1 David Nied
#11 Andres Galarraga
#29 Roger Bailey
#28 Danny Sheaffer
#24 Butch Henry
#30 Brad Ausmus