International Man Of Mystery

Joseph from CrazieJoe's Card Corner had a contest recently to celebrate his 500th post. You can read the details on the contest here, but needless to say, I took an educated guess and won. For the prize, I had a choice between a pack of baseball or hockey cards. I don't have a lot of hockey cards, although starting up a Sabres collection would be fun. I decided to go with the safe bet and chose the baseball pack.

I had no idea what brand or set I would be getting. All I knew was to expect mail from Canada (Hence my post title).

I got my package last Tuesday. My prize?

Oooh...shiny!

First of all, not 1 but 2 packs came my way! Bonus cards are always good. The cards are from Leaf's 2016 Babe Ruth Collection. I've seen these for sale at my local Wally World, but never had much of an interest in buying any. This will be my first real look at cards from the set, so lets see what first impressions I get:

Pack #1

Pack #2

What I like about the set:

I've mentioned this before, but I love vintage photography on baseball cards. Leaf showed some cleverness getting around licensing issues by showing some great shots of the Babe out of uniform. That shot of him in Victorian garb is amazing! The backs of the cards also offer up interesting trivia. (I never knew he switched between left and right field depending on where the sun was shining!)

What I don't like about the set:

Well, as to be expected, a set devoted to the Babe is going to have a heavy emphasis on the Yankees. The lack of Yankee licensing actually hurts Leaf here. Without the Yankee licensing, a lot of his pictures in uniform look weird, especially seeing just a plain blank cap. It's a shame such great photography has to be edited like that.

All in all, this looks like a pretty cool set from the sample size. It's only an 80 card set too, making an easy build. I would think it would appeal greatly to Yankee fans and/or fans of baseball's history.

Thanks again for the cards Joseph! Congrats on your 500th blog post! (only 480 to go for me...)