5 Envelopes, 5 Thank You's

It's rare for me to get 5 PWE of baseball cards in the same week, let alone the same day. So imagine my surprise when Johnny (Johnny's Trading Spot) sent 5 rectangular acts of generosity!

 

Each envelope deserves it's own look, as well as it's own thank you!

 

Envelope #1

 

The last time Johnny sent me cards, he sent me a bunch of those 582 Montgomery Club parallels. With these 7, I'm missing just 6 Red Sox of the 31 from the set. I may have to keep an eye out for those ones and try to complete the team set! The other 3 cards come from a sheet of reusable decals that Johnny picked up on the cheap. 

Favorite Card: Those decals are so offbeat, I'm going to give the nod to the Red Sox logo for once!

 

Thank you for envelope #1 Johnny!

 

Envelope #2

This is the envelope that contains the most variety. It contains World Series Champions in Pedro, Ortiz, and Nixon, a trio of excellent Stadium Club cards, and my first card of former prospect Kyle Teel (who was in consideration for a personal collection attempt until they traded him).

 

Favorite Card: The Boggs card was one of my Top 10 Red Sox cards for 2022! (That reminds me, I should start compiling candidates for this year's list...)

 

Thank you for envelope #2 Johnny!

 

Envelope #3

 

This is my firat real look at the Panini Prizm set since Panini lost their license to use current Major League players.  I will say it's a fun mix of players - I really can't complain about adding some personal favorites to the collection. Parallels are of course frustrating - too many refractor types using the same colors. (Both of those red cards are from different parallels sets! Good grief!)

 

Favorite Card: The red Mike Lowell card is a "pulsar prizm parallel" (say that 5x fast!) serial numbered to 499.

 

Thank you for envelope #3 Johnny!

 

Envelope #4

More Panini! There's some doubles here, but that's just fine with me! I also receive both of the Red Sox cards to appear on last year's 1989 Topps Baseball 35th Anniversary All-Stars insert set. 

 

Favorite Card: I always liked the design of the 1989 All-Star cards, and the Ted Williams proves that it works with players from pretty much any era. 

Thank you for envelope #4 Johnny!

 Envelope #5

We finish things off with even more Panini Prizm! This batch includes Louis Tiant and Pedro Martinez, as well my first cards of the #1 MLB prospect Roman Anthony! Anthony, the also included Marcelo Mayer, and the previously mentioned Kyle Teel made up Boston's "Big 3" prospects, until Teel was superseded and eventually replaced by current Rookie Of the Year front-runner Christian Campbell. With this envelop, I'm just 2 cards short of the team set! (Yoshida and Rafaela have been added to the TCDB want list!)

 

Favorite Card: El Tiante will always be a leading contender for favorite card!

 

Thank you for envelope #5 Johnny, and for being an amazingly generous person!

Repack Haiku #409 (Bob Welch)

Won Cy Young Award

Due to twenty-seven wins

Rocket was better

 

1991 Bowman #215 Bob Welch

 

Welch won the AL Cy Young Award in 1990 when he led the league with an impressive 27 wins, which was 5 more than the runner-up, teammate Dave Stewart. However, Roger Clemens was undeniably the best pitcher in the league that year and bested Welch in most statistics.

 

baseball-reference.com

 

TCDB Trade Recap - Cards From Austin, TX

I made a trade with TCDB member Steffan recently. It's our second trade this year after first swapping cards back in February. 

 

 

With this trade, I finished up all of the Red Sox cards from this year's Series 1 portion of the set. The Dozier is yet another card in my slow progress towards completing the 2016 Topps Archives set - just 8 more cards to go (not including the short-prints!).

 

Favorite Card: Tough call between Devers, Wong, and Houck. I'll give the nod to Houck just for the Raffy cameo in the background.

 

Thanks for the trade Steffan!

Card Excitement From CardBoredom!

Last month I received an email from David, writer of the blog CardBoredom. (An excellent blog if you haven't visited yet - incredible well-researched and well-written articles guaranteed to teach you something!) David wanted to congratulate me on 8 years of blogging and offered to send a couple of Red Sox cards my way. I gratefully accepted his kind gesture and shortly thereafter received those two cards plus some amazing extras:

 

 

The Canseco and 1972 Rookies cards were the two that he offered. At some point, once I've whittled down my needs list of Red Sox Topps cards from 1975 - present, I plan to expand that page to include older cards as well. The rookie cards of Hall of Famers are always key acquisitions, and thanks to David I won't have to worry about Carlton Fisk when I eventually add my 1972 Topps needs!

 

In addition to those two, he included a Darryl Strawberry rookie, a 1992 short-print commemorating one of the single greatest days in baseball history, what is now the 2nd oldest Red Sox card in my collection, as well as what are now the 2nd and 3rd oldest baseball cards in my collection. Fun fact: According to David, that 1953 Topps Dick Brodowski is the first night scene on a major card. (I wonder if night-scene aficionado Greg (Night Owl Cards) was aware of this?)

 

David, I am humbled by your generosity! Thank you so much!

Repack Haiku #408 (Vinnie Pasquantino)

His first two home runs

Were hit off the same pitcher

But ten days apart

 

2023 Topps
#302 Vinnie Pasquantino (ASR, RC)

Pasquantino hit his 1st major League home run against the Tigers' Michael Pineda on July 1, 2022. His next home run came on July 11th, also against Pineda.

I Got Boned!

Sometimes, you just gotta bone...

 

 

Kevin (The Diamond King) was giving away some cards last month, all from last year's Allen & Ginter X-ray'd inserts set. I'm not a huge fan of Allen & Ginter in general, but the product always seems to have some fun inserts every year. The X-ray'd cards are no different, and although I've seen them online before, I heard they were much better in person. I claimed one, and Kevin sent me three:

 

 

I will agree with the masses that these cards are a lot better looking in hand! In case you can't tell, these animals are the Western Pond Turtle, Cape Porcupine, and African Painted Dog.

 

Favorite Card: I claimed the turtle, because who doesn't like turtles?

 

Thanks for the cards Kevin!

Comical Erorrs: Bill Dickey

The 1977 Laughlin Erorrs set (yes the misspelling is intentional) is a 40 card set that is dedicated to errors that appear on baseball cards! It's a great little set with those great Laughlin cartoons, and I thought it would be fun to do a semi-regular series dedicated to the set and errors found within! 

 

 

Today's card features Bill Dickey, the Hall of Fame catcher for the New York Yankees. His error comes from the 1933 Goudey set:

 

Despite playing his entire career at catcher (over 1,700 games total), he's represented on this card as a pitcher, throwing off the mound. 

 

I tried to find another instance of a similar error where a player was shown in a different part of the baseball field than where they normally played. I have it in my mind that I once saw a card where a corner infielder (Will Clark kept popping in my mind) was clearly in the outfield. I couldn't find it however. The closest thing I could find was an insert set from the 2016 Topps set devoted to position players who ended up pitching for their team. 

 

 

This usually occurs when a team is getting clobbered in a game and they want to keep their bullpen fresh, but in Ichiro's case it was a legend fulfilling his dream by tossing the final inning of the Marlins' 2015 season.

 

Can anyone else think of an error card where a player is obviously out of position?

 

 

 

 

Other Comical Erorrs:

Bob Ueker' 1963 Topps card