Giveaway!

Back in August, I showed off an incredibly generous gift of cardboard from Chris (The Collector). Amongst it was a mystery pack filled with cards from a lot of different sports, most of which I do not collect. I promised to pay Chris's kindness forward by offering up these cards I don't want, plus some others that I added from my collection. That time is now!

 

You know the drill: Claim up to 9 cards by commenting the page number + numerical location. 

 

(I apologize in advance for the poor photo quality.) 

 

Page #1

CLAIMED: 1, 7

 

 

Page #2

CLAIMED: 1

 

 

Page #3

CLAIMED: 1

 

 

Page #4

CLAIMED: 1, 2, 4, 9

 

 

Page #5

 

 

Page #6

CLAIMED: 1

 

 

Page #7

CLAIMED: 2, 3

 

 

Page #8

CLAIMED: 6, 9

 

 

First come, first serve! Have at it, and thanks to Chris one last time for the great cards! 

Repack Haiku #482 (Pedro Guerrero)

World Series hero

Shared the M.V.P. Award

With Cey and Yeager

  

1988 Donruss - Bonus MVPs
#BC-16 Pedro Guerrero

Guerrero had one of the greatest games in World Series history. He finished Game 6 of the 1981 World Series with 3 hits (home run, triple, bases-loaded single) and 5 RBI in a Series-clinching 9-2 rout against the Yankees. He was named the World Series MVP along with teammates Ron Cey and Steve Yeager.

Comical Erorrs: Hank Aaron

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!  

 

When I do these posts, I go into them blind. I don't really know what error on what card is going to be my topic until I go to the set on TCDB and pick the next card listed. It leads to some fun circumstances and call backs. Case in point today's card:

 

 

Once again, we have another card where there is a case of mistaken identity.  Funny enough, this very card was brought up in the comments for the Ewell Blackwell card I did prior.

 

 

Unlike other mistakes, you can almost give Topps a pass on this one. The much more prominent headshot is obviously Hammering Hank. It's that artistically painted action shot. Although the player has a stronger build than Aaron, the blurred facial features could make this easy to miss. Even so, it didn't take long before people realized that this action shot was a repainted Willie Mays.

 

It's not the only time the artists at Topps used some creative licensing in their product. Look at this great catch on Mickey Mantle's 1956 card:

 

Mantle never made that catch. He wasn't even close. Getty Images has the photo it was based on here: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/yankee-outfielder-mickey-mantle-seemingly-walking-on-air-news-photo/515364894?adppopup=true

 

Back to the Aaron card.  As I said, as far as errors go, this one was easy to miss. The focus on this card is the head shot, not the action pose. You see Hank Aaron's face, you assume it's him elsewhere on the card. In my research I came across another article detailing a similar instance where the person in the background is not the person in the forefront. I present to you this example from the 1970 Topps Posters inserts:

 

 

That guy batting is not Seattle Pilots' Don Mincher. Can you guess the Hall of Famer cameo?  (Obviously you could click on the link, but what fun would that be?)

 

Other Comical Erorrs:

Bob Ueker' 1963 Topps card

Bill Dickey's 1933 Goudey card 

Ewell Blackwell's 1952 Berk Ross card 

Milt Bolling's 1955 Bowman card 

 

A Day At The Card Show!

It's been almost a year, but I was able to make it to another card show in my little part of the world! Nothing Earth-shattering, but I enjoyed taking my time and checking out all the glorious cardboard. There were probably close to 100 tables, yet only 5 were worthy of my money:

 

Purchase #1

 

I'm the kind of guy that will just walk up and down each isle and figure out where the deals are. The first table to catch my attention had a bunch of cards separated by player at a cost of 5/$1. That's an excellent price to add some Pedros to my collection, rounded out with a few Nomars and Boggs to boot! 

 

Favorite Card: 2001 Fleer Genuine - Pennant Aggression #3 PA Nomar Garciaparra 

 

Purchase #2 

 

This next table I was really exited for, as it had a ton of great cards, with one set of boxes dedicated to serial numbered cards, short-prints, relics, and autographs. More boxes were for other assorted parallels and oddballs. One of my goals for this day was to find some team specific "thank you's" I could send to a few of you out there. I was fortunate enough to find cards for about 3/4 of my list, which have already been mailed out and received. (The hunt as always continues for the others I feel deserve one.)

 

As for myself, I found a Red Sox short-print need:

 

I both love and hate this card. I love whimsical additions to cards. (Part of the reason the Holiday sets can be a lot of fun). At the same time, Rudy Giuliani is not a Red Sox fan and has little connection to the team. This card almost seems like a troll by a Yankee fan. Still, it's a short print I needed, and found within my price range.

 

I also found some other miscellaneous cards, including some vintage Hall of Famers, a fun Coca Cola oddball, and even a card I needed for the 1990 Glossy All-Star set!

 

Favorite card: 1969 Topps #425 Carl Yastrzemski (AS)

 

Purchase #3

 

This was the table I spent the most time on. More dime boxes, but not particularly organized.  They were mostly cards from the past few base and update sets. I took this opportunity to leaf through and find as many missing Red Sox cards as I could. Thanks to my efforts, I have now completed the 2023 and 2025 Topps Update Red Sox team sets, and have just one more card to go for the 2026 base set. 

 

 

The dealer also had some Bowman and Heritage in a quarter box, I picked up a few of those too.

 

I also took a gamble on some small team packs her had for sale. I knew most of them would be cards I already had (and probably just bought too!) but I knew I needed this Anthony insert so I figured why not?

 

 

For two bucks I got 5 cards I needed plus a bunch of extra Sox. Not a bad trade off.

 

 

Favorite card: 2026 Topps #15 Payton Tolle (Even though I already have this card, he's become a favorite and I found myself grabbing an extra copy of his rookie card.) 

 

Purchase #4

 

As my time was winding down, I stopped at one other table with some cards divided by team.  I only picked up these two cards, but they are very eye-catching!

 

Favorite card: 2026 Bowman Chrome - It Came to the League #IT-1 Franklin Arias (A fitting monster card for October!) 

 

Purchase #5

 

 

As I was leaving I decided to take a chance on an over-glorified repack box of Red Sox cards. Sure, it's going to be mostly cards I already have, but it'll be a fun box to open when I'm bored and itching to see some cards. Perhaps I'll do a blog post on it.

 

All in all, not a bad day. Most tables were for the high rollers, and that's OK with me. They also kept the Pokemon/gaming table in their own section, so I didn't have to wiggle my way through them amongst the sports stuff. The only negative I have is that one table was selling custom cards. Now I don't have a problem with custom cards, especially if their made by creative people who have some degree of artistic talent, like a few well known bloggers. No, these were completely AI generated slop, and guy thought they were worth $10-$15 apiece. Sorry, just because you prompted your computer to generate a cartoonish card of Paul Skeenes... Anyway, other than what I fear will be a growing trend in the hobby, it was a great day!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Repack Haiku #481 (DJ LeMahieu)

First modern player

To lead each league in batting

Rockies then Yankees

 

2017 Topps Update
#US230 DJ LeMahieu (AS)

LeMahieu won his first batting title in 2016 with the Rockies, leading the National League with a .348 average. Four years later (2020) as a member of the Yankees, he led the American League, batting .364 in the shortened season.

TCDB Trade Recap: Cards From Loveland, CO (Again)

 A few months ago, I made a small TCDB trade with a collector named Harrison. We matched up on another small trade recently:

 

 

Slowly, I'm whittling down the Red Sox cards I need from the 2026 base set. If I'm lucky I'll have it done before the Update set comes out later this month. 

 

Favorite Card: Gotta love Pedro!

 

Thanks for another great trade, Harrison! 

 

**********

 

Speaking of the TCDB, I found out another former trade partner and member of the blogging community recently passed away. Johnny, who wrote the blog Cards From The Quarry, passed away in late July. May he rest in peace.

Blog Bat Around - Feeling Acomplished!

A new blog bat around has been started up over at Torren' Up Cards.  It's simple enough - all you have to do is list 3 achievements as a collector. Compared to what's been posted so far, my accomplishments aren't as impressive. Still, they are accomplishments, they are mine, and I am proud of them.

 

Honorable Mention:

Completed the 2024 Topps base set 

 

 

This seems like an odd one to start off with, but to truly appreciate it as an accomplishment, you have to look at where I was as a collector, and where I am now. In high school, I bought boxes of cards and loved to just sit on my bedroom floor, rip packs and have 90%-95% of a set completed when I was done. Once I graduated and started college, the hobby took a back seat to many other things. I stepped away from collecting for over 20 years. When I came back, the hobby was in a different place. No local card shops or shows to fuel my obsession (Fortunately, even that has come back since then). Instead of buying boxes, I had to get my fix from buying packs at Wal-Mart. Even if I could afford a box nowadays, parallels and inserts galore don't help us poor set collectors. The 2024 set was the first set that I completed by hand in over 30 years, and it was all done through single packs and trades with amazing people. 

 

3rd Place:

Completed sets from three other countries outside of the U.S.

 

 

Again, I must go back to my high school days. At one card show, I bought an entire box of 1988 Leaf. Although I never formally took French in school, I did manage to pick up some thanks to Donruss's Canadian counterpart (and Seasame Street - growing up close to the U.S. - Canada border, I got to occasionally catch the Canadian version of the show. I can still count to 10 in French thanks to that limited exposure.) 

 

Somehow, somewhere back then, I also picked up a big stack of the 1988 Topps UK Minis set. I didn't even know they watched baseball over there, let alone collected cards. In both cases, I had most of the cards, but not all of them. Flash forward again to my hobby revival, and those two sets became targets for completion. Again, thanks primarily through online trading, the sets got complete. 

 

The last set I actually won from another blogger back in 2020. The 1992 St. Vincent HOF Heroes Postage Stamps set was a small set of oversized postage from the Carribean islands of St. Vincent and Grenadines. 

 

I don't see many collectors mention how many different countries they have cards from, let alone completed sets. Having sets from 4 different countries (U.S. included) seems impressive to me at least! 

 

2nd Place:

This blog right here 

 

I didn't mention this, but Wednesday's Repack Haiku was officially the 1,500th post on Diamond Jesters. Next year, this blog will celebrate it's 10 year anniversary.  The fact I've continued to create so much content for such a long stretch of time astounds me. This blog, the friends I've made through it, the things I've learned through others - it's as much a part of the hobby experience for me as the cards themselves. I can't imagine one without the other. The blog gives my collecting added purpose.

 

1st Place:

Meeting Mickey Mantle

 

I've shown off my Mantle autograph many times before. It's easily the prized card in my collection. But beyond the card were the circumstances behind it. There are plenty of Mantle autographs out there, as he was known to sign a lot especially in his later years. But how many people today can say they actually got their signature in person? I'm very lucky that I got to meet one of the legends of the game.

 

Alright fellow bloggers! What are your top 3 achievements in the hobby?