I Got Humpty Dumpty!

    I never thought I'd be so intrigued by an egg. This card came to me in a package from The Diamond King. And I have to say, I really like it, though it surprised me a little bit. 

    I got the package from Diamond King's last Serial Number Guessing Contest. Along with Humpy Dumpty and the 100 serial-numbered cards, he also gave me a bunch of filler cards. Diamond King warned me beforehand no to get too excited, but the 'fillers' he gave me were full of PC players. Here are all the guys in my PC that were added to the box:

    These nine Ripkens further advance my most-collected player (all were needs). There was also a bunch of shiny, which is always appreciated. The nasty glare messes with the picture, but I took pics about a month ago, so won't bother changing it now.

    Posey's the second-most collected player, and so adding these three was great too. And still more shiny for my collection. Love it!

    And another Pete Crow-Armstrong for the collection. I have high hopes for this kid going forward. (I need to stop photographing cards in their penny sleeves)

    Also some great Corey Seager cards. I also have hopes for the Rangers come next year. I still have my doubts with their pitching staff, but being able to extend Nathan Eovaldi is big, and trading for Jake Burger......I don't know how that will effect their offense. I can do nothing but hope for now.

    I really like the see-through card. I didn't notice it until the picture showed the table I had the card on in the background. And the addition of a parallel will always be appreciated.

    Six amazing deGrom cards. The 2015 Topps design is great, and it's a little bit funny to see deGrom as a 'Future Star.' I sure hope that he can make some magic for the Rangers. Magic mostly meaning that he starts more than ten games. Boy, we could sure use a full season outta him.

    And I'll round things out with a Troy Tulowitzki mini. He'll be getting his first shot on the ballot this year. We'll see how that one goes.

    Apologies for the lack of decent photos. I need to redo them, but all the cards are in a box now, and I don't want to mess with them too much for the time being.

    I think I'll do a top 20 countdown for the serial-numbered cards sometime in January. Thank you to the Diamond King for the awesome cards, and thank you for reading. Happy collecting!

There's Nothing Like In-Person Trading

      Personally, as a card collector one of my favorite things to do is trade cards, usually helping to build up two collections  Also, whenever my friend John (Adventures of a Baseball Card Collector) pays a visit, my collection gets smaller (but better, so don't you worry). This past Saturday I spent some time trading with him, and acquired a rather interesting bunch of cards. 

    It's been my procrastinated goal for a while now to start collecting a few hockey cards, and John helped me take my first eight baby steps into a minor collection. I only intend to collect a few hundred hockey cards, but I tend to veer off my collective plan more often than not. These few cards made for a nice little start, as I'm really into the designs of the cards. These include 2016-2017 Upper Deck Artifacts, 2016-2017 Upper Deck Series 2, 2013-2014 Upper Deck Series 2, and of course, the 2013-2014 Panini Prizm. The only guy I previously knew in this small pile is Noah Hanfin, who I briefly had on my fantasy hockey team a few weeks ago. I hope my local card shop can aid me in my hockey card endeavors. I'll need to take a look next time I'm over there.

   

   I traded for this card purely because of the hilarious pink jersey. Laga played parts of nine seasons in the majors (1982-1990),  with the Cardinals, Tigers and Giants. In 188 games, the first baseman batted .199 with 16 home runs.

    These two cards came in the same trade, which also included the next card. I added another un-owned Ripken to my personal collection in the form of Studio '91, which I think was a decent design. The addition of the Craig Kimbrel was nice too. He looks so young in the picture! 2014 Topps Upper Class is a design that I really like. The red and gold mix really well with this card. The corners are a little roughed up on the card, as well as a small crease on the upper right side, but it didn't take much to get the card, so I don't mind. I hope Craig Kimbrel can clean things up in 2025, but he'll be 37 and coming off his worst season (5.33 ERA), so he may be done as a closer in the majors.

    This was the card I was seeking pretty much from minute one.  I have a soft spot for catchers, and the card looked so good, so it became the top priority in terms of trading. Christopher Wallace was drafted in the 16th round of the 2010 June Amateur Draft. Expecting to get drafted later, this pleasantly surprised him. Wallace played 5 seasons in the minors with the Astros and Indians, including 52 games and parts of three seasons in AAA. Across his minor league career, Wallace batted .270/.341/.445 with 39 home runs and 185 RBI in 315 games. 2015 was his last year of professional baseball, which he spent in the Atlantic League. Wallace batted .257 with 17 home runs in 129 games before calling it quits. 

    And my trading ends with a non-sports card. I was about through with the trades before this one caught my eye. This is card one of the five-card 2005 King Kong - Kong Flocked insert set (thanks for the clarification TCDB). The fur on Kong is....actually furry, which is a nice addition to an already awesome card. I've never seen the movie -- I like to stick to the original Godzilla films with the rubber suits and all that good stuff.

    That was already a great day of trading in my book, but then John dropped a half-dozen vintage Topps on me for no return. It made for a nice little surprise.

    It doesn't matter who the player (or usually even the set) is, I'll always like some vintage baseball cards. Though these cards aren't exactly in the best condition, I still enjoy them. Besides, they were free. The top four are all 1959 Topps, and the bottom two are '61 and '69.

    So ends the acquisitions from John's last visit. I really like getting the oppurtunity to trade cards in-person with people. It's nice to see what the fellow collector has brought along with him, and offers the oppurtunity to trade for cards I otherwise wouldn't -- like the King Kong card. It adds some fun into the day whenever John comes over.

    Thanks for the cards John!  And thank y'all for spending time at Don Cardwell. I hope you enjoyed, have a great start to the week, and happy collecting!

Ripken's Ruined Season

     I am almost entirely sure that Cal Ripken Jr. is the player whose cards I have the most of. Back when the card store sold quarter cards, I would stalk up on Ripken and some other big names from the '90s. But of all my Cal Ripken cards, this one is my favorite:

    I really like the design of the 1993 Classic cards, and especially like the picture on the front of Ripken's card.

    In 1992 Ripken certainly didn't have his best year at the dish, when he slashed .251/.323/.366 with 14 home runs in his usual 162 games. Though I wouldn't consider this a terrible year, he did win the MVP the year before (34 homers, .323 batting average).

    Now, there is one thing that's a little bit peculiar about this particular card. If you haven't noticed yet, it states that Cal Ripken had a measely four home runs in 1992 instead of the correct 14. Just a slight error, but enough to make me wonder: what would his season have looked like if that were indeed the case?

    If Cal Ripken Jr. had actually hit four homers in '92, he would have had 10 less hits. But since the card has the hit total right, I'll assume that these missing home runs were all counted as singles. If this were indeed the case for the Iron Man, then his slugging percentage in that season would have been .319 instead of .366, less than his batting average of the year before! If we're being particular, then he also would have had less RBI and runs, but both of those are correct on the card, so I'll hold off.

    Therefore, I would indeed say that Ripken would have been genuinely bad at the plate had this typo been reality. Thankfully, it wasn't so, and he ended up not quitting after this season and retiring at 32.

    This was the only error on the card. Everything else is correct, including the quiz questions, though some of them are now incorrect over 30 years later. I guess I can use it as ammunition to throw a pop quiz at some friends.

    So Cal, rest assured that 1992 wasn't as bad as Classic gives you credit for. I bet your manager would have appreciated it had you put up the same stats as in the year before, but he'll take what he can get (Ripken did win the Gold Glove in '92). 

    Now that I've finished, I shall leave y'all to the rest of your weekend. Make sure to enjoy the hour that you get back this week, have a great Sunday, and happy collecting!

A Nice Trip to the Card Store, Part 1

    Well, I've been working on this post for weeks, and here's the first part of it. I used some of my other posts to stall for this one, so it had better be good or else I wasted a bunch of time. Here goes:

    On February 17th, I went to that same card store that I would get the 600-card boxes from for only five or six bucks. Unfortunately, the prices of those boxes was raised to $15! Though still probably a good deal, it was a rather painful discovery. However, that didn't stop me from buying one (not sure how good of an idea that was).  I also got a birthday present for some friends and 65 (count 'em) quarter baseball cards, for a grand total of $38.16. I wonder what was going through the cashier's head when he saw me walk up with a fat stack of quarter cards that he had to count.
    Because I made a card purchase bigger than usual, I will split my spoils into three posts this week. The first two will feature the 65 cards I got for a quarter a pop, and the last post will feature the best cards I got from the $15 card box. Well, let's get started before I kill you all of boredom.

    As you can probably tell, I am a collector of Cal Ripken Jr. cards. I have probably 20-25 of his cards, including the eleven that I bought at the store.

    My favorite of the eleven Ripkens is the Upper Deck Cover Glory card. When I came across that one, I didn't need to think twice about grabbing it. Of course, if I ended up regretting it I was only out twenty-five cents. 

    I also saw a great deal of new Hall-of-Famer Todd Helton's cards. I ended up picking up eight of them. Here they are:

    It was tough for me to choose a favorite out of all these cards, but in the end I chose to go with the 2005 Donruss Playoff card.

    There were TONS of Scott Rolen cards looking for a home in the quarter box, and I chose eleven of them. There were still many left over, but considering the big pile of cards I had already picked out, I decided against spending more money on cards of the same guy. 

    This one was hard for me to choose a favorite. I really like a lot of these cards, and in the end call it a tie between the 1999 Upper Deck Hologram card and the 2003 Upper Deck Victory card. Upper Deck has some strong showings today.

    In addition to getting all of these cards, I also saw some nice John Smoltz cards that I decided to get. Contrary to my former pick-ups, I only grabbed five of these.

    And my favorite of these is the 2005 Upper Deck MVP Smoltz card. Upper Deck won my vote in three out of the four different player groups. 

    

    Well, that does it for this post. Please read, comment, and enjoy, and I'll be back in a day or two with the last 30 cards from the 65 that I bought. Thank you for reading.