20,000 Cards - Box 2 - All Layers

Hello to the Blogosphere!  This has never been a blog that was big on video posts, but I have one for you today.  My in-laws took my sons to their house for the week, so I had both the time and the safety to sort out another of the boxes from my 20,000 card purchase.  See it below, and let me know:  What is your favorite set or favorite player from all the ones I pulled out of this box?

Don't CALL 1 (877) CARD MLB

Working through the 2nd giant box of my 20,000 cards purchase, I came across this card...well, actually there were four of them together.

Front:

Back:

The card features Sosa, Ichiro, Randy Johnson, Piazza, Jeter, and Pedro, and instructs us to call 1 (877) CARD MLB to find a card shop near us.  This is from 2002, and has MLBPA and MLB licenses.  It might have come from 2002 MLB Showdown?  There were quite a few Showdown cards around it.

2002 was the year I graduated college.  This card was a vestige of the era where the internet was rapidly becoming well-developed, but there were still many people (like my parents) who were on dial-up connections who still used the phone for most things.  Only 20% of Americans had broadband at that point.  This is pre-iPhone by five years.

Anyway, this morning, I wondered....IS THIS LINE STILL WORKING?  Does MLB have some bored intern manning a phone line waiting for people to ask where the nearest card shop is?  Or is it just a recorded message telling everyone that card shops don't exist anymore and you can only get cards at Target?

So, I called it.  I was hoping for a live person.  Otherwise, a recording telling me where I could buy cards.  Mostly I expected a "this line has been disconnected" error message.  What I got was even worse.

MLB has abandoned this line.  It has been taken over by a scam company offering "free" cruises (you just pay them some "small" FEES, of course) and "free" medical alert systems to prey on the elderly.  Because the elderly are the only people who call 800 numbers anymore.  (Sorry if I offended anyone out there.)

Does anyone remember calling this line?  I hope you aren't relying on this anymore.  If you are ever out-and-about and urgently need to find a card shop, just give me a call.  I'll be happy to point you in the right direction.  :-)

20,000 Cards - Box 1, Layer 4

Hello Readers!  It's been awhile.


Good News:  My wife is pregnant with our third child (our first daughter)!
Bad News:  This has been a rough pregnancy for her, so I've been taking on a lot more of the care for the house and our older boys....thus minimizing my baseball cards time the last two months.  That's what's causing the delay in my posting.

However, those big boxes from my Craigslist purchase have been calling my name again, so I wanted to at least go through the last layer of Box #1 to see if there was anything else good in there.  I had originally hoped to keep a full record of each set that came out of these boxes and how many cards from each set I have.  But that was slowing me WAAAAY down so I'm scrapping that.   I'll just be posting the highlights and sets that have a significant amount of cards in case anyone is putting those sets together.  Hopefully that will get me through these a lot quicker.

Starting simply, this layer had a pretty sizable chunk of 2002 Topps flagship if anyone is looking for some of those.

Next up was a bunch of 2001 Fleer Focus Football, including a bunch of (future) Hall of Famers.  Lots of commons, too.

1969-1970 Topps Hockey - Val Fonteyne - #119

Right after those football cards, I saw this thing.  Hockey?  OLD school hockey?  What's that doing in here with all these modern sets?  I am not a hockey collector, so I have never seen anything like it before. A little research turns up that it is a 1969 Topps base card.  Still looks pretty cool to me!  That ties the Roy Hilton football card for the oldest one to come from these boxes yet.

Digging deeper, there was a decent chunk of 40-Man also...including these two guys that I do not associate with these teams at all.  Raines is an Expo and Punto is a Twin in my mind's eye.

MORE Starting Lineups!  I can't escape these!  :-)  Most of these are Starting Lineup 2 (or is that "squared"?).  Some big names on there.

This card doesn't look like much in the scan, but it's VERY nice in person.  It's 1995 Black Label, and it's printed on stock that feels a little like acetate, but is not fully clear.  It gives the picture a very crisp, HD look.  There's a dot-matrix serial number on the back, but it's pretty large, so I don't think the print run was too limited on these. 

Speaking of another card whose scan doesn't do it justice, tilting this one in the light makes that background light up like flames.  Steve is trapped in the inferno!

Right at the end of the row, when I thought the rest of this was just going to be more 1990 Topps (yes, there was more 1990 Topps), I see this one:

1964 Topps - Cubs Team Card - #237

That's a 1964!  We have a new leader for oldest card pulled.

Behind it...these two!  1962!

And then finally these!  1960!  That Yankees card has quite a few stars on it.  None of these 5 was in pristine condition, but they are still pretty nice things to add to my collection, as I do not usually go after anything older than the founding of the Royals (1969).

In conclusion, please comment below and answer one or both of these questions:
1) Which card of these do you think is the most interesting?
2) Which athlete should I name my daughter after?  Her brothers think "Luke Skywalker Girl" is a good name for her, and I need some alternatives...

20,000 Cards - Box 1, Layer 3

1)  Thank you for all of the interest in this series and comments on it!  These posts are taking a while to put together, so those give me some motivation to keep it going.  I have 2 more layers of Box 1 to post (including this one). 

2)  Please continue to note anything that you want, especially if you have any team/player requests for football or basketball.  I am starting to hit some of those cards and have nothing to do with most of them at this point.

That being said...here comes Box 1, Layer 3!

Starting Lineups continue to be well-represented in this first box.  16 more of them here.  I hope this guy still has all of these figurines on a shelf in his bedroom.  Maybe I will text him back and ask him?  :-)  Looks like he had a penchant for running backs...

There were a few Team USA women's Stadium Club cards:

President #39 Habitating for Humanity:

Baseball Randomness:
1) Cards with Kids
2) A nice Ichiro insert.  I suspect they developed this whole subset to give him another insert card.
3) That's not where the glove goes, Barry.
4)  Flair Giants Rookie...#'d.
5)  Another program for Night Owl
6)  Food Issue: Ritz/Oreo "Red" Derek Jeter
7)  This card is Swell!
8)  Glavine with rotational symmetry
9)  Young, Dodger-y Konerko

A few football cards of note:
1) This card is beautiful in person.  It's lenticular, die-cut, and heavy.  That's a keeper.
2) This Johnnie Morton has a VERY faint watermark irl, but the scanner makes it look like Morton is Hester Prynne.  1 of 499 (not SN#'d) -- It's from the 1996 Anaheim National.  Wish they would bring the show back out here! (side note:  "Devin Hester Prynne" might have to be my new Fantasy Football name if I decide to change from "Orange Julius Peppers.")
3)  Another scanner fail...this is a refractor-y Faulk.
4)  Hmmm.....what's this?  Looks OLD.  No date on the back.  Googling....  It's a 1969!  New record for the "vintagest" card so far, beating out 1981 Ron Cey by a full decade-plus.

Underneath the Roy Hilton, I pulled these three cards:

Huh??  What set is this?  These look old, too.  Must research...
Here's the backs.

So they are 1968s because of the copyright, right?  NOPE.
This set is called "1970 Fleer Laughlin World Series", as the artwork was done by Robert Laughlin originally for a self-published set in 1968, which he revised in color for Fleer to sell in 1970.  So Roy Hilton is still the elder statesman for this box.  Now I have three 1970s, too.  Those are for trade if anyone needs them.

Also in this box I picked up the last LEGO basketball card I needed, another Hawaii baseball player, a couple Barry Larkins and Cal Ripkens for folks who requested them, and a whole mess of 1990 Topps and other junk wax which I have spared you the agony of looking at.  For the aforementioned football and  basketball, I have big stacks of 1999-2000 Topps Basketball and 2001 Football (Fleer Focus, UD Legends).

Here's all the sets (with material memberships) that came in this 3rd level of the box -- 1,200 cards in this one!

Sport	Set	# of Cards
Basketball	1999-2000 Topps	88
Baseball	2004 Cracker Jack	55
Baseball	2004 Topps	42
Baseball	2002 Flair	37
Football	Misc. Football	31
Basketball	Misc. Basketball	29
Football	2001 Upper Deck NFL Legends	28
Football	2001 Fleer Focus Football	27
Baseball	1999 Upper Deck Century Legends	25
Baseball	1990 Upper Deck	24
Baseball	1989 Upper Deck	24
Multi-Sport	Starting Lineup	17
Baseball	2004 Donruss Classics	17
Basketball	1999-2000 Fleer Focus	17
Baseball	1998 Fleer Ultra	13
Baseball	2003 Fleer Showcase	13
Baseball	2002 Leaf Certified	13
Baseball	1994 Upper Deck	12
Baseball	1999 Fleer Metal Universe	12
Baseball	2003 Fleer Patchworks	10
Baseball	2000 Topps	10
Baseball	2003 Topps	9
Baseball	1999 Skybox Metal	9
Baseball	1998 Upper Deck Collector's Choice	7
Baseball	2002 Upper Deck 40-Man	7
Baseball	1999 Topps	6
Baseball	2003 Upper Deck Sweet Spot Classic	4
Baseball	Barry Larkin	3
Baseball	1998 Skybox Thunder	2
Baseball	2004 University of Hawaii - KKEA	1
Basketball	LEGO Sports	1
Baseball	Assorted Junk Wax	425
Baseball	Other	173

There are lots of sets where I am picking up 10 or 20 cards at a time...please peruse the list above if there is anything you want out of there.  Starting a 2002 Flair set collection?  2004 Cracker Jack?  Let me know!  :-)

20,000 Cards - Box 1, Layer 2

As I hinted in my last post, the 2nd layer of Box 1 looked to have much more variety than the first layer.  Boy was I right!  This layer had just over 1,000 cards in it, and you can see how many different unique piles we needed to account for all the different sets.

This time I was able to pull a big stack for my own PC.  I do not normally collect basketball cards, but this (near) set was from 2003 Upper Deck.  It has the LEGO Sports branding on it, and some of them are gold parallels.  We are pretty LEGO-crazy in this house, so I will save this for my boys (or for myself?) for later.

On the left is a picture of the "vintage-est" card that has come out of the box so far -- a 1981 Donruss Ron Cey (happy birthday, Ron!).  Anybody need it?  The card on the right is a lenticular Beanie Baby card, from "Mary Beth's Bean Bag World."  It was the Beckett magazine of Beanie Babies.  I'm keeping it! :-)

Looking at some more cards that are for trade, these were all from 2003 UD Sweet Spot Classic.  This is a very well-designed base set, with gold foil at the top/bottom.  Altogether, there were around 50 of those.  Let me know if you have any needs here, and I can check the rest of them.  (Already pulled the PeeWee Reese for you, N.O.)  The Williams and Righetti were each Serial #'d.

Aloha!  Oddball alert -- I also got 13 cards from the 2004 University of Hawaii baseball team.

Some umpires.

2004 Gold Parallells.

Starquest.

3 Sakics and the author of "Cujo."

Old-style Archives.

These are LAPD Dodgers cards.  4 of the 5 are still attached -- accordion-style.

Here's where things get interesting.  I hit a little pocket that had TEN Starting Lineup cards in it.  I was pretty impressed and took a picture of those right away.  What a great find.  Until...

...I found ANOTHER ten on the other side.  There's ol' Javy Lopez on the Durham Bulls.  :-)  There were actually 11...including an Eric Lindros that I grabbed for myself. 

That's all the loose cards from that layer -- now for the boxes.

If you recall, in the picture I showed from the last post, there were 3 cardboard boxes shown.  1 was clearly labeled as 2001 Bowman Draft.  one we figured was 1987 Donruss: The Rookies, and the other one said it was collectible playing cards.  Well, the playing cards weren't baseball...they were football!

Here were a few of my favorites.  Any needs there?  The box probably had 80-90% of the full set.  Here's the checklist.

The Donruss:The Rookies box was <insert sound of a sad trumpet>.  Half the cards were gone...all the good ones.  Best players left were Chris Bosio and Mike Greenwell....  Moving on.

The last thing was a little box of 2001 Bowman Draft, claiming to have the complete base set.  It was packed tight, so I'm guessing it did, but did not verify.   I pulled out what I think were the best players from that set:

That's a Chase Utley rookie, and a rookie of "Covelli" Crisp.  He wasn't officially "Coco" yet!

When I bought this lot from the guy, he said that it didn't have any jersey or autograph cards in it.  That's fine with me...I'm all about that base.

(sorry)

So much to my surprise, when I opened that Bowman box, these guys were in the back.

A red Futures Game jersey of Brett Myers and an on-card auto of Bobby Bradley.  Bradley may not have been the world's greatest pitcher, but that is a NICE signature!


So that's it.  Below I will post a quick summary of what came out of that layer.  Enjoy these while you can...the next layer looks more junk-waxy than this one.

To help make my future posts on this better, What was your favorite card from this post, and why?  Thanks.

Layer 2 Summary:

Baseball	2001 Bowman Draft	110
Baseball	1989 Bowman	83
Baseball	2004 Cracker Jack	80
Basketball	Misc. Basketball	66
Baseball	1990 Topps	51
Baseball	2003 Upper Deck Sweet Spot Classic	49
Football	1992 NFL Star Playing Cards	48
Football	Misc. Football	39
Baseball	2002 Upper Deck 40-Man	36
Baseball	1987 Donruss:  The Rookies	32
Baseball	2002 Bowman Heritage	29
Basketball	LEGO Sports	23
Baseball	1999 Upper Deck Century Legends	21
Multi-Sport	Starting Lineup	20
Baseball	1990 Donruss	18
Baseball	1994 Upper Deck	18
Baseball	2002 Donruss Diamond Kings	18
Baseball	1999 Upper Deck Collector's Choice	17
Baseball	1989 Donruss	14
Baseball	1989 Topps	14
Baseball	1999 Fleer Metal Universe	14
Baseball	Royals	14
Baseball	1998 Pacific Omega	13
Baseball	2004 University of Hawaii - KKEA	13
Baseball	1998 Skybox Thunder	12
Baseball	Logo Stickers	12
Hockey	Misc. Hockey	12
Baseball	1991 Upper Deck	11
Baseball	2003 Donruss Champions	10
Baseball	1997 Upper Deck Collector's Choice	9
Baseball	1988 Topps Big	9
Baseball	1998 Upper Deck Collector's Choice	8
Baseball	2003 Topps	7
Baseball	2004 Fleer Authentix	7
Baseball	1998 Fleer Ultra	5
Baseball	2002 Flair	5
Baseball	1999 Topps	5
Baseball	2004 Topps	4
Baseball	Barry Larkin	2
Multi-Sport	Other	116

20,000 Cards - Box 1, Layer 1

In case you didn't see it, I hit what I like to think is a Low-End Collector's Jackpot in a recent lot I purchased from Craigslist.  Thank you to everyone who has commented thus far and sent me provisional wantlists.  Please add to those if you see anything further that you like as we go through these.

There are 6 big boxes of cards, and 3 smaller, single-row boxes to go through.  After the boys were in bed, my wife and I dug in to examine the first layer off the top of box #1.  That is sorted by set and pictured above.

There were nearly 850 cards in the top layer:

Baseball	2003 Fleer Double Header	375
Baseball	1989 Bowman	335
Baseball	2004 Cracker Jack	28
Baseball	Angels	20
Baseball	2005 Upper Deck Team USA	20
Baseball	Dodgers	16
Football	1995 NFL-opoly Deed Cards	13
Baseball	Royals	12
Baseball	2002 Flair	7
Multi-Sport	SI for Kids	6
Basketball	Misc. Basketball	5
Baseball	Barry Larkin	4
Baseball	Logo Stickers	1
Hockey	Starting Lineup	1
Baseball	2003 Fleer Showcase	1
Baseball	2002 Leaf Rookies and Stars	1
Baseball	Pocket Schedule	1

The first thing I pulled out was a bunch of 1989 Bowman.  I know this is not exciting.  I hate this set.  The cards are TOO LONG compared to the usual storage boxes and pages.   If anyone wants these, let me know soon, or else they are going straight to the trash.  I am not the kind of guy who throws away baseball cards but for 1989 Bowman I will make an exception.  Don't care if there are Nolan Ryans and Cal Ripkens in there.  To the trash.

The next big thing was the 2003 Double-Header.  These are fun as some of them can fold up their top halves to reveal a different player underneath.  I grabbed a couple of Royals out of here (completing my team set), found 2 different Barry Larkins for Nachos Grande, and separated out small stacks of Angels and Dodgers for the people who have requested those thus far.  There are still lots of stars in that stack like Bonds, Clemens, Schilling, Jeter, etc.

The 2004 Cracker Jack did not have any of the SPs that people wanted.

Fuji, there was a Starting Lineup card (for hockey, of all things!) in there -- looks like a 1998 Paul Kariya.  Dinged on the corner.

I am looking forward to the next layer (shown below).  It looks much less uniform than the top layer.  Can anyone identify the black/red/blue box in the bottom right corner?

20,000 Cards - They're Mine! And Yours?

If you're buying new product, 90 bucks can get you one hobby box of a newly-released product (maybe?), or 4.5 blasters (without tax) at the local big box retailer.

This is what 90 bucks on Craigslist just got me.

Those are six large file boxes (maybe used for comic books?) that are filled with cards.  They are stacked 3 or 4 layers deep in each one.  I estimate it is between 15,000 and 20,000 cards altogether.

So what is it?  Junk wax, right?  There definitely is some of that in here, but it's the minority.  Talking with the guy who sold it to me, he was collecting in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and it is just a big variety from that time-period, primarily.  Standing in his house for 5 minutes, I obviously couldn't look through every layer of every box, but I saw enough to know that I wasn't going to end up with only crap out of this -- there's a lot of fun stuff from that time-period.....which was the period when I WASN'T actively collecting, so this will fill a big need for my Royals collections from that era.  I am a "low-end" collector so doing all the digging through these should be a blast.

It is approx 70% baseball, 25% football, with 5% being miscellaneous (Basketball, Hockey, Star Wars, Simpsons).  I know one of the six boxes is completely full of MLB Showdown and NFL Showdown cards, which he said he was REALLY into at the time.  I rarely see those up for trade, so I should be a source for those if you have some team/player sets you need help with.

My project:  I am going to start sifting through these and posting the general contents of what I am finding (what years, what sets, how many cards, anything particularly interesting that I find).

If You Want Cards:  I know a lot of you are in the same boat as me, and weren't collecting during part of that period from 1995-2005.  There are WAY more cards here than I will be able to keep, and I'd love to trade away anything that you out in the blogosphere could use.  LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU WANT and I will set it aside for you.
Please make your requests for:
1) Specific card wantlists from certain sets.  I.e., "I need cards #4, 13, 19, 22 from 2003 Fleer Double Header."  If you have a team-based wantlist with card numbers, shoot that my way.  These are the most-specific requests and will be honored first.
2) Player collections.  I.e. "Please set aside any Jeff Bagwell cards" or "Please set aside any Tom Glavine cards, but only if he is shown on the Mets."
3) Team requests.   I.e. "I want all your Seattle Seahawks."   <---This is the least specific, so I will honor those last.
Feel free to add any additional requests as you start to see what comes out of here.

When I brought the boxes home, I let my oldest son pull out a handful of cards to show him what was in here.  He grabbed a stack of miscellaneous football, and in the middle of his handful he says "Look at this one, Dad!"

It's a Starting Lineup oddball of my favorite football player.  Found in the first handful of this "haystack."   Let's see what other lovely "needles" we can uncover in this process, shall we?