ONLINE MEGA BOX - PART 1

 YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE DONE WITH THESE RANDOM POSTS OF CARDS FROM THE BASEBALLCARDSTORE.CA FREE PROMOTION? OH HELL NAW. I GOT A MASSIVE PILE OF STUFF FROM THAT SITE AND THEY ARE FUN AND EASY POSTS TO WRITE SO YOU'RE STUCK WITH THESE FOR A LONG TIME. THIRTY-SIX POSTS LONG. AND THE PICTURES HAVE ALREADY BEEN TOOKEN AND CROPPEDED SO ALL THE ACTUAL HARD WORK IS DONE. I JUST NEED TO UPLOAD EM AND TYPE SOME NONSENSE NOW. WE DON'T HAVE A BLASTER THIS TIME, NO. THIS IS AN ONLINE MEGA BOX. SAME PRICE AS ONE OF THOSE SPECIAL BOXES YOU CAN'T BUY AT TARGET BECAUSE THE FLIPPERS GOT TO THEM ALREADY EXCEPT WITH TEN TIMES THE CARDS. STRAP IN BECAUSE WE GOT SOME FUN STUFF COMING. ONCE AGAIN I WAS TOO LAZY TO ORGANIZE THE CARDS INTO ACTUAL THEMES AND MOSTLY AM JUST POSTING THEM AS THEY CAME OUT OF THE BOX. WE'LL START WITH A COIN BECAUSE THAT WAS RIGHT ON TOP

1990 TOPPS COINS DALE MURPHY

CATEGORY - BRAVES

I COMPLETELY IGNORED THESE COIN SETS AT THE TIME AND LATER ENDED UP WITH TWO COMPLETE SETS THAT WERE INCLIDED IN REPACK TINS. SO I PROBABLY HAVE ONE OR TWO OF THESE ALREADY BUT WHEN YOU ARE IN THE MIDST OF A DIMEBOX FRENZY IF YOU SEE A MURPHY ODDBALL YOU GET IT. MURPH IS ONE OF THOSE GUYS I NEED TO GET IN TCDB IF FOR NO OTHER REASON I CAN SEE JUST HOW MANY 80S ODDBALLS OF HIS I DON'T HAVE

THIS IS THE 1990 VERSION OFTHE COINS, THERE WERE ALSO SETS IN 1987-1989. THAT'S TOO MANY COINS. I GOTTA FIND THREE MORE MURPHY COINS NOW. MAYBE I DON'T NEED TO KNOW HOW MANY CARDS I DON'T HAVE 

2022 PANINI CORNERSTONES JAZZ CHISHOLM

CATEGORY - SUPERSTAR? PLAYER COLLECTION? I JUST LIKE JAZZ

CORNERSTONES IS A BASKETBALL PRODUCT THAT PANINI THREW OUT THERE FOR BASEBALL LAST YEAR. IT WOULD HAVE BEEN PANINI'S LAST SET BEFORE GETTING FANATIC'D HAD THEY NOT JUST DECIDED 'SCREW IT, WHO NEEDS LICENSES' AND REBRANDED AS BOWMAN WITH LEGENDS. IT'S A WEIRD LOOKIN SET THO. SUPER THICK BUT WITH A CHEAP FEEL LIKE THE FRONT LAMINATION IS ABOUT TO PEEL OFF. VERY DARK BUT WITH ODD RAINBOW FOIL THAT SHOWS UP IN STRIPES. I FEEL LIKE THEY TRIED TO MAKE ZENITH BUT GOOBERED IT BADLY AND THREW ANOTHER BRAND NAME ON IT AT THE LAST MINUTE. COMPLAINTS ASIDE, I BOUGHT A FEW OF THESE OF PLAYERS I LIKE. JAZZ IS A PLAYER I LIKE

2005-06 TOPPS BASKETBALL BRIAN GRANT

CATEGORY - WANTLIST

MY BOOKMARKS ARE FILLED WITH CARDS I NEEDED FROM WANTLISTS THAT I MEANT TO BUY EVENTUALLY BUT NOW NEVER WILL. IT'S MOSTLY JUNKWAX ERA STUFF, SO NO BIG LOSS. THE STARS I BOUGHT. ALSO CARDS FROM EARLY 00S SETS YOU CANNOT FIND ANYWHERE. THOSE I GOT IMMEDIATELY. 05-06 IS ONE OF THOSE TOPPS BASKETBALL SETS WHERE MY COLLECTION IS QUITE SPARCE SO EVERY BIT HELPS

1995 MEGACARDS CONLON COLLECTION GEORGE EARNSHAW

CATEGORY - WANTLIST

CONLON CARDS GOT LEFT IN THE BOOKMARKS THOUGH. I LASER FOCUSED ON THE MORE EASILY COMPLETABLE PACIFIC LEGENDS SET SO THESE TOOK A BACK SEAT. THIS CARD IS FROM THE 1995 HIGH NUMBERED SERIES WHERE SALES WERE IN THE DUMPER AND THEY PANICKED AND ADDED COLORED BORDERS AND FOIL STAMPING. OR MAYBE IT'S A PARALLEL? I DUNNO. I BARELY HAVE ANY OF THEM SO I HONESTLY HAVE NO IDEA. GEORGE WAS A REALLY GOOD PITCHER FOR A FEW YEARS AND THE BACK TELLS OF HIS WAR HEROICS

2020-21 HOOPS CAM REDDISH

CATEGORY - HAWKS

CAM DIDN'T WORK OUT FOR THE HAWKS AND THEN DIDN'T REALLY WORK OUT FOR THE KNICKS AND HE FOLLOWED UP HIS TIME IN NEW YORK WITH A STINT IN PORTLAND WHERE HE DIDN'T WORK OUT. NOW HE'S WITH THE LAKERS AND OF COURSE HE'LL PROBABLY GO OFF THIS YEAR. PICK HIM UP EARLY IN YOUR FANTASY DRAFTS, AND GIVE ME AN INVITE TO THE LEAGUE, I WANNA PLAY AGAIN THIS YEAR. YOU WILL SEE A TON OF BRAVES IN THESE POSTS BUT I SEEMED TO LIMIT MYSELF TO ONLY ONE HAWKS CARD PER PLAYER. CAM WILL PROBABLY END UP GETTING A PAGE IN MY HAWKS BINDER SO I DO NEED TO FIND AT LEAST 9 CARDS OF HIM AND THIS IS A START 

1992-93 UPPER DECK MCDONALD'S ED BELFOUR

CATEGORY - PLAYER COLLECTION

I HOPE YOU LIKE ED BELFOUR (SORRY FUJI) BECAUSE YOU'RE ABOUT TO SEE A LOT OF HIS CARDS. AFTER NOT GIVING A SINGLE SHIT ABOUT ANY OF MY HOCKEY CARDS FOR OVER A DECADE, SEEING A BUNCH OF OF THEM FOR FREE GOT ME TO LOOK THROUGH THEM TO FIGURE OUT WHAT I ACTUALLY LIKED OUT OF THEM. THE RESULTS: TOPPS SETS, INSERTS, AND CARDS OF A FEW PLAYERS I LIKE. SPECIFICALLY: CHRIS CHELIOS, ED BELFOUR, PAUL COFFEY AND STEVE YZERMAN. HERE'S ONE OF MANY MCDONALD'S CARDS I NABBED, BACK WHEN THEIR SPECIAL PACKS CONTAINED BASICALLY REGULAR UPPER DECK CARDS. THIS CHANGED QUICKLY AND YOU WILL SEE SOME WILD SHIT FROM THE GOLDEN ARCHES VERY SOON

2013 PRIZM DRAFT PICKS JASON HURSH PRIZM

CATEGORY - BRAVES, SHINY

JASON WAS THE BRAVES' FIRST ROUND PICK IN 2013 AND I THOUGHT HE WAS ONE OF MANY PITCHING PROSPECTS THAT GOT TRADED OFF BUT I WAS INCORRECT. JASON PITCHED 11 GAMES FOR THE BRAVES IN THE DISMAL PERIOS OF 2016-2017. IT'S A PLEASANT SURPRISE TO HAVE A DRAFT PICK/PROSPECT CARD THAT ACTUALLY PLAYED FOR THE TEAM. THIS CARD IS REALLY SUPER EXTRA SHINY TOO, THOS DOT PATTERNIN THE BACKGROUND DOES A LOT OF WORK 

2022 CHRONICLES BASE CORBIN BURNES

CATEGORY - CHRONICLES

I WENT APESHIT PICKING UP CHRONICLES ON THIS BINGE AND THERE WAS STILL A TON OF CARDS I DIDN'T GET AROUND TO. MY FIRST FOCUS WAS STARS AND COOL LOOKING SETS. CORBIN WON A CY YOUNG SO HE'S A STAR. THAT'S HOW IT WORKS

2022 CHRONICLES PHOENIX JOSIAH GRAY

CATEGORY - CHRONICLES

JOSIAH GRAY WAS AN ALL-STAR THIS YEAR! YES, FOR WASHINGTON, BUT IT STILL COUNTS. I LIKE THAT HE'S A PRETTY GOOD PITCHER BUT MY BRAVES STILL HIT HIM HARD. NOW THAT I SAY THIS HE WILL ALCANTARA OUR ASSES IN 2024. PHOENIX IS STILL NOT MY FAVORITE CHRONICLES DESIGN BUT IT'S CHROMEY SO IT MADE THE CUT IN MY CARD CHOICES MORE OFTEN THAN NOT

2022 CHRONICLES ELITE KYLE MULLER

CATEGORY - CHRONICLES, BRAVES

I PROBABLY COULD HAVE COMPLETED THE ENTIRE 2022 CHRONICLES KYLE MULLER RUN BUT I VERY QUICKLY GOT MULLERED OUT. THESE ELITE CARDS ARE TOO SHINY TO IGNORE. DONT' GET ME WRONG, THEY ARE VERY VERY BORING, BUT DAMN THEY SHINY

2020 DONRUSS RONALD ACUÑA JR.

CATEGORY - RONALD!!!!!

YEAAAHHHHHHHH FREE RONALD! ALL RONALDS ARE GOOD RONALDS. I NEVER READ INSTRUCTIONS SO FOR A WHILE MY ORDERS WERE BASICALLY 40 CARDS ALL AT ONCE WITH SHIPPING SO I WOULD HAVE A BACKLOG OF CARDS I WANTED TO PICK UP ALL OPEN IN TABS READY TO BE PUT IN MY CART. THEN WHEN A CARD I COULDN'T LIVE WITHOUT POPPED UP I FRANTICALLY CLICKED ADD TO CART 40 TIMES AND HOPED NO ONE SNIPED ME BEFORE I COULD PAY. THIS STRATEGY WAS TERRIBLE AND I LOST WELL OVER HALF OF THE 'CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT' CARDS* I WAS SHOOTING FOR. AFTER MISSING OUT ON A TON OF ALLEN & GINTER MINIS** I QUIT DOING THIS BUT RONALD HERE ABSOLUTELY ANCHORED ONE OF MY 40 CARD ORDERS

THAT'S IT FOR TODAY, POSTS WILL USUALLY BE ABOUT 11-12 CARDS EACH BECAUSE I CAN KNOCK OUT A POST LIKE THAT IN AN HOUR. THERE'S A FEW OUTLIERS THAT ARE WAY SMALLER OR LARGER FOR THEMATIC REASONS. UP NEXT: LEGENDS AND HOX

*SURPRISINGLY, I AM STILL ALIVE

**PUTTING A CARD IN MY CART AND THEN HAVING SOMEONE SNATCH IT FROM AWAY WHEN I WAS TRYING TO PAY FOR SHIPPING DOUBLY SCREWED ME AS I THEN HAD TO REMOVE THE CARD FROM THE ORDER, FIND A REPLACEMENT CARD TO KEEP THE ORDER AT 40 CARDS, AND THEN TRY TO PAY AGAIN ONLY TO FIND THAT TWO MORE CARDS GOT SNATCHED AWAY. AFTER LOSING A DOZEN MINIS TWO OR THREE AT A TIME LIKE THIS I GAVE UP AND STARTED PUTTING IN A BUNCH OF SMALL 5-10 CARD ORDERS TRIGGERED BY AFOREMENTIONED 'CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT' CARDS. I FELT BAD BECAUSE I THOUGHT I WAS MAKING WAY MORE WORK FOR STEVEN AND NANCY BUT IN REALITY I WAS BUYING WAY LESS CARDS THEY PUT ON THE SITE THREE YEARS AGO AND COULDN'T FIND ANYMORE AND WAS BUYING MORE NEW STUFF SO WHO KNOWS IF I WAS MORE OR LESS ANNOYING 

Traveling box loot

White Sox Cards' post on what he picked up from the Traveling Card Box of Awesomeness reminded me that I haven't done my post on that yet. And I was the first one to get the box! I am a bad blogger. What is the Traveling Box? It's a little project Bad Wax put together. A group of collectors all donate some good cards that they don't need and/or want. All the cards get put in a box and shipped around the country to various collectors who take out cards they want and replace them with cards of equal value. There was a ton of great stuff in the box but I limited myself to 5 cards and I let my son pick out one for himself. Here's my loot:

This is actually my son's loot. I allowed him to choose one for himself and he went with the Orioles' hat logo card of Jim Palmer. He almost snagged Steve's Frank Thomas/Jeff Bagwell/Carlos Delgado triple relic but opted for the Manu-Patch instead. I was relieved because I wasn't entirely sure what I could replace that one with.

First pickup out of the box was a 1969 Joe Niekro card I needed for my 'set'. I'm not really working on the 1969 Topps set and I probably never will, but I attacked the vintage in this box with great ferocity. If I didn't have it before, I had it now.

Next up is a 1971 Topps card of Barry's pop. 1971 Topps I will most likely end up collecting in full force as soon as my 1972 set is complete through at least series 4. I'm actually pretty close to completing Series 1.

1960 Topps is another of my favorite sets so I had to pick up the Ashburn. Richie Ashburn on the Cubs is a tad odd. Also odd is that I picked up more Cubs cards out of the box than Braves cards. Yes, I even left Braves in the box. I tried to replace relic with relic, vintage with vintage, etc. but this one I couldn't find a good match so I snuck in a nice Cub card as a replacement.

Ah, now we're in serious card territory. All cards were ranked in tiers, $5-10, $10-15, $15-20 and so on. I don't remember the exact tier of this card but it was in the next to highest tier worth of cards in the box. I have an accidentally good collection of Al Kaline cards as my mother brought me back a 9-pocket page full of vintage Kalines from a business trip when I was a kid. I did not have the '59 already, so this was good luck.

Ok now the doozy:

Amidst the vintage a 2012 card appears! So. I love Yogi Berra. He's right up there with Kurt Vonnegut, Bill Hicks and Pinkie Pie as far as personal spiritual gurus go for me. I also like old coins, especially silver ones. I saw this and thought I MUST HAZ. So I did. I had to pony up a fairly serious card to get it but I think I left the box in better shape than I found it.

I also snagged this custom card of a 1976 Topps Dale Murphy card. There were three custom cards in there but they weren't on the main card list for the box. I left two sketch cards in the box in exchange for this one. One silly, one mostly not silly.

We were instructed not to give away what cards were added to the box so the suspense would be greater. I scanned all of 'em anyway and I'm going to cheat a bit by showing off a little teaser of the stuff I put in the box. I hope I'm not kicked out of the rotation! Two cards I put in the box were picked up in this haul so at least the peeps like my stuff.

Too Many Hobbies

Fuji's homework assignment for this week is to show off your other non-sport related hobbies. Asking me this to do this is kinda like asking Shawn Kemp to show off all his children. Over the past 40 years I've managed to get interested in a whole lot of things. A lot were sports related, especially gaming so I'll skip the video and board games and magazines and fantasy sports and et cetera and keep it to just the stuff that impacted my life that had nothing to do with sports. I literally have 15 minutes to write this up after scanning and photoing all this stuff today so I'm just gonna jump to it and pray that the formatting doesn't break again. 

I pretty much learned to read from Peanuts Fawcett Paperbacks. I've accumulated a bookshelf full in my travels. This one here is one I had when I was a wee lad. It was chewed by my asshole dog who is probably responsible for my current racism toward canines. I also went through a period where I would circle my favorite letter in my books. This book was brought to you by the letter 'R'.

At some point I got my hands on my uncle's old Mad Magazines from the early '70s and started reading them too. I must admit that my political views were heavily influenced by Mad Magazine. Sadly, most of those magazines were lost in a Great Purge of my bedroom, but I still have this one that I picked up in the '80s. This is one of my all time favorite MAD covers. 

I was INSANE over Star Wars when I was about 8 or 9. I forced my parents to let me watch BattleStar Galactica because it kinda looked like Star Wars. My favorite cartoon for a while was G-Force because 7-Zark-7 looked a bit like R2D2. Again, many figures were lost, but I still have Han and a bounty hunter to go along with my new(er) Han and a bounty hunter. 

In 1983 I went berzerk over baseball cards. To try to steer me into something more sensible, my mother gave me her old coin collection. It worked for a few years, but by '86 I was lost to cardboard again. I still  really love old coins though. My cat was actually named after this coin here. 

Stamps. For a brief and crazy period I became obsessed with stamps. I am generally ashamed of and regret this wild behavior today. There is one quirky habit I still have today thanks to stamps. When I get a letter with an actual stamp on it, I instinctively rip off the stamp and save it. You know, because it's so valuable. Here's a stamp of a guava that looks vaguely filthy.

Here is a book cover that is genuinely filthy. This book cover is pretty par for the course for the '70s though. I love love loved to read as a kid and picked up all sorts of crazy sci-fi and horror stuff. I picked this one out to show off on this post not for the cover but because this is genuinely a really good dystopian type sci-fi novel that no one has probably ever heard of. It's about the future (natch) where people get their brains put in jars and then they work out all their problems while existing only as a brain and then they reach Enlightenment and their brain gets put into an actual person and they live out their days in a peaceful utopia but the everyone feels sorry for the first person who was ever jarbrained because he is still a fucking mess after all these years so they let him have a body anyway and HIJINKS ENSUE! Lotta great old crappy books out there if you look!

I also love space, especially the space shuttle. I snagged this shuttle mission token on one of my many trips to the Kennedy Center or the Space Museum in Huntsville. The combo of coins + space was too much to resist.

Comics! I love comics. Not the spandex superhero type though. I liked the House of Mystery type horror comics and space comics and funny comics when I was a kid. When I hit High School I picked up a ton of cheap independent comics at the local comic shop. Most were oddball stuff but I managed to pick up quite a lot of Fantagraphics comics cheap including Love and Rockets, Peter Bagge's Hate and this #1 Lloyd Llewellyn by Daniel Clowes. This may very well be the greatest comic book cover of all time. There is probably a 50-50 shot I break down and do a comics Tumbler in the next calendar year. 

Can't forget the music! Ever since I got an Eddy Grant and a Men At Work cassette tape at K-Mart in 1982 I've been in love with music. I have boxes of cassettes, piles of CDs, folders full of MP3s and a couple of crates of LPs. Here is the most ridiculous and offensive album I own: a Bootleg of the Beatles in Hamburg entitled The Beatles vs the Third Reich. According to the back the audience responses to the Beatles' songs include "Seig Heil" "Your Papers, Please" and my favorite, "Komm, Gib Mir Deine Penis". 

In the '90s, Magic: the Gathering hit and I eventually got caught up in all the CCG stuff thanks to Decipher's Star Wars game. This was probably the first CCG guide I ever got, mainly just for the free Star Wars cards. I now have a pile of them I have no idea what to do with. 

Fast forward to present day and now I like ponies. Lord knows what the hell my basement is going to look like if I live another 40 years....

Random stuff out of the images folder

I want the Joba post off the top but am drawing a blank on what to write. Here's five random images I scanned and never used for anything, let's see how well I free associate.

It's weird, I have two of these Bowman Gold Parallel Heyward rookie prospect cards, and two of the chrome variety, but I don't have the base card. No, do not start mailing them to me, I'm just making an observation. Heyward might end up involved in a Jake Peavy trade anyway, All kinds of players' names are being thrown around like Escobar, Kelly Johnson and pretty much every decent prospect in the system. Trade 'em all for Jake, I say.

This BJ Upton mini '06 Bowman Heritage card was going to go into my Retro Rays post, but I decided to use Longoria's Bowman Heritage card instead. That set is kind of crappy looking, but the mini cards are fantastic. They look very similar to the original '49 Bowmans.


I haven't done a sticker post in ages, and I don't know when I'll do another, quite frankly. This Fleer sticker is from 1985 (I think - I'm sure I'll be corrected if not) and has a jersey instead of the usual logo or cap sticker. How fantastic is that? I think they only did one jersey per team, it would be sweet to have a sticker set with home and away unis. The really fantastic thing about this sticker is that Fleer used Phil Niekro's number - SuperAwesome. Knucksie was pitching for the Yankees when this card came out though.

Morten Anderson Rookie card. Raise your hand if he belongs in the Hall of Fame. So does Ray Guy, but the dillweed voters will never let him in, so nuke Canton. My self-imposed boycott on all things Falcon lasted five and a half games. Last weekend I ended up stuck in a situation where the game was on TV and I ended up watching the last half of the game. The Falcons looked pretty good (goal line stand baby!) and I have to admit now that the Matt Ryan Pick is not as disastrous as I thought. I'd still rather have an anchor on the D-Line for 10 years, but I'm not an NFL GM so ufck me. The game was going well, the Falcons had a 7 point week late in the game and then Jason Elam attempted a field goal to salt it away.

Brief aside here: 1) Jason Elam is a Falcon!??!!?! 2) Jason Elam is one of the best kickers in the league. 3) I looked for two hours for a damned Jason Elam card WHICH I KNOW I HAVE and couldn't find it.

Back to the story: So the field goal would basically put the Bears away, Elam is an elite kicker and of course, Elam blew it. So now there's a 6 point lead with very little time left and I knew in my guts that Chicago would march down the field for a touchdown. Which they did. Same old lousy Falcons. I watched this exact game about 50 times in the past 30 years. Stupid loser Falcons. All they needed was a makeable field goal from a good kicker and they still blew it. Now here's 11 seconds left and we're down by one. Rotten stinkbomb pathetic loser bloody Falcons. I shoulda threw a brick throw the TV screen when I first saw the game was on. Ok, let's have the clock run out and get the losing loserness over with. Then the Bears bungled the kickoff. Then Ryan threw a pass. Then Elam hit a field goal. Then the Falcons won. WHO IS THIS TEAM AND WHAT DID YOU DO WITH MY CRAPPY FALCONS??

So yeah, now I'm the dumbass. I ditched my team and missed a pretty good start to the season. I'm still mad about the whole thing though, but I figured out a way to reconcile my loathing. In the fourth quarter Arthur Blank wandered out on the field as he usually does. At that moment as I was furiously flipping him the double bird, I realized that it's not the Falcons I hate, it's that goddamn stupid idiot moron meddling OWNER. So now, when I watch the Falcons game on TV next week I can cheerfully root for the Falcons, and then curse a blue streak and throw things at the screen in rage when that [insert disparaging epithet here] shows up on the sideline during the fourth quarter. Thanks Arthur! I can cheer for my team again! YOU JACKASS


This... is not a card. It's a coin. Little did you know that I used to collect coins! Well I did, and I got most of them at Northlake Stamp and Coin when I was a kid. That shop has been in the same spot in the mall for probably 20 years now and the same guy with frizzy hair is still there running the joint. I was meeting a freind over in Tucker a few months ago and while I waited for him to get off work I went back to check out the place. They also sell baseball cards and they have shelves full of old boxes way up on the top shelf of their cases. They also had a few packs, but no prices as far as I could tell. Nothing card wise caught my eye but I did see the old Bargain Box on the counter that was there that I dug through when I was 12. I can't just browse through something like that so I looked through every last coin in the box. After all that work, I couldn't just not get something, so I picked out this 1844 Large Cent for 11 bucks. It's a pretty good looking coin actually, the date is strong, most of the details are there and most importantly the LIBERTY on her crown is readable. The reason it was so cheap is that someone tried to drill the thing for some reason. It's a really nice coin and I think it's now the oldest thing in my collection. This ain't no little Lincoln penny either, the sucker is bigger than a quarter. So there you have it, an old penny. Now you all know that I am not just a collector, but a pathological packrat.