When You Just Have To Buy Something

Several weeks ago, I stopped off at Target to see what they had for cards. Since this was the day before Topps Update was released, the shelves were pretty bare. But I was able to find something to keep me going until then.

The front two cards were okay. Not great, but they would do.

The back two cards were acceptable as well. Once I was sure that there were no packs of 1989 Fleer in it, I paid for it and brought it home.

Now I present some of the highlights.

We're already off with a bang with just the second card. I have plenty of Conlon Collection cards, but this is the first one that I've seen colorized. What gives?

Aaaah yes, a "prototype". While doing some research trying to figure out what this is, I found a really cool blog called the Conlon Baseball Card Collector. It doesn't have a lot of entries, but it is full of information.

According to that blog, there were two versions of the color version of this card. One is marked "All Star Fanfest" although I don't know where, as I could not find an image of it anywhere on the web. I have the other version, which according to this blog was handed out at the 1991 National Sports Collectors Convention. There were six cards that were part of this "prototype" set. Five of them were issued at the convention.

In addition to the Ty Cobb card, there was:

Card 331 - Christy Mathewson
Card 400 - Joe Jackson
Card 450 - Hughie Jennings
Card 500 - Ty Cobb
Card 520 - Goose Goslin

All of these cards were the black and white.

Now this is where some of the info is sketchy. The information on the Conlon blog was taken from a variety of sources, most notably Sports Collectors Digest. As you can see, I've listed six cards (including the Ty Cobb), not five. There was also a Babe Ruth card (in color), with a print run of 225, 000 that was distributed there as well. The Ty Cobb card that I have has a listed print run of 60,000.

Irregardless of what information is correct and what isn't, this is a cool card to have.

This is from the second series of the 1989 Pacific Baseball Legends set. I don't think I have very many of the 1989 set, most of what I have are from 1988 and 1990.

1994 Upper Deck Minor League Star Potential Brien Taylor. Probably the biggest failed prospect of the early 90's.

I do collect minor league cards as well. I have a small stack from this set, the 1994 Classic Gold set. This was a two hundred card set which included Eric Chavez, Torii Hunter and Derek Jeter as the biggest stars.

I professed my love for the '78 set numerous times on this blog...

...and this will be an upgrade in my set.

Somewhere there is an empty warehouse that was previously filled with boxes upon boxes of this set. I must have five of these fuckers by now.

I liked the Topps Lineage set (even though there were no stats on it).

Same thing with 2008 Upper Deck Baseball Heroes, although I didn't care too much for all of the parallels.

I only scanned this because of the horrid airbrushing job.

One of the last cards in the package was this 1979 Topps Minnesota Twins team card.

Looks like whoever had this card before was short only the prospect card.

Who were the Twins prospects in 1979?

Sam Perlozzo, Rick Sofield and Kevin Stanfield of course!

Although this contained mostly junk wax (as expected), it still was an enjoyable way to wind down an evening.