What A Day

A few months ago my wife had some minor surgery which required me to be at the hospital with her, so to pass the time (a few hours), I brought some cards that I bought from Five Below.

There were no packs of 1989 Topps to be seen, so I felt safe about my purchase, but I still did proceed with caution.

Five bucks for 100 cards, 2 baseball packs, 1 figure, 1 rookie card and 1 Hall of Fame card.

What caught my eye was the Sports Collectors Digest Paul Molitor on one of the sides of the cube.

Let's start with the two packs. The first pack I opened was 2014 Topps Heritage.

Nothing exciting, although I did get a red parallel of Giancarlo Stanton.

Next pack was 2014 Topps Series 2.

Again nothing exciting, although I did pull a Will Myers Mini Die-Cut...

...and a Vic Black red parallel.

Before we get to the highlights of the hundred cards, I also got this little Oriole thing.

I guess I should have cleaned off the counter before I took this picture.

First card up is the reason I bought the cube...this Sports Collectors Digest Paul Molitor card from 1990.

The second card from this cube is a card I've been looking for! All of the checklists that I've been able to find for the 1987 Hygrade Baseball's All-Time Greats set include this card. This is one of only two cards in these checklists that are orange (the rest are green). I'm not sure how accurate these online checklists are, but all I need now is the orange Jackie Robinson card and I've finally completed this!

Well, as far as I know.

There always seems to be one card that doesn't belong in these things.

I love oddballs., but I really love Red Sox oddballs.

If I ever find a cheap box of these Ted Williams cards (and by cheap I mean five bucks), it's mine. This brand has really grown on me since I started collecting again.

I'll have to admit I was pretty surprised when I pulled this. This was turning out to be quite the cube. I was sitting in my car in the hospital parking lot while I was looking through these, and thankfully I didn't get a call during all of this saying she was ready to go home. She may have had to wait until I was finished. She would have understood...I hope.

I have to grudgingly admit I like these Yankee Stadium Legacy cards, although I'm probably in the vicinity of sixty-six hundred cards shy of completing this set.

You can get this 1991 Score Rising Stars Juan Bell on eBay for 99 cents plus $2.50 shipping.

Ouch. I like my method of getting "rising stars" better.

Jerry Ujdur is the only name of the three that I recognize. So off to Baseball Reference I go.

Dave Steffen never made the majors and Roger Weaver went 3 - 4 in 1980 for the Tigers, his only season in the big leagues.

1983 Donruss. One of the sets that I'll someday make a list for. The year this set came out, I was a Boy Scout and went to the Jamboree in Alberta, Canada. I spent thirty days traveling on a school bus (this was before they decided to put padding on the seats), and it was my first time away from home that was longer than a week of summer camp. We went from New Hampshire to California to Canada and back, seeing as many things as we could along the way. I still have a lot of memories from that trip; seeing my first real life...um...lady of the evening on a Chicago street, chasing kids through a Piggly Wiggly parking lot for making fun of us, and buying packs of 1983 Donruss. I also remember spilling Kool-Aid fruit punch all over the cards. At least the color schemes matched.

I'll have to admit I was NOT surprised when I pulled this. Whenever I pull a card out of these repacks and it is from some early 2000 set that only had one or two issues, it is always Mike F@#king Hampton. Does this happen to anyone else? I've got about nine sets where the only card I have is Mike F@#king Hampton.

This was the earliest card I got (along with the Tigers team card). I like catcher cards like this. It sort of reminds me of the 1978 Topps Milt May card which was a favorite of mine as a child. This one is cooler though.

All that's left now is to decide which is the Rookie Card and which is the Hall of Fame card. I don't understand why they make it a point to advertise this, because you could put a 1991 Topps Nolan Ryan to satisfy the Hall of Fame card and you could put in a rookie card of someone that never made the big leagues. Big deal.

So with that in mind, I've decided that my Hall of Fame card is Jackie. 

My rookie card is going to be the 2010 Topps Dustin Richardson for two reasons:

1.) It is a Red Sox card.
2.) It says "RC" right on it, so I don't have to try and figure it out.

He has a lifetime 0 - 0 record and is still bouncing around the minor leagues, most recently in Double A for the Dodgers organization.

It's all good, the cards helped pass the time, the surgery went well (they were checking a lump for cancer...it was negative, although she's still a high risk) and as a bonus I was even able to mess with my wife's mind on the drive home while she was still loopy from all the drugs.

What a day.