Marlins Legend Mike Piazza.

     They say the first step is admitting you have a problem. While I have spent a long time the last decade or so making my collection smaller and more indicative of the things I love, some of the player collections continue to spiral out of control.  Mike Piazza has always been the largest of my hoards and it seems it might never ever cease (not as long as they keep printing old time players that is).

 

     Spring training and a very nice mailing from Night Owl inspired me to tend to a long ignored pile of around 30 Piazza cards that had accumulated but not integrated into the vastness. N.O. had included a few nice Mets inserts and it put me over the edge of having to organize. In that unsorted pile was the die-cut shiny Diamond Immortals card you see in the middle there, which made it nine original Piazza Marlins cards in my collection - that is 4 more than games he played in Florida teal - right in the wheelhouse of this blog. This also gives me an opportunity to fact dump one of my favorite things about Piazza's career: he hit only 8 triples over 16 years but that does include at least one for each team he played for, yup he hit one in the 18 at bats he took in Miami. So dumb, so delicious.

     So now I have almost two full super top loader boxes of worthy Piazza cards. Not the regular two row shoe boxes mind you, the giant long three row ones. You can see the size of the two row boxes on the right of this photo, and compare it to the two behemoths next to it.

The first box is chock full of the Mets (and Marlins!) insert cards plus all the ones post-2008 and his playing career.  There is about 600 cards in here:

The second box has all the relic and encapsulated cards in the left row and all his Dodgers inserts in the middle and right rows.  There is a bit of room left in here, illustrated by the double plastic box spacer in the back, but all it will take is one eBay or Comc binge and that bit will be gone. There is at least 300 cards in this box and maybe closer to four (I did not count as I organized).  That means there's about 1000 inserts SPs and parallels in top loaders here. And you wonder why I've never shown ALL the individual Piazza cards I have.

Oh yeah, and these are just the fancy insert cards.  I have a 3" binder full of his base cards and lesser inserts and parallels.  There's probably 90-100 pages in there as well.

So while Gary Carter will probably always maintain most favorite player status, he only has a single regular shoebox of fancy cards and one 2" binder.  Mike Piazza arrived on the scene as cards started to get silly and my abundance reflects that.  I will never have all of them but someday my heirs will have to figure out what to do with ~2000 Mike Piazza cards. And by then it could be closer to 3000.  I really do have a problem.

Sort 'em If You Got 'em.

       Yesterday was National Baseball Card Day and no, I couldn't get to the National this year (or any year, yet) and no, I didn't get out to my local card shop.  But if you saw my last post, you know that I had plenty to do - I had 925 cards sent from COMC to sort through and revel in.  And that's exactly what I did:

These piles all make sense, to me anyway.  The majority are baseball cards but there are also football, hockey, basketball, bowling, tennis, golf, softball, gaming, movie (James Bond, Batman, and Star Wars among others), music (Beatles and Guided By Voices), and all sorts of Goodwin Champions which include all those things and more. There are three separate piles of Mets cards alone, and also one each for the Saints and the Devils and the Knicks, and a couple of players even got their own piles, Tom Seaver and Todd Hundley (no, really, I am a Hundley super-collector at this point). After that there are Hall of Famers and current stars and retired stars and birthday boys and all-star rookie trophy cards.  It was a fun few hours to go through all these.

I obviously can't highlight and scan 925 cards (103 scans! That would more than double my Seaver memorial post) so I will semi-randomly grab some cards that are either fun or fun to look at or just interesting, to me anyway.  Plus there were a few surprises even for me because after two-plus years, I had forgotten I'd bought them.

The top three here are some multi-player game used cards, one with Gary Carter and Mike Piazza - basically my two favorite players of all time - one with a "Bat Rack" of Mets with the aforementioned Carter and Piazza plus Jose Reyes and Kaz Matsui (remember when he was a thing?) and the third is a glorious mix of 1973 World Series adversaries from the UD Decades set, that one has Tom Seaver and Bud Harrelson along with Reggie Jackson and Bert Campaneris.  THAT is the best card I completely forgot I bought and I was giddy when I saw it.  But it also begs the question, how could I ever forget that card?

 

There is also a Ralph Kiner announcer card, a rarity of him with Mets colors, a great Lee Mazzilli from 1979 Hostess (I have the panel with Steve Garvey and Mike Schmidt but I needed it solo), a 1970 OPC Mets World Champions #1 card, a low numbered Frank Thomas jersey card (with pinstripes!) and a pair of one of my favorite unusual uniform subjects - Pete Rose on the Montreal Expos - I now have a complete page of him in French red, white, and blue.

Let's do a second nine, shall we, I can't just show you less than 1% of these, can I?

First off is the other side of that Carter/Piazza tandem jersey card.  Now I have to decide if it goes with the Carter collection or the Piazza.  Maybe Carter because he's technically the 'front' of the card?  Then you have two modern Topps Hall of Fame short prints.  I am not a big fan of these but sometimes Topps picks really cool photos for them and these two definitely fit that category.  The Koufax is a magnificent shot of him admiring the scoreboard from his perfect game and the Nolan Ryan is a brilliant candid shot that should/could have been one of his 70s cards.  Topps should only pick pictures of this quality when doing these short prints (alas, they often do not).

 

 

There's also a few fun vintage cards here, a 1974 Tony Oliva with its proud position designation of Des(ignated) Hitter, and a late 70s run of Tom Seaver O-Pee-Chee cards.  That last one in the left corner is a 1998 Fleer Tradition Todd Hundley '63 Classic card numbered to /63.  I told you I was becoming a Hundley super-collector.  I also had my eye on a Piazza version of this card but alas did not pull the trigger on it and now it is gone and I might never see another.  I have put that card in my Needed Nine, you can find that list on the right side margin of the blog.  

I teased it in the post from the other day so here is a much better view of the 1952 Andy Pafko #1 I acquired:

I am not certain why I ever bought into the hype of this card but somehow over the years I did and I just decided I must own this stupid thing.  I ended up getting it during the COMC Black Friday sales and the price was right for this condition.  I think what I really like most is the randomness of someone like Andy Pafko being the first card in their first big set.  He was a good ballplayer but nothing anyone would ever consider a superstar.  Donruss went with Ozzie Smith, Fleer went with Pete Rose, Score went with Don Mattingly, Upper Deck lucked out and chose Ken Griffey Jr. over Gregg Jefferies and Gary Sheffield for their lead off but somehow Topps went with Andy Pafko as card number one. If anyone knows the solid reason why they chose him (I don't recall ever seeing one) please enlighten me.  For now, Andy has a hot date with the other two 1952 star cards I keep protected: my Gus Zernial and my Bob Feller.  

I have gotten to the point in my Gary Carter collection where the only cards I don't have are either strange local oddball issues, low numbered monstrosities, or (somewhere in between) just plain old stuff I don't think is worth the money.  I did pull the trigger on a solid gold Gary that I just couldn't pass up during that black Friday sale.  I must say, it is shiny!

I doubt these Danbury Mint cards will ever be worth much (I also bought a Jerry Koosman one in this batch) but I suppose if times are tough I could melt them down and make fillings out of them or something.

Lastly is a card that probably only means something to me but I am so happy that I got it, the nerd in me is still glowing.  It is a 2019 Goodwin Champions Robert Pollard printing plate, a yellow 1/1. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The pandemic left me a lot of time at home to sit and listen to music and Uncle Bob here cranked out something like seven albums (and counting) during 2020 and 2021.  Maybe it is the old man in me, but I don't listen to a lot of music the way I did when I was a younger man but the pandemic did a lot of strange things to all of us so it was nice to have new Guided By Voices albums flying out at the rate they used to in the 1990s.  This card will now be the centerpiece of my Bob Pollard collection from that Goodwin set and I have to trust in myself that I don't become that lunatic who needs to hoard the one-of-one cards.  It helps that I haven't seen any of the others for sale...you know, not that I've checked or anything.  Now excuse me, I have 905 other cards to put in their proper place in my collection. 

Retro Fun.

       It is safe to say most of us reached retro card saturation sometime in the early to mid-aughts.  The Topps Archives and Topps Heritage sets in 2001 begat Upper Deck's Vintage and Decades series and opened up a floodgate of reprints, design reuse, and pseudo-retro sets.  Sometimes it is refreshing and neat but most of the time it is gratuitous and poorly executed.  And since Topps keeps pumping out their Heritage and revamped Archives sets over and and over, year after year, we get very little variation in the presentation of our nostalgia.

Enter Topps Super 70s Sports Baseball.  If you recognize the name and follow this dude on twitter, you know the whole tongue-in-cheek schtick this feed has.  It posts multiple retro photos a day with an amusing over-the-top caption to it to inflict an emotional response: sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes ridiculous.  When I saw they had teamed up with Topps to put out a card set, I couldn't resist.  Lemme tell you, they had me at the graphic on the box:

When I saw the design of the cards, I knew immediately that they were going for someone like me who wants the vibe of old school cards but not the horrible repetition the whole parade has become.  If you are as much of a card nerd as I am (and if you are reading this blog, I assume you are) you recognized the elements right away: The script team logo from 1978, the pennant flag from 1977, and the ribbon from 1979 (or 1974 perhaps?) all remixed and reorganized into something organic and new.  It's like hearing a perfect cover version of a popular overplayed song that makes the whole thing come alive again.

The "pack" was actually a plastic box sealed with tamper tape. Very interesting indeed.

 

 

I pre-ordered this stuff, which I NEVER do even for Ginter or Heritage, back in early November.  I got a late Christmas present when they arrived on Boxing Day.  And yup, I love them as much as I thought I would.

 

First and foremost, new photos!  One of the huge complains I and so many other collectors is when they put old guys on new cards, they use the same pictures over and over and over and over again.  I know I have written about it and I know other bloggers have too so when I see new shots from the no doubt bottomless pile Topps should have, it makes me very happy indeed.  The other thing I noticed right away is that they feel right.  The vintage cardboard is always a plus on these sets. I know shiny white glossy paper looks better but when you are doing this sort of thing, it really should be thick and pulpy and dull.  It makes the backs look right too:

 

I probably should have scanned more backs but the cartoons are wonderful and they look new though someone with more knowledge than me could probably figure out if they are reused.  Either way, they let a third of the back be the comic and I am more than okay with that.  The backs themselves are in the color scheme of 1977 or 1979 with the ribbon from '79 featured.  I was kind of expecting the humorous tone of the S70sS Twitter feed in the write-up but they are pretty straight forward.  I doubt Topps would want to alienate anyone with a Kevin Costner joke on the back of a Cal Ripken card (google it).

Lets look at all of these beauties.  I even got a nice little hit:

 

 

That's a Dave Parker autograph in the middle there.  I didn't have a Cobra signature in my collection so that one is going to stay.  The last two cards are themed parallels that add the colorful banners of 1975 to the mix.  I think it might have been too much to ask for the whole set to look like that so that is a nice addition and kinda what parallels should do in the first place.  I might need to look into making an entire page of the Magnificent Mustaches. 

They did modern players in the set too, which is fine I guess but certainly not what I came to see.  Scherzer and Turner certainly fit in with a 70s theme, Cole and Soto, not so much.  Full disclosure: I am easily old enough to be Juan Soto's dad.

 

 

You may count more than 20 cards, that's because I also pre-ordered my favorite players, the Gary Carter, the Frank Thomas, the Mike Piazza (amusingly shown in his Marlins uniform), and of course the Mets players there on the bottom.  A wise decision since I didn't get any of them in my 20-card box.  These cards are easily the collecting highlight of the dumpster fire that has been 2020.  If you were on the fence about getting any of this stuff because you don't like all the faux-vintage that gets churned out, I suggest it highly.  I hope Topps learns from this and does more fun sets like this rather than just reprinting all their old cards.

Mail Call: Dog Sitters Aren't Supposed To Sit On The Dog.

       I recently spent a week dog sitting my brother's dog Stella.  You have seen her here before as this is certainly not the first time I have done the staycation thing with my favorite canine.  A lot of people think this is not a good way to spend your off time but I honestly cannot think of a better way.  I am not big on travel and adventure; the notion of going to Rome to see the Colosseum or to Tokyo to try to figure out a language that is way over my head sound like more trouble than they're worth.  Plus, going to Disney World with two small children, like my brother did this time around, sounds like pure unadulterated torture.  But spending a week of solitude in a large mostly secluded house with a very low maintenance and adorable yellow lab?  Pure heaven.  In fact, part of my motivation to reignite the blog came from my memories of writing curled up on a couch with the dog sleeping at my feet.

       The only really good part about coming home to real life is the big pile of mail waiting for you. Specifically the cards, the bills can go get fucked.

So let's take a look at the goodies inside these envelopes and packages.

       There is one Listia seller that I really enjoy buying from (he also has a dog as his profile pic. Coincidence? I think not...).  When I order a lot of 6 cards from him, there is always 9 or 10 in the envelope.  I like this both for the surprise and for the maximum efficiency of his mailing as this is about as many cards as you can get into a PWE before you have to add extra stamps.

Can you guess which card I bought this lot for?  Hint, it is not the Bobby Bonilla.  Oddly, it is also not the amusingly named Pete LaCock, who has a wonderful family history.  X for the center square if you knew the answer without clicking.

       There were some players I collect in that pile too.  That is a Frank Thomas I needed as well as a couple of Big Papis. Saints vs. Colts? I always like how that turns out. Also, that's Ron Meyer (no relation).

Joe Flacco has officially been categorized, the verdict is not elite.  But also, still not the worst QB to lead the Ravens to a Super Bowl victory. So he has that going for him, which is nice.

This year is an Olympic year so when I saw this lot, I had to have it to make a page.

These are 1996 Collect-A-Card Centennial Olympic Collection cards and I'd be lying if I said I had ever heard of them before.  The photography is nifty but you would expect that since the Olympics are pretty much the Olympics for sports photographers too.

       Speaking of collections, these are from the famous (and infamously overproduced) 1992 Sporting News Conlon Collection.

While this batch seems to make a tidy page, they are actually destined for other things.  A few name collections, a couple photo collections, and one is going with my Babe Ruth cards.  Your rudimentary knowledge of baseball history should tell you which.

       Okay, now things get a little more random.  That 1960 Joe Cunningham All Star card is bound for a small collection of cards that I will reveal, well, around the All Star Break (I bought that one on eBay).  That Rocky IV card is one from a set I never knew existed and captures one of the more ridiculous moments in a most ridiculous movie. Apollo Creed deserved better, dammit, and Rock should have thrown the damn towel.  I got that lot of Piazza cards for the MLB Debut insert that I didn't have but it included that UD Masterpieces which might be my favorite non-Met Piazza card. 

Lastly, I bought a set of cards on eBay that I ran into by accident looking for something else, but seeing it, I just had to have it.

        I am sure they are going for a Where's Waldo thing here, just another example of manufactured whimsy from Topps Opening Day.  While nine card sets are ideal, I don't mind ten when I can pluck one of the cards for a player collection - in this case, David Wright - and use the rest for the page (even if it includes a Chipper Jones card). 

I do love how busy this page looks and it will find a place of honor in my weird insert collection binder.  There was also a 2020 Topps blaster waiting for me, but that will have to be another post.  I needed something to cheer me up from missing that cute damn dog.

Fork In The Road To Immortality.

       Last night, it was announced that two men had been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame: Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza.  I am going to get my favorite quirky statistic about this out of the way first:  Junior is the first number one draft pick to be chosen, and as a 62nd round pick, 1390th overall, Piazza is (by far) the lowest draft pick ever granted membership to Cooperstown.


Ken Griffey Jr.


Ken Griffey Jr. set a record with 99.3% of the vote, getting named on 437 out of 440 of the ballots. Whoever the three dudes are who decided not to vote for him should be publicly shamed, stripped of their vote, and kept in the stocks on Main Street in Cooperstown during induction weekend.



I have shown my pages of Griffey before so I dove into the boxes for his inserts for this occasion.  Above you see two of my favorite food issue oddballs of all time.  Not that getting cards out of Oreos or Ritz Crackers is all that bizarre and they certainly are as plain looking as possible.  No, I am tickled every time I look at the back of the cards and see the height and weight measurements.  Every. Damn. Time. I am a simple man.



Griffey is one of the saddest "What Might Have Been" baseball stories of all time.  Yet, he is also one of the most complete and beloved figures the game has ever known.  The only people who didn't like Junior are really old curmudgeonly writers back in 1991 that hated that he smiled and wore his hat backward.  How dare a man have fun playing a child's game!  Luckily, all those men are either retired or dead now. 



It is hard to imagine that had Griffey stayed healthy in the second part of his career, we wouldn't be celebrating Bonds as the all-time home run king.  With the Reds over 8-plus years, he missed 480+ games with various injuries and given the conservative average of a homer every 4 games, that adds about 120 homers to his total.  As it is, he hit 630 dingers which is good for 6th on the all-time list.


I have collected and cherished Griffey's cards since he hit the scene in 1989.  I am not saying I was ever a supercollector or anything, but I do seem to have a lot of his cards laying around and I seem to find more every time I look.  Given his status and statistics, Ken Griffey Jr.'s election to the hall of fame is the very definition of a no-brainer.

***

Mike Piazza.


Mike Piazza was also a no-brainer choice for the Hall of Fame, alas it took the BBWAA four freaking years to find their brains.  He was elected with 83.0% of the vote, named on 365 of 440 ballots. 



I wish I could claim some kind of nonpartisan point of view when it comes to Mike Piazza, but alas I cannot. He has been my favorite player since May 22, 1998 when he was traded to the Mets.  He had been someone I admired before then but the moment I found out he was a Met, it was head-over-heels, love-at-first-sight, you-and-me-forever.  There had never really ever been a player like this in team history and unfortunately, there hasn't been one since.   



Unlike Junior, I have been a crazed Piazza Supercollector since that day.  What you are seeing right now is just the game-used and fancy encapsulated cards I own of him.  I have done huge player collection posts before, but doing ALL of my Piazza cards at once will require 102 pages and another 1800+ inserts in top loaders to be sorted and scanned - not to mention random assorted memorabilia like lunch boxes, figures, 8x10s, bobbleheads, etc.  Yeah, I should have anticipated this day and had it ready but that just didn't happen after a few years of crushing January disappointment.  You will have to wait until July and his actual enshrinement for me to tackle this massive project.  For now, you'll have to make do with the 15 scans here of some high end goodies. Like that Leather Bound card above, which is one of my whales; not only is it a rare type of relic, but it has a lace hole right in the middle of it.  Just a wonderfully neat card.



I never got into the eTopps craze much but I did snag in hand versions of Piazza's cards, some of the very few encapsulated cards I own that have stayed in capsule.



Here you see some later bat cards of him as not-a-Met.  Everyone seems to be arguing if he should go into the Hall as a Dodger or a Met - and joking that he should go in as a Marlin - yet no one has referenced his last couple years on the west coast as a Padre and Athletic.  My view is simple: he made his legend as a Dodger and cemented that legacy as a Met so it is an absolute toss up as to which is appropriate as either one could be (see Jimmie Foxx).  In a case like this, it should then come down to the player's preference and Mike has made it clear he is far more fond of his time as a Mets player and of the Mets fans and organization.  That should end the discussion right there. (Note: as I was writing this post, it was announced that he would, in fact, go in as a Met)



Mike Piazza's offensive statistics are overwhelming.  396 home runs as a catcher - most all time (427 overall).  Highest single season batting average for a catcher - .362 in 1997.  Five 100 RBI seasons in a row - 1996 to 2000 - and an average of over 100 RBIs over 10 years - 1993 to 2002.  Highest lifetime batting average in Los Angeles Dodgers history - .331.  Ten Silver Slugger awards.  Twelve time All Star. 



Conversely, he is known as a horrible defensive player.  This reputation is way way waaaay out of line.  Yes, it is undeniable that he did not have the best arm in the world; his career caught stealing percentage was 23% when the league average was 31%.  But remember that he played in the most drastic offensive slugging era ever so the stolen base was not the weapon it was in, say, Johnny Bench's day and therefore Piazza's arm was not a grand liability.  If his defense was truly as terrible as it is reputed, he would have been moved to 1st base in 1995 and not 2005.  Early in his career, he did lead the league in passed ball twice.  But he took great pride in and worked very hard to improve his defense.  By the year 2000, he led the league in fielding percentage for catchers - bet you didn't know that.  People somehow forget that throwing is not the only thing a catcher does.  Other than his bad arm, all he did was frame pitches well, go back on pop ups quickly and vigilantly, call a game brilliantly, and get down and block pitches in the dirt like a fiend.  And that's not me talking, that is Bobby Valentine his manager.



Enough about the player, let's focus on some of these nifty cards.  Mike's trade to the Mets coincided with the explosion of game used cards, so just about all the stuff he has is in Mets gear.  This makes me very happy (and broke).  I usually only pick up the very best or most interesting relic cards of a player to have one or two to represent him, but I have been a little more loose with that rule when it comes to Piazza.



This scan shows a rare hat patch card and a jersey card that is just filthy and I mean filthy in the true real 'dirty' meaning of the word, it is the filthiest jersey card I have ever seen.  It also shows four manufactured patch cards, including one that I gave quite a famous write up.



There are hundreds of Jersey relic cards of Mike Piazza, of that I am certain and I somehow have had the restraint to only own a couple dozen.  I try to keep it, like the above, to interesting subjects, photos, or even cut outs to showcase the swatch.  There is also a piece in this scan with a teal stripe on the piece, meaning it came from his week long side-trip as a Marlin.  One marvelous little statistical blip in his line is that he hit a triple for all five teams he suited up for, including one of the five total hits he got as a Florida Marlin.



Here are five of the most interesting die cut jersey cards and one of the most staid and plain looking one's in my collection.  The piece is even gray.  That is more than made up for by the round, square, crownish, cartoonish nature of the other cards. 



I have not one, not two, but three of his swatches from the Topps 206 sets of the early aughts.  I think there are bat cards from this set too but I like that these cards showcase the front and back of the pieces, something very few cards actually do, and that is more interesting with the jerseys.  They are color coded to each series of that vast set.  I often wonder if they would fall apart if I took them out of their plastic holders...alas, I am too chicken to test this out.



Jeez, I just realized, seeing them all laid out like this, that I might have enough jersey cards to sew together an actual patchwork Mike Piazza jersey.  But then I would have to pick up some of the rare button cards from ten years ago that were all the rage and I refuse to spend that much money on anything less than a used car. 



Now we've reached some multiple swatch cards.  Here you see him paired twice with battery mate Al Leiter, who was very excited on MLB Network about Mike's election.  There's also one with Mo Vaughn from that one year the Mets thought Mo Vaughn was going to be good for them.  There is also three cards with my all-time all time favorite player, Gary Carter.  Chances are if you play for the Mets and play catcher, you are going to get my attention/affection.  I also love the one there with Piazza, Carter, and Rickey Henderson - that is three Hall of Famers on one card.  I think that is a first for my collection.

Last but not least are a few other multiple player swatch cards below.  One of them is a Mets themed one, the others with various guys like Carlton Fisk (makes sense), Pudge Rodriguez and Jason Kendall (sure, okay), and Sammy Sosa (um, what?).  By my count, that is 73 game used cards, 4 fake manu-patch cards, and 3 magic encapsulated cards.  I am insane - and remember I sold off a lot more than I have bought in recent years.



Each year Mike did not get elected to Cooperstown, I promised to write a scathing diatribe denouncing this folly.  And every year, I got so mad trying to put together this post that I abandoned it in self-righteous frustration.  I am now so pleased with the result that I am going to forgive and forget and let it all go.  Mike Piazza has been given his rightful place in Baseball's Hall of Fame, what is there to be upset about?

Hallelujah.

       About four years later than I should have been, I am finally able to go from this...


To this...



It is a subtle but important distinction.  And if you know anything about me, you know that I am very particular where my binders are on the shelf, so this is a big deal both historically and aesthetically.  There will obviously be more to come about this later.

Mail Call: Shiny!

       I am a sucker for free shipping.  Yes, I am the kind of buffoon who will buy extra stuff just to qualify for it.  Like when COMC.com has one of their free shipping promotions there is usually a minimum number involved, but this really isn't a problem for me since I am pretty active buying and selling on their site.  Well, this spring has thrown all sorts of curve balls and I just haven't been as card-centric as I normally am.  So when I noticed they were having a free shipping for 30+ cards promotion a couple weeks ago, I was forlorn to see that I only had 6 cards waiting in my shipping queue.  Do you think this deterred me?  Did you read the first two sentences of the post? 

I delved into my watch list but only saw high priced stuff for the most part.  I did, however, notice two very reasonably priced inserts from last year's Bowman set.  These inserts were not only Mets cards, they were shiny.  Very shiny.  I got swept up in the moment and decided it would be easiest to make a page of each of these inserts to qualify for my free shipping.  Hey, a bargain is a bargain and shiny is shiny.

The first page is of the 1989 Bowman is Back inserts.

The scan does these no justice.  They are glittery and atomic refractor-esque.  They are like the Diamond Anniversary parallels from a 2011.  I picked out 9 of the most interesting photos I could from the first page of the "lowest price" tab and voila!

The other page is from the Bowman Chrome Fire Die-Cut set. 

I cannot express how much I like the concept behind this set.  I like die cuts.  I like shiny.  I am a bit of a pyromaniac, at least I was in my youth when I almost burned my house down once by making a camp fire in the basement (gimme a break, I was like 8).  I had not seen these in real life and it took me holding one to realize that they weren't just shiny and die cut, but the design itself was the base design, only melted.  I am usually not one for prospect cards, but damn, I love this set.  They are amazing.  Once again, I picked 9 off the first page and now I am sorry I didn't build the whole set.

Keeping with the theme, I nabbed some Mets from those two sets, which were the cards I had watched in the first place.  They were the Noah Syndergaard and Michael Conforto to be specific.  I also got the David Wright and Gary Carter BiB and Travis d'Arnaud of both sets. 

The bottom cards here are three of the six I had in my original queue. They are from an early 80's oddball Cramer set of vintage players in sepia tones.  I chose players I don't have a lot of since the six I had were of the Hank Aaron/Willie Mays very-well represented type.  Brief aside: I have an obsession with pie along the lines of Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks so it stuns me that I don't have a whole Pie Traynor page or player collection.  That is a situation I might have to rectify. 

Here are the other orphans from the original six. 

Nothing very surprising here.  A New Orleans Saint.  A Mike Piazza.  Another Michael Conforto card - and with the Mets quite literally scoring only 1 run a game for the last 2-3 weeks, I am bewildered as to why they haven't called him up, he's only hitting like .330.  So I got my free shipping and it only cost me like ten bucks.  My little buying binge left me with .42 cents credit left and while that is a very good number, I just couldn't leave that in there even though I had hit my magic number of 30.  So one last check of my watch list showed me that the most inexpensive card I had was that Topps 60 Keith Hernandez.  Price: 41 cents.  I love it when a plan comes together.