More Fleer Autographs

Two more Cardinal autographs from 1999 Fleer – one from the Greats of the Game set, the other from the Sports Illustrated set.

The Brock is a double. We have the Forsch, Gibson, and Schoendeinst. The Musial is really pricey or we’d go for all the Cardinals in either set.

2006 Fleer Tradition Hobby Box

My little sister had a weekend dance competition two weeks ago. She did a good job even though she was sick. She actually made me sick too. My dad surprised me with a hobby box of 2006 Fleer Tradition for me to open a few packs at a time between dance routines. I’ve been asking him about the box for awhile because a store had them on sale. I was pretty sad when I found out the last box was gone but my dad was the one who got the last box!

I liked this box because there are at least three different Adam Wainwright rookie cards in the box. My box only had one Wainwright base card but there were others in the box that I liked. I did get a complete set in my box but I don’t know if I’m going to keep it.

These are a base card of Albert, an insert of Albert, and an insert of Ryan Howard.


These are an insert of Prince Fielder, a Goudey mini insert of Jason Giambi, and a Michael Young jersey card.


Dad: $28 for the hobby box (36 packs, 10 cards per pack). Definitely worth the price of admission as a little diversion during the dance competition. I forgot to scan a throwback card though… just imagine the Pujols base card with a black and white picture on Heritage-type cardboard.

Diamond Code 17: The Last Series One Code

Diamond Card 16: Who?

Dad: I graduated high school and enrolled at U of I in 1989. I don't know who this guy is either...

A Unique Mini Book Relic!

Here’s one we’ve never seen before. I took Isaac to an out of the way hobby shop over the weekend and ended up buying a few packs for him, two of which were of last year’s T206. The first pack was uneventful but the second pack had a giant gap between the top and bottom cards which turned out to be this:



Pretty cool mini-book dual relic card numbered to 99, especially since Hamilton has a few pages in Isaac’s favorite player binder. But it gets better:



The Pence bat is pretty blah but how about that Hamilton swatch? We weren’t sure what it was but figured out pretty quickly that it’s the lower label on the front of Hamilton’s jersey. Isaac thinks it might be worth more than a typical mini book relic from this set (about $20 based on recent ebay transactions) because it’s more unique than a plain jersey swatch. If he’s right, he’s thinking about flipping it – if not, it already has a spot with his other favorite player cards.

First Box of 2006 Artifacts

My dad bought some boxes of 2006 Artifacts. I don’t know how many boxes because he will not tell me. He let me open a box while my sister was at dance. There was only one Cardinal card of Scott Rolen that I already had. The four hits were bad. We got TWO hits of the same guy!

The Chavez jersey and Atkins auto are up for trade. The two Broussard’s are already taken.

Arizona Finds

Dad here – I took my bi-annual trip to Arizona last month. While I could not, sadly, find time time to hit any Spring Training sites I did make a stop at Batter’s Box on the drive North and visited an antique mall on the return drive.
I picked up a few things for Isaac at Batter’s Box. The shop focuses nearly entirely on vintage but I did find these at very reasonable prices: much cheaper on ebay – especially for the Pujols.



The antique mall, the Brass Armadillo, had a ton of baseball display cases but I didn’t have time to ask the clerks to unlock each and every one just to see if they had anything interesting. One case had these two staring out at me. I grabbed both for less than $20 total... not bad for two HOF’rs. Not sure why they’re in screw down cases but it makes scanning difficult. I’ll take these out of the cases and re-scan so they’re better in focus.

2011 Topps Jumbo Box Summary

We were lucky and got a pretty good box. We got the three hits we were supposed to get -

Dominic Brown Auto, John Lester Leather Name Card, Geovany Soto Jersey Card

Our bonus "hits" were -

Clayton Kershaw Sparkle, Miguel Montero Printing Plate, Andrew McCutchen Black Border

Aside from getting some Cardinal hits, the only way it would have been better is if my Dad let me open all the packs at once instead of over a month.

Diamond Cards 14 & 15: The 1970's

Southtown Sluggers

My dad took me to Southtown Sluggers last month. It is a small shop but full of new and old cards. We got four cool cards from the buy one get one free box plus a few packs. For $12, I got four cool relic cards – three of them borderline hall of famers.

2006 Artifacts So Taguchi Jersey 239 / 325


2003 Jim Edmonds Bowman Heritage Jersey


2005 Donruss Greats Lee Smith Jersey

2005 Diamond Kings Larry Walker Dual Bat 36 / 100

1999 Fleer Sports Illustrated Lou Brock Autograph

I picked this up (two of them actually – by mistake) on ebay for surprisingly little money… around $10. I’ll have to check the other card but maybe its because the “L” in Brock goes off the card.

I haven’t looked at a checklist but it looks like Brock, Gibson, Hrabosky, Slaughter and Musial are the only Cardinals in the set. I’ve entertained thoughts of collecting all of the Cardinals in this set but the Musial is really, really pricey for some reason.

2002 Topps Want List

Isaac turns nine in exactly two months (!!!!!) and asked if we could build the Topps set from his birth year. So... I found an ebay dealer who had open hobby cases of both Series 1 and Series 2 cheap (like less than $20 each ppd) so I bought two boxes of each.

Series 1:  I thought for sure we'd have a complete set between two hobby boxes especially after the first box. That box had us 44 cards short or 88% of the base set. Alas, the second box only had 20 of those 44 cares so we're 24 cards short. We did like the inserts sets and will post the trade bait in a separate post.

Series 2: The first box was excellent and had us just 11 cards from the complete 354 card set, or 97% of the base set. The inserts aren't as varied as the first series but we did get a monster hit... odds-wise any way. The odds of pulling a Prime Cuts Relic Auto are 1 in 8927 packs and we pulled one numbered 10 of 50. Too bad it was of Wilson Betemit.

Here's the list from google docs. Let us know if you have any problems accessing the list. We have a ton of dupes, obviously, so if anyone else is interested in building this set let us know and the partial set is yours!

Ike's Cards 2002 Topps Want List

Aside from the "easy" inserts, we did not get any hits in either Series 1 box. We did get a relic in each of our two Series 2 boxes.

Wilson Betemit Prime Cuts Bat Relic Auto. Odds 1:8,927 packs.
Greg Maddux Aces Jersey Relic. Odds 1:1,180

Diamond Cards - Lucky #13

We got greedy and entered another code to see if we could three die cut cards in a row. We didn't.

Diamond Cards - Two In A Row!!!

Hammerin' Hank Diamond Die Cut

Diamond Code 11 - That's More Like It!

Diamond Die Cut - Mariano Rivera

Diamond Card - 10 is a Champ!

Champ Summers...

Fan IQ - Topps Offer Update

We posted about the Fan IQ Topps giftcard offer last week - $40 e-gift
cards for $20. We received some emails questioning the validity of the
offer and the integrity of Fan IQ. This, of course, was after I had
already sent payment.

I'm happy and relieved to report that all is well. We received three
$40 gift cards this morning for the advertised price of $20 each!
Now --- what to order...

Thorzul’s March Group Break

Thorzul’s March Group Break is open. Thorzul has always been lucky pulling Cardinals for us. These are my favorites from last month.
Diamond Kings Jim Edmonds regular card and brown card.

Diamond Kings Lou Brock insert.

And finally, the best Cardinal of the break. I wish he could have pulled the gold Sabathia for himself but I really like this gold Pujols numbered 34 of 50.

Dad – Isaac has been begging me to help him do a group break. I really like Thorzul’s Pick ‘em Plus One format (I need to trademark that) but am hesitant to make the plunge b/c of time and $$$ concerns. I’m more worried about the time really, as I *think* the cost may actually be lower as we’re usually just interested in the Cardinals out of the boxes we open --- so even just a few people signing up is better than eating the entire cost. So – how much time and effort are we talking about? Thoughts and input appreciated.

Diamond Cards 7 - 9

2006 UD Ovation Adam Wainwright

Another numbered 2006 Ovation rookie card, this time of our injured Ace – Adam Wainwright.

Codes 4 and 5 + The Freebie

Fourth - 1992 Brady Anderson

Fifth - 1977 Jay Johnstone

And the bonus free code was for - 1992 Wally Whitehurst