An Awesome T206 Leftover

Our local card shop is downsizing. They are not closing, just moving to a smaller space. He marked down the last packs of T206 to $2.50 so we bought two packs last week. Isaac pulled this one out of the second pack!


As always, its up for trade for similar Cardinals’.

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.

Winter Warm Up 2011–Day 1 (The Packs)

During our morning break we went to the vendor room and bought some cards for autographs and 8 packs to open while waiting in line. I got some Cardinals and lots of cool cards. Here are the cool cards.

T206 Pujols Mini SP

I can’t remember who mentioned how to check for the mini SP’s by stacking them up and looking for the white card stock (probably dayf?) but we tried it and found two including this Pujols… almost like Christmas.

Retro Mini’s

As Isaac builds sets, hoards Cardinals, and fills his favorite player binder, I’ve been gravitating towards vintage Cardinals and mini’s of any flavor, though lately just Cardinals. Here are a few of my latest additions from a newly discovered local shop with a huge, well sorted selection.

1975 Topps Mini's of Gibby and Brock

2003 Topps 206 Sweet Caporal

A trio of 2006 Bowman Heritage mini's including Wainwright's "rookie" in mini form.

The 2009 A&G Conor Jackson 6/10 silk card I mentioned a while back.

Straggler Packs

What do you do when you see the last few packs in the box? Do you impulsively pick them up even if they weren’t on your radar? I’m guilty. I pick them up knowing that they’re just like any other pack in the box but I can’t resist the urge to empty that box out *just in case* something in those packs are special. I’ve been lucky enough to perpetuate the myth and did so again last night. I stopped by the hobby shop to pick up a 10 pack of tobacco top loaders & sleeves and four, count ‘em – four, binder pages for a few oddball cards Isaac and I have picked up recently. Total expected cost: $2.50. At the counter, I spy two last packs in the T206 box and one pack in the Ginter box instinctively grab them and instantly more than quadruple my bill. Once again, nothing fancy but enough to perpetuate the impulse.

Cy Young SP Piedmont Mini

The second card didn't scan well at all but was a Conor Jackson x/ 10 silk card!

Helmar Brewing Series Three Set

Unlike the first series (I do not have the second and cannot comment on it), this series focuses exclusively on baseball subjects. Players and managers from the Negro Leagues, the Majors, and Japan, among others, are featured in the set. Sorry for the fuzzy thumbnails - they're not resizing correctly in blogger. Click on each image for the larger high resolution scan.

Helmar Series Three

I finally had a chance to open the box of Helmar Series 3 cards last week. As in my posts about Helmar Series 1 (here and here), I’ll follow up this St. Louis centric post with one displaying the entire set.

While the first series was available in packs, Series 2 (release in 2006) and 3 (2008) were only available as complete sets with Series 2 being short printed by comparison. I’m trying to track down a Series 2 set now that I have the others. Unlike the first series, this one focuses exclusively on baseball.

The Box

Contents

St. Louis related cards:

Nice to see the folks at Helmar have a sense of humor. They’ve included a “corrected” card for an error from the first series.

Pics of the complete third series coming soon...

Follow Up: Helmar Brewing Series 1 Set

Here are the promised Helmar pics. Click on the images to view the larger versions (average size of 1.5MB each so they may take a few seconds to load). I grouped them as much as possible. I didn’t realize the copier was cutting off the edges on card in the leftt and top rows until the last scan and didn’t feel like rescanning everything.

Negro League & Japanese Players

Japanese, House of David & various North American Players


North American Players

Boxers

Helmar Brewing Series 1

I started a mini binder after reading dayf’s A&G mini post last month. It really is a stroke of genius as it gets all of those great cards out of the boxes and into an easily viewed book. I started with the A&G 07 & 08 mini’s we had and stirred in some Topps T205 & T206 from 03 & 04 to make it more interesting. I’m thinking about picking up some vintage specimens to spice things up as well. Before I jump head first into that empty pool, I thought I’d revisit the Helmar Brewing cards I picked up last summer.

Series 1 was released in 2005 and was available as a set, uncut sheet or in packs of of three cards. I bought a set along with the Series 3 set (more on that in a later post) after reading a few posts and seeing them in person during a trip to Wisconsin. I’m told Series 2 is only available as a set and is difficult to find these days.

I had planned to put them in binder pages and scan them for all to enjoy but the cards are too thick for normal 205 / 206 pages. They’re the equivalent of 3 - 4 A&G mini’s, depending on how hard you squeeze. If I can figure out how to display these, then I’ll re-post with pictures. Until then, here are the three St. Louis related cards:

James “Cool Papa” Bell

Mordecai Brown of the St. Louis Terriers

Hugh McAleer of the St. Louis Browns. This is an interesting one as I can only find information on Jimmy McAleer.

These have also been featured at A Pack A Day here and here. Topps Heritage also has an article and checklist online.