Repacks are my jam

 

On a cold mid-January evening while on a one night work trip in a completely generic medium-sized town, I was nicely able to entertain myself without "screens" such as the one you're looking at right now, by simply wheeling into a Walgreen's. It seems their decision to stock Baseball Cards is sticking, always a "for now" deal with that chain, and in particular these Fairfield repack products are (almost) always on the shelf, waiting, for me.

These are such a fun way to suddenly, and completely randomly, own 50-ish old Baseball Cards. Let's take a look:

wait, did I say "old?"

In reality, repacks are often created by distributors, such as Fairfield, literally "ripping" their own un-sold retail inventory. This of course allows ... someone - the business? the employee? access to any sort of truly valuable Baseball Card that might be within, rather than actual Baseball Card collectors, which probably gives Baseball Card collectors the heebie-jeebies, at least a little.

As they say, be that as it may.... unsold Baseball Cards gotta go somewhere. As long as a repack product isn't just filled with 3-4 dozen cards all from the same set only 2-3 years old - MJ Holdings style - I will still enjoy them. Fairfield comes through for me with these.

So a nice nearly brand new (2023 Big League) Bobby Witt Jr. card was a great way to start this re-pack. I was also impressed by the Topps effort here, on an insert checklist which basically FUBAR'd the concept on the other cards from it I had previously seen. That was because these "City Slickers" inserts were -supposed- to show off the new-ish "City Connect" uniform designs. Simple enough, until lazy Topps Baseball Card miners simply copy-paste any random image onto them, including ones that completely fail to show off the special uni. 

Not so with that there BWJ card, which is highly likely to be my Kansas City entry in a simple City Connect collection I have going. The repetition of the special new KC logo on the card itself was a nice extra touch. Thus, a keeper. And, we're off -

I am this-close to finishing up all things 2011 Topps. After that I have to make 'last call' decisions on 2012 Topps, the "Surfboard Set." I have already decided to not fill in the 1-200-ish empty slots on the checklist, in my collection, nor break open the Factory Set of it that I have. It's functional enough design and the photo selections are often great, but so many sets, so little shelf-space, in my life. And the foil, uggh. Craig who? Sorry, Craig, I forgot. Baseball Cards are supposed to cure that for me.

Nevertheless I haven't finished picking out 9 favorite 2012 Topps Baseball horizontal cards. If memory serves, I do have 8 of them assembled. Repack for-the-win, 2-for-2 on the random old cards nobody else wanted. :)

hey look, a Sea Turtle!

It's a beaut!

These are always fun for me to find, now in a whole other decade. Wait, what? That was TWELVE years ago? Oh dear. 

Perhaps Dan Uggla might feel the same way about this entry in his Baseball Card oeuvre, which notes that the year before he had made the 1,000 Hits milestone and played in his first All-Star Game. For all that, he somewhat got "Hero Number" treatment on the 2013 Topps Baseball checklist, where he is card #126, sporting Uni #26.

However after this basically top-notch Baseball Card, I can't remember a single thing about Dan Uggla. I can just hope he is a happy AA Hitting Coach in a town near where he grew up. Such is what happens once you enter a repack and start looking at objects that mark the passage of Time, itself.

yasss!

Fairfield certainly routed this particular repack box to the right state: Michigan!

Is there a more "Baseball" card design than 1982 Donruss? That would make for an interesting contest.

I have always thought Champ Summers would have been a perfect subject for the "Fan Favorites" type cards in Archives sets. I suspect fans have fond memories of him wherever he played - how you could not root for an athlete named "Champ," after all? Alas, he passed away in 2012 at only 66 years of age, just as the concept was launching at Topps, and he doesn't have any 21st Century Baseball Cards. But here I am in the 21st Century, pulling one of his cards from a "pack." How cool is that?

Although I will always connect "The Mad Hungarian" to pleasant memories of St. Louis Cardinals Baseball in the mid-70s, I was also stoked to find this card, which is one shy of being Hrabosky's sunset card. For one I had forgotten that Atlanta hopped on the Powder Blue train, too. A simple Baseball color scheme so effective that Donruss used it in this card design, too. This pair of 1982 Donruss cards is starting to pull me in...

One thing I always liked about 1980s Donruss card backs (including this one) is that they often discuss the player's contract, a key piece of baseball information, for fans. But something strictly off-limits to discuss on Topps card backs.

Meanwhile although the fantastic sideburns and handlebar mustache had here disappeared into just, a beard, as if Al was here with us in the 2020s, this card finally unlocked the obvious realization: I need to start up an Al Hrabosky Player Collection. That's gonna be fun. Good job, repack.

Another great feature of repacks is they are today basically the only place you are suddenly going to see a Manager card, outside of deliberately ripping certain older boxes. Although I am sure I have perhaps multiple copies of this card, as I have large piles of the poorly printed 1989 Topps set that I have never culled down, I was still happy to see this card again, 36 years later. Because I like Manager cards. It's time, Topps, it's time.

yeah buddy

Did I mention that I like Manager cards? I'm still in a permanent push-pull space with 1990 Topps, with it's intriguing design but then essentially random use of colors, here with a classic base of red, white, and blue, but then - purple, multiple purples, fuschia? Violet? What -is- that up there in the corner?

Some (weird) people would probably have the same complaint about 1975 Topps I guess. Oh well. I would be happy to pull a Don Zimmer Baseball Card - out of every box of Baseball Cards.

One thing I like about repacks is that they don't make me reach for baseball-reference.com to figure out just who some Rookie is.

Hey, wait.

The Pirates, a team I follow a little on radio when I can, just came through Detroit this week - & I can't recall hearing Travis Swaggerty's name called, on either broadcast. And as usual I was disappointed that Bob Walk is only on their radio crew in the spring. Nevertheless I can recall hearing his name on the radio back in a March of ... how many years back?

Here Baseball Cards let me down, and I had to reach for baseball-reference.com, again. Travis Swaggerty made a career total 9 Plate Appearances for the Pirates, in the year 2022. How that earned him a spot on the somewhat limited 200 (more?) card checklist in 2023 Big League, well, we all know why that is. Rookie Card cards!

Even in the "kids" set, we get pointless Rookie Card cards. I seriously doubt any kid in western Pennsylvania in the summer of 2023 was excited to pull this particular Baseball Card, as of course no adult was either. Even in repacks, sigh.

As I was saying, Fairfield got this little box of joy delivered to the right place. I always like seeing the actual Tiger appear on a Tigers Baseball Card. I might have to re-think my usual quick dismissal of 1989 Donruss I guess. Might prolly make for a fun team set to assemble. These repacks can sure make a collector question their assumptions, at times.

wot?

Yup, that happened. An occasional hazard of repacks. At least the Fairfield repacker person picked the right team to dup for a change.

I'm trying to find a defect in either of those scans - only total authenticity, here - but I can't. Are these Gem Mint PSA 10s worth one million dollars? Of course not. They have been ripped from a wax pack, held in someone's "collection" for a couple three decades, then placed loose / unwrapped in another cardboard box (horrors!), and run through all the things that happen to a cardboard box in the retail trade. And here they still look, excellent. I truly pity people who can't enjoy Baseball Cards that have been handled like this, with surefire "defects" only detectable via jeweler's loupes.

This is one of my favorite directions for repacks to wander towards - the early 00s. By this point the non-Topps manufacturers were far less likely to appear in front of me on a shelf in a small town, and an "LCS" wasn't a place I could visit routinely, either. 

So I never saw the various non-Topps sets that clearly borrowed their design from various Topps sets. I don't feel a pressing need to fully collect a set like this, but I certainly enjoy the new-old being on display. As I often type, you can't go wrong with a red, white, & blue Baseball Card.

Now here's a nice discovery - the simple, pure class of 93 Upper Deck. A set for which I never opened a pack. I think I will try and keep an eye out on the retro shelf at my LCS, which holds random "junk wax" appearances that never seem to sync up with my Baseball Card memories. Just today I could have ripped some 1992 Leaf, I think it was, for cheap. Here's hoping that concept will "stick" in my overly full Baseball Card mind.

This card will help. Just today I found a random Bowman card of a never-Major-Leaguer with the most picture perfect Pitcher Face - it will pair well with this one. The stranger the expression, the more effective the pitch? Perhaps. ALL CAPS CARD BACK TEXT though, yeah, nope. These will have to go in at 18/page, for sure. 

I thought Robles was an Outfielder.

And, where's Gretl?

I bet Robles, or Hansel (this can get confusing in 2019 Topps) probably wouldn't wanna hear that 2nd tease.

I do look forward to the day I start picking keepers from 2019 Topps. I should re-visit my First Pack, Best Pack blog post from release time. Over time I grew disenchanted with the heavy use of software photo filters in the set and declined to complete it. But it surely has pages of highlights to assemble...thanks for the reminder, repack.

Surprise!

I am sure -some- collectors are quite familiar with this Never Happened card and the circumstances that lead to it. I never completed 2001 Topps though am close. So this upped the amusement factor of that drab January evening a fair bit. Where else (outside of Baseball Card blogs) are you gonna stumble across card chaos like this?

I like Darryl Strawberry cards.

I like it when the Powder Blue gets picked up by the Baseball Card designer.

But I don't like Green Bay Packer style Baseball Cards. One and one team only should have appeared in this part of the multi-colored 90 Score checklist. Ok, ok, some Packers cards on this otherwise gets-the-job-done-ok-enough design would be OK, too.

It would be really hard to imagine the Krukker as a fresh-faced youngster in The Bigs, without Baseball Cards. That is often the appeal of Rookie Card cards, I would gladly admit that. And even, non-Rookie cards, sometimes.

A Minor League stadium with an upper deck? What a rabid Baseball town Denver must have been, I guess? So, I "did the research" and sure enough, the Zephyrs played in Mile High Stadium. With Baseball Cards, you can truly learn something new, every day.

And were the Zephyrs an affiliate of the Green Bay Packers? Close. They were the AAA affiliate for the Brewers back then. Props for the imaginative use of Home Plate in the functional, clean design here, too.

I mostly scanned this one because it has a key feature of Spring Training photos, one I quite miss on such Baseball Cards here in the 21st: other players. I truly don't know why they had to be banned from Baseball Card photos. Just let the photog work the field, and let the game of Baseball appear, too. Would that be so hard?

Finally, a Hall of Famer

I was getting close to the end of the fun little stack of cards before the Fairfield repacker remembered the key rule: one HoF card, per package.

Oh no, he's smiling at me

I have a small collection of cards with that working title. I have never seen this expression on a hitter, before.

And, yes, I might could best "upgrade" this particular copy. That isn't the cumulative effects of being run through the Baseball Card distribution system, twice. Rather, that is a common fate of 2001 Topps cards, which just love to brick themselves together in storage. If you haven't opened a tightly packed box of '01 Topps in a while, you might be a little disappointed when you do. I was.

Such a great stroll through the wonders of Baseball Cards. But did I get that wondrous 8th box with the "hit" in it? Alas, I didn't find any cards theoretically worth theoretical money - no hits. But then, how many "hits" in brand new boxes of Baseball Cards are actually worth any "real" money? I'll leave that for you to discern on your next box-ripping adventure.

I did however, receive one of the "randomly inserted packs" I was supposed to be looking for:

I'll bet you never noticed that one of the blue-est, though not the none-more-blue set, of Baseball Cards ever designed, came in a mostly red wrapper. That the designers could achieve this colorful, attractive simplicity on the outside but so fail on the inside just feels like the exception that proves my you-can't-go-wrong-with-red-white-and-blue on Baseball Cards rule. Plaid just isn't part of Baseball, save that for the Grunge musicians. Or, me, where every cold day is usually Plaidurday.

Anyhow, I decided to share the contents of that pack with ya -

Perhaps the cards that fare the worst in this set are when the uniform is blue, too.

Anyhow if those cards had appeared loose in the repack, which is certainly always possible in any repack though 89 Donruss might be even more common, well I doubt I would have scanned any of them. Perhaps the simple joy of a Rated Rookie might have made for a scan. And I do have to wonder if anyone in 1988 found it remarkable to pull two future Hall of Famers sequentially. Did I pull 2 Hall of Famers in a pack of 2025 Topps Series Two this afternoon? I doubt it.

Mostly what intrigued me about that pack was this sequence:

OF-IF-OF-SS-2B-2B-OF-IF-3B-OF-OF-2B-2B-SS-IF

Which means - no Pitchers, or Catchers, in 15 sequential Baseball Cards.

Just how did Donruss lay out their sheets for the 1988 set?

Ahh, the mysteries.

yeah Man, < 50¢ a little

Maybe someday I will reach the end of the stack of 50¢ Baseball Cards I have been enjoying. That's probably a little tougher than pondering true Dollar Box cards, because the fiddy¢ card pile grows a little faster, of course. Which is a very fun fact. 

Why I selected it: This one might be because I need to do some homework on 1999 Topps, more than anything. Of course Brad Ausmus will be a name connected to the Tigers organization for a lot more than a 1999 Topps Baseball Card, which is why it is in the 50¢ box in my town and nowhere to be found, ever again, in your town. He managed the Tigers basically unsuccessfully after the retirement of eventual Hall-of-Famer Jim Leyland; an essentially impossible-to-be-successful task given the Tigers slowly closing "window" at the time.

But for some reason, I can't seem to find whatever 1 or 2 sample packs of 1999 Topps Baseball I purchased, a year I didn't collect beyond a check-it-out purchase. This card makes me think, "for obvious reasons."

So one thing I want to check out is - how did they make a Gold parallel, for this year? Maybe they didn't?

I also need to wade through all of the Brad Ausmus cards ever made, to find the one with him on the dugout steps with a laptop computer. I believe I have seen the card, now I just need to find it...

Why I selected it: Tall players get better cards, for one. 2002 Topps is a major improvement over doings just 3 years before. And this is just a great Empty Seats card, so apropos for a 2021 card. Recently I decided to assemble a best Empty Seats page, of just Rookies, so it will be easier to also assemble another best-of Empty Seats. This card, though, would look great on the Best-of, too.

Why I selected it: This card feels like an homage. Not to another player, per se / specifically, but definitely to a certain Baseball Card: the 1974 Topps Steve Garvey card. So I just had to have this one and it will 100% certainly make it to my Top 9 verticals of whatever year Stadium Club this card is from, which is something I can never remember just by looking at the front of the card. Meanwhile on the back, I have to use the handy "Magnifier" app on my phone these days to sort out what year a Stadium Club card is from. Doesn't matter, for this card.

Why I selected it: This happy Baseball Card single-handedly made me want to assemble 9 of the 2021 New Age Performers, a Heritage insert I rarely pay much attention to. Those inserts do, however, pay attention to the graphical styles and motifs of the year, and set, they came from, usually. Here, the overall level of 1972-Topps-ness is quite strong.

I figured I had pulled a few of these in my purchases of 2021 Heritage, and that proved correct - 2 each of 2 players who did not "Perform" at all in MLB but rather flamed out quickly and dramatically. The eternal problem with putting Rookies on insert checklists that are supposed to be interesting, later. And it's never any fun to start an insert collection by pulling 2 doubles right off the bat.

So this great Ke'Bryan Hayes card will just be a reset to begin building up a few of these; a happy find.

Why I selected it: I can't say it would help me to have to keep track of another Pirate outfielder named Polanco. Though differing decades would keep me straight eventually. But then, a Bowman card only sometimes = Major Leagues. This one, probably does not, it appears, now, after 3 seasons have passed since it was issued.

But I bought this Baseball Card because I like cards with Trees on them. Trees = good.

Why I selected it: I do always like a road uniform on a card design that just prints the team name and nothing else. Washington. Nationals. Really though a build of this 2021-1986 checklist is looking increasingly likely, so here I have knocked down another one of the "big boys" in the set though I am near certain an Ohtani card will still be waiting for me on top of the mountain. Maybe soon I will start collecting only checklists without an Ohtani card. At least now I can afford to complete all the checklists with Trout cards.

Why I selected it: I was afraid I did not pull a Kyle Tucker Rookie Card card back in 2019. I think his career, or more particularly, his Baseball Card career, might really take off in Chicago in 2025.

If it turns out I already did pull a Kyle Tucker Rookie Card card back in 2019, well I think his Baseball Card career might really take off in Chicago in 2025, so having a "double" of this card will be, good.

Why I selected it: This had to have been discovered after I wrote a recent post largely about the Topps Stars of MLB inserts, and a small bit of certainly way incomplete history of graphical stars-on-cards. Can't have too many Stars in a Baseball Card collection.

Why I selected it: I figured it would be nice to have a Tigers card in with the Empty Seats cards, which usually come from Cincinnati, not Detroit. But the Tigers are on the road here, so ... wait, those empties aren't red, so this isn't Cincy. This just barely qualifies for a nice Empty Seats card but I got to have some Tigers cards outside of the Tigers binder at least occasionally, somehow.

Why I selected it: A Powder Blue Hall-of-Famer. Is this Morgan's Sunset Card, you ask? No, he still hadn't been to Oakland yet.

Why I selected it: Well I do like the Giants' Alternate black uniform even when it's not real, I guess. But mostly I kept this one because even Bowman players might display The Cross, which I quite respect.

Why I selected it: Well this horrendous scan certainly begs that question. I collect/save Dontrelle Willis cards when they appear in front of me, because I like daydreaming about the idea of playing Baseball while under the influence of Xanax, a thing of the past now in MLB.

Normally Dontrelle sure looks chillax-d on his Baseball Cards, but on this one you can't see his face, so who knows. That's usually a no-go for my collection, but this card is unique in that it is a promo card for a Topps&MLB collaboration of some sort, for a video game. It was issued in packs of 2006 Topps it turns out.

The back of the card features a "cheat code" to use playing the game, that is very hard to read ... except maybe my scanner can read it:

The code is a bit more discernible, electronically, appropriately enough. But it is just the word "Unhittable," which feels pretty lame in that I could probably guess the other 10 cheat codes now. Cracking the top 9 Dontrelle Willis cards might need a stronger cheat code, for this card. But it is a nice reminder of how strong his career was, there in the mid-00s.

Why I selected it: I am definitely heading into collecting all of the Significant Statistics cards, which appear in multiple years of Topps Baseball. I'm not even sure how many yet; I just keep these when I find them now. Can't be a bad thing to start another year of them with the Mike Trout card, even those aren't expensive any more.

I wrote up this same Average Distance for a Mike Trout Significant Statistics card from 2021 just the other day month; thus this 2020 card back has little mystery but these cards are meant to be enjoyed on the back, so

I haven't decided yet, but I might put these into binder pages showing the back of the card, for easier 'memberin of the text, later on down the road.

What's better than an Oooohhh, Shiny card?

 

Actually, I'm not all that completely devoted to Oooohhh, Shiny Baseball Cards. 

But — sometimes.

I've posted this card before, also as the lead/thumbnail card for you all to see on blog rolls, when I was pondering the use of stars on Baseball Cards. This card features stars all over the place, starting right at about dead center on the card, which has to be pretty unique in that regard. 

I think it is likely this card will be my 2024 Card of the Year, whenever I finally finish up with the delightful "The Neon" set of 2024 Topps Baseball, which occasionally fits along in starts and stops. I picked up a couple more packs of 24 Update just last week, for example. I think I can safely anoint this 2024 Topps Baseball Series One insert as my 2024 Psychedelic Card of the Year, right now. 

This card is just fun to have, in-hand. I sometimes wonder if there will come a day when we can make 3D scans of cards. If such a thing were possible, this would be one of my first experiments. When holding this card, the rainbow-ish palette for the exploding star behind Riley there starts to shimmer and catch the light. Maybe Tolkien's Elves would start wars over this thing, it's so purdy when light is bouncing off of it.

So aside from anchoring a page of these superb 2024 inserts, and also appearing amidst my collection of the Detroit Stars uniforms as seen on Baseball Cards, I began wondering if there could be another way to enjoy this ridiculously overly-fascinating slice of cardboard enjoyment.

And thus the question that titles this post. Could an Oooohhh, Shiny card become even better with the mysterious extra layer of Oooohhh, Shiny known as a "Chrome" Baseball Card?

hmmm

Surprisingly, the Chrome version of this card somehow dials -BACK- the Oooohhh, Shiny, when enjoyed in-hand, like Baseball Cards should be. In this case, the "Chrome" seems to be nothing more than an extra layer of some sort of translucent plastic that means you should probably wash your hands after holding this particular Baseball Card, before eating anything. (The new Chrome cards falling out of all packages of Heritage these days display this trait on the card backs, which look like they just came out of a shrink-wrap machine. Weird.)

Still I wanted to enjoy this card forever more on yet more binder pages than just the two I initially assigned this one to. 

I could just attempt to find 8 more Oooohhh, Shiny Riley Greene Baseball Cards, which here in the most wonderful season of Detroit Tigers Baseball in about a decade, will become ever easier. I even have a first page-mate, amidst a tiny collection of 24 Topps parallels, which includes a 10th, 'overflow' card, featuring Riley. I'll probably just go ahead and work on 'clecting that project, too. 

That triple inclusion in my various Baseball Card binders still didn't feel like, enough, particularly when I would happen to notice this complete gem of a Baseball Card selling for just 35~40¢, each - can you believe it?

After a couple rescues of this totally awesome Baseball Card from the fairly undeserved fate of being so ignominiously cheap, I finally figured out just what really is better than just one Oooohhh, Shiny Baseball Card-

The Result

how about let's never leave the fiddy box

A few days before Christmas, my LCS mentioned they are prepping some new $1 and 50¢ boxes. Oooh, that was gonna make for a nice Winter Break at some point over the dreary weeks, I hoped, if I could get back "up home" to my little ole home town. (Narrator: still hasn't happened, sigh).

Until then, I'm still scanning and deliberating on my 2024 finds from those boxes...

Why I selected it: At some point, hopefully in 2025, I will be launching my "Stadium Club Project," which will be to shop each set of Stadium Club, starting in 2015, and selecting 9 favorite horizontals, 9 favorite verticals, and a copy of every card originally printed with a black&white photo (not any of the parallels that changed a color image to b&w).

I'm quite looking forward to it and I expect it to be a lot cheaper than just buying random containers of Stadium Club cards, new or old. It should make for bunches of enjoyable $3 binder pages of Baseball Cards.

Will this 2020 Juan Soto card make it to 2020 SC Nifty Nine status? I'm skeptical, but I do like seeing the "Postseason" uniform patch on a card that doesn't otherwise say anything about the postseason on it. So, maybe. If not by then every stock broker on Wall Street will be wanting every Juan Soto Baseball Card ever made.

Why I selected it: Just, mostly, to scan it. Although this is one of the better recent Team Cards I can ever recall in that it sure makes the viewer want to catch a game at Fenway (bucket list thing, for me), I was hoping it would make a dramatic scan well "lit up" by the scanner, for a small "digital-only" project I plan to follow through on, with all of my otherwise essentially worthless "Rainbow Foil" parallels I have pulled since they began appearing in Topps Baseball sets in about 2015 or so.

There is a pretty good chance that the 2022 Topps Baseball Boston Red Sox® card #519 will become my 1/year best Horizontal Rainbow Foil card from 22 Topps, even if it doesn't become part of a little folder for "screen saver" use, as this scan just didn't light up like I hoped it would.

Why I selected these: I am a Topps addict. I forget what 2010s set these inserts appeared in, but I am "working on" the checklist - that means I want to finish it, someday, but since I can't recall what year these are from, "some" day is probably still a ways off. But that's OK, because I am fairly sure these will never be expensive, unless maybe Topps created a Rookie Card card for itself, which is always possible. They have also essentially already repeated this exercise in a 2020s set I am also 'working" on. Maybe when the 2030s version appears I will have a few more cards in each.

I definitely already had a copy of the Sy Berger card, but that's OK, cuz everyone loves Baseball Cards that show Baseball Cards on them. Don't you?

Why I selected it: A new collection effort, of these "Hobby only" inserts I only discovered courtesy of these cheap single card boxes at my LCS.

A 219 Ft "Avg Distance" seems like it will have some hidden trickery involved, since 219 feet is never a Home Run. So what are we looking at here? Let's find out:

Ok, so Mike Trout still relatively "bombed" the ball in 2022, to the tune of ten feet more than anyone else. Neat.

Why I selected it: Always a lot goin' on on an Acuña card. I just love the miniature "Logoman" the scan revealed, to me anyways. I am now rebuilding a modest collection of these 2021 1986 Topps cards. Maybe I will sync up MVP wins with inclusion in a few pages of these. Or, maybe I will just dive into the pool.

Why I selected it: I think the relatively few "re-dos" of 1988 Topps Baseball are really showing the design in a more positive light, particularly given it's deployment on modern, always-crisp-results printing technology. 

It is -very- functional, and memorable, but lets the image be the memory. In this way it is very reminiscent of 1978 Topps - could that have been deliberate, at the time? The 2 designs may seem a bit of plain-jane, however when the photo is as fresh and illuminative as this one, the design seems to be astutely getting the heck out of the way of viewer enjoyment.

I also liked this card because I can't recall having seen this Clemente photo before. Maybe a Clemente collector will have; I am certainly familiar with repeat images on other Clemente cards. 

So with 2023 1988 Topps I am on the same cusp-of-decision as I am with the 86s.

Why I selected it: More progress on the 2024 Significant Statistics checklist. I think I only have 1 card each from 2 other years of this insert, which has more history than I suspected, though not always in contiguous years. Although there is near zero mystery to the concept of a 100.2 mph average velocity on a Sinker, these cards are ALL about the back, so -

and as it turns out, I learned a few intriguing factoids, including a shout-out to a player who has been hard to collect lately, probably due to a combination of Topps' disdain for Middle Relievers and that he missed a lot of time to injury (I think?) - dat would be da Brooze-Darr. I hope to see him on more cardboard in 2025. Otherwise, I am enjoying these inserts, every time I find one.

Why I selected it: So, let's review. I like Pink Baseball Cards. I like Powder Blue Baseball Cards. I like Racing Stripe Baseball Cards.

3 boxes checked. I also like the Pitcher-Plays-Hard Baseball Cards - show me another Dirty Pitcher card.

I however, do not like 1991 Donruss and I had to laugh when someone succeeded at making the whole thing much worse. They must have been taking notes from 2021 Topps or something. I also don't like no-license = no cap logo, so a couple boxes checked on the other, negatory, side of the ledger.

So this is one of those hideous but ultimately love-hate cards. Here's to hoping that this image can somehow appear on another, better Baseball Card some future year.

Why I selected it: Now here is much improved take on an old Donruss design. It rather begs the question of why, back-in-the-day, they made the regular red version, and the sneaky issue blue version, rather than just super intelligently combining the 2 primary Baseball and American colors, just like this?

Meanwhile, I am launching a small Jackson Chourio collection. So this pretty card will fit in there though I would rather have his Nashville Sounds cards. The back of this card is one of the laziest I have seen lately, with oceans of blank space and a report that Chourio is "From: Venezuela." The super teeny-tiny card back text never even identifies what team name might have been the source of this image, other than "Biloxi." 

I do largely expect this is a totally faked approximation of Milwaukee's Powder Blue Throwback uniform (the new Brew Crew uniforms don't have the colored armbands). But there is an outside chance their MiLB affiliate in Biloxi does use them, so I wanna find out.

I also suspect this is some sort of parallel, not a base, and thus the regular 2023 Donruss probably doesn't use this best-possible approach to this design. But there is a teeny-tiny chance such a checklist holds a few other neato lookin' cards on it. Maybe.

Why I selected it: I keep sayn' I'm gonna quit these 2009 Legends of the Game inserts, but here they keep appearing in my little stacks of purchases. I automatically pick up Christy Mathewson cards because they just aren't commonly seen. Mostly I grabbed this one because of the image, which is probably well on its way to a hey, look at these 9 cards page, some day. This is likely the single most common Mathewson card image.

Why I selected it: This card was supposed to the fated 13th card for one of these posts, but I couldn't leave you with a card this hideous, now could I. 

So why did I buy it? I don't know. Maybe to make sure I don't buy it again? Does that make any sense?

This was an insert in 2022 Topps Chrome but these (the card does say "Diamond Greats" in pointlessly tiny text) first appeared in 2022 Topps as decent enough die-cut cards. That clearly then became an all-too-easily repeated insert in that year's Chrome. And somehow one that got significantly worse once Chromed, but then no amount of design could save a card from this turrible, just turrible pic.

The card back writer went quickly to the standard description of Mathewson in the 1905 World Series and probably clicked this one off the office computer screen as fast as possible. Maybe I bought it just to see how many Christy Mathewson card backs can just float on the one World Series. Blech.

Why I selected it: I have a small collection of Hunter Pence cards that needs to be wrapped up = placed on a binder page. He had a good number of memorable cards in the 2010s, but I can't recall having a choice Astros selection, so I thought a Topps Gold would be a nice add. I heard him call one game in 2024, when the Giants were on ESPN Sunday Night Baseball so he moved over to help out the radio crew. I expect he is otherwise routinely on the TV crew. Maybe that will happen again sometime. I hope so.