2016 Leaf Babe Ruth Collection

I'm finally getting around to cataloging the cards from repack boxes I bought during the season. There's nothing like watching the baseball playoffs while scanning and cataloging cards.

I don't remember seeing any of the 2016 Leaf Babe Ruth Collection on the big box store's shelves, but I found 5 packs in a Fairfield repack box I bought last July. I'm not sure what it means to find a 2016 set in a repack box in July 2016. My first guess is that the set came out early in the year and just didn't sell. Baseballcardpedia.com doesn't mention the set at all; tradingcarddb.com has scans of the whole 80-card set entered in March 2016.

There were 5 base cards and one insert card in each pack. I may not have bought it if I saw a blaster box but I'm pretty pleased by the cards, mainly due to the wide selection of photos, many of which feature Ruth not playing baseball. Of the 20 cards I have, all but two feature Ruth during his Yankee days. The baseball playing shots are generally less than satisfying due to the lack of team name and team logo.

Here are some of my favorites.

Babe Ruth golfing! The cards are all sepia toned, full bleed printed, non-glossy and no foil anywhere. The backs feature a head shot from the front and some text explaining the front. Altogether, a nice package.

Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey and a giant bat. Great photo.

The Babe ready for contract negotiations.

 The Babe signing autographs. Nice shot of a baseball glove from the era.

The Babe jogging on the beach.

The Babe looking really uncomfortable.

The Babe and his family. Little Dorothy will later write a memoir, "My Dad, the Babe".

Repack oddities

I like to buy the sort of repack that have a lot of loose cards. Most of the cards are junk but there is almost always a few interesting cards. This one I bought back in November was no exception.

1997 Collector's Choice Teams #CI11 Marquis Grissom

Upper Deck produced the Collector's Choice set from 1994 through 1998. It was Upper Deck's second set after starting their iconic Upper Deck set in 1989. This Grissom card was easy to identify as a card from Collector's Choice. My only question when I looked it it was "What year is this from?" Collector's Choice base cards didn't change much from year to year and I can never tell them apart from the fronts. The back tells me it's from 1997. OK, ready to catalog. But wait a minute. What's with the number? CI11?  Turns out this is a Collector's Choice Team card. I never heard of this. In at least 1997, Upper Deck put out these team sets. But not every team, just the Braves, Orioles, Indians, Rockies, White Sox, Marlins, Dodgers, Yankees, Mariners, and Rangers. 13 cards to a set.  This card goes in the Reference Card album. You don't usually see doubles in a repack but there were two of these.

1995 Megacards Ruth

This is from a 1995 set put out by a company called Megacards. I don't know anything about the company. The set consisted of 25 cards highlighting different years from Ruth's career. 21 of the cards were b/w photos with gold foil trim. The front of this card seems to have some condition issues with the white speckles. The speckles don't seem to be something on the card or paper loss. They may be an artifact from the original photo.  I already had one of the color cards from the set from a previous repack.

1989 Pacific Legends II #123 Andy Pafko

I mostly think of Pacific as a card company that specialized in cards for the Hispanic market in the 1990s. But they did produce some sets in the late 1980s. This 110 card set picked up the numbering from the 100-card 1988 Pacific Legends I set. I already had a Phillie from Legends II that I got in a trade. I can now replace that in the Reference Album with this card. This is my first Andy Pafko card. Although he had a decent career, he's mostly known today as Card #1 in Topps 1952. Due to kids rubber banding their cards in those days, apparently it's hard to find a 1952 Pafko card in decent shape. According to Wikipedia a 1952 Pafko sold for $84,000 in 1998.

Jim Thome - All-Time Walk-Off Home Run Leader

As of last Saturday morning, Jim Thome was in a 6-way tie for the career lead in walk-off home runs. By early evening, he was the all-time career leader. I just missed seeing it. The Rays tied the game 6-6 in the top of the ninth and I left the game because my family was waiting for me to go to dinner. Thome came in as a pinch hitter to lead off the ninth and hit a homer. It was his first pinch-hit walk-off homer. It also gives him 610 for his career, tying him with Sammy Sosa for #7 on the all time list.

Jim Thome - 13

Jimmy Foxx - 12

Mickey Mantle - 12

Frank Robinson - 12

Babe Ruth - 12

Stan Musial - 12

Some elite company.

2012 Topps Heritage #296 Jim Thome

2011 Topps Gypsy Queen #53 Jimmy Foxx

1996 Topps #7 Mickey Mantle

2006 Topps Allen & Ginter #300 Frank Robinson

2010 Topps 206 #185 Babe Ruth

1999 Fleer Tradition Vintage ‘61 #6 Stan Musial

More repack success!

I bought one of those 100-card Fairfield rack-packs which promise to have a relic card in every 4 packs. I've bought several of these now and finally got my relic. But even beyond that, this pack keeps my string of repack success alive. Of the 100 cards, I didn't have half of them. Considering how much junk wax I have, I think that's a pretty good ratio.

2010 Sweet Spot Swatches Travis Hafner
I have nothing against Mr. Hafner, but I already have two cards from this set and I don't need another, unless it's a Phillie. So I'm offering this card for trade. I'd like a comparable Phillie relic in return. Let me know if you're interested. By the way, I checked, and this card is not currently available on eBay.

1998 Pacific Home Run History #60 Mark McGwirePacific produced this 70-card set to commemorate McGwire's hitting 70 home runs in 1998. This is the 7th card of this set I've picked up in repacks. The set was originally available as a boxed set.

1995 Megacards Ruth #11This was a nice find. I have several cards from a 1992 Ruth set produced by Megacards. This 1995 set had 25 cards, only 4 of which were printed in color. What's nice about this card is that it has Ruth as a Red Sox. Even better, he's pitching. The card has a nice glossy finish and a gold foil border. The Ruth logo is also in gold.

1990 Post #27 Nolan RyanThis was a 30-card set available in some Post brand breakfast cereals. Post stopped having baseball-related items a few years ago. I miss them. Post had a license from the MLBPA but not from the MLB which accounts for the anonymous uniform that Ryan is wearing. In those days this was accomplished by air brushing. This is only the second card from this set I've seen. In my experience Post cereal cards are rare items in repacks and I'm happy to have scored this Nolan Ryan card.

1990 Ames All Stars #18 Don MattinglyThis was a 33-card boxed set produced by Topps for the Ames Department Store chain. Topps produced a number of these sets around this time (see the next card). Unlike the Topps regular sets of the time, these cards feature a heavy gloss on the front. I've used the magic of Photoshop to fix the color balance of this card so you can't see how yellowed the white borders have become.

1990 Hill's Hit Men #29 Carlton FiskThis was another 33-card set produced by Topps, available from Hill's Department Stores. These store's were located mostly on the East Coast. Ironically, the Hill's chain was taken over by the Ame's chain in 1999. I've never seen either store.

Topps 2010 Baseball Value Pack

Last weekend we were at WalMart doing our monthly grocery run. I can never go in there without looking at the baseball cards. There wasn't anything new (just where are those Bowman Draft Picks blasters?) but there was this: A 2010 Baseball Value Box. With 40% MORE VALUE.In the box were 6, 12-card packs of Topps Series 2 and one pack of 2010 Allen & Ginter. Also promised was a Topps Million Card Giveaway card and a WalMart Exclusive Chrome Card as shown on the back.
You would absolutely get one of these three cards, Ripkin, Strasburg or Ruth. I figured this was my last chance to get a Strasburg card before he has possibly career ending Tommy John surgery. No such luck, I got the Babe. But I'm not sneering at the Babe.
I'm not quite sure where they were getting the 40% MORE VALUE from. I paid about 18 cents/per card. The Topps Series 2 cards I've bought were about $0.20/card. The Allen & Ginter have been closer to 40 cents. This doesn't work out to 40% MORE VALUE unless the Ruth card is worth big bucks, which I doubt. Of the 62 Topps cards, I only got about 15 I didn't already have. I needed 3 of the 6 A&G cards. I haven't had a single post about the Topps Million Card Giveaway. There have been plenty of other blogger posts and, besides, I wasn't very impressed by what I had gotten. Here's what came in the Value Box:
A very young John Smoltz, 1992 Topps, of which I have 2 of these. Oh, well.

1991 Topps Babe Ruth

On October 6, 1991, NBC aired the TV biopic Babe Ruth. I have absolutely no recollection of this event. You can read about it on IMBD. I saw these cards on another blogger's site and then found the set on eBay. Topps produced these cards using the same design layout as their regular 1991 release. I don't know how they were distributedStephen Lang played Babe Ruth. If the name looks familiar to you, he played Col. Quaritch, the gung-ho alien destroyer in Avatar.
On the back it says "Stephen Lang stars as baseball's greatest hero in the NBC Movie BABE RUTH."
Bruce Weitz plays Yankees manager Miller Huggins. The back notes that Weitz played on the 1954 Little League World Championship Team from Norwalk, CT. He currently plays a regular character, Anthony Zacchara, on General Hospital.
Lisa Zane's recent work includes a regular role on a British TV show called Biker Mice From Mars. IMDB describes the plot as "Martian Mice, who ride motorcycles, crash land on Earth and help fight against the Catatonians". I wonder if this is available on DVD.
Jacob Ruppert, the owner of the Yankees was responsible for buying the Babe from the Red Sox for $125,000. There's not much to say about Donald Moffat. He's had some other TV work and now, at 70 years of age, may be retired.
Neil McDonough currently plays Dave Williams on Desperate Housewives.
Rod Carew helped Lang, who is right-handed, to bat left-handed for the movie.
On the back of the card it says "And who better to play the immortal Ty Cobb than Rose, the man who surpassed Cobb (4,191 hits) as baseball's all-time most prolific hitter (4,256 hits)". Who indeed? This is one of the last baseball cards that Rose will appear on.
"And, while they often clashed in the early '20s, it was the respect that Huggins ultimately won from Ruth that turned the '27 Yankees into baseball's greatest team".
"Every time Babe swung the bat it was all or nothing at all," says Stephen Lang. I'm not sure that's completely accurate since the Babe had a career .342 batting average.
On the back it says "Did Babe call his shot? You decide."