30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 12

Day 12: One of your favorite cards from the 1980s

1985 Topps #703

I have at least 6,000 cards from the 1980s so this was a daunting task. I decided to narrow it down to 1985, since that's the first year I started collecting. I further narrowed it down to 1985 Topps cards (in those days I only bought Topps) that I didn't have any acquisition data on. Which narrowed it down quite a bit. I'm going to arbitrary declare that this is the first baseball card I ever acquired.  And therefore, one of my favorites. Plus it's George Brett.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 11

Day 11: One of your favorite cards from the 1970s

1978 Topps #210

I was following the Phillies closely in the 1970s and beyond but I wasn't collecting baseball cards. I have nearly all the Topps Phillies cards from the 1979s however, and a few of other players as well. I'm going with this one because it just says "1970s" to me.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 10

Day 10: One of your favorite cards from the 1960s

1960 Topps #138

I'm going with this beat up old Art Mahaffey rookie card. I don't remember where or how I got it. I'm a big baseball fan now, but when I was a kid (I was 8 years old the summer of 1960), I wasn't much of a fan. But I can remember that I was somehow aware of Art Mahaffey. He played 6 years with the Phillies, 1960-1965, compiling a 58-60 record. He was somehow an All-Star in 1961 (when he was 11-19) and again in 1962 with a bit more respectable record of 19-14. He was 12-9 in 1964, the year the Phillies blew a big lead in September and lost the National League pennant (which to be truthful, I hardly remember).

So this might not be my absolute favorite card that I own from the 1960s, but I have a story to tell about it so it's my choice. And really, without a story, what's the point of picking any particular card?

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 9

Day 9: One of your favorite cards from the 1950s

I'm going to restrict this to cards from the 1950s that I actually own. There are only 49 of them and most are Phillies. Looking through them, it was no contest.

1958 Topps #230 Richie Ashburn

I got this card in 2007, paid $7.80 for it on eBay. It's in pretty good shape and is a great looking card from a great looking set.

I grew up listening to baseball on the radio and for most of that time, Richie Ashburn was the Phillies color man. I don't really remember him as a player but I loved him doing Phillies games. He worked as a Phillies broadcaster from 1963 to 1997. He was planning to retire after the 1997 season but he died of a heart attack, at age 70, in his hotel room after broadcasting a Mets-Phillies game on September 9, 1997.

A fact we didn't know until he passed is that Ashburn and my father, who also loved Ashburn, were born in the same day.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 8

Day 8: A card that reminds you of a family member.

2016 Berger's Best #31

I started collecting as an adult in 1985. This card reminds me that my younger brother started collecting a few years prior and had bought into the whole 1980s thing of buying cards as an investment. He believed that you should buy sets, put them in the closet and leave them there and retire on the income (I'm exaggerating a bit). Of course, this Berger's Best card is a reprint from the 1982 Traded set, which I don't know if he has. But I know he has the 1982 base set and I remember him being excited about the Ripken rookie card.

So, how did the whole investment thing work out? He's still got the boxes in a closet, hasn't looked at them in years. The 1982 Cal Ripken rookie card currently books at $12.50 and is readily available on eBay (in non-graded form) for around that.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 7

Day 7: A card you bought in person and the story behind it.

In an earlier post I said there were hardly any baseball cards I'd spend more than $10 for. Here's another.

2005 Topps Touch Em All Base Relics

I paid $20 for this at a card show in Houston in 2013. It's got a lot going for it. It's a Phillies card, it's Jim Thome, one of my favorite players, even before he was a Phillies, it's a base relic card, it's from the 2004 All-Star Game which was held in Houston, it's limited (one of 50), Jim Thome was in the game, and even better, I was at the game. BTW, Thome wasn't a starter but got two at bats, unfortunately, going o for 2.

I guy I knew had season tickets for the Astros and had gotten 2 All-Star Game tickets and invited me along. 

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 6

Day 6: A card you spent more than $10 to get.

There are hardly any baseball cards I'm willing to spent more than $10 for, but I made an exception in this case. It's the single most money I've ever spent on a single card. And of course, it is Mike Schmidt.

1999 SP Signature Autograph

I paid $46 for this back in November 1999. More even than I paid for his rookie card. It's the only Schmidt auto I have and I'm very happy with it. Earlier in the year I had paid $6 for the non-autographed version.

30 Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 5

OK, back to the Challenge:

Day 5: A certified autograph card of one of your favorite players.

Since Jim Bunning just passed away, and I was on vacation so I couldn't make a note of it in my blog, I'm going to go with this.

2001 Fleer Greats of the Game Autographs

I got this on eBay way back in 2005 for $8.50

And just because I have it, the non-autographed version.

2001 Fleer Greats of the Game

I paid $0.30 for this later in 2005.

1986 Dorman's Cheese Mike Schmidt

A quick break from the 30-day Baseball Card Challenge.

Just when I think I have every 1980s Mike Schmidt card, another one comes along. It's one of the things that makes collecting cards so much fun.

1986 Dorman's Cheese

A card from this set was featured on tradingcarddb.com's Card of the Day. I figured that a 1986 set should have Schmidt in it and it did. There were several available on eBay. These cards came as a 2-card piece, perforated between cards. As it turns out, the featured card of the day was Rickey Henderson, the other half with Schmidt.

It's hard to tell the card size on tradingcardb so I was surprised to see how small the card is, smaller than a Topps Sticker. But, it's still a Mike Schmidt card I didn't have.

30-Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 4

Day 4: A rookie card of one of your favorite players.

The obvious card here would be Mike Schmidt's rookie card but this would be the answer for several of the days, so I'm gonna hold it for now.

Besides the Phillies, my favorite team is the Astros and my favorite Astro (from even before I moved to Houston) is Jeff Bagwell, finally elected to the Hall of Fame.

1991 Stadium Club Members Only #11

30-Day Baseball Card Challenge Day 2

Day 2 - A card with more than one player on it.

I had a hard time narrowing this down to one card so I'm going to cheat on the rules here (assuming there are rules) and feature 4 cards.

1993 Score #512

There are a lot of reasons to love this card. For one thing it features a rare play, the unassisted triple play. For another, it was pulled off by a Phillie. And finally, it wasn't just anybody involved, it was Barry Bonds.

1991 Studio

For its pun value alone.

2009 Topps Update #316

I got to see Pence's early years as an Astro and he was fun to watch. He sure enjoyed his first All-Star game in 2009.


Here's the whole challenge list.

30-Day Baseball Card Challenge

I've been seeing posts on a lot of baseball cards blogs taking the 30-Day Baseball Card Challenge. I may be a little late to the party but I thought I'd give it a go. 30 days worth of baseball card blog ideas? How can I past that up.

Here's the entire list.

#1. A card from the current year with a photo you like.

Topps #121. With about 850 cards to chose from this was harder than I thought it would be. But I eliminated Panini branded cards and parallels which reduced the choices. I narrowed it down to a couple of action shots but decided to go with this one. There are plenty of baseball cards featuring players celebrating. I may be reading this card wrong, but Santana seems to be expressing some of the fundamental frustration of baseball, watching a pop-up going nowhere.

Repack Bang or Bust #6

Today's edition of Repack Bang or Bust is, unfortunately a total bust. This was an 11-pack box from MJ Holdings I got at Walmart a few weeks ago. The box brags "Including one hobby pack in every box". 4 of the 11 packs were this.

2012 Triple Play. 

This was just an awful set. I did pull one of the generic relic cards but that hardly makes up for the 28 of the 72 cards this product represented in this box.

As I said, I don't like this set. The original Triple Play in the early 1990s was aimed at kids. I imagine that kids have even less interest in baseball cards today than they did then. And cards like this don't seem like they would draw kids back into the hobby.

Both of these examples would likely cause nightmares in impressionable youngsters. Especially the Strasburg card.

2007 Upper Deck Series 2

I guess Upper Deck was on its last legs in 2007. This dull offering was their flagship set.

Half of the 8 cards were of the horizontal orientation which I think looks worse than the vertical. I'd have been happy to have this pack when it was new, as 3 of the cards were Astros. But by now I already have those cards.

2015 Panini USA Stars & Stripes

It's always interesting to pull from a repack something I've never seen before.

Not a bad looking set. 150 cards of college baseball players. Some of the players I pulled have been drafted by major league teams, although Ober apparently hasn't. Two design problems. The large Stars & Stripes logo on the front makes it look like the player is straddling the logo on many of the cards I got. And why would you design a card back to have a large color photo just to repeat the front photo? As long as I collect cards I don't think I'll ever understand that.

This is a 150-card insert set featuring the same players, in the same order, as the base set, but with a different photograph. The card has the look and feel of Topps Chrome. 

2016 Babe Ruth Collection

I never saw this set live but it's been showing up in repacks since last summer. I've got about half of the 80-cards set now. There were two 5-card packs included in this box but there was only one I didn't have.

There were also two packs of this.

I opened them, looked at them and threw them away.

So, there turned out to be 27 cards of the 72 that I needed (needed being a very relative term when speaking of 2012 Triple Play). I usually like a repack to be around 50% productive to be satisfied. 

Repack Bang or Bust Part 5

The last one of these I did was about a 250-card Fairfield box. Well, this is sort of part two since when I bought that box I actually bought two. I rated that last box a Bang! and this one also gets a bang. I needed 115 of the 250 cards. Not too bad.

These boxes advertise that every other box (on average) has either a relic or an auto. The other box had nothing but this one had an auto.

2011 Bowman Autographed Prospects

Havens was the Mets #1 pick in 2008 but never made it to the majors.

1980 Topps #575

This was the oldest card in the box. The Phillies won the World Series in 1980, which was before I started collecting. I'm on a slow motion quest to complete the 1980 Topps set so I'm always happy to get one. 

My last post featured the weird airbrushed 1987 Topps Mike Laga card. That card came to my attention because this card was in the box.

1986 Donruss #578

Nothing really special about this card except it's part of a trend I noticed about this box. There were a lot of cards in it which were near duplicates of cards in the earlier box. For example, this is card #578. The earlier box had card #587 from the same set. These were the only 1986 Donruss cards in either box.

1986 Fleer #380

I collect Lee Smith so was happy to get this even though it's a terrible looking card. The photo is out of focus and the dark blue borders do it no favors. What was with both Fleer and Donruss using dark blue borders in 1986?

1988 Topps Traded #30

This set had a few of these Team USA cards. Pat Combs was the Phillies #1 draft pick in 1988, so of course, I have to consider this as a Phillies card. From this card I realized that there were several Phillies cards in this set I was unaware of. I managed to find the whole 1988 Topps Traded set on eBay for much less than $10, so I bought it.

1990 Donruss #147

Say what you like about 1990 Donruss, but I like it and have about 2/3 of the set. I collect Gary Carter but was missing this one.

1990 Topps #784

This card raises the question "Why do so many baseball cards have light poles in the background?".

1990 Broder Rookies Superstars

I have another card of Ben McDonald with the exact same back, but numbered #1 of 12. It also has a different photo. basebalcarddb.com lists the 12-card set but not the 7-card set. The other box had the Todd Zeile card from the 7-card set.

1990 Star #97

Another of the weird duplicates. This is a set I'd only had two cards from and both were Phillies cards I'd gotten in a trade. So I'd never seen one of these cards in a repack before I pulled #98 from the other box. Now I've also have #97.

1992 Triple Play

Zosky was the Blue Jays #1 pick in 1989 who never really made it. I didn't have a single one of his cards before opening this box. Now I have two. This one and his 1992 Ultra (#156) card.

1993 Donruss #276

The other box had card #277. Also featuring, I believe, the early season dead ivy at Wrigley Field.

1993 Topps Gold #319

These are a relatively rare finding in a repack. The other box had #318.

1997 Select Certified #40

Card #30 from this set (Paul Molitor) was in the other box. The only two cards from this set I've ever seen. I collect both players so I'm happy to have them.

2000 Upper Deck Ultimate Victory #54

I have a handful from this set, all of which I've gotten from repacks. It is a parallel to 2000 Upper Deck Victory but with a soft, thick coating on the front.

2001 Upper Deck Victory #590

This is another set which I've only seen in repacks. I don't know who this guy was but I didn't have this subset so it goes right into the reference books.

2002 Topps 206 #55

I like this set but bought very little of it when it was new. I pulled card #45 (Bud Smith) from the other box.

And finally, 2015 Topps Team Sets #PHP-8

The Phillies team sets don't seem to be available where I live in the Houston area. I'm lucky I can find the Astros set. The other box had the Phillies Maikel Franco card from the set.