2016 COMC purchases: Grandy and the Juniors

First, here's a quick notice to head over to TMM this evening for a celebration of James Earl Jones' birthday and a bunch of cards starring that blog's namesake!

With this year's Hall of Fame class less than a day away from being revealed, here's some more player collection cards I picked up on COMC.  I grouped these together and named them in the style of a 50s band so you know they'll be good!

Today's newest card is this 2010 Topps Update manu-bat of former namesake to this blog Curtis Granderson.  Topps has made some manufactured relics I've loved and loathed over the years and this one leans more towards the former.  It may not be a real bat barrel but then again it's not like I could afford one of those, much as I'd love to.  As I near 100 cards of Grandy this is just my third of him with the Yankees and fourth overall where he appears in a uniform other than Detroit's.

The good old "90s inserts rule" tag is back and happy as ever to be here with Mr. George Kenneth Griffey, Jr.  From one of my all-time favorite parallels (out of one of my top-five sets overall), 1995 Pinnacle Museum Collection, I dug up two of Junior's issues:  the Swing Men subset and his solo checklist.  Along with those I already own his other solo base card from this insert, and just need the multiplayer checklist to complete the run.  After showing off another of these in a post I may get to tomorrow, I'll have shown off 13 of these Dufexed cards of 10 different players I collect, with one more to come when I get around to it.

Besides those two I grabbed one more 90s insert favorite:  Griffey's entry in 1998 Topps Flashback.  This set combined a recent photo up front with a throwback photo on the flip side (which also includes a throwback Mariners logo!).  It's a fun look at baseball middle-aged Griffey and baseball kid Griffey, a.k.a. the Kid.  Hopefully I can track down Gwynn's card from this set as I already own Ripken's and Maddux doesn't appear.

Speaking of the Iron Man, here's a fun four-spot I found of him from my favorite card provider.  First is his 1997 base card from Fleer's Sports Illustrated product.  I've always enjoyed these card-sized reproductions of SI covers, such as this one from July 29, 1991 marking 1500 straight games played.

Meanwhile, the Behind the Numbers die-cut in the shape of Ripken's iconic #8 should look a bit familiar since I just showed off Tony Gwynn's version the other day.  I had to shell out more than I usually like to for inserts to grab this but happily did so as the feeling of nostalgia it brought me was priceless.  You'll be seeing one more card from this set in my next post and a final one when I finish scanning cards of my big four PCs.

Lastly I grabbed a pair of cards from the 2000 Fleer Gamers insert called "Cal to Greatness."  The set comprises 15 cards with the first five coming in at 1:9 packs, the next five at 1:25, and the final quintet at 1:144.  These are numbers 7 and 8, so they're the somewhat rarer versions to go along with the cards I already own, which I believe are numbers 1-5 (unscanned so far).  While the first bunch feature a more subtle design, these are of the reflective foil variety, and the rarest ones have more of a rainbow foil look to them.  I'll slowly try to complete this set as reasonable pricing allows.

Stay tuned (as soon as tomorrow) for my final COMC pickup post over here, though I'll have a few more yet over on TMM.  Also, I hope everyone's as excited as I am for the big Hall of Fame reveal tomorrow.