2021 Baseballcardstore.ca purchases: frugal football

After seeing lots of other folks showing off some fun purchases from Baseballcardstore.ca I finally decided to make one of my own last month, picking up 250 cards from the "Online Dime Box" for $25 (imagine that) plus their flat $4.99 shipping. (Side note: you can use a coupon code on each transaction to have them hold onto your cards until you want them all shipped.)

A few weeks later I received a very well packed and protected box that contained everything I'd ordered (nothing missing!) plus even what I think was a freebie since I ended up with 251 items.

I'm going to break this down into at least two posts--football and baseball--and may even split up the baseball stuff since there's a lot. We'll see.

So tonight I'm showing off the football stuff. My strategy here was simply to search by name and grab everything I could find of each player I collect. And why not, with cards costing just a dime each, not to mention wanting to get good value for the flat shipping cost. Though there's nothing extremely exciting here it was definitely fun adding a bunch of new items to my football PCs on the cheap as a replacement for digging through dime boxes in-person.

Here's what I got:

I like starting out strong with a college uni card, even if it's the only one of the bunch. Former #1 WR Derrick Alexander led the way with nine new cards four of which you see here in vertical format, including Action Packed, a Pro Line set you'll see a few more times, and a shiny Prestige base. A beautiful Black Diamond Biakabutuka is one of three you'll see of the Buckeye-killing RB. And Calloway returns us to the WR position in a bunch of cards that was very offensive (in the best way!).

Carter, a star WR himself, joined the 1000 yard club for three straight seasons, 1988-90, including a career high 1225 in '88. QB Collins' Pacific Invincible base is definitely one of the highlights of the purchase, a fun dime box gem. "Jumbo" Elliott had a very nice 14-year career with the Giants and Jets, so tracking down four new cards of him was a plus. And Funchess's cards (you'll see one more in the next scan) from 2017 were definitely the most recent in the group.

It only feels like I bought the entire '97 Pro Line set. Grbac joins Collins as ex-Wolverine journeyman QBs with awesome cards today, in his case the beautiful 2000 Bowman's Best design. Coach Harbaugh ups the QB count and gets a nice shiny Prestige addition of his own. HOF former Badger/Wolverine "Crazy Legs" Hirsch comes to us from a "baseball" product, Panini's Golden Age, that's about as baseball as A&G and GQ, but that's fine since he's awesome. Heisman winner Howard joins him to continue the run on receivers, and that Classic Images card is so 90s I just did a kickflip on a skateboard while yelling "radical!" and I don't even own a skateboard!

McGee and Riemersma would form a TE pair any Michigan coach would die for. A-Train and Toomer hail from the nice to look at if especially curly 2002 Topps Chrome set. Wheatley's athleticism was certainly a work of art and is captured well on a Pacific Impressions card from 2001. And Super Bowl Champ Woodley doesn't look very happy to be one of just two defenders I could find this time.

Yep, Derrick Alexander definitely had a good day, and here he adds an Ultra insert, Black Diamond base, and a couple of Crown Royales to boot (and he's still not done!). Grbac also got the Crown treatment, and we're not quite done with the die-cut beauties yet. Howard was the #2 player here with five cards including this trio that brought an Ultra Gold Medallion and a somewhat rare Lions appearance.

There's TE McGee again, joining WR alum Howard above in a cool Flair set. Transfer RB Ritchie looks ready to kill a dude on both of his cards. Toomer gets the die-cut treatment from Pacific Atomic and Crown Royale, and the previously seen Wheatley can also be seen on a different version of the latter. Between the two I'm more of a fan of the team die-cuts of Atomic, but you're getting something cool either way!

Last up is the oddly sized stuff. I snagged four players from Fleer's '97 Goudey II throwback product. Collins is by himself near the top of the set while the other three are consecutive, which I thought was cool. Looks like I need to track down Harbaugh, Toomer, and Howard to achieve the team set.

After the Funchess cards you saw earlier, the 2015 Panini stickers you see here at the bottom of Shoelace and Woodson (the day's other defensive representative) were the next most recent. The Robinson foil was a fun throwback to when I'd chase those special stickers to put in Panini's baseball books.

And last up is a trio of cards that both look and scanned better than I'd expected. Those horizontal minis on the right are Open Field holograms from 1996 Playoff Contenders. The one-per-pack insert was broken up into Green, Purple, and Red (which you can discern based on what you see around the player's name), with Green both the most plentiful and easy to pull and Red being the rarest. All three of my players here are Green, as you might imagine since they were a dime each.

I'll be back in the near-ish future with the baseball stuff but first I have a sweet new trade package to dig into, so you'll probably see that next. In the meantime, if you haven't yet I'd recommend giving Baseballcardstore.ca a look! Browsing's not as nice as I'd like but the prices, accuracy, and shipping are excellent, so if you've been on the fence I'd say go for it.