2018 COMC purchases: Cal's my pal

The little pile of Cal Ripken Jr. cards I picked up from COMC caught my eye today so that's where I'm going next.  You can also catch some new football content on TMM should that interest you.  Otherwise, here's some fun inserts of the Iron Man for your Sunday enjoyment:

This one is from the 1992 Donruss debut of Diamond Kings as their own insert set, and as usual the manufacturer and artist Dick Perez nailed it.  These served as a good indication that the Diamond Kings name was in good hands, and cardboard history shows that they improved from there.  Definitely a gem from the waning days of junk wax and boring designs.

And now we're looking at card #7 from Fleer's 1995 Flair insert set focused on Cal.  "Enduring" is of course a good word to describe Ripken throughout his trademark streak.  The back of this one talks about how he won the 1991 All-Star Game MVP before being named the most valuable player in his league later that season.  With this in my collection I just need four more cards to complete the set--one of three Ripken-specific inserts I'm working on that you'll see in this post!

Given Cal's stardom you'll be hard pressed to find many "cheap" quality inserts of the HOF shortstop, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.  The 1996 Ultra Rawhide card above is a case in point with its cool textured surface and great shot of the two-time Gold Glover in the field.

Throughout these posts you'll get a chance to see where I "splurged" a bit this time, spending more like $3-$10 on single cards when I usually don't.  One player in particular benefited from that more than the others, but Ripken did get in on the fun with this awesome die-cut/acetate 1997 Studio Hard Hats (#3043/5000) offering.  Hello, "90s inserts rule" tag!  I've had Barry Larkin's card from the set for a while and have Griffey's card on my wantlist because these just look too cool to ignore.  You won't find anything like this in the era of the Toppsopoly but my fellow 90s collectors and I can enjoy endless creativity like this!

All Cal All the Time set #2 for today is 2000 Fleer Gamers' Cal to Greatness.  This is one I've been trying to tackle for a while because, while the first five cards are relatively cheap and easy to find--I've had them all for a while--the next five were 1:25 pulls and the last five were 1:144, making them much harder to track down, at least at prices I could stomach.  The one you see above is #10 in the series, leaving me short #s 6 and 9 plus the entire run of 11-15.  I'll get there at some point!

Last up is the final all Ripken set, not to mention the largest.  Fleer's 2007 Ultra Iron Man insert weighs in at a whopping 50 cards so this foursome goes a long way towards making a dent in my wantlist.  That's still fairly large because I only recently started working on it after finding a couple in the cheap boxes at shows.  But I've got six now with more on the way, and I look forward to filling the gaps on this outstanding black/orange/foil tribute to Cal that features excellent photography.

This nice little nine-spot of Cals bumps his PC-leading collection up to 795 cards with another milestone--100x his jersey number--in sight thanks to some Sportlots reinforcements.  While I wait on those you'll get a look at a few more COMC PC cards soon!

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.