2020 Facebook purchase: boxing day (with recap from last night's break!)

So I ended up doing things a bit out of order by breaking the '88 Pacific Legends box last night before posting this, but then again it's my blog and

Here's a quick breakdown on how this purchase came about, plus a bit of a look at everything I ended up with.

Last Monday I was perusing Facebook Marketplace again and noticed a guy not too far from me had posted a bunch of listings for a few things that caught my eye, starting with boxes of Topps commons from the 70s (and 1980) at very good prices. I was hoping to grab those for Jeff since he's working on a number of those sets, and he was definitely interested in these.

Besides those I was after a nice pile of 80s and 90s boxed sets, plus a couple of boxes of the aforementioned Pacific Legends cards, one of which I offered to Fuji.

Happily everything worked out and after about a 45 minute trip both ways and $80 cash I was back home with quite the bounty. I've already sent Jeff and Fuji their cards, which they can share at their convenience if they feel like it, and now I can cover everything else here.

  

First up: the results of my Pacific Legends box. I had a blast ripping packs, sorting cards, and talking to Fuji, Andy, Chris, and Chris last night, not that the video is a great indicator since I was spending a lot of time off-screen sorting. I don't really do boxes anymore so this was a fun treat for me, even if it came from the junk wax era. The $10 price was perfectly acceptable to me as I chased a complete set, and maybe a second?

While set #2 wasn't quite meant to be--I pulled only one of card #20, Jim Bouton--this was a fun rip of 36 packs of 10 cards each while attacking the 110-card run. Considering how bad collation could be back then, though, one set plus practically a second was a steal at that price! The player selection is awesome--Bill Freehan and Mark Fidrych join the likes of Kell and Kaline, not to mention Teddy Ballgame, Hank Aaron, and more--and the hits kept coming.

I did a quick breakdown and ended up with 367 cards, even when removing the six Tigers I already had in-hand, broken down into:

• Set 1: 110/110, 100%
• Set 2: 109/110, 99%
• Set 3: 60/110, 54%
• 53 quadruples
• 31 quintuples
• 4 sextuples

I'm working on tracking down one more Bouton so I can finish my second set, plus I have some dupes to help others, possibly even Fuji when he breaks his box!

With that covered, the rest of this post will show off everything else I grabbed, which was in the form of 80s and 90s boxed sets that set me back $1, $2, or $5:

Most of them can be seen here, and I'll go into a bit more detail below. The majority of these were a buck with some of the ones on the bottom making up the $2/$5 group.

And my favorite find of this haul was a 1992 Stadium Club Dome package for just $5. It's not that these are rare, but I don't think I'd ever seen one in-person, so having all the pieces is extra cool!

I opened anything that was sealed and got all the cards put in order, because that's always fun, then tried to get a quick look at fronts, backs, and any extras from each box. In this scan you can see (top to bottom, left then right):

• 1986 Donruss Highlights (56 cards): pretty obvious by the name. Includes a mini Hank Aaron puzzle.
• 1986 Fleer Limited Edition (44): a bunch of stars (like Gibby and Sweet Lou, whose card I didn't flip over to show off the back, d'oh!) plus free stickers.
• 1986 Kay-Bee (33): a collaboration with Topps that shows off young Superstars, like Tony Gwynn at the time!
• 1987 Fleer Award Winners (44): another obvious one. Also comes with stickers, which is a common theme among these.
• 1987 Fleer Baseball All-Stars (44): yep, 44 cards and stickers, plus wot it says on the tin.
• 1987 Fleer Limited Edition (44): you can see where I'm going with this. Look up a couple rows in the photo to compare the two designs.
• 1987 Fleer Record Setters (44): why not 45? I dunno! Cool stickers again.
• 1987 Kay-Bee (33): same set size as the year before, but the word "young" is left out and this is all "superstars" chosen quite well--few if any duds.
• 1988 Fleer Baseball MVPs (44): Fleer didn't have any problem coming up with excuses to print boxed sets, and that's fine by me!
• 1989 Donruss Traded (56): I've always been a sucker for trade & rookies-type sets. The real ones, that is, not the monster that Topps Update has become. Nolan Ryan on the Rangers seemed like a good sample card, and this one also came with a mini Musial puzzle.
• 1988 Score Young Superstars I (40): yeah, this should have been above the Donruss cards chronologically. Oh well. This is Series I of the super glossy young star cards Score produced in their debut season, and they also came with the mini lenticular trivia cards the brand would be known for for a few years.
• 1987 Fleer Mini (120): ok, these are here on purpose, at least, since I thought I'd put them last due to their oddball size. That's a little Eric Davis base you see, plus a rad version of the Tigers' best logo in sticker form.

I believe all of these were $2 apiece except for the UD hologram set on the bottom, though one or more might have been a buck more:

• 1989 Score Rookie/Traded (110): that's a good size for one of these sets. I think this one was $3 which seemed reasonable enough when you consider the Griffey seen here is a RC, one I didn't have! Also, more mini holograms.
• 1990 Topps Debut '89 (154): this one kept the standard '90 flagship design but added a banner up top mentioning the player's debut from the previous season. I couldn't help but show off card #84 of Yankees pitcher Kevin Mmahat--what a last name!
• 1990 Score Rising Stars (100): welp, I did it again, probably because I keep thinking Debut '89 is from '89, though it isn't. Anyway, here's another super glossy set filled with up-and-comers (and holograms). A huge stack of these was part of an earlier Facebook purchase of mine but pretty much all of them were damaged, so this was a nice replacement.
• 1990 Score Rookie/Traded (110): very similar to that year's colorful (as usual for the time) base set, except with orange borders. No huge stars to chase here, but some fun stuff, like cards of hockey dude Eric Lindros and football player D.J. Dozier, as highlighted in this Baseball Card Backs tweet yesterday.
• 1992 Upper Deck Team MVP Holograms (54): I already had a few of my PC guys' cards from these, but I just couldn't ignore the awesome packaging and presentation here. The shrink-wrapped packaging has a cardboard sleeve touting how limited this thing is, and that protects a sweet branded hinged plastic case. The super premium holograms were banded together with a COA starring Junior Griffey, too! Each team at the time got repped by their best pitcher and hitter, plus there's a couple checklists, giving you 54 cards.

Last up is the super cool 1992 Stadium Club Dome set, so called because it came packaged in a little replica of Toronto's SkyDome, host of the '91 All-Star Game. If you thought the presentation above was great, try this: the 200-card set goes into a fairly typical box, inside a molded plastic stadium that opens (and looks like R2-D2 at the bottom), and into another cardboard box!

This one includes 100 draft picks, 25 Team USA cards, 56 cards highlighting the '91 All-Star Game, and 19 more covering the playoffs and World Series. I grabbed fronts and backs from all four subsets, with my favorites being the mulleted draft pick and a back starring one of my favorite names in the game, Basil Shabazz. I'm definitely geeked to have such a nice looking Stadium Club set in my collection, and the original packaging is a very nice bonus.

Now that I have these covered I'll be back soon with another eBay buy and at least one more trade package, so watch for those as I figure out how to make room to store all of this!

2017 Sportlots purchases: a Barry nice finale, part 1

The final player I'll be showcasing in this feature (with the exception of one more over on TMM, possibly even tomorrow) is HOF SS Barry Larkin.  I decided to save him for the big finish because I scored the most new cards of him out of all the PC guys involved in this enormous purchase--so many, in fact, that for my sanity I'm splitting his pickups into two posts!

There's a lot to see here so let's get down to it:

Starting smack dab in the heyday of junk wax we open up with some '88s and '89s.  Leaf and OPC issues from the earlier year are the sole base cards here, while an '89 Classic Travel Purple is one of many oddballs you'll get to see today.  The rest are boxed set-types from former heavy hitters Donruss, Fleer, and Score.  Card #9, from '89 Scoremasters, is a particular fun one done up in a very realistic artistic style.

Grabbing as many Larkins as I did (I'll reveal the total in the next post) allowed me to accumulate a totally wild variety of stuff, so get ready for a few more scans like this (until the more mainstream era of the mid-90s and later).  This time we're looking at items from '89-'91 with base from Sportflics ('89), Leaf ('90), and OPC and Score ('91).  Of course you already saw card #9 in Sabo's post, and I'm happy to repeat it here because it's a super fun issue celebrating the Reds' surprising World Series win the previous season.  Larkin shows some very Ozzie-like athleticism there!

A Topps Glossy Send-In and a couple more Classic issues from '90 and '91 join a pair of food issues from Jimmy Dean and Post cereal to round out another eclectic bunch.

We're still in the early 90s here for a few more scans--1991 and '92 to be specific.  The base cards hail from Studio ('91) and Bowman ('92) and there's also Score Cooperstown and UD Silver Sluggers from the earlier year.  The oddball side is populated by Score and Topps/Woolworth's boxed sets from '91 and Classic, Donruss/McDonald's, and Fleer/Citgo issues from the following year.  Notable for me here are the debut of the excellent Studio brand and the fact that Barry has a second card in '92 Bowman, a foil subset base I still need.

There's less odballness in this all 1992 scan, with Topps Kids and a McDonald's/Topps offering the only qualifiers.  On the mainstream end we have Leaf and its much better looking Black Gold parallel; a fun Score base subset starring big-head Barry; one of Larkin's appearances in the excellent sophomore year of Stadium Club; a pair of Topps Gold Winners; and a hint of things to come from Ultra with an All-Star insert.  Those Leaf Black Gold cards really do look nice and I think every time I mention them I say the same thing about just ditching the plain gray borders!

Now it's time to move up to 1993, the year I turned 10.  There are base cards from Donruss, Flair, Fleer, OPC, Pacific Spanish, and Pinnacle.  The Flair card--one of two featuring Larkin in the set--is the most notable as it includes a cameo from Barry Bonds.  We also continue the early-ish run of inserts with Pinnacle's Cooperstown, which was obviously right on the money by included the super-talented Larkin.  Meanwhile, Classic pops up once again with another Game card, and Duracell adds to the litany of retail brand oddballs.

1993 bleeds into '94 here with the latter claiming the last six cards.  Regular issues can be seen from '94 brands Bowman, Donruss, Flair, and OPC, with the Donruss card including a fun turn-two photo.  That seems to be longtime SS Rey Sanchez getting doubled up.

Inserts include a '93 Triple Play Action game card, '94 Collector's Choice's You Crash the Game (also a scratch-off), and '94 Donruss' Special Edition parallel.

The oddballs are the Post food issue and Upper Deck Fun Pack from '93.

Fun Pack makes its second appearance in a row here as it closes out 1994, and it's joined by yet another different food issue, Tombstone (anybody else that used to enjoy those mini deep dish pizzas besides me?).  A better Pacific design (other than the still-awful logo) and an SP look that's much nicer than the card to its left are the '94 base representatives, and they're joined by 1995 examples from Topps' Bazooka, Collector's Choice, and Fleer's EMotion.  The pair of inserts are both 1995 parallels:  Bazooka's Red Hot and Collector's Choice SE's Silver Signature.  I like how both Collector's Choice cards use excellent action photos!

I believe from this point onward we're pretty much done with oddballs until the next post.  This scan takes us through the rest of the '95s before starting back up with 1996.  There's a lot of solid and above cardboard with base from Pacific, Select Certified, SP, Stadium Club, and Ultra, plus a below-average Fleer design and a stinker called Topps Embossed.  That middle row is a great representation of the better stuff available in the middle of the decade.

The lone '96 entrant is an appropriately red Fleer Circa on a decent design that ended up going in the wrong direction as the brand evolved into Skybox Thunder, but was solid for its debut.

Our one insert here is a Leaf Limited Bat Patrol, a set with a design that might've been a bit better if they hadn't put the insert title at such a weird angle.

Now we're really getting into one of my favorite card eras:  the decade that began in the mid-90s.  We continue our '96 run with Donruss, Finest, Fleer, Pacific, Select Certified, and Studio base, and all of those feature at least pretty good designs, with Finest, Fleer, Select Certified, and Studio near the top of their game.  I am, of course, a shameless promoter of 1996-97 Fleer, the best two-year run of the brand's flagship product.

There are two inserts you can spot here:  a Collector's Choice You Make the Play game card and a Score Dugout Collection parallel, which was a nice copper-colored version of the solid base set.

The card I haven't mentioned so far is somewhat but not completely odd: a Stadium Club Members Only 50 of the guy who was named MVP that season.

1996 finishes up with an excellent Upper Deck flagship design (I love the award/achievement stamps) and Zenith, for which I'll always be grateful thanks to its awesome Mozaics insert.

1997's base in this scan is represented by Circa (see what I mean?), Donruss Limited, Fleer's E-X2000, and a twofer from Leaf.  Limited definitely had a higher-end feel at the time, plus Larkin shares his card with another SS who was popular at the time,

Rey Ordonez.  And the E-X2000 has an even more premium feel to it, which makes sense since just two cards came in each pack.

The pair of inserts you see in the middle row are Stick'Ums stickers from Collector's Choice.  For some reason these came in hobby and retail versions (left and right, respectively), though there's no difference in the stickers up front.

It's all 1997 in this scan, and aside from card #7--a Stadium Club Members Only issue again--everything is a base card.  Fleer's crazy Metal Universe product starts things off and is followed by another Certified product (Pinnacle Certified in this case).  Then we see a couple examples of the latter brand's experimentation thanks to Inside (the cards that came in collectible cans) and Mint (which included coins).  Then there's a pair of base Score on another nice, understated design, and typical strong examples from Studio and Topps Gallery.  Of course a double play photo like that should be framed!

The first two cards here close out '97 in style with Topps Stars (did the colors always look this faded on them?) and the beautiful photograph of Zenith.  There's a definite higher-end feel to their '98 counterparts thanks to Bowman Chrome, Donruss Elite, and Flair Showcase, and the latter there is one of the highlights of this whole scan.  The best of the rest is a very nice Fleer Tradition design, joined by another Metal Universe offering, Pacific's Paramount, and Pinnacle's out-there Performers.

The top row here is a fantastic finish to another good year of cardboard:  Sports Illustrated World Series Fever, Stadium Club, and Upper Deck Retro.  Fleer's collaboration with SI was always a highlight and UD's Retro was a short-lived but excellent product.

Half of the '99s can be claimed by Pacific in the form of Aurora, Crown Collection, and a not-so-ostentatious Prism set.  The others are base entries from Bowman, a very Certified-like Fleer Brilliants, and, yes, once again, Metal Universe!

This mostly 1999 scan contains another nice mix of brands that shows what the hobby was like almost 20 years ago.  It's interesting to look at the debut of Pacific's Private stock as it changed quite a bit the other years it existed (especially the relic-per-pack 2001 version).  Skybox's Molten Metal and UD's SPx are foil-infused eye-poppers.  Topps' contributions here hail from Opening Day and the third iteration of Stars.  Then another excellent Fleer Ultra base leads to a pair of UD products in Encore (a louder version of the base set) and Ovation, the product with the raised design that felt like a baseball.

Card #9 then begins the final year of this post with Upper Deck's Black Diamond.  While I'll always be a bigger fan of the '99 version, 2000 was another good year for that brand, one that had some very cool parallels.

Time to finish things off here before I get to part 2 soon.  This all 2000 scan is chock full of goodness so it's a great way to end this post.

The top row is an upper-end dream with Fleer's E-X, Topps' Finest, and Fleer Showcase.  That version of Finest happens to be one of my favorites and I can't think of a Showcase design I didn't like.

Meanwhile, the next four cards are all Pacific:  flagship, Crown Collection, Omega, and Private Stock (again, see what I mean?).  The flagship design is one of that manufacturer's best, and Private Stock was clearly a work of art that year.

Last up are SP Authentic and Stadium Club Chrome.  The former looks great as always, and the latter is a product I wish had continued.  That's probably because I pulled so many great cards from it, including a Derek Jeter I sold for good money and a Griffey Refractor.  I mean, really, Stadium Club cards are beautiful already, so why not Refractor-ize them as well?  That's Topps for you.

Congrats to all of you who made it this far!  After adding everything you see above, my Larkin collection sits at a very respectable 551 cards, so that's another fun milestone I can cross off.  Stay tuned for more of all Barry, all the time in my next post!

2017 Sportlots purchases: I got you Tram

I'm still in a bit of an unmotivated state in terms of posting despite having lots of great cards scanned and ready to show off, and a death in the family will further take away from what little focus I have here in the next week or so, but at least for today I'm finally getting off my ass and getting down to business.

With my last Sportlots post centering on Tigers legend Lou Whitaker I bet you're all not too surprised about today's start, brand new Hall of Fame member Alan Trammell.  As you might expect, his name came up a lot in terms of availability from the sellers already in my cart because his cards mostly hail from the junk wax and 90s era that may be the most representative on the site.

Because I picked up so many cards (a number still dwarfed by the final player in this series), I'll probably be a bit more concise in my summaries for each scan.  Besides, in most cases the cardboard can speak for itself!

We open with lots of 80s goodness that's mostly represented by Donruss base cards (1981-85, including an error DK from the second-year version) as well as flagship versions of Topps ('82) and Fleer ('84).  Those are joined by Fleer Star Stickers from 1981 and '86, providing a quick look at the evolution of their designs.

Here I'll highlight the first card, an '86 Sportflics base that also includes Reggie Jackson and Rick Dempsey.  The theme:  World Series MVPs--Trammell ('84), Jackson ('73, Oakland and '77, New York), Dempsey ('83, Baltimore).  Just about everything else is a Fleer base ('88), insert, sticker, or boxed set card from '87 and '88 except for a Topps Tiffany parallel from 1987.

Everything you see here is from 1988, starting with a Fleer Glossy parallel (one of a couple featuring Tram in the set) and another five boxed set issues.  Man did Fleer love pumping those out during this era!  The bottom trio comprises three different brands:  Leaf, Sportflics, and Topps (Glossy Send-Ins).  One thing you should notice in this group of cards (the previous scan through the next two) is how many times Trammell was referred to as an "MVP", "leader", and "star/all-star".  It may be easy for younger fans to dismiss him as a "hall of very good" player, but he was among the best of his position in his generation.

As we finish up '88 with a Rite Aid/Topps pairing and then delve into 1989, here's more superlatives such as "exciting", "hero", and "superstar".  The latter year includes another large bunch of Fleer boxed stuff, and even more interesting, a box bottom card from that brand (which we also saw earlier in this series with Kirk Gibson).  Another Topps retail pairing, this time with toy store Kay-Bee (which I totally remember from my youth!) and a Score boxed set entry (Hottest 100 Stars) close out this scan.

Here an '89 Topps base (once again, yes, I needed it, and I really should just grab a set when I can find it cheap enough) leads into a little run on that brand including more pair-ups (Ames, Cap'n Crunch, Hills) and another Glossy Send-In.  The 90s open with Classic, Sportflics (the third one already!) and a pair from Starline Long John Silver.  Those last two are among a few I previously showed off thanks to a great trade package from Fuji back in December.

Now we have a quick look at three years--1991 to '93--with some familiar faces:  Bowman, Studio, Topps Gold Winners, Flair, Fleer, OPC.  There's also a few that aren't quite as well-known--a Score boxed set and UD Silver Slugger insert from '91, plus Topps Kids from the following year.  The casual out-of-uniform shot used on Studio's second-year product is a bit jarring, to say the least.

1993 continues with the low point of Pacific (which thankfully was largely better over the years) but the debut of Upper Deck's SP makes up for it.  Considering so many of the photos used in the cards you see today are batting shots I like that baserunning and fielding are mixed in a bit here.  Also, 1994, which stars here with Bowman, is around the time designs really got to be more interesting.

One last Sportflics from '94 is joined by some other designs I really like here, like Studio from the same year, plus Leaf and SP Championship from 1995.  While I don't love '95's fleer design, the Pacific offering shows signs of improvement over the 1993 disaster.

The 1995-96 trio that leads off this scan portends the fun stuff from more recent years that follows.  A second '95 SP Championship base features one of the best photos in this whole post, while Fleer's 1996 flagship and Ultra designs are highlights from those products' runs.  A couple 2002 Fleer (Fall Classics and Greats of the Game) and 2003 Donruss/Panini (Champions and Team Heroes) are a nice segue into stuff from the last decade, with Fleer's efforts particularly appealing.  The hobby sure could use something like Greats of the Game to replace one or more of Topps' stale products these days.

Here's more Fleer and Donruss brands from 2003 and '04.  My favorite design is the Team Heroes card while I love the older photos seen on that one, Leather & Lumber, and Playoff Honors.  Considering how bad things got for Tigers fans in the 90s it's nice to remember how good we had it in the 80s for a bit.

This 2004-06 group is the last of the standard size vertical stuff.  Upper Deck's iconic SP Legendary Cuts product is represented twice (2004 and 2006) along with another of their best, 2004 Legends Timeless Teams.  Naturally Tram represents the '84 Champs and '87 AL East-winning teams on the latter, and I'd love to track down the autographed versions of these.

These eight horizontal cards span 1989 (Topps...sigh) to 2005 (Donruss Champions).  In between there's a fun mix that includes 1994 Stadium Club, 1995's unnecessary UC3, and a sunset '97 Score.

As we near the end I have one oversized card, another example from 1985's Donruss Action All-Stars.  You already saw versions of those starring Lou Whitaker and Geoff Zahn (in a post from the end of last October.  Man have I been dragging my feet on posting!).

Last up is a fun mix of undersized cards, stickers, stamps, and more.  Besides Fleer stamps and Minis, Topps stickers and Micros, and other fairly recognizable stuff there's a few interesting items of note.  The first thing on the bottom row is a 1981 Topps Scratch-Off, and I think that's the first of those in my collection.  Next to it is an '89 Topps Coin, though we've seen a few of those already.  And possibly the most interesting item of all is the first you see in the second row:  a 1984 Topps Rub-Down that Tram shares with fellow stars Dave Parker of the Pirates and Steve Henderson of the Mariners.  I'm pretty sure that's another first for me, plus I'm betting a few of your Pirates fans who don't have a copy are already opening a new tab to track one down!

In the end I added over 100 Trammell cards thanks to this purchase giving me a milestone-passing total of 315 of the HOF SS.  I'm thrilled to both pad and diversify my PC of one of the all-time great Tigers, a guy whose career I enjoyed very much.

With this post in the books I have one more player to get to, and he'll require two separate posts due to the sheer volume of incoming items.  I don't know when I'll be putting those up but I do look forward to sharing them with you.  Until then, congratulations to Trammell and the other deserving members of the 2018 MLB Hall of Fame class!

2017 Sportlots purchases: mo better Lous

See?  No "Happy Lou Year" in the title, just like I promised!

Of course that means today's featured PC guy is Lou Whitaker.  I didn't knock anything off his checklist in my Sportlots purchase but did find a few scans' worth of new stuff to add to his collection, mainly of the oddball variety:

Most of what I grabbed was from the 80s which makes sense since Whitaker's career spanned 1977-95.  This bunch starts and ends with Topps Glossy Send-Ins from 1984 and 1987.  I don't generally count stuff like that towards the mainstream checklist because I tend to limit it to box- and pack-pulled stuff.

As with many of the other players you've seen, Lou appeared in many of Fleer's prolific array of products that decade, and here you can see his issues from their 1986 Limited Edition boxed set as well as the Star Stickers offerings from that year and 1987.  The stickers are definitely odballish enough to leave off the checklist but I may change my mind on the Limited Edition card at some point.

Last up is the most oddball of this scan:  1986 True Value.  These logo-less cards (despite apparently being approved by the MLBPA?) came in panels of four when you bought stuff at one of those stores.

Here's the final four standard-sized cards:  Up first is 1989 Classic Travel purple, an update to the product that featured trivia questions on the back.  Next is a psychedelic design from 1992 Topps Kids, another product that's weird enough to leave off my checklists, at least for now.  I'd argue that kid-centric products look a bit better today.

Going a bit more mainstream are Whitaker's 1993 Pacific Spanish base (with that butt-ugly logo from the early 90s) and Upper Deck's Fun Pack from that year, another kid-friendly product.  I may also decide to put these on the main checklist at some point.

Lou was living large in the 80s--five straight All-Star Games, four Silver Slugger Awards, three Gold Gloves, and 43.4 bWAR are proof--so naturally he belonged on some oversized cards like this Donruss pair.  The first is from the 1985 Action All-Stars set while the other product's name simply opted for "All-Stars".  If you're familiar with either year's base set you can see some similarities in the designs, though they're notably different as well.

And now we have the oddballs of the oddball stuff:  undersized and other non-standard form-factors.  The first and third items in the top row are stamps produced by Fleer in 1982 and '83, apparently designed to be stuck in an album, much like stickers from the era.

Speaking of stickers, this scan is littered with them:

• Topps:  (L-R, top to bottom) items #2 (1982), 5 (1983), 6 (1984), 7 (1986), 9 (1989), and 11 (1988).  The '88 sees Whitaker paired up with 1984 World Series foe Garry Templeton of the Padres.
• Fleer:  #4 (1983)
• Panini:  #8 (1989)

Item #10 is the first of four non-stickers, a Topps UK Mini from 1989.  Also from Topps I have a pair of coins from 1989 and 1990.  It looks like the company brought those back for a few years starting in 1987 after they were a mainstay of the 60s and early 70s.

Our final item on the day is also round, and it's a King B Disc from 1990.  The discs are food issues that came in packages of beef jerky made by a company I wouldn't know about if not for the cards!

And with that I have another nice bunch of Whitakers to beef up his collection and give it a ton more variety as I close in on 300 total cards.

Stay tuned for another Sportlots PC post soon, and in the meantime please check out a Michigan Football-related one this evening over at TMM.

Complete sets: 1997 Upper Deck Home Team Heroes

Happy 4th, everyone!  I hope you all had a relaxing and safe holiday (unless you had to work for whatever reason) doing American things like blowing stuff up, grilling, and especially watching baseball.

Since the latter is such an American tradition, how about I show off more cards from that sport?  Though I did make it to a show on Saturday--and had reasonable success while spending just $12--I'm going with the "in for a penny, in for a pound" mindset this evening and showing off one more oversized boxed set:  1997 Upper Deck Home Team Heroes:

(I'm pretty sure this is the last such set I own that I haven't shown off, but no promises!)

Y'all are in for a treat today:  these 3.5x5" cards feature Light F/X™ Foil technology!

This is a 12-card set UD put out in '97 celebrating popular pairs of teammates and their clubs' cities.  Each oversized card is horizontally oriented with kind of a banner or marquee die-cut on the upper quarter.  The main color is based on the team and pretty much everything else is silver foil, from the outlines/accents to the set name in huge letters at the top to the players' names and logos--team and UD brand.

The "Light F/X Foil" refers to the background of each card into which the teammates are superimposed.  This is a shot of the stadium done up in Upper Deck SP-like foil with a sort of textured look that's easier to show than describe.

Backs include an additional photo of each player, their names in huge letters up top, the typical write-up, their positions and team logos, plus height/weight/age.

With 12 two-player cards we get a total of 24 players, and even almost 20 years later the player selection is excellent, not to mention representative of player popularity during that era.  I consider the Mets card the only misstep, and really only half the card looks all that bad now.  UD was understandably excited about Todd Hundley breaking the HR record for catchers with 41 bombs in '96, but they were fooled by Bernard Gilkey and his flukey 30-HR campaign--almost double his previous career high--the same year.

Everyone else seems spot on, though, from Griffey/A-Rod to Piazza/Nomo to the young duo of Derek Jeter and Bernie Williams, who'd just won a World Series the year before.  Atlanta is especially well-represented with a pair of cards, but considering one is a pair of pitching legends--Maddux and Smoltz--and the other, Andruw and Chipper Jones, had just starred in the '96 Series, which was Atlanta's second straight Pennant, you can't really blame Upper Deck.

So enjoy this trip down memory lane looking over some of the stars of 20 years ago as I get new cards added for my four big non-Detroit/Michigan PCs:  Griffey, Gwynn, Maddux, and Ripken!