2021 trade packages #17 and 18: Scribbled Ink

While it's hard to find reliability these days, I can just about always count on Paul of Scribbled Ink (but mostly on Twitter) to keep things interesting. He may have moved to New England, but he'll be damned if he ever turns into a Masshole! The erstwhile Michigander and current New Hampshirian was nice enough to treat me to both a bubble mailer and PWE recently, so I thought I'd round them up into one post. And I meant it when I said he made things interesting here as I didn't expect any of this stuff!:

We'll start off with the bubble mailer that I believe arrived in late June. This is how he packaged the contents, and the sticky note made me laugh since he'd hyped up one or more if the items he was sending here.

Here's a look at almost everything in the envelope. Up top we have three totally random packs: 1991 OPC Premier baseball, 2015 Panini Texas Longhorns, and 1990 Collegiate Collection LSU. He thought I might try to flip the latter two to fellow college collectors, but he was wrong since I went ahead and ripped all three (more on that below) since I don't really buy packs for myself anymore.

Next is a pocket schedule from a Minor League team about a half hour away from Paul's new home: the New Hampshire Fisher Cats. Even with Sith Lord Rob Manfred robbing towns of teams, it's nice that you can often count on a nearby Minors franchise for fun, low-cost games. This one happens to be the AA team for the Blue Jays (previously the Cards, Mariners, and Rockies), and claims potential future star IF Austin Martin as one of its better prospects. I hope Paul gets to enjoy seeing some of Toronto's future stars on their way up!

And last up in this scan we have two of the most exciting items here: a pair of Gypsy Oak cards. I'll admit I don't know much about these, but I've seen the works of art by the talented Jeff Baker all over the place, and I'm always impressed by how great they look. There's some great people doing amazing things in the world of customs right now (more on that later), and this guy is clearly one of them. I believe Paul asked me if I was interested in the Greenberg (it may have been a dupe for him?) but the Ripken, apparently signed by the artist, was definitely a surprise. How great do these look?!

I thought it would be worthwhile to show off the backs. Hank's card definitely has an 80s Topps feel to it, and Cal's functions as a checklist. If you're interested in more stuff like this, I'd suggest checking Jeff out on Twitter or his site here.

Of course, "more stuff like this" includes by far my favorite item in the envelope, this carved(? Etched?) Braille card of Ripken. It's scanned here at roughly its actual size, and obviously it looks even cooler in-hand, but even in a 2D image you can get an idea of the level of detail and quality. I did some quick translating and the Braille reads:

Cal Ripken Jr

Balt Orioles

Stars of

Sports

Man, how cool is that? I really appreciate the great work Jeff put into his pieces, not to mention Paul for including what's now one of the most interesting items in my Ripken collection.

Before we get to the PWE, here's a quick look at the results of the packs:

1991 OPC Premier:  I got my 7 cartes de baseball as promised, and the pack definitely had a Canadian lean with a pair each of Jays and Expos. Crime Dog and Bonds are the most notable players here, but Boddicker, Key, and Gruber each had pretty nice careers as well, with all winning at least one ring.

2015 Panini University of Texas is just like the Michigan product I enjoyed so much. Most of the players are well known to me, as I'm sure they are to many sports fans, and I'll probably toss them up on TCDB unless somebody comments here that they want them.

I've seen packs like this LSU version before, I believe, and they're great for collectors of universities like me. Not that I can really stand any SEC teams for multiple obvious reasons, of course. Again, these'll go up on TCDB unless I have one or more readers who are a different kind of Tigers fans!

A bit earlier this month I was then the lucky recipient of Paul's favorite ammo: a PWE.

I get where he's coming from because despite collecting a ton of different players, for a lot of them I already have a lot of the basics. He's really underselling himself here, though, because I most definitely didn't have any of these items and was in no way likely to find them myself anytime soon:

Before I discuss these, here's a look at the backs of the first two cards, since there was no way I was going to have any inkling what they were without doing so myself:

Millburg Trading Cards looks to be a company that prints all kind of custom stuff like cards, stickers, and apparel. As with any customs featuring player likenesses and/or obvious use of other companies' designs, I don't know the legal workings of this, but I will say that their cards look pretty cool!

#1 is former Wolverine (as if I don't mention that fact enough) and 2021 All-Star Jake Cronenworth from the Lettermen line. Click the link to see the large range of players and schools, though, spoiler for fellow Michigan fans: Cronenworth is the lone representative for our team. Not a surprise in a set that's heavy on alumni of such programs as UCLA, LSU, and Vanderbilt. Anyway, Jake's card looks excellent, with a good (if a bit too zoomed-in) action photo, team colors, and the team nickname in fat capitals up top.

Another guy who was no stranger to the Midsummer Classic (and who I thought was fun during the Home Run Derby broadcast) is Junior Griffey, here repping the Quarantine Project Minis line. This 12-card set uses the classic '62 Topps design and places a cartoony or mosaic type of image of a player over a photographic stadium background. I like the resulting posed image of Griffey in a Mariners uni from early in his legendary career.

Last up is a card that was customized by the pictured player--an IP or TTM autograph of one of my bigger recent PC guys, Dean Palmer. The slugging 3B signed his '92 Ultra base with some decently legible writing, and I'm really happy to get a card like this for his collection since I never sent him a TTM request back in my younger days when I sent a ton of those out. It was very cool of Paul to think of me whenever he found that, and that's a great example of why I love trading with people like him.

While he obviously doesn't feel like he sent me much, there were clearly some gems for me in both envelopes, especially when it comes to the custom-type stuff that wasn't even on my radar. So, many thanks to Paul for this pair that came up aces! Once I get my end of my latest huge TCDB deal, he'll have a nice fat stack of stuff heading back his way to reward these efforts.

As for me, I have a few things in the pipeline: that TCDB deal I just mentioned, this month's show, an eBay win, and the final post in my latest Sportlots series, plus who knows what else? When will I get to all of that? At some point!

9-15 card show report: pack busted

I hit up my usual card show location in Taylor this afternoon since I had a bit of breathing room in my monthly budget and hadn't gone to a show for a bit.  Although I ended up spending under my average--around $64 today--I still ended up doing pretty well.  You can see the rest of my haul over on TMM this evening, and this post won't include a bunch of cheap but very useful trade bait cards headed elsewhere, but here's what I scored today:

Am I dumb for dropping $28 on these three packs?  I'd wanted to try the RA hockey pack ($9) since it has a couple Michigan guys I'm chasing and looks pretty good regardless.  Score '13 football jumbo ($9) was a repeat from last time, but my pack then was so good that I thought I'd give it another whirl, plus I'm still working on the set.  And although I remain annoyed with Topps and their anti-collector ways, I was curious enough about the '13 Topps set to grab a jumbo of that ($10) as well, hoping to find Denard Robinson, not to mention a hit.  Here's how I did with each:

RA proved to be the best of the trio:  not only did I pull Wolverine Max Pacioretty, I also landed a nice #d rookie and an autograph.  The two goalies will be heading north of the border in a trade, but if any Nash fans would like his base card I'll be happy to send that out.  The autograph is of the Sharks' John McCarthy, a Boston U alum.  Since he played college hockey he's ok in my book.  That's also available for trade for now, though I might try to sell it elsewhere before long.

This time I got nothing exciting in my Score jumbo pack, but I did knock eight more cards off the wantlist, so that was a positive development.  Two of them were even Calvin Johnsons, and regardless of my shunning of the Lions I'm happy to get anything of his I can.

I also landed five more Rookies, none of which I needed, (so they're up for grabs for you guys building sets, and as a reminder I still have a decent amount of base left!) and a couple uninteresting inserts:

Having seen the baseball edition of 2013 Topps, I pretty much knew what to expect from the football edition.  I pulled nine RCs (none of guys I wanted!) and thought I'd show those off:

I also ended up with seven inserts, only two of which appealed to me:  the Gold parallel (as usual) and the Mini, which continues to be fun.  I don't know if I'm going to chase this set, but for now, everything from the pack (included the base not scanned) is available.

Just because I spent most of my money on trade bait, packs, and Michigan PC stuff doesn't mean I didn't buy a couple Detroit cards, though!  A guy from whom I scored some trade bait had some interesting stuff for $1, $2, and $5, and from those I managed to find a Red Wing and Tiger to bring home:

Ray Sheppard 2012-13 ITG Motown Madness auto

I never have been able to explain why Sheppard was one of my favorite Wings, but it probably has something to do with the classic Sega NHL games (especially '93-'95) my brother and I would play for hours on end.  This is my first card from Motown Madness, which sounded like a fun idea as soon as I heard about it.  The guy had a pile of autographs from the set for just $2 each and Ray was the only one I found interesting, but I look forward to finding more.

Alan Trammell 2002 Stadium Club World Champion Relics bat

I usually don't like spending this much on relics at this stage of the game, but I had no problem throwing down $5 for this Trammell bat celebrating the '84 World Series win.  After all, he was the Series MVP, hitting .450 (9-for-20) with two HR and six RBI.  I have to say that Topps came up with some cool relic ideas back when they were the flavor of the month, and these further highlight the hole the company left when they ditched Stadium Club in favor of the crap we get today.  Anyway, I now own four Tram bat relics to go with a pair of autographs, and this one moves to the top of the relic heap.

Not bad, not bad at all.  Please head over to TMM for the rest of the day's recap.  As for this here blog, stay tuned for some more trade postin' and other features whenever I get around to them!

Happy packs aplenty Friday

Trade package #whatever:

If your blog's name is My Cardboard Mistress and you have the following image on said blog,

WE'RE HERE, WE'RE YOINKING YOUR IMAGES, GET USED TO IT!

well then you're in luck, good sir, because you have a sweet trade package coming your way as of today (which is good since you promised me stuff too).

A reminder to the rest of you:  if you want to trade, hit me up with the player/team/theme(s) of your choice.  I'll generally ask you for Tigers/Michigan players, but I'm flexible.  I've done a lot of trading in my time, but I think some of the best deals I've made have been with other bloggers since I've started my own, so if you're on the fence about it, go for it (obey the above picture.  NOW).

New eBay swag:

As promised, here are the 2010 Sweet Spot Signatures Variations cards I scored from eBay the other day:

Do not taunt Happy Fun Graham

MINOR RAGE

Next time I'll just do this instead of trying to beat ridiculous odds by pulling either from a box.  I had no shot of getting either of these anyway:  you figure you get two SSS cards per box (unless you get screwed on that front, and I've heard that's happened to people); if you're like most people, you get two of the "regular" signatures numbered to 400.  The fact that these are rarer doesn't make me like them more--I just much prefer the helmet designs.  The regular version has a kind of basic M, which my Graham up there has something more like the "official" school logo.  And though it's actually more common, I'm a bigger fan of Minor's card, because Our Helmet's Got Wings:


(If you've somehow never seen this before, 1.  Shame on you and 2.  Everything JoePa says is comedy gold;  "WEEAH LINEBACKER U!" and "COME TO PENN SHHHTAAAAAATE!" come to mind)

Anyway, I'm thrilled to have these, and they now reside in the UM personal collection.

Um, I believe I was promised packs?

Yessir--look for a review later today (probably) or tomorrow:  I grabbed 20 retail racks of 2009 Bowman at Meijer today because they were on sale and I still love me some Bowman.

And before I forget...GROUP BREAK!

Get your asses down to GA Mindset's group break (2010 Topps Triple Threads and Chrome).  Teams are still available and the price is right.  Or don't do it, whatever, just don't come crying to me when he pulls a Joe Mauer booklet auto/patch/baby teeth/high school ring/diploma card and you were too cheap to spring for the Twins.

New contest: FREE STUFF (no asterisk this time), plus trade stuff

Jefferson Burdick says TRAAAAAAAAAADE

Before I get to the contest below, I want to take a minute to solicit new people for trades.  I have a comprehensive wantlist, which you can see to your right.  That includes sets and teams/players.  If you have a favorite team or player, or you're also working on sets, please leave a comment below or hit my email link to your right.  I have a bunch of stuff that I can put into team or player lots, and a good amount of set fillers (also listed on my SCF wantlist page linked above and to your right).  Sets I'm working on that I'm ohsoclose to finishing:

1994 Topps: 64 87
1995 Topps: 391
1996 Sportflix: 69 90
1996 Ultra: 523
1996 Upper Deck Ripken Collection: 22
1997 Bowman's Best: 134
1997 Fleer: 108 212 685
1997 Score Premium Stock: 1 22 24 122 123 130 156 187 215 310 349
1998 Pinnacle Mint Bronze Cards: 25
1998 Score Rookie Traded: 181
1998 Studio Portraits: 7 10 13 16
1998 Upper Deck: 18 260 603 610 629
1999 Skybox Thunder: 265 281 290
1999 Stadium Club: 100 141
1999 Topps: 374 461 (Any Sosa)
1999 Upper Deck PowerDeck CDs: 3 10 23 25
2000 Bowman: 180 192 399
2000 Fleer: 129
2000 Ultra: 11 89 200
2000 Upper Deck MVP Set 2: 100
2001 Donruss Retro 2000: 15 23 24 58 63
2001 Fleer Platinum Rookie Reprints: 2 6 8 17
2001 Fleer Triple Crown: 65 92 298
2001 Stadium Club: 160 161 167 170 187 189 191 196 198
2001 Topps Archives: 180
2001 Upper Deck: 367 414
2002 Donruss: 3
2002 Donruss Rookies: 95 104
2002 Topps: 338 339
2002 Topps Archives: 10 113 125 136 139 157 174 189
2004 Bowman: 198
2004 Fleer Hot Prospects Draft Edition: 14 48
2004 Leaf Second Edition: 4 32 33 42 50 66 82 111 136 182 195
2004 Topps All-Time Fan Favorites: 5 15 21 25 34 38 50 82 97 112
2004 Topps Traded set 1: 7 13 15 18 24 76 78 82 89 102 130 170 198
2005 Flair: 7 24 30 36
2005 Fleer Patchworks: 4 13 15 29 55 61 68 69
2005 Skybox Autographics: 26 40 45 54 60
2005 Topps: 350
2006 Topps: 53 76 90 146 155 188 224 231 252 274 275 280 281 290 297 319
2006 Ultra: 37 75 95
2007 Topps Series 2: 530 618
2008 Donruss Elite Extra Edition (Set 2): 11 15 58 59 67 74 79 96 97
2008 Topps Co-Signers: 24 28 50 70 74 78 96 99
2009 Donruss Elite Extra Edition (set 2): 26 30 31 33 41 45
2009 Topps Update: 18 24 30 39 46 100 145 147 167 224 238
2010 Bowman: 4 109
2010 Topps: 452

Help me out!  And get your favorite team/player in the process!

NEW CONTEST

Not included in the contest, so don't guess him

This one is totally altruistic this time, I promise--well, mostly.  I'm not bribing you guys to advertise me on your blogs this go round, I'm just killing two birds with one stone by giving away some packs that I don't need.

You might remember the box of 2007 Topps gravity packs I opened a few posts back.  You might also recall that while I completed a set from the box, I had leftover packs because I caught on to the sorting scheme they used.  These are the packs I'm passing on to one lucky winner.  Here's how it works:

-There are 8 total packs of 22 cards (plus 3+ year old gum!).  That's like, 172 cards or something, and they're probably mostly, if not entirely, different considering what I saw from opening the packs I did
-All packs are from Series I.  That would include anything from #1-#330 here
-All the packs are different, at least in terms of the players that show on the top and bottom
-All 8 packs have a different player showing on the front
-All of the topmost cards are of a single player (ie no subsets, multi-player cards, team cards, etc.)
-All of those cards are of actual players (ie no managers)
-The last names of the players on the eight cards start with a total of 6 different letters
-6 are of players pictured on AL teams, 2 NL.  The AL Central is well represented

That's all the hints you'll get.  Your job is to guess as many of those eight different players' names as you can.  Whoever gets the most correct by next Wednesday (the 22nd) at 7 pm EST (give or take a few minutes, I'll do my best) gets all eight packs (giving me a day or two to get their address and ship them off).  Should there be a tie, the tie-breaker will be the players on the back, but we'll cross that bridge if we come to it.

Other rules:
-Only 1 entry per person--include something to uniquely identify you in your comment (blog URL, full email address (formatted however you'd like to avoid spam, such as "user @ gmail dot com"), or whatever else you can think of)
-You only get 1 entry but in case you change your mind, I'll use your final guess closest to the contest's end
-I'll only accept entries that include the names of  8 different players at most.  If you'd rather guess fewer, that's fine by me, though you'd be dumb to do that and decrease your odds
-If nobody's guessed more than 1 or 2 by Tuesday evening, I'll give some hints and everyone can amend their guesses.  However, I won't specifically mention which players, if any, have been correctly guessed.
-If I get 10 or more different entries, I'll throw in the following swag to the winner:
     2005 Topps Chrome A-Rod Throwbacks (4-card) set, an $8 value
     2002 Bowman Francisco Liriano RC ($8)
     1985 Topps Kirby Puckett RC (because I've got a bunch) ($12)

Sound good?  That's a buttload of free stuff!  Again, I'm not asking you to pimp me on your blog this time, but feel free to mention this contest to your friends to make it more interesting.

Good luck guessing!

Appropriate because of the question marks, plus I'm GIVING AWAY FREE STUFF THAT THE GOVERNMENT DOESN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT SO CALL TODAY!  (Note:  Mattew Lesko is not affiliated with this blog in any way--there's no free money in it)

2005 Topps Chrome Series II packs (120)

As promised, here's the result of my huge 120-pack purchase of 2005 Topps Chrome Series II.  I purchased a similar (but smaller, I believe) lot of these groups of 24 shrink-wrapped retail packs from the same guy on eBay and was interested enough to complete the set to do the same with these recently.  It doesn't hurt that I got a pretty good price on each of the five auctions to the point where I paid less than $1/pack for packs that used to go for $3 just a few years ago.  How did I do?  Read on to find out.



Purchased from/price:  eBay, $79.60 (including shipping)
Packs/cards:   120 packs / 4 cards
Set size:  220 base cards (including 5 SP rookies)
Key features:  They're chrome!  Also, autographed RCs, Refractors, Black Refractors and A-Rod Throwbacks
Key cards:  Autographed RCs of Billy Butler, Justin Verlander, Nate McLouth, Glen Perkins and Chip Cannon

Base card front

Base card back

Set completion:  186/220 (85%)
Extras:

• Doubles:  127
• Triples:  59
• Quads:  30
• Quints:  9
• Sextuples:  4

Inserts:   

Refractors:  32, all different (1:5, 24 expected)

     















Black Refractors (#'d to 225):  5, Vicente Padilla, Ryan Drese, Nick Green, Tony Armas Jr., Corey Koskie (1:36, 3-4 expected)

A-Rod Throwbacks:  29 (1:5, 24 expected), including five "sets" of the four-card insert

Autographs:
Base card autograph:  Glen Perkins, Landon Powell (1:55, 2 expected)
Black Refractor autograph:  Tyler Pelland (1:508) 

Relics:  None (none expected)

Best pack:  Manny Ramirez, Landon Powell AU RC (also Eric Hinske and Brett Tomko)
Worst pack:  2 doubles, 1 triple, 1 quintuple (my first at the time, Brett Tomko)

Quality control:  8/10  Minus a point for a card with "roller marks" on it, and another docked for some off-centered cards.  Everything else was fine--all packs had the right number of cards, nothing else was damaged 
Collation:  8/10  I'm making sure to take into consideration that this was basically 120 random retail packs, not a standard hobby or retail box of 24 packs.  Getting only 85% of the set was pretty disappointing, at least in light of all the triples, quads and so on that I pulled.  More importantly, in terms of the five base RCs, which are pretty difficult to pull, I got nine and only four were different.  That wouldn't bother me as much, but I pulled FOUR Bobby Livingstones.  I would have traded all of those for one freakin' Yorman Bazardo.  Still, I absolutely killed the insert odds; I would have considered two autographs a success, but getting the black Refractor was icing on the cake.  And I got way more inserts than I was due.  That makes up for the deficiencies of the base card pulls a bit
Value:  10/10  Remember, I judge this relative to the price I paid, not what it originally would have cost.  I paid less than $1/pack and got THREE Auto/RCs (all of which were some of the better ones in the set), including one $40 hit.  Throw in 32 Refractors, five Black Refractors, five sets of the A-Rod insert (and a few more to boot), and most of the set, and I'm very happy
Set design and player selection:  8/10  There's a large number of players that seem out of place in a higher quality set like this, even for 2005, but when you get into a set of this size I guess that's bound to happen.  I'm not the kind of collector that obsesses about Chrome, but these cards look nice, the Refractor inserts look great as always, and the autographs are excellent (on-card autos!) 
Inserts and extras:  10/10  I got sick of the A-Rod insert pretty quickly since there were only four and I was pulling them at better than a 1:5 pack clip.  But the Refractors and Black Refractors are great, and the RC autographs are outstanding 

Overall score:  44/50

Bonus packs: 2008 SP Rookie Edition Football

Before I get to the meat of my recent box order (three boxes from Dave & Adam's Card World), here's a quick look at the free bonus packs I got with my order for spending a certain amount (a cool idea, by the way):  four packs of 2008 SP Rookie Edition Football.  (NOTE:  this won't be a formal review as I picked these up for free)
Having purchased three retail boxes previously (good prices at the local Meijer), I already have one set and I'm well on my way to two (refer to my wantlist if you think you can help).  Michigan had a couple rookies in the set, including Chad Henne and Mario Manningham, plus each of those boxes promised one autograph, plenty of RCs and a good number of SPs (which I've since shipped off in an auction).  Here's how I did:

Pack 1:

• 43  JaMarcus Russell
• 50  Tony Romo
• 68  Calvin Johnson
• 89  Kurt Warner
• 142 Mario Manningham RC
• 198 Rashard Mendenhall SP 93

Pack 2:

• 10  Thomas Jones
• 34  Vince Young
• 76  Michael Turner
• 80  Steve Smith
• 121 Fred Davis RC
• 238 Mike Hart SP 94

Pack 3:

• 11  Jerricho Cotchery
• 47  LaDaninian Tomlinson
• 55  Brandon Jacbos
• 75  Sidney Rice
• 113 DeSean Jackson RC
• 315 Donnie Avery SP 96

Pack 4:

• 24  Wes Welker
• 32  Maurice Jones-Drew
• 39  John Lynch
• 81  Julius Peppers
• 102 Andre Woodson RC
• 124 Glenn Dorsey RC

And here's a look at some of what I pulled:

From top left:  Mendenhall SP, Avery SP, Hart SP, Davis RC, Manningham RC, Jackson RC, Woodson RC, Dorsey RC, Calvin Johnson

All in all, not a bad lot of packs, especially considering they were free.  The best news was that I ended up picking up a Kurt Warner I needed for my second set, leaving just a handful of RCs before I get that done.  The rest, besides the Manningham and Hart, are available (just leave a comment) or I'll see about packaging them up in a giveaway or contest later.