Pablo Sandoval as a Red Sock

Recently I decided to get off my duff and really up my game when it came to my Pablo Sandoval player collection. I may never collect all 2,343 of the unique cards of this man, but I reckon that I'll do my best to at least grab everything I can that's grabable, within reason.

I started my first binder for a player, and organized all my Sandoval cards by year. That was fun, and it didn't take as long as I thought it would - less than an hour - but I did need a magnifying glass in order to differentiate between a 2013 and a 2014 and so on. So now my strategy is to work backward from 2021, and go by year to buy any and all cards of Sandoval's by year that I can find - and that aren't 1/1s and selling for $375/each on eBay. 

2021 was easy - there's one card, and it's one that I talked about in Monday's post. 2018-2019 was pretty easy too. Sandoval was a role player for the Giants, and one that some thought might be somewhat washed up. I then went big on 2015, 2016 and 2017 - the years Sandoval toiled for the Boston Red Sox, in a contract that is thought to be one of the worst in Sox history. He was basically injured all of 2016, and played poorly in 2015 and 2017, so much so he was mercifully released back to the Giants during 2017 - where he started thriving again, albeit in a lesser role.

As you might have gathered, dude is my favorite baseball player of the 21st century. If you've seen him play - especially as a Giants - you know why. Here are some cards that represent the lean years of the man's career, all recent acquisitions of mine.

What The CardBarrel Order Dragged In

Another week, another "impromptu" order from CardBarrel over here at Card Hemorrhage. Oh, there are new cards out from Bowman, Panini, Donruss et al? Next thing I know I've rung up $25+ in cards - in order to get the free shipping, of course - and then they arrive a week later and I'm like, oh yeah. I did order that.

This post is designed to document my most recent of CardBarrel excursions. To your left you'll find card #TN-2 from 2021 Topps Heritage. This is a set I am actually attempting to collect in full, and you know - except for those short-print higher numbers, I'm doing OK on it so far. I'd be delighted to take your doubles off your hands, as long as they're cards I don't already have, and send you something in return. 

And hey, how about these "Artist's Palette" inserts from 2021 Panini? I picked out the two guys I needed from this mini-set and I'm pretty happy w/ how they're looking:

The card from this order that I'm most excited about by far is a 2021 Pablo Sandoval. I wasn't sure if I'd ever see another new card of his again, and it's his first Atlanta Braves card - though if you look at the relic itself, it's almost certainly a San Francisco Giants uniform they've stuffed in there, right? Is that orange I'm seeing?

I'm a little confused about these two Bowman cards here. Are they inserts from the main Bowman 2021 set? I can't remember. I was just clickin' and buyin'. 

Finally, here are two familiar fellas, this time on their main 2021 Panini cards. That's what I've got. Until next time!

Check Out These 2021 Bowman Chromes

As promised in yesterday's post, I'm now sharing the handful of 2021 Bowman Chrome cards that I picked up. Unlike most of the Chromes in my collection, these scan beautifully. For once, they look as nice in these scans as they do in real life.

Again, I only really picked up my guys this time. There are two cards from an insert set called "Rookie of the Year Favorites", and the two cards I got are dudes who aren't even in the majors yet this year, as of June. I do not think Joey Bart in particular will be winning NL Rookie of the Year, but Jo Adell? Who knows what he'll do in the AL if they ever actually call the man up.

You'll also see two inserts from "Bowman Scouts Top 100 prospects", along with a few regular Chrome cards, which, as I mentioned, look pretty phenomenal. Oh, and check out my SF Giants 2021 Bowman "Talent Pipeline" Chrome card (#TP-SFG), which highlights three ringers currently in the minors who may be raking and blazing at a major league ballpark near you one of these days.

The New 2021 Bowmans

I was able to cherry-pick the cards I wanted out of the newly-released 2021 Bowmans the other day, and thought I might share a few of them with you here today. I was able to get the guys in my personal collections, both in regular and Chrome versions, along with a few others I thought I might wanna have around. Today we'll look at the regulars, and I'll scan some Chromes so we can look at them together at some time in the near future.

Let us start with the hallowed Wander Franco, he of the Tampa Bay Rays organization and the purported #1 prospect in all of baseball. I believe this player has caused an awful lot of money to change hands amongst card collectors and speculators that past several years. He has yet to play a minute of baseball in the big leagues. Knowing the Rays organization, he's bound to be fantastic. 

Note that all of the 2021 Bowman prospect cards are in their own set, numbered BP-xx, and say "prospect" along the top and the bottom. The regular Bowman series is numbered numerically, and each card says either "Rookie" or "Veteran" along the top and bottom. Weird to see Shohei Otani labeled as a veteran, as I feel we're really just getting to know him, but I suppose it's technically correct. 

I was able to get my PC guys, some Giants prospects, and a few others just for fun. Here's what they look like.

An LCS Repack - Miles Better Than a Walgreens Repack

So last post we talked about a 'lil visit I had to Lefty's Sports Cards last week. I'd kind of ignored their custom repacks the other times I'd been there, having not looked at what they were selling them for, and assuming they'd probably be all the 80s and 90s junk wax stuff I can't stand.

Well pardon me! Here's what they did. Yes, their 25-card custom repacks are stacked with '87 Donruss and '90 Topps and '92 Upper Deck and whatnot. Between 15-20 cards in each of the THIRTY-THREE PACKS that I bought were like this. Jay, you're saying - "Jay, why did you buy 33 packs of cards?". Because it was $15 for 30 packs! And because the packs were wrapped in clear plastic, you could easily see 2 cards - the "front" and the "back" card - in each.

My feeling was, if those 2 cards are worth 50 cents to me, and/or can easily be traded to folks who might like 'em, then let's go for it. Sure - of those 825 new cards I got, 700 of them are now in a special "give it to the Goodwill" box. But among the other 125 there were some corkers that I'd like to share with you now.

Well, there's 1992 Mother's Cookies Dennis Eckersley, for one. There's no shortage of Mother's Cookies cards hanging around the SF Bay Area card shops, and this was one of several Oakland A's fellas I got in these packs.

I'm always up for new cards in those late 80s/early 90s "Baseball Legends" sets that Pacific put out. I'm trying to collect the 1990 set they did, but they're all great - as is this Johnny Bench card-on-card from K-Mart's 44-card set from 1982.

Hey, speaking of cards on cards, here are three from those late 80s Topps "Turn Back The Clock" sets that were part of their flagship. 

Two players I happen to be a big fan of - Tim Salmon and Paul Goldschmidt, the latter of whom I think I may slowly becoming a collector of. This is a 2016 "Topps Update Team Franklin" card, #TF-5.

Three legends. Of course I dig the Lance Berkman the most - it's a 1999 "Team Best" minor league card from when he played for the New Orleans Zephyrs. 

I am NOT familiar with the 1992 Ziploc series of cards, but once I saw this Rollie Fingers card, I knew I needed to be. The other two are just cool quote-unquote vintage cards that I knew I needed....the 1977 Bert Blyleven was certainly a card I had when I was a kid.

Not much to say about these 3 rows here, except that they're keepers.

A 1988 Sportflics card! You kind of get the two 3-D Don Mattingly photos blurred together in my scan here. The Ichiro card is kind of a trip because it definitely has a Willie-Mays-in-1973 vibe to it. All-time Top 10 favorite player of mine.

Finally, these guys. That's 825 cards, about 35 absolute keepers, 90 or so excellent cards to trade, and another 700 or so to give to a good cause or to a young child who'll be excited about junk wax, all for $16.50. What's not to like?

What Happened During My Last Trip to the LCS

My favorite card blog post is the lookie-what-I-just-got post. It's how I find out about cards that I myself might need to have in my possession, and it's how I'm best able to subjectively judge the preferences of the purchaser. I hope that my posts serve as something of a similar salve for you.

Recently I visited my local card shop - Lefty's Sports Cards in Burlingame, CA. They still haven't opened things up all the way, despite Northern California's lowest Covid rate in the nation, but then again, I knew this time period was going to be purgatory, and I accept it. I'm not able to request a box of, say, 1965 Topps to be pulled from the back, and there are many precautions being taken to keep people from lingering. Didn't stop me from pulling some humdingers, though!

When I hit the card store, I've usually got a goal in mind: a set to build, a player to dig into. etc. This time, given the circumstances, it was more a "I dunno, let's see that they have" approach, so I came home with a bunch of cheap custom packs that they made - mostly for trading purposes - and these 12 cards I've scanned here. The 1982 Topps Stolen Base Leaders card was $1.25, and I thought that sounded about right to get these two legends on one card (I also have the '84 stolen base leaders card with the same two guys on it).

Lefty's tends to specialize in Giants and A's cards, which you might expect. I picked up this 1961 Mike McCormick for a low price, due to its not-so-great condition:

A little closer to present times, a 2018 Leaf Joey Bart that I'd never seen before:

So here we are in 2021, and Shohei Otani has just registered the fastest pitch thrown in the majors; the hardest-hit ball; and the fastest measured speed on the basepaths. One man. A lone human. It is a tragedy that he and Mike Trout have to play on the Angels, a team that just seems to think that good pitching is optional. Every year, I think they'll figure it out. Maybe next year. Anyway! Check out these Otani cards!

Speaking of players that are good at baseball, I picked up one card each from these 3 guys:

Finally, any visit to my LCS is going to have Pablo Sandoval cards as a main reason for being there in the first place. I now have so many Sandovals that I'm reorganizing my collection of his into one giant, stuffed binder, with cards broken out by year. He's the gift that keeps on giving. There were 4 that I did not have that I saw at Lefty's, with this first one, a 2012 Topps Finest Chrome, being just outstanding.