Reggie and Johnny

 The other day Johnny shared a bunch of wrappers on his blog (a ton!), and one of them was a wrapper for a Reggie bar, the 70's era Reggie Jackson inspired foodstuff.  I mentioned over there, that I had a Reggie wrapper too, and that I would show it on my blog.  But first...

Here are a couple of PWEs Johnny has sent me lately!!

Bunches of new Gallery and Chrome!  And that super shiny, numbered Ruiz looks nice.  My fave though, is the minor league card of the caveman, pre-beard!  A Johnny from Johnny!

Next batch...

Woah, Cardinal heavy!!  I love them all!!  Pooj and Big Mac are two of my all time favorites, and the Ozzies are excellent.  

In fact, that Pinnacle Ozzie in the upper left is my first copy of the base version of that card.  I already have the Sunburst and Artist's Proof versions of it.

Old timey rainbow!!

And since you have stuck around so long, here is the Reggie wrapper, flattened and mounted around some thin cardboard:

It is actually a different wrapper than the one Johnny showed.  I guess there were different versions or something.  Here are pics I found on the internet that shoe the differences between Johnny's and mine:

Johnny's - Redder and 1.4 oz.

Mine - Oranger and 1.5 oz.

We the people /76

 The latest card show was all about the quarter boxes, I found some great stuff.  But I also found about 40 cards in dime boxes.  Here is the only one I will show, a beautifully purple Max Scherzer numbered to 299.

On to the the quarters!!  I grabbed at least 100 cards out of the quarter boxes, here are a few highlights I found.

Lovely cards, one and all, and definitely worth the quarters.

Here's where we finally get to the title of the post.  The top three cards here are "Stars N Stripes" and "We the People" parallels, each numbered out of 76.  These seem quite popular, and command a bit of a premium, so I was ecstatic to find them in a quarter box.

The bottom row isn't too bad either.  The Rice is #/50, the Cabrera is a beautiful prizm, and the Alcantara is #/60.

These basketball and football cards were also quarters.  

Very fun stuff, it's not every day you can get a second year LeBron for a quarter.  Also, not pictured, I found 7 more Shawn Kemp Fleer RCs.

And the card of the show for me, was this sweet Kent Tekulve auto!  It wasn't a quarter, but it was only a dollar. 

And here's the back!

Mail is the best

 Hard to argue with getting cards in the old mailbox.  Sure beats bills and junk mail!  And like many of you, one of the main sources of cards in the mail lately has been Johnny!  Here's a couple of great PWEs that came my way from him lately.

1995 PKK Ken Griffey Jr. set 1-10 (card #10 not scanned)

Yep, I got a complete set in a PWE!  Don't remember that ever happening before.  And of course, anything Griffey is always welcome here.  That card in the lower right, I can't decide if he looks happy or like he's about to attack and eat some small children.

The other batch also contained Griffeys, but had other baseball player dudes as well.

McGwires I actually need!!  That's getting harder to find these days.  The Maris is awesome, I love it.  And that Vladdy Jr RC is super appreciated!  It's like Johnny knows what I like...

Well, thanks for dropping in, and go check out Johnny's giveaways!

Pujols winner

 OK, 7 commenters for the Pujols cards, here is the initial list in order of the time the comment was left:

And here are the results after my traditional three randomizations:

Of course Night Owl would win!  I mean, hey, there ARE 3 Dodgers cards in there (that he already has, I am sure!).

Thanks to all who participated, and I will get those cards out to you Greg!

Pujols celebration

Mr. Albert Pujols has retired, leaving the field for the last time for a pinch runner after slamming a rocket down the third base line in his last at bat as the Cardinals were eliminated by the Phillies.  Pujols is one of my favorite ballplayers of all time.  His massive skill has something to do with it, as the first half of his career (and the last half of his final season) was as good as anyone has ever done it.  But he has also always been a good guy to my eye.  An excellent teammate, a hard worker and great off the field too (If you don't know about the Pujols Family Foundation and their work with Downs Syndrome, you should look into it).  If anyone has some bad memories about Pujols, don't tell me!  I know nobody is perfect, but I prefer to remember him as I do now. 

Here are my three favorite Pujols moments:

3. In the only live baseball game my son ever attended with me, Pujols doubled, singled and stole a base.  We were hoping for a home run ball, but the closest we got was a Matt Holliday blast about 15 seats away from us.

2. Like most people, I figured there was no chance for Albert to make it to 700 this year.  But as he got closer and closer, the excitement built.  #2 is the day he hit both #699 and #700 in the same day.

1. Oct 17 2005 - the train tracks homer - Down to their final out of the season in Game 5 of the NL Championship Series, down 4-2, against Brad Lidge, Pujols launched a monster home run to left field, landing on the train tracks at the top of the stadium to win the game.  It wasn't a walk off, which would of been better, because the Astros were the home team.  But it was epic anyway!

Honorable mention - The 2022 Home Run Derby.  If you didn't watch, go find it on YouTube.  I figured the old man had no chance.  But he kept getting chances and barely getting through.  It was a lot of fun to watch.

I keep most of the Pujols cards I come across.  In fact, he has the second highest card count of anyone in my collection after McGwire.  But I do have a few "non-keepers" of Albert that I am willing to send to a good home in celebration of his great career.

No, that's not a Topps RC in the upper right.  It's a Berger's Best reprint.  Sorry!

So if you want a chance at these Pujols cards, leave a comment with your personal favorite Pujols moment, and I will random them off to one of the commenters.  One winner, and the contest closes at 9PM Pacific time on Sunday October 16th.

Thanks!

Show acquisition - Help me out!

 I need the expertise of some experienced collectors!  Help me out!

I grabbed this Dan Marino insert out of a dime box at a recent card show.  Didn't look too close, just saw a shiny Marino and threw a dime at it.  This pic is from my scanner:

1999 Upper Deck Black Diamond - Diamond Skills #S3

I got it home and was going through my various finds, and I noticed the imprinted markings on the middle of the card.  They are hard to see, right?  So I thought maybe it's a parallel, and went off to comc.com to look it up and see if I could figure it out.  No help at comc, all the copies on there had no imprinting.  

Now my eyes are getting pretty bad, so I broke out the old magnifying glass to see if I could figure out what the imprint says.

Here is another shot with a camera:

And a closeup:

And for those of you who still can't make it out (I can't!), here is some black text added in overlay:

And to show that is look s at least kind of professional, here is the back.  Whatever made the impression made a nice reverse image in the back of the card as well.

At this point, I am leaning toward this being some kind of promo or maybe a "do it yourself" prank.  The reasons I think that are:

1. I can't find any information on this anywhere.  Comc.com, TCDB.com, Google etc.

2. It was in a dime box

But it also kind of looks legit.  The imprinting, while hard to see, doesn't look like something that could easily be done at the quality level it has to an existing card.  Seems like something you would need good equipment do to.

So what do you think?  Anyone seen these before?