Oversized cards and big numbers

 **I have noted that all of my posts that feature Mark McGwire receive significantly fewer views and comments.   Lol!!  And yet I persist....  some people never learn.

I have been slowly building a stack of McGwires to check against my Haves List over the last couple of months.  For some reason, I never seem to take the time to go through and do the work.  But a couple of nice freebies from Rod (Padrographs) spurred me to get it done!

First, what Rod gave me....

BIG Big Macs!  I threw in the random Metal normal sized card for comparison.

And Rod gave me these at a card show, no less. I have been enjoying seeing a few bloggers in person lately.  Hopefully that keeps up!  Very generous of you Rod, thanks!!!

Now the updated McGwire collection stats...

From the stack on my desk, I found 14 new McGwires!!  My grand total is now 1403 (1394 'actual' cards, and 9 great customs from various bloggers).

A *rare, and I missed it

Super quick post tonight...

If you caught one of my recent posts, you might remember that there was a decent table with most cards priced at 50 cents or lower.  I picked up a bunch of Stadium Club parallels and some other nice cards.  I left out of my post that I grabbed a number of Corbin Carroll RC's from Topps Holiday form that same table.  They were all just sitting together, marked at 25 cents each and I grabbed them all without much thought.

 Well as I was putting them away today, I noticed that one was different....  a variation!

Turns out this is the 'Rare' variation for Carroll, these were seeded one in 20 packs.  Not bad for a quarter!

I can't say I am amazed with the effort Topps went to with these.  The added graphics (in this case, lights around his neck) are a little hokey.  But what do I expect from a Holiday set, I guess.

Blog Bat-around, quirky edition

In my opinion, Blogger Bat Arounds are great.  I always hope to participate when they come around, so thanks to Diamond Jesters for proposing one.... However, this one is going to be hard for me.  I'm supposed to list my 5 best pack pulled hits??  But I don't buy packs!  OK, it's not like I have never opened packs, I have been in the hobby for a loooong time.  But in the last 20 years, all of the packs I have busted have been given to me or won in contests.

So my top 5 might be a little different from what you see on other blogs, but without further ado, here is what I came up with:

#5

1993 Finest Refractor.  This isn't the one I pulled, but that specific card has long since been lost to me.  I assume I will never see it again.  If I remember correctly, mine was an Ozzie Guillen.  Man, I wish I still had that...

#4

Akeem RC - OK, I know this is supposed to be about HITS, and this is a base card.  But what a card!!  I loved it when I pulled it out of a 25 cent pack of 1986/87 Fleer waaay back in my childhood.  And I would love it still today, if it hadn't been stolen from me as a teenager.  This is one the pack I wish I could open again today.  I probably pulled a Jordan RC or two as well, since I opened maybe 30 packs of the stuff.  But I don't remember for sure.  I do remember the Akeem though!

#3

OK, #3 is also a base card.  I don't follow the rules!!  This one is special more because of the story than the card itself.  It was 1991, and Skybox basketball was the new thing.  All gold borders, oooohhh.  Looks kind of pedestrian now.  Anyway, My brother and I were in a card shop when I opened a pack of Skybox.  It had a Shawn Kemp rookie in it.  Nice card, I now collect these, actually.  But back then, I just wanted more Skybox.  The owner said he would trade me another pack for the Kemp, and I said yes!  The next pack had...... another Kemp RC!!  My brother and I laughed, and kept shopping for a while.  Then I decided to ask the owner if he'd make the same trade, and he agreed.  Sucker!  And by now, you probably guessed, I got another Kemp.  The owner and I made one last swap for another pack, and I failed miserably in my attempt for a 4th Kemp in a row.  But boy, was it a fun day!

#2

Kevin Love auto - This card is not so big now, but at the time, it was looking like it could be huge.  Love was turning into a perennial All-Star, and looked like he could blow up.  But he didn't, I shoulda sold it!  I got this out of a box that a blogger gave away.  Oh, and it is numbered /10.  I keep it around because nobody will give me much for it.

And #1.....

#1. Rickey Henderson Elite - #1!!  At a card show in a middle school gym, I was deranged enough to open a pack of 1991 Donruss.  At this time, there had never been anything like these, and my friends and I didn't even know what it was.  We hadn't even heard of these things, and it sure seemed out of place in a pack of Donruss.  We went to a nice dealer and he explained the concept of a serial numbered insert.  I don't even know if we knew what a regular insert was!  It was a weird feeling, holding that beautiful card for a few minutes.  I ended up trading it to that same dealer...  for a Julius Erving RC.  Man, I wish I still had that!

Cheap box returns

 Lately the cheap boxes have been disappointing for me.  I have still been able to find some stuff, but I have had to dig a lot harder lately.  This last show was a lot of the same until I was about ready to leave, and stumbled across a father/son table with a 'priced as marked' box.  Most of that kind of boxes at my local show are extremely overpriced, so I usually skip them.  Luckily, this one turned out to be worth my time.

I won't say they were really amazing deals, but I do like Stadium Club a lot, and there were a lot of them in there.

All foil variations here, Red, Black and Orange.  Some nice shots, and a lot of fun.

More of the same, I have seen that Berra on another blog somewhere, that's a photo for the ages!  Makes me wish regular Stadium Club had refractors, I would like a refractor of that.

There was some non-Club stuff too...

The Rutschman Candy Cane variation, serial numbered Acuna, #'d Reggie and #'d Munson all feel like steals to me.  The Bo Jackson is a ceramic card, and cost me a dollar.  The Deion in a Chicago hat is from Heritage Minors, and is kind of cool.  I got 2 of those, for a dime each.  Anyone want the other copy?

And my 'big' purchase of the day cost $3.

What a thick, heavy card this is, and serialed /736 to boot.  Fun addition.

Here it is from the side to show the thickness...

Thanks for reading!

Serial Contest winner

I'm going to take this opportunity to mention again that I have recently moved, so if you want my new address, let me know.  I really should get a mass email out to everyone, but I haven't yet, and I am not sure I will anytime soon, so... 

If you read this blog much, you just know I'm going to write a little about trivial numbers stuff before announcing the winner, so if you can't wait, shoot down the page and look.  But come back up and read my crap!

OK, we ended up having 23 total guesses.  Lots of good ones.  One huge outlier.  I am not sure if it was a fat finger, or a real guess, but Rod from Padrographs guess was larger than ALL of the other 22 guesses combined.  

If I take out Rod's guess, and average the rest, we come out a little higher than the correct number.  The average guess was 87250.  

And now, I guess I should just get to it.  The winner....  well I feel a little bad about this one.  I shouldn't, but I do.  You see, we had one commenter who made a guess.  Then updated his guess with another comment.  And then updated it again.  He specifically stated that the third guess was his official guess.  And.... no, he didn't win.

But his original guess WOULD have won, had he not revised it!

Which leaves the winner of the 140 serial numbered cards to be...

With a guess of 66555...

The Lost Collector!!!!!

The actual correct total of the serial numbers was 65707....

Thanks to everyone who participated, and AJ, if you don't mind shooting me your current address, it has been a while since I sent anything your way and would hate to send it to the wrong place!

Serial Contest

 Over the years, I accumulate.  Just stuff.  I'll be going through some cheap box at a show and come across a card and think "someone will want that", so I pick it up.  Unfortunately, I never get around to setting up trades the way that trades are done these days.  I hear TCDB is great for trades, but so far, I have been too lazy to enter all my cards.  I could scan and post trade bait, but in the past, that hasn't worked well either.  I hear X or Facebook can be good places for selling, but I am not really wanting to sell.  

So I keep ending up with stacks of cards that I wish I could trade off.  I have probably said it before, but what I really want is to go back to grade school days, where a buddy would bring his box of cards, and I would bring mine and we would go through the boxes and hammer out a trade.  Sadly, in person trades are mostly a thing of the past.

Anyway, one stack of stuff that I have accumulated is going up for grabs today!  Not as trade bait, but as a giveaway!  It is a real hodgepodge of serial numbered cards.  Probably wouldn't be interesting to team collectors or player collectors.  I am betting that every team in MLB in in here somewhere.  But if you are an omnivore collector like me, or want a quick way to accumulate trade bait, or just like serial numbered cards, this may be for you!

There are 140 cards in the lot.  If you want it, what you need to do is guess the total sum of the serial numbers.  So if there were three cards in the lot, one #/100, one #/ 999 and one #/125, the sum would be 100+1999+25 = 2124.  Obviously, with 140 cards, the number you will be guessing will be much higher!

Here is a pic to help you with your guessing...

The COMC.com value of this lot would be very high.... the real value is much lower of course.

The highest serial number is #/2025 and the lowest is #/5.  OK, that's all the hints, feel free to make your guess in the comments!  And I am going to go old school, so if you pimp the contest on your blog, you can have an extra guess, just put the link to the post in the comments with your second guess.

Guessing will close on Thursday, April 4th at 5PM Pacific time!