I was going to make a snarky post about seagulls, and being chased by them. Then I got to the hit of the pack:


If I could pick any Oriole to get a relic from, it would be Frank Robinson, of course. But Brooksie is a close second. Even if it's a manuhit, it's still pretty sweet looking.

You never know what you're going to find. I was searching for copies of the Sandy Koufax short print and I typed in "2011 Topps 530" (because that's the card number). In amongst the Koufaxes and the Felixes (how great is it that they share a card number?), I found this card.

It's a 60 Years of Topps reprint, and it's an original back. It was listed because in the original 1968 set, this card was #530. And at a very reasonable price, it's now mine.

Like I said, you never know what you're going to find.

Photo courtesy of eBay

(This post is fourth in a series of what I bought with the money I got for a 2010 Bowman hobby box. You know, the one with Stephen Strasburg on the front)

I had been waiting for a while for this particular package to come, and it took a couple days extra than I expected. I've given up trying to figure out Australia Post - this particular package was mailed, from California, a day after another was mailed from Pennsylvania. Both used the same postage rate - International First Class. The one from California - three thousand miles closer to Australia than Pennsylvania - took three days longer to get here. If you can figure out why, please let me know, because I can't.

Anyway, on to my latest purchases. Yes, this is more Strasburg money, folks. I'm almost starting to feel bad - when I coined the term and started this series, ol' Double S wasn't even on the disabled list, much less the operating room table. It now feels kinda like profiting off someone else's misfortunes. Kinda.

Let's start with the big ticket item. This was the card that I really wanted, the rest I just bought to help defray shipping costs:

It's a 2009 Spectrum rainbow card, in this case, a turquoise Tim Lincecum. It's numbered 9/25 and is the second rarest, in terms of print run, card in my collection. I have a 1/1 printing plate that I pulled out of a box of '09 Topps Series 1. But this card is infinitely shinier and better looking than a printing plate. I can't even remember what color plate it is now.

I'll admit it - I've caught rainbow fever. I've got four Spectrum rainbows in various stages of completion (care to guess who?) and I'm thinking of starting others. But this is the first top-end card I've actually got in my possession, although there may be another one arriving within the month. Stay tuned.


Here's the next favorite card in my bundle - a 2007 Brian Roberts relic. You know, from back when he was healthy and could play. His 2010 season just sums up the Orioles in general. Disappointing.

But B-Rob is a fellow Tar Heel, even if he left midway through his college career. I don't fault him for it - after all, the school fired his dad, former UNC baseball coach Mike Roberts. I'll always appreciate Coach Roberts - he brought me on board as the team's announcer, and I enjoyed every minute of working for the Tar Heel baseball program.


Let's stay with the Orioles for a minute. I picked up this Brooks Robinson mini for a very reasonable price. Something happened with my scanner because his name on the bottom looks just fine on the actual card. I was just too lazy to re-scan it. But the best thing is what's on the back:


IT'S POLAR BEAR, BITCHES!!! IS NOW, ALWAYS HAS BEEN, ALWAYS WILL BE THE BEST. PERIOD.

I assume they mean best cigarettes. If so, I guess they were wrong about that.


Finally, two random Ichiro cards for the PC. I don't really have that much to say about either one, just that I didn't have them before, and now I do. The Flashback Fridays one on the lest is kinda interesting, but I have no idea what Topps means by "Flashback Fridays." Flash back to what? And was the card only made on Fridays, or sold on Fridays, or supposed to be looked at on Fridays? At least I received the card on a Friday.

Hmm, maybe Australia Post knew what it was doing, after all...

Before I flew out to the States, we went up to Perth for the weekend to rest up before the flight and see the dog, who went up the weekend before so he wasn't underfoot when we were moving house. After what could rightly be referred to as "the week from hell," I earned a trip to Al's Card Shop, I thought.

I didn't get much, just a handful of singles for various PCs and team collections. But I spent an hour talking to Len the owner, who is, despite being a native Australian, a pretty big baseball fan. I always love finding Australian baseball fans - I think they just love having someone to talk ball with.

Anyway, here's what I got. Six Griffeys for the PC, including a Skybox with more delightfully ludricrous gangsta text. The late '90s Skybox cards are definitely a guilty pleasure. While the ridiculous set name (Hip-No-Tized) originally caught my eye, just one look at the back and I knew I had to take it home with me:

Here are three parallels from the 2000 Topps subset called "Magic Moments." All three cards are numbered 475, but as you can see, they are all different moments in Griffey's career:


And then two cards of Griffey in Reds gear (there weren't any White Sox cards, or I would have for sure snapped them up). One is an Upper Deck "E-Card" from 2001 (is that before or after e-Topps debuted?) which I picked up because it's all fractal and I wasn't sure when I'd see it again. The other is an '06 UD "Amazing Greats" subset serial numbered to 699. I know many people are through with serial numbers, but I still kinda like them.


It wasn't all Griffeys. I also got a couple of Ichiros, including his 2009 Spectrum base. I like the design of the Spectrum that year and have decided to go rainbow chasing. I've got Ichiro and Griffey base (which is also a Griffey White Sox card, so I was going to collect them anyway) and King Felix's red parallel. No Lincecum cards yet, but I hope to change that soon. Did I mention that as you are reading this post, I'll be travelling around Raleigh going to card shops? Because I am.


The other Ichiro card is a 2007 SP Authentic card that commemorates his 45 steals that year. Basically, if Ichiro is on a card, I want it and I'll probably buy it or trade for it.

Finally, we have some Robinsons of both the Frank and Brooks variety. I'm a bit annoyed because I forgot to scan one of the Frank Robinson cards, and now it's back in Australia and I can't get ahold of it. First up are Frank, Brooksie and Joe Morgan all appearing in a Topps Stars "Spotlight" set. I bought all the Orioles and Reds that were available. Rest assured, had Bench or Palmer been in the binder, I would have grabbed them, too:

So a couple of months ago, I won an auction for a couple hundred Orioles cards. It was one of the first auctions that I won since getting back into the hobby, and I did it just to boost my Orioles team collection. The description on the auction wasn't great, and to be honest, I was expecting a bunch of junk wax.

My folks sent the cards in their latest package, and I'm glad they did. Looking through, the lot had its share of junk wax, but also a bunch of really interesting cards. Nothing along the lines of Thorzul's 40-dollar haul, but value for money as far as I'm concerned. I've enjoyed sifting through the cards, and am pleased to share some of the highlights with you. So sit back and enjoy...Eight Bucks Worth of Orioles:

The first installment contains the oddball cards from "non-traditional" manufacturers. Later on, I'll do posts for Topps, Upper Deck, Fleer, Donruss, etc. The first card - well, you can't beat Sportflics. Unless, of course, you tried to scan a Sportflics card. Can you even tell who this is? I'll give you a hint - it's not Jim Palmer:

If you said "Mike Boddicker" - you win! If you said anyone else, you lose. If you said "Jim Palmer," then I'm sorry, but I simply can't help you.

A side note - I'm having a heck of a time trying to figure out the card number for this card. On the left hand side, it says "Series #1 Card 104". But on the right-hand side, next to the Sportflics logo, is a picture of a baseball with the number 52. So which is it?


Next up is this card of former shortstop Jerry Adair. I can't make hide nor hair out of this card. First of all, there's absolutely no clues as to what year this card comes from - none - which makes me think it's a reprint. On the back, there are two lines of stats: "Past Year" and "Lifetime". The copyright information is for Sports Novelties - Chicago, Ill. with no year. In fact, the only year that's mentioned in 1958, when Jerry made his debut for the O's. And yes, the card is in black and white, which robs us of a good look at those first Oriole caps.

Now this next card isn't a re-print, as such, but a re-interpretation of a classic baseball card design. An homage, if you will. It comes to us from Baseball Card Magazine, and has obviously been cut out. Poorly, I might add:


I'm willing to overlook the fact that the original owner apparently used a machete to cut out the card because it has a picture of Chris Hoiles on it. Chris Hoiles was great. At least, it seemed that way to me at the time. I've got nothing but good memories of Chris Hoiles and there's nothing you can do to tarnish them. Besides, Fred Lynn was washed up by then, anyway.

Moving on, here's a card of Ken Singleton from a sponsored set. In this case, Drake's Bakeries:


Ken is a Drake's "Big Hitter" and in 1980 he hit 24 home runs, certainly a big total for that time. Nowadays, if a corner outfielder doesn't hit 24 home runs he's not pulling his own weight. Sadly for Ken, the '80 season was the fifth and last time he blasted 20 or more homers. He hit 13 in the strike-shortened '81 season (when this card came out) and only hit 18 in '82, his next full season. He retired two years later with 246 career blasts.

Drake's is best known as the company that brought you Devil Dogs and Ring Dings.

The final three cards are all from the good folks at Pacific. These two are from the 1988 Baseball Legends set:


As I said before, any card with Brooks Robinson on it is a good card. The Brooksie card was actually the first card I saw on top of the pile. My first thought was "oh great, this is going to be a bunch of reprints and inserts. But I was, thankfully, wrong.

The final card today is also from Pacific, or should I say, Pacifico?


Yes, it's Ben McDonald, lanzador in Pacific's 1993 Spanish-language set. It's a good thing I took five years of Spanish in school so I can tell you that Ben finished with 158 strikeouts in 1992, and his 227 innings pitched made him the third-most durable pitcher on the team that year. He was also the first pick in the 1989 draft, but I didn't need to be able to read Spanish to know that.

Next up in the series - my Leaf cards from the stack. There are some good looking cards, so stay tuned!

After my trip up to Perth got cancelled delayed for a week, that's kind of slowed down my progress. I've got a bunch of cards that need to be sorted but nowhere to put them. Also, I went to the store to pick up some binder sheets (they were back in stock) only to find they weren't quite right. They were Ultra-Pro, all right, but they weren't the platinum ones. They were the "hologram series" and frankly, crap. The plastic feels different in your hands and is a lot slicker. In fact, the cards that I did put into the sheets are already trying to escape.

Basically, they're useless to me. It sucks, because I thought I found a local solution, even for a quick 10 or 20 sheets at a time. I guess I just have to keep looking. I'll probably just give the sheets away to my students for their football cards. They're too young to be picky about storage. Hell, some of them even keep their cards in their pockets! (I make sure to let them know that's not the proper way to store cards). I also refuse to trade with them for cards with dinged corners. I believe in tough love.

Anyway, what's the best way to deal with having too many cards and no place to put them? By opening more cards, of course. Specifically, a blaster pack of '09 Heritage. Yes, I know I went on a Heritage rant last week. But this is '09 Heritage. Completely different.

Not really. In my first pack, out of the eight cards, I got two team cards and two insert cards. Only the fact that one of the team cards was the Reds and one of the insert cards had a picture of Brooks Robinson saved this pack:

Pack two at least were all cards of players, but none from the teams I collect. I did get this guy, again:


I always seem to get Lincecum cards, no matter what manufacturer or set I'm opening. Maybe the universe is trying to tell me to start collecting him. He is a darn good player, at least.

Pack three, however, was the best of the lot. I could tell I was in for something when I saw the side edges of the cards were different colors. Hidden in the middle was this:


Yes, it's another Yankee. But it's an old Yankee, Bobby Richardson. And it's not a Yankee relic card. Look closely at the description. It's a relic from a seat at the old palace on 33rd Street, Memorial Stadium.

A freakin' Memorial Stadium relic!!!

I haven't opened packs 4 through 8 yet. Quite frankly, I'm not going to get better than I've already got so why even try?