Sunday, April 22, 2018

Just for the "F" of It #14

Several weeks before requesting delivery of my latest COMC order I ran across a couple cards that didn't really fit into a specific collecting niche but I had to have once laying eyes on them.


Regular readers of this blog may recall that I am a graduate of USC and I am a proud Trojan alumnus.  I have a pretty solid USC football card collection but haven't really concentrated too much on picking up former Trojan baseball players.  If you aren't aware of the long history of USC baseball players, here is a partial list of graduates who made it to the big leagues: Bob Lillis, Ron Fairly, Don Buford, Rene Lachemann, Tom Seaver, Bill Lee, Tom House, Dave Kingman, Jim Barr, Steve Busby, Fred Lynn, Roy Smalley, Steve Kemp, Rich Dauer, Mark McGwire, Randy Johnson, Jacque Jones, Eric Munson, Barry Zito, Mark Prior, Morgan Ensberg, Ian Kennedy, and Lucas Duda.  In my four years at USC, the team had the following players that made it to the bigs: Bret Boone, John Cummings, Damon Buford, Jeff Cirillo, Mark Smith, Mark Robertson, Aaron Boone, Bobby Hughes, Geoff Jenkins and Gabe Alvarez.  I had tons of fun stopping by the on campus ball field to watch these guys play.

Although Kingman was before my time at SC, I remember much of his career in the big leagues.  Seeing him in his Trojan uniform in a 1982 inspired design from 2005 Topps Pristine was too good to pass up.  I picked up both the regular and refractor version.  Outside of a few 1/1s, there is still a gold refractor /65 to chase.  I will keep my eyes open and see if I can complete the rainbow Just for the Fun of It.

4 comments:

  1. College baseball is so underrated. Nice grabs! That Topps Pristine set is one of my all-time favorites.

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  2. Oh man I've been working on a Stanford set and that's crazy enough as it is. I can't imagine doing that project with a team with the history that USC has.

    Yes I know we're supposed to hate each other but I really really miss the old South Six-PAC days. That was great college ball every weekend beginning in February and I loved seeing the prospects on other teams come through Sunken Diamond.

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  3. Topps Pristine was such a nice product. Great Kongs!

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