Oddball Acquisitions

I don't think I am alone in finding some pleasure in oddball issues.  From my early collecting days of seeing Hostess and Kellogg's cards to later days of getting cards in my Big League Chew, cereal boxes and beef jerky, these non-standard issues always intrigued me.  I started collecting in 1979 and at that time it seemed perfectly within the realm of possibility that I could acquire a copy of every sports card that was ever made and the oddball cards were the treasures I wanted to hunt down and add to my collection.

I have fairly recently decided to try and build the old Hostess sets but outside of that I haven't been one to actively seek out oddball card sets in my adult years.  I will try to pull in Giants and player collection oddballs and that is what initially drew me into the auctions I won that I decided to share today. 

I already had the Will Clark in my collection but the Barry Bonds card was new to me.  These are postcard sized from 1993 Donruss.  This card wasn't even on my checklist/want list and I have found that frequently with Bonds cards from 1993. It is the year he moved from the Pirates to the Giants and Beckett.com, where I pull the lists for my checklist, don't have a team listed for Bonds on quite a few cards. It takes some luck and happenstance to run across cards like these.  The other cards were just a bonus.

Here is the back of the Bonds card, it is even set up as a postcard with a place for a stamp.  This card has some stains on it that show up much more on the scan and the lot of cards I picked up had damage as a major theme.  Luckily I am not too concerned as the price was low, I would have paid what I did for all of these for just the Bonds.

Here are the other cards included in the oversized card lot:

 First time I have seen these Mantle cards, they are postcard sized as well.  I did some Beckett searching and there are cards with similar fronts put out in 1997 by Scoreboard.  The only difference I can see on the front is where this card says Mantle Home Run Giant, the other card just says Mickey Mantle.  On the back, the numbering is different.  These two cards are 1 and 2 of 7 while the other set numbers them 39 and 40.  Sticking with the damage theme, the one of the left is pretty beat up.

The last 3 cards were definitely filler for me, they are all beat up and I am pretty sure I already have.  My younger oddball self liked tracking down these oddball Donruss sets.

While the Bonds was a nice addition, the best part of finding this auction was actually another auction by the same seller that it connected me to.  The seller offered a really bid combined shipping discount so when I searched his other auctions, I found an oddball set that I had never seen and that I really wanted to add to my collection.  I won it and decided to scan it in its entirety to share:

Not tons of scanning as this is just a 9 card set.  This is an oddball food set put out by Homers Cookies referred to as Homers Cookies Classics.  Here is a quick write up from Beckett.com:

This nine-card standards-size set was sponsored by Legend Food Products in honor of Hall of Famers in baseball history. One free card was randomly inserted in each box of Homers Baseball Cookies. The cards have vintage sepia-toned player photos, with bronze borders on a white card face. The player's name appears in a bronze stripe overlaying the bottom edge of the picture. In black print on white, the back presents lifetime statistics, career highlights, and a checklist for the set. 

I really like the simple front design and enjoy the photos selected for the cards.  Most of them are pretty classic photos that I have seen elsewhere they look good together as a set.
 

Since the set was easy to scan, I decided to share the backs as well.  They contain a ton of info including a career stat line, the year they were elected to the HOF, 3-5 bullet points about their career and a checklist of the set on each card.

I am a huge fan of baseball history and enjoy picking up cards of legends like this.  I have found it pretty rare to run across cards from a set I have never laid eyes on like this which added to the fun in picking this up.

Its Opening Day tomorrow and even though this season is going to suck for my Giants I am excited.  For the first time in 20 years I am not in a fantasy league so I hope the season keeps my interest when the Giants are 20 games out.  I am skipping out on work a little early tomorrow to catch the game.  Play Ball!