2 More Boxes of 2014 Panini Hall of Fame

Man, I love this stuff.  I have broken a few boxes and saw them on sale again and decided to pick up a couple more.  As a HOF auto collector, my hope is always to add some new autos to my collection. The subject matter of all the cards - HOFers - make some great looking cards of the all time greats.

Let's see how these two boxes treated me:

First up are the base cards and their parallels.  I scored one each numbered to /75, /50 and /25.  The DiMaggio is great and the other two are solid.

These Crusade cards are pretty solid in design, I scored another Jolten Joe, a purple parallel of Dizzy Dean and a great looking die cut of Carl Yastrzemski.  This becomes one of my favorite Yaz cards in my collection and it is numbered to /10.

My two Diamond Kings card as the unnumbered base cards and feature two players I grew up watching.  I love the Brett picture, he looks so young.

One each of my two favorite insert sets from this product.  I have officially decided to collect these 40 card sets.  I have a needs list on my Set Want List page and recently picked up a lot from a seller on COMC, he had pretty reasonable prices and took my offer with them together as a group.

Boom! A gem card of Cubs great Hack Wilson.  I don't know the odds of these gem cards or what they sell for on the secondary market but I like the look.  Having watched a number of box breaks I would guess these are 1 per 5-10 boxes so this is a nice score.

The high from the gem card was tempered a bit with two duplicate autos. I have several Eck autos in my collection.  The Sutton is a nice addition with the numbering /50 and perhaps an upgrade over my other Sutton auto from a different set.

The final card in this box was a big one of the Big Train.  A Walter Johnson 1/1!  I haven't decided what to do with this card yet.  I rarely sell cards on eBay any more and have no idea what I would ask.  If I end up at the National, maybe I will take it as trade bait.  Those are both possibilities but my money would be on it staying in my collection as it is a beautiful card.

On to Box 2...

Only 2 base cards, both actually parallels /50.  Nice to score a Giants card in Cepeda as well.  The Yogi card is great, nice posed photo of the swing follow through.

These Crusade cards weren't all that exciting, no PC hits and not any high end HOFers with the possible exception of Dizzy Dean.

A great bounce back with 2 of my player collections represented by the two Diamond King cards.  These were both needs and the Diamond King design looks great. After the Dominators and Elite Series get knocked off the want list, this set is a possibility to pursue.

It was nice to score 3 of these inserts in this box.  Already had the Mathewson in the Giants collection but it was a need for my new set quest.  I was lucky not to pull any duplicates in the boxes I have purchased so far.

Wow! Another Big Train sighting and another gem sighting. I am guessing these boxes came from different cases.  This 2 box break gave me my two best Walter Johnson cards.

The first auto is my second Whitey Herzog auto for my collection.  I had pulled one from a Panini Cooperstown box a couple years back.  Not the greatest pull but I like this design and  the Herzog photo is nice.

My final auto is a huge pull! A Carl Yastrzemski on card auto /5.  I have been wanting a Yaz auto for a long time. His older certified autos are few and far between. Even though he has started signing more over the past couple of years, his cards are pretty expensive and I haven't found one I like at a price that fits my range. That is no longer a problem with this addition, I can take the eBay email notification off and lessen my daily email load by 1.

I am pretty happy with the boxes of 2014 Panini Hall of Fame once again.  I am not sure what the resale value of these boxes would be, I am not in it to flip and make money. I am very satisfied with these breaks and enjoy all the cards.  My guess is I will probably pick up a couple more during the next round of sales.

Some More Bid Board Wins from the LCS

It has been a few days since I have posted, been busy having some non-hobby fun.  Over the weekend the family and I took a weekend camping trip to Los Padres National Forest.  We stayed at the Los Prietos campground and it was quite nice.  Our campsite was about 75% shaded with oak trees.  We had plenty of room for 2 tents and a nice long tie out for our puppy.  It was the puppy's first camping trip and also the first camping trip for my 2.5 year old daughter.  Outside of our neighbors showing up at 11 PM on Friday night and starting a campfire waking up both the dog and my daughter (and therefore my wife and I) we had a really good time.  With this campground about 1.5 hours away I suspect we will be back for another weekend sometime soon.

My other non-hobby excitement is the purchase of a new car.  We did some serious looking in April but put everything on hold with my job uncertainty. With that resolved, we figured it was time to take the plunge.  My wife convinced me to go with a hybrid so I agreed with a stipulation that it had to be a really nice car.  We settled on a Lexus ES Hybrid - I am very happy with it, it looks really sharp and drives very nice.  It replaces an 11 year old car and the only downside is our first car payment in 2 or 3 years.

On to what you really care about, cards!  I had a chance during my work week last week to sneak out to the LCS for a long lunch break and pick up some cards I had won on the bid board.  I thought I would share them with you, the total cost of these 10 cards was $6.25 and at 62 cents/card I am really happy with the haul.

First up are a quad of Matt Barkley rookie cards:

 These fit nicely into my USC football collection.  I would really like to see Barkley get a shot to play but it appears he is going to go the way of Matt Leinart, John David Booty and perhaps Mark Sanchez as highly hyped QBs who just can't make the transition to the NFL.  On the plus side, it keeps his card prices down!

The other 6 cards I picked up are all of the vintage variety:

I am a big Yaz fan.  I think part of that comes from my dad handing down his collection which included a Yaz rookie card.  Similar to the discussion in my last post about going for a Topps run of Rollie Fingers cards, I think a Yastrzemski Topps collection is in my future.  I couldn't pass up the All-Star Freddy Lynn card for a quarter.  The diagonal background along with that A.L. All-Stars banner makes this a great looking card.  With Lynn's USC connection he has been strongly considered for a player collection but I need another player collection like I need another hole in my head.  The Teddy Ballgame card has a crease across the card and I already have one in my working 1972 set but for a buck I couldn't pass on it.  Finally I picked up a nice Steve Spurrier card for my vintage 49ers collection.

My favorite bid board weeks are the ones where the vintage cards make an appearance.  I am super happy with this week's haul.  I am heading out of town to Kansas City for a few days for work but I am going to upload some scans and hopefully get a start on my first Gint-A-Cuffs contest from my hotel room.  Happy Collecting!

More Reject Pile Goodness

As I shared recently, I was able to pick up a decent chunk of the 1968 Topps Game insert set out of the reject pile at my LCS.  Most of the cards I picked up were the lesser players, basically most of the commons from the set.  I had pretty much decided to build the set but my trip the following week to the LCS solidified the pursuit.  I was able to pick up 9 more cards towards the 33 card set and this time the names were a little more famous and the players a lot more accomplished.  Here they are:

 Tommy Davis and Joe Torre are the only 2 players in this purchase that aren't HOFers and I would suspect Mr. Torre will make it as a manager quite soon.

 Here are a couple of pretty accomplished infielders.  I was surprised to see that Killebrew played almost as much 3B as he did 1B in his career.  For some reason he just seems like a 1B to me.

 Here are a couple of HOF outfielders, both spent time at 1B but are primarily known for their outfield prowess.

 The Robinson Bros from Baltimore both appear in this set and were part of this recent purchase.  The Frank is miscut quite a bit but if you look at the scans you will see that I am not super concerned about the condition of this set.

Finally the best pick up in my opinion. None other than Mr. 755 Hank Aaron.  During my recent trip to the Baseball HOF in Cooperstown I was able to go through the newer section of the museum dedicated to Mr. Aaron.  The display was under construction during my trip a couple years back and I was really happy to be able to enjoy it.

I am pretty happy with the progress on this set with 27 of the 33 cards.  The best part about this 9 card purchase from the reject pile?  The cards only cost me $3.25!  I have a want list for this set on my Set Want List Tab if you happen to have any for trade - I am working on a trade for a Mays right now.