SoCal Autograph Odysses

 So, I pulled something pretty cool out of a random Bowman value pack I found in a Walmart in New Mexico. My intent in going to Walmart was to restock on travel supplies for the family, but as is custom, checked the sports card shelves.  All that was left was two solitary 2021 Bowman baseball value packs. The packs with two packs inside and five camo variants.  My kids and I wanted to open something but I did not expect to pull what my son found. Mariners top prospect Julio Rodriguez green paper auto numbered to 99. It's not a Chrome and it's not a 1st Bowman (his first was 2019) but it's an amazing hit out of a random value retail pack. Another pack also had a speckle Jake Vogel 1st Bowman, numbered to 299.   

I have a new record for longest wait on a through the mail return, and it's MLB Hall of Famer Harold Baines.  As you can see on my through the mail tracker, I initially sent this request towards the end of February, so the total wait was about four months.  To be clear, I am definitely not complaining, and I'm always happy when any athlete returns something signed.  They don't have to do this.  More than anything, I kind of just expected not to see this again after the first couple of months went by.  Based on recent reports on SportsCollector's.net, Mr. Baines has been very hit and miss with his returns over the past few days.  There was a big gap in time between him returning requests, so I wasn't the only one waiting, and based on what I saw, most of those waiting got their requests back unsigned.   I only have one other pending TTM request out there right now, and I sent it a few months ago.  I don't think I'm getting that one back, and I'm also writ

 Other than the recent Nolan Ryan return, it had been a while from a through the mail standpoint for me.  I have been keeping an eye on SportsCollectors.net to see if anyone new is signing through the mail, but haven't seen a lot that has piqued my interest other than the players I already have.  However, one of the guys I did see that was having some returns was former catcher for the Red Sox and White Sox, Carlton Fisk.  Carlton is also a Hall of Famer, so of course I wanted to try with him.  I sent a card just ten days ago, and today was happy to see this in my mailbox. I've met Carlton in the past, at the Tristar show in San Francisco in 2012.  I have blogged about that very trip on this blog, please use the search feature in the upper corner of the home page and look for it.  You can search any name in there.  That day he signed a baseball for me and it has badly faded since, so I told him that in my note I sent.  He really popped this card with a clean, blue, signature wi

 As part of the Target (very) early morning from a couple weeks back, I also bought four Bowman 2021 baseball blaster boxes.  Baseball tends to sit a bit longer online than does either the NBA or NFL product, so it's not as much a rush to be up early and buy them as soon as they are released on the Target website. As with most retail products, you are not guaranteed any hits, so I was happy when my daughter found this in the packs she was opening; It's the base and not chrome, but it is a purple parallel numbered to 250.  That's not bad for a retail blaster hit I supposed.  Currently I see Ebay listings of this card for about $40-50.  If the kid pans out, this card goes up in price.  In the more likely event that he never makes it, the card plummets and is basically worth nothing.  It's a nice bonus that this is a 1st Bowman and that the player is an outfielder as opposed to a pitcher as well.   I did manage to find just about every rookie anyone would want to pull, whi

 Today I made a trip to my nearest local card store Honey Hole Collectibles, with no intention of buying anything in particular.  I was actually there because my brother in law wanted to check it out and buy something NFL related.  While he was looking around, some soccer cards caught my eye.  I've not yet ever been able to find Premier League cards in stores, and kind of was yearning to open some of them.  I have liked the look of the Panini Prizm cards I've seen others open in various videos.  I bought a mega box, which comes with 12 packs and 5 cards per pack, including 22 pink cracked ice cards.  I wasn't expecting an auto, but I pulled one anyway as my first time opening a product luck continued.   This is Mousa Dembele, of Tottenham Hotspur.  I think it's a real nice looking card, and it's kind of cool that the sticker auto blends in so well with the cracked ice in the background.  I was told that only about 1 in 16 of the mega boxes contains an auto, so I was

 Over the course of the pandemic, and into the summer of 2021 as the Covid crisis seems to be ebbing, a peculiar thing happened.  Sports card collecting went through the roof, forcing "flippers" to buy all the sealed retail product they could find and sell it on Ebay for two, three, and four times the actual cost.  This led to kerfuffles in stores like Target and Walmart, with guns being drawn and fights ensuing.  Into this bedlam I have fallen, being drawn to a hobby I partook in as a kid and early teen.  You've seen on this very blog some of the finds I have made in stores, with it all starting I believe in May 2020 when I found a box of 2017 Panini Diamond Kings sitting on a shelf at Target.  I bought that box on a whim because I thought it looked cool and ended up opening a David Wright signed "Limited Lithos" card numbered to 15.  Reminisce with me about that day by clicking  here .  Needless to say, so began my pursuit of carboard, which just happened to c

 Today saw my first success through the mail in quite a bit of time, as I haven't sent nearly as many recently.  I have to say though, it was quite the return as MLN legend and one of the all time great pitchers Nolan Ryan returned a signed card.  I had sent this card with the required donation to his foundation about six weeks ago.   As you can see in the second photo, autographs coming back from the Nolan Ryan Foundation also come with Ryan Authentication, which is a nice touch. The card I chose was a reprint of what I believe was his rookie card.  I tried prepping the card beforehand but it did still come with a slight, slight bleed that you have to zoom in to see.  All in all, this is a very solid return and I never mind paying for players of this caliber.