The high point of my winnings from the break were Griffey Juniors (of course), which was cool for me but also a bit awkward. Junior has been a fantastic ball player and was a favorite of mine as a kid, but Bud of First Day Issue is the Griffey collector of the blogosphere, and so I like to send any Griffeys he doesn't have his way. So I was hoping for excellent Griffeys, but had to keep in mind that some were going to go his way. Like these first, excellent three, including a TSC Chrome Griffey. They won't leave immediately, but in time they will be yours Bud!
I did get a few Griffeys for my own though, along with a lot of other good stuff. This first picture shows a lot of the base and insert stuff that I got, including some Starquests and a really wacky Power Up of Bret Boone. There's also a Jose Mesa in there (whom I love because his name in English is Joe Table, which was the name of a college roommate of mine) and a few Carlos Guillen rookie cards. There are also several Jay Buhners, the guy who protected Griffey in the batting order for years and is therefore a veritable badass.
Here are my three favorite cards from the pull: an Ichiro Power Up, an ARod Dynamic insert, and the super unexpected UD MVP auto, Shane Monahan. The Power Up cards in general are just amazing, and I may end up collecting them someday (maybe after I finish an actual set or two haha). And the ARod insert just looks really cool to me - I'm a big fan of the "future" feel to late 90's UD MVP. The future has always been pretty funny to me.
Here's another look at the Monahan. I didn't even realize that there were autos in this set, which makes me think that the football set must have autos as well. I'm trying to collect the 1999 MVP football set, but I guess the inclusion of autos should make that a bit harder!
Anyways, that's it for the stuff I got from Thorzul's break. I loved it all and am happy to enter another break now - hopefully I'll pull more wants for other people/hits/maybe even some McGriffs since I picked the Braves this time! I can't wait to see what comes of it!Between this post and last, I've written a lot about Griffey Jr. in the past few days, which is pretty new to this blog. To end the Griffey talk on a high note, I thought I'd show you readers two of my favorite Griffey Juniors (and favorite cards in general) of my entire card collection. Sorry to Bud in advance, but I don't think I'll ever be able to trade these two to you despite your collection-ness. I don't mean to stall your collection - they just have a lot of personal meaning to me and so it's hard to get rid of them! All apologies!
The first is a UD Collector's Choice You Crash the Game redemption card (#CR26) that I actually earned myself. I pulled the exchange card for this redemption within a few weeks of when the actual set of games was to be played. I got really excited (Griffey, McGriff, and Greg Maddux were like my favorite three players at the time) and held on to the card awaiting that weekend. Griffey hit a homerun, and I think I jumped around the house a lot and screamed basically non stop. I put it in the mail, and several weeks later I had this awesomeness in my hands. To date, this is still my own and only redemption card.
Ooh...aah!
It's not quite as cool as it was to 12 year old me, but it's still one of my favorite cards of all time. The funny thing to notice about it now is that it came after a season where he hit .258 in 72 games due to injuries. Not his best year, but Griffey was still the man!This second card has a much nerdier connection to it. It's a 1994 Super Nintendo insert that came with Ken Griffey Junior Presents Major League Baseball for the Super Nintendo.
Again, ooh...aah! I like the juxtaposition of the bat on the left with an intense Griffey in the middle. The game itself is easily my favorite video game of all time, and I remember playing it constantly for years. I always tried to get my brothers to play with me but I got so good that they didn't want to get crushed by me anymore. Griffey was the only actual name that appeared in the game, as it came out before name rights were a given with video games (it also came out right around the time of the player's strike of 1994). This led to some hilarity, as the Mariners had J(abba the) Hutt instead of Jay Buhner and the Rockies had a team that included B(ela) Lugosi, and T(om) Savini. Fred McGriff was D. Crime - nice one there by SNES, right?Anyways, those are my two favorite Griffey cards, and will probably always remain among my favorite cards in general due to the stories I have attached to them. So sorry Bud, I won't be able to send you those two. But I will be able to send you the three Griffeys at the top of the post someday, so I hope that makes up for it! And I'd like to say thanks again to Thorzul for the awesome Mariners cards - I can't wait to see what results from this next break you're doing dude!
Nice loot! Can't go wrong with Griffey.
ReplyDeleteGood luck to McGriff this year for the HOF vote! He's a HOFer in my mind.
Love the Nintendo card. I just played that the other day!
ReplyDeleteKen - I definitely agree. Even though he was pretty awful last year, I would watch him play if he stuck around another 20 years, Julio Franco style. He's just such a cool guy!
ReplyDeleteDave - haha doesn't it still rule? I remember watching The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies one day, and I noticed it was directed by Ray Dennis Steckler. I immediately remembered R.Steckler, the ace of the Rockies pitching staff in Griffey's game, and was so happy. They really covered their bases in that game. I believe your beloved Royals were all American Presidents.
It's still the best baseball game ever made! Someday I will track it down again and finish an entire 162 game season. Made it into the 60s back in the day before one of the kids my mom babysitted overwrote my season. :'(
ReplyDeletehaha I always tried to finish 162 also, but then my game got too old and wouldn't start every 50 tries or so without blowing in the system and on the cartridge. Of course for whatever reason, every time I did this the season erased, and so I never really got past 40-50 game seasons.
ReplyDeleteI did have a SNES emulator for my computer for a while, and so I managed to get like 95 games into a Rockies season wth that. It's less fun playing Nintendo on the computer though methinks.
I have almost the same story... I was 11 in 1996 and I got baseball cards in a care package while I was at a summer camp (yeah I was kind of crazy about baseball cards). And I pulled out the same Griffey crash card you did except with the gold foil. I was so excited that he hit a home run... especially because having that card at a summer camp for most of a week I completely failed to keep it in good condition so it was really good that I got a chance to exchange it.
ReplyDeleteThat is my very favorite baseball card of all time. It was a long 8 weeks waiting for the exchange though, I was freaking out that it was going to get lost and I would have nothing... The unexchanged card was pretty sweet too and I would rather have had that than nothing.
anyway, thanks for posting. my email is joelshreve@mac.com if you want to see a picture of it or anything, but it looks exactly like yours... with the slightest difference in the color of the seal.