Dollar Store Buys and a Few McGriffs

Now I don't know if your Dollar Stores do this, but I recently discovered that the Dollar Trees in my area buy Targets older/non sold cards to sell at cheaper prices. Today I was in town anyways to buy some books that my dumb teacher just told us about four weeks from the end of the semester, so I decided to make lemonade out of my personal lemons and stopped by the Dollar Tree. I bought 5 packs from all types of sports, and I think I ended up doing okay. for $5 I'd like to share the results with you. First the bad, then the okay, then the awesome.

First the bad stuff:
2009 Donruss Elite Football - I like some of the older Elite stuff that I've seen thanks to my Fred McGriff cards, but their base stuff is horrible. Very bland, all the same stuff - I'm not a big fan. I pulled:
# 4 Tim Hightower - Not a bad pull I suppose
#20 Carson Palmer
#62 Jeremy Shockey
#77 Willie Parker - now a backup
#100 Chris Cooley - on injured reserve currently
All available for trade


The okay stuff:
2009 Donruss Americana - I absolutely had to get some of this stuff for just $1. I've seen a lot of celebrities that I liked in the set, and wanted to see if I could get some. Sadly I knew 0 of my cards without reading the back. But after reading the backs, I'm happy with what I got.
#15 Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs (aka "Boom Boom" from Welcome Back, Kotter - Nice pull)
#29 Ty Hardin (Haven't seen anything this guy was in, I guess he's an old Westerns guy)
#57 Geoff Stults (of 7th Heaven fame. My brother used to watch the show)
#72 Anson Williams (aka Potsie Weber of Happy Days. Best pull of the pack!)
#86 Dean McDermott (aka Mr. Tori Spelling. Ewww.)
All available for trade, though I do like Potsie.


2008 Upper Deck Football Heroes - I've gotten some Baseball Heroes before, and I like a lot of them. I'm a little less impressed with the base stuff, but they're still pretty nice looking cards.
#78 Peyton Manning (Pull of the pack)
# 82 David Garrard (waiting for this guy to get it together in real life)
#109 Aqib Talib (Awesome name, actually not a bad young player)
#162 Jonathan Hefney (Already in the CFL after only one year in the NFL...not much of a "Hero," but I guess hindsight is 20/20)
#201 Barry Sanders (Very nice drawn card)
#231 John Elway (Okay drawn card, but hey, yay legends)
All available for trade, though I do like Peyton, Barry, and Aqib.


The awesome packs:
2008 Upper Deck First Edition Update - UD always puts out a great base product IMO. I really like these cards, though they're a bit flimsier than the 2009 models.
#305 Chipper Jones (Nice little card here. Chipper rules.)
#342 Brandon Phillips (after his breakout 2007)
#351 Ubaldo Jimenez
#360 Curtis Granderson
#377 Torii Hunter
#431 Dan Johnson
#457 Tim Lincecum (pulling this post-Timmy's brush with the law is especially neat. Nice card
#467 Raul Ibanez
#476 Troy Percival
#SQ-36 Starquest Common Insert Carlos Beltran
All but Linc available for trade.


2008 Upper Deck MLS - I know what you're thinking...soccer? Well my family is pretty into soccer - my Dad has season tickets for the New England Revolution, and both of my brothers play (one in college one in high school), so I kind of like it too. Not nearly as much as them, but I figured that maybe I'd pull a Rev or two that I knew and that would be cool.
Bad news: No Revs.
Good news: This card
My very first materials pull EVER. I don't buy many packs, so stuff like this never makes it into my hands without a Beckett purchase or online trade first. So you can imagine how psyched I was to find this card. I have no idea who Stuart Holden is (wikipedia says that he's Scottish among other things), but I think this is a pretty cool card. And I don't know that I've ever seen a bright orange swatch on a card. Great pull right here.

For base stuff, I also got:
#18 Eddie Gaven
#31 Juan Toja
#39 Zach Wells
#74 Juan Pablo Angel
#124 Brian Mullan
#140 Jonathan Leathers
#148 Kosuke Kimura
#159 Mike Randolph
#200 Fabian Espindola
#KP-15 Goalkeeper Insert Greg Sutton
All available for trade except the patch.

Any day that you can add a game used card to your collection is a good day, and so I'm wicked happy with my pulls. So happy, in fact, that I'll delay my homework to bring you a few more Fred McGriff cards from my personal collection. I'm trying to get them all posted someday, but it's taking a while haha.

1997 Pinnacle XPress #37

1997 Score #195 (The parallel of this was sent out to Fred about two months ago in my first TTM attempt. I don't know if it's coming back though haha).

1997 Bowman #263 (I posted the International Paralell earlier - here's the version without a crazy flag in the background.

1997 Pinnacle Express Swing for the Fences Exhange