So, a couple posts back I had mentioned how I was putting together a custom set of cards this year, a major undertaking given the general lack of time I seem to have for creative projects these days. It was something I wanted to do, not for some blogging statistical goal, or to sell to people, or to show off, but to be able to flex the creative muscles a little bit and do something I actually enjoyed doing for a change.

I’ve been making head-way with the set and I’m about half done. I decided to do a 100 card set. That seemed like an obtainable goal. 300-700 was just going to be out of the question. With 30 teams, I can do 3 per team, and add 5 Rookies from each league, giving me an even 100.

I looked at the team statistics from Baseball Reference and the MLB.com stats pages and tried to pick what I thought were the most interesting and engaging players. Players who are having really good years (up to this point) and performing well could have gotten preference over the more established names you’d normally see on cards. For the rookies, I took a look at Baseball America’s list of most likely “Rookie of the Year” candidates. I also came up with my own variation of an “RC Logo” to distinguish them from the rest.

So, without further ado, let’s kick off the set with a look at the AL East!

Red Sox

I’m going to save the “complete” Red Sox cards for the very end of this series of posts, because I wanted to do an entire 25-man team set for myself. So, instead of those, we’re starting with a cut and paste of some of the Red Sox cards I already previewed in the previous post, because a) they were already done, and b) it’s easy in my WordPress builder plugin to clone sections of content. New to these previews however is the Michael Chavis RC. He’s had a pretty solid rookie season and can certainly hit for power.

New York Yankees

Next up, our storied rivals, the New York Yankees, who are putting together a frighteningly good season already, and that’s with half the team on the DL. The playoff race in the second half is going to get really interesting.

Tampa Bay Rays

I’m not going to lie, the Rays have been a real surprise this year. With a couple hot rookies and the pitching being surprisingly good they’re going to easily be in the race for a playoff spot. Brandon Lowe gets the 2nd AL Rookie Card treatment in our list.

Toronto Blue Jays

Despite having one of the most highly anticipated rookies on the team, the Blue Jays are racing against Baltimore to see just how many games they can lose this year. There have been a few flashes of life here and there, but it certainly seems like the Jays are in for a mediocre season at best.

Baltimore Orioles

Last but not… well, actually, no. Just last. Last up are the Baltimore Orioles. With Machado gone I can now honestly say I hate them less, but it’s still pretty fresh, so that wound will take a while to heal. It’s a race to the bottom in Baltimore. The only team, historically, worse than the 2019 Orioles? The 2018 Orioles. Ouch. These three seem to be playing well at least, so they get cards.

There we go, there’s the AL East. Well, at least in completely fictional cardboard anyway. I’ll be posting the rest of the divisions over the next couple weeks. If there’s any suggestions or requests for specific players on specific teams, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

Thanks for checking them out!

Nomar

The vast majority, probably 50% or so, of the cards I found this year came from one dealer, and one box. He had actually taken the time to ALPHABETIZE his dime box. Let that just sink in for a minute. Yeah….

So, when I was going through it there was quite literally a whole row of Nomar Garciaparra cards. I just grabbed the whole damn stack. It was roughly 55-60 Nomar Cards that I thought I didn’t have. After sorting them at home I found a few duplicates, but being able to add multiple pages to my Nomar binder for next to nothing made the whole trip to the show worthwhile.

I tried to scan them chronologically, but then realized I was making “pages of 9” but in doubles across the scanner, so it’s a little messed up. The older stuff is, in general, at the top (first two scans) and the newer stuff, ending with modern inserts, are towards the bottom. A couple cards are worth mentioning specifically. Things like the ’97 Upper Deck Echelon and the ’97 Pinacle with the gold foil I had just simply never seen before. There’s also a chrome version of a Leaf 50th anniversary card, which I’m led to believe are harder to find parallels. The Topps Stars and Topps Reserve are little known brands that had escaped my radar. The Victory 2000 and eX cards are just the right level of crazy and (although I’ve said it before) the Authentix Tickets and the old school Topps Gallery are some of my favorite products in general.

Manny

The same vendor who had the Garciaparra cards also had a healthy stack of Manny Ramirez cards. That made me happy. I don’t have nearly the same level of player collection going for Manny, but it’s getting close.

Pedro and Pedroia

Same vendor, same box for the Pedro cards. I can’t remember where the Pedroia’s came from, but I’m thinking it was the other vendor.

The second vendor had piles of monster boxes just layered on top of each other. No signs, no organization, and the cards were a complete mishmash of everything. I found the 2017 Stadium Club in the same box that I found a ’91 Mo Vaughn RC in (below). It was a mess, but it was actually fun to look through. Every time I thought I’d give up and move on I’d find another card or two that was neat. Didn’t hurt that the guy was just looking to get rid of stuff. Assuming it was a dime box, I had about $10 worth in my hand and asked what the price was. The guy said “$2 and it’s yours”. Done and done… and then I went back and looked through some more boxes, digging for more gold.

Sale and Ortiz

The same story repeats itself for most everything else you’ll see in this post. Two or three vendors, random boxes. No huge purchases, but just a fun time digging through boxes of stuff nobody else wanted. I did really enjoy peeling the protector off the Ortiz Finest though. It was very satisfying. (maniacal laugh!)

They come in 3’s

The rest of these I’m scanning in 3’s, just to make life easier. Let’s start old-school…

A ’91 Upper Deck “multiple exposure” Wade Boggs, one of my favorite cards from a photography perspective. A ’91 Donruss Mo Vaughn RC that I never got as a kid, checking that off the bucket list. And a ’95 Score Summit John Valatine… I mean, just look at that thing, it’s insane.

Recent Bowman Chrome inserts… for some reason. Bowman doesn’t need throwback inserts, it just doesn’t. These were a “well, at least I know I don’t have them” purchase.

Ok, here’s one that completely blew my mind. 1982 Topps, but with Brigham’s Restaurant / Coke branding. For those that don’t know, Brigham’s was a restaurant and ice cream parlor chain in New England. I grew up going to Brighams. They sold the restaurant business to some crappy chain restaurant company and those went under, but they sold the ice cream to Hood, another New England institution that’s still alive and well. This was like finding a piece of my childhood. The crazy part is that these were at the card show in HOUSTON! I don’t know how else to explain it, but these cards were meant for me to find. After some searching I’ve learned that there are 22 in the set. They will be mine!!!

Speaking of things that will be mine. I’ve decided I was stupid to break up the set of 2011 Gypsy Queen that I had, and that I really need to finish a complete set. A second Red Sox team set certainly couldn’t hurt either, so I grabbed these at some point throughout the day.

These are great. Literally and figuratively. I love Fleer Greats, I love Flair Greats, and UD Masterpieces are easily top 5 in my favorite sets of all time list.

I have the basic team set this year for Heritage, including the World Series cards, but I never picked up the couple inserts there were. I think I’m still missing one or two (Mookie NewAge?), but these certainly helped.

Last one’s before we get to the slightly above average stuff. A couple parallels for my favorites B’s. Betts, Bradley and Bogaerts. I actually might have had all but the gold Betts, and “Big League” wasn’t something I was really interested in, but always good to find some cards for the player collections.

Rookies

I had a few of these, but a couple are new. Never hurts to pick up a couple rookies for your current players, especially when they’re really cheap.

Two Benny’s and a Bradley.

Here’s a couple I don’t think I actually had. The Jed Lowrie just kind of looked lonely in the box. I never finished 2010, so I figured I’d grab it in case I needed it. I don’t think I have any Porcello rookies at all. I wasn’t a huge fan of t206, there are certainly better retro products, but I’ll take it from an RC perspective. The tiny stickers, after some research, appear to be 2003 Heritage Bazooka stickers. Most importantly, they have a Kevin Youkilis “1st Card” sticker, which I believe completes my Youk RC collection.

Next, an ERod gold version of his RC, which I think is new to my collection, a Devers Gallery parallel that I didn’t have, and a Devers Bowman Platinum that doen’t have an RC logo on it because it’s 2017 and he’s still listed as a prospect.

The stuff that’s worth more than a dime…

There were only a couple cards I spent more than I dime on. I felt like these were worth the $0.25-1 (seriously) they were asking for them.

2010 Bowman Chrome “1st Card” for J.D. Martinez. Yeah, it has a scratch on it, but I didn’t have one and I’m not a huge “condition” collector that’s going to worry about it. If I find a nicer version to upgrade later that’s great, but I’m just happy to finally have one.

Last but not least, a 2010 Bowman Chrome “1st Card” Chris Sale purple refractor. I feel like Sale rookies don’t get enough attention, and I’m just glad to snap these up before he does something insane like throws a perfect game in the World Series and is a first ballet HOF’er.

Well, that’s it for card show scans. I don’t think I really went crazy this year, was just enjoying “the hunt” for neat cards and didn’t really have any goals for going. I brought $100 with me, parking was $15, and I left with $60, so I think I did pretty good for $25 on cards.

Thanks for reading!