Remember way back in July when I posted about this big ol’ ebay lot I bought for about $30 shipped? That thing stayed mostly untouched for a good long while. I finally took the time to go through some of it. Let me tell you that there was a lot to go through. In fact there was so much stuff that I’m going to split it up into a total of 4 or 5 different parts. Part 1 was sets. This part I’ll call “football.” Let’s see if you can figure out why.
First, I’ll just quickly mention that there was nearly a metric ton of Pro Set cards. Included in the auction were 4 boxes of the stuff and several binder pages full. There are really only two ways to think about this. 1) I got all of these cards free as a bonus, because no one in their right mind would purposefully buy all of it. or 2) I was basically charged a couple bucks for the honor of hauling away his garbage. You decide.
No Expense Spared!
I even have plenty of the special cards like the ones shown above, so if you have ANY set building needs or want any cards from any team for any reason, PLEASE let me know, because I bet I have it.
There were cards from all 4 major sports in the binder (only 2 hockey cards), and luckily pro set did not make up the majority of them. Here’s a brief selection of what I found in that dingy thing.
1991 Fleer Ultra may be the ugliest premium set of the junk wax era
I’m not all too familiar with these players, but that Sanders picture is too cool not to show off.
Action Packed a/k/a Credit card cards
I have a handful of the action packed, but I don’t recall ever seeing a braille back on any of them. Is this some specialty issue? Any clue what it says?
More overproduced goodness
There may be a couple other star cards if anyone’s looking for someone specific.
If I had to get only 1 '91 Fleer, I'm glad it's Elway
There were only a small handful of 1992 Topps in here, but I did get a gold card! And again, a pretty cool picture on that gold, too. My guess is someone bought a pack at some point and this is what’s left.
Rocket to the Moon! (to the Rocket)
The star of the football binder cards was the entire All-World CFL set. You can tell Rocket Ismail was the Strasburg of the day because he had at least 5 cards in this set. I’m too lazy to actually count them. Interesting that they consider Warren Moon a “Legend.” No need to be sarcastic about it, A-W. Anyone interested in this set?
If you’ve made it this far, congratulations. You’ve just sludged through a lot of poo just to get to some more modern cards that aren’t as poo-y.
Remember when these used to be so special?
1995 Upper Deck SP. In the small stack included, there were a couple recognizable names. I knew Carl Pickens because someone down my street claimed to be his nephew.
Don't worry, the digital glitches you see are just part of the shitty card design
That Chris Chambers is numbered 211/249. Again, this looks like the contents of a pack or two thrown in to boost the auction. By the way, this is the 2007 Rookies and Stars set. Good thing they put the year in the logo, because otherwise, you’d never be able to tell them apart year to year.
Schizophrenia, thy name is 2005 Heritage Football
This damn set confused the hell out of me. All of these different designs were all jumbled together and I just didn’t know what I was dealing with. After a little bit of digging, I found a couple checklists and discovered that 2005 Heritage was just a mix of at least 6 different designs. I can’t imagine this really helped the products’ chances for succeeding. I did get some bigger name players, if you have any set needs, but I just chose the first cards I found with the different styles to use for the scan. They look nice, but I’d like something a little more cohesive.
Woo hoo!
Well, the auction description did mention there would be an autograph included. It looks like this was it. Does anyone have any experience with expired redemption cards? I know I wouldn’t be likely to receive the Mathis if I sent this in, but would I get something? Any Mathis supercollectors out there want an unredeemed card?
Where have I seen this before? Oh that's right...everywhere!
2006 Heritage did things mostly right. Although, they did decide to use a design that was never used for football. I think they proved in 2005 that there was enough design history to draw from that they could have just used one more actual football retro design instead of relying on ’52.
Double the Bruce
This is another thing they got wrong. I’m not a fan of variations, and back variations are the worst. I got plenty of blue and red backs (not sure which is more common), but only a couple that matched up. I didn’t know it was a variation until I sorted them. I thought it may be an AFC/NFC thing. That would have been nice. Oh well, I’m not collecting the set, so it’s not that big of a deal.
Not Pictured - Flashbacks Frank Gifford #FL-1
It was pretty cool to see some inserts included in the lot as well. That’s some nice added value and a little better than a non-auto auto.
Okay, I’ve saved the best for last. I got basically the entire contents of a 2008 Topps Mayo box. I think it’s a pretty decent box, although not great. I bet a lot of people would have paid $30 for this lot if they knew what was in just this box at the time.
What other set would have LT and Thomas Edison together?
Mini-Puzzles. Pretty tough.
The thick, “dummy” cards were turned into collectibles for the different super bowls. The helmet cards give the team line-ups and the logo card has a little write-up. Certainly better than something you just have to throw away.
SS Who Gives a Rat's Ass?
I don’t know the set all that well, so there may have been other inserts actually associated with football. But these are the only two I got. I got other minis of players as well, luckily.
asdf
The players featured are Santonio Holmes and Marcedes Lewis. This is the Yale back variation. They had this Ivy League theme going on. Sure they look nice with the blue backs and all, but they could have put some identifying text on there as well, don’t you think?
asdf
The Princeton back (which serves little purpose other than to be a different color) is of Taylor. I’ll guess Chester, but I’m too lazy to look at a checklist to find out for sure. The product also featured Harvard backs, which I believe are #/25. I didn’t get any of those, but I did get this.
I think the guy forgot to pull this out before sending it to me
It’s a Mayo back of Derrick Mason. We have a knack for getting low-numbered Mason cards, since our National Chicle box had an Artist Proof signature Mason #/10. That one ended up going to Beardy, and I think this one will be too, assuming he’s still interested.
Oh, and I got a couple relics.
Nice looking relics
I don’t know about the player collection (Jake Long and Tony Gonzalez), but the framed relics still have not let me down. I like the see-through nature of the Gonzalez. That red really pops out.
Okay. I’m finally through all the football stuff. I just have basketball and baseball left. I think the football haul is pretty decent. Sure there’s a lot of junk wax, but there’s enough newer stuff and minis, etc that I may have gotten my money’s worth just from this section. This is turning out to be a pretty good find. Will it get better? Stay tuned and see in the next installment.
I am definitely interested.