1993 O Pee Chee

Well, since Awesome didn't get delivered in the mail today, I'll cover what I did yesterday. 

First a little backstory. 

I have a little extra money between the government help and my driver retention cheque finally showing up, so I wanted to get myself a little "I've survived this hellish year this far" treat.. 

So I got a box of Big League, a box of 2019 Archives, and I thought a box of 1993 OPC Premier. 

Well, I get an email from the place I tried getting the OPC from, Past Time Sports stating they didn't actually have the OPC Premier, that they made a mistake on the website. They did have 91 and 92 Premier though.. I didn't need either one, so I got a refund.. Then I got to thinking.. If they actually have the base year, why not get that? So I did.. 

The box.. 

It came with 36 packs. 8 cards per pack.. Each one has a card from the 18 numbered World Series Champions set and 1 in 8 had the World Series Heroes, which was numbered to 4 

There's the packs! 

Now the fun thing is on the back there were three different things. One was an offer for MLB pens. One was for a book.. 

And one was the obligatory Say No To Drugs. 

So let's dive in!

1993 O Pee Chee was a 396 card set produced licensed to Topps, but in a departure from previous years, did not use the Topps design. 1993 was the second last year for OPC as a card producer. 

There was a 1994 set and that was the last of it until Upper Deck resurrected the brand in the 2000s. 

1993 was also the last year for OPC Premier, but I digress.. 

So how did this one turn out? 

I'd say pretty well. The front had a lot of good action photography. (improved greatly over 1991 and 1992 OPC Premier) 

The backs were nice as well with a headshot in the corner, the normal information and the stats everyone loves. 

Some guys (who don't have a giant sheet of stats) get a short writeup. Obviously, in both English and French. 

I honestly didn't realize Boucher pitched for the Rockies. 

The first thought I had when I saw this card is "What could have been?" 

Ah here's the front of Denis' card. Some are pictured wearing the Rockies uniform. Others have the "now with" that OPC was famous for. 

Speaking of a "Now with" we have Tony Fernandez pictured as a Padre but signed with the Mets. 

Junior Felix as an Angel but is a fish. 

I just liked the photo.. Can you blame me? 

We have some Hall of Famers in here as well. Boggs, Fisk, Brett, Yount, Ryan, Walker, Raines, etc etc etc. 

Hey it's Mike Piazza. 

Had to show this to appeal to everyone's favourite Darryl Strawberry/John Kruk fan PK Steinberg. 

Speaking of Nolan Ryan.. 

I love this set.. Is it perfect? No. 

In some cases the back can be hard to read for the card number.. 

They're better in scan, but in hand it's tough to read. 

There's really no issues that came up previously. The card stock is nice and it seems like something sharper than a butter knife was used to cut the cards this time around. 

I bought one box and I have 63% of the set done. I definitely will be finishing it. 

Big Fun Game Prizes and Other Things

Over the past few months I've taken part in Matt's Big Fun Game on Johnny's Trading Spot. 

Twice I remembered and was able to take part.. One time I forgot and got a consolation prize.

The first time I took part was in May. This was what I received. A Baseball Greats Bing Miller and a 2014 Josh Tomlin. 

The second one I took part in was in June.. I forgot about it completely, so I received these as a consolation prize. A couple Honus Bonus cards. 

I took part in this month's and when I saw one of the cards, I was hoping I'd get to hold onto it.. And sure enough, that Maury Wills Expos card from 2019 Archives reached my grubby little paws. Very happy to get that one card.. 

Speaking of Archives, I had a little extra money lying around so I decided to buy a box of Archives from last year and a box of 2020 Big League. The main thing I want to show are a couple cards I got from Archives. 

Ken Hill autograph! I was so happy to see that one of the two autographs I got out of the box was something I wanted. Normally I get things like Laz Diaz.. 

Wil Cordero also makes an appearance here. 

The other autograph I got out of the box was Gorman Thomas. Obviously I don't collect Brewers, so I'm looking to find a good home for Stormin' Gorman.. And really.. If someone wants the Laz Diaz, I'll gladly give that up too.. 

Another Sportslots Post

So I wanted to go over another order I made through Sportlots just to update some of the problems I came across previously. 

Whatever problems I was having with errors on this screen are gone.. (Thank you for fixing it!) 

Nobody had too incredibly insane shipping. So nobody has set it to "Not Canada" lol 

As with before, this is a lot cheaper to send to the box than it is to directly ship to me. 

The final picture here gives me a better idea.. 

I think the first two orders I made were wonky because of the errors on the first screen.. There is no way otherwise I'd get a $1200 shipping savings. 

BUT.. I also found something else I missed before.. 

There's a radial to toggle "Pending" and "All" for Sportlots Box Calculator. 

Leaving it on "All" will show a cumulative total. Wonky and non-wonky alike. 

By selecting "Pending" It shows me I saved a nice little $45.16 in shipping by boxing it up.. 

I am liking the Sportlots option more now that I'm understanding what's going on. I also love the box ship option. It saves me a boatload of money this way. Yes, it takes longer for the cards to reach my greedy paws, but I can handle that over paying 3-10 times the amount of the cards in shipping costs. 

I can handle the wait and pay the $22 they're quoting me. 

Anyway, I just wanted to give a quick update on that. I know I did some ranting about it online before. 

Trades and Purchases

Today I want to cover a few acquisitions. 

The first one... I don't remember who sent them.. If they were a trade or what.. 

But here we are. A Derek Bell Gold Winner, a Nate Pearson Camo parallel, and a Russ Adams 

This batch is from a TCDB trade with user refmichel. A nice bunch of 1986 OPC Jays goodness. This puts me 7 cards away from the full team set. 

Finally, is a purchase from Yashark on Twitter. I honestly don't recall exactly what I purchased from them, but I got some nice cards back for sure. 

The Donruss cards are nice and shiny, almost hard to look at in hand, but they look nice in the scan!

The Donaldson Bowman is a Purple parallel.. 

When I rant about parallels it's usually about things like this.. Bowman had 12 parallel sets in 2016. 

One year I looked at had multiple parallels of the same colour, but slightly different shades. 

ANYWAY...

Donruss Optic Cal Quantrill! This is a parallel as well. I want to say stars? 

Jeff Hoffman was part of the trade that brought LaTroy Hawkins and some Troy Tulowitzki guy to Toronto.. 

Finally.. A Bowman International Chris Widger. This one looked MUCH better in hand than scanned. 

Thank you all for the cards!

A Pennysleeves PWE

I received a PWE in the mail today from Jon at A Pennysleeve for Your Thoughts. 

Recently he was doing the Free Cards Friday thing, where he had a bunch of cards up for people to claim for free.. I was late for a few of the cards I wanted, but that happens. I did however, claim one card. 

It was a Fleer Greats of the Game Dennis Martinez. Have to go with Expos whenever possible, right? 

Well, because I claimed only one card, he was kind enough to pad the envelope a little. 

The Martinez is the one I claimed. The rest are parallels. In the note he sent along, he made mention about me not being too keen on parallels. 

It is true I don't chase parallels down, but I will accept them. 

The Peter Bergeron is a 2000 Prism numbered to 480

The Fullmer Rookie is numbered to 3999

The Sweet Spot Classics Carter is one I've never seen before. 

The Stevens Stadium Club Chrome is a refractor

It looks brighter in the scan than it is in hand. 

The Archives Carter is shiny and numbered to 199

The three Jays are the Diamond Anniversary parallels from that year..

Thank you Jon!!

Showing a Player Collection

I was talking on Twitter this morning with some people and somehow we came up on player collections. 

One of the things said was "I'm tired of seeing the same players 1000 times" 

I jokingly said "So what I'm hearing is to show off my Steve Wilson or Kirk McCaskill collections" 

The reply was to do it.. 

Another reply was they wanted to see McCaskill.. So here's what I have of him.. 

It's not in chronological order.. Probably won't be until I have all the cards. 

The reason I collect him is that he was born in Kapuskasing, Ontario. His father was playing hockey in Kapuskasing when he was born. 

I've read that he doesn't consider himself Canadian, as he was only here for a couple years. He considers himself an American born in Canada. He does hold Dual Citizenship however. 

So this is my Kirk McCaskill collection. I have plenty of other Canadians in my binder as well. Some only have a couple cards.. Some have a couple pages.. Some have 10+, it all depends. 

If you know a Canadian player you'd like to see what I have.. Put it in the comments and I'll do more of these

Sportlots vs COMC

Today I want to go over something I came across that's rather interesting.. 

As you know, I collect Canadian born players. Well, I came across one that I have one or two cards of that I wanted to get as many of as possible to maybe complete the player collection. 

That player is Matt Maysey. He was born in Hamilton Ontario and for the most part spent his time in the minors. He did get some Major League time with the Expos and Brewers. 

So I headed to COMC to see what I could pick up of Mr Maysey.

I found 16 cards that I needed (there is actually one on COMC that I still need to get there) 

Add to that a couple Peter Hoy cards

Peter Hoy, by the way, pitched for the Red Sox in 1992 and is from Brockville, Ontario. 

The 18 cards I picked out.. $31.94. 

Shipping would be generally around $5-10 

I went to Sportlots to see what I could find for Mr Maysey and Mr Hoy.. 

32 cards... $10.47

Here's where it gets fun... 

My options for shipping.. 

Shipping costs ranged from $3.66-$99.99

OR.. I could use the box shipping option, where the sellers send the cards to Sportlots, they box the cards up for me, and when I request a shipment, they send it and I pay a shipping cost. 

Doing it this way, I have a postage fee of $13.69, so $24.16 total. 

The figure it gave me for what I saved made my jaw hit the floor.. 

According to Sportlots, I was saving $1200 by box shipment option. 

$1200!!!!

So today I wanted to verify this again.. 

So I looked up the cards I needed to finish 1992 Studio.. 

I didn't bother to check it out on COMC this time around.. My concern was the shipping part. 

So I found the 37 cards I needed to finish the set.

This time I saved the screenshots.. The first one has the list of cards I picked up and the sellers/shipping.. Look at some of the prices.. 

The second one is after I chose the box shipping method. 

Now.. Am I right in reading this as saying I'm saving $1303.70 in shipping costs by doing the Box Option? Or am I just completely insane? 

I just wanted to cover this today.. 

A Couple PWEs

Today I want to cover a couple PWEs I received today. 

First is from Brian at Highly Suggestive and Completely Arbitrary. 

He had been doing Freebie Fridays for a bit and, while I did see a few things I wanted, others tended to grab them before me.. (Not complaining, it's the way it goes) 

I did however, grab that 1992 Studio Checklist because I need it for the set. 

The other two cards that were included were pleasant surprises! 

Michael Barrett jersey card and a JP Arencibia auto/bat relic card. 

Much appreciated!!

Next is a group of cards from Matt Saltzman. I bought some cards from him including the Stairs Leaf Rookie. He added a couple extras. 

The Stairs will be added to my Canadians binder. The Jays on the bottom row are all new to me.. 

The only completely new Expo was the Ginter Raines. But the rest of them will have a home in my Expos Project. 

Thank you Matt!!

Finally, I had a TCDB PIF trade from Shawn Norris. 

He contacted me with these two cards and offered for free.. I jumped at it obviously. 

Now that I have some time, I'm thinking about doing a couple PIF trades on there myself.. Thank you for the cards, gentlemen!

2001 Grandstand Vermont Expos

Today we return to 2001. 

The Vermont Expos Grandstand set is up today.

The 2001 Vermont Expos went 28-47

So let's see who made up this team.. 

So Steve Balboni was the manager of the team. 

Liam Frawley was the trainer

Jose Zapata was the hitting coach

Jeff Schwarz was the pitching coach

You had four players from this team sniff the Majors.. 

Josh Labandeira 

Shawn Hill

Chad Bentz

Chris Schroder

We also have two Canadians on the team.. Hill and Pierre Luc Marceau.