Like a bunch of other folks in this little card collecting community of ours, I recently was the recipient of some major league generosity bestowed upon me by Dave from Tribe Cards as part of his Last Great Tribecards Giveaway. Of course when I say recently I mean about a month ago. What can I say, sometimes the slack hits me like Bob Gibson pitch to the ribs. Better late than never, I say.

Anyway, this was my first dealing with Dave, so when I first signed up for the giveaway I was expecting just a bubble mailer with a handful of cards, which would’ve been awesome. I was totally unprepared for what ended up on my doorstep. I mean it was literally on my doorstep because the package wouldn’t fit into my mailbox.

For those not familiar with the giveaway, in order to sign up for it, you sent him a list of 3 baseball teams, 3 football teams and any other miscellaneous cards you collect and he’d see what he had and hook you up. Obviously, the Mets were first on my list, followed by the Tigers (they’ve kind of become my default American League team because I’m a huge Ty Cobb fan and the Red Sox got boring once they broke the curse) and the Cubs (I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for the Cubs. I think since they haven’t won in over 100 years and also Wrigley might be my favorite stadium). Dave sent along a ton of awesome cards from each one of those teams, and oddly enough, the Mets were not even the best cards in the package. Also, I’m sure he didn’t do this on purpose, but there was a suspicious number of mini-Bippings in there.

Although I was considering showing off every card he sent (I kid, I kid), we’ll boil that giant mother down to a handful of the best ones.

At first I figured this was just a regular old Bowman Chrome card, but it turns out that it a Bowman Chrome International. Apparently, it was a parallel set that featured the flag of the players home country as the background. A sort of precursor to the Allen & Ginetr National Pride set, kind of. I don’t tend to buy a lot of chrome product. They look cool and all, but since most of the time, they’re just a shined up version of the normal set, I don’t tend to buy any of it. I guess because of that, I haven’t really gotten the hang of scanning chrome cards to make them look as good as possible. With that in mind, believe me when I say this card looks a million times better in person. That flag just looks incredible.

Refractors are another type of card that I don’t tend to go out of my way to get. It’s just a shinier version of the shiny version of the regular card. As a matter of fact, the few times I ever get a refractor, I usually go months without even realizing it is a refractor. I don’t know why. I also have the same problem scanning these as I do with chrome cards. It is a pretty cool looking card, however, and I figured since it’s only like my third refractor, I’d throw it up here.

There was a pretty sweet Magglio Ordonez jersey buried in all that junk wax as well.

It’s funny. I’m well aware of the fact that Howard Johnson wasn’t always a Met. I just forget sometimes. It was a bit of shocker coming across this card. Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t know if I can honestly say that I’ve ever set eyes on a non-Met HoJo card. Weird.

I always have a little trouble trying to pin down my “official” favorite Topps set, which I guess is why I often refer to sets as “one of my favorite sets” or “one of my top 5 sets from the 60’s” or some other equally vague claim. Pinning down my least favorite Topps set on the other hand, is not a big problem for me at all. I do like this card though. I think I only need one more 1990 Topps card to finish my Mets set from that year. Then I can stop looking for these things. I must say, although I am by no means a big fan of foil on cards, those numbers float around behind Nolan are just screaming for some green foil.

I’m noticing a trend in this post. Apparently, I don’t like shiny things. Moving on.

This is a interesting looking card from a really oddball set that I’d never seen nor heard of before. It’s from 1995. I guess the official title is Phil Rizzuto’s Baseball: The National Pastime, put out by a company called Comic Images. According to The Standard Catalog of Baseball Cards:

This set is principally made up of 19th Century baseball images done up in 20th Century chromium card technology to detail the history of baseball from the 1860s through the 1950s. As might be expected, there was little positive reaction from collectors. Photos of old baseball collectibles, including a few vintage baseball cards are scattered throughout the set as are a few actual player photos. Hall of Famer Phil Rizzuto was tapped to promote the issue, but his name was misspelled on the cards’ box. A number of special inserts including Rizzuto autographed cards were part of the issue.

It’s another shiny chrome card that scanned in a way that does no justice to it. It’s almost like black chrome. It looks awesome. Here’s the back.

Reading the back it seems like this is some weird reprint of a card from 1887. Doing a little research I came up with this, which is the card, or die cut or whatever, that this card was based on. This site claims it’s from an 1888 set released by Scrapps Tobacco. Again, according to The Standard Catalog:

The origin of these die-cut, embossed player busts is not known, but they were apparently part of a book of “punch-outs” issued in the late 1880s. When out of their original album, they apparently resembled scraps of paper, presumably leading to their unusual name. An earlier theory that they were issued by “Scrapps Tobacco” has since been discounted after research indicated there never was such a company. The die-cuts include 18 different players – nine members of the American Association St. Louis Browns and nine from the National League Detroit Wolverines.

Well, there goes the Scrapps Tobacco theory. Hmmm. The plot thickens.

This one wasn’t anything too big deal. Just a Hall of Famers autograph. I always love when dudes sign their number as well.

This last one is definatly my favorite of all the millions of cards that were in the box. Not only is it vintage, it’s a coaches card, it has a Hall of Famer on it, it’s from the set that I just recently decided to collect and I don’t have this card yet. Oh, and it looks really cool. It’s a winner on every level.

So there you go. A miniscule sampling of some of the awesome cards that Dave sent my way. Thank you so much Dave.

Tags: 1888 Scrapps Tobacco, 1960 Topps, 1985 Topps, 1990 Donruss, 1990 Topps, 1995 Comic Images The National Pastime, 1997 Bowman Chrome, 2008 Topps Chrome, 2008 Upper Deck, Autographs, Howard Johnson, Kerry Wood, Magglio Ordonez, Nolan Ryan, refractor, relic, Ryne Sandberg, Sam Thompson, Tribe Cards
Filed Under: Free Cards by slangon
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