Random Cardboard Of The Day:1997 Upper Deck Hot Commodities Mo Vaughn

Breakin' With Cardboard Collections

 

I recently saw a break on Twitter that Cardboard Collections, @flywheels, was hosting with a box of 1996 Sportflix baseball and wanted in. 

Only problem, there wasn't many teams left to get in on. So as a Yankees fan (Mariners fan just to land some Griffeys) I sinned and grabbed the Red Sox in the break.

I can feel you all shaming me now.

But, I did it to score some Mo Vaughns despite the team, I always liked watching the big dude hit. And it was also a brand in my favorite time to collect which was the biggest draw.

Let's see how I did.

Roger Clemens. I really liked Roger and would always pretend to be him when I was pitching in backyard baseball against my friend Brian. Then came the steroid talk and he was no longer my favorite pitcher.

 

I ended up with 2 of these UC3 subset cards of Vaughn, I like the 3D appeal which is hard to capture in a blog post.

John Valentin

Mo Vaughn flexing on his card.

Jose Roidseco. I always forget how many teams he bounced around to and always forget he even played for the Red Sox. I associate him more with the Rays than I do the Red Sox.

Overall for the cost, that was fun and I landed a couple of cards for my players collection.

Cardboard Collections is always hosting these affordable break spots for a variety of fun products. If you haven't tried it out yet, please do and check it out HERE for new breaks. And no, this wasn't sponsored this is just speaking the truth. Though I would be more than happy to have Cardboard Collections as my break sponsor. *hint* *hint*

The Diamond Club

My love of cards with jewels reached a new high with my latest addition.

To go along with the Sapphire I have of Terrell Davis, I can now say I own a diamond chip as well. It is real diamond, it claims to be but how will we ever know.

I made an offer of $7 to acquire this tough 90's insert I didn't even know existed. This insert set is from 1996 Zenith named coincidentally The Diamond Club. The base insert falls 1:24 packs while this one, known as the parallel to it, falls at a tough 1:350 packs and there are not a ton of them out there from my searching.

 

It's a pretty cool cheap pick up in my opinion. It's also not very often this Yankees fan finds a Red Sox card to be cool.

Now if only I could add the expensive Griffey version of this and it's base version as well.

It Was The Collectors Choice

Up to this point, I hadn't busted any baseball. Just like with basketball, I didn't have much baseball knowledge at all as my focal point was football. Luckily, my sports fanatic father did. He was a die hard Yankees fan. Funny thing about our origins sometimes, we may follow someone else's steps. I later on became a Yankees fan because of him and we will hear about that in 1996.

Even though I didn't know much about the sport or the players, I think when packs of 1995 Collectors Choice hit the shelves my father looked at that as an opportunity to open me up to it. The price was fit our budget as well with it only going for .99 a pack for a 12 card pack.

The base set was huge, we don't see much of this today, it was also one single series and a whopping 530 cards. The base set was simple with a white border and action photography.

 

 

But, for me at 12 years of age, it was the subsets that caught my eye.

Rookie Class were the first cards in the set. They made up numbers 1-27 in the set. Of course at the time with the confusion that baseball can cause, I thought I had a Derek Jeter rookie card. I never did pull the real key rookie of the product, Hideo Nomo.

 

 

Future Foundation were those upcoming stars that a team could build around. I had put these into rookie binders at the time as well.

 

Best of the 90's made up card numbers 51-65 and were key players on their 90's teams

 

 

What's The Call was a goofy subset making up numbers 86-90 but somewhat eye appealing. It was truly what a kid friendly product needed.

 

There were a couple cool inserts but not loaded by any means. There were two parallels and one insert set to chase.

Silver Signature parallel fell one-per-pack taking a players signature and making it facsimile silver.

 

The tougher one per box Gold Signature parallel taking a players signature and making it facsimile Gold

And You Crash The Game fell 1:5 packs and also had two parallels. Gold and Silver. I never pulled a Gold however. These were fun for sure. It was a redemption card of sorts and if a featured player does their feat on the day on the card posted, you could exchange that card in for a set of You Crash The Game cards. Whatever happened to fun promotions like this in sports cards today?

 

 

Did Collectors Choice get me into watching baseball? No. Did it peak my interest in getting more baseball cards? Absolutely. This is what you would call my baseball card origin and it only grew from here on out.

1997 Upper Deck UD3 Baseball Pack # 20

Pack 20 gives me three new set needs and some memories.

All I can remember of Mo was that he was the Ortiz of the 90's. Big dude that could hit. Mo delivered a grand slam in the game I went to see Griffey play in. Was a bad ending to a great day.

 

John was so dominant that my friends would fight in the backyard on who got to be him in our baseball matchups.

 

And Andruw makes me think back to when my father and I would try to chase down his rookie cards as he was the "it" factor.

 

 

Let's see if Pack #21 will be as memorable as this one tomorrow!