With Thanksgiving just a couple days away, I'm still wondering whether I should take a trip to the Mansfield show on the day following it and spend my Black Friday there or if I should take part in the annual COMC Black Friday sale.
No matter how you look at it, there are benefits to both options. At the show, I get to be surprised by whatever I stumble upon while I'm there and also interact with actual people. Plus, I get to take the cards home right away whereas, on COMC, I'll have to wait a couple of weeks for shipping.
However, the Black Friday Check out my Cards sale has its benefits as well. Free shipping on orders of 25 cards or more is the main attention-grabber, but keep in mind that most sellers drop the prices of their items, making it cheaper to pick up certain cards I need.
When I buy cards online, gives me the chance to narrow down my purchase to specific cards that I need for sets or want for player collections. On the other hand, there's definitely an element of surprise when buying cards at the show given you never quite know what you'll see, and there could be some incredible deal that I'm missing out on by not going.
While I continue to ponder this decision, I have the 29th page of my frankenset ready to go with cards 253-261 included on the 9-card page.
#253 1987 Topps Eddie Milner
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I feel like 1987 Topps is a set that typically features pictures taken in-game rather than warmup photos that have, in recent years, become synonymous with brands like Topps Heritage. While there aren't all that many pre-game photos included in a set like 1987 Topps, that's not too say that I don't see this card as one of the better ones of the set.
#254 2017 Topps Heritage
Speaking of Topps Heritage, you can see from Johnny Cueto's card among many others that Heritage as a brand is very reliant on using pictures from warmups or Spring Training rather than actual photos from the game like Topps Flagship does. Besides the action image variations, Heritage is around 98% free, maybe more, of images from actual regular season MLB games.
#255 2011 Topps Allen & Ginter David Price
A couple of hours ago, MLB made the announcement that David Price had won the AL Comeback Player of the Year award after a much improved 2018 season. After making just 11 starts throughout all of 2017, Price bounced back with 30 starts, over 170 innings pitched, and a respectable 3.58 ERA to help guide the Red Sox towards success.
Now, if only he could emulate his Cy Young season from back in Tampa Bay, but I'm not going to complain after the shaky start in Boston both on and off the field with the press.
#256 2005 Fleer Tradition Ricky Ledee
I don't really have much to say about this card, so I want to take the opportunity to use this Giants card from the mid-2000's and pose the question of whether Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens should make it into the Hall of Fame or not given that the 2019 ballot for the Baseball Hall of Fame was announced yesterday, featuring newcomers like Mariano Rivera and the late Roy Halladay.
#257 2016 Topps Heritage Skip Schumaker
Even though I'm fond of the Cueto, Schumaker, and Upton cards included on page #29 of the frankenset, I wish I had decided against one of them in order not to have 1/3 of an entire page dominated by cards from the Topps Heritage set, no matter how great the cards happen to look modeled after original Topps sets.
#258 2008 Topps Heritage B.J. Upton
2008 was the very first year of the Tampa Bay Rays as opposed to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. However, due to Topps Heritage being an early release with the additional possibility that Topps wasn't too confident in their ability to photoshop, the Rays players, or at least, B.J. Upton, remained in the Devil Rays jerseys they had used throughout the previous years.
#259 1970 Topps Tommie Reynolds
The only card on this page from before the year 1987 is a card from way back in the "glory days" of Baseball, the beginning of the 1970's. As if I had forgotten, Tommie Reynolds' card from the 1970 Topps set serves as a nice preview of what we're set to see in 2019 Heritage, both in set design and also, hopefully, in terms of image choices as well.
#260 1998 Bowman Fred McGriff
In a way, it's shocking to hear that someone with 493 home runs like Fred McGriff is coming up so short on the Hall of Fame ballot year after year given his respectable .284 average as well in addition to over 1500 RBI. However, it's equally as surprising when you take into consideration that Lou Gehrig and he had the same number of career dingers.
#261 2017 Topps Gypsy Queen Jose Iglesias
Before Xander Bogaerts came along, the Red Sox rolled with Jose Iglesias as the starting shortstop for a little bit. Fast forward some years and Iglesias is now a free agent set not to return to the Detroit Tigers. He's a solid contact hitter with pretty decent speed and fabulous defense, something that could appeal to a variety of teams trying to make improvements to succeed in 2019.
That Tommie Reynolds is fantastic.
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