Card #26: 1992 Ultra #45

YEAR: 1992
BRAND: Fleer
SET: Ultra
NUMBER: 45
SUBSET: NA
TEAM: Cleveland Indians

I was always really impressed by 1992 Ultra.  The photography was crisp and clear.  The finish was nice and glossy.  And I liked the marble borders on the card.  I like the fact that Alomar is depicted here in a crouched pose, but there is absolutely no action.  Nevertheless, I have always liked this card.  Ultra would decline in quality in subsequent years.  This has always been their best set in my eyes.

Card #25: 1991 Studio #41

YEAR: 1991
BRAND: Donruss
SET: Studio
NUMBER: 41
SUBSET: NA
TEAM: Cleveland Indians

I always liked Studio.  It was Donruss's next foray into a premium brand.  The idea of the brand was to have some more classic studio photography.  Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.  Alomar's picture is decent, but it does definitely look like the kind of picture you would see in a high school yearbook.  I remember being pretty excited about this card when I found it.  I had it before I had any Red Sox Studio cards somehow.

Feliz Cumpleanos a Mi

Yeah, I can't figure out how to do the punctuation.  Ah well.  Here are today's additions:

The Prism card means I just need one more to have all of those variations.  

The Nestle card knocks another one off of my Top 10. 

I like the Christie Brinkley card.  Plus it has a picture of her on the back.  She STILL looks good now. 

The 1989 Fleer is the Glossy card.

Three more Tek variations in the bag.  I now have 11. 

That's it for today.  I still have quite a few more cards of Alomar coming.  Though things will slow down after that.  I allowed myself to spend a little more this week because it is my birthday today.

Card #24: 1989 Bowman #258

YEAR: 1989
BRAND: Bowman
SET: Bowman
NUMBER: 258
SUBSET: Father-Son
TEAM: San Diego Padres

This has been a card that I have thought a lot about.  I guess it is not technically a Sandy Alomar Jr. card.  It is definitely more of a Sandy Alomar Sr. card.  Sr. is the one whose name is on the back with a reference to where to find Jr. and Roberto.  Nevertheless, I think most people consider it a card of all three.  So this marks the third appearance of Roberto in my collection and the first time all three Alomars have been on one card.  All three were with the Padres at this time too, so it is that much more interesting.  I have never been the biggest fan of 1989 Bowman because of how much taller they are than normal cards.  Still this is a very interesting card in my collection.

New Pickups

It was another big mailday for my Sandy Alomar Jr. collection.  Most of the items were from Ebay, although there was one Beckett marketplace order.  The biggest additions were undoubtedly the autograph cards.

 

I am not sure what the Schwebel's Stars disc is.  I am a little disappointed with it because it is too large to fit in the nine pocket pages.  So I have to keep it separated from the other stuff.  I love the autograph card.  I am surprised it is not serial-numbered.  There are only 100 made and I have mostly seen it for very high prices.  I lucked out.  The 7-11 coin is a Sportflics-like card and is kind of interesting.  I apparently had the Upgrade version of the Swing for the Fences card, which was much more rare.  So I added this one.  I like the design of the Pacific card on the bottom row.

I finally got the regular version of 2005 Rookie Cup.  I am working on picking up all of the color variations.  I already have the orange.  The 1991 Topps card is the reprint version from Rookie Cup.  I have the Original Relics card as well.  Finally, we have the Millenium Marks Autograph as well, which leaves only the red version to get.

Card #23: 1992 Upper Deck #81

YEAR: 1992
BRAND: Upper Deck
SET: Upper Deck
NUMBER: 81
SUBSET: Bloodlines
TEAM: Cleveland Indians

This is the second appearance of Roberto Alomar in my collection and it is once again a 1992 card picturing Sandy with the Indians and Roberto with the Blue Jays.  I will once again point out how much bigger Sandy was than Roberto.  The Alomars played together on the AL All Star team in 1991 and actually hit back-to-back in the starting lineup.  This is from the Bloodlines subset that celebrated family members in the big leagues.  Other families included the Griffeys, Mitchells, and Dwight Gooden and Gary Sheffield.

More Tek Progress and My First Printing Plate

Three nice hefty packages showed up today.  The first one is my very first order from COMC.  I don't know why it took so long before I tried it out.  Maybe because I was concerned about the shipping.  I don't really know.  Well, I picked up a few random cards:

Obviously you can see the Tek cards were the focus.  I picked up all three from the site bringing my number of those variations to seven.  The Bowman Heritage is a short print.  The Flair Showcase is one of the rarer Legacy Collection parallels.  The Pacific card was on my Top Ten Most Wanted and there is a minor league card and a couple of nice Pinnacle parallels as well thrown in.  Not a bad collection of cards.

The next pickup was a small buy from a store in the Beckett marketplace:

The first two cards are the Devil Rays inaugural cards.  The third is my eighth different Topps Tek card.

And this is the highlight of my day:

My first Alomar printing plate and first 1/1.  This comes from the 2004 Topps Total set and is the cyan plate.  This is one of the better action shots of Alomar in a non-Indians uniform.  That was another reason to be excited about it.

Card #22: 1991 Classic Game #194

YEAR: 1991
BRAND: Classic
SET: Game
NUMBER: 194
SUBSET: NA
TEAM: Cleveland Indians

I never had the game that these cards went to.  I just had a bunch of random singles in my Alomar and Red Sox collections and the occasional card that showed up in a repack.  I know some people do not consider these as cards.  I am not one of those people.  I do like this shot.  Most pictures showing Alomar in full catchers' gear are pretty cool.  The purple border is not real impressive personally though.

Card #21: 1991 Toys 'R Us Rookies #1

YEAR: 1991
BRAND: Topps
SET: Toys 'R Us Rookies
NUMBER: 1
SUBSET: NA
TEAM: Cleveland Indians

Another oddball.  I always felt a little self-conscious about adding cards like this to my collection.  It just seems a little juvenile to me, even at the time, when I was 11.  I still added the Red Sox cards to my collection as well though.  Ultimately, it is just another card.  This is one of those cards that you had to buy the entire set at once.  Nevertheless, I found this copy at the store mentioned earlier that had a ton of oddballs in boxes separated by team.  Finding the Alomars required digging through the Indians stuff, but it was worth it.

Stickers

Apparently Beckett lists stickers as cards, so I always have as well.  I have a number of Panini stickers previously in my collection.  Today, I got this one:

It's pretty small and very thin, but I like the fact that it is kind of an oddball item of Alomar from his time with the White Sox.  Unfortunately there were not a lot of oddball items around any more by the time Alomar was jumping from team to team.  So this is a nice little pickup.