My 10 0000th page viewed will be the following : vintage from Mr Hoyle

I wanted to make a special post for the 10 000th page viewed on this blog, but I realized by looking at the stats that many of those pages come from robots (damn you, robots). And not the cool kind of robots that collect baseball cards. No. The kind of robots that roam the internet looking for...hmmm...I have no idea, actually.

But enough about stats, let's talk about cards. And more precisely, a nice stack I received today from Mark Hoyle, who doesn't blog but is very active in the community nevertheless, and who likes to drop vintage bombs on bloggers everywhere.

This is the third package I've received from Mark, and he always manages to completely surprise me.

Always nice to add my very first '56 Topps to the (growing) vintage collection

My first Bowman TvSet ! I'm very happy to have one, as now I can say they're as ugly in person as they are on screen ! But they are still fun though, and I'm sure kids loved those at the time.

My first ever 1960 Fleer ! Not the most memorable design (I've been chasing the Mays, CLemente and Koufax '63 Fleer cards for some time now, but the cheap ones don't show up very often), but again, happy to add one to the collection.

Mark knows how much I love '72 Topps ! Three Orioles (and good ones too) and a player named Cookie. Can't beat that.

I'm also a big fan of '73 Topps, so yay

As for the PC portion :

A little bit of everything. Some oddballs (I couldn't track down that Barfield card. It's from a 12 card Grand slammers set, but I didn't find any trace of it), a minor leaguer, a pop up, a card from the 90s, one from the 2000's and one from last year.

Now THAT'S a jumbo card. It's 3 1/2 by 5" and I love it. Apparently it's from the Baseball talks set, that came with records, I suppose.

You can't tell from the scan, but those are oversize cards also (and roughly the same size as the Jimmy Key Topps one). This time from the All Star set. Really nice cards too.

A random oddball, from 1985 (cool card)

I have no idea why Mark included this one (along with some random 1990 Classic), but fun fact : Steve Luebber played for the Blue Jays. Ok, he only pitched one game. Ok, he only pitched one inning. Ok, he only pitched to 3 batters. And didn't retire any. He did retire after that.

Mark knows I love to rip open packs, regardless of their era. So it was really fun getting those three.

Hmmm okay, define "years to come" ?

If I remember correctly, this is the first time O Pee Chee came up with a design of its own, instead of just copying Topps. Kids would've been excited to pull a Juan Gonzalez card back then. *cough*

The UD pack yielded a card I needed for my PC, along with a couple Red Sox dupes. Which is fitting, since Mark collects Boston sports teams. I'll bet this was on purpose.

The basketball pack was loaded with stars, including a Jordan base card. I should have it graded (ok, even a perfect 10 would be worth $5, but still). Not every day you pull a fresh Jordan from a pack of 24 years old cards.

And finally here are....hmmm...what look like stamp-like mini cards of Wilt Chamberlain.

Thanks a lot Mark for all those fun cards, many of which I had no idea existed in the first place !