Packs That Just Showed Up #1

Hello, friends.

 

Let me set the scene.

One night last weekend my wife got together with one of my cousins and a mutual friend for a girls' night out.  The next morning, I walked downstairs and saw a little stack of baseball card packs rubber banded together and sitting on one of the steps.  The first few hours of daylight were filled with taking kids to various activities, so we didn't see each other until the afternoon.  I was pretty sure these packs weren't mine, though I wouldn't put it past myself to leave some cards on the stairs and not remember doing so.  When I asked where the packs came from, I got a delightful answer.  

My wife explained that one of my cousin's other friends had these packs for some odd reason, didn't want them anymore, and didn't really want to throw them away.  Not sure how the topic even got brought up between this woman and my cousin, but she made a heads-up play by saying, "Oh, I have a cousin who is really into baseball cards, maybe he would want them."  And that's how they ended up with me.

If you look closely, you can see some evidence of tampering.  Yes, these packs are all open.  My plan here is to "rediscover" their contents and share them in this space.  I put it to a vote over on my BlueSky account as to which pack I should open first.  Three people voted, and all three picked a different pack, so I went with the quickest comment, which was a push to the the 2007 Topps Updates & Highlights pack.

Here we go.

 

UH269 Grady Sizemore

UH55 Mike Maroth

UH237 Justin Verlander

UH281 Classic Combo Cole Hamels / Russell Martin

So far, so good.  I completed this set back in the fall of 2007, so these are all doubles to me.  Quality players in this bunch.  Let's continue.

 

MHR471 Mickey Mantle Home Run History 417

This one is new to me.  I obviously got a bunch of these back in the day, but I must have traded them all away of sold them.  This will go into my 2006-2008 monster box.

UH176 Kurt Suzuki

Uhhhhhh, OK?

Yeah, there's no foil on the front of this card.  I might have something here.  Maybe there's a Suzuki collector out there who would pay for this production error RC.  I'd imagine he had/has a pretty nice following as a one-time All-Star and World Series champion.

UH206 Tom Glavine

UH130 Eric Gagne

UH195 Marcus McBeth

More missing foil.  Someone's got to be willing to slide me a couple of bucks for that Glavine, right?

UH142 Jeremy Guthrie

UH87 Jeff Karstens

UH304 D'Angelo Jimenez

Checklist 3

Well, that was weird.  All of the cards after the mid-pack insert missing the foil stamping.  The black voids above and below the photos make these cards feel eerie, like the text is being redacted.  Maybe these cards are in witness protection.  Check back here for more packs, perhaps we'll get some more egg noodles and ketchup.