A bit out of character for me . . .

I bought a 300-card lot of modern cards, mostly very recent cards, for under a dime each. These kinds of lots are actually very common on eBay. Cheap lots of recent year cards are plentiful as people who buy cards looking for hits need a place to dump their base cards. This one seemed different - lots of shiny and higher-end cards, not really any filler at all. Not something I would do all the time, but fun to do once in a while when a low bid actually comes through.

The one drawback was that this was mixed sports, not just baseball. Fortunately it was overwhelmingly baseball, and of the rest overwhelmingly football. The other sports, hopefully some of you readers can use all or most of the cards.

Here are a few mixed sports. That WWE Ringside Relics card is really cool. Jeff Hardy and Carlito, with a piece of the mat from Cyber Sunday 2006. Two hockey cards, Eric Lindros and Saku Koivu.  That one F1 card was actually a throw-in from a different purchase, I just lumped it in here. Two Goodwin Champions cards, Jack Johnson and actor Rob Paulsen. The rest are soccer cards, mostly Panini. Brenden Aaronson of Team USA, the rest are all European teams. Hoping a soccer collector can use all of those.

About 45 basketball cards. Maybe a basketball collector can use all of these? Or you have a favorite player, or pro or college team? I tried to highlight the big names (I don't know the basketball stars well) and shiniest cards. Everything here appears to be high-end or a star or both. Three Shaq cards in there. No players from the '80s or earlier.

Now for the stuff I am keeping, minus any dupes I come across. There were maybe 60-70 football cards. Mostly newer stuff, 90s and later. Some big names and lots of shiny cards. My favorite is the Jeff Blake in the middle. It catches the light beautifully, very glittery and sparkly. I have some baseball cards in that Score set but that is my first football.

There was some vintage football too. I haven't checked but I think I need most of these. These were the only older cards in the box.

On to baseball. These were the more standard cards in the box. If the lot was just like this I would have passed, but I'm happy to add cards like these once in a while. They're just not interesting enough for me to focus on collecting on their own merits.

Here are the biggest stars in the box. I actually probably have most of these, but the ones I have already should make solid trade fodder.

Here are some of the more intriguing high-end cards, rarer inserts and parallels. These are the kinds of cards I usually only see on Johnny's blog when he's getting great deals on thousands of them. A few one-offs here and there are fine for me.

So many shiny cards! The picture doesn't do them justice, each of these cards is refractory, shiny, sparkly, etc. Hard to get tired of cards like these, I love to stop and hold them in the light.

Zeroing in on a few more that caught my eye. Some of these I'm not familiar with and will have to look them up. The ones that say BASEBALL in big letters are quirky but fun, they look like they should be wax pack designs. Some other cards with fun large lettering too. I think neon looks great on a card and am excited for a Topps base release for the first time in ages. I like the throwback to the old Bazooka cards even though the formatting seems off on the card.

Some early 90s fun! I don't come across early Finest cards very often. I don't remember seeing Robby Thompson with a beard, either. That Will Clark is a Broder that appears to be ripping off a Pro Set football design. On the bottom are some more fun early 90s, cards, a Stadium Club insert celebrating George Brett's 3000th hit, and a 1990 Score Scott Bradley!

Wait, what?

My first thought was that the Bradley was just a random junk wax card that snuck it's way in. Then I figured it must be one of those ERR/COR variations that occur thoughout the set, though I didn't remember one for this card. On the back I noticed he was missing some stat lines, which I did not remember as one of the set's several errors. Curious, I looked it up and it turns out this was a promo card, issued before the '89 season was over. Hence, the blank stat lines. You'd never know it was a promo unless you were looking at the back closely. I don't always look at the backs, so now I am wondering if I have any others in my collection. Soon I'm going to go though my '90 Score set and all of my dupes, seeing if I happen to have any other promos.