During the first two weeks of June I do contract work for the Illinois High School Association broadcasting play-by-play for the state softball state championships. This year marked my 11th year at the state finals.
Within the last couple years everytime I take a roadtrip I peruse Craigslist in that area for any card sales. I didn’t find any decent card listings for the Peoria market (where I was working), but did find a collection of about 100,000 cards in Bloomington.
My first thought was it was going to be all junk era, so I sent the seller a message. The seller said it was all within the past ten years, and several different sports, not just baseball. The other sports and non-sports cards turned me off (Olympics, Country Music, Beach Boys, etc.).
However, he had large boxes of about 5,000 cards each for the White Sox, Cardinals and….CUBS! Sold.
It is a great lot for trade bait as I am fairly low on certain football teams, and I have a couple bulk White Sox card collectors. It’s taken a month to finally pull the Cubs and make a count. I haven’t even cracked open most of the boxes due to the softball broadcasts and then my card room project. This past week I counted out the two main Cubs boxes and cake up with 5,750 Cubs baseball cards.
Eventually I will get through the rest of the boxes. There are some other Cubs cards mixed in.
Going through the Cubs, I didn’t expect what was inside. Mostly late 1990’s into the 2000’s, which is probably the era that I have the least of, generally speaking. I don’t think I’ve seen these Corey Patterson Topps Tek cards from 2000.
How about this?! Not expecting to pull a 2016 Bowman Chrome Gleyber Torres.
I’ve seen Upper Deck Fun Pack cards, but this Rick Wilkins, with Mark Grace making a cameo is new to me.
Panini Golden Age and Tristar Obak were products that I didn’t buy. Don’t think too many others did, either. Can’t imagine there are too many William Wrigley Jr. baseball cards.
Speaking of Obak, this is a really cool Josh Vitters card from 2009.
This is a beauty of a card. Kyle Farnsworth 1999 Upper Deck SP Prospects.
Gotta love Earl Cunningham. This ProCards set design from 1991 is awesome.
Some color! Scott Maine 2011 Bowman Chrome green shimmer refractor.
Here’s a card of a guy I had never heard of. There’s not too many prospects, or even general minor leaguers from the Cubs organization dating back to the mid-1980’s I haven’t heard of. Who’s Jeff Inglin???
It says Chicago Cubs at the top. Oh wait, look at the first sentence below.
Inglin was a White Sox prospect. So, that’s an error. Here’s a set that just drives me crazy. 2008 Upper Deck Documentary. A card for each game of the 2008 season. I started creating custom cards this year in the same vein…until the Rookies App crashed and would not open for me. I lost 160 custom created cards. Still bitter.
Anyway, back to the Upper Deck set from 2008. Awesome idea. Simply awesome. Final product, not so much. Why? Well, I wanted to search out for Game 1, because I still have great memories of the 2008 season opener. Newly signed free agent Kosuke Fukudome hit a game-tying home run in the 9th inning. So, who does Upper Deck feature on the Game 1 card?
Alfonso Soriano?!?! Even the subtitle states, “Newcomer has impressive debut with 3-for-3 effort.” That newcomer wasn’t Soriano! This was a trend throughout the entire run of cards that featured photos that had nothing to do with the title on the front of the card.
One Million Cubs Project Stats
Thursday’s (7/4/2019) Cards: 5,750
Thursday’s (7/4/2019) Packages: 0 (count from Craigslist purchase)
January’s Cubs Count: 9,343
February’s Cubs Count: 8,980
March’s Cubs Count: 15,704
April’s Cubs Count: 11,651
May’s Cubs Count: 7,273
June’s Cubs Count: 7,690
July’s Cubs Count: 5,752
Total Trades/Donations: 161
Trade States of Origin:
Arizona (2)
Alabama (2)
Arkansas
California (11)
Colorado (2)
Connecticut (9)
Florida (9)
Georgia (3)
Idaho (2)
Illinois (14)
Indiana (4)
Iowa (2)
Kansas
Kentucky (2)
Maryland (7)
Massachusetts (4)
Michigan
Minnesota (2)
Missouri (2)
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey (10)
New Mexico
New York (13)
North Carolina (5)
Ohio (6)
Oregon (2)
Pennsylvania (4)
Rhode Island
South Carolina
Tennessee (4)
Texas (6)
Virginia (2)
Washington (4)
West Virginia (3)
Wisconsin (10)
Countries of Origin
Korea (1)