This series has quickly become the most read and commented series I’ve put together. I’ve found it easier to share my collection through blogging and Twitter and this particular series has covered all of my favorite pieces that I keep locked in my fireproof safe. If you missed Parts 1 and 2, I will link them for you here.
While I say that these are my favorite pieces, I should mention that I have a few others that I treasure that don’t fit in the fireproof. Maybe that will be the finale to this series but I’ll have to re-title it in some unique way. I’ve got 7 more items in this part and will have 7 for part 4 before we can get to a finale so I won’t get too far ahead of myself. Let’s dive back in!
2013 Panini Prizm Draft Picks Kris Bryant Auto – This is currently the only Bryant auto I have. I ripped through 4-5 boxes of this stuff to pull one too. The box comes with 4 autographs and I pulled a lot of guys who will never see a Major League Baseball field. I pulled some other decent names as well though with Gregory Polanco and DJ Peterson. I have a Eugenio Suarez auto from the set and didn’t know anything about him until this year and he’s on fire for my fantasy team so I guess you just never know. I would love to have a Bryant in a Cubs uniform but for now, this one will suffice. I’m not going to complain about having a Kris Bryant auto, no matter what uniform he’s wearing. He has a very good signature, even if this particular picture doesn’t show it well. It’s also on card which is great! You can still pick up these boxes for less than $50 and there are some solid autos to be had!
2011-12 Upper Deck Exquisite Magic Johnson Championship Bling Auto – I love this piece! The auto is gold and it’s #’d to 50! I’ve been a Magic Johnson fan since I was a wee lad. He always has a smile on his face and made some of the most amazing passes I ever saw. I still vividly remember when Magic announced his retirement due to contracting HIV. I was in 9th grade and HIV was a very real and scary issue during that time, not that it isn’t still in 2017. But in 1991, we didn’t know very much about the virus and it was nothing more than a death sentence in a 14 year olds mind. I remember Magic coming back for an all-star appearance and winning MVP. And then he came back to play on the 92 Dream Team. Magic has always been superhuman to me so having an auto was a goal of mine. One of my favorite documentaries (and I love a good doc) was “Magic & Bird – A Courtship of Rivals.” I could watch it everyday and never get tired of it. I really love this card and it will always have a special place in my collection.
Panini Dirk Nowitzki Auto – This is the most recent addition to my fireproof collection. This one came courtesy of a great friend, Nate Gunderson (@GundersonNathan) this past week. Nate and I pulled off a really sweet deal as I sent him a short stack of Texas Longhorn Autos and he returned the favor with this, a Chris Conley 1/1 Auto, Herschel Auto, Knowshon Moreno patch and other great Atlanta players. I’ve wanted a Dirk auto for a very long time and I’ve always heard he was great TTM but I’ve just never sent him anything. When I got this, it immediately went into the fireproof and that’s where it will stay for life. I was in the prime of my basketball life when I started hearing about Dirk playing in Germany so it was a very intriguing story to me. He was a 7 footer that could shoot like Bird! I was skeptical like others but all he did was come over to the NBA and amass 30,000 career points with his unstoppable fadeaway. That’s good enough to place him 6th all time in NBA scoring! He cemented his legacy with me when he took down Lebron and the Heat in the 2011 NBA Finals. I love Dirk and love this card! Nate came through in a huge way on this one!
2013 Topps Museum Andrew Luck Patch/Auto #’d to 55 – I haven’t mentioned Luck much on my Twitter feed but that’s because we haven’t made it to football season yet. I love my Falcons and my Dawgs in the NFL but Andrew Luck is my favorite QB in the league. He might be my favorite player behind Gurley and AJ Green. I have had Luck on 4 of my fantasy football teams since the first year he started. Thankfully, those are keeper leagues so I don’t see myself letting him go anytime soon either. My daughter and I have matching Luck jerseys that we wear from time to time as well. I was thrilled to see the Colts take a player from my high school in little ole Camilla Ga, Grover Stewart, in this week’s NFL draft. Grover is a DT and Luck needs some help on the defensive side of the ball! Those 400 yard passing games need some defensive support! This piece is my only Luck auto but I do have a ton of his cards. I suppose he might be my NFL PC but I haven’t really been keeping track of the numbers. I have this one though and it’s my favorite of him!
2015 Topps 60th Anniversary Y.A. Tittle Auto – I don’t necessarily have a strong connection to Y.A. Tittle but I’ve been a football fan all my life and I know his body of work and also know he’s in the Hall of Fame. I knew he was a legend at LSU and the MVP of the Ice Bowl (1947 Cotton Bowl). He played for the Colts, 49er’s and Giants during his career and won 3 MVP awards in 4 years in NY. What I didn’t expect to find out about him until some recent research was that he created the phrase “alley-oop” in sports. That’s quite a claim to fame regardless of his on the field accomplishments. I pulled this card in a pack of the 60th Anniversary Topps Football set and was excited to have a legendary Hall of Famer from the 50’s to add to my collection.
1990 Score Baseball Bo Jackson (with football pads) Graded 10 – This may be the most iconic card I own, along with the ’89 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. My buddy Kin (@beansbcardblog) even uses it as his Twitter avatar. This card has always been one of the most appealing cards of all time for me. The black and white was unique in a modern day card set but having a two sport player wearing shoulder pads while holding a baseball bat was awesome. There’s another version in the ’89 Football set with Bo in a batting stance and I own that one in a Gem Mint 10 as well but it isn’t as widely recognized as this one. Bo was known as one of the greatest athletes of our era. He’s also known for a few iconic images; breaking a bat over his knee, scaling a major league fence and this one. If I could only keep one card from my entire collection, this might be it. But I don’t even want to think about that scenario so let’s move on.
1955 Bowman Mickey Mantle – This card is obviously in very poor condition. It even has some tape across the front of the card but it wasn’t ripped because the back is not taped. It’s creased but I wish the front looked like the back. It has seen its better days but it is an authentic 1955 Mickey Mantle and the only Mantle card I own that isn’t a reproduction. The best part is that I picked it up for $20 from Smiley’s Antique and Thrift Shop around Lake City, Florida on my way home from Disney one year. We had always seen the big Yellow Smiley Face sign but we had never stopped. We finally did and I wound up making one of the proudest card purchases I’ve ever made! The only negative from that trip is that there was a handful of other 1955 cards that I didn’t really pay attention to because I saw this Mantle. There weren’t any other big stars but there were some in much better condition that were very cheap. I should have splurged that day and bought several of those ’55 beauties. Even with that regret, this Mantle stands as the oldest card I own and is the one player that is on most collector’s bucket list from that era. I really don’t care about the condition. It’s an original Mick and that’s enough for me!
We made it through 7 more and there’s one more post coming your way from the fireproof. I think I have saved the best for last but it’s really hard for me to pick favorites in this batch because they are all very special to me. I will promise you there are some great ones in the next post. Thanks for checking out another edition of “What’s In The Fireproof?”
J-Dub