More Angels Scoring in the Upper Deck

Sometimes when I get as package like this in the mail I feel like I'm cheating on my team. I'm sure that everyone knows that I am the lone Mariners fan out here in the blog world. I take great pride in rooting for my team that has been down for quite a few years. Yesterday's package came to me and there was only 2 Mariners cards and the rest were all California Angels cards. Yes, as you all know I grew up in the part time spring training home of the Angels until the 1193 season, even though I left after school in 1989.

I must say that I don't really know how we as collectors survived before the Internet and social networking. The mailer that came in yesterday is from a man that I've never met bet we have been on Facebook for quite a while. He continues to find cards I need for my collections, and keep humbly accepting them. I constantly ask how I can repay him, and he asks me to pay it forward and help out other collectors. As of today in the Mariners Super Set, I now have all the cards from both Score and Upper Deck. These were the last two pieces to those puzzles:

The 1994 Score of Bret Boone with a guest appearance by Willie McGee was the last of the 314 Score cards. The 1998 Upper Deck of Jay Buhner Making History was card #568 of the 568 from Upper Deck. It is so awesome to have three makers down and only two to go. I am down to about 14 cards from Donruss to blow them up, and the big challenge to finish off the 49 cards from Fleer and their run of Mariners. I seriously think and hope that I will make this baby happen by the All Star break!!


Tom also seems to have some kind of connection to someone that is secretly hiding all the cards I need for my projects and slowly releases them to me. Inside the mailer was a stack of VINTAGE TOPPS. Just look at the beauty of these 50 year old LA Angels before they were the California Angels. You know that even if this was your most hated rival of a team, you wouldn't just drool all over yourself to find cards that are 50 years old coming to you!!

Being an equal opportunity giver of all things I need to make collections, there just happen to be a nice stack of 17 cards that came from a five year run of Donruss from 1982 to 1987. There were some fairly big names that were later in their careers that were Halos that I saw around Palm Springs Stadium in my junior high and high school days. Here is a look at about half of those Donruss cards that are now going into the binder with the other Angels that are the ones I want to collect.

It seems that most mail I get from Tom is somehow always got cards that will finish off years or sets or has some kind of finishing touch. Earlier it was the finishing of Mariners sets. Here is the last six Halos that were necessary to finish Fleer and add them to Score as finished Angels. The mountain behind Ron Romanick reminds me so much of my young days in the desert since the mountain range was always behind you. I love the look of Tim Foli and his 80's aviator glasses, so classic!

Not to be outdone, Upper Deck did a few cards from the Coachella Valley before the Angels left for the greener pastures of Tempe, AZ. I only needed two last cards from UD to complete them. If you sense the theme here, Tom finished them too. I had never seen the Von Hayes up close, but that bat shattering is an awesome pic by the cameraman. The last one is a guy that I always thought had one of the coolest names in Chili Davis. Until I found it was a nickname, I wondered what kind of parent would name their boy after something to eat.

I am so proud that the numbers for my collections continues to get smaller and smaller. It is hard to believe that I am down to only trying to find 63 cards for the Mariners to get me to the over 3400 base cards out there. Even though it was only a side project, i find myself down to needing 21 more Halos cards to put what was once just a thought of a collection to completion. Big thanks again to the Internet and social media for helping us collectors connect with each other to help fulfill our dreams, and collections!!