Mailday from Fuji

A couple weeks ago Mark/SanJoseFuji (I’m pretty sure the most popular name on Card Twitter is Mark/Marc) asked me for my address so that he could send me a few cards for myself and my kids. Last week a pair of PWEs showed up and what was inside was definitely good stuff for the three of us.

We’ll start off with the things that are clearly for me. Three Stanford autographs of random guys who my kids have never heard of. Fuji also collects Stanford guys so I assume these are his duplicates.

Justin Armour was not in the binder yet. I’ve been hitting the  pre-1990s guys but haven’t put the list together of junk wax NFL cards of Stanford guys. Todd LaRocca is definitely one I remember watching play. It occurs to me that I should look through those mid-90s signature cards and see if there are any other Stanford players on those checklists (I do have Jed Hansen already). And that Steve Stenstrom signed $2 phone card is one of the wildest things I’ve ever seen. I don’t even know where to begin.

Explaining pay phones and phone cards to my kid is going to be tough enough. Adding in the idea of them being certified autographs of sports players? Weird. Plus a $2 phone card in the age of 20¢ phone calls would actually have been a decent number of calls.

The first batch of cards are all ones I have at some level. I don’t know if my Kellogg’s are in this nice of shape though so I’ll definitely be doublechecking those before I distribute them to the boys. I really like the UK minis and MLB Debut is one of those sets which I wish Topps still made.*

*My dream would be if the MLB portion of Bowman became MLB Debut so that those cards would never show up in Update, we could lose a lot of the rookie bloat in flagship, and a bunch of guys who normally don’t get cards would be able to get a real MLB card.

A half-dozen shiny cards for us to fight over. Though to be honest these all have my youngest’s name written all over them. My eldest is a traditionalist who likes his cards to be made of paper and emphasize the photography. My youngest likes the bright colors and shiny backgrounds and it’s always a bit heartbreaking to see him realize that those cards are not intended to be affordable for kids.

I’m not sure what they think about the logoless Panini stuff though. Is interesting to me to realize that this entire batch is non-licensed including that Lincecum where Upper Deck hilariously didn’t bother to do anything to remove the logos.

Finally, Fuji included a Tim Alderson relic. Very much a “who was this?” card now even though he would’ve absolutely been a big deal in 2008 after he was one of two Giants first round draft picks in 2007 (the other being Madison Bumgarner) and was on track to being one of the California League ERA leaders that season. In 2009 the Giants would send him to Pittsburgh in exchange for Freddy Sanchez. Sanchez became a key part of that 2010 World Series team. Alderson meanwhile topped out in AAA ball.

Thanks Fuji this was fun!