A Crocodile Size Surprise!

A few weeks ago, I received an email from Greg (from Crocodile Sports Cards) saying that he found something at his local hobby shop that he thought I'd enjoy.  Flash forward a few days and then this big box showed up!

That's a huge box full of nothing but Barry Larkin cards*

*there were actually two non-Larkin cards that snuck in but you get the idea.

For the past several days, I've spent a solid chunk of time sorting through that box beginning by putting the cards in stacks by year.  Here's a sampling of that step in progress:

As I sorted the cards out by year, I started to wonder if there were going to be any cards in the box that I would actually need!  It wasn't until the final bunch of cards that I pulled out of the box that I found this card which I knew at a glance I needed:

That's a 2013 Panini Cooperstown card that I didn't recognize at all.  I'm happy to report that I was correct in that it was a card I needed - so yes, the box would produce at least one needed Larkin card!  

As you might expect from a random box of cards of a single player, there were a lot of duplicates within the box.  In fact, check out the stacks of Larkin rookie cards that popped out of the box:

Yeah, that's a lot of wood grain!

Of course, I have all of the 1987 Barry Larkin cards (at least, all that I'm aware of existing) so the above cards were all duplicates.  I decided to upload all of the duplicates into TCDB thinking I'd perhaps end up being able to trade with a fellow Larkin collector on there but that decision panned off in a different, unexpected way almost right away!

After uploading the 1987 cards, I moved on to 1988 and quickly discovered another card that I needed!

Okay, obviously I have plenty of 1988 Donruss Larkin cards but this one was slightly more special because it was the "no period" variation on the card back!

Yep, a missing period after Leaf, Inc (see the red circle above) means it's a different card within my Barry Larkin collection.  If you don't like that (and I don't blame you, fwiw), then don't look at TCDB for late 80s, early 90s cards as you'll find all sorts of dumb stuff like that differentiating different cards!

Moving on up to 1991, I found another card I needed that I thought I owned already:

Okay, you can't actually tell from the front of the card that I need this one.  Instead, you have to flip over the card and see who published it...this one was from the International Playing Card Co. which is different than the very similar card (see here) published by the US Playing Card Co.  Here's the card back for further proof:

All things considered, three new-to-me cards is pretty good but the box wasn't done yet as it wasn't too much later until I found this guy:

Once again, I couldn't tell this was a needed card until I flipped it over and realized that is the error version with the wrong card number (the error card is #149 instead of #150).

Sticking with Pacific, I did find one more card I needed - a red parallel from 2000 Pacific Crown Royal:

I love the die-cut cards for this particular set and the dark red parallel looks great for Reds cards in particular!

Finally, while I was sorting through that box I also sorted through a small stack of random Barry Larkin cards that had accumulated on my table (a stack, mind you, that I thought was all duplicates).  Of course, you can probably guess by now that I ended up finding another new-to-me card and you'd be right!

That's a Topps Archives card that I thought was a regular base card until I noticed that the logo was a Topps 70 logo instead (making this a short print need)!  

A HUGE thanks to Greg for thinking of me and sending that box of Larkins.  I had a lot of fun going through the box, ended up with a lot of new trade bait, and I knocked off a few cards from my Barry Larkin want list.  I'd call that a success, especially when you consider I have nearly 2,000 different Barry Larkin cards at last count (I'm way behind on getting them all posted to my blog)!