War with JBF: Boxes 2 and 3 of Monster #5

It's pretty well known around the blogosphere that I love oddballs. As a kid, whenever I'd see one of those 33-card or 44-card sets at a toy store, a drug store, or a grocery store, I'd throw down the dollar or two and buy it. If I heard about a food company using cards as a giveaway, I'd suddenly have a craving for three boxes of granola or macaroni and cheese or potato chips.

With that reputation, I probably should not have been surprised by the contents of the second and third boxes of Monster #5 from Jaybarkerfan.  After the cruel attack on my home in box 1, it was clear that things could not get worse...well, unless the other two boxes were filled with cards of Will Clark and the 1981 New York Yankees.  

Thankfully, they were far better.

Box 2: The Unopened Packs

In case you were wondering, this box was still random.

JBF said so:

As a kid, I'd save up my nickels, dimes, and quarters to buy packs of cards. JBF gave me a kickstart toward a new pack:

I imagine that this nickel could still be used to buy things, even if it is anywhere from 77 to 102 years old. The date for this coin cannot be determined, however, as the date for the coin has worn off through normal circulation.  Originally, the date would appear on the shoulder on the heads side of the coin -- as raised numerals.  Those numerals frequently wore off through usual circulation.  But still, this is a cool coin.

On the other hand, I don't think I'll be able to get too many packs in return for this:

See, this is why it is good we have an international contingent in the blogosphere.  I can guess at what this 1 guilder note says, I could try using Google translate, but instead, I'm calling out to The Dutch Card Guy for help -- Jeroen, help!

The box, though, contained a ton of packs for me to open, so I'm not going to need to spend the nickel or my 1 guilder note any time soon.

Yes, those boxes were filled with unopened packs:

Laid out on the floor, that box looked like this:

And another one...

Laid out on the floor, that box looked like this:

And finally:

That box contained a bunch of non-sports packs:

In total, here's what all those packs looked like back in the priority mail box:

I tore through nearly all of those packs too.  I haven't opened all of them -- I did not open the non-sports stuff, and I saved a couple of rack packs for reasons that will be clear in a second. There were definitely some highlights for me in those packs.  

Actually, let's start with those rack pack highlights -- the ones I left unopened.  They remained unopened because they are going into player collections:

There were two rack packs with this Paul Molitor Glossy All-Star in them.  I chose to keep this one sealed because, well, it had two Hall of Famers on the front and because I've met Brett Butler when he lived here and he's a good guy.

Another Molitor rack pack with two Hall of Famers on the front that goes into the Paul Molitor collection.

Never mind the Hall of Famer in the middle -- it's Dan Plesac on the left that I care about, and it's that fact that puts this rack pack into the Plesac player collection.

Of course, I couldn't NOT open those other packs.  Here are a few highlights:

The Yount and Lucroy Gypsy Queens came in the same pack, which happens to me never. The other cards were needed for the team collection or for a player collection.  So, these packs overall were not all that fruitful for Brewers cards, but they still were fun to tear through.  

Box 3: Box Sets

Box 3 is best introduced by some Canadians:

Yes, that was Barenaked Ladies singing "Box Set" off their album "Gordon," which was released in 1992...which makes me feel even older than my 43 years.  

What did Box 3 look like?

More random doom?  Sign me up.  Just please, no more Gigli.

The first thing to pop out?

A 35-year-old Brewers program from the Opening Series against the Boston Red Sox in 1980.  The big news for the 1980 season was the fact that County Stadium had gotten a brand new scoreboard -- touted inside as begin the "World's Most Advanced Scoreboard System" and featuring "more than 32,000 40-watt light bulbs."  Indeed, that scoreboard appears in the first Major League movie on many occasions, including in this clip at the 1:09 mark.  

Those of us in Milwaukee chuckled that the advertisement for our local NBC station, WTMJ 4, stayed up.  Also, if you look closely during some of the early scenes in the movie -- the part where the Indians are sucking -- you can see that the clock on the scoreboard shows that the producers did not adjust the clock to proper game times.  Often, you can see that they were filming in the morning at Milwaukee County Stadium (if you can't tell it by the lighting, you can see the clock at 20 minutes till 11 AM at least once or twice).  

All thanks to that state of the art scoreboard with all the 40-watt light bulbs.

What else was in this box?  Ask my buddy Gus what he sees:

Yes, more unopened packs and some bags of randomness, but also two 800-count-sized boxes filled with boxed sets from the 1980s and 1990s!  Indeed, as you might be able to see, there were a few repacks in this box and a graded card.  

Of whom?

Former Milwaukee Buck Andrew Bogut. It's a 9.5! Maybe, though, I should try my hand at freeing him. I mean, I won't be heartbroken if I damage this card, to be fair, and I'm not sure that it holds all *that* much value as a graded card...we'll see.

Now, I haven't fully catalogued all of them, but I did find two sets from Woolworths that were $1.99 each back in 1986.  They featured 33 cards and one stick of gum.  And, as you can see in the photo below, they both each still had their gum inside.  Yes, 29-year-old gum, and in both boxes, they were stuck to the back of Gorman Thomas's card.  Thankfully, Thomas was a Mariner in this set!

At any rate, here's a photo showing the stacks of boxes that were in Monster #5, including the 29-year-old gum.  

Sorry, I threw the gum out so it won't be living on to be thrown into another trade package.

Actually, for that, I'm not sorry at all.  

Finally, let me show you a few highlights from the various repacks and bags and boxes in Monster #5, Box 3:

A Ziploc bag filled with Topps Coins from 1988 and 1990!

A 1973 Topps Cy Young card!

Inside that unopened pack of Topps Heritage was this Sandy Koufax insert of "A Legend Retires '66."  I get that it is a career retrospective insert set -- and a really nice photo at that -- but it confused me at first to see the caption as "Sandy Notches Shutout at 19."

One of the repacks Bipped me.  Not a full on "Bipping" but a single 1986 Topps Update card of the Bipster.

This was a JBF insert -- the 1968 Topps Tommy Davis game card.  In case you missed it, Topps Archives is going to use this design for an insert set this year.  It's a 33-card insert, and it contains three Brewers in it.  I hope I get a few of those thanks to JBF entering me into the Nachos Grande Case Break!

My first First Pitch insert.  Macklemore apparently threw out this pitch on a night last year for which the Mariners did a Macklemore bobblehead give away.  To be fair, he did a pretty good job of the pitch -- full wind-up and all.

Back to the box:

 My God does he look small.

Pat LaFontaine, whose career was destroyed by concussions.

Daren Puppa is sporting a perfect 1990 mullet. Between LaFontaine and Alexandr Mogilny on NHL 95 on Sega, I became a Sabres fan for a while.  Puppa was not all that good by that point.

What is one of these Baseball Card Magazine cards doing in a repack?

 This one is a card JBF threw in as well.  What Cabrera collector would like it?

Il Calcio!

A complete set from Fleer of the 1988 World Series cards.

And, to close things out, a Dave Nilsson from the Upper Deck "Final Edition" from 1991.  I broke open that box just to pull Nilsson out.

That wraps up Monster #5. I feel like things are actually going my way in this War right now. JBF should be getting to my last few sorties soon, and there is one monster remaining.  So, I am certainly not getting cocky about my chances here. 

But, again, I think my research and the depth of cards available to me here has helped me hold my own in a war that I thought initially would be a lopsided affair.

But, again, there's one more Monster to go.  We'll see how that turns out.

War with JBF, Monster #5, Box 1: Cruel and Unusual Punishment

While a number of protocols for war arose out of various conventions in Geneva, the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War is the one most people know as the "Geneva Convention" in war.  Within this Geneva Convention, prisoners of war "shall in all circumstances be treated humanely."  Specifically prohibited is, in particular, "cruel treatment and torture."

Similarly, most people who have taken a high school civics course recall that the Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution -- specifically the Eighth Amendment -- prohibits the government from imposing excessive bail, excessive fines, or cruel and unusual punishments, including torture.

After opening Monster #5, it would seem that Jaybarkerfan is violating each and every possible protocol against torture.  

Those are strong words, I realize, but there is no way I can describe Monster #5 otherwise. But, enough description.  Let's let the photos speak for themselves.

A reminder: this is what showed up on my front porch a week ago:

The bottom box of these four was Monster #4, the Hall-of-Fame-filled package loaded with Paul Molitors and Robin Younts.  The incredible contents of that box will be tough to top for me -- though I think I have tried valiantly with my most recent remits to Hazel Green.

But Monster #5 is a three-box monster.  Three boxes.  JBF numbered the boxes for me, so I followed directions.  

We are talking about boxes here, so this post will focus only on box 1.  

It started out innocuously enough.  Based on the randomness of this monster and as will unfold across the three boxes of this monster, I think JBF was trying to help me replenish my 1980s oddball supplies.  For instance, let's start with some unopened super large one-card packs from 1981:

Being the nosy pack searcher I was when I was a kid -- you know, when all you had to do to pack search on these giant photo cards was look closely at the pack through the outer packaging to see who is in the package -- I was able to determine that all five of these are Texas Rangers from 1981 from the Home Team Series.  

If you're interested in those, please let me know.

Then, still in its original wrapping was this 1990 Classic Board Game set:

But then, this package starting going down a different road.

On the football side, JBF threw in the results of one of those University of Texas blasters that Upper Deck put out, including this:

Then it went ugly.  In a move I have to question strongly -- what self-respecting University of Alabama fan would have this in his possession? -- I found a ticket stub.

I mean, I could understand it if it were a decent game. I will watch the SEC game of the week on CBS every weekend so long as it does not conflict with my Georgia Bulldogs game. But, what could possess JBF even to have this ticket stub?  

Did I mention it looks like it was used, meaning that it appears that JBF -- a confirmed Tider Nation member -- attended the Tennessee v. UNLV game?

It's difficult to accept, I know.

Box #1 is truly random, though. I mean, this is the first time I have ever gotten a Beanie Baby -- or knock-off Beanie Baby -- in a trade:

I also got my first OYO figure:  King Felix!

The box started drifting away from sports, slowly but surely.  It turned to the Sports Entertainment field.  As a little kid, I had tons of Hot Wheels cars in addition to my baseball cards. I don't know where those cars are now, but I can add a couple more to them from Kane and the Undertaker: 

Thumb wrestling, anyone?

One final wrestling item was a doozy:  hours and hours of wrestling:

This was not the only DVD in the box, but it was the only sports DVD in there.  In fact, there were many DVDs in the box.  First off, we have a movie classic that we did not have in our DVD collection:

And now, for a little breakdancing action:

After that, it degenerated quickly.  Seriously, I started to wonder which of these items that follows was the Monster for this box.  

Was it the obvious answer, Dr. Doom?

Or, was it the package of Star Wars Villains?

I personally think, though, the monster was one of these last three.

First Monster Nominee

This might be a one of one -- it could be the only "Special Collector's Edition" in existence of this movie.  I showed my wife this one and she said, "Why?"  For a movie that is ostensibly a chick flick and coming from a woman who DVRs Lifetime Movies, that says volumes.

Second Monster Nominee

Nuschler.  Really.  Having Will Clark's huge chin popping out of the package was scarier than any Jason, Freddy, or Mike Myers. And yet, I'm still not sure that this is the worst, scariest, cruelest item in the package.  

In fact, I'm almost certain that this last one is.

Third Monster Nominee

Number 78 on the list of the worst 100 movies as rated by IMDB users (100 is worst) is this abomination.  When this movie was released, 2,215 theaters showed it during its first week out.  By the third week of release, only 73 theaters were still showing it.  It was withdrawn after that third week.  In the notorious Razzie Awards in 2003, it "won" Worst Picture, Worst Actor, Worst Actress, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay, and Worst Screen Couple.  Then, in the 25th anniversary Razzie retrospective, it won "Worst Comedy of Our First 25 Years."

Wes, please be advised that I will be contacting the proper authorities to take out a warrant for your arrest for the atrocity you have committed by sending a copy of the movie "Gigli" over state lines.

In all seriousness, I'm not sure whether to be impressed with the cruelty or dismayed at trying to figure out how to get rid of this movie.  

I think I'll leave it in my neighbor's recycle bin. But don't you dare tell anyone I did it.