The Discovery of Forgotten Cards from the Collection

Card collections are of themselves, by definition, difficult to define.  It's a sprawling mass of purchases, trades, and discoveries put together in a way for you, as the collector, to keep track of or hide from view.   As with most of this ilk, I seem to have accumulated boxes beyond count, binders beyond reckoning, and enough plastic team bags to fill a landfill.   Sometimes cards are put there for years without being noticed or acknowledged as being important enough to be counted.  Other times, they were part of a set collection that never got its act together.  And other times, they are from boxes that were discovered after many years of hibernation in another state.  Below are those examples.

2002 Bowman Jose Bautista:   This is the rookie of the Jose Bautista that is on the Blue Jays.  I honestly had no idea that there was any connection between the two, mostly because of the lack of goatee.  What actually brought this card to my attention was an up arrow in a Beckett of all places, while browsing through one at the local CVS.    I dug through my boxes of many Bowmans and there it was.  I do like to have rookie cards of known players.  It's nice to know I didn;t overlook one, even if I did at first.

2001 Upper Deck Ichiro: No excuse for this one.  I love Ichiro cards.  It simply got wedged between two 1959 Topps cards' toploaders and only became unstuck recently.  That was a nice surprise to find.

1991 Stadium Club Jeff Bagwell:  This card I chased forever.   I have no count of how many 1991 Stadium Club series 2 packs I opened in search of this card.  I thought Jeff Bagwell was awesome in 1994.  One thing is certain from opening those packs, either this card was shortprinted or the Jeff Conine rookie was triple printed because that's all I ever got.  While going back through my '90s cards recently, I noticed I had two of these; I don't know how they got there....so I would like to thank the nostalgia elves for dredging them up for me.

So as we take account into this new collecting year, remember to reflect upon what used to be important (diamonds and Bryce Harper) from the recent past and strive to look even further back and take stock of that  which may not be treasured immediately upon arrival. You might find something that would astound you.