Some 2014 and Some "2014"

Before I show off some new card pickups, I'd like to point out that with the first pitch in the bottom of the first inning today, the Cubs will have officially used all 25 men on their roster. Two games and a pitch is all it will take this season. Will this be the third year in a row with a team record for players used? Granted, each of the first two games went in to extra innings, but that's still a little ridiculous.

In yesterday's game they used 23 players, including four more Cubs debuts. The only two left out were Opening Day starter, Jeff Samardzija and today's starter, Jason Hammel. That makes eight new potential ATCRCS cards if/when I get back to making those.

The good news? Cubs pitchers have only given up five runs (four earned) in 25+ innings. The bad news? Cubs batters have only scored three runs in 26 innings. This will make for a heck of a card in my new custom set.

OK, on to the cards.

Sometimes I do a eBay search, follow some links and suddenly an hour has gone by. I have no idea how I came across these but they all came from the same seller with no additional shipping beyond the first win. Gets me every time.

The first lot was for five of the 2014 Heritage Box Topper/Loader Advertising Panels. And that's kind of how it was listed, no names of any of the players featured. I think it caught my attention because the main picture had a Cub.

Peter Bourjos, Andrew Lambo, Stolmy Pimentel, Chris Rusin

Edwin Encarnacion, Buddy Boshers, Matt Shoemaker, Juan Uribe

Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Yasmani Grandal, Logan Morrison

Jered Weaver, Taijuan Walker, James Paxton, Marco Estrada

There were two copies of the last one in the lot. I placed the minimum bid and ended up being the only one. Does anybody know how many different ones of these there are? I didn't see any other Cubs featured but if somebody knows of any, please let me know. All of them had the same back:

These last two cards fall into the "2014" category. With quotes. Or maybe that should be an asterisk. These are 1965 Topps buy backs, foiled stamped with a 50th Anniversary logo.

Frank Baumann and Dick Ellsworth

I was really happy when I won them for the minimum opening bid of $.99 each but when I got them I was a little disappointed. Not with the seller, but with myself. It was kind of that same feeling I got when I picked up a couple of those blank back 1/1 cards Topps sells directly through eBay. Why did I buy these?

The cards are in pretty good shape corner and edge wise. The centering and crookedness are a little off (that's not my crop job) but without the 50th Anniversary stamping they probably would have sold for more at a card show.

I'm still pretty happy with the pickup overall though. For about $5 total, I got a pair of cards that were teenagers before I was born, a pretty neat panel with a Cubs player and a few extras for trade bait. Plus, the auction ended on Sunday and I had these in hand, from California to Virginia, after Wednesday's mail delivery. Not bad!

Here are the backsides for the buy backs. No additional stamping.