Blog Bat-Around: Top 5 Pack-Pulled Hits

I saw this particular blog bat-around idea on Night Owl’s blog, and he got it from Diamond Jesters (“I got it from Agnes, she got it from Jim, we all agree it must have been Louise who gave it to him…”) and I’m always receptive to suggestions which relieve me of the task of thinking of something to write about.

I’ll tell you up front, this is not going to be an impressive list.  My buying is relatively modest compared to a lot of collectors, and I don’t feel like I have the luck of the Irish in this category (even though I do have some Irish blood… well, going back multiple generations and 175 years)

The biggest hit I can remember pulling is one I never wrote about here on the blog, because I pulled it from a pack of 2014 Heritage and immediately put it in a box of cards I was getting ready to send off to COMC.

This was as close to the proverbial “I’m shaking!” moment as I’ve come, but it was more along the lines of “This sucker’s worth more than a couple of bucks.  Don’t drop it, you klutz!”  It remains the highest-priced card I’ve sold on COMC.  My only regret on this one is that I didn’t use the COMC credit from this card to buy one biggie biggie card for my own collection (effectively trading it for something like the 1970 Topps Nolan Ryan card I need to complete the Mets team set).

One hit I did write about on my blog is a 2021 Heritage “No Stars” variation of Jacob deGrom… The image below – the hit is the one on the right – is from an earlier blog post which wasn’t about the hit itself but the fact that the variation’s photo was cropped slightly differently (look at how much sky is between the top of deGrom’s cap and the card border).

I once pulled this Joe Kelly autograph from a pack of Bowman Draft Picks And Prospects and sold it on COMC… unlike the prior two, I kinda regret selling this one.  In my defense, at the time Joe Kelly was just some prospect-y guy I’d never heard of.

Jim Brosnan was not just a pitcher of the 1950s and 1960s, he’s also written several books about baseball including “The Long Season”, his diary of the 1959 season.

When I pulled this card in 2012 – it came out of the 5th Heritage pack I’d opened that year – I told myself that I should make a point of reading “The Long Season”. Guess what? I still haven’t read it.

My favorite of these top pack-pulled hits was this autograph of Bert Campaneris. I think this came from a pack of 2003 Topps, but I’m frankly not sure anymore.

I originally gave some thought to selling or trading this card, but I decided that I could find a spot in my collection for an autograph of an All-Star from my childhood.

So those are my top five… at least the ones I could remember or find mention of in my blog or COMC sales history.  Hopefully I’ve made someone feel better about their own modest collection.