bears

My first Jimmy Garoppolo cards

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I’ve kept a watchful eye on QB Jimmy Garoppolo since his college days at Eastern Illinois University. Sadly he was drafted by my least favorite team: the Patriots. There was rumors of him being traded to the Bears but nothing ever came of it. Garoppolo was born in Arlington Heights, IL which would have been quite the homecoming had he made it to the Bears. Thankfully he got traded to the 49ers who I think will really turn things around next year with Jimmy running things.

I am mainly interested in collecting him because he went to Eastern Illinois University which is my alma mater. Other notable football players from EIU are Sean Payton (currently the head coach of the Saints) and Tony Romo (former Cowboys QB and now TV analyst). Not bad company! I figured I’d better get a few of his cards before they skyrocket. I searched around eBay and a lot of stuff was way out of my budget especially the graded cards. I ended up bidding on a 9-card lot of ungraded 2014 cards and eventually won the auction.

I really like the cards where he’s in his Eastern Illinois uniform. I will have to pick up a few more of them down the road.

Cards in this order:

2014 Bowman #105 Jimmy Garoppolo RC New England Patriots
2014 Press Pass #20 Jimmy Garoppolo
2014 Prestige #252 Jimmy Garoppolo RC New England Patriots
2014 SAGE HIT #10 Jimmy Garoppolo
2014 SAGE HIT #60 Jimmy Garoppolo NL
2014 Topps #432 Jimmy Garoppolo RC New England Patriots
2014 Topps Strata #141 Jimmy Garoppolo RC (Passing) New England Patriots
2014 Upper Deck #62 Jimmy Garoppolo
2014 Upper Deck Star Rookies #15 Jimmy Garoppolo

Target and Meijer run

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My wife and I had some errands to run so we stopped by Target and Meijer. Target has a much better baseball card selection than Meijer. I hadn’t bought any Bowman cards for awhile and they had some small packs so I got some of those. I also grabbed some Stadium Club as I wanted something different. Kris Bryant (on the box) kept staring at me, so I picked up a 2017 Topps series 1 hanger pack. (because I don’t have enough Series 1 stuff this year!) My wife picked out the Donruss football cards, but she gave them all to me after pillaging the Colts players. 🙂

2017 Bowman Baseball (4)
2017 Stadium Club Baseball (2)
2017 Topps Baseball Series 1 Hanger (1)
2017 Donruss Football (5)

In the Bowman packs, I landed a Tomoyuki Sugano /499 refractor card.

In the Stadium Club, I found an Anthony Rizzo card with an awesome picture of him standing on the wall to make the catch at Wrigley Field!

As for the Topps Series 1 cards, the only thing I really liked was the Toronto Blue Jays team card. Why a team card? Because this one was blue (well they are the Blue Jays) and has a serial # of 21/50! I’ve never found a blue card like this before so that’s really neat.

As for the 2017 Donruss football cards, it was a mixed bag. I landed my first Mitchell Trubisky card in the form of a Gridiron King which looks pretty snazzy. Not shown is a few other Bears players including a Walter Payton card. There were a lot of duplicates in the packs we picked up, so that was disappointing.

I found a Tony Romo card which didn’t excite me that much until I flipped it over and noticed a mention about my alma mater (Eastern Illinois University) on it.

I attended Eastern Illinois University during the same time that Romo was there in 2000/2001. While visiting the campus on September 11, 2010, I snapped a picture of the retired #17 Romo jersey next to the retired #18 jersey of Saints head coach Sean Payton.

FYI: Did you know that Patriots backup / future quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo played college football at Eastern Illinois University? I’d love to get some of his cards, especially ones showing him in an EIU jersey. 🙂