Tuesday, January 22, 2008

2002 Select Rookies & Prospects - Jeremy Lambert

When I got back into collecting full time, I tried to make up for lost time. I was suckered into those giant boxes of assorted packs at K-Mart. It was nice, at the time, because I was happy to see what I missed. Apparently, I missed a lot of crap. Which is fine by me, but I also missed some good releases.

This autographed card of Jeremy Lambert, I found hot glued to the side of the cardboard infrastructure inside the box full of old packs. That really can't be good for the card. It took a full five minutes to pry the clear wrapper that was "protecting" this card from the inner-workings of this cheap box. Amazingly, the card showed no damage for all the effort.

Jeremy's autograph looks like a fat man trying to hold onto a motorcycle that popping a wheelie. The fat man is not very successful as he tries to hold on to the back tire. That's gotta hurt! That's slightly more imaginative than Jeremy's baseball career. After spending many years in the St. Louis organization, he found a home with the Boston organization in 2004. He never made it into a major league game and he was out of baseball in 2004.

What a crappy card to be hot glued to a cardboard maze inside a cheap box. Did Jeremy envision his card to end up here when he autographed that sticker? My guess is no. He probably thought it would be going for thousands of dollars, many years into the future after a great Hall of Fame career that gave him enshrinement with 100% of the vote. Nolan Ryan, Tom Seaver and Carlton Fisk did not get 100% of the vote when they went into the Hall of Fame, neither would you have.

What was I expecting for a cheap box of leftover packs? I have no idea. I was looking for a cheap, easy way to reconnect to the hobby. I guess in that respect, the cheap box has succeeded. I did get some interesting cards in that box, just no other autographs.

2 comments:

dayf said...

I got one of those K-Rappy K-Mart blasters too! I don't remember what auto I got but it's in that same set. It was just as weak though.

The first thought I had when I saw that sig was the Led Zeppelin ZoSo logo, but I can see the fat guy holding on for dear life now.

Steve Gierman said...

I didn't want to soil Jimmy Page with the bad mojo from this card.