20 February 2014

Expos Extra: Showing My Dollar Tree Hand

Expos Extra: Extra Inaugural Edition

I got the idea for this feature while composing a post on my regular card blog. That post will be published simultaneously with this post. This new feature mostly for this blog is called Expos Extra. It will be for those older Expos cards of players that never called DC their home at least at first then I might start slipping and adding guys who transitioned onto the Nats in DC. I think now I can justify showing them off here at CWC. I know when I first started this blog I said some of those guys I wouldn't mention here, or show their cards. Well I will allow exceptions since they are all the Expos Franchise. I'm using the bloggers prerogative clause that states "My blog, My Rules... So there!"

On my regular blog in the last few days I mentioned the booty I got from a repack adventure at the Dollar Tree store near me (part 1, part 2). These are the Expos cards I got from the Repacks and well since the latest year of a card pulled was 2002 from the first pack NO Nationals just a few Expos.

This poker hand of cards are Expos ancestor cards of my Homie Team The Nationals. Since these guys never played in DC or called Washington their home I wasn't going to show the cards here at first. Finally I decided I would after coming up with the Expos Extra feature title. Plus it gives this blog some more potential which might help me post to it more often.

Now on to the cards:
1994 Pinacle 355 Ken Hill Expos
(Front and Back)
Pinnacle way back in the day made a very fine product. In recent years Panini (was Donruss) still makes a fine product including some in the Pinnacle name but without the official licensing from MLB so they can't use team logos or the team names. That means logos are airbrushed out, cropped out or covered up by card design.

1994 Upper Deck 274 Home Field Advantage Larry Walker Expos
(Front and Back)
It's all Upper Deck's fault. Yes there I said it, way back in 1989 they set a very high quality bar for the baseball card universe and now everything is in ruins but still very high quality. These Home Field Advantage cards are a sub-set within the main set. I have made a mental note to at least get all of them if not the complete main set.

1984 Topps 390 Tim Raines AS Expos
(Front and Back)
Mr. Raines was "The Rock" way before Mr. Johnson was, but both are cool. It is a shame that the Expos couldn't afford to keep the high salary high quality stars like Tim Raines on their roster. Had they been able to keep those guys in the early 2000s they would still be in Montreal and I wouldn't have a Homie team.

1997 Pinnacle 10 Jeff Fassero Mariners (Marked Mariners but in Expos Uni)
(Front and Back)
I have said before that I don't like this particular Pinnacle year's design because of the gold foil and being difficult to read the players names sometimes, especially when I first got one or two of these cards. When I first got this card I saw the Mariners name and logo and laughed a little. Then I studied the card a little more and discovered the weird picture border cropping they did to the profile picture on the back. I checked the other 1997 Pinnacle card I had gotten from that repack and it had the same weird "crop design". I don't like it. It doesn't do anything for the card.

1984 Topps 503 Elias Sosa Padres
(Front and Back)
The uninitiated are wondering why I have included this "riding into the sunset" (is that a Dimebox term?) Padres card on my Nationals blog in a post of Non Washington Expos? Well just check out who Mr. Sosa was playing for in 1979-1981. Yes Siree them Canadian Fellers up in Montreal.

Oh that's it I've shown my hand. Cash in your chips folks. The game is over.

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