Am I a baseball card elitist?

I think not.

At least, not anymore....

Let me explain, since my collecting is based (mainly) on big lots picked up off eBay, you usually don't know what kind of cards you will find inside the boxes, which is also the fun part of this system.
Being it sort of a lottery, you can find some really nice / rare / valuable stuff, as well as "Junk Wax era" cards, ot just regular modern mass-produced cards.

But what you can also find inside those boxes can sometimes differ from all the above categories.

When I was going through my first lots, I wasn't very happy of finding these cards, because I (stupid me) considered them as "less noteworthy" compared to the major brands as Topps or Upper Deck.
But as time (and lots) passed, I started looking at them from a different perspective.

I started thinking "Wow, who knows what happened to this minor league unknown (to me) player?", "Where could be found these cards at the time they were issued?", or "This guy looks really awful on this pic!". But the idea that most frequently comes to my mind is "Wow, this is a very cool piece of cardboard".

I'm talking about cards like the ones that follow, cards that I really enjoy nowadays, and that I'd like to know more about, and obviously have more of them!

This beautiful picure of the great Wagner comes from 1991 Sporting News Conlon Collection set, a set that continued until 1995 and that comprises the total incredible number of 1.430 cards! All the cards I've seen from this set have black and white pictures, and have the black border on the front.
I also have a bunch of cards from what appears to be a subset, focusing on Babe Ruth, and the cards have a blue border on front.

The next card comes from 1990 CMC, a set featuring the players from 27 teams of that time playing in the minor league system. This beautiful card depicts Tino Martinez from the days when he played for the Calgary Cannons.
It's amazing the number of players that soon after this year became more know by playing in the MLB, to name a few there are Dave Justice (playing for the Richmond Braves), Andy Stankiewicz (who a couple years later was playing for the Yankees) and Kevin Maas (another soon to be Yankee).

This is just a small preview of all the great cards that were almost unknown to me, and maybe to some of you reading this post...the best thing about them is that there's still so many brands and teams and players out there, waiting to be discovered again and reunited to the rest of the respective sets!

I'll post some more cards, as soon as I'll get the chance to scan them! These pictures came directly from google.images, but I guarantee I have the phisical copies of both cards!

Thanks for reading and CIAO!!!

Remember to keep collecting!!