Care Package from Fuji

When I got home from New Jersey I had a veritable mountain of mail sitting on my desk. Among the mailers was a package from Fuji over at The Chronicles of Fuji. Inside I found a whole bunch of items that hit many of my different collections.

First up is a number of Hakeem Olajuwon cards. Those Upper Deck holograms were huge for me back in the day. These are the cards I coveted in the 90's. There's also a Manute Bol card hiding down there in the lower right.

I like lists, and those NBA Jam Session cards take a list and put it on cardboard. There's a lot of star power on those cards. The Trading Places insert at the bottom was new to me. I got out of collecting around the time that Olajuwon went to the Raptors, so I haven't seen most of his later cardboard.

Fuji also hit up my Nolan Ryan collection. I'm not a very good Ryan collector, but I like getting his cards when they show up. Out of this lot, I especially like the O-Pee-Chee in the upper right and the Starline card in the lower left. It's also nice to see a couple appearances by the Astros' rainbow uniforms.

There were plenty of Astros in the package, including the Killer B's, player collection guy Jon Singleton, and World Series hero George Springer.

Hologram technology makes another appearance here, with a Denny's oddball of Jeff Bagwell. I've probably eaten at Denny's three or four times in my life, so I wasn't ever exposed to these until I started reading card blogs. There's also a nice-looking Craig Biggio League Leaders card here.

My R.A. Dickey collection got a little boost, too, with a few different things, including two different Bowman Platinum parallels, a shiny foil Stadium Club card, a Little League card (from a Sports Illustrated for Kids magazine), and some Museum Collection and Ginter to round it out.

This slightly over-sized Kellogg's Raisin Bran card was one highlight of the package. I don't think I'd ever seen this one before, so it was a welcome addition to my Olajuwon hoard. It highlights his college career.

This 2017 Topps Series One Jackie Robinson Logo card of Alex Bregman is a solid chunk of cardboard. These were a one-per-blaster inclusion in the retail release of this product, so the card for a given team would be a pretty difficult find.

The last card in the package was this Jason Lane patch relic from 2002 Leaf Certified. This is the Mirror Blue parallel, numbered # 68 / 75. Lane played outfield in parts of 6 MLB seasons, with his only full season being 2005. That means he's played in four more World Series games than most of us have. He fell out of the MLB after 2007, but bounced around the minors and came back as a pitcher, throwing 10.1 innings for the Padres in 2014. I thought that was pretty wild, especially with the long gap in between. I believe he is currently a hitting coach in the Brewers organization.

Thanks for the package, Fuji! There was a lot of variety in here, and I enjoyed looking through all of the cards you sent!