The Society for American Baseball Research held our 51st in person convention this past week, and as always the event was wall-to-wall fun, offering everything a baseball fan could want except sleep! Here at SABR Baseball Cards we will leave it to others to chronicle the awesomeness of Nancy Faust, Jason Benetti, Maybelle Blair, Ozzie Guillen, Mike Veeck, and the like (as if anyone is like Mike Veeck or Maybelle Blair!), and here we will simply recap the event’s Hobby happenings, including the solving of a
In a perfect world, we’d say that all who attended received a SABR 51 “Fun Pack” in their tote bag, but with 500+ attendees and only about 300 packs, it was more like 60%. Fortunately, as not everyone is a collector, there were many instances where the “haves” donated their packs to the “have nots” in the spirit of generosity that tends to characterize all things SABR.
Similar to Hobby “repacks” the SABR 51 “Fun Packs” tended to offer a mix of good and bad as well as old and new. That is, the same pack might include a 1964 Topps Jim Bouton, a 2023 Topps Shohei Ohtani, and thirteen bright yellow 1991 Fleer cards of players with negative WAR. One pack even consisted entirely of 1990 Upper Deck Darryl Strawberry cards!
Number 5 Type Collection