I picked up a couple pharmacy boxes at Wallgreens this morning thinking I’d go back to the well and do another FairField box break/faceoff, but a find in Box #2 had me saying, “Holy sh*t!”
Stan “the Man” Musial? Autographed? From a Pharmacy Box?!?!
Wow.
A closer look...
Yes, it’s a sticker auto.
Yes, it’s an unlicensed Leaf card (from 2015).
and Yes, the auto itself doesn’t look great.
But hey, I pulled a Stan Musial autograph from a pharmacy box!
Wait, hold on a second. The card was issued in 2015. Musial died in 2013. What? Some of you surely know this already. I didn’t. Apparently, Stan’s family and business people had him sign a ton of stickers in his waning years. Leaf bought the stickers and put out a product where you’re guaranteed a Musial auto with every box.
That’s morbid. It does diminish my enthusiasm for my hit some.
Musial, of course, was a first-ballot HOFer and one of the greatest and most consistent hitters in baseball history.
He’s a 24x All-Star (1943, 1944, 1946-1963), a three time World Series winner (1942, 1944, 1946), a three-time NL MVP (1943, 1946, 1948), he twice led the NL in RBIs (1948, 1956), and was a seven-time NL Batting champion (1943, 1946, 1948, 1950-1952, 1957).
What a resume.
The backstory on the auto explains the devaluation of Musial’s autograph over recent years (COMC listings have autos from this Leaf series in the $22-40 range) and potentially how it ended up in a $5 repack.
Still, to pull this out of a pharmacy box feels like a win.
Absolutely, any auto of a big name, let alone an all-time great like Musial, out of a pack like that is a big win. I mean, you paid $5 for that, and there are people buying high-end boxes and not ending up with something that good.
ReplyDeleteDude that's awesome! I would have been stoked
ReplyDeleteIt's always sad to think about how greedy his family members must be, they were more concerned about making money off of him, than they were just spending time with him during his waning years. As for the auto, at least you didn't get one of the ones that he messed up on, the ones that should've been thrown away, but instead were also bought by Leaf, and ultimately affixed to cards.
ReplyDelete