A Quick Heads up

I know that I don’t have a ton of wrestling fans reading this and I think there’s even fewer wrestling card collectors, but since there are some of you out there I just wanted to pass along a little heads up.  I got word today from TRISTAR that they would only be able to send out a blaster box due to the quick sell out of the new TNA New Era product.  I have a feeling that this might be a product that follows in the steps of Topps’ UFC sets as far as price after release goes.  There’s an amazing list of autographs to pull out of this product and I see it as being something that picks up in popularity as box breaks start to show up online and people see the Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair cards coming out of it.

I’m very appreciative that TRISTAR is sending something over to review and I should have that blaster box break in a couple of days.  I was always planning on buying a box for myself, but I know that I won’t be able to do it right at the release so I’m glad that I’ll have some cards to show off here on the blog.  I just hope that the box prices haven’t climbed too high once I am able to pick up a box.

Technorati Tags: TNA Wrestling,TRISTAR,2010 TNA New Era,Hulk Hogan,Ric Flair

Box Break: 2006 Fleer Baseball

I wanted to open a low cost box with a lot of varied cards in it and decided on 2006 Fleer Baseball.  The normally cheap box was even less expensive due to a Blowout Cards special.  I remembered how much fun it was to open boxes of Fleer products in the 90s and hope to find more of the same from this box even though it was Upper Deck in Fleer clothing.

The base cards are a little bland.  My biggest beef is with all of the blank space down at the bottom of the card.  Did the bars for the player name and position really have to be that big?  Other than that, this is fine for a flagship set.

What I used to love about Fleer sets, especially Fleer Ultra, were the wide range of fun insert sets that you’d find.  There would be foil, die cuts, glitter, acetate, faux leather, wood, etc.  Unfortunately, this set doesn’t come close to living up to the Fleer legacy.  There are a variety of insert sets, but they’re all plain and none of them really stand out.  At the price I paid, I can’t complain, but I would have hated paying full price for this.  It’s yet another Upper Deck that’s not worth anything near the original retail price.

I’ll start things off with the Team Leaders cards.  You get two studio shots on each card; one of a pitcher and one of a hitter.  "Team Leaders is in gold foil and that’s about as fancy as these cards get.  This box contained 11 Team Leaders cards and while I didn’t pull the Red Sox, I did get the Mariners, Marlins, Mets, Rockies, Braves, Royals, White Sox, Blue Jays, A’s, Padres, and Phillies.  The majority of the cards from this box are up for trade so if you see anything you like, drop me a line.

Fleer has done some cool Lumber Company cards in the past, but this one doesn’t compare.  The design is a nice one and on its own it would be fine, but you can’t help but to compare it to Lumber Company cards of the past.  This box contained Miguel Cabrera, Manny Ramirez, Vlad Guerrero, A-Rod, Troy Glaus, Aramis Ramirez, Eric Chavez, Alfonso Soriano and Ken Griffey Jr.  I’m being unfair to this insert set because it does look nice.  I just wish that there was something in this box that was more than just gold foil.

Like the majority of the insert sets in this product, this one also returns from previous years.  Upper Deck did themselves a disservice by doing this because you can’t help but to think of better looking versions of these sets.

The Smoke ‘n Heat inserts have flames on the bottom and a red fire baseball in the background.  This set focuses on pitchers and I pulled the following: John Smoltz, King Felix, Carlos Zambrano, Pedro Martinez, Curt Schilling and Roy Oswalt.

This is the first insert set that I really dislike the look of.  The red background just doesn’t do it for me.

The good thing about a set such as this one with numerous insert sets is that they get to focus on lots of things you may not usually see insert cards devoted to.  This next set focuses on some of the best fielders in the league.

The Smooth Leather insert set is very basic with a foil stamp.  This box contained Greg Maddux, Mike Mussina, A-Rod, Ichiro and Scott Rolen.

One thing that you always found plenty of in Fleer sets were parallel cards.  Fleer Ultra always had gold medallion parallels and you’d find various other parallels in their others sets.  There is a parallel version of the base set, but you don’t get many of them in a box.  My box only contained three of the parallel cards which are gray on the left side and have a glossy front as opposed to the non-glossy base cards.

The three player on my parallel cards were J.T. Snow, Noah Lowry and Alfonso Soriano.  These parallels aren’t numbered and even though there are only three in a box, I don’t see there being much demand for these cards.

The next insert set is the only one that had any kind of flair to it.  Not Flair as in super thick, super glossy cards, but you will find a little bit of etched foil on these cards.  That’s saying a lot for this set.  Sorry to keep harping on the fact that Upper Deck phoned it in on these inserts, but that’s the feeling that you get opening one of these boxes.  It’s similar to opening a box of 2010 Topps and wishing there were only half as many insert sets.

The Stars of Tomorrow cards are pretty nice looking.  You’ve got team colors, etched foil and a nice design.  We’ve got a winner here.  Unfortunately, there are only three of these in a box.  I pulled Joe Mauer, Rickie Weeks and Jeff Francoeur.  2 out of 3 isn’t bad as far as predicting the stars of tomorrow goes.  Mauer is currently one of the superstars of today.  I’ve got to check and see if there are any Red Sox in this insert set because I think they’d look very good in this design.

We’ve got one more insert set and then the one hit that I pulled out of the box.  The final insert set celebrates the previous season’s award winners.

A-Rod was the AL Most Valuable Player and Huston Street was the AL Rookie of the Year.  Those were the only Award Winners in my box.  These cards are classy looking with gold foil along the borders of the picture and the two banners in front of the picture.

I always liked cards like this that commemorate events from the previous season.  I like having cards of all-stars, home run derby champions, award winners and record setters.  I’d like to see more of that in sets again.

The hit from the box was this Miguel Tejada plain white jersey swatch.  I’ve got to say that Upper Deck picked a really strange picture to use on this card.  Is Tejada doing the Hokey Pokey and putting his whole butt in?  Did someone just pull his finger?  If there were more of the picture, you could tell more easily that Tejada was looking towards first to see if he had successfully turned a double play.  Instead, it looks like Tejada is sitting on an invisible chair.

This was still a fun break and you get a ton of cards.  A little more variety in the inserts would have been nice though.  This was a great value, the condition of the cards was good, I can’t complain about the collation and the design of the cards was alright.  I would give the box a B-.

Technorati Tags: baseball cards,box breaks,2006 Fleer

Catching up

Just a boring, pictureless, state of the blog post from work. I made a long overdue trek to the post office today to mail out some package. I sent out two trade packages, three contest prizes and 2 packages to Topps of cards to be replaced. So, if you were expecting a package from me you should see it by the end of the week.

A box of TNA The New Era should be arriving at some point this week and I'll be posting a review of that. This is the first TNA set to contain cards of new World Heavyweight Champion RVD as well as some yellow and red clad wrestler who some of you may be familiar with. Jeff Hardy has a huge following and his cards will be sought after along with Ric Flair who also makes his debut in this set. I can't wait to bust open that product.

I've been using this lull in purchasing new products to get work done on my collectibles room and also get things a little more organized. I'm also looking into throwing together a database to get an idea of exactly what I've got. Look for that project to be completed somewhere around the year 2040.

I'm excited about 2010 Bowman, but I'm not excited about where the box prices have soared to for jumbo boxes. The last time that I checked, the lowest prices were around $125 a box. I think it's going to be a great set with lots of fun and great pulls, but I may not be able to get a jumbo box of it like I'd prefer.

I've still got some box breaks to post from that list I put up as a poll. I've got a bunch of 2010 Topps inserts that I want to get into the collections of people trying to finish those insert sets. I want to spend the rest of this year trading and getting more creative with posts since I won't be buying as much until our September Disney trip is all paid off. We already took my daughter when she was two, but now she's tall enough to go on almost every ride in the parks and will remember a lot more about the trip.

That's all for now. Thanks for reading everyone!

Look at what some originality will do

I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t hop on the Panini bandwagon at first.  Topps had an excellent final release and Upper Deck’s last hoops set had some fun inserts.  The design of the first few Panini sets didn’t do it for me.  They love to design cards with space for jersey swatches in mind and that drives me crazy.  It’s better than swatches covering players, but all-new designs would be ideal.

I think one of the reasons that collectors get bored with the hobby is that you can only do so much with the same gimmicks every year.  Yes, pulling a Larry Bird jersey card is cool, but when there are Larry Bird jersey cards year after year it gets a little dull.  I pulled a Michael Jordan jersey card out of 2007-08 Fleer Ultra and threw it up on eBay immediately because there wasn’t anything special about the card.  It didn’t sell for what you would think a jersey card of the best player ever would go for since there are tons of Jordan jersey cards out there.  Eventually, the market gets saturated and the only people buying the 1,000th Jordan jersey card are the completists out there.

That’s why when something new to the hobby comes along, people go nuts over it.  Topps’ hat logo cards may not be game used, but they are well designed, look great and have low print runs.  That’s why they are selling for more than a lot of the plain jersey cards of the same players.  If Topps is doing the same thing for 10 years in a row, they will no longer sell for a premium, but this year they were something new.

Panini hit the jackpot with one of the subjects of their Blast from the Past jersey set.  Reggie Lewis was an athlete that Boston loved for more than his play on the court.  Lewis was constantly giving back to the community.  His loss was felt by the Celtics for years after his death, but as a person he’s still missed.  Lewis was on the verge of becoming a superstar in the league at the time of his passing.  Considered by many players to be the toughest defender at his position, he regularly shut down players like Jordan and Reggie.  No other player has ever blocked Michael Jordan 4 times in one game:

Lewis was also the only Celtic in the history of the franchise to finish a season with more than 100 rebounds, blocks, steals and assists during the 1991-92 campaign which was the best of his career.  This feat is something that LeBron James has yet to do although he came close in 08-09 when he fell short by seven blocks.  Kobe hasn’t even come close. Magic and Bird never did it.  Jordan only did it twice.  Scotty Pippen did it once.  Kevin Garnett did it eight times, Dr. J eight times, David Robinson seven times, Ben Wallace seven, Shawn Marion five times, Chris Webber four, Shawn Kemp three times, Josh Smith three, Karl Malone once and Rasheed Wallace once.  Dwyane Wade has done it and was the first player to have 2,000 points, 500 assists, 100 steals and 100 blocks in a season (along with just under 400 rebounds).  Hakeem Olajuwon just might be the career leader on this list accomplishing this feat 12 times.  I tried to find a definitive list of players who have achieved this feat, but my Google-Fu failed me.  Of course, this excludes any seasons before 1973 since steals and blocks weren’t tallied before then.  Bill Russell comes to mind right away as a Celtic that might join Lewis on this list if those stats were tracked back then.

Let me reel in my tangent before it gets out of control.  Panini Classics Basketball has both a jersey card and patch card of Reggie Lewis and these cards have turned out to be extremely popular.  These are the only jersey cards ever produced of Lewis since he played before jersey and autograph cards were staples in packs.  The only Lewis autograph card in existence is a cut auto with Dennis Johnson with a print run of one.  A Reggie patch card numbered to 30 just sold on eBay for $119.50.  When is the last time that you saw a basketball patch card like this one sell for that amount of money without the names Jordan, Kobe or LeBron on it?  Even the plain white jersey swatches are selling well with this one numbered to 199 closing at $20.50.  Imagine if you could see every single color jersey swatch that you pulled out of a box of cards for $20.  What a great world it would be.

I wish that there was more of this in new card releases.  Whether it’s the inclusion of Negro League autographs in Allen & Ginter or players who haven’t already had mountains of insert cards produced, it’s going to take more innovation and freshness in releases to keep collectors interested now that the number of products being released is down due to exclusives.

Technorati Tags: Reggie Lewis,Players with 100+ rebounds assists steals blocks,Panini Classics

Collectibles room update

So, once the work started on the upstairs room, we discovered a few more problems than we expected.  When they originally framed this room, they didn’t put up any walls.  They put up a very thin border and that’s about it.  Reality TV has exposed the shoddiness of many home inspectors and it looks like we had one of those shoddy inspectors when we purchased the house.  I’m pretty sure that’s something that he should have caught.

Here’s a view of the area behind my desk all ripped out.  The contractors found some interesting stuff on the top of the recessed area on the other side of the “wall.”  There were matches, cigarette packages and other stuff like that.  It looks like the prior tenant snuck back there to smoke.  The whole floor reeked of smoke until the border was ripped out and now I know why.

New wall!  It’s tough to see in the picture, but the door folds out in the middle and inside is a storage area of the 9 foot wide section between the stairs and the chimney.  This larger section will be for the storage of baseball card stuff.

Almost as import as the storage space is the large sections of vertical walls to hang stuff on.  This room was severely lacking in vertical walls prior to this and that’s something that I wasn’t a big fan of at all.

Here’s the other 9 foot section.  It’s set back from the other wall segment by a foot or so.  This was done to make space for the giant Ikea bookcase that you see in this picture.  The bookcase fits and there’s still a decent amount of storage in the room behind the bookcase.  This smaller storage area will be used mostly for my comic book long boxes.  I think I’ve got around 10 long boxes and 30 half boxes that will need to go in there.  I’ve got lots of bagging and boarding to do as well.

It’s tough getting really good pictures of the room due to the size and shape of it.  Also, all of the large furniture was in the middle of the room during the construction and that prevented good picture taking as well.  As the room comes together, I’ll take pictures of those items and sections of the room to give you a better idea of what the room looks like.  The first thing that I want to get up is my giant pin board, but I need some hardware to hang it.  That thing is pretty heavy.

Heat woke a sleeping giant (baby?)

I called it in my last post about the Celtics/Heat series.  Quentin Richardson woke a sleeping giant and the Celtics responded big time.  Ray Allen had a huge game and Glen “Big Baby” Davis was awesome given an opportunity to start (just like he did last year around this time).  Rondo played phenomenal defense and never let the Heat get their offense started.  Big defensive efforts were also turned in by Kendrick Perkins, Big Baby and Tony Allen.

Unless the Celtics get bored in the next couple of games, like they have at times during the regular season, I don’t see the Heat winning a single game in this series.  I feel badly for Dwyane Wade because he’s getting almost no help from his teammates.  The defensive pressure is causing him to have to isolate every time he touches the ball and there’s no way that they can win that way.

He made an appearance at the Garden and now he’s making an appearance in my blog as well.  The official mascot of Celtics blowouts: Gino!

Technorati Tags: Boston Celtics

What’s up with the Red Sox?

It’s only two weeks into the season and all of the worst fears of Red Sox Nation have come true.  The supposedly weak offense has actually been worse than the experts predicted and the pitching, which was supposed to be Boston’s biggest strength, hasn’t yet performed like they are expected to.  The other place where the Red Sox were supposed to be strong, but have shown weakness, is defensively.  What makes it worse is the fact that these defensive mishaps have been committed by the new guys brought in to shore up the defense.  Their weaker offense might be acceptable if they were turning in web gems night after night, but at this early stage in the season, this has yet to be the case.

While Marco Scutaro has been one of the few bright spots in the offense early in the season, he has also been the worst offender on the defensive side of things.  These have been really bad errors on easy chances leading to multiple unearned runs that led directly to losses.  I’m sure this will change as the season progresses, but right now it has some fans wishing that Jed Lowrie could do more than tie his shoe without ending up on the DL.

Speaking of costly errors leading to multiple runs and a loss, next up is Mike Cameron.  Sox fans knew going into this season that Cameron would hit some bombs and for every one that he hit, he’d strike out 6 or 7 times.  So far this season, Cameron has whiffed 8 times without going yard.  He displaced fan favorite Jacoby Ellsbury in center because of his reputation for superior defense, but that wasn’t the case in Clay Buchholz’s last start.  Cameron had an easy fly ball clank off of his glove in the first inning that led to four unearned runs and a tough luck loss for Buchholz who pitched well after that inning.

One signing that I questioned the moment it was made was that of Bill Hall.  He was a monumental bust in Milwaukee and I didn’t see what he could add to the Red Sox roster.  So far, Hall has added more errors than hits.  He’s got one hit in eleven at-bats, but has committed an error at short and an error in the outfield.  Hopefully the Red Sox get healthy and need to fill up Hall’s roster spot with someone else.

Jeremy Hermida is showing signs of improvement.  After tonight, he’s hitting .257 with an error, but he’s hit three home runs and driven in 9.  In the long run, I do think this will end up being a good signing. 

Right now, the “pitching and run prevention” team make-up that was sold to Sox fans during the offseason isn’t panning out.  Lester is notorious for his slow stars and his performance should improve once the calendar page turns.  Dice-K is on a rehab assignment in Pawtucket and will most likely take Wakefield’s spot in the rotation.  I expect him to look a lot more like the Dice-K of 2008 than the Dice-K of 2009 since he’ll finally be healthy again and hopefully he’s done with pitching in the World Baseball Classic.

Things will turn around for the Sox and there’s no way that they’ll continue to lose 60% of their games, but it looks like the only way that the Sox will make the playoffs is if they end up with a rotation that contains two 20-game winners and two 15-game winners.  No matter how well the pitching is, that’s not going to happen without major improvement from the offense.

Technorati Tags: Red Sox

Sponsored Box Break: 09-10 Panini Classics

I came home Monday night to find a nice surprise waiting for me.  Panini had sent over a box of Classics to break open and review on the site.  This came as a complete surprise and made my day.

Packs of Classic carry a suggested retail price of $6 and boxes are currently selling for $83 on Blowout Cards.  You get 18 packs per box and 5 cards per pack.

The design of the base card is simple.  The cards feature large, close up images of the player and look very nice.  I didn’t see a lot of variety in the types of pictures used while going through the cards that I pulled out of my box, but I only have 75 out of the 200 cards in the set.

This set is chock full of goodies for a Celtics fan such as myself.  Once you get past the fact that Rajon Rondo was left out of this set in favor of Kendrick Perkins and washed up Rasheed Wallace, you start to see some very cool cards available to pull.  One card in particular that I will be chasing is the Reggie Lewis Blast From the Past Jersey card.  As far as I know, this is the first jersey card ever produced of the late, great Reggie Lewis.  There’s a regular version numbered to 199 and a patch version numbered to 30.  The two patches listed on eBay so far have gone for $50 and $70 dollars.  It definitely looks like Panini filled a demand with this card.

The set consists of 200 cards.  Of those 200, the first 100 are regular base cards.  Cards 101-160 are Legends and those are numbered to 999.  Panini states that you get at least 3 Legends in a box and I beat the odds there and pulled 4 Legends out of my box.  I got Buck Williams, Oscar Robertson, Kareem and Willis Reed.

This is not a product for set collectors.  With 16 boxes in a case, you’re not going to get a complete set of Legends out of a case at 3 per box and that’s if you get perfect collation.

I will be looking for some singles of Celtic Legends such as Larry Bird, recent and long overdue Hall of Famer Dennis Johnson, Bill Russell, Kevin McHale and Bob Cousy.

Cards 161-200 are autographed rookies.  All of the big names are here including Blake Griffin, Tyreke Evans, Stephen Curry and Brandon Jennings.  Some of the cards are numbered to 999 while this Jeff Teague is numbered to 553.  A couple of the rookie autographs are numbered to only 99 copies making a complete set that much tougher to complete.

The best part about the rookie autograph cards in this set is that from what I’ve seen, they’re all on-card.  That has been a rarity in basketball for anything that costs less than $50 per card.  I think the only stickers to be found are on the jersey cards, but some of the superstars could possibly be sticker autographs, I’m not 100% sure.

There are some numbered parallels.  Every card in the set can be found in various numbered parallels.  This David Lee is a Dress Code Platinum numbered 5/25.  I also pulled an Andre Iguodala Gold which is numbered to 100.

These cards are usually more of a crap shoot than anything else pulled out of boxes.  If you pull a numbered card of a minor star it’s no big deal, but if you pull a low numbered card of a big star then it may be your lucky day.  Pulling a serial number that matches the player’s jersey number can be rewarding as well.  So, it’s nice to have that chance to get a little something out of the box besides the advertised hits.

These Dress Code cards are one of the few negative things about this set.  These cards only exist so that there can be jersey parallels.  The jersey cards look nice, but these cards don’t.  To top it off, the set checklist isn’t that impressive.  There are some players in this set that leave you scratching your head.

If these cards only existed as jersey cards then they’d be perfect.  I don’t see the need to have the base versions as well.  Since I’m a set collector by nature, I’d much rather have more base cards than an insert set where you get 3 of 25 cards.  My box contained Sam Perkins, Shawn Marion and Samuel Dalembert.

I’m not sure why it bothers me so much, but I really don’t like that these insert cards are designed with the jersey variations in mind.  It’s not quite as glaring on these Classic Combos cards and the player selection is much better, but those basketballs with the player’s jersey number on it are almost as big as the player pictures.

My box contained Kobe/Odom and LeBron/Shaq.  What I would have liked to pull would have been the Garnett/Pierce and Russell/Sharman cards.

Again, the jersey versions of these cards look good, but these “template” cards don’t look quite as good in my opinion.

These Classic Confrontation cards are two sided and feature players who have faced off frequently during their careers.  This card features Kevin Garnett who plays forward and Shaquille O’Neal who plays center.  There aren’t any stats on the card at all so you’re not really sure what confrontation they’re talking about.  Maybe it’s just weirdness on this card, let me check the other card that I got in my box.  That one features point guard Chris Paul and shooting guard Dwayne Wade.  Looking at the rest of the checklist, most of the rest of the checklist seems to make sense.  I just seem to have pulled two of the abnormalities.  There are some nice matchups such as Bird/Magic, Worthy/Parish and Kidd/Nash.

The final insert set is another one with a jersey window integrated into the design.  The jersey cards do look nice, but the regular cards look a little strange with the team logo floating in the middle of nowhere.  It results in the bottom part of the card looking crowded with the player smooshed over to the side to make room for the logo/jersey window.

My box contained three Classic Greats.  I was happy to pull Celtic Great John Havlicek, but also saw Lakers James Worthy and “Mr. NBA Logo” Jerry West come out of the box.  I think that I pulled all of these Lakers because the box destined for Boston ended up going to The Basketball Card Blog.  Now I have to hope for a Boston sweep and the Cousy card from that box will make its way to Boston.

So far, you’ve only seen one of the hits from this box.  Each box guarantees four hits, but you don’t know what kinds of hits that you’ll get with the exception that at least one hit will be an autograph.  I was very lucky with the contents of my box since it contained three autographs.  Since these are all on-card autographs that ends up being a great value.

This redemption card is for a Jodie Meeks autograph and is numbered to 249.  I love Panini’s card replacement process and wanted to see what their redemption process is like.  I really like that you can pick the time frame that you are willing to wait before you are offered a replacement.  I selected the 4 month time frame for this card to see what happens.

The final autograph in my box was of Jermaine Taylor and is numbered to 999.  I don’t think that I got a rookie autograph in my box of a player that averaged more than 5 points per game last season which is unfortunate.

Before I go on to the final hit from my box, check out the first post on this thread paying particular attention to the hits that were in the box.  That box contained two autographs that were also in my box as well as a patch card of a player named Gerald.  I had already stated that my box contained three autographs and you’ve seen all three of them so the final card in my box must be a patch card of a player named Gerald.

The big hit from my box was this Gerald Henderson prime patch card numbered to 25.  Unfortunately, this brings up another frustration for me.  Panini does a good job of designing the jersey cards on their insert sets, but make the mistake of also using those designs for jersey-less cards that don’t look as good.  Now you’ve got a nice looking base card with a jersey swatch slapped over the stomach of the player.

If this patch were placed inside of one of the insert cards it would have resulted in a beautiful card.  This is a beautiful patch in an alright looking card.  It just confuses me a little bit.  There’s a lot of good in this Panini release, but there’s a good amount of bad as well.

It may seem like I’m being harsh from reading the review of this set, but I think that is mostly due to the fact that this set contains a lot of one of my biggest pet peeves.  If Panini designed jersey cards and then only used those designs for the jersey cards, this set would improve by leaps and bounds.  They should also confine the jersey swatches to those cards designed to hold them.

The main selling point to this set is going to be the on-card autographs, but since you are only guaranteed one autograph per box, I don’t know if that’s going to be enough to push sales of this set.  I would have liked for these to be at least two guaranteed autographs.  I know that I would be disappointed if I purchase a box that contained one autograph and three relic cards.  My box contained three rookie autograph and that’s a box that I would have been very happy with if I had purchased it.  Yes, they aren’t great rookies at the moment, but sometimes you have to give them time.  People would have scoffed at Rodrigue Beaubois autographs at the beginning of the season, but by the end of the season he was one of the top rookies in the league.  So, someone such as Meeks who had a good college career and is on a team with some other good young players might hit his stride in his second or third season.  Due to the wide range of what you can get in a box, it’s tough to give this an overall value rating, but for my box specifically I would give it an A.  It’s tough to beat three on-card autographs and a low numbered rookie patch.

The collation was fine.  I didn’t get any duplicates.  Panini boxes have this weird trend of inserts coming in numbered order.  It’s very evident in the flagship set where you get a ton of inserts, but you notice it in this set as well.  I pulled Classic Confrontations 7 and 8, Classic Combos 1 and 2, Dress Code 8, 9 and 10 and Classic Greats 13, 14 and 15.  Combine that with the other box break that I liked to which was extremely similar to this one and it makes you wonder.  I have to think that it wouldn’t hurt for Panini to possibly look into changing how they load up their boxes.  Then again, I got all of my promised hits which is a lot more than I can say for the Topps and Upper Deck boxes that I’ve opened over the past couple of years.  I’d give the collation a B+ with just a few points off for the quirkiness of the collation across the whole run of the product.

The condition of the cards out of the packs were good with the exception of one of the autographed cards.  The Jermaine Taylor had a lot of white showing along the black edge on the bottom of the card.  If it were a better card, I would send it back especially since Panini’s card replacement process is so great, but for this card I think I’ll just hold on to this copy.  This box gets an A for condition.

Finally we come to design.  I’ve discussed the card designs thoroughly in the box review so I’ll just give the grade here.  I’ll go with the middle of the road C.  There’s a lot of promise, but after a great looking set such as Studio, this was a bit of a letdown.

Overall, I would give this box a B+.  I would place this product at the top of the heap as far as Panini’s releases go this year.  The best looking set is Studio, but this is the set that people are going to go after if they want the best rookie autographs of this year’s players.

Technorati Tags: Panini,box breaks,Panini Classics,basketball cards

Playoff BS

I know that you’re supposed to keep your cool no matter what the situation, but I hate how it always seems to happen in NBA playoff series that a team will have a scrub instigate something with a star player on the other team.  Even if Quentin Richardson had been suspended along with Garnett for Game 2 of the Celtics/Heat series, the Heat would have the advantage.

It actually seemed more like Richardson was trying to instigate something with Pierce who led the Celtics comeback in Game 1, but Garnett stepped in and instead he’s the one who ended up getting suspended.  With 40 seconds remaining in the game, there’s no doubt that this is the tactic that Richardson had in mind when he was standing over Pierce after he had been knocked down on the sideline.

Luckily for the Celtics it was Garnett and not Pierce who ended up being suspended.  The Celtics still stand a chance in Game 2 without Garnett, but they wouldn’t have a shot without Pierce.  Richardson may have done something very stupid though.  The Celtics were a team struggling at the end of the regular season.  They haven’t played up to expectations even though they won 50 games.  The last thing that you want to do is give them something to rally around and wake them up.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see huge games from Pierce and Allen in Game 2 and then a big game from Garnett when he returns in Game 3 to take that game in Miami.

I really wish that David Stern would do something about these kinds of antics, but improving the level of officiating and fairness of calls during games hasn’t been high on his list of things to do.  A team can win a game with 6 players on the court and have that win stand without the referees even reviewing the video.  Stern is all about the image of the league and has put more emphasis on things like players dressing well.  Unfortunately, you can easily conceal guns under dress clothing.  When all is said and done, I wonder if Stern’s legacy will have more to do with the decisions that he made or the fact that the most popular player in the history of the league was drafted the same year that he became commissioner and joined Magic and Bird who saved the league.  The popularity of the league under Stern sometimes overshadows the bad things that have gone on such as the weapons charges, the fights in the stands, the crooked referees, allegations of fixing the NBA Draft and Bill Simmons’ favorite rumor of the super secret suspension of Michael Jordan for gambling that led to his time playing minor league baseball.  Meanwhile, Stern has made sure that players don’t commit such serious transgressions such as Tweeting during a game.

Technorati Tags: David Stern,Quentin Richardson,Kevin Garnett

Robot Baseball

I’ve been collecting baseball cards for a long time now and I’ve also been playing fantasy baseball for a long time.  I started playing fantasy baseball in the early 90s through a company called Robot Baseball.  Robot Baseball started pre-Internet and required the filling out of a Scantron sheet in order to set your lineup.  You also had to wait until results arrived in your mailbox to find out how your team did.  At one point there was a 900 number that could be called for results, but it gave teams that used it a bit of an advantage because you could find out roster moves a week earlier than teams who waited for results through the mail.

What I really liked about Robot Baseball was that it involved real baseball strategy.  You had a salary cap and had to put together a team that resembled an actual baseball team in order to be successful.  Runs counted a little bit more if they came from the first three guys in your lineup as did RBIs from batters four through six.  Teams had a minor league roster where you could keep rookies and other players whose salaries were under a certain amount.  For example, my team was struggling the year that A-Rod was called up and I was able to draft him the week that he first became available and had him on my minor league roster.

Another thing that I loved about Robot Baseball was that it was a keeper league.  You built your team from year to year and had to think about which players you wanted to keep and which you wanted to let go.  You also had the ability to sign players to extensions at their current salary to save yourself some money if you think that it is going to go up the following season.

I stopped playing Robot Baseball around 1994 and started playing fantasy baseball online on Yahoo and Sandbox.  Those were fun and easy, but many of those leagues declined in fun starting the day after the draft.  I saw too many bad trades involving teams out of the running who didn’t care about their teams anymore, team giving up when they were out of the running and other things that kept these fantasy leagues from being as fun as they could be.

This year, while searching online for Robot Baseball in the hopes that someone had revived it online, I came across Benchwarmer Baseball.  This site was run by someone else who had played Robot Baseball and who used a lot of the game as the groundwork for this one.  I quickly signed up and have been in the process of drafting my new team.

The draft process is an interesting one.  For the initial dispersal draft, you have to submit a list of players that would constitute a legal roster if you were to get every player that you requested.  That means filling all of the positions and remaining under the salary cap.  Any player that is only requested by one team goes to that team.  Players that were requested by more than one team are awarded through a dispersal process.  I missed out on some players due to forgetting to rank my picks, but I’m fairly happy with how I did.  The only players that I missed out on were some of my sleeper picks and players that I was drafting for the minor league roster.

In the first part of the draft, I acquired Victor Martinez ($3519), Joey Votto (2200), Kevin Kouzmanoff (2076), Everth Cabrera (672), Nick Markakis (4634), Jon Lester (4869), Brett Anderson (2378), Wade Davis (202), Hideki Okajima (1444) and Dustin Nippert (610).

From there, there are up to three more rounds to get teams up to legal rosters.  The first part of the second round draft, I was able to add the following players to my roster: Brian Roberts (4293), Chase Headley (1793), James Loney (2997), Willy Aybar (685), John Danks (3889), Mike Adams (1750) and Justin Masterson (1078).

With two more rounds to go, I still need a starting OF, 4 bench players, a pitcher for my starting rotation, two spot starters and a relief pitcher.  From there, you can also have 2 DL/taxi squad spots for players with any amount of salary and 12 minor league slots for players with salaries under 250,000.

For those spots, I picked up Bobby Abreu (4786), Brendan Harris (1104), Kosuke Fukudome (1586), Taylor Teagarden (238), Max Ramirez (100) Kevin Correia (2860), and Papelbon (6110).

So, my lineup before Brian Roberts got injured looked like this:

1) Brian Roberts – 2B
2) Kevin Kouzmanoff – 3B
3) Everth Cabrera – SS
4) Joey Votto – 1B
5) Nick Markakis – OF
6) Victor Martinez – C
7) Bobby Abreu – OF
8) James Loney – DH
9) Chase Headley – OF

My starting rotation is:

Jon Lester
Brett Anderson
John Danks
Kevin Correia
Wade Davis

The best part of Robot Baseball and now Benchwarmer Baseball as well is that each regular season game corresponds to a league game.  Things don’t start until game 6 of the regular season for hitters which allows starting pitchers to all get a start in before the season begins.  This is mostly done because the week that you have a pitcher scheduled to start twice in a week in BWB may not be the same week he’s going to pitch twice in real life.  So, starts are saved up and then served up in order when it is that player’s turn to pitch.

So far, the results have only been run for the first game of the season which I lost.  Brian Roberts didn’t play and neither did any of his backups which gives you a pretty bad penalty.  Combine that with a shaky start from Lester and I ended up losing 6-5 in extra innings.

Technorati Tags: Robot Baseball,Benchwarmer Baseball

Traded: Cards from Thoughts and Sox

I posted on the Thoughts and Sox website regarding the Mike Piazza card that someone’s mom threw out because it’s not really worth anything.  It still seems strange to me to have reprints of cards that sell for a quarter, but it’s a Piazza card and so I had to have it.  Along with the Piazza came a nice stack of cards from my want lists including 2009 Chrome, 2007 Masterpieces, 2009 T206 and 2009 X.  Those cards were great since I seem to have stalled on set completion as of late.

I’m still going through my Red Sox cards to find a few more cards to send back in return for this great package.  It can be tough at times finding cards to trade of the team that you also follow.  Luckily, Adam has a handy, dandy checklist of what he needs making it easy to see what he needs.

Mail Day: Digging out

I forgot to include this card when I posted about my Jorge Garcia through the mail autograph success.  I also included a card to be signed which came out nicely as well.

Now that I’ve seen them, I’m wishing that I had one of the Rittenhouse cards signed and I may still try to get one signed, but I don’t want to be greedy.  Also, things are ramping up with the filming of the Lost finale supposedly and Mr. Garcia may be busy with other things after that and not have time to spend answering fan mail.

Here’s a Big Baby rookie green refractor.  If you’re going to get any Celtics refractors from this set, why wouldn’t you go with the green parallels?  They’re a perfect match for the Celtics uniforms and are numbered to 149 which is rare, but not too rare.

Big Baby seems to be the only guy on the Celtics who grabs any offensive rebounds at times.  The one thing that does seem to hold him back is his maturity level.  He earned a spot in Doc Rivers’ doghouse a few games ago after committing a stupid flagrant foul.  Hopefully he can overcome these maturity issues by the time Boston is looking for him to step into a starting role or it may never happen.

The black parallel is sharp as well and is numbered to just 75 copies.  The white outline around the player gives this card a little bit of a different look.

I think that I’ve been having the most fun with my Glen Davis collection because I’m able to pick up some cool cards at great prices.  That’s not the case with Paul Pierce, Mike Piazza or David Ortiz.  Piazza cards especially climb way out of my price range quickly.  I don’t have any Piazza autos while I have multiple autos of Davis and Pierce and now one autograph of Ortiz.

In typical eBay ridiculousness, I ended up paying less for the black refractor than I did the green and this one is rarer.

I’ve got a couple of Dee Brown cards that I got signed in person as well as an NBA Jam strategy guide that he was promoting.  So, why would I pick up a sticker autograph card?  Well, winning it for a dollar may have had something to do with it.  I also don’t really have many pack inserted autographs for the former Slam Dunk Champ so I figured that I would pick this up.

Brown is now coaching the NBA D-League team in Springfield.  I don’t know if the team was on the road, but it would have been cool for Panini to get this Celtics fan favorite to be a part of their Adrenalyn promotion in Springfield.


There’s no way that I could pass up this lot for a dollar.  I’ve been coveting the Larry Bird from this set ever since I bought one for my wife at a card show last year and this lot contains the refractor.  I would have paid a dollar just for that card, but I also got the regular Pierce and Parish cards from that set, a Pierce Finest rookie, a Garnett Finest card and three other Pierce cards.

The first thing that I did after trading away my Babe Ruth Yankees hat logo card was to start searching eBay for Red Sox players that I could add to my collection.  I got this Ortiz for a great price.  My auction closed at $5.50 when most others were ending in the $10 - $15 price range.

I know many collectors hate manufactured patches on principle.  These are great looking cards though.  I don’t mind at all that the B in this card wasn’t ever touched by David Ortiz.  Somewhere down the line, nice looking cards started taking a backseat to ugly cards with bits of crap in them or a random serial number printed on them.  These are great looking cards.  ‘Nuff said.

I picked up one Clay Buchholz autographed card for my collection prior to this just to have one.  I was at the no-hitter and have a mini collection of Buchholz cards.  Buchholz has a terrible autograph and I never saw myself picking up another one of his scribbles.  Seeing this card changed my mind.  First off, this is signed on-card while my other autograph was on a sticker.  Second, Allen & Ginter autograph cards are beautiful.  Third, Buchholz’s autograph doesn’t look quite as bad on the little mini card.  Next up, for the Buchholz collection: one or two of his 2005 rookies.  From there, I’d love to get something nice framed with the ticket stub and a signed photo.  Maybe not something this elaborate, but I would love that as a gift some day.

I’ve picked up these cards before, but I haven’t had the best of luck getting these cards in good condition.  I win the auctions cheaply and always seem to find people that think shipping cards wrapped in paper towels actually does something to protect them.  These cards aren’t necessarily damaged, but they don’t look at that great either.  One day I’ll just buy one of each of the stamped factory sets from my Rockies and Marlins inaugural year collections.

I love the Lumberjacks inserts and was holding on to the one that I pulled from a box back when these first came out even thought it wasn’t of a player that I collected.  Now that I have this Piazza in my collection, I can trade away that other card.

The Lumberjacks card is numbered to 5000 and the Great American Heroes card is numbered to 2500.  Big deal back when they were released, high print run by today’s standards.

The good thing about that is that I can now pick up insert cards that sold for $20 back when they were first released for a fraction of the cost.  There were a lot of cool Donruss/Leaf and Fleer Ultra inserts that I couldn’t pick up then that I can now add to my collection.

I never would have known about the Topps Tek set if it weren’t for card blogs.  Now it is safe to say that I’m officially hooked on this set.  I’ve picked up a few Piazza lots here and there and am slowly growing my collection.  Some of the designs are ugly, but the majority of them look nice.  The backgrounds with the various team logos in them especially look good.

Last, but not least, another Jeremy Piven letter.  I only grab these when they’re listed cheaply so I may never finish off this phrase.  Many people don’t want to list these cheaply after getting one of these as a hit in their Icons box, but they don’t really sell for more than $3 or $4.

On the letter front, just the second H from Kent Hrbek that I’ve ever seen showed up on eBay and went for a ton of money just like the first.  That’s another word that I may never complete.

That’s all for now.  Time to get the room together and things put away before I starting bringing in a bunch of new singles.

Technorati Tags: Mike Piazza,Glen Davis,Paul Pierce,Jeremy Piven,Clay Buchholz,Dee Brown,Larry Bird,Jorge Garcia

Traded: Cards from BA Benny’s Baseball Card Buffet

This traded was started when I saw the Ortiz autographed jersey card that was posted over at BA Benny's Baseball Car Buffet.  A couple of e-mails later, I had sent away my Babe Ruth hat logo card and a few other cards and got three Ortiz jersey cards and a nice pile of Red Sox in return.

One interesting thing of note is that Ortiz signed this sticker upside down.  If I thought that it would carry any sort of premium, I would hold on to it, but I think that I’m going to send it to Topps for a replacement.  I already contacted them and they said that they had replacement of this card available.

Technorati Tags: David Ortiz,Boston Red Sox

Traded: Cards from The Basketball Card Blog

I sent some extras that I had from the Murad mini set and got some great cards in return.  I still needed two of the better rookies from the set and both of those were sent over.  Now all that I need are a single base card and a handful of SP cards to complete this set.  Some Celtics were sent over as well including the Paul Pierce and Celtics logo stickers from this year’s Panini set that I wasn’t able to pull out of my box.

There aren’t nearly as many basketball blogs out there as there are baseball blogs so I was glad to find The Basketball Card Blog.  Check it out!

Technorati Tags: Paul Pierce,Murad,Celtics

Contest prize results

I apologize again for the delay on this part of the contest.  I wanted to give people ample time to get back to me and then I got busy.  Wickedliquids was added as a second chance entry because he was second on the list.  I also reduced the list back to four because I never heard from SamL and he wasn’t logged in with a Blogger account so I had no means of contacting him.  Two weeks was plenty of time for people to get in touch with me.  Without further ado, here we go:

	1st choice	2nd choice
FanOfReds	Redus auto	Norworth cards
handcollated	Redus auto	Norworth cards
Drew	Sanchez /50	Redus auto
wickedliquids	Sanchez /50	Pollack auto /25

So, there will be two randomizations done.  To change things up, I’ll be using the flip a coin feature on Random.org and will assign heads and tails by the order in which the choices were submitted to me.

For the first flip, FanOfReds will be heads and handcollated will be tails.  The winner of the flip gets the Redus auto and the other person gets the pair of Norworth cards.


The first flip came up heads and the Redus auto goes to FanOfReds. 

For the second flip, Drew is heads and wickedliquids is tails.  The winner of the flip gets the Sanchez card.  If wickedliquids doesn’t win the flip, he receives the Pollack auto.  If Drew doesn’t win the flip he’ll have to contact me with another choice for a prize since his second choice was already selected as a first pick twice.

The second flip came up tails which means he receives the Sanchez card.

All four of you please contact me with your mailing addresses and Drew please also let me know which of the unclaimed prizes you’d like to have sent to you.

Wanted: Piazza on-card auto

Here’s a great opportunity for any of you reading this.  I’m looking to add a Mike Piazza on-card autograph to my collection and am willing to offer up some of the better cards in my collection to do so.  Below, you’ll find some of the gems available to the one who has a Piazza auto to trade as well as some other cards that are cool if not quite gem status.

I could sell some of these cards on eBay and then use that money to buy a Piazza autograph, but I wanted to try this first.  That way I can avoid all of the fees and someone can get some great cards.  If you see some cards that you really want, don’t have a Piazza auto and see a card available somewhere, let me know.  If I like the card, we’ll work out a deal and you’ll get some great cards for helping me add an important piece to mine.

I’m also looking for a 1992 Fleer Update set and will work out a deal for that as well.  There’s not as much booty available for that card, but it will still be worth your while if you have the set.

If no one takes me up on this offer or there are cards posted here that aren’t traded for that you like, let me know.  Maybe we can work something out.  A lot of these are cards that I’ll only trade for something special, but maybe you have that special something.  I’m currently redesigning the site bit by bit and eventually I’ll post a page of cards that I’m currently looking to trade for just about anything.

Now for the booty:

1994 Upper Deck Minors Trade Card – There were two trade cards available at a rate of one in every 135 packs.  That put an A-Rod redemption card in every 7.5 boxes.  Back in 1994 when redemption cards had to filled out and mailed in, a lot went unredeemed.







1997 Donruss Preferred Albert Belle Precious Metals Gold – This card is printed on 1 gram of fine gold.  This card will always be worth something even when no one remembers who Joey Albert Belle is.  The card is encased in a plastic capsule at the factory so you don’t have to worry about anything happening to the precious metal.





2008 Stadium Club Carlos Delgado Beam Team autograph – These cards are beautiful and while I’d like to keep this card in my collection, I’ll let it go in the right deal.

2008 Upper Deck Masterpieces Gavin Floyd Stroke of Genius auto – Not a huge card, but a great looking on-card auto.  I know that some people are putting together Masterpieces master sets so I thought I’d include this.




2001 Donruss Ken Griffey Jr. Career Stat Line parallel.  This card is serial numbered to 33 on the back.  At that point in his career, Griffey had hit 33 triples in his career.  2001 Donruss was a very strange set filled with all kinds of strange cards including 1999 and 2000 sets included one per pack depending on if you were buying retail or hobby packs.  There are serial numbered cards all over the place.  I liked it, but never did much with the set after buying a hobby box other than purchasing a few of the Rookies set coupons on eBay.

2009 Upper Deck A.J. Griffin USA Baseball auto – I pulled this out of one of the packs that Upper Deck finally sent me to make up for my box that had four packs with only 10 cards in them and was missing two out of three hits.  The weird thing was that they sent two packs of series 1 and two packs of series 2.

I think that Griffin is in the Phillies minor league system.



2010 Topps Hanley Ramirez Peak Performance auto – Again, this is a card that I’d love to keep in my collection under normal circumstances, but a Piazza auto would make me much happier than a Ramirez auto.








2007 Upper Deck Goudey Rich Harden Goudey Graphs auto - This Rich Harden auto was what was sent to me in place of the auto that I didn’t get in my box of 2009 series 1.  It’s an upgrade since the flagship autos were all on stickers and the majority of them were of bums.




2001 Donruss The Rookies Ichiro Rookie Diamond King - Speaking of the 2001 Donruss Rookies coupons, this Ichiro is from the set that was sent out in exchange for the redemption card and $25.  I think the cost of the set kept too many people from sending away for it.  People knew it would contain Ichiro and Pujols so it’s not a rare set by any means, but the coupons were always available for a low price on eBay.




2001 Donruss The Rookies Ichiro – This is the base card from The Rookies redemption set.  I’m not sure exactly what this card qualifies as since Ichiro was in the regular 2001 Donruss set as a Rated Rookie.








2001 Topps Ichiro RC – I forgot that I had this card until recently because I had it organized under S instead of under I with the rest of the Ichiro cards in my collection.









1993 Bowman Derek Jeter RC – Come on, it’s a Yankees card.  Do I need to say anything more?  I’ve actually got two of these.  I was trying to put this set together at one point, but I wasn’t even close after busting two boxes back in 1993 so I ended up pulling the Jeter out of the set in progress.






1993 Topps Derek Jeter Draft Pick Gold – This is the regular gold version and not the Winner version.  Yes, Topps did print up a ton of cards in 1993, but at least this is a rarer version of that card.








1993 Stadium Club Dome Derek Jeter – When I originally bought this set it was to get the Nomar Garciaparra rookie that was in there.  Now it’s the Jeter card that is the best card in the set.  I was buying a ton of cards in 1993 and ended up with a ton of Jeters.  I’ve got his SP rookie as well in my set, but that’s something that I’m going to continue to hold on to.





2007 Bowman Best Joba Chamberlain auto – Full disclosure, this card has two indentations on the front to the right of Joba, but it’s got a great autograph on it and you could always cut this card up and make your own cut card or sell it to Upper Deck so that they can do it.







2009 Allen & Ginter Manny Ramirez relic












2008 Topps Joe Mauer Event Worn All-Star Jersey – It’s event worn, but it’s a nice looking card.







2007 Bowman Chrome Matt Palmer X-Fractor.  He’s on the Angels Opening Day roster.  Numbered to 275.










2001 Bowman Albert Pujols RC – If not the first, this was one of the first Pujols rookie cards to be released.  It was a huge card in 2001 until some of the autographed rookies started to show up.









2001 Donruss The Rookies Albert Pujols RC – There was an Albert Pujols card in the base set, but it was a redemption numbered to 500 copies that is ridiculously hard to find these days.  This card isn’t as rare, but isn’t plentiful either and has remained popular with collectors.







2001, 2002 and 2003 eTopps Albert Pujols.  The 2002 card has an upside down eTopps logo on the front of the card making it an extremely rare error 1/1? in eBay terms.  The Pujols rookie is one of the few eTopps cards that I’ve purchased which have gone up in value.  I love the cards, but these days I wait to purchase cards instead of purchasing them at the IPO because that’s just throwing money away most times.

2008 Upper Deck Masterpieces Albert Pujols brown parallel /100







2005 SP Authentic Honors Albert Pujols jersey /130 – Upper Deck included this card when they sent back a bunch of 2007 Timelines cards for replacement.









1995 Upper Deck Reggie Jackson auto – Full disclosure, there are some rough corners on this card, but it’s a Reggie Jackson auto.  I’m not sure why the Upper Deck Authenticated sticker is on the front of the card since it is on the back of others that I’ve seen.  I don’t remember if this came out of a pack or if it was a redemption.  I want to say that it was a redemption, but I can’t find any information online about it.  This was back when pulling autographs out of packs was still a big deal.



2001 Bowman Jose Reyes RC – I have an old Beckett where this card has a big price tag on it.  I doubt that’s the case anymore.  Figured that I’d include it anyway.









2009 Finest Angel Solome autographed manufactured letter – I pulled this out of one of the packs that Topps sent me after the replacement card switch-a-roo.  Still not a fan of these cards.  I’m glad that I sold my David Price from my box back when it was selling high.







2009 Topps Updates and Highlights Jimmie Foxx and Nolan Ryan SP – I haven’t pulled any of the SP cards out of Topps boxes until I opened a box of 2009 U&H and pulled two.  One of them was in there in place of one of my other promised hits in the box.  The hits that I did get were in terrible condition and I still have to send them in for replacement.

2009 Topps 206 Denard Span Piedmont framed auto – Span made Sportscenter the other day for hitting his mom with a foul ball.  These cards are very similar to the Allen & Ginter framed autos, but I prefer these slightly.  I think it is due to the mini card inside being a little bit bigger or the window being smaller.






2009 Rittenhouse Spider-Man Dan Quiles sketch card – Quiles is listed as very limited in the set.











2007 Bowman Best Chase Utley blue parallel /99

2009 Upper Deck DeAngelo Williams 20th Anniversary relic – These were one in every other case of Upper Deck X.  I’m not sure of the pull rates in other Upper Deck products.  Every other case hit mojo!



2009 Topps 206 Jordan Zimmermann Piedmont framed auto – He’s going to miss this season with Tommy John surgery, but these days a lot of pitcher come back from that even stronger than they were prior to the surgery.










That’s it for now.  Thanks for reading.