Anyone who has been following this blog (or its previous incarnation) for any length of time knows that I collect some strange stuff and love all kinds of oddball items. It helps that a lot of these oddball items don’t sell for much money.
Jeremy Piven’s role as Ari Gold on Entourage has gotten him noticed by everyone, but I’ve been a big fan of his for years. I love his delivery and the type of sarcastic humor that seems to be his specialty. I own a copy of PCU on VHS and think that his two minutes in Cameron Crowe’s Singles rank as one of the all-time best cameos in a movie. Eddie Vedder and Chris Cornell also have great cameos (for their unintentional hilarity) in the movie.
I’m not a huge fan of Razor’s products. The head of the company seems to be a shyster and there’s always been a shady aura around the company. That being said, I couldn’t pass up this card for .99¢ plus shipping. Who knows if it is from a shirt that Piven ever really wore or not. I’ve seen a lot of his clothing show up in charity auctions so it is entirely possible. The card itself is pretty ugly. There’s no picture and the design is just bland. The big white swatch is just begging for an autograph. If I ever found a reliable TTM address for Mr. Piven, I’d send this right off to him.
Jeremy is a big Bears fan so I figured that arranging the letters in this way was appropriate. I have no clue where I stand on this catch phrase, but the letters keep popping up for a buck and I keep buying them. It’s too bad that I didn’t hold off on collecting this because someone recently posted the whole set at a really good price. I was tempted to buy it in spite of the ones that I already had.
When I won this card, I wasn’t sure yet if I already owned it or not, but for $6.19 delivered I figured that I wouldn’t mind owning a second copy of this rookie refractor numbered to 199 if it was already in my collection.
As I type this, Big Baby is at the free throw line against the Pistons after collecting a big defensive rebound late in the game. Davis had a little bit of a rough time when he was starting in place of Garnett especially when Shaq was healthy. With the second unit, Davis fills the role of the guy waiting just outside of the lane for a pass from a penetrator who draws his defender. Shaq is that guy in the starting lineup. Davis doesn’t yet have the outside range that Garnett has and when he got those shots in the flow of the offense, he wasn’t hitting them as often as Garnett does. He’s back to being a beast now that he’s coming off the bench again and has renewed his quest for a 6th Man Award.
One eBay seller had both of these Big Baby on sale for $3 a piece with free shipping so I couldn’t refuse. Normally you are paying $3 just for a shipping fee, so this looked like a great deal to me. Once I got the cards, I wasn’t disappointed. These are beautiful, thick cards with a foil board sheen to them.
The two cards do look similar, but I’m fine with that for a couple of reasons. First off, there are different pictures used for the two cards. Second, there aren’t other versions of these cards out there with big blank spaces where the jerseys are on these cards.
Compare the Davis SPx cards to these Pierce cards from Panini. First off, there would usually be an ugly version of these cards with a blank space or team logo in place of the jersey swatch. I think that Panini spared collectors from those travesties in National Treasures.
You can still see the trademark Panini laziness in the fact that these are essentially the same card with a different hole cut in the front. Boring. How difficult would it be to produce a second card with a different picture? Does it really save that much money on product costs to print up the same front for both? *Yawn*
Clay Buchholz doesn’t have too many rookie cards. I think there’s just this one and Bowman Sterling. This one costs too much locally so I finally picked one up for a good price on eBay.
This officially completes my Trifecta of Buchholz. I’ve got an Allen & Ginter auto and a Bowman jersey card. I’ve got to get my butt in gear and start posting more of those. Off of the top of my head, I think I have Dwight Evans, Mike Piazza, Clay Buchholz, David Ortiz, Ken Griffey, Paul Pierce, Glen Davis, Al Jefferson and Delonte West. I might also have some random ones where the whole Trifecta exists in one card.
I also added a new Buchholz memorabilia card to my collection. I’ve had my eye on this card for a little while and finally won it for the right price (a dollar plus shipping). You can pull some beautiful cards out of Sweet Spot, but it’s such a huge crapshoot and there are always some terrible clunker autos. The singles are great if you can pick them up at the right price though.
This is a lot of cards that I didn’t think I had a shot of winning at the price I did. For just over $12, I picked up a Bryce Brentz refractor auto /500 as well as two refractor versions of the base card. I’ve seen auctions for the non-refractor version of the auto close higher than this one did. I still haven’t picked up any Vitek autos, but I’m putting together a nice little Brentz collection.
This is another card that I’ve had my eye on for a while now. A couple of copies of this card went for $20 and more because they just weren’t showing up on eBay and everyone trying to collect the name needed them. I waited and got the card for $5.50 plus shipping.
Hrbek still has a decent fan following and his better cards see some action when they show up on eBay. It’s always easier collecting a player who isn’t a member of one of the local teams because you can usually find their cards for good price.
Here’s a great looking Hrbek auto out of 2009 Sweet Spot. This one cost me a little over $20, but I had a little bit of money in the PayPal account and really wanted this. The black numbers on the front looked weird to me since I’m used to gold numbered, but that’s what they used that year. I think that I have a Sweet Spot auto of the majority of player that I collect because the cards are just so beautiful looking.
I forget now which blog I first saw these cards on, but once I saw them I knew that I had to add one to my collection. It just so happens that there’s a Piazza in the set so not only do I get to add one of these cards to my collection, but I also get to add something to one of my player collections.
This is a great acetate card that pictures one of my favorite players in front of the Green Monster from the best park in the league. These cards look even better in person with the etched foil and large player picture. Great stuff.
This last card is one that I had to pick up since I already had the black version. I’m not anti-manufactured cards as long as they look nice. All cards are manufactured. It doesn’t matter that much to me if the card is just a flat piece of cardboard, a think piece of cardboard or something with a letter or bat embedded in it. If Topps goes back to the well once to often then I may tire of these cards, but right now I’m enjoying them.
So, there you go. A little bit of this and a little bit of that. Hope you enjoyed!
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