My Epic New York Adventure – Part 2

For me, I can’t stop by a card show without buying a box of something to break. I know that it barely pans out, but I love to do it and it’s too much fun. I actually didn’t go overboard and really enjoyed the two boxes that I purchased:

First up, this year’s Finest Baseball. Chrome and Finest both are bolstered by a really strong rookie auto crop. Since I had a lot of fun with Chrome, I decided to take a chance with Finest.

Everyone has seen the base cards over and over again, so I’m going to skip those. If you haven’t seen them or forget what they look like, just scroll down to the refractors for a refresher.

The Finest Foundation cards are refractors and the Finest Freshmen aren’t. I don’t really see the need for inserts in a set such as this one. At least make them limited and serial numbered so that you’re adding some value to the box.

I like the look for the Finest Foundation cards and could see myself searching out any Red Sox players that might be in the set. As for these two cards, they’re both up for trade.

Here’s the base card design again for those who may have forgotten it. These boxes have 10 packs and you end up getting an insert in each pack. It would have been nice to get a little more color in my parallels, but at least the regular parallels are serial numbered in Finest (/549). The Tulo is numbered to 299 and the Kimbrel is /199. All of these cards are up for trade as well and I’ll give preferential treatment to anyone who has any Red Sox refractors to offer in exchange.

There are two hits per box of Finest and that’s what is going to determine how good your box is. I had some good news and some bad news when it came to my hits:

• Bad News: Both of my hits were redemption cards. There’s nothing worse than opening a box and having nothing cool to show for it once you are finished.
• Good News: Both of the cards that I pulled redemption cards of are live so it shouldn’t be too long before I have them.
• Good News: I pulled what is easily one of the top cards out of the entire print run of Finest.
• 

 

 

 

 

 

Right there is a redemption card for the dual relic gold refractor autographed card of Eric Hosmer. For some reason, these gold cards are numbered to 69 and not 50, but it’s still a very low print run. That card is currently selling for more than what I paid for the box which is always nice. I’ve already redeemed the card and am eagerly awaiting its arrival in my mailbox. The only negative aspect of the card is that it’s a sticker auto, but other than that it’s a great looking card. The second redemption, for the Brett Wallace X-Fractor autographed card, is up for trade.

Anyone out there have any Finest singles? I’ve got half of the set from my box and plan on attempting to finish it. If you’ve got any singles, let me know. I plan on getting a list posted within the next few days.

One thing that I’ve been struggling with lately is collecting basketball cards. I love the sport, but I can’t stand Panini. They follow the same game plan with each and every set with a different design and name. It’s pretty frustrating because I want to buy some hoops cards, but I’m not a big fan of throwing my money away on more of Panini’s 4 jersey card boxes. So, I thought that I would try some football instead and decided on Supreme.

This stuff can be very hit or miss, but the hits are pretty amazing. The base cards themselves are beautiful, but it would be painful to spend this much for a box if you’re getting a crap hit and three base cards. Luckily, that wasn’t the case for me.

I ended up opening this box right at the dealer’s table because I knew that I wouldn’t be able to wait until I got home to see what I got. Behind the Tony Romo and Ahmad Bradshaw base cards, I saw a beautiful A.J. Green autographed relic rookie card numbered to 50. This card is selling for a decent price on eBay, but all of those have black jersey swatches full of holes. I think that this card is much better looking that any of the copies that I’ve seen on eBay. That’s a great looking orange swatch.

These packs end with a base parallel numbered to 99 or fewer. I had enough luck with the Green card so my final card was a Jamie Harper rookie numbered to 99.

I’m pretty happy with what I pulled, getting one of the better rookie autographs. There is some amazing stuff coming out of this product including Cam Newton and Tim Tebow autographs and legends such as Joe Montana, Jerry Rice and Joe Namath.

The only thing that I think Topps should have changed about this is that packs without autographs should have contained two jersey cards and no parallel. It sucks big time to plop down $80 - $90 for one of these boxes and only pull a jumbo jersey card or triple jersey card no matter how low the serial numbering.

So, I bought some great cards and pulled some great cards, but neither of these were the reasons why I went to the show in the first place. Stay tuned for the main event.

My Epic New York Adventure – Part 1

I’ve been talking about it enough, but the weekend finally arrived and I made the trip out to New York and the White Plains card show. I hopped on a bus at 1 am to make the trip into New York City. Sleeping most of the way is the best way to make this trip. It took a little longer than scheduled due to snow along the way, but that actually worked in my favor. Upon arrival, I set up camp inside of the McDonald’s on 42nd Street for breakfast and to wait for my friend to get to the city.

It ended up being a good thing that I got to the city nice and early because the roads were a mess. Driving was slow and most of the roads were reduced to just one lane. We still got there in plenty of time though and got to browse through a fairly empty show for a couple of hours until the weather improved. I started off by finding tables that I’d want to return to after checking everything out. I didn’t notice any singles that caught my interest. I’ll start off this recap with some of the individual cards that I picked up.

I won’t post pictures of all of the cards that I picked up for a quarter, but here’s a sampling. The Chief Team MVP is printed on holofoil that can only be seen along the top and on the top right, a Chaunsey Billups stand-up card in the shape of the NBA Championship trophy is a nice addition to the Celtics collection, Piazza Pacific Vanguard High Voltage from 2000, Juan Gonzalez 1996 Fleer Ultra Power Plus followed by the 1997 version and finally a regular sized card made up for 4 Cracker Jack minis including Kent Hrbek.

When I saw these, I couldn’t pass them up. Most were in great shape and for a quarter, I couldn’t pass them up. This is such an iconic set and while I may never have a Bird rookie of my own, it’s nice to have most of the other Celtics. I like how you get a picture of Parish in a Warriors jersey for their scoring leader card and in a Celtics jersey on his regular card.

The same dealer with the quarter cards also had some dollar boxes, so I sorted through those for a little while. Here are a few of the Piazza’s that I pulled out of the box. 99 UD Encore Homer Odyssey, 94 Leaf Gamers, 00 UD Ionix Pyrotechnics (on nice holofoil), 00 UD Ionix Awesome Powers (Yeah baby!), 98 SP Authentic Sheer Dominance gold and 95 UC3 In Motion. I may have already had the In Motion card, but for a buck I’ll grab another one.

This last batch came form a table that had a bunch of dollar boxes. They were well picked through by the time that I got there, but this table was packed every time that I passed by. 07-08 Echelon KG, 07-08 Triple Threads Big Baby RC /99, Delonte West 05-06 Ultimate Collection /50, Chris Slade second year refractor (this is from when refractors were about one per box), 08-09 Topps Sam Jones vintage orange refractor /199 and Jim Edmonds Sportscaster /50.

There was more, but this is the cream of the crop.

Father’s Day Haul – Part 4 – Everything Else

The majority of the cards that I took home from the Father’s Day Card show came out of the nickel box and most of them were Piazza cards. I probably have most of them already, but for .05¢ a piece, I wasn’t racking my brain as to whether or not I had the card already. Since there are so many other Piazza collectors out there, I’ll have no problem trading any duplicates away. First off, some cards that don’t have Mike Piazza on them. Not pictured is a Greg Maddux 2000 Tek card. I’ll grab any Tek cards for a nickel all day long.

There wasn’t much in the box in terms of basketball, but I did grab some cool cards. There’s a Paul Pierce Showcase that I could possibly need, a Shaq clear acetate card, a cool Barkley die cut card from Upper Deck, a Bird/Magic Stadium insert, 1978-79 Topps Jo Jo White, 80-81 Dr. J All-Star and three cards that I have no clue about. Their foreign and look/feel like playing cards. The back has the NBA logo on it.

Here’s some miscellaneous Piazzas that didn’t fall into any of the other categories that I set up. There’s some Donruss and Leaf, one Playoff and some minis. Nothing too thrilling in this batch.

Fleer! It always seemed like there were so many Fleer sets because they didn’t really do much as far as high end sets went. Their sets mainly different in what you could pull out of them. There was the set with the patches and the set with the box scores and the set with both the pros and the prospects.

Of all of the Fleer sets, I think that I miss Ultra the most. The two inserts here are tame compared to a lot of them, but they did some extremely cool inserts back in the 90s. I was always a fan of the Platinum sets that had a retro look to them. I think I ended up needing 6 of these 9 cards which isn’t bad at all especially since I knew that I already had the Ultra base cards, but again, they were only a nickel.

Here’s some Upper Deck goodness from back when they could put logos on their cards.There was a time when that Platinum Power insert would have cost me more than what I paid for all 74 of these cards. I already have it, but it’ll be great trade bait. Same goes for the Ovation cards. Love the design on those. I needed everything else which adds some very cool cards to my collection.

Topps has been doing retro and following a very similar strategy with their releases for a long time now, so I don’t understand why everyone wants to call them lazy now that they have the exclusive MLB license. Were the Million Card and Diamond Giveaways not some of the best promotions ever done by any company in any sport? Yes, their quality control could be better, but I don’t know if I would call them lazy. They’re nowhere near as lazy as Panini who does the exact same thing in every set.

Ignore the Fleer Tradition card that snuck in masquerading as a Topps Heritage card and the SportFlix card that, well I have no clue why I put that in there. The Topps All-Stars card is a lot shinier than it appears here. I think I had most of these already, but I can’t pass up things like a 2006 Ginter card or a SportFlix insert. Even if I had paid .45¢ for the Topps All-Stars card, it would have been worth it. Everything else is just a bonus.

Last up, as far as the cards that I’m going to show, are the shiny cards. I forget the year already, but the card in the middle of the bottom row was a variation from the card that I already had. My card had a flat back, but this card had an etched back like you’d see on the front of a Chrome or Finest card. Strange. I had all of these already except for one, but you don’t pass up on shiny cards of a future Hall of Fame catcher when they’re just a nickel each.

So, there you go. This is what I chase when I’ve got the time to dig through boxes at a card show. It’s was a fun Father’s Day for sure.

 

Technorati Tags: Mike Piazza,Fleer,Topps,Upper Deck,Donruss,baseball cards

Father’s Day Haul – Part 3 – Wanna Trade?

While digging through the boxes looking for cards for myself, I came across that looking like they would be decent trade bait. As always, if you see something on the blog that you’re interested in, make an offer.

As far as I’m concerned, I can never have too many cards of Larry Legend. Michael Jordan did some amazing things, but when it came to shooting the ball, no one was better than Bird. He walked into the first three point contest, told everyone he was going to win and then backed up his words.

I grew up watching the Bird led Celtics and still prefer that style of play to the current NBA game. With the current NBA lockout, I’ll just pop in my Larry Bird and Celtics DVDs and watch classic games.

When I saw this card sitting in the box, I had to grab it. Finley signed with the Celtics during last season, so it had that appeal to it. It might also be a card that other collectors might be interested in for trading purposes, so it’s a no-risk acquisition.

This is also a cool looking card. The blue borders and jersey swatch match and I love it. You don’t see that often on cards. I don’t know if the rest of this set looks this great, but if it does then I have to give kudos to Upper Deck.

Here’s another Finley card. This one isn’t nearly as good looking as the last card, but since it was in there with the previous two cards, I threw it into the stack.

Feel the Game has been a Fleer insert set for years. Yep, that’s about all I have to say about this card.

This card came home with me for a couple of reasons. The first being that it’s a card of Al Jefferson. I was a huge fan of Big Al when he played for the Celtics and it was sad to see him go even though the deal did bring Kevin Garnett and an NBA Championship to Boston. I still follow Big Al and even bought tickets last season to see the Celtics take on the Jazz so that I could watch Jefferson play in Boston. Once the NBA starts operating again, most likely after a complete lost season, I’d love to see the Celtics work out a deal that brings Big Al back to Boston.

I don’t collect Jefferson’s cards as aggressively as I did when he was here in Boston. If I get a card of his that isn’t going into a set, I’ll toss it into a toploader and put it into my collection. I went all out when Jefferson was a rookie. I’ve got a ton of rookie cards, relics and autographs. That was pre-baby, pre-wife and pre-many other financial responsibilities. I didn’t buy much unopened wax then either. I couldn’t stand the basketball sets with one or two rookies per box. So, I just bought the rookies that I wanted and saved a ton of cash.

The Studio set had a lot of potential and some cool looking insert sets, but it was ruined, as many Panini cards are, by the fact that they design the cards for relics and autographs ruining the base cards. Since this card has a jersey swatch, it looks good. Without the swatch there, it looks terrible.

Speaking of former Celtics, here’s a card of two-time former Celtic, Antoine Walker. ‘Toine never had the best attitude and ruined his career when he fell in love with the three point shot, but he had some flashes of brilliance while in Boston. Check out Pierce and Walker in the 2002 fourth quarter 21-point comeback playoff record performance against the Nets (it’s on YouTube). It was a season where Pierce led the league in fourth quarter points and had double digits in points in the final quarter alone 26 times. Walker did everything down low at the end of that game and he was a dominant player down there when he wanted to be. Once he started heaving up threes and wiggling, his career was done.

(Note: If Pierce were still that kind of closer, the Celtics would be celebrating a three-peat. At the very least, they wouldn’t have lost that game 7 to the Lakers.)

This card is ridiculously thick and contains a piece of a game used ball. It’s an unlicensed Collector’s Edge set so I have no clue if the ball is from an NBA game, college game or a pick-up game in the driveway. I’ll always associate Collector’s Edge with their early football sets where every single card was serial numbered and they were made of a strange, thin, plastic-like material. For a buck, this one was definitely coming home with me.

This is another card that I picked as potential trade bait, but I also wouldn’t be too upset if none of the many Orioles collectors out there wanted it. I haven’t jumped on the hating manufactured patches bandwagon. Plain swatches are tired and boring. I know that I won’t pay a premium for them, but at least these patch cards are nice looking. I’d much rather have a nice looking card than a card that contains a relic that was hopefully touched at one point by the player in question.

So, there you go. That’s it for the “pricey” cards from the break. All that’s left is 72 cards form the nickel box. I don’t think that I’m going to post all of those individually, but I will definitely post some highlights.

Father’s Day Haul – Part 2 – Papi’s Day

You have to buy Big Papi cards on Father’s Day if you’re a fan. So, I figured that I would pick up a few since there were some nice cards at the table for good prices. I’m starting to forget which cards forget exactly how much, but I’ll try and figure it out again as I compose these posts.

Wow, this card scanned very well. It looks like it’s glowing.

The Spectrum sets produced by Upper Deck may have been panned by the majority of collectors, but in small doses you can appreciate it. Sorting through a full box of foil board like that can be hazardous to your health and eyesight. This Ortiz swatch is from 2009 Spectrum and it’s got a nice blue tint to it. I’m pretty sure that this card and the next three were in a box priced $3 each or 4-for-$10. I’ll grab Papi relics at $2.50 all day long.

Here’s some more foil board from Upper Deck, but this time it’s the non-shiny variety. I like the fact that the picture of Ortiz pops off of this card in the scan, but it makes the rest of the card look terrible. The background isn’t quite so dark in person, but the Ortiz picture doesn’t pop as well either. This is a gray swatch which is a nice change from the usual white swatches that you see far too often.

I don’t think I’ve purchased a pack of 2009 Icons and this card doesn’t really do much to convince me to do more than pick up some singles from the set.

A David Ortiz framed relic from 2006 Allen & Ginter? Yes, please. I was pretty surprised to see this card priced so cheaply, but it’s cards like this that get overlooked by people looking for the latest sick, mojo, autographed, one-of-one, relic, printing plate, rookie card of someone in A ball. I don’t have many cards from the 2006 Ginter set at all. I think I have the Piazza and Ortiz base cards and that’s about it. I didn’t get back into collecting until 2007 when I sold a bunch of my old Transformers, went to a huge card show and caught the bug again.

This last card is the only non-Papi in this post and it’s not a card that I would normally pay $3 for, but I already had the three Ortiz cards picked out so this really only cost me a dollar. That I was fine with.

This card is from 1999 Fleer Ultra. It looks like Fleer took the Season Crowns, which had been an insert set in the past, and made them a subset within the main set. This is the Gold Medallion Edition and it’s nice looking, but one-per-pack gold parallels stopped being exciting back in the mid-90s.

These last two cards were in a box marked $2 with no discounts for quantities which was fine by me given what I pulled out of the box. This first card is just another plain white swatch card, but this is sporting a serial number of 084/150 so it’s got all kinds of mojo all over it.

2006 Artifacts is another Upper Deck set that I’ve never purchased a pack of. The line lasted for a few years, but never really appealed to me. Upper Deck seemed to release a lot of very similar sets that were overpriced, in my opinion, at release. So, I don’t have many of the cards other than a few singles I’ve picked up here and there.

I think this last card was the one that I was most excited about acquiring. The fact that it was costing me just $2 was even better. Even though the packs/boxes are way out of my price range, I’ve always enjoyed Sterling singles. A refractory, bat relic numbered to 199 copies is right up my alley. The Sterling cards have a classy design, nice big pictures of the player and a variety of relics. I’ll pick up the mostly neglected relic cards cheaply all day long.

Some amazing additions to the player collections here. I’m pretty sure that I got the prices right. I added everything up and it came out to be more than what I paid, so it looks like the dealer gave me a little bit bigger of a discount than I thought. There’s one more post of hits to come and then a huge pile of 74 cards from the nickel box. Thanks for reading!

 

Technorati Tags: David Ortiz,Mike Piazza,baseball cards,Topps,Upper Deck

Father’s Day Haul – Part I

Two great things occurred on Father’s Day. First off, there’s a yearly card show on the day and dads get in for free. Second, my wife gave me some cash and sent me on my way to have some fun. This was great because cash for cards hasn’t been as plentiful since I had to miss time from work for my kidney stone surgery. I looked at a couple of the newer Topps baseball releases, but they didn’t really grab my attention. So, I decided to dig through the boxes there for singles which turned out to be a great decision. Twenty-eight dollars later, I had 99 new cards to add to my collection and to use in various trades.

This is the first card that started me down the road of picking up singles. I’ve had my eye on this card since series one was released, but all of the auctions on eBay ended too high for my tastes once you factored in shipping costs. A dealer had it available for $5 at the show and while I almost passed it up, in the end I decided to pull the trigger and grab the card since it had part of a nice pinstripe. I figured that the chances of me winning this card for $2 - $2.50 on eBay were pretty slim. The weird thing is, if there’s a regular version of this card, I don’t have it yet. That happens to me a lot now that the majority of my Piazza cards come from online purchases.

With the exception of that first card, the other 98 cards all came from the same dealer who had a bunch of great cards available cheaply. This Piazza is the first of the cards that I pulled from the .10¢ box. This is a 1998 SPx Power Explosion that’s numbered to 4,000 copies.

The back of this card is pretty cool. It lists HR and RBI hit at home and on the road by month. There’s also a chart that shows how many home runs were hit to each field both home and away. Piazza loved right field in Los Angeles hitting 10 of his home runs there. He also hit 8 home runs to center on the road. He only hit 4 home runs to right on the road. Piazza hit 40 home runs in 2007.

Next up from the dime box is a David Ortiz 2006 Turkey Red red bordered parallel with the ad back. Sure, he’s in a Twins jersey here and I don’t really collect cards of Ortiz with the Twins, but for the ad back parallel, I couldn’t pass it up for a dime.

While the Turkey Red insert sets were nice, I really liked the full sets for the the colored border parallels and ad back variants. I could have done without the chrome versions of the cards in a retro set, but Topps isn’t going to stop that any time soon. I would have liked for the colored parallels to have been numbered similar to what you’d see in Upper Deck’s Masterpieces sets. I’ve got some Turkey Red rainbows, but unless you do some research, there’s no telling which colors are rarer than others.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, one of the best things about other card blogs is seeing cards that I never knew existed. Whether it’s a Fleer Diamond Cut Piazza, Fenway Favorites or some of the very cool Stadium Club Basketball inserts from when I wasn’t collecting.

Here’s a great example of that. I saw these Stadium Club Triumvirate cards on another blog and made a note that I wanted to pick at least one of them up. When I saw this Barkley for a dime, I knew that I was buying this card. There are two other Rockets players and the three cards fit together like a puzzle. The backgrounds of these cards are translucent which gives them a very cool look.

What I really need to do is track down the Celtics/Red Sox/Patriots pairings. There’s a complete set from one year listed on SportLots.com from two different sellers, but it’ll cost me $12 with shipping to get all three of them and that’s a little much for me.

Next up is another cool 90s insert set that I first saw on another blog (which was either Hoopography or Hupe Royalty, but I can’t remember at the moment). The die cut at the top of these cards is what makes that so great. The fact that it’s a refractor makes it even cooler. It’s listed as a refractor on the back, so I’m guessing that there are non-shiny versions of these cards as well. For a dime, I would have picked up any version of this card, they’re just that cool. This insert set is a great example of the crazy themed insert sets that companies came up with. You can find both old and new insert cards in the dime box, but I’d rather have cards that are visually appealing such as this one.

Why pick up just one Rock Star when you can pick up two. Here’s a card of Timmy Hardaway in his later days with the Heat. Hardaway became a huge star while paired up with Chris Mullin and Mitch Richmond in the exciting trio nicknamed Run TMC.

If you saw my jumbo shoeboxes, you’d see that they are filled with all kinds of oddball inserts from the 90s just like this. Most of them would probably go into dollar boxes today, but they’re worth a whole lot more than that to me.

I love how well these Rock Stars cards scanned. You can see the texture in the background and the shininess of the card.

This card was one that I picked up just for the novelty of it. I had seen these Authentix upgradable cards before, but never owned one before. This is a Leandro Barbosa rookie that is numbered to 1250 copies. It’s an interesting card and I think that I definitely need to track down the card and upgrade tickets for my Paul Pierce collection. Such a strange concept that isn’t nearly as cool as the inserts above. The whole ticket theme hasn’t gone over well whether done by Fleer or Topps.

After the tragic death of Nick Adenhart at the hands of a drunk driver, I’m surprised that Miguel Cabrera didn’t get more crap after his DUI conviction. I don’t see how people could be stupid enough to drink and drive in the first place, but to do it after one of your peers had recently been killed that way is even stupider.

This card didn’t deserve to be in the dime box so I added it to my stack so that it could be rescued. Dump cards because players got injured, never made it to the majors or have dropped in popularity, but don’t dump cards due to a player dying. That just doesn’t seem right to me.

This is a 1996 Playoff Illusions Terry Glenn rookie card. This appears to be Playoff’s version of chrome. It’s embossed with patterns that look like a topography map. There are rainbow colors all over the place and a giant flying Elvis head Patriots logo. It’s by far one of the most gaudy cards that I’ve ever seen. There’s no way that I could pass this one up for a dime. Many times, the really bad inserts are just as fun as the really good ones. It’s like a cardboard train wreck.

Normally, I wouldn’t go anywhere near a Curtis Martin card where he was in a Jets uniform, but I had to make an exception for this card. I love the vintage Vegas look to this card. It’s a simple design, but it looks great. A refractor version of this card would look even sweeter.

I also picked up a Brett Tomko 1996 Best on-card autographed card that I’m assuming was in the dime box due to a dinged corner, a 1981 Topps Coke Carl Yastrzemski, a couple of Sandbergs for a friend and a 2008 SPx Jerod Mayo rookie numbered to 999.

15 cards down and 84 to go. I’m pretty sure that the deal gave me these 14 dime cards for one dollar so that’s $6 spent for these 15 cards.

 

Technorati Tags: Mike Piazza,David Ortiz,Curtis Martin,Upper Deck,Topps,baseball cards,basketball cards,football cards

A Loss and a Gain

One of the many insert sets that I’m slowly putting together at the moment is the Boston Celtics Dynasty set from 2008-09 Upper Deck Basketball. It hasn’t been a particularly easy set to put together just because the cards aren’t all that easy to find and many times when they are listed, the $3 shipping fee on eBay is enough to send me running for the hills. I’m only going to pick these cards up if I can do so for the right price.

I was up to 16 out of the 30 cards, but I backtracked a little while I was recovering from my kidney stone surgery. Now I only have 15 cards in the set.

Due to a last minute cancellation by Jose Canseco (due to health issues) the Memorial Day card show in Mansfield brought in Celtics Legend and 2011 Hall of Fame Inductee Tom “Satch” Sanders to the card show. Since this would be a perfect addition to my Celtics HOF/Retired Number autograph collection, I had to go.

There was just one problem. I was out of work due to the surgery, wasn’t feeling very well and wasn’t moving around very well either. I decided that this would be a good opportunity to test my body and see how I was doing. We could turn around at any point and the day wouldn’t be that taxing.

Well, that’s what I thought. Just walking from the house to the car, from the car to the hotel and then to the card show inside already had me hurting a little. I bought my ticket and got into line and that’s when things got rough.

The best thing about this show is that they bring in affordable players who are popular with fans. They give you time to interact with the athletes as long as they’re not against it and it makes it a better experience for everyone. Everyone, that is, except people standing in line with a tube sticking out of their back and a drainage bag strapped to their thigh. The waiting in line really wore me down.

Even though I was 10th or so in line, I had to wait around 20 minutes to arrive at the front due to people talking and having multiple items to be signed (at $11 an autograph, I can’t blame them). I got my autograph and spoke with Mr. Sanders for a couple of minutes. He liked the card, stating that he hadn’t ever seen it before, and wished that he had been a member of all of the teams listed on the front of the card.

I hobbled back to the rest of my family in the lobby and we made our way back to the car. Once I got home, I crashed on the couch for a couple of hours which was a regular occurrence during my recovery. When I woke up, I got to admire this brand new gem in my collection.

When it comes down to it, I’ll always enjoy an in-person autograph a heck of a lot more than any card company produced autograph. As far as this collection goes, I’ve gotten autographs of Robert Parrish, Bill Russell, Tom Sanders and future Hall of Famer Paul Pierce as well as Slam Dunk champ Dee Brown. This was probably the worst time that I’ve ever had acquiring an autograph for my collection, but it’s one of the better ones due to the unique story that goes along with it.

 

Technorati Tags: Tom Sanders

A Tale of Three Boxes

Went to the spring edition of the card show at the Shriners Hall in Wilmington. While the winter version of the show is run by the Shriners themselves and benefits charity, this show was run by Hollywood Collectibles and benefits Hollywood Collectibles. When I saw that it was $7 just to enter the show, I almost turned around and left. When I saw a hall that was a third empty with tables much more spread out than normal, I felt like asking for a refund. I’m just glad that I wasn’t looking to pick up any of the autographs from the show. Why pay $180 for Bill Russell’s autograph when I got it for around $27 at his book signing? Why pay $30 for an autograph of a player that you can get on eBay for $5?

Those of you who live within driving distance to the Boston area and collect vintage cards, you have to check out the winter edition of this show. Even if I don’t buy anything, I just enjoy paying my admission (which goes to charity) and then walking up and down the aisles checking out the amazing cards that are for sale. So, I knew that I would at least see some nice cardboard eye candy even if the show didn’t live up to the usual expectations.

I dug through quarter and fifty cent boxes and ended up with 32 Piazza and Ortiz cards for my collection along with some other insert cards for $10. I really wanted to bust some wax, but there wasn’t a lot to choose from since there was only one wax dealer in the whole show (out of around 100 tables). I checked out his tables and ended up walking away with 2010-11 Donruss Basketball (Upper Deck made me want to give Panini another chance), 2010 Topps Pro Debut 2 and what I thought was 2011 Opening Day, but ended up being 2010 Opening Day (which explains the $20 price tag).

You may have seen spoilers if you follow my Twitter, but if not you’re in for some surprises. Which box do you think ended up being the best? Which box underdelivered and underwhelmed? I’ll post the box breaks throughout the day today and at the end you can see if the final results matched what you thought it would be. Which box would you be most excited to open?

Card Show Haul

Made another trip out to the Mansfield card show a couple of weekends ago. It’s a nice little show with a little bit of everything. There are usually only two dealers with any quantity of wax, but their prices are pretty good from what I’ve seen. I’ve been heading to this show mainly to pick up singles and that’s exactly what I did at this show.

These Sportscaster cards appeal to me for a couple of reasons. The first is that it is a modern version of a vintage set. Sure, the original cards were much larger and were designed to be more of an educational tool than a collectible, but many people have fond memories of these cards. The second thing that appeals to me is that the original Sportscaster cards were definitely an oddball issue as far as the sports subjects go.

I had been thinking of picking up a box of 2005 Leaf to chase these, but the boxes are still fairly expensive and I’m not sure what else there is worth pulling out of those boxes. I’m not going to pay $80 for 5 or 6 of the Sportscaster cards. Especially not when I can pick up a couple of them for a dollar each. The Mulder is numbered to 45 and the McCovey is numbered to 25. I really need to start tracking down some of the Piazzas in this set which might be tough since each variation is fairly low numbered.

I may have already had this Big Baby orange refractor, but when it’s numbered to 499 and available for a dollar, I don’t mind possibly picking up a duplicate. It’s funny how much more easily you’ll pick up a card for a dollar when there’s no shipping involved and the card is right there in front of you.

I’d still much rather pick up older Topps singles of the players that I collect than the junk that Panini is producing these days. I haven’t even picked up any Donruss, which I wanted to love, outside of one autographed single and the cards that I won in Hoopology’s contest. I can’t encourage them to keep putting out the same garbage.

I purchased all of these Piazza cards from the same dealer for a little over $2 a piece. He had some cool looking inserts that I hadn’t seen before and so I grabbed those along with a couple of other cards to hit a quantity discount and get everything even cheaper.

This Cheap Seat Treats card is pretty interesting. At first all that you can see of the player is their head peeking out over the top of the seat. The card is designed to fold down just like the seats at your favorite ballpark. It’s kind of strange, but it also makes sense.

I had a little bit of trouble getting a really good scan of the card with the seat unfolded. It finally cooperated a little bit when placed in a large sleeve while unfolded. This is still a strange insert set, but at least now you can see the entire player.

I like seeing things like this where companies took a chance on something new. So many cards have been produced over the years that companies have to try something new.

This card doesn’t scan all that well, but this is a beautiful card and is exactly what Topps Chrome can be at its best. There’s etching, cool designs and a really nice picture of the player. If there’s a refractor version of this card, it’s something that I really need to pick up.

There’s a ton of Piazza cards like this one that were produced while I was away from the hobby that I now need to acquire. It was nice to pick up a handful of these cards all in one place. Soon it might be time to grab another bunch of .18¢ base cards from SportLots.

I really miss some of the really cool insert sets that Fleer seemed to put into their sets on a yearly basis. They were the first company to put an insert (that wasn’t a parallel) into every pack and they were one of the first to have inserts that were case hits. The tougher to pull that a card was, the more cool things you were likely to find on it. Most of the cards can probably be acquired cheaply these days, but that’s just all the more reason to search them out.

This Baseball Rules! insert is just another very cool Fleer insert set. It’s die cut and has a cool background consisting of baseballs. I’ve already put the card away, but if I remember correctly the back explained how to figure out batting average.

Who will be your… Mystery Finest. Topps came up with an interesting idea with Mystery Finest inserts. When you pulled these cards, they had a protective film over them like other Finest cards, but the film was opaque so you didn’t know how was on the card. The card backs would picture four players that could possibly be on the front of the card. I don’t think that anyone kept these cards unpeeled or if they would go for any sort of premium in that state. Most people want to know which player is on a card.

Dufex! Boy do I miss Dufex. Museum Collection cards were by far the coolest parallel set ever produced. It’s a shame that no one is using this technology these days. Upper Deck might have used it in hockey, but no one is using it in any of the sports that I collect.

I think that Piazza had 3 or 4 cards in this set and I now have two of them in Museum Collection form. These cards are still pretty popular and sell for a lot more than any of the other common parallel sets from the 90s.

Speaking of parallels, here’s a Piazza gold chrome refractor. This card books for $12 and is available on CheckOutMyCards for $3 so I was happy getting it for what I did. I have no clue how difficult these were to pull. Luckily, Topps now numbers most of their colored refractors, but that had led to those same colored refractors being a lot tougher to pull.

Did someone say oddball cards? I love me some Sportflix. I bought a ton of the stuff back in the day which was tough because it was by far the most expensive trading cards out at the time. As times changed and sets such as Chrome, Finest and SPx came out with new technologies people weren’t as willing to pay so much for Sportflix anymore. It’s kind of like what happened to Action Packed (which I also loved for those of you who may have been wondering).

Unfortunately, I already had this Going, Going, Gone insert so if any of my fellow Piazza collectors need this card (in a Dodgers uniform) then let me know. Maybe you’ve got an extra of a Piazza insert that I need.

This Stadium Club Chrome refractor is a parallel version of an insert set. I’m blanking on anything to write for some of these cards due to putting them away before composing this post. I’ve been trying to focus on getting my desk organized and cleaned off especially in preparation of a future case break.

So, just take in the great Stadium Club photography, imagine a refractory shimmer when this card is tilted from side to side and wonder mourn a great set that doesn’t exist any longer.

This 2004 Leaf Certified Cuts card was thrown into the pile because it was serial numbered and a Marlins card. You don’t see all too many cards of Piazza in a Marlins uniform since he only played 5 games with them. I’ll also pick up serial numbered cards whenever I see them because you don’t know when you may see them again.

Last, but certainly not least, is this Piazza Moonshots jersey card. You can’t beat that for $2. Well, you probably could since Piazza jersey cards are a dime a dozen and many can be picked up for a couple of bucks, but I was very happy to add this to my collection. The jersey placement seems like something right out of Panini’s playbook which makes me wonder if there’s a version of this cars sans jersey. If there isn’t another version of this card then the swatch placement seems a little strange. A quick Google search reveals some with white jersey swatches, but that’s it.

So, there you go. All in all, a very successful day at the card show. The only place where I struck out was in trying to purchase some 1000 count boxes. Oh well, there’s always next month.

 

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