Gimme an A…and another A.

There’s a decent chuck of time from the late 90s to early 00s where I wasn’t collecting much at all. I’d buy a discount box at Kmart every now and then, but that was about it. It’s a shame because I love a lot of what card companies did during the 90s. A lot of these inserts appeal more to me than my 100th card with a swatch of a player’s jersey in it. In my latest package from CheckOutMyCards, I picked up a few of those inserts.

I actually have a Ken Griffey Jr Spellbound in my collection and while I like Griffey, he’s not a player that would motivate me to go out and collect all of the letters from his name. Mike Piazza, a player that I just happen to collect, is another of the players to have his name spelled out in the Spellbound insert set. These four cards were on COMC at a good price, so I decided that I start on my way.

What’s not to love about these cards? There’s a big picture of the player framed by foil and etched foil. You’ve got different pictures on the front and back which is always a nice touch. Putting this set together is also a very realistic goal since it is only six cards.

Hanx For The Memories

I’m not quite sure what to think of these Razor cards. I finally found this Tom Hanks wardrobe card for a decent price over on CheckOutMyCards.com and so I decided to take the plunge.

These cards couldn’t be more non-descript. “This card includes an actual piece of clothing worn by Tom Hanks.” While I’d love a piece of the eye-catching suit that Hanks wore in Big, this certainly isn’t a piece of that. It’s blue and corduroy and…well, that’s about it. I can’t think of any specific movie that Mr. Hanks wore this kind of blue corduroy in, but he’s been in a ton of movies at this point. That being said, I doubt that this card is from any movie wardrobe. I know that celebrities often will donate old clothes to be auctioned off for charity and I’m thinking that something like that is more likely the source of this clothing swatch. I’ve been a Tom Hanks fan for most of my life. Heck, I was a fan of his before I even knew who he was. (I loved Bosom Buddies as a kid.) He’s an amazing actor and a class act, which seems to be rare amongst celebrities in this day and age. Tom’s former cords are a quirky addition to my collection.

Check Out More Cards

I had a couple of big sales on CheckOutMyCards out of the blue and decided to put those funds to good use. It’s interesting to see how my collecting has changed. In the 90s, I would pick up new stuff almost exclusively at card shows. I would pick stuff up at card shops as well, but not as frequently. These days, I might have a new card arrive to become part of my collection every day of the week. It’s always a pleasure to see a package arrive from COMC since a whole bunch of new cards will be added to my collection.

First up are a couple of 2011 Finest Tom Bradys. I’ve been slowly getting back into football due to Panini driving me away from basketball cards. When I saw that this year’s Finest offering pictured Brady in the Patriots throwback uniform, I had to have it. For good measure, I decided to pick up both the base card and refractor version of the card since they were both very affordable.

Whenever I get the chance, I’ve been adding Bryce Brentz autographs to my collection. If I remember correctly, this all started when I pulled one myself and from there things have snowballed. Both of these Brentz cards are from In The Game. The cards look nice even without any logos on them. The autos are on opaque stickers, but they go well with these designs. The only additional thing that I’d like to see on these cards is serial numbering. These days, a little detail like that on a card can make all of the difference. Brentz is currently the 8th ranked prospect in a loaded Boston minor league system.

Here’s a little bit of old and new. I picked up an off-center Dennis Johnson rookie and a black bordered parallel from Panini’s Basketball Hall of Fame set. Like most Panini products, this set is best acquired card-by-card. Every single card in this set with the exception of maybe 1% of the cards produced can be acquired for less than you’d pay buying them by the pack. There seem to be a lot of singles on COMC for around a dollar a card which is perfect for me.

Sticking with off-center 1978-79 Topps cards, here’s a Cedric “Cornbread” Maxwell rookie card. It’s not quite as bad as it looks in the scan. I guess I inadvertently cut off the right edge of the card.

I have to chuckle a little bit at Upper Deck including Dee Brown in the Immortals section of the 2009-10 hoops set. I think these are short printed. Eventually, I’ll need to pick up a second copy of this card since I need one for my set and one for my Dee Brown collection. Dee had one of the best dunks ever in the Slam Dunk Contest, but in no way is he an immortal.

BRAINS! Like a zombie, I’m always on the lookout for Brains. Bobby “The Brain” Heenan was the best thing about wrestling in the 80s and 90s. I probably mention this every time that I post cards of The Brain, but his humor was really the only way to make it through some of the terrible matches from the 80s when half of the WWE roster consisted of jobbers.

These Brains all come from 2010 Topps WWE Platinum. The first two are part of the Platinum Performance insert set with the second being a green parallel numbered to 499 copies. The final card is a green parallel of the base card and it is also numbered to 499 copies.

As a kid in the 80s, my two main player collections were Dwight Evans, who played for the hometown Red Sox and Kent Hrbek who played for the Twins. It was pretty random when it came to deciding to collect Hrbek. I noticed that he popped up in a few of the 44 card retail sets that I had purchased and that I had a good number of his cards already.

Though the selection may have been random, I knew what I was doing when I picked Hrbek to be one of my player collections. Like Evans, Hrbek was insanely popular with the hometown crowd, but his abilities weren’t as widely known to the majority of baseball fans.

I couldn’t remember if I already had the 1982 Topps Traded Hrbek XRC, but for the price it was listed at, I wouldn’t mind picking up another one. This would almost definitely be in better condition than anything I would have had from my collection in the 80s. I knew I already had both the 1982 Topps Future Stars card and Hrbek’s 1982 Donruss rookie, but there purchases were made solely for condition upgrades.

The Starting Lineup Talking Baseball card might be the only new addition to my collection. I remember this game being heavily advertised when it came out, but I never owned it. The game came with the AL and NL All-Star teams, but the rest of the MLB teams could be purchased on additional cartridges. The cartridges came with cards of the players included on the team rosters. These painted cards stand up well next to current releases such as Masterpieces or Chicle.

Not too long ago, I finally picked up a Kevin McHale rookie for my collection, but this isn’t that card. This is a reprint from 1996-97 Topps Basketball. Topps has been doing this rookie reprint thing for a while now and have produced so many iconic basketball cards. It’s a shame that they can no longer produce basketball cards.

Here’s another card from current basketball card serial killer Panini. Panini relies far too much on serial numbering to create value in their products. They are lazy in design and uninspired in execution. I won’t even get into their tremendously horrible customer service because I’m sure that all of you are sick of hearing about it.

This Robert Parish rookie is the real thing, but right below it is the chrome version of his rookie reprint which like the McHale is from 1996-97. The Heritage insert from Studio is one of the nicer looking Panini inserts that I’ve seen. Of course, the player is way over to the side to make room for a jersey swatch that is shoved into some of the cards. The main thing that these cards have going for them is that the autographed versions of these are on-card autographs. Wrapping things up is another Panini Basketball Hall of Fame black bordered parallel. Who knows, I may complete the Panini HOF set by the time that their exclusive license runs out and Topps can (hopefully) make basketball cards again.

You know that any package that comes in the mail from COMC is going to include some Mike Piazza cards. This is one of the better batches that I’ve gotten though.

First up is the 1997 Donruss Preferred X-Ponential Power insert numbered to 3000 copies. I’ve had the Tony Gwynn from this set for a while now and think it’s the coolest card that I’ve ever seen. The background is printed on clear acetate, it’s die cut and there’s a good amount of holofoil accents. Once I obtained this card, I was willing and able to trade away the Gwynn which promptly went into a trade pile that will some day be headed off to Fuji.

Next up was a card that I picked up mainly for nostalgia reasons. Back in the 90s, I was completely hooked on watching Don West pitch sports cards on the Shop At Home network. These Elite Dominators were available exclusively through the network when you purchased a box of 1993 Donruss for $99. That’s a huge markup on those boxes for one extra card numbered to 5000 copies. You did have a chance at autographs of Juan Gonzalez, Nolan Ryan, Don Mattingly or Paul Molitor, but there were only 10,000 autographs out of a total print run of 100,000 Elite Dominators. Not terrible odds, but at $99 a box it wasn’t a great gamble either.

I picked up a couple of cards from great 90s Upper Deck insert sets. The Generation Next Era has a motion hologram on it that moves as you tilt the card. The Mickey Mantle Long Shots is printed on that classic Upper Deck holofoil, not the garbage that Panini uses these days. Both of these sets were retail exclusives, but redemption cards for the complete sets could be found in hobby packs.

To round things out is a 2010 Sterling. It’s a great looking card, but Sterling is ridiculously expensive for what you get. I’m perfectly happy just picking up the singles.

One of the few sets that I liked from Panini last year was Totally Certified. It wasn’t quite the original Certified and it wasn’t quite Dufex, but it was a nice combination of the two. I liked it until I busted open a box which reminded me how bad of a value any Panini product is. I ended up picking up the base card, red parallel, red jersey card and Fabric of the Game card pretty cheaply. To top things off, I also picked up the Crown Royale card which is a great looking base card.

The Totally Certified base card is numbered to 1849, the red parallel is numbered to 499, the red jersey card is numbered to 249 and the Fabric of the Game is numbered to 299. Does anything numbered this high really matter? You can usually pick up a card numbered to 499 for the same price as one numbered to 1849 (and I did). These days, unless the numbered is double digits or lower, it doesn’t seem to have a huge effect on the card.

These jersey cards were were purchased for $3.50 and $4.00 which is about the same as a minimum bid plus shipping on eBay. Does this make you happy if you open a box that sells for over $100 and pull a jersey card of one of the top players in the league? This is $60 box content.

I had already finished this set a while back, but I hadn’t noticed that one of the U cards had a crease from the bottom edge to the “relic.” So, when this one popped up cheaply, I had to grab it. These cards are a perfect example of serial numbering not meaning everything. These cards are numbered to 55 copies and don’t carry a lot of value while this year’s Topps manufactured relics are numbered to over 700 copies and sell very well.

There you go, a pretty big batch of cards. Normally, I would have broken this up into smaller posts, but I hadn’t posted in a while and have a ton of other things to write about so you get a marathon post. Thanks for reading and don’t forget about the Red Sox Frankenset. Where else can you possibly win prizes from trading away Red Sox commons?

Check Out My Satch Sanders

While my pursuit of Celtics players with retired numbers is mainly to collect their autographs, I’ve also been picking up some other Celtics cards here and there to add to the collection. Here are a couple of Tom “Satch” Sanders cards that I picked up from CheckOutMyCards.

The first is a 1970-71 Topps Sanders card. I love the older Topps basketball cards. These taller cards make sense when you’re picturing seven foot tall athletes. The weird thing about these cards is that the team name is airbrushed out and there’s no mention of the Celtics anywhere on the card. It looks like they are licensed by the Players Association, but not the NBA itself. Still very cool cards. The card is a little rough with rounded corners, but the price was right.

The second card is from the Upper Deck Dynasty set that I’m collecting. I had this card already, but I pulled it from the set to get it autographed. Now I have one to put back into the set.

Check Out My Piazzas

It wouldn’t be a delivery from CheckOutMyCards without some additions to my Piazza collection. There are a ton of sets from the late 90s and early 00s that I don’t have any cards from at all.

First up is the beautiful 1995 Leaf Gold Stars card which is numbered to 10,000 copies. This was a big deal in 1995. I traded away the Kirby Puckett that I had from this set and had to pick up the Piazza so that I’d have at least one of these great looking cards in my collection. That’s followed by a 2006 4-in-1 Bowman sticker card, 1995 Fleer/Panini sticker, Classic promotional phone card and 2005 Cracker Jack sticker.

Anyone else collecting back when card companies starting putting phone cards into packs? Classic/Score Board did it more than anyone else, but I think even Topps got into the act.

Since I’m not really impressed by the big “MOJO” hits that come out of higher end products, I’m perfectly happy just buying singles after other people pay way too much to bust open boxes. Topps Tribute is a good example of that. It’s a beautiful base card, but most people don’t even care about these base cards. Next up is a Sterling parallel that’s numbered to just 50 copies. 2007 Topps Hit Parade is a shiny foilboard insert.

The next row starts off with a couple of Triple Threads parallels. The first one is numbered to 559 and the second to 1350. The 2006 Trading Places insert commemorates Piazzas move from the Mets to the Padres as a free agent.

The bottom row contains a 2006 Fleer Ultra Midsummer Classic Kings card which celebrates his being named the MVP of the 1996 All-Star Game. Rounding things out is an Upper Deck 2006 World Baseball Classic card showing Piazza playing for Italy.

So far, 5 of the 29 cards that will be part of my next shipment are Mike Piazza cards. I picked up some cool stuff including one card that I grabbed as much for nostalgia purposes than anything else.

Check Out My Cowens

I always make a note in my head of the first card that I buy on CheckOutMyCards after requesting a batch of cards to be sent to me. The purchase is usually made a day or so after requesting delivery. I had been waiting a while for this card between purchasing it and having it in my possession.

This card adds another to my total for my Celtics Retired Number collection. I think I’ve got around 10 autos now. I think this chase is going to be more of a focus for me this year since there are still a decent number of inexpensive autos that I can add before I start chasing some of the tougher ones such as Bird, Cousy and Auerbach.

Check Out My Repetitive Cards

When CheckOutMyCards announced their shipping special right before Christmas, I decided to head on over to the site and shop around for some cheaper cards using the money that I had in my account there. Someone must have busted a case of this stuff because they had a ton of Piazzas listed at .50¢ a piece and so I grabbed them all.

I ended up with three copies of card 79 for home runs 2, 15 and 23 of the 35 that Piazza hit during his rookie season. I also grabbed 15 copies of card 80 for RBI 14, 17, 24, 27, 31, 35, 38, 40, 49, 54, 63, 75, 90, 92 and 112 of the 112 that Piazza hit in his rookie year. All of these cards are numbered to 150 which isn’t a lot, but it seems like a lot since there are so many versions of each card. I got a parallel with a lower print run in a trade with Community Gum a little while back. That one was numbered to 29. Why 29? Hell if I know.

I wouldn’t pay more than .50¢ a card for these things. It was a pretty terrible idea by Topps. It’s funny because I love Topps Tek, but I hate this. At least the different backgrounds on the Tek cards made things a little interesting from card to card. These Moments and Milestones are only good for teaching kids how to count.

Check Out My Brain Cards

I was a huge fan of WWF wrestling in the 80s and 90s and a big reason for that was Bobby “The Brain” Heenan. He had a quick wit and his jokes made any match where he was commentating ten times more entertaining. Many times, the segments with Heenan and Gorilla Monsoon during Prime Time Wrestling were better than any of the matches they would introduce.

I only bought a few packs of WWE Platinum so I picked up this Heenan individually along with a refractor from 2006 Heritage Chrome. I really need to add a Bobby Heenan autograph to my collection. I guess that will be one of my collecting goals for 2012.

Check Out My Dewey Cards

My favorite player when growing up, Dwight Evans will probably always be my favorite Red Sox player. Dewey was an amazing fielder with a cannon for an arm. He wasn’t a slouch with the bat either once Walt Hriniak revamped his swing in the early 80s. A few more better offensive years early in his career and he might have gotten a little more Hall of Fame consideration. Maybe if he did somersaults on the field he would have been elected.

Here are three serial numbered cards from an Upper Deck set and two Donruss sets. It’s nice to see that current day Panini is carrying on the tradition of laziness started by Donruss. You didn’t have any other pictures of Evans to use? The design on both of those cards is brutal with the giant spaces looking for relics to be inserted. The final card is perforated and has a logo on it from the final year of Memorial Stadium. None of these cards will be entering the list of my favorite Dwight Evans cards, but I got them cheaply so they’re not part of my collection.

Check Out My Colored Sox Cards

I’ve found that CheckOutMyCards is by far the best place to pick up retail exclusive cards. These cards are no good for purchasing on eBay because the shipping is usually twice the price of the card. So, every now and then I’ll try a search for the various purples and oranges that Topps tucks away inside of retail packs.

The first card here actually isn’t a retail exclusive. This is a purple parallel numbered to 1799 from 2006 Future Stars. Next is an orange refractor from 2010 Topps Curvy Chrome. Batting third is a purple refractor from 2009 Bowman Chrome. In the cleanup spot is an orange Jon Lester refractor that looks really red in this scan.

Check Out My Bowman Basketball Cards – Finishing Move

Nothing too exciting about these cards except that they finish off my 2009-10 Bowman ‘48 set. The two rookies, DeMar DeRozan and Jordan Hill are serial numbered on the back to 2009 copies (as are all of the rookies) and the Double Post is numbered to 1948 (as are all of the plays).

I was a fan of this set right from the release. The autographed cards were sticker autos, but the checklist was very strong and there were three autographs to a box. I ended up pulling Dwyane Wade, Derek Rose and O.J. Mayo out of my box. Selling the Rose towards the end of his MVP season almost paid for the box on its own. There were blue parallels one per pack (numbered to 1948) and rarer black parallels that fell one per box. Then there were some rarer cards such as red autos (1 of 1), black bordered autographs (numbered to 48), printing plates, auto relics numbered to 1 and 8 and auto dual patch autos there were 1 of 1.

This is one set that I think can retain some decent value. It’s got a limited Blake Griffin rookie and there can only be 1948 complete sets due to the short printed play cards. So, I might be able to put this away with my ‘92 Bowman, ‘93 SP Baseball and ‘94 SP Baseball as the only sets that I own that are actually worth something.

Check Out My Triumvirate Cards

A while back, I posted some of the Stadium Club Triumvirate Basketball cards that I had picked up cheaply at a card show. It was my first time seeing the cards which led me to tracking down any of these cards from local teams or players that I collect. The first place that I looked was CheckOutMyCards where I was able to locate a few. I just took delivery the other day after some cards sold so now I have these to share with you.

First up is one-time Patriot Curtis Martin. Martin is the fourth highest rusher in the history of the NFL. The Patriots found something special when they took a chance on Martin who had slipped in the draft to the third round due to injuries in college. Martin would only play in New England for three seasons before leaving for the Jets along with The Tuna.

It’s always fun to play the “What if?” game in sports. What if Martin had stayed with the Patriots? With a running game, does Drew Bledsoe still get hurt? Does Tom Brady end up starring for a team other than the Patriots? Say that Bledsoe still gets hurt, how dominant would a Patriots team have been that featured the surgically precise Brady along with Martin carrying the ball? If the Patriots don’t overwork a 31-year-old Martin in 2004, like the Jets did, do injuries still limit Martin to 12 games the following season? (That season being his last.)

These Triumvirate cards are incredibly cool. Although this is a Stadium Club card, this is printed using Chrome technology. The die cutting on this card is amazing. Not only do you have the puzzle piece edge, you’ve got the word Triumvirate in the top left corner, holes in the top and bottom right as well as ovals around the player’s name. The scan of this card just doesn’t do it justice at all.

Whenever I discover a cool looking set, I check to see if it contains a Mike Piazza card. If it does, I’m going to want to acquire it for my collection. This was no exception. While I will probably never end up attempting to complete this Triumvirate, I’m really glad the I was able to pick up this Piazza for my collection.

This card has so many cool things going for it. First off, there’s the glove stitching along the right edge of the card complete with die cut holes. What you might not be able to tell is that the stitching is all little die cut holes. That little detail makes this card incredibly cool.

While I have no plans to complete the Dodger Triumvirate, I want to collect all of the trios of local players that were produced. There are Triumverates out there of Celtics, Patriots and Red Sox. Once you put all three cards together, you’ve got yourself a cool image:

These Triumvirate cards from 1999 come in two flavors. The Nomar is Luminous while the Pedro and Mo are Luminescent (Refractor). The die cuts on these cards make it look like the Red Sox are playing inside of a baseball themed crib or prison cell. I’m not a big fan of Nomar or Vaughn, but I love Pedro. This is a nice addition to the Red Sox collection.

 

Technorati Tags: Mike Piazza,Curtis Martin,Nomar Garciaparra,Pedro Martinez,Mo Vaughn,Topps Stadium Club,Triumvirate

Check Out My Cards: Themed Edition

Since all of the new wax boxes out there currently are priced way too high for what they deliver, I’m going to stick with picking up singles. There aren’t any redemption cards (expired or otherwise), you always get the players that you want and you can pick up inserts for less than what it costs for base cards out of new packs. These are my most recent acquisitions from CheckOutMyCards.

More Sportscasters! One thing that I’ve noticed about my COMC cards is that they tend to really follow my collecting fickleness. You see a card on there and you can pick it up right away. After I busted my box of Pinnacle Zenith and pulled some Epix cards, I ran to COMC and picked up some more. When I became obsessed with the Sportscasters inserts, I ran to COMC and picked up some of those. Above are Jim Palmer /30, Miguel Tejada /50, Tejada /55, Prior /25 and Pedro /35.

Here are some more of the beautiful Masterpieces basketball inserts. I love the cards in this set that focus on players with the Finals trophy or personal awards that they’ve won. Here’s Steve Nash with his MVP trophy along with OJ Mayo and Donte Greene. It’s a shame that there wasn’t ever a full set of Masterpieces basketball produced. The relics and on-card autographs would have been beautiful. It’s too bad that producing such a set costs to much and that the brand died out, but it sucks that basketball was the only sport that didn’t get a set.

Bryce Brentz is currently tearing up Single-A pitching. He should be tearing up pitching on that level, but it’s good to see since last year in Lowell at the rookie level he struggled. Since I didn’t pull it out of my box, I picked up the blue parallel from Topps Debut which is numbered to 369. I also picked up the 2010 Upper Deck USA insert card. The last card in the trio is the blue parallel from 2010 Bowman numbered to 399.

I’m usually not a fan of Topps’ higher end stuff, but I took an immediate liking to this Piazza Tribute bat card from the moment that I saw it. It’s a redemption card and it is numbered to 75 so I thought that I did pretty well when my $5 offer was accepted. Here’s one of the previously mentioned Epix cards. This is one of the All-Star Moment cards. This set is full of variations and I don’t think there’s any way that I’ll ever gather them all up. You really don’t even see the common cards all that often because there’s not much of a demand for them.

Last, but not least, are a trio of Red Sox cards. First up is a card that many people may not have ever seen. This Dwight Evans is from the “TV set.” Back in 1990, Topps offered up some team sets for sale through a TV offer. There were team sets for the Cardinals, Cubs, Mets, Red Sox and Yankees. There was also an All-Star set for collectors who didn’t happen to collect one of those five teams. I’ve been chasing this Dwight Evans for a while now, but they were always overpriced on eBay and then there was the shipping factor. So, when I saw this copy on COMC for under a dollar, I jumped on it. I love the way that the card looks. The design is simple, but it looks great. Nice big picture of Dewey during his follow-through.

Next up is a 2007 Masterpieces jersey card of Big Papi. I didn’t pull one out of my case, so I picked one up for a coupe of bucks on COMC. I usually have a hard time turning down a relic card when you can buy it for less than the cost of eBay shipping.

The final card was the first card that I purchased in this batch of cards. I had been looking for this Buchholz Bowman Sterling rookie for a while, but the prices had been pretty high on eBay. I picked this up for $4 which was good at the time. After his start this season, it might be a little high. There are tons of copies of this card available in graded form which doesn’t really appeal to me at all. Still, this is a great addition to my Buchholz player collection.

I’ve already started up a new batch of cards with another card for my Celtics Retired Numbers collection. I need to add some funds so that I can send in the remaining hits from my Masterpieces case and turn those into some more cards for my collection.

 

Technorati Tags: CheckOutMyCards,Dwight Evans,David Ortiz,Bryce Brentz