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.

A Bunch of Babies

I’m going to stick with the parallel theme for one more post. I’m all for picking up parallels cheaply, but I won’t break the bank for them. I definitely enjoy picking them up in batches because it makes the whole process a whole lot easier.

Here’s a trio of 2007-08 Topps Luxury Box Glen “Big Baby” Davis rookies. First up is what I think is the base card which is numbered to 699. The base card has some nice team color stuff going on in the design. I’m guessing that the other two parallels are the bronze (/249) and silver (/75) which leads me to believe that there is also a gold version out there as well.

The best part of this acquisition is the story. This package was mailed from the Philippines back in January. It got lost somewhere along the way and then had another postmark from April 29th when it got back on track and then it arrived to me in May. I had long given up on these cards so it was a total surprise when they showed up. I’m usually not a fan of buying cards from the Philippines for this very reason, but I took a shot when the three cards sold for a dollar plus three dollars shipping.

 

Technorati Tags: Basketball cards,Glen Davis,Big Baby,Topps Luxury Box

Big Big Baby Haul

I’ve been lucky enough to add some amazing Big Baby cards to my collection over the past month or so. Starting form the top left and going clockwise:

• 2007-08 Topps Finest RC blue refractor numbered 120/199. I already had this card, but I picked up this second copy at a great price and also got a David Robinson black refractor /75 from the same seller with combined shipping.
• 2008-09 Topps Chrome gold refractor 26/50. I found this card on SportLots.com when I was picking up some cards for my various player collection. It was listed at $3, so I threw it in my cart. If this card were listed on eBay, it would cost $3 for shipping alone.
• 2009-10 Topps yellow printing plate 1/1. This is my first 1/1 of Big Baby and now that I think of it, it’s the first 1/1 of any player that I collect.
• 2007-08 Fleer Hot Prospects Rookie Autograph Patch 310/599. Things really lined up for the acquisition of this card. I got both a nice patch swatch and a nice price. I’ve seen one color patch pieces go for more money than what I paid for this one.
• 2008-09 Topps black parallel 34/51. Goes nicely with the gold card above it.
• 2007-08 Upper Deck Chronology RC autograph 69/99. I already had a copy of this card as well, but I was watching it and the price was so low that I had to pick up another copy. There are now only 97 other copies out there.

I really need to get my Big Baby collection scanned and posted online. Since he’s not a huge star, I’ve been able to pick up much better cards of him than I can of most of the other players that I collect.

 

Technorati Tags: Glen Davis,Big Baby,Celtics

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.

 

Technorati Tags: Mike Piazza,Glen Davis,Big Baby

Recent Ebay Acquisitions

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!

 

Technorati Tags: Mike Piazza,Glen Davis,Kent Hrbek,Bryce Brentz,Jeremy Piven,Clay Buchholz,baseball cards,basketball cards,autographs,Topps Upper Deck,Fleer

Mailday and Panini Laziness

I was rooting for Panini to put out some great products when they took over the NBA trading card license from Topps and Upper Deck, but so far I've been mostly disappointed. The only boxes that I've purchased are one box of the flagship set and one box of the Hall of Fame set. I really wanted to like Studio, but the fact that the base cards are designed for autograph and relics ruins them. The fact that Panini mostly guarantees "hits" and not autographs means that a lot of their boxes don't even come close to being worth what you have to pay for them. Hopefully things improve in 2011. I'm very excited about the upcoming Donruss set. They are by far the best base cards that Panini has "designed" for the NBA to date. I put designed in quotes because they're reusing an old design.

That being said, there are some nice Panini cards out there. The Skylines cards in Studio were one example. Check out these four Celtics cards that I mentioned recently in a previous post.

Most of the cards in the Hall of Fame set are great looking. The Famed Fabrics cards are very nice looking. That's where the good design ends unfortunately. The Old School card suffers from bad design with that huge empty area where the Celtics logo is just waiting to contain an autograph sticker or jersey swatch. The two Big Baby cards are a good example of Panini's laziness. First off, Davis is a Prestigious Pro? I'm a big fan and I don't even think that I would say this. It's just another reason to throw more cards out there and then they make it worse with a floating jersey swatch in the card. Want to see another example of this? Check out the picture below.

Here's where things get even worse. I've seen the same card come in jersey and patch versions, but this is a new one on me. You can find this card with a square window over the jersey swatch as well as die cut windows of Pierce's number 34. This is the kind of crap that really has to stop if Panini wants people to take them seriously.

Why do I have these cards if they're so terrible you might ask. Well, they were all available very cheaply which made it worthwhile to add to my collection. Buying singles is a lot different than slapping down a wad of cash to purchase packs or a wax box. While I have no problem picking up Panini singles, especially with how cheaply many of them sell for, I have yet to be motivated to purchase many of Panini's wax offerings.

Celtics Lots

Finding stuff like this is one of the reasons why I haven't abandoned eBay completely when searching for lower priced cards.  While it's not worth it many times to have a single, cheap card shipped to you, sometimes you can make it worthwhile by finding multiple cards from one seller or by stumbling across a great lot.  My latest win came yesterday and it was actually a lot that I forgot to bid on the first time.  Luckily, it was listed once again and I was the only bidder.

I probably would have paid the four dollars that this whole lot will cost me with shipping on just the Dennis Johnson jersey card.  This lot comes with three other cards though and two of them will go right into one of my player collections.  There's a Big Baby Prestigious Pros card that is numbered to 499 as well as the same exact card with a jersey swatch stuck in it also numbered to 499.  There's also a Cedric Maxwell Old School card to round things out.  Not bad at all for $4 shipped.

Next up is a good win on behalf of a poorly written listing.

This auction is listed as a Big Baby Bowman Sterling Refractor.  They leave out the fact that it's an autograph which I think would have gotten it a little more attention.  This card is only numbered to 99 and it's one that I didn't yet have in my collection.  There's free shipping so that bumps up my potential high bid.  I end up winning the card for $6.05 which isn't bad at all for just this single card.  This single card?  What do you mean by that?  Well, further down in the listing you see that this lot also includes a Sweet Shot autographed card.  I already had this card, but this one ended up having a better autograph on it so I was happy with that.  So, I ended up with two Big Baby autographed cards; one is numbered to 99 and the other to 699 and they cost me three dollars a piece.  Can't beat that. 

Jon Lester Mojo

...and suddenly I've got an impressive Jon Lester collection, but that's getting ahead of myself. About a week and a half ago, I received an e-mail from Mojo letting me know that he really wanted my Kobe Bryant Rookie & Stars patch autograph that I had won in the Panini Adrenalyn photography contest. Always one to entertain an offer, I took a look at what he had to offer and what he had to offer was impressive. We exchanged a few e-mails and my end of the trade arrived in the mailbox on Friday. I'll start with some of the extras and work my way up to the meat and potatoes of the trade.

I didn't have any Jon Lester rookies prior to this, so these were welcome additions to my collection. Now I've got a great Jon Lester collection. What's that? These aren't all that impressive. Hmm, there must be something else in this package to prompt that first sentence up there.

Next up is a 2008 Donruss Threads Anthony Rizzo Diamond King. I haven't purchased any of the unlicensed baseball stuff that Donruss/Panini has done since losing their MLB license. So, it is safe to say that this is my first card from this set. This card is serial numbered 7/100.

Rizzo might have been king of the high school diamond, but at the time that this card was produced, he had yet to be crowned king of any minor or major league diamonds. The Donruss crystal Ball was working because he's currently ranked 3rd amongst Red Sox prospects after a season in AA Portland that saw him hit for power, but not much average. He was named the Sea Dogs MVP and the Red Sox Minor League Player of the Year. Jon Lester got all of the press because he was in the majors at the time he battled cancer, but Rizzo defeated cancer himself in 2008.

Here's the Dice-K card from last year's Topps World Baseball Classic redemption cards. The terrible diamond cut on these cards would be a harbinger for many mis-cut, mis-printed, damaged and missing cards to come from Topps in 2010. It's a refractor and it's of a Red Sox player, so I'll take it. Whether or not Matsuzaka is a member of the Red Sox roster when Opening Day rolls around is under a lot of debate. He could be traded to lower salary, but if he's still around he'll easily be the best 5th starter in the league. I'd like to see him stick around.

Next up is a gold Aaron Bates from Topps Unique that's serial numbered 15/25. Bates doesn't currently rank amongst the top Red Sox prospects, but that doesn't take anything away from the coolness of this card. I like the design of the Topps Unique base cards, but I probably won't ever own too many of them unless I go digging through a singles box for them. The packs and boxes cost way too much for me for what you could possibly pull as hits. It was great for those who are only looking at the serial numbers, but a lot of the big hits were ugly looking cards.

Josh Reddick is part of the new crop of youngsters knocking on the door in Boston. We got to see a lot of these youngsters last season due to all of the injuries that plagued the Sox. Two-thirds of the starting outfield spent the majority of the season on the disabled list. Reddick currently ranks 8th in Boston's farm system and is on the 40 man roster.

This green foil parallel from TRISTAR's 2008 Projections set is numbered 16/50. This is a nice looking set. I've purchased a box of the special packs containing only Red Sox Prospects and liked what I saw.

To be honest, I don't even know what set this Carlton Fisk card is from. I thought it might have been All-Time Fan Favorites, but that doesn't appear to be the case. What I do know about the card is that it has Pudge's complete career statistics on the back which is very cool. The card is numbered out of 99 on the back and has the cool old-school Topps logo on the front.

As a Sox fan, you can only ask "What if?" when it comes to Fisk. What if management back then hadn't played games with Fisk's contract negotiations and he remained with the BoSox rather than signing with the ChiSox. For starters, I'd probably have no idea who Rich Gedman was.

Oh, here's another Jon Lester card. Is this the one that lays the ground work for a kick-ass collection? This is a relic card that's numbered to 102 from 2009 Topps Ticket to Stardom. Here's a nice ticket stub from Fenway Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. The ticket has a photo of Ramon Hernandez bunting the A's to victory over the Sox. On a Jon Lester card? This will be interesting to have in the collection in a "Topps really produced shit like this?" kind of way.

Jacoby Ellsbury had a really tough 2010. He missed over 90% of the season, stayed away from the team while rehabbing his injury and ended up alienating fans as well as teammates. He's an amazing talent on the basepaths even if he doesn't get there via walk as often as a lead off hitter should. Here's hoping that he can put a disastrous 2010 behind him and rebound next season.

This card is from 2007 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects and features a jersey swatch from an All-Star Futures game-worn jersey.

On the other hand, Clay Buchholz had a brilliant 2010. He finished with a 17-7 record and 2.33 ERA. If not for an injury that wiped out 3 to 4 starts, Buchholz might also be mentioned as an AL Cy Young Candidate. As it is, I don't see too much difference between his stats and the players that are getting all of the attention. The only thing that Buchholz didn't do was strike out a ton of batters.

Those of you who have been reading the blog for a while are probably sick of me mentioning that I was lucky enough to witness Buchholz no-hitter. Because of that, I've put together a little bit of a Buchholz collection. I've got an Allen & Ginter autograph, this relic card and now just need a Bowman Chrome rookie to complete the trifecta.

Here's another card from 2008 Donruss Threads. This is an autographed Lars Anderson limited to 474 copies. I'm not sold on using the Diamond King name with prospects, but Donruss was probably trying to cash in on the nostalgia of the brand.

Anderson is currently ranked 4th in Boston's farm system and once he's ready for the Majors it will give Boston the flexibility to move Kevin Youkilis back to the hot corner. It can't hurt to have two top prospects at first base and it'll be fun watching to see if Anderson or Rizzo ends up being the first baseman of the future in Boston.

When I started watching basketball, Bill Walton was a member of the Boston Celtics. So, even though I'd later find out that he only spent two years with the team at the end of his career, the fact that I first saw him with the Celtics on a team that would go on to win the 16th Championship makes me always associate him with the Celtics. So, when I saw this card I definitely wanted it in my collection.

Elite was yet another Donruss product that I never purchased any packs of. I got my fill of multi-sport sets in the 90s thanks to Classic. This is a cool card and one of only 100 copies in existence.

This Big Baby card is one that Mojo had let me know about a while ago, but until recently I didn't have anything to send off in order to acquire it. This is actually one of Baby's better looking autographs with the only flaw being that it slips off of the sticker a little at the bottom of the G. This card is the gold version and is numbered to 25 copies.

Davis has been huge so far for the Celtics this season. He is now the first person off of the bench which will be important in order to keep Shaq and Garnett rested for the playoffs. Davis has been playing the center position late in the 4th quarter of games due to Shaq's free throw problems and has been playing well. I wouldn't be surprised if his name came up at the end of the season in 6th Man Award conversations.

Here's the card that I've been teasing throughout this whole post. It's a Jon Lester 2007 Sweet Spot black bat barrel red ink autograph card numbered to 5. This is the type of card that you may not even see for sale let alone have the opportunity to own. So, that card alone lays the groundwork for a great Jon Lester collection that I think I shall now begin. I'll pick up one or two higher end rookies and then a nice looking relic and build from there.

Thanks to Mojo for the great trade. I didn't think I would end up trading the Kobe for a handful of cards, but then again most people don't have a collection full of cards such as these to draw upon.

11 and 34

It’s funny how certain numbers can pop up again and again in your life.  I’m not talking anything as severe as Hurley’s 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42, but since sports are full of numbers it’s bound to happen.

I was born on the 11th of September and those two numbers correspond with my current favorite players on the Celtics: Glen “Big Baby” Davis and Rajon Rondo.

I’ve been collecting Big Baby since his rookie season.  I was still bumming over the departure of “Big Al” Jefferson and Davis seemed like a fun rookie to root for.  He’s exactly the type of player that I love.  He’s got a natural instinct to be around the ball, battles hard on the offensive boards and is always hustling.  The biggest hole in his game is his lack of any vertical leap to speak of, but hopefully as he slims down and continues to work that will improve a little.

I haven’t fully committed to collecting Rondo yet because I’m already collecting a lot of players and it’s never a good idea to dive into a collection when a player is red hot.  I do have a handful or Rondo rookies, autographs and relics though.  I complete forgot to nominate Rondo for the terrible autograph tournament.  Some of his early autos have his full name, but he quickly switched to just signing “RR.”

Rondo has improved dramatically by leaps and bounds every year in the league.  This was a guy who “Boston Sports Guy” Bill Simmons crapped all over when the Celtics acquired him, jumped on the bandwagon after the Summer League and then resumed pooping for most of his rookie season.  To be fair, Rondo couldn’t shoot coming into the league.  Once he learned how to use his superior speed to get to the basket almost at will, it caused defenders to respect his speed and opened up room for his jumper which started going in more frequently.

Where Rondo has really shined is in the playoffs.  People were afraid that he might be a liability when the Celtics won it all in 2007-08, but that wasn’t the case.  Rondo really shined last season in the playoffs, but the Celtics couldn’t overcome the loss of Kevin Garnett on the defensive end of the floor even with Big Baby stepping up offensively in Garnett’s place.  This year, Rondo has been phenomenal.  Forget the new “Big Three,” right now in Boston there’s just a “Big One.”  Rondo’s triple-double today against the Cavaliers will go down as one of the all-time great Celtics playoff performances and that’s saying a lot when you’re wearing the jersey of a team that has won 17 Championships and could have their own wing of the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Another player that I haven’t really chased as far as a collection goes is Clay Buchholz.  I hadn’t noticed until two starts ago that Buchholz is now wearing 11 on his jersey this season.  It’s the number that he wore all through his childhood and on school teams.

I already had a connection with Buchholz due to being at his no-hitter.  My Buchholz collection started with all of the cards that mentioned the no-hitter and then grew from there.  I now have a couple of autographs and relic cards.  I’ve been eyeing an autographed rookie, but the majority that I see are slabbed and I’m not too big on that.  The prices on those cards always seem to be through the roof.  I will make sure that I track down all of Buchholz’s cards once they start depicting him with his new jersey number. 

I turned 34 on my last birthday and I currently collect two players with that jersey number.  I’ve been collecting Paul Pierce ever since I returned to the hobby casually around 2001 or so.  At that time, Pierce was one of the best clutch players in the game and also one of the most underrated.  He played with some terrible teams and chose to stay in Boston when he had chances to leave.  That decision was rewarded when Danny Ainge added Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett to the mix along with a great supporting cast and Pierce led the Celtics to their 17th NBA Championship winning NBA Finals MVP in the process.  Pierce has been struggling this year in the playoffs due to age and nagging injuries, but once he retires his 34 will be raised to the rafters in the Garden and he’ll take his place in the Hall of Fame.

The other 34 is Red Sox Slugger David Ortiz.  One thing that I liked a lot about the 2004 World Series Championship team was that it was built with the addition of two of my fantasy baseball favorites: David Ortiz and Billy Mueller.  Both of these guys seemed to annually be on the verge of their breakout season only to lose large parts of the season to injury.  Both of these guys were great, low-risk/high-reward free agent signings by Theo Epstein that looked brilliant in retrospect.

It’s tough not to like Ortiz.  He’s got an infectious smile, seemed to be well-liked by his teammates and under the tutelage of hitting coach Papa Jack became one of the most fearsome hitters in all of baseball.  He cemented his place in Boston Sports History with his clutch hitting during the 2004 championship run.  He struggled at the beginning of last season before leading the league in home runs from the middle of June to the end of the season.  It looks like he’s struggling again at the start of this season, but a platoon with Mike Lowell at DH will hopefully rejuvenate him like the platoon at catcher has done to Jason Varitek.  If not, it just means that Ortiz cards might be cheaper for me to acquire for my collection.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to buy a lottery ticket.

 

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