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.

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?

My Epic New York Adventure – Part 3

I’ve got to say, my family is getting better at including my hobby in Christmas. Last year, my mom put a box of Panini Basketball Hall of Fame under the tree. This year, my mom and wife partnered up to send me to New York so that I could add a Mike Piazza autograph to my collection.

The one thing that I hate about getting the autographs of big stars at card shows is that things are usually run like an assembly line. You hand the item that you are getting signed to someone, they hand it to the athlete and then hand it back to you. There’s no interaction with the athlete and it’s really not as much fun.

Of course, this is how the Piazza signing was being run. They announced that there would be no pictures with Mike and that he would not be signing home plates or seat backs. The last two things weren’t known to the promoter ahead of time which led to a lot of unhappy customers and arguing in line. Some of that arguing happened right before it was my turn to get my autograph. Never one to miss out on an opportunity, I figured that I would take it upon my self to hand my picture directly to Mike.

Here’s Mike getting ready to sign my picture. Over my backpack, you can see the guy with the red hair who was arguing with people about what could and couldn’t be signed.

Here’s Mike signing my picture. Screw PSA/DNA, James Spence, etc. This is all of the proof that I need right here. I won’t be selling this autograph anyway so it doesn’t matter. The guy right above Mike’s head had a home plate that he wanted to get signed. You can see it on the table.

I figured that since I was able to do the interaction thing, I may as well do it right. So, I thanked Mike and shook his hand. No one else got to do that as far as I knew. I was also lucky enough to end up with some great pictures thanks to my friend Stu who accompanied me to the show. The result?

I love it. Part of the autograph did end up on a dark part of the picture which isn’t the best, but I love the way that it turned out. While Piazza’s autograph is just a bunch of scribbly loops, it’s an autograph that really needs to be on something larger in order to appreciate it. I do love my Sweet Spot Piazza autograph, but the autograph doesn’t have enough room to breathe on that card.

I also picked up a series 8 Mike Piazza Retro Edition McFarlane figure for $8. Tough to beat that.

How did I end this great day? I went to the Knicks/Nuggets game with Mike Piazza. Well, I went to the game and Mike Piazza went to the game. I was up in the balcony and he was down in a courtside seat. That counts as going to the game with him, doesn’t it?

The game turned out to be a great one. It was a double overtime Nuggets victory that saw Carmelo Anthony take almost every shot from the middle of the 4th quarter on. He hit some big shots, but missed a lot more shots where he was double teamed and had teammates wide open. Poor Amare Stoudamire. I’d hate to play with someone like Melo.

I left the game and made my way to Port Authority for the trip home. Luckily the 12:15 bus wasn’t even half full so I got to switch to that earlier bus. I was back home and in my bed at 4:30 am, slept for around 9 hours and was up in time to see the Patriots beat the Ravens. All in all, a great weekend.

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.

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.

Piazza Poll

Now that I’ve decided that I’m going to get an 8x10 signed by Piazza at the White Plains show, I have to decide which 8x10 is going to end up with a place of honor on my wall. I found a seller on Amazon that had a good selection of pictures at a very good price. I chose three that I liked the best and placed my order. Now, I’m having a hard time trying to decide which of these three should be the one that I bring. Each one has it’s positives and negatives.

This first picture I got because it’s got Piazza’s face on it even if it looks pretty goofy in this image. Normally, I’d be concerned about the dark background, but these days they have all kinds of pens at autograph signings and some sort of metallic ink should be perfect.

The main thing bugging me about this show is that normally I love getting things personalized, but since time is money they have to charge you for the extra time that the athlete will spend scribbling on your item. There’s no way that I’m spending $50 for him to write my name (or his first name twice).

I picked this picture because I liked how you could read the name on the back of the jersey. You can see Piazza’s face a little bit, but nowhere as well as in the first picture.

The background of this picture isn’t as dark as the first one. A black Sharpie would show up well in the lower third of the picture. Anything higher would require metallic ink.

One thing that bugs me about this picture is the MLB hologram right over Piazza’s foot. Anal, I know, but this is something that I will end up constantly looking at. I’ll have to make sure that the Piazza McFarlane figure is blocking the sticker if I end up choosing this picture.

The final picture is of Mike Piazza decked out in the tools of ignorance. I figured that I would pick this one up since Piazza was so well known for his defensive skills behind the plate. I almost typed that with a straight face. Piazza’s rep definitely wasn’t made because of his defense or pitch calling abilities, but I thought that this was a cool picture of him. You can’t even really tell that it’s Piazza unless you peek through the facemask or read the number on the top of his chest protector.

So, I’m probably not getting this one signed, but it’ll make a nice addition to the collection.

What do all of you think though? Which picture do you think will look best autographed (and with what color ink) and hanging on my wall?

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 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

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 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