Greatest Of All Time

When Panini released their Basketball Hall of Fame set, it could have been the greatest basketball set of all time, but there were a few things preventing that from happening. The first was that they had no access to Michael Jordan due to his exclusive contract with Upper Deck. The second problem was that it costs a heck of a lot more to get the autographs of the big stars than it does everyone else. That resulted in poor collation with the same common autographs showing up again and again.

One good thing that did come out of this set was the very first autographed card of Tennessee women’s basketball coach Pat Summitt. I actually pulled two of these out of the boxes that I opened, but I sold one right away which helped to pay for another box. I think this is by far the best card that I pulled out of my boxes. Even though there are 599 copies of this card, it sells for around $50-$60 on eBay and will probably spike a little with the recent news of Summitt’s retirement.

It’s not often that you can an autograph of someone who is the greatest at what they do. I know coaches aren’t as glamorous as players, but Pat Summitt is to college basketball coaching what Michael Jordan is to NBA Basketball. They are both, inarguably, the best in what they did and that’s a huge thing. So, while the Panini Basketball Hall of Fame set did not have the greatest basketball player of all time, they did manage to succeed in a cardboard first for the best colligate coach.

Panini Makes Good

This post is overdue, but it’s kind of appropriate given the subject matter. I had the misfortune of dealing with Panini while their customer service and fulfillment departments were in a shambles. They claim that they are in the process of improving this, so until I have to deal with them again, I will give them the benefit of the doubt. Since I don’t buy anything from Panini, that probably won’t be any time soon.

After waiting over a year, dealing with extreme frustration and searching out someone through their personal Twitter, I got the following cards sent to me:

2010-11 Absolute Memorabilia Avery Bradley Rookie Premiere Materials 177/499. When I got this card, it was when there were rumors circulating that the Celtics might trade away Rajon Rondo. I joked that this card could possibly be a good one if that to occur. Rondo didn’t get traded, but a Ray Allen injury and eventual transition to a bench role paved the way for the emergence of Avery Bradley. The Celtics climb to the top of the Atlantic Division and anything they may do in this year’s playoff will be in large part to Bradley and what Rondo can now do in the open court with Bradley and Bass running with him.

2010-11 Gold Standard Kevin Garnett Gold Medalists Prime Patch 5/25. This is a pretty cool card and while I know that the patch in this card is most likely from a Timberwolves jersey, I’d love to think it was from one of KG’s USA jerseys. I don’t think Panini picked up a jersey from the 2000 games though. I’m still not even sure that the jersey swatches in the USA cards from the Basketball Hall of Fame set are from actual Olympic jerseys. One question that I’ve got about this card is concerning the jersey number. Garnett has worn #5 the entire time that he’s been in Boston, but his Olympic jersey number as pictured on the card is #10. So, would this card bring in a jersey number premium on eBay? It doesn’t really matter since I’m pretty sure this card will have a permanent home in my collection.

It was kind of disappointing to have an Avery Bradley autograph take the place of Cheryl Miller, a member of the Hall of Fame. The Garnett patch makes up for it a little bit, but a patch card, even if it is numbered to 25, doesn’t have the same prestige as a HOF auto. I find it hard to believe that Panini didn’t have a high numbered or unnumbered Rondo, Pierce, Allen or Garnett auto to send, but they made a good effort and worked within my request and in the end, I am happy.

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?

Red Sox Frankenset

I took advantage of a week or so of not feeling well to start a project that I had been thinking of for a while. That project is a Red Sox Frankenset. Not only do I want to assemble a set of Red Sox cards numbered from 1-792 (which could be impossible, I haven’t researched it that thoroughly), but I want to represent as many players and different sets as possible. I’m going to run a contest that’s going to last the remainder of the year to reward people in helping me in putting this set together.

Here's the checklist so far.

I will trade for cards just like I normally do and points will be rewarded with the following criteria:

• If you trade me a card that goes into the binder you will be rewarded a point.
• If you trade me a card of a player that isn’t yet represented in the set you will get an extra point
• If you trade me a card from a set that isn’t yet represented in the set you will get an extra point

So, you can earn up to three points for each card that you send. I also reserve the right to award bonus points at my discretion. If someone sends me a vintage Ted Williams to put into the set then there are going to be some bonus points awarded. I’ll keep a running tally of the points going on the blog and at the end of the year will reward prizes to the leaders. I’ll offer up some sets I’ve got from case breaks, older sets that I’ve got multiples of, cards of the team/player that you collect and other cards that I acquire throughout the course of the year.

Slick Ginter

I’m a fan of the Allen & Ginter sets that have become a staple of Topps’ yearly release schedule. The only thing that I’m not a fan of is how difficult it is to complete the set.  You don’t even get enough cards in one box and then when you factor in all of the short prints, completing the set becomes more of a chore. Buying the complete set is no fun and so 2011 was the first year since I returned to collecting that I didn’t purchase a box of Ginter.

Topps did something different with 2011 Allen & Ginter that they hadn’t ever done before which was offer a factory set. This wasn’t just any factory set though, this was a limited edition, serial numbered to 999 factory set. The weird thing is, in this day and age, one of these sets ends up being worth more broken up than it is complete. There are a ton of team and player collectors out there.

I found someone on eBay who had broken up their set and had the singles listed at very reasonable prices. Pair that up with combined shipping and I’m a customer. The cool thing about getting all of these from the same person is that the serial numbers all match.

I picked up all of my favorite Sox along with Stan “The Man” Lee. Glossy Ginter cards are a first, but it brings me back to the days of the Topps Tiffany sets. Those cards weren’t serial numbered like these are, but they were pretty limited compared to the print runs of the regular cards.

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 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 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.

Additions To My Celtics Retired Number Collection

Here are a couple of recent additions to my Celtics Retired Number Collection:

I picked up the Bailey Howell at my local card shop towards the end of last year. The best thing about Panini’s Basketball Hall of Fame set was that it provided a lot of affordable autographs of Hall of Famers, many of which didn’t have any autograph available prior to this.

The Tommy Heinsohn I picked up on eBay for a great price due to the fact that it was a Hong Kong auction and that tends to scare many buyers away. The card is serial numbered to 50 and has a great looking on-card autograph. I’m not old enough to have seen Heinsohn play, but he’s all I know as far as Celtics television broadcasts go. He can be hilarious, many times unintentionally so. I was very happy to add this card to my collection.

Anyone out there have any nice Larry Bird or Bob Cousy on-card autographs that they’d be willing to trade? I would make it more than worth your while. Drop me a line.

My New Favorite Card

My daughter’s school is part of a program where they take some of their art that you can then get on all kinds of items. Think CafePress. We ordered a few things and our families jumped all over it. Once I saw that there were art trading cards, I jumped all over that.

So, forget all of the relics, vintage, autographs, rookies, etc. This is now and will forever be my favorite trading card.

Giving and Getting

The New England Patriots held a blood drive sponsored by Bob’s Furniture at Gillette Stadium at the  beginning of December. It was right after I became eligible to donate blood again so I went to give up some blood. I have to say that they did things right. They had things for kids to do while parents donated, tons of giveaways and plenty of snacks to help you recover.

Right before the exit, former Patriot Joe Andruzzi was set up at a table signing autographs. Andruzzi played with the Patriots for five years and was a member of all three Super Bowl Championship teams. More impressive than that, Joe kicked the ass of non-Hodgkin’s Burkitt’s lymphoma.

Joe and his wife had already launched the C.J. Buckley Brain Cancer Research Fund at Children’s Hospital back in 2002. In 2008, they started the Joe Andruzzi Foundation that provides financial assistance for cencer patients and their families as well as fund pediatric brain cancer research.

While waiting in line, it was fun watching Andruzzi interact with the younger kids that were there. He let many wear the Super Bowl ring that he was wearing and was extremely friendly and personable with everyone. Getting the autograph of a three time Super Bowl champ is always a cool thing, but it’s his accomplishments off of the field that make this autographed picture a great part of my collection.

A Special Night

To say that this post has been a long time coming is an understatement. It concerns one of the few bright spots that occurred during the final month of last season for the Red Sox.

Every year, I try to purchase some Red Sox tickets for a game on or close to my birthday. This season was no different and it led to me purchasing tickets to see the Red Sox play the Toronto Blue Jays a couple of days after my birthday. My wife was still recovering from her spinal fusion surgery, so she wouldn’t be joining us at the game. I picked my daughter up and we made our way into historic Fenway Park.

Normally, I’m the type of fan who gets to the park right when the gates open and stays until the last pitch is thrown, but I knew that wouldn’t be the case for this particular game with my daughter in tow. We got to the park about 30 minutes before the game began, grabbed food and settled into our seats. This game would be Tim Wakefield’s eighth attempt at his 200th win and early on it looked like it would go the same way that the previous seven attempts had. The Red Sox gave Wakefield two leads that he quickly gave away by serving up long balls.

At the end of the fourth inning (and back-to-back homers by Ellsbury and Pedroia), we made our way out to Yawkey Way. For the past few years, the Sox have started blocking off the road during games making it only accessible for ticket holders. There are food vendors, musicians and other performers to be found out there before the game begins and during games it’s a nice place to go if you want to get away from the crowd. Yawkey Way is also where the Red Sox were setting up Wally’s World, some fun things for younger kids to do if they get a little bored during the game. I’d rather have my daughter miss a couple of innings and see the ballpark as a fun place than get bored and dread a trip to Fenway.

This trip would leave us a little disappointed though. It seems like the team stopped setting up Wally’s World once the school year started back up figuring that there would be fewer kids at night games. They still had the fast pitch set up and it was free for kids, so I watched my daughter do that a few times. I think he top speed was 24 mph which seemed pretty good for a 5 year old with horrible mechanics.

Other than sharing my love of baseball with my daughter, I’ve also been introducing her to some of my other hobbies. The hobby that she’s taken the greatest interest in is collecting pressed pennies. They have one machine in Fenway and I hadn’t pressed any pennies there since they updated the designs. I had a bunch of change left over from our penny pressing adventure two days earlier so we each got to press a complete set of four for our collections.

The scan isn’t all that great, but the four pennies are: 2007 World Series Champions, I Believe in Magic, Red Sox Nation and Go Wally! The Green Monster.

While we were pressing our pennies, we kept track of the game on a nearby monitor. Hi-5s were exchanged when Pedroia hit his second dinger of the game, this time a three-run shot. We got a celebratory ice cream in a helmet and returned to our seats to eat it. We rose to sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and that was just about all that my daughter had left in the tank. When the 7th inning ended, it was already 9:30 pm and it takes about an hour to get home from Fenway. We made our way home and ended up missing the seven-run 8th inning, but it was fine with me. Beating the crowds on the subway ensured that we got seats which was important because my daughter fell asleep halfway home.

Ten years ago, I never would have thought that missing two innings of a game, including one where seven runs were scored, would be a perfect day at Fenway, but when you factor in the time I spent with my daughter it was just that. We’ll stick with minor league games for the majority of baseball games that she goes to, but I want to make sure that she experiences Fenway Park as she grows up. Sure, her favorite thing about the park right now is that Wally lives there, but it gets her into the park and someday she might want to go for the baseball itself.

Quick little addendum to this story: Thanks to a co-worker, I was able to go to the game the next day as well. It was a day game and I was already leaving work early for a doctor appointment. I got to see the pre-game festivities for Wakefield. I also had the opportunity to see history made for the second day in a row, but Daniel Bard blew that. If he hadn’t blown the lead and Papelbon had gotten the save, I would have seen him become the first player to get 30+ saves in their first six seasons. He did achieve that milestone, but not on that afternoon. Bard’s September meltdown was one of the biggest reasons that the Sox fared as poorly as they did to finish the season. It was probably that month that led to the Sox dealing for a new closer to replace Papelbon rather than handing the job to Bard. Whether he’s still the set-up guy or moves into the starting rotation remains to be seen.

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

Blast From the Past: 1993 Fleer Ultra Performers

One of the fun things about organizing your collection is finding stuff that you completely forgot that you had. Do I really have 3 sets of 1994 Upper Deck Fun Packs? (Boy did I love busting that stuff. So much fun.) I’m going to feature some of the smaller, oddball sets that I’ve uncovered as they go from the box they were in to their new home in my man cave.

Back before the Internet really took off around 1995 or so, everything done in the collecting world was done through snail mail. Once you factored in the amount of time that it took to process most of these offers, it really did feel like your cards were being delivered via snail.

I had a lot more free time back in those days so I loved taking advantage of these offers. Fleer had a ton of these offers and many of them were for the last cards to complete the Career Highlights set that you were pulling out of the packs. This set was a little different in that it was its own standalone set. I can’t remember for sure, but I’m thinking that you had to send in around $10 and some empty wrappers in order to acquire this set. I forget if this was advertised on the wrappers themselves or in magazine ads. The cards are very nice looking and feature some of the biggest stars of the time.

When it came to special offers such as this one, I almost always sent away for multiple sets. For this set, I’m glad that I had two sets shipped my way. At the time, I was a Juan Gonzalez collector and so one of these went into that collection. I also have a binder full of almost every 1993 Rockies card produced and the David Nied went into that collection.

This set was limited to 150,000 copies which seems like a lot now, but for 1993 that was a limited edition. Along with these 9 cards, there was also a Barry Bonds (never to be pictured in this blog) and a header card congratulating you on adding this set to your collection. You can see the serial numbering on the back of the Greg Maddux card. You get a matched set of serial numbers which is nice. On the back of the cards, they give each player a nickname of sorts. The Big Hurt is now “The Comiskey Cannon” while J.T. Show is “Snowballer.” (Clerks had not yet been released at this time or there’s no way they would have gone with that.)

There aren’t any recent completed auctions for this set on eBay, but a few of the singles have sold for a dollar or two. Smart dealers could make a quick profit on these back in the 90s. Most people wouldn’t send away for these sets and with the serial numbering you could average around $3 a card and do pretty well. Remember, this is the era when unnumbered Griffey, Thomas and Bonds inserts would sell for $10 or $20 all of the time. I know that we’d sell a ton of the Career Highlights cards both in the shop and at card shows