Check Out More Cards

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Check Out My 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 Cards: Themed Edition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Dewey on eBay

One of the things that I like about collecting a player such as Dwight Evans is the lack of interest across the country.  People love him in Boston, but not as many people even know who he is as you travel further away from New England.  That being said, there are enough collectors out there that when really nice Dewey cards pop up on eBay, there can be some bidding battles on them.

Check out this auction for a 2001 Fleer card from the Red Sox 100th Anniversary set.  Many of the hits from this set go for a premium since they are tough to come by.  This simple, unnumbered, on-card autograph from Fleer recently sold for $58.95.  You don’t find them very often though.  There’s also a Dwight Evans autographed hat from this set that could be found randomly in the box sets that were also produced.

Seeing a card such as this one is kind of refreshing.  These days when jersey cards are commons and most autographs sell for a dollar on eBay, it’s nice to look back to when autographs were tough to pull out of packs and actually held some value.

This next card is a good example of modern cards that are worth something due mostly to manufactured scarcity.  This auction is for a Sweet Spot 1 of 1 that is signed with green ink on black leather.  This card sold for $247.55 which is way out of my price range.  It’ll make one Dwight Evans collector very happy though.

I am a fan of the various 2007 Dwight Evans Sweet Spot autos that are out there.  It’s just a shame that this card is from 2007 when Upper Deck used the wrong substance for the “baseball” cards and all of the signatures have faded.  All of the bat and leather cards look great though.

Speaking of cards that look great, I’m completely happy with this card that I added to my collection for $6.76 with shipping.  It’s one of the more beautiful relic cards that I’ve seen and it helps me understand why so many people miss Topps Archives.

 

Technorati Tags: Dwight Evans,eBay

Dewey

This lot just might be my all-time favorite eBay auction win.  99 different Dewey cards for $6.75 shipped?  Yes, please.  It doesn't come close to the $54 book value stated in the auction title due to the condition of the cards, but there is some nice stuff in here.  The '75 is very nice and the '79 O-Pee-Chee is by far the oldest Canadian baseball card I have.  One day I'll track down an O-Pee-Chee Dewey rookie, but they always go for an arm and a leg when I see them.

Speaking of an arm and a leg, that Dwight Evans Sweet Spot 1/1 is already up to $215 with 7 days left in the auction.  Looks like that one won't be coming to my collection.

It's the oddball stuff that makes this lot fun for me.  There are a couple of Kellog's 3-D cards and a few Classic cards from the board games.  It's all topped off with some newer cards that I don't have yet.

Hope to have two new box breaks posted on Monday.  I also still have a backlog of breaks from my big shopping spree to get posted.

Favorite cards: Dwight Evans RC

From the moment that I started watching the Red Sox, Dwight Evans was my favorite player.  He is one of the most underrated players in the history of the game.  If only he had discovered the teachings of Walt Hriniak earlier in his career instead of halfway through the 1980 season, he may have gotten more consideration when it came to the Hall of Fame.

While Jim Rice had a couple of career years better than any that Evans put up, Evans had a better overall career and that’s without considering Evans’ far superior defense.  Rice is in the Hall of Fame, but Evans is not.  Ozzie Smith is in the Hall of Fame mostly for defense and some stolen bases.  Evans is a more deserving candidate than Smith was, but Smith had the one or two big career years to get himself into the minds of fans.  The biggest thing that hurt Evans’ consideration for the Hall was not having that one monster season.  He was well on his way to that in 1981 when the strike stopped play in the middle of the season.  Evans couldn’t get back on track once play resumed.  Even with doing almost nothing in the second half, Evans finished third in the MVP voting.  No one in the American League hit more home runs during the 80s than Evans and he was fourth in all of baseball.  He led the league in walks and OPS (long before anyone knew what it was) multiple times, but those aren’t flashy categories.  Without the strike, there’s a good chance that Evans tops 400 HR and 1400 RBI for his career and gets a longer look by Hall of Fame voters.

Dewey had a cannon for an arm, was amazingly accurate when throwing home and mastered all of the angles in Fenway Park’s right field corner.  His eight gold gloves are the most in the history of the Red Sox and only three outfielders have more than he does: Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente and Al Kaline.

Most of the time it is easy to accept the fact that Dwight Evans won’t ever be in the Hall of Fame, but it gets harder to accept when players such as Andre Dawson, Ozzie Smith and Jim Rice get inducted.  Evans is better than Rice, very similar to Dawson and better than Ozzie (who absolutely shouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame if Alan Trammel isn’t).

On to the card at hand, 1973 Topps #614.  This card pictures Dwight Evans along with Al Bumbry and Charlie Spikes.  Bumbry was the ‘73 Rookie of the Year and would later go on to be a coach for the Red Sox.  I miss having multiple rookies on one card.  It allowed Topps to include more players from each team’s roster in the setand resulted in fewer cards of guys who only had a couple of at-bats and never saw big league playing time again.

This particular copy of this card isn’t in the greatest of shape, but I purchased it with my own money back in the late-80s at a collectibles show at the Bayside Expo Center.  This copy will always have a special place in my collection even if I pick up better copies of the card.  I’ve got Sweet Spot cards signed on leather, Sweet Spot cards signed on a ball, Leaf cards signed with baseball stamps and a bunch of other cool modern cards, but none of those will ever come close to this card.  This card has been in my collection for over 20 years.  The only thing that could have come remotely close to this card would have been Dewey Dufex, but unfortunately he retired before Pinnacle unveiled the coolest parallels ever.

Technorati Tags: Dwight Evans

Mailday: Dude, where’s my cards?

Dude, Lost is back on the air and I couldn’t be happier.  I’m a full fledged Lost fanatic and really get into all of the mythology and details of the show.  My favorite character on the show is Hurley.  So, when I saw that Rittenhouse Achieves was offering this Hurley promo for free with SASE, I had to have it.  Their recently released Lost Seasons 1 – 5 set looks pretty good.  I definitely think that I’ll be busting open a box of that in the near future, but first I’m going to get myself a box of 2010 Topps Jumbos.

  Sticking to the non-sports department, here’s another Jeremy Piven letter to the phrase “Hug It Out.”  It doesn’t look like many people are breaking Icons anymore since I don’t see many of the Hrbek or Piven cards that I’m looking for.  Looks like I should have jumped on that one H from the Hrbek set that showed up on eBay, but it went for about four times what all of the other letters were going for.

This was a great lot that I won on eBay.  The cards themselves only cost .99¢ and shipping was the usual $3.  Now I’ve got a Pierce for the set and will need to pick up another one for my player collection.  I’ll keep plugging away on this set as I find cards that I need at great prices.


This is another sweet lot that I picked up on eBay.  I picked up the base, refractor and Xfractor cards from 2005-06 Finest.  I like the design of this set and all three of these cards are sharp looking.  The refractor is numbered to 349 and the Xfractor is numbered to 139.

I also added another Big Baby autograph to the collection.  As long as he’s coming off of the bench, his cards will probably be available cheaply, but I think that’ll change in a couple of years when there’s no longer a Big Three in Boston.

Davis was a big factor in the Celtics’ last win over the Nets.  There’s no way that the game should have been as close as it was, but the Celtics were without Paul Pierce and still don’t have Garnett at 100%.  The game finally turned around in the 4th quarter with the bench players in the game.  Davis played some tough defense on Brook Lopez and had some huge offensive rebounds that allowed the Celtics to pull away behind the hot shooting of Eddie House.  Oh yeah, he also scored in double digits off of the bench.

Here’s a jumbo swatch from a Mike Piazza Padres jersey.  I didn’t have any Padres relics of Piazza so I figured that I would pick this one up.  Since this isn’t a sick mojo patch, I think that I’m safe in trusting Upper Deck when they say that this is accurate.  Pot shots at Upper Deck aside, this is a nice looking card with a fairly low serial number.

I wouldn’t have known that this card existed if I didn’t have an eBay search set up for Fenway Stamp.  There were some items made with this stamp’s image on it that I was interested in as well as the Dwight Evans Leaf Century Collection autographed card with the Fenway Stamp.

This is a nice looking card featuring an actual stamp and not something manufactured on Stamps.com.  The low numbering and high number of Red Sox fans made this cost a little more than I would have liked, but at least I didn’t pay the price that the first 2 or 3 of these sold for.

These were two separate lots from the same seller, but the discount on shipping made it worthwhile.  I’ve always liked the oversized Donruss Action All-Stars sets and I thought it would be cool to have unopened packs with Dewey showing on the top.  This set is so small that it is probably easy to find any card in the set showing on top and I’m glad that someone had done so and was now selling those packs.  I’ll keep these sealed in my collection because I already have both of these cards loose.  I may upgrade them if I ever find them in better shape since these are still the original card that I had from when I was younger and these was nothing good for storing cards these size in back then.

This is a card that I had been chasing for a little while now and when you look at it you can see why.  This is a great looking card that leaves plenty of room for Evans’ beautiful signature.  I have a lot of Dewey autographs including two that I’ve gotten in person and this one is my favorite that I didn’t obtain in person.  I could do without the silver TeamTopps Legends stamp, but that’s about the only downside to this card.

I couple of these cards sold for more than what I wanted to pay.  The strange thing was that I was willing to go a little higher on this card when it was listed, but I ended up not having to.  Sometimes being patient can pay off.  That’s important when you’re collecting on a budget.  If this card never came down to a price that I was comfortable paying, then I just wouldn’t have the card in my collection, but I’m glad that it did.

Technorati Tags: Dwight Evans,Mike Piazza,Paul Pierce,Big Baby

Mail Day: Dribs and Drabs

My eBay purchases have been dwindling as of late.  These days it is just so easy to get cards that I want cheaper elsewhere.  I’ve been buying bunches of cards at .18¢ a pop on Sportlots and have been getting other singles on CheckOutMyCards.com for less money that you’d pay on eBay.  Still, there are still bargains to be found on eBay even with the $3 shipping fee that you’re going to pay most of the time.  Here are some of those bargains.

Dufex!  This 1995 Pinnacle Museum Collection card just had to become a part of my collection.  This is hands down the best parallel set ever.  I never minded getting common Dufex cards, but I’m not a big fan of getting common gold, mini or foil parallels.

Hopefully some card company brings back Dufex technology some day.  It’s much better looking than 99% of what the card companies are currently putting in packs.

Since I wasn’t all that happy with the kiss card that I got in my box of TNA Impact, I decided to see what some of the other ones are going for online.  I saw this one of Roxxi with a cheap price on it and jumped at it.  Roxxi is from this neck of the woods which is cool and I’ve always enjoyed watching her on TNA.  This is card 3 of 75 and is a fun card to add to my collection.

The only good thing about “Big Baby” Glen Davis getting injured is that there’s been a little less interest in his cards.  I won this for .99¢ and the shipping wasn’t bad.  I think it cost $2.50 delivered.  This isn’t the best looking card, but I like what they did with the sticker autograph.

Davis came back for 2 games before spraining his ankle and missing a game.  The Celtics on a whole are battling injuries at the moment.  Pierce will be out for a while, KG is going to miss a couple of games and reports state that Rajon Rondo will not be playing in Saturday’s game against the Raptors.  If this team is healthy once the playoffs start, they can bring championship #18 to Boston.  It looks like staying tough might be easier said than done though.

This is a very nice looking card and the auto is on-card.  The only problem is that Big Baby got a little carried away while signing this card.  It looks like it slipped or he was holding it crooked and he signed outside of the signing area.  It gives it a little bit of character.  Some day I may pick up a better version of this card, but this one is just fine for now.  I’ve got plenty of perfect Davis autographs.

I’m pretty sure that this is the only Ultimate Collection card that I own.  Those packs are way out of my budget and I’m not sure that I would buy them even if I could afford them.  I don’t see the difference between this card and something that you’d get out of the flagship set.  Every single card in packs that cost this much should be something special.  At least number the darn thing.

Here’s another set that I would never purchase any packs of, but there are some nice singles.  Topps refuses to get on-card signatures for its high end releases which can be annoying.  That’s one thing that Upper Deck really has going for them.  Most of the time, they have on-card autos on their high end releases.  Hopefully baseball isn’t full of nothing but sticker autos next year when Topps is the only game in town.

How many variations are there in this Sweet Spot Classic set?  I thought that I was actually getting close to having most of the versions out there, but then they started popping up in slightly faded gold ink.  I’ve also seen a red and blue stitched card that I missed out on.

Checking the Upper Deck site tells me that this was once black ink on this card.  I had forgotten about the fading issues with 2007 Sweet Spot.  Good thing I scanned this card because one day I may no longer be able to see the autograph.

Here’s a different card with faded black ink on a silver stitched baseball.  This one hasn’t bled badly, but the black ink has faded and looks gold.

To answer my previous questions, there are 16 different Dwight Evans autograph cards in the set including 4 1/1s, 4 bat barrels, and 4 glove.  I love the gold and silver ink cards that I have from this set, but these others leave a lot to be desired.  I may just have to forget that they exist and not pick them up for the Dewey player collection.

That’s it for now.  I’ve got a bunch of cards sitting in the CheckOutMyCards warehouse waiting to be shipped to me.  Once I get those shipped to me, there will be a nice sized mail day post for those.

Technorati Tags: Mail Day,Dwight Evans,Glen Davis,Big Baby,Mike Piazza

Mail Day: Rainbow Edition

I’ve got a fever and the only cure is more mail day.  I’m starting this post off with my Mario Chalmers Topps Murad autographed mini framed card…

My Mario Chalmers Murad…

Wait, that’s not a Mario Chalmers card at all.  Since Topps is losing their basketball license after this season, it seems like they haven’t put a lot of effort in getting rookies to sign their sticker sheets.  Because of that, I was sent this Spud Webb (that’s not what his signature reads) autograph card from Topps Signature.  Can you believe that Spud is considered an A List signature?  The card is numbered to 1899 and there are plenty of them available on eBay for one dollar.  This was in exchange for a card whose redemptions were selling for around $10 on eBay.  Equal book value my ass.  (Now can you see why I’m hesitant to send in my Dwayne Wade card to be replaced.)  I would have much rather gotten a non A List card of a Celtics player such as Rajon Rondo or whoever else might be in the set.  With the number of Webb cards that were sent out as replacements, I wonder if Topps even packed any of these out or if they saved them all for replacements.

Even though it is my largest collection, Piazza has kind of taken a back seat lately to other collections where I can get cooler cards at an affordable price.  I can buy 10 – 20 Glen Davis autographs for the cost of one Piazza autograph.  I think my best chance of picking up a Piazza autograph is pulling some other great card and trading it.

This here is a nice Diamond King.  I grew up during the era when the normal Diamond Kings were treated like insert cards long before they became actual insert cards.  You can’t tell all that well from the scan, but the picture in the middle is framed by the die-cut outer frame.  The card looks great in person.

The same seller had these two cards for sale.  The same card with two different colored jersey swatches.  This lot was just over a dollar a card.

Plain jersey cards aren’t all that appealing anymore, but something like this is something interesting to add to my collection.

Here’s the final card that I picked up from that same seller.  1998 Leaf Heading For the Hall numbered to 3500.  It’s a shiny, refractory card and everything red on the card is embossed.  This is another one that looks great in person.

I didn’t pull this card when I opened a box of SP Rookie Edition so I picked one up for my collection.  I’d love this set if you got more than three SP cards in a box.  It makes much more sense to pick up the singles that you want.  This color coordinated card has a refractory border.

Colors, colors, colors.  Here’s a Big Baby Finest Blue Refractor numbered to 199.  I think I just might like the blue better than the red that the regular cards have on them.  Now I just have to find out how many other cards I need in the rainbow.

I’m really not a fan of rookie cards with college jerseys on them.  Isn't that what the Rookie Shoot is for?

Davis put up big numbers at LSU, a lot of them second only to Shaq, but weight and injury concerns caused him to slip in the draft.  He was a steal at 35 in the draft and Danny Ainge was very smart in getting him included in the trade that brought Ray Allen to Boston.

Ebony and Ivory live together in perfect harmony.  While the 2007-08 Topps cards were black, the Chrome cards were… Chrome colored.  Here’s the white version of the Chrome card.  Everything really seems to pop off of this card as scanners really seem to like the grooves around the players.

This card is numbered to 99 and looks great.  I doubt that I’ll ever complete any of these rainbows, especially the ones that include a 1/1, but I’ll get as much of them as I can.

This is the “Wow, I’ve got a filthy and scratched up scanner” part of the post.  This card scanned horribly and showed all of the imperfections on my scanner.  One of these days I’m going to need to get a new one.

This card looks a lot nicer in person than it scans with a black and white picture of Davis ghosted in the background.  The card is numbered out of 1999.

I was very excited when I won this card and since it was through an offer, I didn’t have to deal with the drama of trying to win an auction.

I can’t afford these kinds of cards with any of the other players that I collect so I’ve enjoyed scooping them up for my Big Baby collection.

Dee Brown was the first Celtic that I collected.  I liked him from the moment that he stepped on the court for the Celtics and was thrilled to see him win the Slam Dunk Championship that year.  That led to Brown’s first card being released in a Fleer Basketball Update set.  Back in those days, early sets had no rookies in them.  Series two would have the lottery picks, but many lower picks would be ignored and that was the case with Brown.

Dewey!  2007 Sweet Spot Classic on a bat piece.  This is numbered to 75 which was a great year even if it contained one of the worst World Series travesties ever.

Evans’ catch in Game 6 of the Series should be as famous as Fisk’s home run.  Without that catch, the Fisk shot never happens.  Dewey did color the other day for a Sox game as one of many who are filling in for Jerry Remy as he recovers from Pneumonia related to recovery from Cancer.  Don’t smoke kids!  I’d have to say that he did a good job and I love seeing him back with the team.  This opens the door for the team to retire the correct 24, the one that roamed right field for most of 18 or so seasons.  Not the one that sauntered around left for 8.

This card here just arrived on my doorstep today and I love it.  This is numbered to 24 which is Evans’ jersey number and the silver ink looks great on the black leather.  I think this completes my Dwight Evans 2007 Sweet Spot Classic Memorainbow.  Now I can focus on picking up the cards from some of the other years he was in Sweet Spot sets.

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