Mail Day: The pile was getting out of control

I haven’t posted one of these in forever.  For now, I’m sticking to mostly to cards that I’ve picked up through eBay.  I’ve also done a couple of trades and want to get those posted as well, but the upcoming move might throw a monkey wrench into those plans.  At the very least, I’ll make sure to get a post out there about who I traded with along with a summary of the trades.

This first card here isn’t an eBay purchase at all.  This is the card that Upper Deck sent me along with the damaged Timelines cards that they replaced.  They didn’t have a replacement for the Chris Smith card that I sent and the letter that came back with my cards stated that they sent a replacement of equal value in its place.  How this Albert Pujols card is of the same value as that card I don’t know, but I’m not complaining.  It’s a shame that Upper Deck Customer Service never came through on the 40 cards that I was shorted from my 2009 Baseball Series 1 box because they’re done well when they actually decide to follow through.  The company also has a bit of an attitude problem and has no qualms about deleting comments from both their blog and Facebook pages that don’t leave the poster with a brown nose.

Next up is another Pujols card.  This was thrown in as an extra card by an eBay seller.  I’m pretty sure that I posted the card that this came with already, but I never got around to posting this bonus card.

You can’t complain about a bonus Pujols card.  What he’s done at the plate so far in his career is ridiculous.  If he stays healthy, he should rewrite all kinds of records.  I don’t go out of my way to acquire new Pujols cards, but when I pull his cards they go right into my collection.

This card here was a redemption that I pulled out of the box of Bowman Sterling which I got when I sent in my damaged Dwayne Wade mini that I pulled out of a rip card from a 2008-09 Topps Basketball jumbo box.  This card is numbered to 218.  One of the cooler cards that I pulled out of the box just so happened to be another Dwayne Wade card.  It’s a mini in the style of 80-81 Topps that comes in a folder that seals magnetically.  Both the folder and the card are numbered to 999.  I’ll have to post pictures of that card on here because I’ve searched and searched ever since pulling the card and haven’t been able to find another one online.

Speaking of redemption cards, this card was a replacement for a Murad redemption that got the shaft once Topps knew that they weren’t going to have an NBA license in 2009-10.  I responded to the e-mail that they sent asking if I could get a Celtic in return and not another Spud Webb since it looks like those were held out of the packs specifically to send out in place of Murad redemptions.  This card is certainly of a Celtic, but they got the names reversed (and spelled slightly wrong).  This card will go into my collection unlike the card that I would have gotten if the redemption had been processed so I guess that’s a plus.  Another case of Topps Customer Service coming though.  At the very least they listen and try to make an effort unlike Upper Deck who sometimes don’t even reply to e-mails sent to customer service.

Gimme an H!


It’s funny how I couldn’t stand pulling these darn things in 2009 Topps and couldn’t wait to sell them off, but jumped at them on eBay once it was a player that I liked.  I’m not going after the entire player name and so far have only seen one “H” on eBay that went for some ridiculous amount of money.

You might wonder how a kid in the 80s who spent his entire life in Massachusetts ended up a fan of Kent Hrbek.  One day, I decided that I wanted to collect a player who wasn’t on the Red Sox.  I went through the cards that I had and I had a few of Hrbek and decided to start collecting him.  It was a good choice because he was good enough to be included in a lot of the oddball sets that I loved in the 80s.  Now that card companies are including Hrbek in sets again, I’ve resumed collecting him.

Back then I collected Dwight Evans and Kent Hrbek.  There are a lot of similarities between the two players.  They were never amongst the biggest stars in the game, but they were faces of their franchises for long times.  Both players have very devout fan followings and played the game the way it was meant to be played.

Gimme a ?!

Hopefully this will someday spell out “Hug it out,” but I’ve kind of stalled out at the moment.  When Icons came out, I picked up a couple of these right away for a price that I was comfortable paying.  Since then, the price has steadily increased as more people have started chasing them.  That’s good news if I wanted to sell these, but bad news for ever collecting the whole phrase.  If you ever want a good laugh, check out one of these that Piven has autographed.  He printed his name vertically down the letter and it looks like something his niece "Pearl the Landlord" would have written.  Huge fan of Piven, but I wouldn’t even be excited if I pulled one of those out of a pack.

Speaking of lame autographs, here’s exhibit B.  RR?  Are the 10 letters in Rajon Rondo really too much to write out?  I stumbled into this card as an additional bid from the same seller.  I missed out on the first card, but I got this one cheaply and now have Rondo’s initials in my collection.

I’ve yet to buy a pack of 2009-10 Topps because I’m waiting until I can afford a jumbo box.  I’ve had great luck with them in the past two years and want to see what I can pull this year.  I have picked up some singles though; most of them for less than what you’d pay for a pack.  Here’s a gold version of Big Baby tossing Brad Miller to the floor.  Most likely this is Miller flopping like he did all through last year’s playoffs.

I love that I can still pick up unnumbered Big Baby autographs for about a buck a piece.  I’m excited that he’ll be back with the Celtics this season.  He was supposedly going to get an offer from another team that the Celtics couldn’t match, but the outrageous offer sheet to Gortat which the Magic matched ended those plans.  Davis will now be a part of the best bench in the NBA and since they just might be backing up the best starting 5 in the league, the Celtics are a good bet to bring another NBA Championship to the rafters of The TD Bank (fake) Garden.  Davis showed that he can play at a high level when Kevin Garnett was injured last season.  He and Rasheed Wallace will let Doc Rivers give plenty of rest to Kevin Garnett and Kendrick Perkins to save them for the playoffs.

What can I say, I’ve got a problem.  It’s tough to pass up any Davis autos when they are this cheap.  I think he signed this one with his foot.  This one has Kevin McHale’s number on it so if Davis wins the Sixth Man Award I can sell it on eBay as a 1/1 Super Mojo Hit.

Whenever I scan a card with a piece of Celtics jersey in it, I wonder if a brown jersey swatch will show up green.  Hmmmmmmm.

Here’s another card from 2009-10 Topps.  While the basketball die cut gives the card an interesting look, I wish that they had just cut out the whole circle for the swatch to show through.  These things are small enough to begin with and now you barely see any of it.

It looks even worse when there’s a patch involved.  I just want to tear off that piece of cardboard going over the middle of the patch.

This card is numbered to 50 and super thick.  I’m surprised there isn’t a sticker auto on it.  If they had put autos along the bottom and put the name elsewhere, they could have had a nice looking set.  On card would have been beautiful.

I really like that Topps put Chrome cards into the base Topps set since they weren’t going to have time to do a stand alone set.  This here is a shiny refractor of Paul Pierce.

The refractors from this set are numbered to 500 which could make for a challenging set to put together.

Here’s a different type of relic card from 2009-10 Topps.  Although the set is called Championship Materials, it doesn’t say anything about this swatch being from a jersey worn in the NBA Championships.  In fact, it’s probably from a jersey worn years ago.

Topps kept the die cut basketball thing in this set as well.  According to some clueless eBay sellers, the die cuts would make this a dual swatch card.  Heck, I’ve seen some cards labeled as quad cards from the manufacturer that have four windows showing the same swatch.

Got this Pierce Bowman Sterling jersey card for a buck plus shipping.  I like the designs used in some of the Bowman Sterling sets, but it’s a shame that the value that you get out of the packs usually doesn’t come anywhere near what you paid.  It’s worse in basketball due to all of the top names being exclusive to Upper Deck.

The one exception to the value that I’ve seen is 2007 Bowman Best baseball.  The value has even gotten better as more and more names from that set have emerged.

It’s no secret that I absolutely loved the Murad basketball set.  It took a while, but I finally tracked down a Pierce auto from this set at a reasonable price.  It’s not one of the numbered versions, but that’s fine by me.

The sticker detracts from the look of the card a little, but it is still a beautiful card.  This is right up there with UD Glass as my favorite Pierce autographed cards.

More Murad Madness.  I also had to track down the Pierce silk card from the set.  When I first saw this auction, I expected some ridiculous selling price because it was #1, but that wasn’t the case at all.  It’s a good thing too because if that had been the case then this card wouldn’t be in my collection.

I’m going to end with some of the blue parallel Celtics that I pulled out of Bowman ‘48 basketball.  The rest of the cards will be another post.

Technorati Tags: Mail Day,Paul Pierce,Glen Davis,Big Baby,Rajon Rondo,Albert Pujols,Kent Hrbek,Jeremy Piven

Real bowling

There’s many things to love about living in Massachusetts.  Even with the early exit of the Red Sox in this year’s playoffs, we’re still got 3 Super Bowl trophies, 2 World Series trophies and 1 NBA Championship Trophy this decade (and are the early favorite for the 2009-10 Championship if everyone stays healthy).  I’m going to stray from the more mainstream sports in this post on focus on a regional sport that most of you probably have never seen before and that is Candlepin bowling.

Candlepin bowling is a variation of bowling that is played primarily in the Canadian Maritime provinces, Maine, Massachusetts and in New Hampshire.  As you can see from the picture to the left, the ball is a lot smaller to the one used in ten pin bowling.  Candlepin balls have a diameter of 4½” and don’t need holes since you can easily hold one in your hand.  A frame in candlepin bowling consists of three balls instead of the two that are used in ten pin.  Another big difference is that downed pins (referred to as “wood”) are not cleared off of the alley between shots as they are in ten pin.  This can be both a good and bad thing.  Sometimes a piece of wood can assist you in making a difficult shot or can make an easy shot even easier by increasing your target, but they can also act as a road block shooting off in one direction while the ball flies off in other leaving the pin still standing.

Candlepin bowling is a lot more challenging than ten pin bowling.  While perfect games in ten pin bowling are frequent it has never been done in candlepin bowling.  The highest sanctioned score in a candlepin string is 245.  Throw a ball right down the middle of the lane in candlepin bowling and you’re very likely only going to take out the middle two pins.  Throw that same ball so that it hits between the head pins and a neighboring pin and you’re likely to get a good pinfall.  It can be frustrating, but the added challenge brings added fun.

I’ve been bowling since I was a kid and in bowling leagues almost as long.  Now that I’ve been doing it all of my life, I wouldn’t ever want to live somewhere that doesn’t have candlepin bowling.  If this has caught your attention and you’d like to find out a little more about candlepin bowling you can check out this link to the International Candlepin Bowling Association or check out this YouTube video of one of the best televised performances ever.  There are a ton of YouTube video out there of candlepin bowling from nearly impossible shots to breaking pins.

Technorati Tags: candlepin bowling

Moving sale! Everything must go!

The main reason that this blog has become so neglected over the past 4 months or so was due to me moving.  It was just a temporary move and due to that the majority of my collection is currently in storage.  I also have a longer commute and less time to devote to things such as writing about sports cards.  The good news is that we’ll be moving again at the end of the month so the collection will be coming out of storage and my commute will be shortening.  I’m not the only one that will benefit from this.  All of you reading this can potentially benefit from this as well.  I’ve got a few piles of things that don’t necessarily have to be in my collection.  Instead of packing them up again and taking them with me, I’d rather find them better homes.

In the grand tradition of multiple blogs who have done similarly, I’m looking to trade the following cards for stuff that will have a home in my collection.  What might that be?  Well, it could be cards that I need for sets.  You can find my want lists on Google Docs by clicking on the link right under the site header.  I’m also looking for cards to add to my player collection.  Have any baseball cards of Mike Piazza, Dwight Evans, Kent Hrbek, Clay Buchholz or David Ortiz floating around that you no longer want?  What about basketball cards of Paul Pierce and Glen “Big Baby” Davis?  Drop me a line at michaeltravers@gmail.com and we’ll work out a deal.  The pictures here should link to larger images in case you aren’t able to make the players out.  If you know of any collectors out there who may not read this blog, but may be interested in any of these cards send them on over.  I’ve got plans for the cards if they don’t get traded, but I wanted to offer them up here first.  Without further ado, here’s the cards:

Technorati Tags: Trading Block

Which would you rather have?

I’m sure that many of you reading this also follow the Upper Deck Blog.  One of the things that they love to do on that blog is post pictures of stuff that they are going to cut up and insert into their various products.  Today, they posted an entry about a Michael Jackson photo that they can’t wait to cut up and put into 2009 Prominent Cuts.  They’re going to take an autographed picture from the coolest music video ever and chop it up so that they can put the signature in an upcoming set and capitalize on the death of a celebrity.

Once they’re done with it, the Frankenstein card will probably look something like this.  I’m sure that the design will be a little fancier, but you get the gist.  You get the autograph, Jackson’s shoulder and a zombie’s mouth.  Would you rather own that or the complete picture?  Imagine if the Upper Deck redemption got you a nice, framed Upper Deck Authenticated piece that this were to be put into.  It could still be a 1/1 and say Upper Deck on it, but it wouldn’t require the destruction of a nice piece of memorabilia in order for it to be made.

I decided to share my thoughts on the Upper Deck blog comments, but I guess that they didn’t care for them since I wasn’t singing their praises.  I didn’t see anything about comments not showing up until they are approved so I can only guess that they decided to delete my comment:

This is the reason why I think cut signature cards are the worst idea to come into the hobby in a long time. It’s fine when the documents that are being destroyed are things like cancelled checks. Cutting those up betters the way that they look, but when it comes to stuff like this autographed picture or historical documents it’s a shame to have those destroyed for a silly trading card.

Have you ever thought about doing redemption cards in products where the person is sent an autographed picture or historical document intact? I know that it won’t say “UPPER DECK” all over it, but maybe you can transform it into an UDA piece and then send that off to the person.

I really can’t believe you’re bragging about cutting this up. It’s really not anything to be proud of.

I guess my criticism wasn’t welcome.  There goes my shot at ever writing a guest column in the Upper Deck blog.  IS it just me thinking this way?  Which item would you rather have?  Does hacking up this card and slapping a 1/1 on it make it more desirable?

Technorati Tags: Michael Jackson,2009 Prominent Cuts,Upper Deck,Thriller

Jennie Rox

We made a family trip this past Saturday out to Brockton to see the Brockton Rox play.  It’s one of the teams partially owned by Bill Murray and is a fun time if you love baseball.  You can’t beat $5 tickets and $2 hot dogs.  We didn’t go for just the baseball though.  On Deck Sports was there that night for the announcement of their new partnership with softball legend Jennie Finch.

Prior to the game, Jennie spoke to a large group of girls about softball.  She spoke about her training regimen and history with the game since she first started playing at 5 years old.  She told some great stories and made a lot of young girls very happy.  My daughter is only 3 years old at the moment, but so far she’s taken a liking to sports and hopefully she’ll have fun playing either baseball or softball once she gets older.

After the talk, Jennie was doing an autograph signing at the stadium.  That’s the reason that I was there.  I’ve been a fan of Jennie since she first burst upon the scene.  She was a phenomenon in sports and by her senior year of college, every single one of her games were broadcast on ESPN.  That was a huge deal back then.

They brought Finch out to the Pepsi All-Star Challenge one year.  It’s a yearly charity event where Major Leaguers come out and play softball for charity.  I went to the game one year and its a lot of fun.  Well, they had everyone come out and have an at-bat against Jennie Finch the year that she was there and one player made contact and that was only a weak foul tip.  Sure, she doesn’t throw 90 MPH, but with a shorter distance and that rising motion, it wasn’t anything that some of the best hitters in baseball could hit.

I just randomly happened to walk past the line as it was starting to form because we were taking my daughter to have her face painted.  I jumped into the autograph line and 5 feet away my wife and daughter jumped into the face painting line.  The only bad thing about this is that the line was starting to form while the talk was still going on and a lot of the girls who were huge fans got stuck at the end.  I just hope that they were all able to get autographs.  The front of the line had your typical autograph hounds.  They had their bats and other memorabilia ready to be signed.  Finch appeared at the big Shriner’s Card Show that I went to over the summer and the fee to get her autograph then was $50 if I remember correctly.  It’s no wonder that a good number of collectors showed up to get her autograph here.

We made our way to the exit after I got my autograph.  I had worked that day (6th in a row out of 10 in a row I will be working) and it was the second long day in a row after going to a Wheel of Fortune taping the previous day.  My daughter was starting to get restless as well.  She had been in line, but grew tired of that and so my wife took her down to the kids area where they had a giant inflatable slide.  It was a great day though because I got to add this card to my collection.  Allen & Ginter cards are beautiful to begin with, but they look even nicer with an autograph on them.  This came out really nicely and it capped off a great evening.

Technorati Tags: Jennie Finch,Brockton Rox