Another day, another trade package. Today's cards were sent by everyone's favorite upper case challenged blogger, Jim (gcrl), of cards as i see them.
Jim sent cards from three different sets that I'm working on, all three of which seem to be drying up for me at the card shows. First up is this trio of 2001 Fleer Greats, the Maris being my favorite of the group, but just barely, as Catfish (and his green sleeves) is a pretty darn likable card as well.
2012 Cooperstown has completely disappeared from everyone's dime boxes at the Nashville card show, so these (as well as the others that I've received as of late) are very much appreciated. And closing out the package, was a Koufax from Topps Lineage (probably from Jim's duplicates box). Lineage is still findable at the shows, but it seems to have moved from the dime boxes to the quarter boxes. To me, 25 cents is a lot to pay for a base card from a seven year old set that not too many people are collecting, so I've been passing on a lot of needed cards over the last couple of months... including this Koufax!
As always Jim, thank you, not only for this mailing, but also for all the other's over the last few years. It's nice to have someone to exchange cards with, minus all the formalities that are often involved with traditional trading.
Recently, thanks to the magic of Twitter (perhaps the only time that you'll ever see such a phrase uttered on this blog), Julie, of A Cracked Bat fame, and I, pulled off our first informal trade (more of an exchange than a trade).
I had been meaning to contact Julie for what seems like ages now, as I had a few things that I thought she might like, the only problem was... my social anxiety! I don't know if it's normal for folks with social anxiety to be affected by communicating with people online, but I often am, especially when it comes to trying to contact someone for the first time in order to get their address (there's still like half a dozen people that I would like to contact, but haven't been able to get up the courage to do so yet). Luckily for me, this ended up being one of those instances where I didn't have to initiate contact with a "can I please have your address" email.
This Bob Skinner buyback is directly responsible for Julie and I's first exchanging of cards. Julie was showing off the contents from her box of 2018 Topps Heritage on the Twitter -- and Bob just happened to be amongst those contents -- since I didn't think that he was going to be something that she would be keeping, I decided to inquire about his availability... and that's how we got to where we are now!
A couple more 2017 Archives were removed from the want list. At this rate, thanks to the recent help from fellow bloggers, I might actually be able to complete this set by year's end.
I had just been talking about my love for, and lack of, 2011 Topps Lineage base cards in the second to last post. Kerry was kind enough to include some in the package he sent me, and now Julie...
... up's the ante...
... by sending me...
... like 1/8...
... of the set! Oh, and so many great cards in here -- Gibson, Snider, Jenkins, Morgan, Palmer, etc. -- I really could keep going on, but these weren't even the best thing to be included in the package.
Julie had mentioned that she might have some 2013 Topps Chasing History Silver Holo-Foils for me... and boy (or girl) did she! I will get to those in one second, but first, there was also this really great Stan Musial non-foil included as well.
Now we've arrived to the heart of the package, the Silver Holo-Foils! I only had a couple of parallels before this mailing, now...
... I have...
... considerably...
... more! Julie's "some", ended up being nineteen. I don't know what the pack odd were on these, but just the regular non-foil base inserts were seeded at 1:4 packs, so someone would've had to of opened quite a few packs to have gotten all these, and I'm guess that that someone wasn't Julie. Either way, I am very happy to have received all of these.
And lastly, even though it wasn't on any of my lists (not that I'm complaining mind you), is this 1980 Kellogg's Darrell Porter. I only have a couple from the 1980 edition, so this was certainly a nice surprise, especially on top of everything else that was sent.
Thanks again, Julie! These were really fun to go through, and all the set(s) help was very much appreciated.
I have been very fortunate as of late, receiving three packages from fellow bloggers in less than two weeks time. All have been really great, and all three have done some damage to my many set needs.
Today's batch of cardboard generosity comes courtesy of Kerry (aka madding, aka the commissioner of the Cards on Cards fantasy basketball league), a fellow native Portlander, who also happens to be, as many of you already know, the proprietor of Cards on Cards.
Since there's a lot to cover here, I am gonna forgo my normal dilly-dallying, and just jump right in:
When I started removing the tape and toploaders that were used to secure the stack, I couldn't help but notice a few rough cut/older looking edges all grouped together. Even the rough cut edges should have been the only clue I needed, I couldn't for the life of me figure out what they were going to be until I was actually able to get into the cards. And just in case anyone else didn't figure it out by the "rough cut" clue, here you go:
OPC! To say that I was surprised would be a major understatement. This is the one OPC set that I am trying to collect, but it's been really slow going, as I haven't added a new card to the set in what seem like years.
Since a lot of people don't just have these lying around, I must admit that I'm most curious to know where Kerry got this duodecad of 78's?
Jumping ahead almost 40 years, Kerry was able to obliterate...
... about 1/3...
... of my...
... 2017 Archives needs.
Topps lineage might be favorite modern baseball set that contained current (at the time) players. It's also a set that I had very little of.
I believe that before this package, I actually had more of the parallels than I did base.
This is probably a good time to mention that I actually scanned most of the cards in this post, which is a rarity for me -- most turned out pretty good -- although the Lineage sort of look like only the first names of player's were used for the front of the cards.
Before I made my list of 2013 Cooperstown needs, I was seeing them at the card shows all the time, but I never bought any because I didn't want to end up with a bunch of duplicates. And now after finally making a list, the seemingly endless card show supply seems to have conveniently dried up.
Kerry must have noticed all the player's of yore sets on my want list, so what did he do? Oh, just included a quartet of 2005 Upper Deck Sweet Spot Classics, which just happens to be a set that I haven't ever even seen before. Every time I think I've finally got a handle on all of these kinds of sets that came out while I was away from card collecting in the 2000's, someone comes along and sends me yet another one that I hadn't been aware of.
A few basketball set needs were addressed as well, like this 2015-16 Donruss Rebounding Kings.
After the OPC, this 2013-14 Prizm blue, white, and red was the biggest surprise in the package, as these monster box exclusives aren't the easiest things to come by. Until recently, I would've never thought that I would have something in common with an entitled rich kid from Lake Oswego, but apparently we do... anxiety!
[Note to Kerry: after sending out your package I came across an extra Lillard B,W,R Prizm, so if you need it, please let me know]
The package was rounded out with some more Prizm parallels, this time from the 2015-16 edition.
All in all, seven sets had needs removed from them, that's what I call efficient!
Many thanks for the wonderful package, Kerry! I don't know if the package I sent you was anywhere near as good as this one was, if not, I still have plenty of stuff for you :)
Welcome back to another batch of cards form last Saturday's card show. The first installment featured all things sparkly, today's post of cards that shine, will differ somewhat, but they do ultimately still fit in to the same category, that being... cards of the gaudy variety.
After removing all the cards that are destined to be sent out in care/trade packages, I was surprised by how little was left for me (at least as far as the shiny stuff goes), although looking at it in a glass half full sort of way, taking all those cards out made this post a lot shorter than it would have otherwise been... so that's always a good thing.
I'm sure a number of people are quite familiar with these Artist's Proof parallels from Score's 1997 Showcase series, but I had never seen them before, or at least I don't remember ever having seen them before. While it was cool to finally learn of them, I just wish I could have found more than just these three.
It seems like I'm always able to pick up a couple of needed cards from the Archives Reserve sets at just about every show I go to now, and as you can see, I found a few more from the 2001 edition on Saturday. At fifty cents apiece, these were the only cards in this post that cost more than a quarter. The seller had more that I needed, but a lot of them had some sort of gunk on them, a gunk that didn't seem like it was going to be removable. And if anyone's interested, the Fisk was a duplicate.
I was also able to find two from 2002 edition as well. It's a good thing that I always carry a couple of quarters, because even though this seller had a couple of 3200 ct boxes full of 25 cent stuff, these were the only two cards that I could come up with.
The Topps Season's Best inserts are usually not held in too high of regards by basketball insert collector's, but I've always enjoyed them, and I always enjoy finding stuff that I didn't have, as was the case with this Shareef Abdur-Rahim from the 1998-99 release.
I've said it before, but I'll say it again anyway, the 1998 Upper Deck UD3 Die-Cuts are one of my favorite parallels of all-time. This was the only one of these that I saw at the show, so while I would've liked to have come across more, I am happy to at least be able to knock Pudge off the wantlist.
I've been thinking about starting a frankenset of Topps Chrome colored refractors, if I do, these 2012 purple's would certainly be a nice addition.
Attack of the random photo! This image was apparently captured while taking the pictures for this post. It was kind of funny to see it among the uploaded photos, especially since I don't remember taking it.
Of all the photos/scans in this post, I think this one of the 2011 Topps Diamond Anniversary's turned out best. I mean just look at those colors!
The orange Cutch refractor would be a nice addition to the possible frankenset as well. I've also toyed with the idea of starting one for sepia refractors too, even though that one would be a pretty slow build, as I wouldn't want to pay more than 25 cents each for the cards that went in to the set. I only found one of the sepia's on Saturday, that being the Cashner above, which is numbered to /99.
One of my card show objectives was to try and help Chris out with his 2015-16 Donruss basketball set build, which by the way, I failed miserably in my attempt to do so. I did find two non-base cards from the set though, an Inspirations Die-Cut (#'d to /80) and an Elite Dominators, both of which are inserts/parallels that I'm working on. And don't worry about Chris, because I did end up finding a few other cards for him :)
I came across my first 2017 Topps Chrome Negative Refractor on Saturday as well. I don't anything about young Mr. Marquez, but it sure is an attractive card... scanned pretty well too!
I couldn't get a good picture of these 2015 Topps High Tek's either, but they seemed to have scanned pretty good. I know the background patterns have different names and are of different scarcities, but I couldn't tell you what's what, I just bought them because they were different. I'm always amazed that cards numbered to /50, can be had for just a quarter.
Tim Brown comes from that 2015 Topps High Tek set as well, but he's probably considered to be less special, what with him being numbered to /99 and all.
If I had pick favorites, I'd probably say these 1999 Pacific Prism parallels were my favorite cards from this post, mostly just because I can count on one hand the number of times that I have come across these at a card show. This was back when parallels that were serial numbered and had names like holographic gold, or holographic purple, seemed to be really cutting edge... and in many ways they were, in retrospect, Pacific really was ushering in a new era for trading cards.
As I mentioned in the beginning of the previous post, this past Saturday was a card show day, and not just any old card show day, no, this was one of the twice a year card show on steroids days... featuring 180 tables of pure cardboard nirvana. Oh, and the Beckett grading people were there, as well as the JSA folks, and for the third time in the last year and a half, Denny McClain was there to sign stuff.
Having not been to a show since the last big one in September, I had been looking forward to this day for quite a while now, and thankfully the show didn't disappoint (not that I thought it would).
As far as getting there goes, it was pretty uneventful, got up at 3am so that I could hit the road by 5am in order to get there at/or before 7am. Although I did see two bunnies and a deer practically right after I got out of the driveway, so that was nice, and it must've been a good omen as the rest of the drive there ended up being quite pleasant.
I was surprised to see how many people were already there when I arrived shortly before seven, as the main crowds don't usually arrive until an hour or two later. It seemed to be rather crowded the entire time I was there, thankfully though, I left a little earlier than normal (ran out of money) so my anxiety didn't get as bad as it usually does by the time I leave. And as always, I enjoyed seeing where everyone was coming from via the license plates in the parking lot. I lost count, but I think this show beat the old record of 12 different states being represented, including an Arizona and a New York (he was a dealer, his accent gave him away) this time. Maybe it's just because I hate long drives, but I couldn't imagine driving to Nashville all the way from Arizona... that's just crazy!
As I mentioned in the last post too, since everything I bought pretty much fits into six different categories, I'm going to make these recaps a little easier by separating them into six different posts. Since the vintage stuff seems to always be the most popular, I had fully intended to start with that, but apparently the lighting wasn't good enough when I did pictures, so all the whites look yellowish... and just won't do, so instead I'll be starting with all of the glittery/sparkly stuff, aka the polar opposite of vintage.
I hit a bit of 2011 Topps Platinum Diamond Anniversary mother lode while going through my favorite seller's (Jim) quarter boxes, and I guess before I get too far along, I should probably mention that everything in this post came from two different sellers, and nothing was more than 25 cents.
If anyone's interested, the J.J. Hardy and Joel Pineiro were duplicates.
In terms of star power, the MadBum was by far the best of these Platinum Diamond's. 26 of these cards were new to me, and they almost doubled the amount of cards that I now have from this set.
Also from the 2011 Topps set, I found a couple of the Cognac's. The Banks and Sandberg are variations, of the legends variety, so it was pretty cool to find those for a quarter as they usually go for a couple of bucks apiece. The Ernie Banks is also my favorite card in this post.
Even though the scans don't show it, these cards (in my opinion) are more sparkly than shiny, which I feel need to mention because the next post is reserved for shiny cards, and I spent a couple of minutes trying to figure which cards should go in which posts.
Ooh, more Platinum Diamond's, this time from the 2011 Topps Lineage.
I love this set so much, but like everything else, I didn't know of it until a couple of years after it came out.
Of all the Topps parallels, I think the 2012 Golden Moments is the set that I have the most of. I really like the active AL batting average leaders, the base card's cool too, but it's just so much better in glimmering gold. This is another set that, in person, seems more sparkly than shiny.
I bought this Piazza mainly because of it's sparkly nature, and also because I couldn't recall ever seeing a card from this set before. I have since found out that it's a Nth Degree parallel from the 1995 Score Summit set. I don't know if I'll end up keeping it or not, but for the moment I sure do enjoy looking at it.
And finally, another card from a set that I don't recall ever having seen before. From checking COMC, I have been able to ascertain that the 1993 Collector's Edge had a five-card John Elway insert set, which came in three different versions. This one that I found is of Taraus Technologies Prisms variety, and under the right conditions, could seriously mess up your eyes. I was torn on which post this one should go in, I guess if anybody reading this has one, you can tell me which category you would've put it in. This is also another one that I don't if I'll be keeping or not, but either way, it sure is cool looking.
If you still haven't gotten your fill of gaudy cards, you'll want to come back for the next post, as it too will be full of brightly coated pieces of cardboard.
