rounds 1, 2, 3 and 4

Let's begin. First off, I went through a computer issue about a month ago and I had to wipe my hard drive and install a new copy of OSx. In that process I did lose everything (which wasn't much) but I also lost the ability to connect my scanner/printer to my computer. I tried to get it to work but I have to trick the comp into letting it install (it worked before but won't now). So for all the pictures in this break I am using my phone camera and sending them to my email and posting them here. I apologize if they come out not so great but if you can't make something out let me know and I'll let you know what it is.

Now, for each of these rounds, pick one card you'd like. Actually with the Legends Variations you can pick from either picture, I just split them up between the verticals and horizontals for the pictures but you can pick any two you like.

Dan- Schmidt
Matt- Roberts


Matt- Smith
Dan- Robinson


Dan- Santana
Matt- Simpson


Matt- Carter
Dan- Braun

I'll try and keep the rounds quick, happy pickin's!

a halladay auto!

...plus many more. Today I received a very interesting item from the local shop today. Well, first let me give a little background info. I started working there part part-time. What that essentially means is that when he needs me, he asks if I can work. Well flash forward to Wednesday (I think it was Wed.), he sends me a message saying he got something I'd be really interested in. Well, this is what it was:




Eighteen signatures from the 2009 team. Included are Roy Halladay, Vernon Wells, Jose Bautista, Adam Lind, Aaron Hill and the reason it's even here, Jesse Carlson. Jesse is from Berlin, Connecticut which is the next town over and the location of the aformentioned card shop. Apparently the high school baseball coach received this a gift from Carlson and went on over to the shop to see if he was interested in either buying or trading for it (I'm not sure which). Being that I'm a known Jays fan, he said 'of course' with me in mind. He gave me the ball (and holder) as a payment for my first couple of shifts. Shifts have only been two hours long so far (on days when he wants to leave early) so this worked out pretty well. I haven't identified each signature yet but I know a few others on here. Once I figure them all out I'll document it but a sweet piece to my Jays collection.

round 6

Just did relics, so why not autos?


cardanathema- fowler/martis
ryan- mcdonald/freese
shadytwine- schafer/kottaras
jeff- jepsen/crowe

maybe it was a good idea...

...to leave the house today.

Nuff said!

round three

The Soriano I just posted about is here if you would like to see it on the 'Bay. This does actually mark my first true 1 of 1 pull. I don't know if I really consider printing plates to be true 1 of 1's (as many collectors don't) but they are still kinda cool to pull. Of course even that has only happened twice. One was a Jose Reyes from 2010 Chicle and the other was a 2011 Ruben Tejada from Gypsy Queen. I know, both Mets. Weird. Anyway, we are on to round three. This round will be the autos of non-scrubs. At least I think they aren't anyway. Oh, and if McCutchen is a scrub (I honestly don't know, I know nothing of the Pirates), then he is only in here because Opening Day autos are 1:746 pulls. It's crazy.


1- commishbob- kemp
2- hiflew- feliz
3- diamond king- mccutchen
4- ryan- billingsley
5- ba benny- ruiz

no idea what took so long

...to get in on these sets. The Conlon Collection is a massive showcase of early 1900's baseball. Seriously, what took me so long to pick these sets up? It has everything I look for in a set that focuses on older players. Excellent black and white photography by Charles Conlon and TONS of information on the card backs. When I say massive, I mean massive. They issued five sets annually from 1991 to 1995. The 91-94 sets each had 330 cards and they straight numbered them to 1320 (bigger than Upper Deck!) and the 1995 set had the endcap 110 cards, bringing the total set up to 1430. Thats a lot of baseball history there. As of now I have 1-990, 1991-93. I picked them up new and cheap on eBay and when I opened up the 1992 set, this card was on the outside:

Pretty cool, gold cards eh? What is this at the bottom:

Autos too? Cool. So check out what was hidden behind two of the gold cards:

A Johnny Mize auto. Yep, I just pulled a Hall of Fame auto from a 19 year old factory sealed set. Pretty friggin' sweet if you ask me. Weird marker they used for the auto though, reminds me of crayon, even though it is not.

I may try to get the 1994 and 1995 sets but they tend to carry a premium online due to their scarcity. I remember having some of these when I was younger but probably dismissed them because they were "a bunch of old guys", and I wanted anything Topps Gold (seriously, I was a fiend for 1992 Topps Gold). Besides, where else can I get a card of Rabbit Maranville?

Tomorrow I will tell the tale of a card that went on a journey that I thought he may never reach home. Plus I'll give something away. Stay tuned.

guess the sig...

Should be an easy one. This pic was taken by me, from an item I now own. First to guess correct wins....something. I haven't decided what exactly, yet. I'll reveal the answer (and item) tomorrow afternoon.

Oh yeah, does anyone collect card pack wrappers? I have Topps wrappers that I opened up nicely from 79-90. There are some gaps in there but there are about 7 or so different ones. They came from when I was opening up older Topps backs a little while back. Claim 'em and they're yours.

card show pick-ups

Hit up the card show today. My goal was to come out with most of the 2011 Heritage I need to finish the set off. While I was mostly unsuccessful (I did manage to get about 8 cards I needed, wantlist is updated on right), I did walk out with some great stuff:

Some quality vintage, with the best part being what I paid for all of them. I spent most of my time (and money) at one dealer. Apparently he buys up collections cheap and sells cheap in return. For the six cards above, I paid $15. The Rose is my first Vintage card of him. The Munson is his final year card and the two 75s are the achievements in the beginning of the set with Aaron and Kaline hitting milestones. He had a great many boxes of stuff, including 5, 10 and 50 cent boxes and dollar, three dollar and five dollar boxes. He also had some $15, $25 and $40 boxes but I didn't get anything from them. A lot of graded Bowman's in there, new stuff not vintage. I pilfered through the 'cent' boxes and came up big with a ton of cards for my PCs, including Fleer stickers from the early 80s, Griffeys, team cards and some Hall of Famers.

These were almost a no brainer, being that he only wanted $3 each for them. For that price I was more than willing to take the chance on these being actual autographs of three fantastic Hall of Famers. I looked at the autos and compared to ones I saw online, and I'm no handwriting expert but I am almost willing to bet they are authentic, signed in person autographs. Maybe someday I'll have them authenticated but for now they'll go right in the binder. The two Donruss cards look fantastic with the blue marker autos. A great bunch of pick ups today even though I didn't get what I intended. Oh well, Heritage will be finished someday.

my collection of non-card autos

I don't have too much in the way of autographed items that aren't cards. Well, today's post is going to focus on those few such items. Shall we?

I'll start with the one item you may be familiar with:

The Griffey ball/UD rookie. Still probably my favorite.

Vernon Wells ball.

Vernon Wells mini helmet. Yes, those are Lego ninjas hiding underneath on the left and a Lego baseball player on the right.

Aaron Hill ball.

Jimmy Key ball.

Cal Ripken Jr. ball. This one is cool because it is on an All-Star ball from 1991, which was played in Toronto, which Cal played in.

I know, short but sweet. With only sic items so far it is a terribly small collection when compared to some of you guys. I haven't been big into the autographed ball/items/etc. thing but that may change someday. It's a start though.

card show pick-ups

I hit up the old card show today. It seemed like it was a little busier than usual this morning and I saw a few new dealers there too. Here is what I came out with:

The vintage:

From right to left; 1934 Batter-Up, 1940 Playball, 1950 Bowman.

I grabbed these because I had none from any of these series. I have the surrounding Bowmans (1949, 1951-54) and Playballs (1939, 1941) but I had no Batter-Ups yet. The prices on these were very good for the condition.


The autos:

I grabbed all these from a guys box labeled '$5.00 each'. I definitely couldn't pass up the Strawberrys at that price. The two Wells and Pavano were no-brainers for me.


The relics:

Ok, so one of the Wells is an auto/relic, that came from the previously mentioned '$5.00 each' box and the Snider is a manu-patch auto. The Yount was impossible to pass up at 5 bucks too (different seller) and the second Wells seems to be maybe off of the nameplate.

Total spent: $60 for everything. Really can't complain too much there seeing as how I got some good vintage and autos and relics I actually wanted.

finally...

...an autograph worth getting out a Topps base product. Never, have I seen an auto from a pack of basic Topps that was worth really anything. I've pulled a few decent autos but nothing overly fantastic. This guy is the clear winner for best auto I've pulled:

Certainly a quality auto right here. Pulled from a hobby jumbo, from of all places, a Newbury Comics store. For those who don't live in the Massachusetts area, Newbury Comics is an awesome store that carries comics, movies and music. I noticed the last time I was there a few months back they carried baseball cards. Last night I went with a buddy of mine and picked out 4 packs and one jumbo. All hobby. No idea why they have hobby packs but that's all they had. No problem there. The pack luck continues. When I buy packs, I get good stuff. When I buy boxes, I usually get the shaft or missing hits. Want more proof? See the Reggie Jackson, Bucky Dent relics and the Yaz and Ortiz dual relic? I pulled those three from four packs of 2009 SP Legendary Cuts. Last time I went to Wal-Mart, which was on Thursday? I picked up a couple packs of 2011 Topps and pull the Ruth legend variant (card 271). I'll save that picture for a future post. Packs net me my best stuff, maybe I should just give up boxes all together...

value-fractor-mania! (non-fractor)

As I stated in yesterdays posts comments (I have to comment from the wife's computer, mine still won't let me comment...I know, stupid), I was going to post what else I got in the WallyMart value boxes. The first box came with the Hanrahan auto. The second came with the manu-patch (which made the pack super obviously thicker than the others) and the bronze Met. The third and latest came with the Mijares auto and the best bronze I could have gotten out of series two, being Aaron Hill. Great seeing as how I'm sort of collecting him. The funny thing with the Hanrahan and Mijares autos is that they don't even have cards in the regular set, but they got autos! (and even funnier is that I have a Mijares auto from series 1, go figure) Maybe these are left over stickers from when Topps had them sign for Bowman cards and never used the sticker autos up. Who the heck knows. Maybe I'll try for one more to test my luck.

its not alan hale but...

Cameron over at Reds and More... recently decided and posted up that he would like to send out team lots of all the teams he didn't care about (ie; anyone who is not a Red). I jumped at the chance to get his Jays stuff, and sent him over some Reds in return. What he sent over was fantastic to say the least. Some autos, inserts and a ton of cards I didn't have. It was the following card though, that really caught my attention:

The skipper himself! His 1989 Topps Traded card, signed by the man himself. I asked Cameron where he had obtained it and he said that he had gotten it during Spring Training in either 1990 or 1991. Incredible that he has held onto it that long. I find it to be really great because I have very little stuff that I had back in 1990. Its one of my new favorites, and I don't plan on it going anywhere any time soon. A HUGE thanks to Cameron for the great card! Check out his blog and claim your team if you have not done so already, as he has some teams left to clear out.

aquisitions

Recent show pick-ups (this morning actually). Two great autos of one of Toronto's sure-to-become-a-star pitcher.

open all night

2010 Topps Opening Day.

What is it really? Is it a low end value set geared towards younger collectors? Is it kind of a 'greatest hits' compilation of the 2010 issue? Or is it just another set to make them some more cash while we wait for the next set to drop? I'd like to think its all three. While Topps does recycle many of the images from the main flagship set, Opening Day does have its quirks. As you can see above, our friend Hanley Ramirez is in the post hitting pose, while his Series 2 card looks like this:

So there are a few differences in some of the players pictures. Many airbrushings are abound in this set, but its nice to see a player in their current uniform. I wasn't sure that I wanted to collect this set at first but then decided that I would like to collect each set that has this format. I really like the 2010 layout and to have every set (Series 1, Series 2, Update, Opening Day and Chrome) with this layout would be totally rad in my eyes (I think I'll skip Pro Debut though). I love the blue border parallels of this set. I picked up a blaster the other night and tore through the 10 packs and when opening the 8th pack I discovered this (not the blue border):

Now Daniel McCutchen isn't even listed on the checklist as an auto, but here he is. What a glaring oversight. the checklist lists ten autos in the set, he is not one of them. The stated odds on the back of the pack for an auto is a ridiculous 1:746 (I'm not kidding), making this the rarest pull I've ever pulled from a pack, even beating out the 1 of 1 (of 4) Chicle printing plate (1:300 odds). Very odd. Maybe because its so over-produced that pulling an auto is impossibly hard. I haven't even seen many on eBay, but maybe because they aren't that desirable. I'm all for it though, any auto is a good auto in my book.