We like ROY

Sort of a random little post revisiting 3 cards and taking a look at 3 new additions. 

Despite my half-hearted attempt to rebrand myself as The Pre-Covid Collector, I find myself with nice cards of each of the recently announced 2020 Rookie of the Year winners. The pair of Kyle Lewis refractors were a surprise in a Zippy Zapping from a couple years ago. While I'm always happy to receive random shiny prospect cards, gotta admit at the time I didn't see him ending up as the unanimous AL ROY.. very nice surprise, indeed.

The Devin Williams auto was included in a lot of nine cheap Bowman autos I bought in 2014 during a combined shipping eBay spree with a few other items from one seller. The other 8 prospects in that auto lot have pretty much all faded away, but nice to see Devin break out with a dominant shortened season. I sure don't own many 1st Bowman autos of ROYs, so that's pretty cool, even if his card prices aren't too wild as a 26-year old relief pitcher. While it would have been nice for me to see Padre Jake Cronenworth take home the award in the NL, well, I don't own any of his cards, so screw him, lol.

The Diamond King reached out to me shortly after I moved offering up this second-year Mike Schmidt card. Heck yeah! He seemed to indicate the condition left something to be desired, but no, it fits in perfectly with the rest of my 1974 Topps setbuild. There are a lot of '74s currently populating my Desperate Dozen sidebar wantlist as I make a push to close out this set sooner rather than later, and this is a big one to check off. Just 35 cards left to go. (Be sure to appreciate the bullpen cart in the background!)

Michael Jack Schmidt had trouble making contact during his rookie campaign, so no ROY votes for him-- Gary Matthews of the Giants took it that year-- but he figured it out the next year and went on to become an all-time great.

Big thanks, DK! Glad you're feeling better now. I haven't had much luck finding cards on your wantlist, but hope to return the favor soon.

Here's a very shiny Jose Abreu card. He was an unanimous selection as AL ROY in 2014 and has been consistently solid since.

My favorite part about this sweet card...

Christmas Card!

Featured here on another super shiny card from 2019, Eric Hosmer placed 3rd in AL ROY voting in 2011 behind Jeremy Hellickson and Mark Trumbo.

This gold wave refractor and the Abreu orange wave refractor were scored in an easy PWE purchase from @MashingDingers on Twitter. Took a while to find my mailbox, forwarded from my old address, but eventually showed up safe and sound. Thanks, Eric!

That's all for today. Thanks for stopping by.

GCRLive: cards as I receive them

I briefly met gcrl a year or two ago when he was in Portland for business. When he came back around this time, we turned it into a big cardblogger meetup. He was nice enough to bring along cards for the group. Let's take a look at what he had for me.

Kicking it off with college cards of a couple Padres greats, plus some other very goods players of yesteryear.

Here are some current guys, including 3 additions for my new Eric Hosmer PC. That 2018 Donruss Arenado card was "pack fresh" as can be, as gcrl had the foresight to pick up a few packs at Target for us to rip together, and that was among the cards pulled.

A couple infielders who didn't quite pan out longterm in San Diego, Sean Burroughs and Marcus Giles. The encased gold refractor Burroughs is #'d 086/170.

The Marquis Grissom is appreciated for my big Marquis Mania project. The two 1980 Topps cards are upgrades for my set (they have unchecked checklists on the back, which I prefer over marked-on cards). And the four 1987 Fleer Update cards get me closer to completing that little set.

And we'll end with this sweet Norm Zauchin, a high number for my '57 Topps setbuild. Love getting help there via trades.

Thanks again, man! It was great seeing you. Sorry I'm running low on Dodgers at the moment, but hope you were happy with the cards I rounded up for you.

Welcome to the Jungle (random cards)

Here's a first in what will likely be an extended series of posts here. Actually it's just a lazy way for me to feature random cards on my blog that I've added to my collection recently. Coming up with post titles is tough sometimes, so I'm just going to use Guns N' Roses song titles. I'm still undecided if I'll jump around or go chronologically, but for now I'm starting at the start.

More like "Welcome to the Beach." Looks like I need to add Eric Hosmer to the list of guys I collect. I never had much opinion of him either way, but as you may know my team the Padres just gave him a big, long free-agent contract. That makes in a little nervous, and making a big splash like that seems odd what with San Diego still rebuilding. But apparently Hosmer is a good leader in the clubhouse, and that's something the team needed. So yeah, I'll cheer him on and hope for the best.

I'd like to optimistically get a PC of the guy kickstarted, so any trader buds out there who want to thumb through their Royals tradeables, please feel free to set any Hosmer cards aside for me. I don't have many.

Picked up a couple vintage football cards of familiar names at the latest card show. Alex Karras and OJ Simpson both went from being gridiron greats to successful actors in Hollywood. OJ ran into trouble with the law later in life that perhaps you heard about. Anyways, for 71¢ each, I thought these were too good a deal to pass up.

I always check out any graded cards I see poking out of the sub-dollar bins. It's just fun to pick up cards for substantially less that some poor sap paid to have them slabbed. Whoever sent this one into PSA apparently didn't give it a very good look beforehand. It's got a little surface indentation mark above the "n" in Bowman which I'm sure is the reason the card only got a 7. But whatever; cheap Jake Arrieta pre-rookie.

(Sorry for the crazy shadow. I took these photos this morning, and the sun was shining bright off the snow on the ground. Looks like the card is trapped in a block of ice or something.)

Back to football, another graded card. This Reggie Bush rookie got a respectable 8.5 grade. I collect him a bit because we're from the same neck of the woods. Bonus points to this card for mentioning his school, Helix High School, in the blurb on the back. They were a powerhouse of great athletes and it's a treasured memory from my Track Team days when we broke their long winning streak on the way to a championship for Granite Hills. (pardon the brag)

I waffled on this card for a while before eventually deciding to add it to my card show stack. I don't collect Joe Mauer, but he seems like a good guy. I suppose this and the above Arrieta are available for trade consideration if anyone's interested.

This isn't really a new pickup, just a card that I found in my collection and was like, "oh cool! Didn't know I had this." Back in October 2016, I won a few lots of 2013 Bowman Sterling autographs from one eBay seller that worked out to about a buck or two per card. Unfortunately I was narrowly outbid on the lots that included Aaron Judge (this was before he broke out). But there were still a few notable players in the lots that I scored. Ryon Healy had a solid 2017 season for Oakland and was recently traded to Seattle. I don't really collect him, but I've been kinda keeping an eye on him, and it's nice to stumble upon an auto of his that I didn't realize was in my collection.

Thanks for reading, and always remember: you can have everything you want, but you better not take it from me!