cardboard catchup

I've received some cool cards in the mail from cardsphere folks over the past couple weeks. Time to catch up and give them their spotlight. So here are several cards I got from a pair of Dodgers fans and a pair of Yankees fans.

Over the summer, I won this sharp Mookie Betts 2017 Bowman's Best blue refractor in a big multi-winner contest at the Chavez Ravining blog. I had pretty much forgotten about it, so it was a nice surprise when it showed up forwarded from my old address. Alex kindly threw in a bonus Pete Alonso 206 as well.

Thanks again for the contest, Alex!

-  -  - ---o

Here's another unexpected PWE that recently blessed my mailslot (the new house doesn't have a mailbox): gcrl sent me over a housewarming Gwynn.

Surprise, it's a blank back. Trying to find more info, I saw one of these listed on COMC as "1996 Topps Finest - League Leaders - Bronze Blank Back". Not sure if it's a proof card or was actually packed-out, but regardless, it's a neat one to add to my Gwynn PC.

Thanks, gcrl! i'll try to find something good to return the favor with soon.

-   -  - --o

Bo of the blog Bo's Bonanza of Baseballers got me to the cusp of completion with 1990 Donruss. Now I'm just down to the Bosio Diamond King, the MVP insert of HoJo, and one more puzzle piece. (plus all the Grand Slammers and the many error cards, but I doubt I'll end up going hard after those.) [UPDATE: heads up that I'm getting many of these in a forthcoming Sportlots order, so no need to try to find them for me.] 

Can't blame you if the '90D doesn't excite you, but come on, these candidates for my Vintage Frankenset are a fun bunch! Expect to get a closer look at them in forthcoming posts about that project.

Thanks, Bo! I feel bad I've been owing you cards for a while even before this, so it's a priority to hit you back with something good soon.

-  - - --o

And biggest for last is a surprise zapping from the Luis Torrens Fan Club. Kinda like a repack blaster with all the repurposed wrappers. Nice to get a pseudo rip in!

Among the highlights were some 2020 Padres I can use.

I'm always a sucker for a shiny refractor.

A few more various highlights.

And a pair of hits! A Jorge Mateo auto and an Anthony Davis relic managed to sneak out of Kenny's collection and into mine. Awesome! Originally signed by the Yankees out of the DR, Mateo made his big league debut with the Padres last season. And I don't follow basketball very closely, but I know he's one of the best in the game and teamed up with LeBron to win the 2020 NBA championship with the Lakers. Happy to give my little basketball collection a bump with this jersey card.

Thanks, Zippy! Very cool. I'll have to return the favor one of these days.

Rod delivery

My recent move scooched me a little closer to fellow Portland-based Padres fan, Rod of the longrunning Padrographs blog, with the distance between us going from 6 miles down to 4. Nice to have a close-by collecting buddy, especially a generous one like Rod who occasionally drops off longboxes of fresh baseball cards for me!

Time to take a look at some highlights from my latest bounty. And let me stress how great it is to have "blind" cards to thumb through these days because since covid I haven't gone to a card show or bought product (and I don't do group breaks) so the only cards i've been getting are the occasional mailday where i generally already know what I'm getting.. so that means I'm lacking a vital "mystery excitement" aspect of my personal collecting experience. So a big batch of random cards is great for that fix.

Topps Fire generally doesn't do much for me, but I do dig most of their foilboard parallels (though foilboard generally doesn't do much for me either). The all-gold cards they do are pretty cool and I'm always stoked to add a shiny new Soto to the PC (a goldie though it's catchin' rainbow in the photo).

Rod's boxes gave me my best first-hand look at 2020 Stadium Club. Just a few highlights and parallels pictured here (Solak and Bagwell are black foil), plus that one in the middle is a wide boxloader thingy. Pretty cool, even if might be a hassle to find a place for.

There was about a pack or two's worth of 2020 Bowman in the boxes, and I'd say the highlight was this mega refractor of a guy I heard about thanks to him contending for NL ROY this past season. Bohm picked up 9 first-place votes, even.

Oh, during the postseason I had myself a bit of the ol' "FOMO" because this rookie Randy Arozarena was tearing it up and i didn't own a single card of his. But boom, now I got a couple RCs at least.. sweet!

I didn't have much 2020 Archives before now, so it was cool to get a closer look at it, including these two silly creations by the Topps cardmakers. The McCovey is trolling collectors such as myself who have been pining for an official/real A's card of Stretch for a lifetime now. Topps is all like, "this is as close as you'll get, nerds!" 

And the "Washington Nat'l" ref with the Robles color scheme is a hoot. Is this special or just a base card? [...looks it up...] That's the base card version; there is a variation that changes it to "San Diego" w/ "Nat'l Lea.". The Padres on the '74 design seem to have a similar variation, but changing the city to Washington. Now I kinda want the Tatis version of that... if it weren't so expensive.

My first sampling of 2020 Pro Debut shook out some semi-familiar names as a /99 green parallel.

Speaking of low print-runs, I got a few of Rod's spare Padre customs in the mix too. Always fun stuff.

The quantity king of this delivery was the Express himself, Nolan Ryan. If I didn't already have over 100 unique cards in my Nolan Ryan PC, I do now. I got an immature giggle out of that "Number Two" card and had to check the back to see if it included Nolan's career toilet stats. (That reminds me of a new thing I came up with recently. It's like #walletcard but #toiletcard, and I'll leave it at that unless commenters demand a post further expounding upon the phenomenon, but it might be best left "TMI". Bottom line is I found a use for my extra factory set of '91 Upper Deck,er.)

Cast a wide net and pulled up a bunch of Trout.

The boxes were mostly modern cards, but some Bonds-era stuff was mixed in, good to fill a few PC holes here and there.

This is the back of the above Ivan Rodriguez 2000 Fleer Mystique "Supernaturals" insert. Did it really come out of the pack like that or is this an example of card-art or something? Either way.. shiny!

Cal Ripken wasn't too far behind Nolan as far as thickness of PC stack from this haul. From the look of that hovering '92 Leaf shot, Cal's about ready to ride off into the sunset, so let's wrap up this post.

Lots and lots of keepers that would take way too long trying to cover, so I'll just again say big thanks to Rod for keeping the fresh cards flowing. Much appreciated!

Thanks for moseying on by, y'all.

Happy Thanksgavin

 

Happy Thanksgavin from my card collection, featuring an autograph from the legendary Edie McClurg. Picked that up for a few bucks over the summer.

Hey, re: Mr. Stearnes, I finally got a couple extra "Neglected HOFers" custom sets (15 cards) printed up if anyone wants to trade me for one.

Paula in the kitchen working on the big meal. Be sure to check out my MusiCards blog. I'm gonna try to do a holiday surprise for the regulars over there.

Ruby celebrated her 6-month birthday recently. She looked more like a black lab as a tiny pup, but you can see her husky coloring coming out as she gets older. No one has ever punched me in the balls more than this dog. How I hate her. But she's a cutie.

Ruby got spayed the other day and we thought it might slow her down a little, but no, she was back to her queen-bitch self the next day. So much damn wolf blood in her that nothing seems to faze her. Pretty sure she's got some honey badger in her, too.

Fun with a Darryl Strawberry mailday yesterday.

pic.twitter.com/yVDgkpwwhC

— Baseball Card Breakdown (@breakdowncards) November 26, 2020

I got one of these fiberoptic toys earlier in the year and I love it! I remember being fascinated by them when I was a kid. Highly recommended. (See also my previous post with the Lux pic.)

It's the first Thanksgiving in my lifetime with no turkey. My wife and I are doing hickory smoked ham and I'm totally cool with that. Pumpkin pie with whip cream for dessert, so that's really all I give a shit about, lol. (Strawberry/Rhubarb is another tasty option.) But yeah, hopefully next year we're back to a normal big family meal. Hope you all are having a good day, too.

2020 recap of Gavins and Guys From Granite

I like to do yearly recaps of the active non-star players I collect. Honestly, these such posts are mostly for me, because otherwise sometimes I forget to check in on these guys! But I get a blog post out of it, and hopefully a few readers find this stuff mildly interesting too.

However, with the cancelation of the 2020 minor league season, there's not a whole lot to report this year. So I'm combining the guys who share my first name and the guys who went to my high school in one post.

Gavin Lux - In really the only good news to mention in this entire post, 2020 marked the first time ever that a guy named Gavin won a World Series. It's a proud moment for us Gavins everywhere! lol. (Honorable mention to Scott Gavin Erickson with the '91 Twins.)

But otherwise it was a disappointing season for a kid who was projected to be a frontrunner for NL Rookie of the Year. Lux didn't impress in training camp and didn't make the opening day roster. He made it up to the bigs for 19 games (down from his 23-game call-up in 2019) and hit just .175 for the Dodgers. His lone postseason appearance was a strikeout in the NLDS.

But yeah, 2020 was a weird season and you gotta take these stats with a grain of salt. Collectors haven't given up on him yet, as his cards still ain't cheap. I haven't added any new Lux cards to my collection this year other than maybe a base card or two from a trade package, as any card that caught my eye seemed to creep out of the price range I was comfortable with.

But here's hoping he bounces back for a strong 2021 season. (Or if he continues to struggle, well, the silver lining for me is his card prices could finally chill out.)

Gavin LaValley - Big Gav was sadly among the 48 minor leaguers that the Reds released at the conclusion of training camp this past June. After a so-so second go-round in Double-A the previous year, LaValley looked like a longshot to make the majors, but were it not for covid crapping on everything, he possibly would have gotten a shot in AAA. He turns 26 next month and I'm not holding my breath for another club to sign him for 2021, but best of luck to him. If he's hung up his cleats for the final time, I wish him all the best in the next chapter of his life!

Gavin Cecchini - The Diamondbacks gave Cecchini a look in spring training, but he didn't stick with them and was released in May. He had earlier been on track to play pro ball in Australia, but the wild brushfires scared him back to the States just in time for the pandemic, lol. What an awful time in civilization we live in! He'll be 27 next month and may very well be done in organized ball. But like with LaValley, I'm wishing him the best of luck.

Here are some more minor league Gavins that spent 2020 in limbo but hopefully take the field for official MiLB games next year:

Gavin Collins
Gavin Collyer
Gavin Garay
Grant Gavin
John Gavin
Gavin Hollowell
Gavin Jones
Gavin Sheets
Gavin Stupienski
Gavin Wallace

Good luck, Gavins!

As for Guys From Granite, no 2020 stats from anybody to report.

Travis Taijeron had been back with the Mets in camp this spring, but was among the 39 players New York released in May. He'll be 32 next season, so that might be it for him on the diamond. I'd be surprised if he's still playing next year, but I wish him the best!

There are 3 other active players who went to Granite Hills High School hoping to return to the field in '21: Trenton Brooks, Andrew Brown, and Jordan Verdon. No Granite grads have been drafted since Verdon in 2018, but hopefully we get some new blood in pro ball soon.

Thanks for reading and have a great holiday weekend.

High Shelf Esteem

I've been in my new house for over a month now. Making progress getting it how I like it, with little tweeks/improvements here and there, though my job and a hyper puppy cut down on the time/energy I've got available to really go to town. But the card room took a big step forward over the weekend.

Scored a free spice rack / curio shelf from a local "buy nothing" Facebook group that was exactly what I had in mind for a little display shelf on the lone bare wall in my tiny card room.

After mounting it up, the first order of business was putting together a Dick Allen corner. I've got a nice assortment of various goodies from him that I thought it would present nicely together. Others seem to agree, as I tweeted out this pic and it "went viral" by my standards with 100+ likes!

Here's a full view of how it stands at the moment. The other top corner features Kirby Puckett. Then the lower two shelves are just crammed with other favorite cards n' such thrown in there willy nilly as a "first draft"-- Much of these came from unpacking my evacuation keepers stash.

I'm thinking I'll probably overhaul it every few months, with new themes/cards. For instance, maybe a month or so with all my Ghostbusters autos on display, another month with Sandlot stuff, and another with my best MST3K stuff, and so on. Even though the area is free from direct sunlight, I don't want to put anything out on display indefinitely for fear it'll eventually start to fade. Plus I want to keep it in a state of where it'll make me smile everytime I look at it, without letting it get stale, and hopefully it'll help me appreciate my collection to its fullest, with various parts of my collection getting a chance to shine. So yeah, expect to see periodic cardroom display updates on the blog going forward!

Waiting For COMC / Pedro pickups

I finally pulled the trigger on a COMC order I'd been building for over a year. I was hoping to wait until they got their long shipping delays under control, but no such luck. At this point, I figured I should at least get in the queue before the Black Friday sales add to the bottleneck.

The shipment includes 189 cards. (Apparently they don't do the $5 credit for every 100 cards anymore, but I had originally planned to go to 200.) My estimated ship date is 2/18/2021. Now we wait!

I believe this is my 30th order from COMC. That's the above 20 plus 10 more "Other Shopping Cart Purchases" between 3/19/13 and 1/9/15 that are counted differently for some reason.

Ah, remember the good old days of $3 flat shipping and it just took about a couple weeks to show up to your door? Now it's $4.99 and 3+ months. I think I'm gonna try giving the Sportlots "box" thing a try and use COMC less until they get their shit together.

Here are a couple recent Sportlots pickups. These were both 1-card purchases, and even with the separate shipping, they ran me about a buck each and took about a week to show up. Best price on COMC right now is $7.25 for the '09 Update and $19.99 for the Heritage. Don't forget about that $4.99 shipping and a 3+ month wait. Ok, I'm done bitching about COMC now; sorry for the negativity.

But back to the cards, I've got a decent Pedro PC with 100+ different cards, but it bugged me I didn't have any cards from his 2009 sunset stint with the Phillies. I remember I was pretty excited when he came back mid-season. He was solid for Philadelphia and I had hoped he'd make a similar return in 2010, but nope.

Another Pedro Martinez card I scored recently was this one for my 2004 Topps Chrome black refractor set. Love these rainbow in the dark beauties! It's the 250th card I've added out of 487 on my checklist, good for 51.3% complete. 2004 was a good year for Pedro, adding a World Series ring to go along with his 3 Cy Young awards.

Thanks for swinging by.

p.s. While we're at it, here's a couple bonus 2004 black refractors for the birthday boys today.

Kerry Cards

Unfortunately covid kinda put the kibosh on in-person card swaps downtown with fellow Portlander Kerry of the blog Cards on Cards, but there's still the handy USPS to help us out (in exchange for a reasonable fee). 

Several terrific highlights in this latest crosstown package, but I gotta give the shiny Juan Soto relic top billing. I've got a respectable little Soto PC, but I think this is the first swatch linked to him in my collection.

The shine continues on this trio of players who were pretty hot a year or two ago but seemed to cool off this year. Still welcomed in my collection!

Some "free card friday" picks here. The last batch of cards I got from Kerry included several of those Tatis inserts, but I still needed this pair (There are 30 total of these things, geez).

Three additions to my Damian Lillard collection, plus a slick Chrome Hammer and a dilemma of which PC the Phillies card goes to.

I called dibs on these Victory cards from another Free Card offering a while back.

The '90 Donruss lot was a pleasant surprise. Now there's a sentence that very few people have ever said! LOL, but no, I mean it.. would love to put this set to bed before the 30th anniversary year ends. Time's running out for that, but as for base cards, I'm now down to just the Chris Bosio DK (#20) and #276 Paul Kilgus. I think I only had a couple of the MVP inserts before Kerry hooked me up with most of them. I've got 7 more of those left on my wantlist, plus one more Yaz puzzle piece (19+20+21), and all dozen of the Grand Slammers. It's funny, I have the Smoltz MVP error picturing Tom Glavine that I pulled myself way back when, but don't think I ever had the corrected version before this.

Another "junk" set that I've been trying to complete for the past couple years after receiving a starter lot. Still a handful of '88 Fleer left on my wants, but the end's in sight. Nice bunch here including a Caminiti rookie.

I finished '79 Topps recently, but these upgrades are appreciated to help sharpen up my set a bit.

My Xander Bogaerts PC got a surprise boost with an oversized box topper and Chrome parallel, both from 2020 Stadium Club. What a shot of him getting loose on the field before game two of the 2019 MLB London Series against the Yankees at West Ham London Stadium.

I happened to have a spare frame handy, so I've framed the big one up for now.

Big thanks, Kerry! Eclectic mix of good stuff. I'll get a return over to you soon.