card show covfefe

I missed May's card show this past Saturday, an aftereffect of my wife's car being totaled earlier in the month, but it was ok since I've had so many new cards to go through thanks to that big lot from Rod I posted about already, plus a few recent incoming maildays which I'll feature here today.

Ok, first up.. I've been Zippy Zapped! This brick of cards unexpectedly arrived on the day of the show, so it was soothing comfort when I needed it most.

The highlight has to be this glorious hunk of clear acetate autographed by Luis Torrens. The sticky-note from Zippy stated he was giving this to me on the condition that I keep it in the case as-is (complete with tampered-with tamper-proof seal). Ha, you got it, man. Thanks! I finally caught a game on TV where Torrens got the start behind the dish. He looks like he can hold his own, despite being rushed into the big leagues via Rule 5. Hopefully his bat comes around. I like how this 2014 Leaf Trinity card doesn't mention New York anywhere, so I can try fooling myself into thinking it's a Padres card.

Here are some keepers from the ample selection of Padres cardboard included.

Incredible lot of sparkly 2011 Topps parallels, featuring some favorites such as Jim Thome and Derrek Lee. Some dupes for me here, but plenty of needs too. I'm now over 2/5 complete (40%) with this crazy frankenset idea of mine.

It's not often you can send someone a 1992 Upper Deck card and a 1991 Topps card and have that person actually need/want them, but thanks to my recently rekindled Kevin Maas PC, Zippy pulls off the improbable. Also a couple other one-time Yanks I collect, Xavier Nady and Arod.

I got a laugh at that Steve Cummings, which I gotta assume was in response to my recent Dick Cummings pickup. I gotta stress, guys, please don't dump all your Cummings on me! I don't want to end up drowning in Cummings.
Also here is a Gary Sanchez (I guess his cards have cooled off a bit since last year?) and a couple Trevor Stories.

Shiny!

Some cool black border parallels. I think the 1962 design looks silly with black borders since you've still got that woodgrain corner. They should have made that all black and then changed the black text to light brown or something.

Some more Heritage Minors.. I believe these are parallels with various tints.

Some more cards that caught my eye.

Oh man, I love black refractors!

While not shiny, these Asian exclusive black boarder Bowman cards are pretty neat too.

Back to the shiny! More black refractors. Did you catch Hunter Renfroe's grand slam to beat the Cubs yesterday? As a Padres fan, it's nice to see them win once in a while.

Wave refractors! Love these! I wish Topps/Bowman would ditch that tired "transformers logo" refractor pattern they've been overusing this year and instead go nuts with wave refractors. Perhaps they could do a whole set.. like, Topps Wave consisting of nothing but various wave refractors! If that sells well, do Bowman Wave too. Eventually they'll get to Topps Wave Heritage and Bowman Wave Heritage. Five Star Wave. Wave Archives. Bunt Wave. Opening Day Wave... nah, scratch that last one.. not even making every card a wave refractor could save Opening Day from the redundant afterthought it's become.

Some shiny Star Wars cards, too.

Wrapping things up with a random game card (Magic?) and a couple hotties. Yuki is my favorite here. In fact, here's the back of that one...

Thumbs up!

Thanks a lot, Zippy! I'll do my best to round up some cards you might like.

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Commishbob was already on my list of "guys I owe cards" thanks to a great '64 Eddie Mathews he sent me a few weeks back, but before I had a chance to hit him back for that, he surprised me with a nice half-dozen 1957 needs he kindly scored for me at a recent card show...

Awesome.. thanks, Bob! Now I'm at 52/417 cards, good for 12.47% complete.

- - - -----------------o

Next is my first time trading with Jason's Sports Card Blog, a new blog started this past March.

Here we have the only two Gavins to ever play in the MLB. Unfortunately, 2017 hasn't been a good year for Gavins in baseball so far. Floyd was released by the Jays in spring training and doesn't seem to have caught on with another team, so his career might be finished. Cecchini is down in AAA, learning to play second base to make way for hot Mets shortstop prospect, Amed Rosario. After a slow start with the bat, Gavin's starting to heat up a bit, though we'll see if he gets called back up any time soon.

Some favorite players of mine.

A couple more needs for my 2011 Topps parallels frankenset.

Thanks a lot, Jason! I'll scrounge up some cards to return the favor soon.

- - -----o

Finally for today, here's a quick one-card PWE from reader mr. haverkamp...

...knocking off a need for my 1964 Topps setbuild. The star of the show here is Jim Ray Hart, who put up several solid seasons in San Francisco.

Thanks for the trade, man!

- - ------------o

To wrap up, May 2017 will go down as one of the worst months of my entire life. Let's see, there was the nastiest car accident I've ever been involved in, a heartbreaking incident where a scared lost dog slipped away from me as I was trying to help get her home, gruesome stabbings by a white extremist in my neighborhood, plus serious health problems emerging for some beloved members of my extended family. In light of all that, having to miss the card show is no big deal, but just piling on the shitshow of a month.

Thankfully, I've got the cardsphere to raise my spirits with thoughtful mailings of cards here and there. Big thanks again to everyone who's sent me cards. Thanks also to everyone who reads/comments on my blog. Always appreciated! BTW, this was post #999 for me.. expect a big contest next post.

My Top 10 Tony Gwynn autos

I wanted to get this post out under the wire for eligibility in Collecting Cutch's "show off the top 10 cards you've got of your favorite player" contest. I feel a little greedy even entering after just recently winning one of his other contests, but dang it, he's offering up some high quality shit for prizes! Gotta take a shot.

I'm going to make it a little easier on myself by making this list AUTO ONLY rather than grapple with the dilemma of whether I like the look of a base card enough for it to compete against hits. (And relics are in limbo somewhere between since I don't really have any sick patch cards or anything too fancy.) I intend to do a Top 10 for my non-auto Tonys later on after I've finished my big Gwynn PC sorting project.

Ok, here we go.

10.

Sorry, I had to cheat here. I only own 9 autographed cards of Mr. Padre, so I had to turn to his offspring to fill a list of (technically speaking) ten Gwynn autos. I believe it's my only Tony Gwynn Jr card, but it's a nice one, numbered 1/25 on the back. I hear he's been putting in some time as a color commentator on Padres telecasts this season and getting good reviews, though I haven't been lucky enough to catch him on there yet.

9.

I feel bad ranking this one so low. It's a fine looking card.. and a Christmas Card, to boot! But it loses points for being a stickergraph, and the stat part at the bottom seems to clutter up the design; should have left that for the back, not the front.

8.

Few cards in my collection have more sentimental value to me than this '89 Score. My best friend Doug got this card back in middle school (circa '91), probably as a birthday gift, if I recall, bought by his dad at the LCS, PB's Baseball Cards. Our little group of friends was very envious of it! Eventually, Doug got out of collecting and somewhere along the line (high school), we worked out a deal where he swapped the card to me. I think I lent him some money or something and he ended up giving me this card to square us.

7.

Let's put the 2004 Topps Retired card here (shown at the top of this post). It's a great card, but somewhat redundant in my collection now due to another card coming up later in the countdown.

6.

Here's another uncertifed auto. The signature is pretty faded, but I still love this one, being a sucker for any SDSU cards of Tony.

5.

This was my first certified Gwynn auto. Funny enough, it's the only one I've got featuring a photo from the latter half of his career. Won it on eBay for the price of a blaster a couple months before he passed away.

4.

I love this card! It features my all-time favorite uniform, plus it's a Christmas Card.. similar to card #9 on this list in these respects, but the design's wood border and gold foil make it look like a cool little plaque. If only the signature was on-card, this might have contended for the top spot on the list.

3.

Bringing out the big guns here. Photos from Tony's basketball days at SDSU, plus a gorgeous gold ink signature.. can't go wrong.

2.

And here's a similar card, but with silver ink. I gotta rank this one a little higher due to the funky "Old School" vibe. Plus it's #'d 24/75, and 24 was Tony's jersey number on the hardwood.

1.

The top spot has to go to the 2004 Topps Retired refractor auto. These are among my favorite cards ever, so add to that my favorite player ever, and this is likely my favorite card in my collection, if I had to narrow it down just one.

The only way I could love this card more would be if it was #'d 12/25. Well, I'll keep an eye out for that one and who knows, maybe one day I'll "upgrade" to the Christmas Card. But really though, I'm very happy with # 09/25.

Love you, Tony! Great player, great man, great cards.

Thanks for reading!

Portlanders giving cards, not stabbings

Did you hear about the incident in Portland on Friday where the crazy guy was harassing a couple Muslim women on the train, and when a couple guys tried to get him to chill out, the fucker pulled out a knife and fatally stabbed the guys who were trying to help? (A third heroic person was injured but survived the attack.) It's a tragic story. And close to home for me, as it happened right at the stop where I get off to go home. I usually take that train but a little later. My wife gets off work earlier than me and perhaps would have been on that very train on a normal day, but drove Friday.

And the Friday before that, there was a stabbing at the next stop before on my route home. Just some creepy guy hitting on a woman, then stabbing her when she turned him down.

Yikes! Why is Portland getting so stabby lately? And on my route home, no less!

Well, I don't know a good way to segue that into showing off baseball cards, but let's wrap up the remaining highlights from the big lot fellow Portland resident Padrographs Rod kindly gave me a month ago.

There was a nice lot of 2016 Bowman/Bowman Chrome, with plenty of shiny. I probably could have gotten a full post out of these, but I'll keep things moving along since I've got a lot to post about at the moment.

These are pretty cool.. Here's about half of the Topps' Rookie of the Week insert set from a while back, with reimagined rookie cards of legendary players (most of whom I collect).

Who's still working on 2016 Stadium Club? Hit me up. Nice stack here with some keepers for me including a Bryce insert and popcorn Donaldson.

Minor league team sets are fun.

A few basketball cards, heavy on Lakers, including a few Jerry West cards (it happens to be his birthday today) which I'll likely end up sending over to Matt Scott (WVU content). And how have I never heard of a guy named Smush? I love fun names like that.

Look at this big lot of minor league team logo cards. Pretty cool, if somewhat strange.

And there were 2 copies of the Topps Now holiday bonus card. I haven't bought a Topps Now card directly from Topps, so I never got one of these. Cool to get two of them! One's definitely going toward the Kris Bryant PC, while the second one will likely go to the Ichiro PC (with him getting the slight nod over Big Papi since I've already got 100+ cards of Ortiz.)

And just some more various cool cards. Love seeing Jesse Orosco as a Friar. There were also several TTM autos in the lot (Padrograph doubles, no doubt). Nice framed Eddie Murray card. And howbout that John Kruk card from back when he was a relatively slim minor leaguer?!

Food oddballs! Most of these are from Carl's Jr. Don't recall seeing them before, but I like 'em!

A bunch of non-sports, heavy on US presidents. These don't really fit my collection.. anybody interesting in trading for them? (There were also many Beach Boys cards, but I'm holding off on going though them until I bust the box I bought.)

And a bunch of Olympic cards, also available. Not often you see a sportscard with a guy aiming a gun at you. At least he's not stabbing anybody!

Again, huge thanks for the cards, Rod!

Coming up Cutch

It's been a very lucky past two or three months for me for winning contests on the cardsphere. First I won a Cardboard Hogs contest by default. Then I won 2x3 Heroes blogoversary contest by figuring out his cryptic clues. More recently, I got into jaybarkerfan's Big Fun Game thanks to the randomizer (and then John Miller's similar game). Then I came in 2nd place in a Summer of '74 contest, but 1st place winner Tony L. graciously deferred his prize to me. And the other day I found out my suggestion was selected as the winner for Collecting Cutch's "name my new segment" contest. Nice! (I'll be balancing out the karma with a couple big contest of my own coming up shortly.)

Here's the grand prize from the Collecting Cutch contest, a great looking relic #'d 18/27. This is an awesome addition to my McCutchen PC. "Cutch 22" works on a couple levels, as it's a pun on "catch 22" and 22 is his jersey number.

Brian didn't just stop there, though, including a bunch of sweet bonus cards for me...

If you've ever checked out the Collecting Cutch blog, you know Brian's got an insane Andrew McCutchen collection. I collect him too, but on a much more modest level, and here's a nice lot for my PC. Cutch has been struggling the past couple years, apparently falling victim to the Samson complex, as it seems his mojo was in his dreads. But he's a good guy and I still collect him. Hopefully he can turn things around.

You don't see too many oddballs these days, thanks in large part to legal bullshit, so it was cool to be surprised with these police cards.

I like these motivational sayings on the back.. a step up from the old "Stay in school" and "Say no to drugs" you get on similar cards back in the day.

Love this sparkly Conforto RC!

Some more dudes I collect.

Xander in the house!

A few cards for the Mike Trout PC.

A couple reprint/ads of HOF RCs.

Ooh.. A Padre prospect auto. Michael Kelly is still in the San Diego organization, currently putting up solid numbers in AA.

And let's wrap things up with an auto of the Cobra himself, Dave Parker!

Awesome stuff! Thanks again, man!