You Ain't the First

"You Ain't the First" is next on the Guns N' Randoms list. Here are some of my random pickups over the past few weeks.

This ain't the first Graig Nettles auto in my collection, but it's the shiniest. Another card towards my Archives Reserve Master Set. The former SDSU standout set career highs in 1977 with 37 dingers and 107 ribbies as he helped his Yanks get new boat. (sorry, been watching a lot of Letterkenny on Hulu lately. "Boat" means "championship".)

This ain't the first nice Pedro Avila card in my collection.. in fact, my last post featured an autograph version of this 2018 Bowman card Rod was kind enough to give me. But you know how I love cards numbered 12/25. Picked up this Christmas Card cheap a while back.

With combined shipping (flat $1) on the above Xmas Pedro, also snagged this Heliot Ramos 2018 Bowman Tek purple parallel, a promising CF prospect for the Giants.

And along with the aforementioned Pedro and Heliot was this Chris Sale. I hadn't realized there were colored-bordered parales of these neat Tarot of the Diamond cards from 2018 Gypsy Queen (but of course there were), a bright spot of an otherwise forgettable product. While I'm definitely not into all that fortune telling crap (can't believe folks still put any faith in this stuff, but as my facebook feed attests, some do), these arty cards with rounded corners are pretty cool, especially with the "indigo" border making it pop.

I've seen these Topps Pristine "Personal Endorsements" cards on eBay before and always thought they looked kinda lame in the scans, but then I stumbled upon this Darrell Evans stickergraph cheap, a PC guy of mine, and snatched it up. It actually looks really cool in-hand, with the "engraved" effect really dancing in the light. Wouldn't be against picking up more of these.

Finally, this ain't the first Gavin LaValley 1/1 in my collection.. in fact, I'm sure I've got more LaValley 1/1's in my collection than any other player by a wide margin, but I'm still happy to add this cyan printing plate.

I already had the Superfractor and the black printing plate in my quest for a master rainbow.

As of this writing, LaValley is batting 2-2 in spring training 2019. If he keeps up this pace for a full career, he'll be a slam dunk HOFer with a 1.000 batting average! My PC will skyrocket and I'll become rich slowly selling off my collection. Go, Gavin, Go!

Happy Friday, Y'all!