Return of the Black Refractor

Did you hear there's going to be a separate "Topps Chrome Black" product coming out this year? I'm generally a fan of black refractors, so I took a curious look..

2020 Topps Chrome Black is due out Oct 7.. pre-selling at $350 for a hobby box of just 4 cards (1 auto, 1 refractor parallel, and 2 base cards).

That's gonna be a hard pass from me.

So when it comes to black Chrome cards, I'll stay in the past.. 2004, to be specific. 2004 Topps Retired refractor autos are my main focus, but that's spilled over to the similar looking 2004 Topps Chrome black refractors. I'm crazy enough to be building the entire parallel set. And I've got a notable milestone to trumpet about today: I've just passed the halfway point!

Here are the latest additions that took me over the hump.

I was happy to land the Griffey for just under the price of a blaster. (Seems to be a 3-figure card if graded.. and not even necessarily graded 10.) Nice action shot of Junior robbing a home run from some poor schmuck.

And a sorta similar photo of fellow HOFer Craig Biggio.

As a Padres fan, I especially dig this Trevor Hoffman.

Adrian Beltre is another solid name to check off my wantlist.

A card so nice I bought it twice! Yeah, I got it for a few bucks on eBay.. then discovered it cheaper on Sportlots and decided to grab that one too.. So now I've got a dupe for the Beltre PC.

And some other Sportlots pickups. I just love the look of these cards! Highlights here include fellow Xmas Eve baby Kevin Millwood and 4-time All-Star Troy Glaus.

I've got a few more either on the way or sitting in my COMC inventory, but as far as what's in-hand, here's where I'm at:

248/487
50.92% complete
239 cards left to go

Feel free to take a look at my 2004 Chrome black wantlist and let me know if you've got any I need available for trade.
Thanks!

COMC Finale

Ok, I've been distracted, but let's finish off the pickups from my latest COMC shipment.

I think I snagged this Harold Baines bronze auto the day he was elected to the Hall. It was cheap and I figured induction typically results in a healthy bump of card values. But really my intention is that I love 1996 Leaf Signatures autographs and may go after a full set of them someday far from now once I finish the other collecting project I've got in the works.

Yeah, I post about Topps Retired, the product line that lasted for 3 years 2003-2005, a lot here on the blog. I keep an eye on these cards, and when this '05 Brett Butler I didn't have popped up at a good price, I snatched it up.

I've been lazy about my big glow-in-the-dark cards post-- it's been "in the works" for over a year now-- but I'm committed to finally publishing it sometime later this month, so get excited. Anyways, this is a glowing red parallel Topps Chip of Adrian Beltre. Kinda funny how COMC puts these things in coin holders though they don't really fit very well.

I'm a sucker for shiny cards. I saw somebody on Twitter gushing about these 1996 Fleer "Zone" inserts and had to track down one for myself, scoring Tony Gwynn here for a buck or two. Gotta admit it's pretty sweet in-hand.

Now a few non-sport things to cover, starting with a pair of additions to my Ghostbusters PC. The card that looks like a buyback is actually from 2013 Topps 75th Anniversary, which was a set Topps put out consisting basically of reprints of non-sports cards they've released over the years. It's a reprint of the final base card in 1989 Topps Ghostbusters 2, and the back has a little write-up on the set. The Stay Puft card is a promo from 2016 Cryptozoic Ghostbusters. Now all I need is the tougher-to-find Gozer promo card to complete the 9-card Character Bio insert set. (And while typing up this post, I found Gozer for a reasonable price and snatched it up.)

These might seem like 3 of the same card, but they're different! In fact, there were a couple coincidences here that blew my mind. I busted a couple boxes of 1988 Topps Pee-Wee's Playhouse Fun Pak, and ended up ONE card short of a complete base set (each card has a variation with different background). And the one card I needed just so happened to be one of the only 3 cards from the set available for sale on COMC. So that was a "what are the chances?!" trip. And I didn't even realize it at the time, but that one card happened to be the one card Topps chose to reprint in their aforementioned 75th Anniversary set! Same background variation and everything! I got the base version (middle card pictured) and the Rainbow Foil parallel (bottom). So once the COMC package showed up, it included 3 versions of this card, to my surprise. I would like to do an exhaustive post about this set once I finish it, though I'm still missing a few cards..
NEEDS:
flipbook #7
flipbook #24 [pending trade]
flipbook #33
skull mask (flatter top crack on right variant) [pending trade]

Here are the backs of these three. The reprint's write-up on the back gives you an idea of this crazy set.

Finally, here's another Deadpool "Sports Ball" insert I needed. It's paying tribute to Nolan Ryan's '89 Upper Deck card. I'm now down to two needs remaining for these..
SB3 (looks like 1992-93 Upper Deck Shaq #1) and SB6 (looks like 1990-91 Upper Deck Jaromir Jagr #356)

And that wraps up my latest COMC order. There were also many glow-in-the-dark cards that will get their time to shine glow soon, plus a couple 12/25 cards that I'll likely hold off showing on the blog until the holidays roll around.

Thanks for reading!

Sportlots by Surprise

A made a few small Sportlots purchases late one hazy night a week or two ago. I had totally forgotten about the order until PWEs with unfamiliar return addresses started sprinkling in my mailbox. These aren't the most exciting pickups, but I haven't posted since Monday, so figured I should crank out something before I lose my reputation as a blogger who posts multiple times per week.

I think 1993 Topps Black Gold inserts are my favorite 90s insert. If I have room in my cart to add some cheap without making the postage go up, I'm all about it.

A gratuitous second look. I've said it many times, but I wish Topps would bring these back for an encore, preferably in Archives, but failing that, even an online exclusive would do. Would be neat to see current players on these. But I suspect the crazy gold foil makes them a bit too tricky/pricey for lazy Topps to bother with.

This must be what initiated the Sportlots order. It wasn't long ago that I tracked down Rich Gossage's 1989 Mother's Cookies card-- the lone Giants card to come out from his short-term stint in San Francisco-- but I figured I'd also snag this tiny 1990 Publication International sticker, too.. the only other card-like-thing out there picturing Goose in the unfamiliar duds.

I have no recollection of putting this Reggie in my cart, but I think I was looking for card #1 in this subset (featuring an oh-so-rare shot of him with a KC cap), but either got this one by mistake or settled for this one when the other was unavailable. But whatever, I'm always down for a new Reggie card.

I have a love/hate relationship with Topps Chipz. I hate them... but I love glow-in-the-dark collectables, so sometimes I'll look for cheap glowly parallels, such as these. I didn't take a pic in the dark, so you'll have to trust me that they glow (just a little, behind the player). Beltre is from 2013, while I've got Cespedes in both '13 and '14 varieties.

I'm working on a big post of glow-in-the-dark stuff, but it's still a ways off since it'll have to wait till my next COMC shipment. But know that I've been hitting my glow-in-the-dark "type collection" hard lately, trying to get at least one example from every glowing trading card set out there.. which I hope to chronicle in that forthcoming post.

Anyways, that's all the baseball stuff for today.

Here are some bonus pictures from my commute home yesterday...

I ended up walking over the bridge since the Max I was on kicked us all off the stop before for maintenance or something. There are some ships in town for the big Rose Festival this weekend.

Pretty cool.

Those funky towers in the middle are part of the Convention Center. I haven't been in there. Sure would be cool in the National Baseball Card Convention came to Portland, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Here's a Max train passing me by.

You can kinda see the roof of the Moda Center here (where the Blazers play).

After I crossed the bridge, I made it to the next stop to get on a Max the rest of the way.

As I got close to home, I saw a bunny! Always a highlight of my day when that happens.

Then my cute pooch welcomed me home and wanted to play, wrapping up this little tour through my Portland commute.

Hey, it's a Card Show Weekend for me! As is my tradition, I wore a Topps shirt today, the Friday before. I originally put on my red one, but this morning I saw on Twitter that you're supposed to #WearOrange today to stand up against gun violence, so I played along and changed into the orange one.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

Mailday Before Christmas

Good stuff under the tree to recap from Collecting Cutch, Fuji, and Too Many Verlanders.

I was thrilled to win this awesome Harold Baines card from Brian the other day. He had a contest post of predicting where Andrew McCutchen would end up. I pulled Philadelphia out of my ass, and wow, a few hours later, it was announced that he did in fact sign with the Phillies!

I've always liked Harold Baines and was pleasantly shocked at the news of his HOF election. This is a great card to ring in the occasion in my card collection. Panini Flawless cards are always classy. No logos, but there's enough going on to where you don't really notice, between the two impressive patch bits and his crazy autograph. Harold doesn't have the most visually appealing signature, but still much better than a lazy squiggle. The low serial number is a nice feature, too.

And I won this pink parallel in Brian's wonderful Save The Boobies event back in October. Victory was mine in this instance thanks to my lucky pick back in September that J.D. Martinez would hit the first double of the 2018 World Series. Sure enough that prophecy was fulfilled a month later in Game 1! For my nostradamus-like abilities, I scored this Giancarlo Stanton / Aaron Judge "award show" checklist from Series Two #'d 42/50. I collect both these guys, though I'll likely throw this in the Judge PC since I already have well over 100 Giancarlo cards and I'm still getting there with Judge.

Always down for bonus Cutch cards thrown in for the ride.

But the real surprise punch of the package was this Adrian Beltre bat relic #'d 60/99. Heck of an addition to the ol' Beltre PC.

Thanks for the contests and the bonuses, Brian! Very generous of you.

-  -  - ---o

Next up is Fuji. I figured we were square, but somehow I was still on his "hit list", and hey, I'm not going to object to receiving cards in the mail.

The 2015 Chrome George Springer is a refractor.. nice! And Fuji was just a little late on getting me that '82 Jack Morris I needed for my set, beaten to the punch by Turrdog, but still appreciated.

The meat of the package was this pair of Mad Dog Madlock relic cards.

Awesome stuff! Thank you, Fuji!

-  -  - - - --o

Lastly, Dennis from Too Many Verlanders graciously included me in his blast of holiday mailings.

Kicking off with a neat pair of blue Gavins.

Some Pads from the Past I collect, Gwynn Jr, Nevin, and a golden Giles.

Wow, now this is a Christmas package. These ornament cards from Pacific are a blast.

But the "Christmas Cards" that really get my attention are 12/25 cards. I'm always happy to land a card of any player with that yuletide numbering.. but a guy I collect? That's a bullseye for my collection! HOFer Greg Maddux and Guy From Granite Marcus Giles, both top tier dudes I collect.

Big thanks, Dennis! I'll hit you back with a return soon.


Merry Christmas, Brian, Fuji, and Dennis! Your generosity brightened my holidays.

And Happy Holidays, all. Thanks for swinging by.

Perfect Crime (Guns N' Randoms)

This post isn't crime related, just the next song up on the list of Guns N' Roses songs that I pull from for post titles when I want to show off some random recent cards I've picked up and can't think of a decent title.

It wasn't exactly a steal (eh? eh? tying it in with the post title), but this slabbed Adrian Beltre rookie was a pretty solid deal and I used an eBay discount code to help me out further. I showed off my Beltre PC a month ago and mentioned the one card I still had a hankerin' for was his 1997 Bowman Chrome card. And so now with this pickup, I'm satisfied and feel like the PC is at peace. (Though a final tribute/sunset card next year with complete [non-truncated] career stats would be nice.)

"Has tools of a Gold Glover at third." It's a rare instance where Bowman's hyperbolic write-ups were correct, as Adrian brought home 5 Gold Gloves.

The rest of the cards in this post are more from my latest COMC order. I think I was just looking for cheap Goldy parallels and ran into this yellow one from 2014 Topps retail. Or maybe I was looking for cheap yellow parallels from 2014 Topps retail and ran into this Paul Goldschmidt. Sad to see him leave AZ. He basically left a team I don't like and joined another team I don't like, so that's not a big deal, but I really thought he was the face of the franchise and had a shot at being a rare-these-days one-team career player. That would have been cool. Oh well.

As for the Caminiti, I don't have much cool inserts from the mid/late 90s, and wanted to snag one of the old Instavision inserts from Stadium Club. Pretty cool card from the past days of holograms on baseball cards.

A couple Padres autos. I was a Carlos Baerga fan when he was a hot rookie in the early 90s. Heartbreaking that the Padres delt him away, but kinda cool that all these years later he gets a card in a San Diego uniform.

I think I was looking through cheap autos, looking for anybody I collected, and found the 2016 Topps Archives 65th Anniversary Ryan Klesko auto for just $1.44.

A couple lumber sweet sigs. I actually bought these to destroy them, the Brian Giles one, at least. I want to pull out the signed wood piece and use it in a big custom with the laundry tag from the game-used pants of his I've been cutting up.. so I can make it a big oversized relic/auto box-topper type extravaganza. I might not get around to that anytime soon, but it's on my to-do list. At least the Giles card already shows some damage around the cutout, so it won't hurt me quite so bad to tear it up. I don't think the wood piece is actually from a game-used bat or anything, but it's still cool. Maybe I'll end up doing it "overlay style" so I won't have to actually destroy the card.

Rod Beck PC additions! One of these days I want to add all my Rod Beck cards to the TCDB and see how far away I am from being his #1 collector on there. The Sports Illustrated card is the Extra Edition and numbered to 500 or something. The 2002 Topps card is a gold parallel #'d /2002. The die-cut is kinda neat. And as for the illustration.. full disclosure, it's not actually Rod Beck, but rather Mario. For whatever reason, I really wanted to snag a 1982 Topps Donkey Kong card (sticker) after seeing one on the blogs a while back, and went with this one. Whack!

Last thing for today-- a late addition to the post-- my boss just gifted me this Tony Gwynn figure for Christmas today. What a cool boss, right? This might be my first McFarlane's figure. While I generally tend to stay away from stuff like figures and bobbleheads, this is a big hit with me. My favorite player, plus he's in my favorite uniform (their white/brown/yellow/orange getup from the early 80s)!

Not exactly a spitting image in the face, but close enough. I'll likely keep this displayed at work.. Probably keep it in the package for now, but might bust it out of there at some point.

For my coworkers, I gave them little magnets of stuff they like (similar to the minis in rip-cards I sent to my trader buds a year or two back), with a cool nickname for our department on 'em (Data Force! lol). Like, one of my coworkers is a big Frank Zappa fan, so I made him a little Frank Zappa magnet. And my boss is a Batman nerd, so I made him a Batman one. They seemed to go over well. That was fun. Now I'm looking forward to a 5-day holiday weekend.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend. I've gotten in a few nice trades and a contest-win that I need to post about ASAP. And I need to round up some prizes for a contest of my own on the horizon. So that'll keep me busy leading up to Christmas.

Adrian Beltre PC

Adrián Beltré has been one of my favorite active players over the past few years, so it's a bummer to hear he decided to retire today. He's incredibly entertaining and a lock for the Hall of Fame. I thought he had a couple more seasons in him.

But it's a good excuse to sort out my PC and see what I've got. So here's how my Beltre collection stands at the point of his retirement.

The 2-pronged crown of the PC consists of the pair of certified autos I've got, which I talked more about in an earlier post.

A few early cards. The '97 1st Bowman Card - International parallel was a pretty sweet sub-buck card show find a couple years ago. I would still like to score his '97 Bowman Chrome card at some point, which I believe is considered his top mainstream rookie card.

1999 is highlighted by the Wheaties homage.

2000. Gotta love that Keebler oddball!

I've only got one card from '01, but it's a nice one-- my only relic card of Adrian's.

Getting thin here in 03-04.

But a bunch of cards from 2005 a year removed from his breakout '04 season when Beltre won the HR crown and finished runner-up to Bonds for NL MVP. I think 3 or 4 of these are serial numbered.

Then my PC hits a dry patch for a few years.

 2011 includes my only card of him as a Red Sock.

 2012 has some good shine.

 2013.

 2014.

 2015.

 2016.

2017. The "signed" card is a TTM semi-success from earlier this year.

2018 rounds us out.

By my count, I've just barely squeaked over the magic number of 100 different cards, so I'll be "retiring" him into the Hundred Card Club section of my wantlist shortly, though I'd still be down for any cards of his that I'm missing, especially from those barren years in the aughts.

Thanks for everything, Adrian!