A birthday box of 2018 Topps Tribute

Merry Christmas, everybody! My mom has had a hot streak of getting me great high-end boxes for my birthday. First there was a box with two Mike Trout autos, and then a box with a Trout 1/1.

Will this year's box carry on the tradition?

Boom! It's not Trout, but this is still a terrific start to the box! I've got one Kris Bryant auto already, but it's an unlicensed Panini card so I'm thrilled to be able to add a legit-Cubs autograph to the PC. From peeking on eBay, looks like this card is already "live" so shouldn't take me long to redeem it.

As for the other autos in the box, there were a couple young guys with promise who haven't quite put it together yet (Bradley Zimmer [orange /25] and Lewis Brinson [green /99]), and an old guy, HOFer Phil Niekro [/65]. The box promises 3 autos, so that means the Bryant redemption was just a sweet bonus.

Lots of star-power with the relics, though the jersey pieces themselves are nothing special, just boring grey or white jersey swatches. But hey, they're all numbered under 100 and I sorta collect all these dudes, so I'm happy with these pulls. Max Scherzer, Ichiro, Giancarlo Stanton, Anthony Rizzo.

Decent base cards, too. Trout doesn't get shutout. The Benintendi is a numbered parallel (/99).

Good stuff.. thanks, Mom! No Mike Trout hits, but still plenty of good cards for my collection.

As for my December 24th otherwise, it was a nice evening at the in-laws. I'm a little sick of It's a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street every damn year, but it makes my mother-in-law happy, so I can deal with it, lol. It was a nice birthday. On social media, despite a few solid tweets, I lost 2 or 3 followers (what kind of monster unfollows someone on their birthday?!)-- can't please all the people all the time, I guess. Screw 'em. But yeah, was a good birthday overall.

A few classic pics from Baseball Card Breakdown's Christmas past.

Did you know that the holiday season of Christmas actually lasts for 12 days and begins on 12/25? Yep, while counting down to Christmas might be more popular these days, the 12 Days of Christmas technically lasts into January.

Going old school, I've got a 12 Days of Christmas giveaway starting now. Here are the rules: The eligible people are listed below, thanks to their recent commenting.. always appreciated. Y'all only get one pick.. once you successfully claim a prize, you're done. Just be the first eligible person to pick a prize (from the prize pool) by commenting on this post. Go! [Update: Chris took Day One, claiming the Tiant auto] Once there's a winner, you'll have to wait till the next day for your chance to pick again. And be specific.. if you just say "give me whatever" or something like that, your pick won't count.

Sport Card Collectors
Collecting Cutch
Bulldog
Julie Owens
Brett Alan
Fuji
John Miller
TSHenson
shoeboxlegends
The Lost Collector
Jafronius
Tony Burbs
Chris (The Collector)
JediJeff
madding
Nick (Dimebox)
Billy Kingsley
night owl
Jon (Penny Sleeves)
Dennis (Too Many)
Trevor P
Zippy Zappy
Bo
Nick Vossbrink
Corky
P-town Tom
gregory
GCA
ketchupman36
Jason (HeavyJ)
Greg Zakwin
CrazieJoe
Marc
Brian (Highly Subjective)
Coast To Posts
Rob
Laurens
SumnoMenkoMan
Jeffery Turri
Mark Hoyle
Twitch
Rod (Padrographs)
RAZ
Nick Sheren
Larry Presnall

Prize U - Luis Tiant 2003 Topps Retired auto

Congrats, Chris! 

Looks like people are still picking in the comments.. Sorry for any confusion, but the contest is "dead" for today now. Check back tomorrow for another chance.

Dimebox Debauchery

Had to keep things tight at the card show this morning, as I had a noontime appointment. Got in and did my thing; picked up some cool cards. Two purchases: first a stack from Bill's 7-for-$5 bins, then dropped them off at the car and rested my back for a couple minutes, then went back and hit his dimeboxes. Today's post will feature the latter haul.

Much of my time was spent squinting my eyes at the tiny text indicating "class" (1, 2, or 3) on 2017 Topps Gold Label cards. I generally tried to stay away from the more plentiful Class 1, but gobbled up Class 2 and 3 cards, especially a ten cents apiece. Perhaps my best score of the day was this class 3 black parallel Anthony Rizzo, which according to "book value" (current best price on COMC) is a $9.25 card.

More Rizzo and fellow Cubs. Some of these Gold Label cards are really suffering from curvature already. In a couple more years, they'll be cardboard taquitos.

More Gold Label. Oops.. Got an extra Reggie if any trader buds want me to set it aside for them.

A couple 2017 Stadium Club cards.

Blue Fire is very hot. Like a welding torch. P-town Tom, do you need that Ryne?

I've quietly started a little Joey Votto PC recently. Feel free to send me your Vottos.

#1 Padres Prospect Fernando Tatis Jr!! I already had that International Ink card, but for a dime, I'll do some "prospecting investing" and add another.

A couple pudgy legends from the protective coating era. I might already have the Gwynns, which if so means I get the tactile pleasure of peeling off the protector. One peeled and one unpeeled equal two unique cards for me.

So incredibly shiny!!

Plucked a couple neat vintage cards out of the dimeboxes. The '71 Sparky is a seventh series high-number (#688).. cheapest one on COMC right now is $8.24, right up there with the Rizzo at the top of the post for my best score of the day, even considering the worn edges.

Cards from some mid-80s sets I'm gearing up to build one of these days. In fact, expect a 1984 Fleer wantlist from me sometime this coming week.. just got a big lot of them in from a trade the other day.

Pops and Macho Man.

Some dudes I collect. The Bonds is serial numbered (out of 9799, but it still counts!)

Really, though, I will pretty much never turn down serial-numbered cards for 10¢. Even if they don't quite fit in my collection, they make for good trade fodder. Most of these are /499.

That's it for today. I'll show off the other part of my card show haul in a few days. Thanks for stopping by.

Dimebox Dysmorphia

More dimebox haul highlights from the show yesterday.

Dave Parker and Pops.

A couple great catchers and a couple Yankee agitators.

Former Padres in the Hall. I had received a Christmas Card relic of the McCovey from gcrl a few months ago, so it's nice to have the base version now to pair with it.

Beltre and some more dudes. The Bartolo is #'d /125, I believe.

Some Sox.

More old-timers.

Juicers. There's always way too much of these guys in Bill's bins, but I caved and threw some on my stack. The HoloGrFX cards are just cool looking. I dug the throwback on the Canseco. And Powerdeck discs are hard to pass up when that cheap.

I kinda-sorta collect Tony Fernandez, plus I'd like to work on completing 1984 Fleer someday. As for the Rizzo, I just thought it was an odd photo choice for a card. According to COMC, it's a two-buck card, so not a bad pickup for a dime.

A couple 3000 Club cards and a couple Hanks.

A few football cards to close the post with. When I first got to Bill's tables, the only available space for me to pull up to was the football dimebox area. So I bided my time there while I waited for space to open in front of the baseball bins. It all worked out, as I was able to grab a few cards for myself, plus some trade fodder. I'll likely have a big "trade bait" post up within the next few days.

More cards later. Thanks for reading!

A couple bad blasters

Wow, I wasn't expecting so many congratulatory comments on my last post, but thanks, guys! To clarify, we've been together for 10 years as a couple, not a wedding anniversary, but still.

In contrast, I only got 2 congratulatory comments on my recent post regarding a guy from my high school getting called up to the major leagues, a much more impressive feat and one that fills me with more pride than any dumb relationship ever could. Come on, guys, get your priorities in order!

Nah, I'm just messing. Now here's a post I originally planned for the eclipse day last week, but it was derailed by rage and I couldn't bring myself to type about it till I cooled off.

I took today off work, playing it safe in case of any eclipse shenanigans (bad traffic, the apocalypse, etc.), though seems like everything went smoothly. Still, it was a good excuse to take a day off.
I didn't buy any packs/boxes at the card show the other day. But then later that day, my wife asked me if I needed anything from Amazon, and I ended up throwing a couple Panini blasters into the order. You can get them cheaper on eBay, but I had some Amazon credit to burn.
I haven't ripped any 2017 Panini products yet. Picked up a blaster of Optic and a blaster of Diamond Kings. Maybe I'll hit something decent. Let's check it out...

I opened the Optic box first and it was a disaster. About 75% of the cards had a badly dinged corner.. the lower right corner for vertical cards, or upper right for this one horizontal card. The box wasn't crushed or anything, so I'm blaming Panini's production process, not a damaged-in-transit issue. I would have liked this Altuve a lot, but the dinged corner just bums me out. It's worse than it looks in the picture.

These 2 refractors were probably the highlights for me. Kirby and Renfroe. Not happy about the Kirby being so off-center. The corner ding on these 2 isn't as bad as some of the other cards, but still noticeable.

A couple Rizzo DKs. You can't really tell by the picture, but they're definitely dinged.

Some more guys I collect. The top row is dinged, while the bottom row are ok.

Actually, the Miggy has a bonus flaw.. yippy. A weird indentation in the middle of the card.

Needless to say, I don't plan on buying anymore 2017 Optic. My blaster netted me zero hits, zero numbered parallels, and dozens of damaged cards. Very unhappy with it.

Will I have better luck with the 2017 Diamond Kings blaster?

Well, at least the cards weren't damaged! The Ted Williams insert is kinda cool, I guess. The closest thing I pulled to a hit was the framed Bill Dickey. But even that isn't numbered. And nobody collects Bill Dickey.

A few guys I collect, but a largely forgettable blaster.

Too bad I've lost my enthusiasm for collecting Anthony Rizzo lately, as I pulled 4 cards of him from this pair of blasters.

One reason collectors bother with logoless Panini baseball cards is because they usually give you good value and solid chances to pull hits. But after these two blasters, I feel like I'm done with Panini. Couldn't even have pulled one goddamn card #'d /999 or something? Even if the Optic cards weren't damaged, I'd still be disappointed with the purchase. Throw in the damage and I'm downright pissed about it.

It's kind of cool that in the future I can remember the exact day I decided to stop buying Panini products (at least for a good while) because it was the day of the total solar eclipse.

A dirty 2012 Topps setbreak

I celebrated opening day by opening a box of cards.

This month's box out of my Black Friday stockpile is a bit different because it's a factory set rather than packs to rip. It's a special edition that comes with a relic card of Fenway Park infield dirt. For narrowly less than the retail price of a blaster (well, 4¢ less), it was a pretty sweet deal. I think I'll raid it for my many player collections rather than worry about keeping the set together. The surfboard set, as it's sometimes known because of the design, is fine but I wouldn't call it one of my favorites. I never ripped any 2012 flagship, as far as I recall, so there should be a good number of needs for my collection in here.

If I were to sell them, the two Bryce Harper rookies alone could probably cover my price of the set. So it's all gravy from here. He's off to a good start this season with a homer, his 5th career opening day home run. The card on the left is the standard #661 in the set. On the right is actually a sealed 5-card pack of "rookie variations" which I think I'll leave sealed for the time being since Bry-Bry himself is on top and all such packs are apparently the same so there's no mystery. There's also a Darvish in there, and Cespedes visible on the back. Reminds me of the days of pulling sealed little packs of oddballs out of cereal boxes.

And the other star of the box: the Fenway Park infield dirt. It's my first dirt card. Silly, but pretty cool. I've sort of lost steam in my pursuit of a "Ridic Relics" minicollection of out-of-the-ordinary relic cards (ie, not jersey swatches or bat chips), though I still enjoy them.

Regardless of your team allegiance, ya gotta love Fenway if you're a baseball fan, right? I've never traveled to that part of the country, but it's nice to have a tiny baggy of it in my collection now.

Cracking into the rest of the base cards, here are a couple of the other big rookies.

Some nice Season Highlights cards. Vlad didn't get a standard base card in the set, unfortunately, but got on the front of a checklist, at least.

Here are some early cards of big names whose RCs appeared just prior, in 2011 Topps Update.

Healthy stack of other dudes I collect.

Speaking of Mickey Mantle, have you heard the news about his return to cards? That's kinda cool, but bummer about them being from Panini (logoless).

And a big stack of "other notables" to wrap up with. I had forgotten about Manny's stint on the A's.. maybe because he never actually played a major league game with the team.

After going through them all, I think I'll probably hang onto the cards for now (though sending the Willingham off to jaybarkerfan is hard to resist). Even if many of the cards are spread out into my various player collections, I'd know that I technically own the complete factory set of 2012 Topps somewhere under my roof, which I guess is kinda cool.

Thanks for reading! Enjoy baseball! I think this is the year the Padres go all the way! :P