Cards from the Big Folder

Here're some recent pickups I haven't gotten around to posting about yet, soundtracked by the songs of Tears For Fears.

"Everybody Loves a Happy Ending"

For Padres fans, a happy ending to the 2017 season would be to capture a NL ROY award. They've got a few young guys getting an opportunity to play, so who knows. Last I checked, Manuel Margot was leading rookies in several offensive categories, so fingers crossed he keeps it up. I was very happy to land this Christmas Card auto off eBay a month or two ago for a good price.

"Laid So Low"

Feels like the moment has passed, but I'd still like to one day get all the Gallery of Greats inserts from 2015 Chrome/Series 1. These were a couple cheap ones of guys I collect from Just Commons. Both these guys have been laid pretty low lately, with Josh Donaldson having injury issues so far this season. And the tears roll down Royals' fans faces as Alex Gordon continues to slip further away from his all-star form of the past.
Still though, sharp looking cards!

"Change"

I've got several Brooks Kieschnick cards, but those were all from his days as an upcoming slugger with the Cubs. This is my first card from after he made the change into a pitcher who could also be called on to pinch hit or make a spot start in the outfield or at DH. Love the versatility.

And here's the back so you can see the pitching stats. He would spend all 2005 in Houston's minor leagues before hanging up his cleats, so this is a sunset card, featuring complete career stats.. well, pitching stats, at least. Pity there's no batting stats or write up trumpeting his "2-way player" feat. It's not super uncommon for guys to switch in the minors, but to get into over 100 MLB games as a position player, then take up pitching and make it back to the majors? Pretty exceptional. This card balances out my lil BK PC: I have 14 of his cards, and half of those are certified autos, which is kinda crazy. But hey, he has many inexpensive autos out there, so I pick them up when I can.

"Head Over Heals"

(Heads behind borders?) Panini seemed to throw a bunch of ideas out at collectors around 2013 to see what would stick. Select was one of the ideas that didn't stick. It wasn't even on my radar back then. But years later I wound up with a Brian Wilson card from it that I strangely was head over heals for even though I very much dislike Brian Wilson. I thought about finding a hobby box to bust, but after learning that all the autos in the product are stickers (Nooooo!!), I quickly dropped that idea and understood why the reboot failed. Instead I picked up a few cheap singles of guys I collect on Just Commons, including a Beltre refractor.. er "prizm".

(Different Brian Wilson.)

"Shout"

I'm trying to build up my Minnie Minoso PC a bit, so I added these couple cards to my Just Commons cart. It makes me want to shout when I think about the injustice of him not being in the Hall of Fame. Cold as ice.

"Pale Shelter"

Here's a card I bought to add another Jabari Blash to my Blashlection. (I also kinda collect AJ Reed.)

Blash is a guy who launches many massive dingers in spring training, making those stadiums look like pale shelter, but once the season starts, he gives me cold hands. Hopefully he can deliver this season when the Padres ask for more and more out of him.

"Everybody Wants to Rule the World"

I'll never forget that day in the mid 80s when I was a kid at Aquaris Roller Rink for a friend's birthday party and "Everybody Wants to Rule The World" came on over the sound system. For the first time in my young life I realized what an amazing thing music was. The song just really connected with me, as I skated ovals under the light bouncing off the mirror ball. Ever since that moment, Tears For Fears have been one of my favorite bands.

So when I saw an autograph card of singer Curt Smith featured on Sport Card Collectors not long ago, I made it a mission to land myself a copy. It didn't take too long for me to snag one at a decent price (under $7 shipped) on eBay. I've never seen the show Psych, a guest spot on which brought about the card, but I'm interested in checking it out, so hopefully it comes (back) to Netflix streaming one of these days. And I'd love it if Roland Orzabal eventually got a certified autograph card too so I could complete the central duo of the band, but it doesn't look like he's got any official autos out there at the moment.

I was gonna end this post there, but let's have one more...

"Sowing the Seeds of Love"

Hey, speaking of Netflix, Mystery Science Theater 3000 is back today! Sowing the seeds of love up on the Satellite of Love. Good enough excuse to repost a favorite piece of my autograph collection, my DVD signed by Joel, originally posted about back in October 2014. The new version of the show actually premiered last night at midnight, and I even stayed up late but forgot to watch it. Luckily my work closes for Good Friday since the stock market's closed, so I have the day off. Had a fun day bowling with my wife and hanging out.. and now just about to check out the first episode.

Thanks for reading! Have a great weekend. TFF 4EVER!

Step inside my sapphire dream

This trade post has a soundtrack by Lucy's Fur Coat, a 90s alt rock band from San Diego who put out a couple pretty good albums, but never quite hit it big. I now think the line in the song above is "stuck inside my sapphire dream" but I always heard it as "step inside my sapphire dream" and I've long thought that'd make a good title for a post if anyone ever sent me a sapphire parallel. Well, it finally happened!

These cards are all from an excellent package I received from P-town Tom over at Waiting 'til Next Year last week.

That's a beautiful Yangervis Solarte, my first card from the 2016 Topps Chrome sapphire parallel set that I think was an online-only thing, only available as a super expensive complete set, right? And there's also my first ever relic of Gavin Cecchini.. very cool!

The Lucy's Fur Coat song "El Cajon" is probably the best song written about my hometown. --ok, it's the only one that comes to mind. But it's a good one.

The Giles Brothers also hail from El Cajon. Happy to get these two PC additions.

Here's a song about smoking weed.

And to go with the drugs song, here are a bunch of players from back in the day when drug testing wasn't as prevalent as it is today. Mantle was no stranger to popping greenies, Caminiti rode the PED train hard in the late 90s, and I bet most of these guys from the 60s and 70s puffed on a doobie once in a while. (Sorry if I'm reaching to pair songs to groups of cards, there aren't a ton of quality LFC videos on YouTube.)

Here's a full show filmed at my favorite venue in San Diego, the Casbah. I never actually saw Lucy's Fur Coat live, unfortunately. They were broken up during the heyday of my concert-going days, and after they reunited, I never got around to seeing them. Bummer. The singer is known for his crazy dancing, evident in the first minute of that video. This show features several of my favorite songs that I wasn't able to otherwise work into this post, so if you dig any of the other videos, you might want to check it out.

Marquis Mania! I'm due for posting an update to my long-term goal of amassing 1000 copies of this card. Each one helps, and this trio is very much appreciated! I actually have a big stack waiting to be paged. It'll take me a long time to get through them all, just like it'd take a long time to get through that live video (79 minutes).

Here's a song called "Stretched Out".

Brooks Kieschnick always needed to keep stretched out during a game, as he was a true two-way player, sometimes being called on off the bench, other times being called on out of the pen.

Here's a song called "Water Gun".

Kids play with squirt guns, and here are some kids.. or young men, at least. Looks like Tom (a huge Cubs fan) had a couple sweet Kris Bryant dupes to share. Hey, tough loss in Game 1 last night. Best of luck evening things up tonight!
The Vogelmoster got off to an inauspicious start to his major league career in Seattle, with just a lone single to show for 13 plate appearances at the end of the season. Let's hope he cranks it up in 2017.
Manuel Margot was a bit better, hitting .243 in 10 games for the Padres. Happy to add this 2016 Heritage Minors card to my small but growing collection of his cards.

"Treasure Hands" might be Lucy's Fur Coat's most popular song. I remember it got pretty good airplay on 91X, San Diego's alternative station, back in the day.

Treasure typically sparkles. And so does this treasure trove of sparkly 2011 Topps parallels. Some good ones in here, such as a Zach Britton RC, plus big names Pujols, Pedroia, and Beltran.

I'm now at 19.94% complete with this parallel frankenset. Coincidentally 1994 was the year Lucy's Fur Coat's debut album came out, the one with "Treasure Hands" on it. Neat!

Well, I hope ya'll checked out at least a song or two and enjoyed this musical trade post. Shoutout to Tony L. for being a master of the format.

Thanks again to P-town Tom for the awesome cards. While he said he wasn't looking for anything in return, just trying to clear out his tradebox, I've got a couple Kerry Woods and some Cubs customs that I'll send over soon.

Oh, one last thing I hadn't thought of till now, the name Lucy's Fur Coat is a play on "Lucifer's Goat". Goat? Crap, did I just jinx the Cubbies?! Nah, I ain't afraid of no goat! Go Cubs!

Thanks for reading. Keep on rocking, guys.

A shiny haul of cards to check out

I accidentally put my cell phone (an old flip-phone) through the laundry recently. Dummy. After letting it dry a few days, I turned it on and surprisingly it was fine.. except that the display looked kinda like a Chrome atomic refractor. Honestly, it was pretty cool! Sort of a neat holographic thing going on, but still normal enough to where I could read it without too much trouble. Not that I recommend doing a load of laundry with your phone in it, but in hindsight I'm glad it happened, and I was a little bummed when a couple days later it was back to normal. It's like I had upgraded my phone from the base version to the atomic refractor parallel!

And along those lines, I'm a sucker for a cool-looking, shiny, colorful baseball card. I placed a COMC order last week-- call it a "Hooray, my new job seems to be working out fine and my supervisors like me" gift to myself-- and loaded up mostly on pretty parallels.

I feel it, guys! After 2015 was the first year a Padres batter hit for the cycle (thanks again, Matt Kemp!), 2016 could be the year a Padres pitcher finally throws a no-hitter. And these 3 guys are our best hopes. The James Shields atomic refractor gives you an idea of what the display on my phone looked like for those glorious couple days. The orange Tyson Ross is a Christmas Card (!!!), numbered 12/25 on the back. I'm hoping Andrew Cashner can bounce back from a down 2015, but at least his forgettable season means I could pick up this sweet auto/relic #/50 relatively cheap. What usually turns me off from the Triple Threads brand are the sticker autos for the vast majority of the autograph cards, so this on-card signature is much appreciated. The other Cashner auto card isn't as impressive looking, but it's got a big on-card signature and was too cheap for me to pass up.

Next up is a trio of young Red Sox. Manuel Margot is a Padre now and has been turning heads in camp this spring.

Here we have some Cubs including 3 pickups for my Brooks Kieschnick PC and 2 Rod Beck Pacific cards from 1999.

Finally, I wanted to pick up a Toe Nash auto, and this was the cheapest available. I guess 2001 Topps Reserve was weird in that the product included an already-graded card such as this in every hobby box, with the player signing the top label before encapsulation (the PSA grade is on the reverse; this one is an 8). So it's not quite an auto card in a strict sense, but still a certified autograph.

I learned about Toe's story thanks to a Dime Boxes post from 2014, and had been meaning to pick up a card or few of him since, but I always seem to forget about him when card shopping. But I finally remembered this time.

The rest of my COMC order was loading up on a certain monster of a player, but I'll save that for another post.
Take care, everybody.

Recent pickups for some various projects

Man, I'm beat! Been working a lot lately. Even came in on Sunday, which is a first for this job. The company is moving out of state and my job will come to an end around the end of the year, but I'm still busy as hell. Nearly everybody else has reached their final day already (the ones who hadn't jumped ship months ago), with one person in my department in particular being let go prematurely, and my boss was like, "Whoops, I guess we still needed that person; oh well, Gavin, you also do that job now, I guess." The extra income is nice, especially with me looking at employment uncertainty going into 2016, but yeah, I'm pretty exhausted.

But let's whip out a post checking out some random cards.

I spelt a word! My goal is to spell BASEBALL CARD BREAKDOWN. So now I just need BASEBALL BREAKDOWN. Picked up the R last month and then figured I'd go after a C to complete the word. Sorry, Hockey fans; I did try to bid on a hockey C so that I'd include all 4 major North American sports, but alas I didn't win and had to settle for the lesser McCutchen brother. As for the R, Spencer Haywood seems like a pretty cool guy and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame this past September.

P-Town Tom and I are locked in a frantic race to be the first to reach 100 different Brooks Kieschnick cards. Ok, maybe that's just a made up competition in my head. I think Tom's got a good lead on me, with probably twice what I've got (He's pushing 30 and I've got around a dozen). These 3 are from my Black Friday COMC order. Two cheap certified autos and a dufex that caught my eye. I just missed out on dufex cards when I collected as a kid, stopping in mid 1993, so they don't pack as much 90s nostalgia punch for me as they do some other collectors. But still kinda cool.

A couple additions to my Pride PC. I was very happy to land that Dale Scott auto on COMC after searching to find it for a reasonable price on there or eBay for a while. It's pretty neat that 2004 Bowman Heritage did the umpire cards as a nod to the original set, and even had some autos such as this one. My Pride PC technically features openly gay professional athletes, and while it might be a stretch calling an umpire an athlete, I'm gonna count this one. Scott came out as gay in 2014, thus becoming the first openly gay umpire in MLB, and is married to his partner of 28 years, Michael Rausch.[1] The back of the card tells me Dale is a fellow Portland resident, so that's cool.

And to the right is my 2nd David Denson card, joining the snazzy patch/auto I picked up in my previous COMC order. Denson, the first openly gay player in affiliated baseball, was awarded Minor League Baseball's Presidential Citation earlier this week. He's the first active player to receive one of these annual citations that recognize exemplary service on behalf of MiLB.[2]

I'm not much of a Garbage Pail Kids collector, but stumbled upon this on COMC while looking for cards to add to my  glow-in-the-dark  minicollection. The back tells you to look at the card in the dark to see the subject in a new light. I wasn't able to get a great photo of it in the dark, but...

There's a cop bursting onto the scene from the left, with New Wave Dave's sunglasses popping off his head in his shock over being caught vandalizing. Ha, well, it's some variety to that area of my collection. The only other GPK currently entrenched in my collection is Thanks Gavin, obviously part of my Greatest Gavins minicollection. That reminds me, it's Gavin Month here at baseball card breakdown and I haven't done a Gavin-centric post in over a week. I'll have to get on that soon. I've just been busy with work (and a custom card project I'll be unveiling soon) so I haven't had much time/thought to put into posts so far this month. I'm also working on some card packages and hope to get a mailing blast out this weekend.

One cool thing about my work closing is there's plenty of free stuff to toss out. I'm not a binder guy, but damn it, now I'm ready to go if I ever decide I want to be! Just need a crapton of 9-pocket pages. Anybody in the Portland, OR area want a couple of these? Free for pickup.

That's it for today. Keep on rocking, guys!