I haven't posted in a few days, so here's a quick show-off post of recent eBay wins. Figured I'd follow up the snazzy Duke Snider I featured last time with more Dodger blue.
Check out this Don Sutton! While the black 2004 Retired refractors are my favorite, I also really like 2003 Retired. (and 2005 for that matter.)
Excellent career. 324 wins.
Whoops-- sorry, Dodgers fans.. snuck in a Mets card.
I believe it was a Junior Junkie post a few months ago talking about how cool these 1999 Fleer Ultra Diamond Producers inserts are. Sounded neat to me, so I saved an eBay search and waited till a guy I collect popped up at a decent price. Ended up with HOFer Mike Piazza back in March, but don't think I've posted about it here yet.
1999 Fleer Ultra Diamond Producers are pretty cool cards. Just picked up this Piazza. pic.twitter.com/VZ5UD0V7AS
— Baseball Card Breakdown (@breakdowncards) March 28, 2020
In the window, the shiny parts disappear and it looks like a jellybean that's had the coating sucked off. lol
Clayton Kershaw 2018 Ginter mini.... but not just any run-of-the-mill mini...
Glow-in-the-dark! And surprisingly, this one actually seems to glow well. I've got a few of these things now and most of them don't glow fer shit. But this one looks kinda nice in the shade.
The new crown jewel of my modest Walker Buehler PC! I've wanted to score myself a WB autograph for a while, and recently wound up with this beautiful RC refractor. Hope he becomes the next Kershaw like everybody thinks, but you just never know about pitchers and who will stay healthy.
That's it for today. Have a great holiday weekend!
I've mentioned on the blog before that I'd probably consider 1993 Topps Black Gold cards to be my favorite inserts of all time. I pulled a Frank Thomas back then as a kid and felt like I had won the lottery. Just awesome looking cards.
And I've expressed hope for the design to pop up in Archives, thinking it'd be cool to see current players (and perhaps greats from the pre-93 past) on the cards.
Well, that hasn't happened yet... but.. Topps brought the design back for a Throwback Thursday set recently. I was on the fence about it at first-- not too hot on the player selection of the 6-card set-- but ultimately I pulled the trigger (price of a blaster), drawn in by that classic design.
I'm giving Kershaw top billing even though he's the 2nd card in the set. Out of the six players in this set, he's the guy I collect the most and I suppose the card I was most interested in getting. But that's not really saying much. It's basically a "finished" PC for me. It'd be nice to score his rookie card someday, but otherwise I'm content with the 100+ cards of his I have, highlighted by a Christmas Card auto. That said, it's a nice card.
Oh, and I should mention that Topps crapped out on the "gold foil" parts. As I suspected when I ordered online, they just used a picture of gold foil. No dancing in the light here, just a static image. Kind of a bummer, though I would have been shocked had today's Topps gone the extra milecorrect number of miles called for rather than be lazy. But that's how it goes.
Gio Urshela isn't a guy I'm very familiar with. I think The Lost Collector did a post about him last month, and that's about the extent of my knowledge. Not even a rookie card, though. I would have rather gotta a different young New York corner infielder.. but I guess Topps can't put Pete Alonso in every small weekly set they put out.
Never heard of Bryan Reynolds. Looking him up, he's quietly having a real nice rookie year. Cool. This is the only "RC" of the six cards.
I've never PC'd Justin Verlander at all, instead sending off his cards to Dennis at Too Many Verlanders. But now that he's locking up his HOF credentials, I'm feeling some remorse. I probably should have collected him, at least a little. Oh well. Can't collect everybody, as the saying goes. But sorry, Dennis, I don't want to break up the set, so I'll be hanging onto this one.
Besides Kershaw, Yasiel Puig is the only guy in this set I player-collect. He's low priority for me-- as with most collectors, I've grown frustrated that he hasn't been able to recapture that Puigmania promise he had when he burst on the scene in 2013. But he's still a solid player and a fun dude. I'm hoping he can breakout for an MVP-caliber season one of these years.
Last card is Marcus Stroman. I don't have much feelings on him one way or the other. Seems like a good guy.
Like with all #TBT cards, not much time was spent on the backs. Same picture from the front. Generic blurb.
Notice the mistake here? "Black and Gold"? Often feels like the people who work at card companies aren't actually collectors themselves, rather just graphic designers and manufacturers or whatever.
Speaking of that.. Did you hear Sooz is leaving Topps? That's a bummer. As I told her, it was cool having "one of us" on the inside. She started as a cardblogger, then went to work for Beckett, then got a job at Topps. Not sure what's next for her, but I wish her the best.
Back to this set, yeah, it's fine. No regrets picking it up, though it could have been a lot better. Wish they had used real gold foil like the original cards, for one thing. And would have loved some more exciting players... Tatis? Acuna? Guerrero? Trout? Bellinger? Yelich? Alonso? Gleyber? That rookie on the Reds who hit a dozen homers in a row? All guys I would have rather been in the set.
Looks like the print run was 362 sets, which is on the lower end of these weekly sets from Topps (they often top 1000), probably due to the uninspired checklist with a lack of hot rookies and superstars. But on the other hand, at least the cards are kinda scarce. So there's that, I guess!
I was almost reluctant to trade for this pair because they'd be somewhat out of place in my low-grade 1957 Topps setbuild. But I couldn't say no, and they got worked into the deal. They are now the highest graded cards among my '57s, ahead of a PSA 5 Ernie Banks and a PSA 8(OC) Campanella. The Billy Pierce is an upgrade and the Wally Post is a need.. which happened to bump me over the 70% complete mark. So that's pretty cool.
Been wanting a green Mike Trout Big League box card, and Chris hooked me up with a flattened box.
I took the liberty of trimming it down to a more easily-stored card.
The Kris Bryant 1st Bowman purple parallel is a beauty.
George Brett with a chunk of a bat!
Robin Yount and another man.
A couple young sluggers slugging away.
Musial and Marquis, rocking the bat on the shoulder pose. I'm long overdue for an update post on my Marquis Mania project, but I actually started drafting one the other day, so maybe I'll finally figure out how many copies I have of this card soon.
Love this die-cut Gwynn! The diamond effect looks great in-hand.
The last piece of the trade is this lovely triple relic with Corey Seager, Clayton Kershaw, and Julio Urias. Sweet card.
Thanks for the trade, Chris!
- - - ---o
Next up is-- going by weight-- possibly the biggest trade package I've ever received. It comes courtesy of Matt Prigge and contained zero cards.
Hundreds upon hundreds of penny sleeves! Looks like Matt is becoming a binder guy and had a bunch of abandoned like-new sleeves looking for a good home. I can always use more of these little buggers, so I spoke up and sent him back some Brewers to make it worth his time/postage.
(Funny enough, last time I traded with a guy for a bunch of sleeve like this, it was Tony L, another prominent Brewers collector, back in 2015.)
Thanks, Matt!
- - - - ----o
I just realized today that January 20th is the birthday of two (of the eight) Guys From Granite to make the major leagues.
Yep, both Brian Giles and Travis Taijeron are celebrating a birthday today. Happy Birthday, fellas!
It just so happens that I recently picked up printing plates from each of these guys, so here they are. The Taijeron was especially nice to see pop up at a reasonable price, as that's the card I ponied up for the superfractor of a couple months back, so I'm glad to add another 1/1 to that rainbow.
Bill, my "usual dealer", was back at the monthly card show today after missing the September show. So it was back to my old routine and I spent the whole show going through his bins.. some were 7-for-$5, and some were 50¢ each (He also had some quarter bins out, but they were pretty packed and I didn't feel like elbowing myself in.)
Oh yeah! These Trouts were probably my best finds of the day. The cheapest "Ginter rookie" (his 1st A&G card) on COMC right now is $9.15.
I don't mess with football much, but when I came to a stack of Pat Mahomes II, one of the hottest names in the NFL right now, I snatched them all up. Looks like most of these are going for over 4 bucks a pop on COMC, so good score on my part.
Kershaw.
Bellinger.
I got a bunch of Rhys Hoskins cards.
Votto. That card in the middle looks creepy, but hey, it's #'d on the back.
2018 AL ROY hopefuls.
2010 Cards Your Mom Threw Out original back variations.
Big Yanks.
Sox.
Bryce.
More Sox.
Shiny. The Ozzie dupe was on purpose.. just love that card.
I grabbed a bunch of numbered parallels, including these guys.
My lone basketball card pickup of the day, TJ Leaf
Cheap autos and high end Astros.
More refractors.
And a smattering of vintage. I'll have wantlists up for 1974 and 1975 Topps soon, by the way.
Not a bad haul. Among other cards not shown is some trade fodder and more numbered stuff.
Thanks for reading!
Like most collectors, I didn't pay much attention to 2013 Panini Pinnacle when it came out. No logos, black overload, and not much in the way of big hits to chase (a weak auto checklist of 100% stickergraphs).. it was hard to justify the price. But last Black Friday when a hobby box was on sale for the price of a blaster, I jumped at it. And it's my scheduled box break for May, so here we go.
Since I never ripped any of this stuff (and haven't gotten much of it in trades over the years), there were plenty of player-collection needs for me. Oh hey, there's Ichiro. I'm so disappointed with how things went down. Wish the Mariners would have given him a couple more games so he could have faced Ohtani, and let him get a proper on-field sendoff and have him tip his cap to a big ovation. Really feels like us fans got robbed of a couple amazing moments. Oh well. I know I'm fickle, but I've removed Ichiro from my wantlist for now.
Panini squeezed in some big names from the past. I usually like black borders (see my love of 1971 Topps and 1985 Donruss, for example), but this design just doesn't work. I kinda liked the original Score Pinnacle back in the day, but was never a huge fan of it, to be honest.
Respectable crop of rookies.
Instead of doing colored parallels (which probably would have been a refreshing change of pace), there are parallels that have a modest level of dufex action going on (I think Panini calls them Museum Collection parallels). Don't look like much in the photos, but kinda cool in hand. (These 3 are all available for trade.)
Some dufexed inserts. I collect Giancarlo, but the other 2 are up for trade. Bummer I don't collect David Price, as I kinda like the metallic look of that "Ace" card.
These two are pretty cool. That wraps up the dufexy cards.
Howbout we cleanse our palate with some acetate cards. A couple PC hits for me here with Reggie and Votto.
Nice Kershaw here. Other two available for trade. (was somewhat of a Brewers hot box).
A few more inserts here, plus a Matt Harvey artist's proof parallel (not serially numbered). Looks like Harvey is done in New York.. at least in the NL. Besides the Rose and Stanton, these are up for trade.
Another addition for my Manny Machado PC with this Team 2020 insert.
Panini went 5-for-5 with these Awaiting The Call predictions, with only Tim Raines making it close. The Randy Johnson is a diecut parallel.
Clear Vision inserts might be what 2013 Pinnacle is best remembered for these days. The Kershaw and Molitor are nice hits for my collection. Edwin and Howard are available for trade.
And finally, my autos. As expected, they're far from being big names but hey-- they're both Artist Proofs, #/25! So at least there's that! The only numbered cards of the box. (Too bad neither was 12/25.) Brock Holt has been a valuable utility guy for the Red Sox so far this season. Josh Thole has been out of the game since 2016, but had a respectable 8-year career behind the dish split between the Mets and Blue Jays.
These are both open for trade offers. Also got plenty of base cards to get rid of if anyone is working on the set or a team set.. just let me know.
Not a bad box, all things considered! Especially for the discounted price. Thanks for checking it out with me. Have a great weekend.
