Infusion of 2004 Chrome black refractors

I keep an eye out for bulk lots of 2004 Topps Chrome black refractors, and one such lot popped up recently. It was 79 cards at a buck per card plus shipping. Not quite a steal, but still good enough to get me to bite.

The guy pranked me by shipping them in a box for '91 Fleer Update. I opened up the package and saw that and immediately thought there was a mixup. But nope, '04 black refractors hidden inside.

Some highlights...

There were a few dupes for me in the lot, including Marcus Giles and Fred McGriff here, but since I collect both these guys, I don't mind having an extra copy for the respective PCs. The dupes of dudes I don't collect should make for decent trade fodder.

Big sluggers of the era.

A pair of near Hall of Famers here. (I say put 'em in.)

These 2 guys have been in the news lately... for very different reasons: Ross for being named the Cubs' new manager, and Edmonds for an ugly divorce.

There are some nice photos in this set that if Topps used them today, would likely be zoomed in 2x. It's refreshing when the image can "breathe" a bit.

HOFers! The Vlad is the card I saw in the listing that made me click the "buy it now" button. That guy was a beast!

A couple guys winding down their solid careers on unfamiliar teams.

Closing us out is a nice Dontrelle Willis rookie cup, and (as far as I can tell) the last active player in 2004 Topps Chrome who was still playing in 2019, Oliver Perez. (Fernando Rodney is not in the set.)

This lot took me from 37.17% complete up to 48.25%. Honestly a little disheartening that I'm still not even halfway done. Maybe I'll do a Sportlots order one of these days to get me over the hump.

Also disheartening about his quest of mine?...

The Yadier Molina "first year" card (that I still need) selling for $160+ recently. Ouch. It's not even an auto, for frick's sake!

So yeah, it's a long-term project, for sure.. but I love these cards and I'll keep grinding, and maybe someday I'll finish this one off.

How the Grich Stole Black Friday

Just received my big COMC order placed over Black Friday weekend to get the free shipping. The majority of the cards were either vintage set needs (lots of '57s and '64s) or additions for a certain history-themed binder project of mine, but those will wait for another day.

I've mentioned before that I'm always keeping an eye out for Topps Retired autos. The 2004 Retired Bobby Grich auto is super common, with several affordable copies kicking around eBay and COMC at any given moment. But the 2003 Retired version (pictured).. Well, that one comes around much less often.  I snatched this one up quickly when it popped up on eBay via COMC consignment, jumping over to COMC for it, as the prices are often a little cheaper there plus you can save on shipping as opposed to buying the card on eBay.

You don't hear a lot about Bobby Grich these days, but he was an elite second baseman in the 70s and early 80s. According to Hall of Stats, he's a slam dunk Hall of Famer, though has thus far been kept out by Cooperstown voters. Happy for this addition to my very long-term goal of eventually maybe completing the 2003 Retired autos. I've got over a third of them now. I've also got about a third of the 2005 Retired autos, and I've completed the 2004 Retired autos (my major collecting accomplishment of 2018.. or really probably my entire time in the hobby).

Another project along these lines is my Archives Reserve Master Set (ARMS). I've got the base sets (the two baseball sets and the one football one), and like to pick up an auto or relic from time to time. Here's a name that's familiar to most on the cardsphere, thanks to Matt at Sport Card Collectors supercollecting Rodney Hampton. I keep an eye out for scarce Hampton cards as trade fodder for Matt, and that's probably how I stumbled upon this auto for a good price, but this one's for me.

And another card for the ol' ARMS. I'm almost finished with 2001 Topps Archives Reserve Future Rookie Reprints (the only non-hit cards I've got left to chase in my quest). After checking off Jim Edmonds here, I'm down to just needing Bernie Williams and Sammy Sosa, both of which being 1990 Topps reprints.

Another long-term goal of mine... I seem to grab at least one or two 2004 Topps Chrome black refractors with each COMC order. I just sort by cheapest-first and try to find any I need for under a buck or so. It's slow going, but I'm nearly to a third complete here, currently at 32%.

I just love how these cards look, spilling over from my obsession with the similar looking 2004 Topps Retired refractor autos (as seen in my header). The biggest names in this lot were should-be-HOFers Larry Walker and Carlos Delgado.

I found myself itching to finalize my order but with 99 cards in my COMC inventory, needing one more to hit the $5 credit that comes with shipping out 100 cards in a month, and so I checked for cheap 2011 Topps parallels-- yet another of my long-term projects (2011 Topps+Chrome parallel frankenset.. still not even to the halfway point with it)-- and landed on Charlie Morton here. He's built himself a solid career, recently signing with the Rays after a very successful stint in Houston.

Ok, that's all for today.

a box of 2008 Bowman Chrome

I haven't heard that "Despacito" song yet. If you're also over 35, maybe you haven't heard it either. It's supposedly the big Song of Summer, 2017. I guess I'm "with it" enough to be aware of the song, but not with it enough to have heard it. And I'm kinda proud of that, so I'll resist heading over to YouTube and checking it out. And along those lines, I wasn't collecting from mid-1993 through 2012, so I missed out on the early days of Chrome.

Here's my "Black Friday monthly box break experience" for September. If I'm being honest with you, I actually ripped through these packs back on 8/30. Yes, I'm a sinner; jumping the gun a couple days. But the thing is I was having a bad day and needed a pick me up (still in a stretch of bads days, tbh), plus I had just ordered 3 other discounted boxes that were due to arrive, and I figured I could do some substitution. So if we're being technical about it, maybe this is just a random box break, and my "Black Friday monthly box break experience" for September is actually forthcoming in a future post.

But the bottom line is here's a hobby box of 2008 Bowman Chrome. For the retail price of a blaster, I thought it was a solid deal. But there aren't really any huge rookie cards to chase in this set or anything, hence the reasonable price. But I'm just hoping for a few cards to add to my collection and something decent to cards replenish my trade coffers a little. And hopefully something shiny.. since Chrome is at its best when it's refracting, after all.

Guys I collect! I don't think I've got any of these already. Base veterans plus a Jim Edmonds refractor in unfamiliar Cubbie blue.

Hey, I pulled a Beltre autograph! Unfortunately, it's Engel not Adrian. But hey, my promised auto could have been worse. At least Engel briefly cracked the majors, which is better than many on the autograph checklist can say. He's still playing down in Mexico. I like the "Uncle Sam" pose.
As for Jhoulys Chacin, he's been one of the Padres' better starters this season, so it was nice to land his 1st Bowman Chrome Card. I'm still not sure how to pronounce his name. I'll just call him "Julie's Chachi."

A few other semi-notable cards. I know I've seen these cards before, but until now, didn't realize they were all from the same set. Three different designs mashing into one set. Rookies (green), prospects (blue), and veterans (red). Whatever happened to Luke Hochevar? Put up a respectable 3.86 ERA in 2016, but no one signed him for 2017? Jed Lowrie is having a solid 2017 with the A's (I had no idea until I looked him up). Pedro Baez converted to pitcher, and according to the ERA+ statistic, he's been the Dodgers' 2nd best pitcher during their incredible run this year, below Jansen and above Kershaw. (Kershaw may have since passed him after a dominating comeback performance against my Padres last night.)

Some shiny refractors. Don't think the rookies (top row) ever amounted to much, but veterans Troy Glaus and Scott Rolen had fine careers.

Finally, here are the numbered cards I pulled. The Snyder is /500, while the 2 Xfractors are /250. No big names here unfortunately, but at least I have trade buddies for all 3 of these teams, so they're decent trade fodder. Feel free to call dibs on anything that catches your eye. Besides the guys I collect (1st photo of the post) and the Chacin, all these cards are available for trade. And plenty of base, not pictured, if anyone is working on team sets or anything. Just let me know.

Thanks for reading.

Kicking the holidays into gear

Whew.. it was an exhausting weekend, spending the majority of my free time getting my "Holiday Blast" mailings packed up. A whopping 25 packages / PWEs are now enroute to trader buddies of mine. I would have liked to do more-- hate to leave out anyone-- but gotta cap it somewhere, and 25 is a good Christmasy number, so there you go. As for whether these are "trade packages" or "gifts".. yeah, I don't know. If you get one and you've got a stack going for me, feel free to use this as an excuse to send it over. But you definitely won't make my "shit list" if you don't send anything back. Just trying to spread some cheer n' whatnot.. not to mention a year-end trimming-down of my "set aside for others" box.

I'm usually the type of guy who waits until deep December to get into the Christmas spirit, though I guess the snow day we had last week helped get things going (though it turned to nasty ice the next day, and now we're back to typical Portland rain). I even watched Bad Santa for the first time ever.. it was ok. And generous holiday card mailings from SCC and JBF that showed up over the weekend also helped my heart grow two sizes.

First up is a Christmas card (greeting card, that is) from Sport Card Collectors that included a couple great 2016 Tek cards for me in it.

Boom! The green and red give it a warm holiday feeling. Not only is this great looking /99 parallel my lowest-numbered Kris Bryant card, it's the only serial numbered card I've got of the reigning NL MVP. I really stepped up my Bryant PC this year, and this is a nice bow on top.

Schnell! Schnell! The other card Sport Lad kindly sent me was this waving Blake Snell RC. If the Bryant card had a warm feel, this one definitely has a cold feel to it.. burr!
I like Topps High Tek just fine, but really seems like this year's set is exactly the same as last year. Those metallic things in the background are probably different. But yeah, these are generally cool cards.

Big thanks, SCC! Awesome pair of cards.

- - - ---o

The other mailing to cover today is my haul in Jaybarkerfan's Holiday Tradeathon. Wes is downright infamous for his generosity, whether focusing a "war" on one lucky trader, or spreading out cards throughout the cardsphere, such as with his recent Tradeathon. Many times during the event, I lucked out and happened to be checking my blogroll shortly after new posts went up, so I was able to quickly call dibs on some sweet cards.

The highlight has to be this swanky auto/relic of 2016 World Champion Addison Russell. Sorry, Cubs fans, but I just had to pounce on this one.

This Heritage refractor of Giancarlo Stanton is a beaut! Hopefully gets in a full season in 2017.

Nomar Mazara had a fine debut season in 2016, though he cooled off a lot in the second half. This here is a sharp Optic Rated Rookie refractor #/199.

Mike Trout won his second MVP this year, though the Angels sucked so he was kind of under the radar. Hopefully they find a way to contend in 2017. As I always say about Prizm, I hate the base cards, but love the parallels.

Jim Edmonds is a sleeper PC of mine, but one of these days I'll get him into my Hundred Card Club. I picked up an auto a few months ago that I don't think I got around to featuring on the blog. Was happy to add another hit to the PC via this jersey swatch.

Wes surprised me with a couple bonus Gavin Floyd parallels thrown in for good measure.

Neither a Christmas Card, but both #'d /25. Very nice.


Big thanks, SCC and JBF! Extremely happy with the cards. You both have good stuff on the way from me that I hope you'll like.

Refraction Action: Jim Edmonds '08 Chrome X-Fractor

This looks kinda cool.

Here it is without the distracting background(s).

It might appear like the image is pixilated, but that's just how the refractor is. It's got a weird "checkerboard" look to it.

This is a 2008 Topps Chrome "X-Fractors" card featuring Jim Edmonds photoshopped by Topps into something that could sorta pass as a Padres uniform. Although he put together an excellent career, his stint in San Diego was quite unspectacular, as he batted just .178 in 26 games. I threw this card in with a recent COMC order for 51 cents to add to my collection of "Oh yeah, I forgot that once-big-name player was a Padre for a moment near the twilight of his career" guys. (Players of his ilk include Cliff Floyd, Ron Gant, and the subject of the first Refeactin' Action: Mike Piazza.)

The above is my attempt to capture the refractor in action.

Here's a regular ol' scan of the card.

This concludes today's installment of Refractin' Action. Thanks for joining us and see you next time.