Vottograph

Quick post to show off this Joey Votto auto I scored the other day.

I think it took over a year, but I eventually found a "Christmas (on)Card (auto)" in the price range I was looking for. Now my Joey Votto PC is in a place of "good enough" for my mind, which is always a happy feeling. With some rookies and relics already acquired, the all-important "trifecta" has been achieved.

A Trifecta Pyramid! lol

And it's his 40th birthday today! He celebrated in style with a home run fresh of the IL. Great dude and fun ballplayer.

Here's a partial rainbow of his 2015 Bowman's Best card, just to squeeze a little more refraction into the post.

Thanks for reading and have a great week. 

I'll throw in a couple cute Ruby pics from the other day, as I think Mr. Votto would want it that way.

Christmas Comes Late

I finally got my big COMC shipment in: a total of 189 cards for $381.60 amassed from 8/21/2019 thru 11/7/2020 when I requested shipment. Pre-covid, that would have been ample time to receive the cards by Christmas, but the current hobby boom caught COMC unprepared and they've struggled to catch up ever since. So now after nearly half a year waiting for them to arrive, I've finally got my cards in-hand.

As an aside, for my job I physically mail out several hundred packages of data archives every month. It wasn't easy, but even at the height of lockdown, I never fell behind schedule. I stepped up my game and found a way to make it work despite the additional challenges. So I don't have a lot of sympathy for COMC at this point. I haven't purchased any cards on the site since this shipment, and don't plan to until/if they get their shit together.

I figure there's a few posts-worth of cards to feature on the blog from this lot, and I'll start with the Christmas Cards. Sometimes I think I should cool off on hunting for cards serial-numbered 12/25. With the crazy number of parallels being put out these days, the novelty has kinda worn off. But dang it, I still love them, and once in a while I would get bored and bumble around the site looking for them, either cheap (usually prospects who never made it) or less-cheap (guys I collect or otherwise eye-catching cards).

Here's one of the latter. Dropped a Hamilton on this Joey Votto with a neat piece of jersey. I believe this was one that I originally saw pop up via COMC on eBay, then hopped over to the site to purchase it for a little cheaper. Ended up with 6 Vottos in the order. His numbers may be slipping as he gets older, but still a cool dude and fun to build a little PC of.

Unfortunately, you can't just search for "12/25" on COMC and get a bunch of Christmas Card results. I pretty much have to find a line of parallels that are /25 and then check them for any that are 12th in the production run. I figured out Bowman Chrome typically has orange refractors each year with 25 copies in the run, and hey, I like refractors and the color orange, so I spent some time searching the site for them.

Edwin Jackson established the major league record for most teams played for (14), nearly as much as the rest of the guys in this post combined.

Michael Sullivan never made it out of A-ball.

Kevin McKague seems to be a West Point graduate who pitched 5 games in rookie ball and that's it.

Juan Ciriaco played nearly 400 games in Triple-A yet never got the call.

Mark (Marc) Kaiser also topped out at AAA.

Rowdy Tellez has had some success with the Blue Jays in recent years, though got sent down the other day to make room on the roster. Gotta root for guys with fun names.

Numbering is on the backs with these, so here you are. Oh hey, just noticed Kevin McKague is a fellow Xmas Eve baby. That's twice the yuletide cheer with this card.

But wait, there's more...

Cory Hall didn't make it out of A ball.

Gregory Infante had a cup of coffee with the White Sox in 2010, bounced around organizations in the minors for several years, then returned to the South Siders to become one of their best arms out of the pen in 2017.

Alex Rios had a sold 12-year career in the AL, getting All-Star nods in '06 and '07 with Toronto.

David Robertson also enjoyed a 12-year career, with his best season being 2011, putting up an impressive 1.08 ERA over 70 games with the Yankees.

Dillon Overton got into a few big league games in '16 and '17, including a single start for my Padres.

Cameron Varga never made it past A ball.

And here's the last of the baseball Christmas Cards from the order.

Nick Travieso made it as high as AA and was spotted pitching in the Puerto Rico Winter League last season.

Michael Zimmerman is another guy who didn't make it past A ball.

Yeison Asencio is a former Padres prospect I was really rooting for but he didn't pan out. I have a couple other parallels of this 2013 Bowman Chrome card including a gold refractor auto. He seems to still be active south of the border. 

I always say I don't need more Wil Myers cards, but eh, caved to pick up this blue-bordered Archives card.

The Mark Trumbo auto is cool if you squint your eyes and pretend it's Mike Trout. He had a few good years and hit 218 taters, but seems to be finished now.

I also picked up 4 football cards with my favorite serial number. Always love green ink autos (Ykili Ross here), and the refractor looks cool, too (Demetric Vance). Trenton Thompson has played some in the CFL. Brandon Doughty was starting quarterback for Western Kentucky from 2013 to 2015. I've got a grampa-in-law who taught there for many years, so that's kinda cool.

We close out the post with a pair of Rakeem Christmas Christmas Cards. Love doubling up the Christmas like this. He didn't stick in the NBA very long, but is still active overseas. Fun fact: Rakeem made Michael Jordan a grandfather in 2019, siring a son with Jasmine Jordan, Michael's daughter. That kid's got some good basketball-playing genes!

So there are the 12/25 cards from my big COMCOVID order. Still plenty of more fun stuff to show off in upcoming posts.

Refractory Period

Just a few refractors I've picked up recently.

Derek Jeter is a big name to cross off my 2004 Chrome Black setbuild. This one happens to be graded. Dings here are centering and surface. Centering is fine on the front (a little off on the back) and while I don't see any problems with the surface, I get it. In fact I also won a Mariano Rivera from this set (ungraded) just a day or so later, but it had a deep scratch on it so I returned it.

But here's another Hall of Fame shortstop in Barry Larkin. Weird for me to see him in what I think of as a "modern set", but yep his last year on the field was 2004.

And a rookie auto I needed (thanks to rookie autographs [/25] being included in the black parallel set). I guess technically Nic Ungs is also a Hall of Famer, being inducted into the Northern Iowa Athletics Hall of Fame in 2015. He never made the bigs, but had a solid professional career, 2001-2011, putting up an 84-69 record with a 3.79 ERA.

2004 Topps Retired Darrell Evans refractor auto! I already had this one in my setbuild, but it popped up with a solid Buy-It-Now and I jumped on it. Hey, he's a guy I collect, so I'm cool with it being the new crown jewel in my little Darrell Evans PC (while still having another copy in my 2004 Retired auto set). When he eventually gets into the Hall of Fame, his cards will all go up.

Snagged this Joey Votto for my 2011 Topps parallel frankenset recently. Reds players probably look best in red or blue parallels, but this orange one still looks pretty good.

Here's a red one! As most folks who've gone after a Chrome rainbow can tell you, those /5 red parallels can be real doozies. So I was excited to see this one pop up of Casey Craig with a low opening bid. A guy who went to my high school, he hit .285 for his minor league career, but topped out at AA. Still though, very happy to add this to the Guys From Granite collection. I wonder if the superfractor will ever pop up for sale (again?).. If so, I'd probably try to snag it.

Ok, that's enough refraction for today. Thanks for reading!

Post Office Appreciation Post

I send out stuff through the United States Postal Service as a main duty of my job (data DVD archives), so I'm very interested in how the current situation there works out. The USPS says they'll likely go tits-up soon without a bailout type of situation from the government, but the jackasses currently in charge are flipping them the bird and would rather see the private sector take over (which would most likely mean significant increases to the postage rates we pay today).

If the post office goes away, my job could go away, too-- and more importantly (j/k): trading online would likely dry up! Ouch!

Let's hope it doesn't come to that, as trading is a great way to get cards you want, and re-home cards you don't want with someone who does want them.

Buying cards online would become more expensive too. Buying one card at a time would become cost-prohibitive unless maybe we're talking about like a high-dollar card. But for any card under $10 or so, it just wouldn't make sense. We're looking at nearly every physical-good online transaction having the price significantly bumped up.

Anyways.. I'm not trying to get political here.. but if you're a card collector, you've got to be rooting for the postal service in this fight.

I've received 3 trades in the mail over the past week which I'll now show off here.

Always fun finding a brand new trading partner. Jay over at the young Card Hemorrhage blog (great name) posted about ripping some Heritage and pulled this relic card that didn't really fit his collection, so I inquired about a trade. Rhys Hoskins is a young guy I like to collect. He had a bit of a sophmore slump last year, but I was expecting to see his numbers back up in 2020 (or whenever they start playing again). I don't often get too excited over relics, but I thought this card looked sharp, and I love the pinstripe on the swatch. So I sorted my Vlads and McCoveys (a pair of players Jay and I both collect), and sent him over my dupes.

Some bonus Heritage made its way into the envelope too. That Chrome Xander is pretty sweet.

Thanks, Jay! Pleasure trading with you and I hope we end up doing so much trading that I'm eventually able to spell "Hemorrhage" correctly on the first try. :)

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Then I did a little trade with Chris at Nachos Grande. I claimed the "trade stack" he had going on this blog, mainly because I was interested in the Wee-Pee's Wacky Packages. I'm a big Pee-Wee Herman fan and figured I could use the parody card in the collection. There was another card or two in the stack I could probably use too, but mainly just wanted that one. But then since we were going to exchange cards anyways, we expanded the trade a little. I love the shiny 2011 Topps.. it's a "Hope Diamond" parallel, which is basically a blue version of the cognac parallel, and numbered out of 60 on the back. As you can imagine, I don't have many of them in my parallel frankenset, but happy to score any I can. And I recently added those Pinnacle Cooperstown Card inserts to my Black Gold wantlist. Looks like Chris (a big-time Larkin collector) had a dupe to spare.

Chris also had some Votto and F. Robby cards available for me.

Thanks, Chris! I'm ashamed to admit I haven't mailed your cards out yet but I will do that very soon.

-      -    -   - ---o

And then I was surprised by a PWE from Jeremy at Topps Cards That Never Were. Very cool '85 Topps Ken Caminiti USA custom he made a while back. I had been planning to print off one for my PC but hadn't gotten around to it yet. So Jeremy helped me out there. He said he used an online colorization site with a B&W photo, which explains why Ken's arms and hands might look a bit off. But looks pretty good for the most part. Fun addition to the Cami PC. And the shiny Gwynn is a nice add too.

Thanks, Jeremy! Much appreciated.

And thanks again to Jay and Chris, and all the postal workers out there during this crazy time. Sure is a bright spot of any day when neat stuff like this shows up in the mailbox.

See y'all next time.

Zapped Into Submission

The first couple months of the year always seem to be the busiest for me. While I pride myself in being good about keeping up with all the card blogs I follow, over the past couple weeks I've fallen way behind and any hopes of "catching up" are fading. Breaks my heart, but I may need to accept the fact that there will be posts from my favorite blogs that I'll never have a chance read. (only half-joking)
It might be a few more weeks till I'm able to get back into the "read all new posts" groove.

Posting my own stuff has taken a hit as well, and I'm getting a backlog of cards I want to post about. But hey, I took a sick day today, so I've got a few moments to show off a hell of a zapping from Zippy I got earlier in the month. He's been narrowing his collection lately and he knows I'm a receptive dumping ground for pretty much any cards he wants to purge. This Priority Mail flat-rate box included a bunch of great keepers for me.

My lil Joey Votto PC got a nice boost thanks to these early Bowman Chrome refractors. Those two cards ain't cheap! And I was also super stoked about the Asian black parallel of Rhys Hoskins' first Bowman card.

Love these Asian imports!

I didn't really mess with new cards much last year (and don't plan to in 2020 either), so I appreciate when I can add some dudes I collect and the year's notable rookies. The rainbow foil Lucroy can wiggle into my collection thanks to the Matt Chapman cameo.

Here are a couple guys whose careers each looked promising before they came back down to earth.
Aw, I kid Bryce lumping him together with The Maasinator. The guy has 219 home runs and he's only 27.
UPDATE: Oh crap, I didn't even realize at first that the 2014 Heritage card in the lower right is an Action Image Variation (pricey card). Whoo!

I've mentioned someday might wanting to try building a 2015 Bowman/C/D parallel franketset (along the lines of my 2011 Topps parallel frankenset), so I love to stockpile these snazzy cards when I can.

Look at Zippy going old school! That '82 Taveras goes straight to my "Bender Binder" minicollection of trippy printing errors. This is my 7th card earmarked for that project.. just 2 more and I'll be finally able to complete a page.
The '73 Corrales was actually a slight upgrade over the one in my set. I've gotten a ton of great cards from the ol' Zipper over the years, but vintage set fillers is a new trick for him.

Highlights of some 2019 Panini USA/draft cards included in the boxxxx. Pretty sure these are the first cards in my collection of overall #1 Adley Rutschman and the Padres' #1 pick CJ Abrams. Sweet!

Some more cool stuff. And that-all was just about half of the baseball cards included. But there was also a ton of non-baseball...

Not too much football in the box, but some really nice cards among the few. Mahomes and Garoppolo! Facing off in the Super Bowl tomorrow (er, Sunday, I mean). I almost forgot it was this weekend, honestly. Seems the sports news has been mostly Kobe and the Astros. But anyways, I'm not sure if I'll catch the game but I'll be rooting for Mahomes to have a great game.

Luka! I think that's my first card of my close and personal friend whom I hang out with. Solid little stack of basketball cards.

A bunch of hockey, too. I don't know squat about hockey, but I was able to find 3 guys I know of, plus a pair of hits.

Turns out we weren't done with baseball yet. Holy geez! I was under the impression Zippy had already handed down his Arod collection to me a few months ago, but looks like that was only the tip of the iceberg. There's a relic in there somewhere, too. By quantity, he might be my #1 PC now, with only Tony Gwynn challenging for the top spot. Crazy! I don't even like Arod that much, lol.
I recently saw a guy on Twitter was looking to trade for all Arod cards (even ones he already has), so one of these days I should sort out my PC and ship the dupes off to him. One dupe I'd keep though would be the Stadium Lights card.. I want all glow-in-the-dark cards (even ones I already has [sic]).

Turns out we weren't done with football yet. Panini stickers. I like the shiny ones.

Some fun non-sport stuff including a Barb rookie card.

Nice selection of Star Wars cards. By the way, yeah, I need to refinish my coffee table one of these days. Please forgive the scuffs n' whatnot.

Oh dang! MORE Arod! These are the smaller-than-a-normal-card things from the box.

Zippy was generous enough to pick me up a '19 Brooklyn Cyclones team set last season because it has Gavin Garay in it. New guy named Gavin for my collection! Right on! I've kept it sealed so far, but I might give into temptation and free Gavin before long.
Here we also see a few pocket schedules and (not pictured) a couple programs.




That just about brings us to the end.


HEADS UP, the last picture of the post coming up is semi-NSFW, so you might want to stop reading now if you don't want to see any sexy girlie cards on your screen.

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Oh my! Many lovely ladies here. Some of these were actually sealed packs that I had the pleasure of opening. ...Sorry, that sounds dirty. I'm especially crushing on Nana Ayano, featured in the top few cards here. Super cute!


HUGE THANKS, Zippy! So many awesome cards in that box. I'm very grateful to be a lucky person you choose to dump cards on!

I sent him back just 2 cards since I know he's on a strict, low-card diet. But I think I made the two pack a punch, at least.

Thanks for reading and enjoy your Super Bowl weekend!

RodPost

Got to meet up with Padrographs Rod at the last card show. He graciously hooked me up with a whole bunch of cards, partially as a prize in a recent multi-winner contest he ran.

I picked this Votto relic out of the available prizes Rod had still available when my turn came up. Joey's been having an off year, but I still think he's pretty cool and hope he rebounds.

I can always count on any box from Rod to include a bunch of Padre prospects. Got the likes of Tatis Jr and Luis Urias in here.

Wow, five Topps Now cards! Since these things run a few bucks each, it's always a treat to be surprised by one in a blind card package, much less five.

Hey, speaking of 5, it's my 5th wedding anniversary! Go me and my wife!

More neat Pads... green xfractor, Wingenter auto, Fleer sticker, and a couple Meija customs.

A bunch more dudes I collect.

I've got a gathering of Panini Beach Boys cards that could be considered in the loosest sense of the term to be a "complete set" but I'm always happy to throw some insert needs into the mix to bolster it up a bit, and these "On the Record" and "Etchings" inserts are probably the most interesting of the non-hit inserts in that product, so I was happy to find them in the box.

Rod is also usually good for a few pretty ladies in his lots for me.

Both myself and Bo were bestowed with copies of this same Jeff Pendergraph card by Rod recently, each #'d /499. Ha, I won't reject a Blazers hit, though for the record, I don't collect Christmas-themed cards other than 12/25 and 12/24 serial-numbered cards.

SPEAKING OF BASKETBALL!!!!!
Thanks to a recent Fuji post, I just recently learned that Kawhi Leonard attended my alma mater SDSU. It kinda blew my mind. I must admit that I don't really follow college sports, and even blocked the words "SDSU" and "Aztecs" from my Twitter feed (which must be why I didn't know). But that said, I do collect a handful of notable players who go onto greatness as fellow San Diego State alumni, and after the Raptors magical, improbable run this year, I think I need to add Kawhi to the short list of NBA guys I collect. So to all my trader buddies who do basketball cards (ie, Billy, Kerry, Doug), please consider me an outlet option for all you excess Kawhi cards. Thank you.

Rod also hooked me up with a near complete set of 1988 Fleer. It's a "want" as part of a long-term goal of mine to go for a run of flagship from that period. It's missing 100 or so cards, which are now listed on my wantlist. The bunkwax (sic) truth is that this set can be bought for $10-15 shipped on eBay and it'll likely cost me more than that (just in postage) to round up the remaining 100ish cards for this set. Oh the cruel irony of the overproduction era haunting the hobby even still. But I don't mean to complain. This partial set includes plenty of the best cards, including the Mark Grace RC, a card I coveted as a kid in the early 90s.

Rod took note of my love of glow in the dark stuff and included a small box of glowing temporary tattoos.

The box is about the size of a matchbook, with each of the "4 Glow Tattoos" (on one sheet) being about the size of a dime.

Here they are in action. Cool!

He also gave me a shirt, which seemed a little strange at first. But it's a shirt from the library system he works for, and as far as my personal interest in it..

It glows, baby!!!

The back side too.

I'm currently undecided if I'll rock this shirt from time to time, or just file it away as a collectable, but either way, big thanks to Rod for thinking of me and scoring me one of these.

I'm not a big reader, I must admit, though coincidentally I did receive a new book today which I'll feature in a future post (it's autographed). The current book I'm reading is on my phone-- the SABR Nuclear Powered Baseball collection, which is basically just the SABR bios for all the players featured (and pre-war players referenced) in the Homer At The Bat episode of the Simpsons. I'm currently in the middle of Harry Hooper's entry. I typically read a few pages while riding on the Max most mornings. Before that I read Ball Four.

Again, my gratitude to Rod for the cards n' such. Always great to see him, and I appreciate all the neat stuff he gifts me.