Cleveland Rocks

Of the 4 remaining teams this postseason, I guess I'm rooting for the Guardians to go all the way, though really I'll be happy as long as it isn't the Dodgers again.

I happen to have PCs going for 4 guys on Cleveland's current roster-- which seems like a lot since I don't collect a ton of active players-- so in the wake of their impressive comeback in the ALDS, I figured I'd get a post out of showing off some highlights.

That division series had me torn. On one hand, Chicago is my ancestral homeland, so wanting their teams to win is kinda embedded in my DNA. But Cleveland has a guy named Gavin. A pretty good Gavin, in fact! This past season, Williams became the first Gavin to lead the league in strikeouts, with his 248 pacing the AL. He's kept it going in the postseason, stepping up to carry a taxed Cleveland pitching staff.

Turns out I've got 3 Gavin Williams autos in the PC, all unlicensed Leaf stickergraphs. I'm pretty sure I've taken a run at a 1st Bowman auto or two, but couldn't walk away with one as of yet. At least the autos I've got are nice and shiny. They've also got serial numbers I like...

A pair of Christmas Cards and the first-off-the-line of 99.

As far as fully-licensed highlights from the PC, these funky rookie refractors are pretty sharp.

The refraction continues as we move now to Jose Ramirez, the heart and soul of Cleveland's lineup.

Looks like he's another guy whose signature changed after their rookie year, speeding it up after the novelty of signing stacks of your cards wears off. The 2014 Chrome RC auto was acquired as part of a blockbuster blogger trade back during the glory days of exchanging cards with other bloggers. It's the card I was most looking forward to when thumbing through the PC. And on the other hand, I had to do a double take when I came across the 2018 Stadium Club auto, as I had completely forgotten that I even had it, as if a friendly gremlin slipped it into the PC at some point over the years.

My childhood stint in the hobby ended in mid '93, and I have warm memories of pulling Topps Gold parallels while ripping packs of 1993 Topps, so I wanted to score myself one when Archives paid tribute a few years back. I think they were case hits or something, so I didn't bother going after a bunch or anything, but was happy to land this Ramirez for a good price.

Austin Hedges shares catching duties for the Guardians, sticking around in the game over a decade now by virtue of being a good dude and his skills handing pitchers, despite not having much luck with the bat. To his credit, 2026 saw him reach a career-high .247 batting average. Since he came up as a Padres prospect around the time I had returned to the hobby, I've ended up with a lot of Austin Hedges cards over the years. Autos here are a sweet Leaf Valiant card and a signed Topps Pro Debut, the later probably coming from Zippy.

A few more highlights from the Hedges PC. 

Gotta admit I kinda forgot Rhys Hoskins was on Guardians this year, but yeah, he was in the 1B/DH mix for Stephen Vogt's squad most of the year before an injury in August knocked him out of the lineup. He hasn't been as effective/fun of a player since the ACL injury wiped out his 2023 season, but I've still got a solid PC built during his early years in Philly. Another Zippy-Zappy TTM auto featured here. (btw, I need to post about a couple incoming PWEs from him, plus one from TLC.. thanks, guys!)

A variety of Panini cards I thought were worth taking a picture of.

Some neat Topps miscellany. The '70 Topps is a cloth parallel. The orange refractor is #/25 (sadly not #12). As the Ginter RC mini notes on the stamped sleeve, it's a glow-in-the-dark parallel (case hit).

And some more Topps hits, including the lone fully-licensed auto I've got of Rhys. It's numbered 66/99, which is extra fun because it's the same upside-down.

Let's close with the team's skipper. Stephen Vogt isn't a PC guy of mine, but he's in my collection thanks to a 12/25 Ginter mini that a reader kindly reached out to me about back in 2017.

He's got his work cut out for him, but wishing Mr. Vogt the best of luck finally bringing a championship back to The Cleve.

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.

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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!

The Wampum Walloper and some Topps website exclusives

A few more of my recent COMC pickups to show.

Starting off with a few Richie Allen oddballs. This is a Danbury Mint 22K Gold from an indeterminate year. I've never much cared for cards like these. You'd often see them on home shopping networks, right? Feel like their trying to trick people into thinking the card is actually made of gold-- which would be really cool-- when really they might've mixed in a few cents worth of gold dust on top of cardboard. At least the likeness is decent on this one compared to a lot of similar cards/coins.

I like that the back has full career stats, though you've got to get it in the light just right to be able to read it.

Another embossed Allen, this one 1993 Action Packed.

1987 Hygrade and 1971 Topps Scratch Off. ("Team Captain"? I doubt he was a team captain in 1971, as he had just bounced from one year in St. Louis to one year in L.A.)

And a trio of small, thin oddballs from '69. 1969 Sports Collectors Photostamp, 1969 Topps Decal, 1969 Globe Imports Playing Cards - Gas Station Issue.

And now onto some other stuff...

After picking up the Dick Allen 1969 Topps Decal, I took a look at the recent Heritage versions, and picked up Hoskins and Bellinger.

I also took a look at some online-only Topps offerings to see if I could find anything cool on the cheap. Here's a black & white Rhys RC.

The '78-style card is kinda cool.. sort of like my old If They Were Full-Bleed series of blog posts. What ruins it for me (and I hadn't realized until it was in-hand) is there is no space in the player name. FRANCISCOLINDOR. Huh? Francis Colindor? #ToppsFail. The Trevor Hoffman is in an old, unused Topps design. Looks nice enough, though I'm not sure I'd choose it over any real 60s-70s Topps designs.

And these are kinda fun. I think they're based off a poster design that Topps did a limited release for back in the day. You might think they were inserts for Archives or Heritage, but nope, more online exclusives. Quirky additions to my Griffey, Thomas, and Yelich PCs. Ryan O'Hearn isn't a guy I collect, but figured I'd take a flyer on a cheap RC while I was at it.

That's it for today. I think I've got one more post's worth of stuff from this COMC shipment, not counting several glow-in-the-dark cards for that big post on the subject I'm working on. Also coming soon to the blog are a sweet box from Night Owl, a rollercoaster ride of an addition to my 2004 Retired Refractor quest, and a ridiculou$$$$ pickup celebrating my recent raise. So stay tuned.

Kerry on my Cardboard Blog

Met up with Kerry downtown Friday afternoon for a quick swap of cards. He metaphorically dunked on me and the team bag of cards I handed off to him by giving me a very impressive box of cards.

The Vlad Jr. hype is intense! On mlb.com the other day, the top 7 or so news stories were about him and his debut. A bit over the top, but like most baseball fans, I'm interested to see how he turns out as a big leaguer.

The gold standard, Mike Trout!

More Trouty.

Reining NL MVP Christian Yelich. Good stuff here! The mini is /99.

Reigning AL MVP Mookie Betts. Sure, sometimes I feel like a "basic bitch" of a card collector, turning my head for any hot rookies and MVPs. But hey, I also collect guys like Travis Taijeron and Matt Ginter, so I feel I've got well-rounded wants.

Mookie's teammates Rafael Devers and Andrew Benintendi.

Rhys!

Alex Bregman!

More Astros. Love that Correa Heritage refractor.

I've lived in Portland for over a decade now, but have yet to really jump on the Blazers bandwagon. But after that epic playoff-advancing buzzerbeater the other night that had all of Portland bumping, I was like, "Damn! I need to collect Damian Lillard cards!" And Kerry, a big Blazers fan/collector, was kind enough to get that PC started with this lot of dupes he had.

As I add one new name to the short list of active b-ball guys I collect, I lose another, as Dirk retired after the regular season.

Most of the guys I collect in basketball are greats of the past, like Wilt and Dr. J.

...And Dikembe, Kareem, and Manute.

Back to baseball, with plenty of shine here.

And some old-timer favorites. Dave Henderson cards always make me smile. And I hope Bartolo gets an opportunity to pitch this year, but it's not looking likely at this point.

I just sorted out my George Brett PC the other day, seeing if I had hit the 100-card mark yet.. but fell short, around 90 cards. Keep creepin' up, though.

Current Padres representing. Almost May and we're still in contention!! LOL

JOY OF A COMPLETED SET!!!

I got a factory set of '90 Score for Xmas back when it was current-- that and a cheap '89 Topps from the Sears catalog were my first ever complete sets-- but never had a Rookie & Traded set to complement it. Some great cards in here!

Some nice Nats.

And a hit to take us home! Sweet!

Big thanks, Kerry! Great stuff. I'm in your debt and will try to balance the scales soon.