2014 Prizm Draft Picks (trade bait)

A little early Christmas gift to myself, I bid on and won an auction for a hobby box of 2014 Panini Prizm Perennial Draft Picks Baseball (rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?) and it arrived yesterday. While I had toyed with the idea of saving it for an after-Christmas pick-me-up, my willpower was weak and I ripped the whole damn thing within a half-hour of coming home from work. I was hoping for a good Gavin LaValley card (stay tuned for my big Gavin LaValley post coming 12/28! [his birthday]). While I struck out on LaValley, it was a decent box.

Here are the hits. Nothing I'm particularly attached to, so all trade bait, btw.

I don't know anything about these kids, and with the holidays n' all, I don't have the free time to really research them much more than finding out the round they were drafted.

AUTOS

Mitch Keller (#'d /100 red parallel) - Pirates 2nd round pick in 2014. Put up an ERA of 1.98 in rookie league this past season.

Braxton Davidson (#'d /149 purple parallel) - Braves 1st round pick (32nd overall) in 2014.

Trey Supak - Pirates 2nd round pick in 2014.

Michael Conforto [redemption, #'d /149 purple parallel] - 1st round draft pick by the Mets in 2014 (10th overall). Put up a nice 2014 in his first pro season in Brooklyn. Hate to say it, but this placeholder might be the best pull of the box.

Four autos in the box, three of which are #'d parallels.. nice! But one is a redemption, and with my frustrating track record of getting mail from Panini, I really don't want to redeem it, so hopefully one of you readers makes me a trade offer for it, or else maybe I'll put it on eBay for a few bucks. The in-hand autos include 2 Pirates prospects (which have already been set aside for Matthew Scott) and a Brave, which are welcoming to see. Always nice when you can avoid pulling hits of relatively-unloved teams.

Color Parallels

Ross Kivett (#'d /199 blue) - Tigers 6th round pick in 2014.

Justus Sheffield (#'d /199 blue) - Indians 1st round pick in 2014, 31st overall.

Reed Reilly (#'d 01/35 green) - Red Sox 7th round pick in 2014.

Brandon Finnegan (#'d 20/35 green) - Royals 1st round pick in 2014, 17th overall. Got called up to the majors and became the first player to pitch in a World Series and a College World Series the same year.

A nice bit of color in this box between these and the autos.

Refractors Prizms

Jorge Soler - Cubs signee from Cuba who's put up some good numbers in the minors and got called up late in the 2014 season.

Scott Blewett - Royals 2nd round pick in 2014. I remember Zippy mentioned him recently because he has a funny name for a pitcher.

Matt Morgan - Blue Jays 4th round pick in 2014. Hit .092 in rookie league last season.. ouch.

Wyatt Strahan - Reds 3rd round pick in 2014 out of USC.

These four aren't numbered or anything, but are nice looking shiny cards.


So there you go. I didn't pull any big names or really low-numbered cards (or any Gavins), but not a complete bust. All 4 autos were from teams with several active collectors on the blogosphere (Pirates x2, Braves, Mets), so they're nice as trade bait at least. Plus it wasn't all that expensive for a hobby box. (~2.3 blasters shipped.) I didn't scan any of the base cards, but that's because I didn't pull anything notable there.. just more dudes I've never heard of. But who knows, maybe there's a future star in there somewhere.

Again, everything in this post is available for trade, so check my wantlist and get in touch if something caught your eye. Thanks and Happy Holidays!

Update Signature Edition to my glowing sketch cards

Here's my latest project getting creative with cards: Glow-in-the-dark sketch autograph cards. This is sort of a little "update" set to the art cards I've made earlier this year (featured here).

What I do is pick up boring, inexpensive signed index cards of interesting guys. Then I "repurpose" the autographed note cards into standard baseball card sized sketch cards. At first I thought about making them "cut auto" style, but then I was like, screw it, just draw right on the index card. This method keeps the autograph "on card" but the downside is if you screw up the sketch, you kinda ruined the autograph. But these index cards just set me back an average of a couple bucks each, so it wasn't a huge risk or anything. These guys are/were very prolific signers (well, maybe Jay Bell less so, but definitely the other three), which is a big reason the auto index cards were so cheap. So no one should feel bad about me "ruining" a perfectly good signed index card with my amateur doodling.

Instead of filling the back with my sloppy handwriting, I've typed up and printed out backs with a short write-up on the guy, as well as an explanation of the card's origin and something of a COA statement. I subtly snuck in the source image I used for each sketch in the background. They're printed on stickers that I then slap on the back of the sketch. I need to be better at placing them straight and centered, as well as giving the ink plenty of time to dry (smudges easily for a few hours).

Of course I've also got to kick up my art cards by making them glow in the dark and sparkle in the light.

The glowing silhouettes look better in person.

The Feller was the first one I made, and I'll probably hang onto that one. The other 3 have been sent out as holiday gifts to lucky friends of the blog. Hopefully the recipients have received them by today.

I've got a few more signed index cards waiting to be transformed into auto sketch cards in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

Trading with 2x3 really takes me back (to my old house)

Jeff at 2x3 Heroes sent me a nice return trade package recently. Thanks, Jeff! However, this is the 2nd time since I've moved that you've mailed to my old address. This time it didn't get forwarded and I had to pick it up from the old house. Luckily my old landlord happened to be around and was nice enough to get in touch with me so I could swing by and pick it up. But anyways, Jeff and anybody I traded with before February of this year, please go through your old email or "traders addresses" list or whatever you use for addresses and delete all references to my "1533 Main" address. I'm now at the "1242" address. Not to be a bitch about it, but I would hate to miss out on any future awesome card packages, like I nearly did with this one.

Ok, with that out of the way, let's rip open the package and see what I got!

That's a pretty sweet Bryce Harper. It's my first of these "burnt cards" I've seen a lot of on other blogs. This one is extra special because it's got that Xfractor stuff going on, and is #'d 17/25.

Kevin Kouzmanoff bat/ticket relic.. Very cool! Funny that the ticket stub was produced by Topps too.

A couple all-time greats. We'll see a few more of these neat "raised frame" GQ cards before this post is over.

A bunch of Chris Sale cards! More like Chris Wholesale, am I right?

A bunch of Gavin Floyd cards, including my long-awaited first Gavin-on-the-Braves card.

Love getting Willie Stargell in a trade package! This is a great lot of 3 framed Gypsy Queens plus a thick "card that never was" Future Star.

A trio of McGriffs. Love em.

Several Gwynns. Jeff is trying to get me to believe that GQ on the bottom is an image variation, but I think he's lying.

A bunch of Roberto Alomars (plus a couple more that didn't fit on the scanner).

Three of the best pitchers to ever suit up for the Padres. I think that might be my first Brewers card of Trevor.

Here's the last scan of cards. Some sweet ones here, with the card I'm the most happy about probably being the gold Gyorko. It's numbered 0262/2014. Let me ask you a question: What was Jedd Gyorko's batting average at AA in 2012? That's right! .262! This card is his Topps Gold AA 2012 Batting Average eBay 1/1!

Thanks a ton, Jeff! You made me earn it, but this package was definitely worth the trip back to my old neighborhood. Thanks again for the great cards and Merry Christmas.

2015 Archives anticipation

According to Cardboard Connection, looks like 2015 Archives is going to feature designs from 1957, 1976, and 1983 in the base set. I'm pretty happy with that. Those designs haven't been beaten into the ground yet. 57 was obviously used in Heritage a few years back, but otherwise not much dead-horse-beating here. 83, especially, is one of Topps finest moments that they don't salute nearly as often as they could (2 photos required.. not conducive to lazy cardmakers). Inserts include designs from 1968 Topps Game which is kind of a cool idea, as well as 1990 Topps, which might be too soon since it was just a base design in 2013 Archives.. I'd probably have rather seen 1991 used there. But still, no major complains about the designs they picked for this go-round.

Maybe I should be ashamed to admit it, but Archives is honestly the only current product I really have any legitimate excitement for. It's what first helped get me back into the hobby back in 2012. And while I may buy a small handful of other various blasters and hobby boxes throughout the year, only Archives really makes my heart flutter with anticipation. So June can't come soon enough for me. I look forward to giving Topps my money for a hobby box or two.. and the inevitable disappointment from not pulling any decent hits, like always.

Anyways, let's fill this post out with a couple older Archives cards I picked up recently.

Hopefully the Fan Favorites Autographs checklist for 2015 Archives packs a few pleasant surprises. Obviously none perked me up more on the '14 checklist than Bip Roberts' first-ever certified auto. I gobbled up a bunch of them, working on a rainbow of sorts. Even though I already had this /10 purple parallel, I grabbed another one for a decent price in a eBinge a while back. Now I've got #s 09/10 and 02/10. I also picked up another /50 gold parallel because the other one I had was # 13/50 and I wanted a less-unlucky number. But I can't find it at the moment (I'm overdue for a good sorting of the cards I've gotten in the past few months), so no scan for that one today.

Vince Coleman is an old favorite of mine from my early days of collecting. While I'm much less active in adding Vinnies to my collection these days, I was happy to pick up my first auto from him thanks to this cool-looking card (A way better photo than they used on his original '86 Topps card which just features a boring portrait shot.)

This Tewksbury was actually bundled together in an eBay auction with the Vince Coleman, so it was a nice little bonus for virtually no more money. I specifically remember him fondly for his stint on the Padres team of 1996 when San Diego finally got back into the playoffs after a long drought. I could go for some more of that. Hopefully all the off-season moves they've been making lately will pay off in the form of an exciting 2015.

Gift box from Johnny

The holiday surprises continue! John from Johnny's Trading Spot dropped a flat-rate Priority Mail box full of cards on me the other day, mostly Padres. It was a lot of fun going through it and coming up with a fat stack of keepers. Let's check out some highlights.

This probably doesn't count as a Bipping in the traditional sense, but I always love getting Bips.

Benito has lots of cool cards. Well, 90 Fleer isn't one of them, obviously.

I've tried to fight collecting Garry Templeton cards for a while, but I think I gave in.

A key component of the box, there were over 30 cards from El Cajon's own Brian Giles! Here are a few I picked out to scan.

And here are some other various interesting cards, included a Peavy throwback, a young Headley, a young Derrek Lee, a young Phil Nevin, an old "year zero" Mike Scioscia (he signed with the Padres but got injured in spring training and retired), and a Khalil. (I think I need to play with my new scanner's settings a bit to work on improving the quality. The Scioscia, especially, looks terrible here.)

Great cards.. Thanks so much, John! Have a very Merry Christmas! I'll hope to scrape up some Braves to send you before long to try returning the favor.

Vintagey card show haul

Here are a bunch more cards I picked up at the card show this past weekend. I've split up my haul here with the old-school players. (Active/more-recent players will be posted another day.)

Topps was ga-ga for Mickey Mantle up until their contract with his estate ran out a couple years ago (which was probably a good thing, because collectors were getting sick of him. Now if only the same could happen with Ruth, Cobb, Nettles, Kaline, Nettles, etc, Nettles). I hadn't seen this one from 2004 before, though (possibly my favorite flagship design in the past 20 years or so). The corners are a bit dinged, but I'm still happy to add this to my Mantle PC. Looks like 2014 will end without me adding any true vintage Mantles to my collection. I'm ok with that. Maybe I'll target one next year.

And of course I always love adding to my Clemente PC. That Gypsy Queen gold has a nice raised border on it, like an actual frame. The middle card is one of those Renata Galasso cards that I wasn't familiar with until getting schooled last month. And on the right is a reprint of his '62 card.. working toward getting that entire tribute reprint run.

Neat minor league card of a Hall of Famer. Sure, somebody spilled their drink on it in the upper left, but still.

Some Gwynns, including a nicely-centered 84 Fleer, a Pacific card celebrating his 2998th hit (?!!) #'d /3000, and my first-ever (I think) Tek card.

A couple Hank Aaron cards. Actually the AS card is an upgrade for my Dick Allen collection (somebody spilled their drink on my other copy), and the card that's currently in it will now move into my Hank Aaron PC. And there's another Renata Galasso card.

Everybody love Kellogg's 3D cards. A couple guys I collect. No cracking!

At a card show, I don't spend much, if any, time digging in the football bins.. but occasionally a football card will sneak into the baseball bins and catch my eye, as did Joe Montana here.

It's hard for me to pass up Ozzie as a Padre. By the time this '82 Topps sticker came out, he was gone.

Here's a trio of greats to close out the post: A vintage Frank Robinson game card, Lou Brock SSPC, and a Dave Parker 2nd-year.

Not a bad haul of classic ballplayers.

Listia winnings and webtraffic roundup

Time to check out this past week's Listia pickups.

I just got my first Ken Caminiti auto a couple weeks ago, and now I've added another. Of course this one is less cool, being on a '91 Score, uncertified n' all. But still neat to add to the collection for a reasonable amount of credits. I'm inclined to consider it authentic; If someone was going to bother to forge it, they'd undoubtedly do a better looking job than that. (No offence to the late Ken Caminiti.)

I don't know why my new scanner occasionally does a crap job, such as with all the lines on that above scan. Really tempted to rescan it.

--ok, I just tried to rescan it and it still looked bad. I guess my scanner, like most collectors, just hates '91 Score.

Glad to add a Fidrych rookie to my collection. Gotta love this iconic card of the 70s.

Here was a lot of 8 McCovey cards. Between this lot and the McCovey-heavy PWE Hoyling the other day, this week has seen a nice bump to my McCovllection. This was a pretty good deal (557 credits), even though I'm sure I already had 3 or 4 of these.

My Listia credit account is looking pretty fat these days. That $22 pennybox grab bag I bought at the card show a couple months ago has really paid for itself just with the football cards I didn't want. (Hell, the Aaron Rodgers cards alone probably netted me $22 worth of Listia credit.) Lately, I've been too lazy to list separate lots (picking out cards, scanning them, typing up the details), so I've just been putting up "6 random cards from the team of your choice" lots with low Get It Now prices. It's been working great so far. Low effort on my part, and the winners are happy with the random cards they get. I've also tried similar auctions for baseball, basketball, and racing, but the football lots are definitely the best performers. You can check out my current auctions here. I recently toyed with the notion of eBaying a couple cards, but the process for listing an auction was such a run-around that I abandoned my attempt. Now I remember why sellers hate eBay so much.

Anyways, onto the webtraffic roundup. This is my 3rd week doing this. I like it mainly for the ICYMI ("in case you missed it") rundown of the blog posts for the previous 7 days. Gives me the opportunity to give a little push to any particular posts that may have gotten overlooked. But I don't want to come off as either bragging about good traffic or whining about not enough, so let's not put too much importance on any of this. Not sure how long I'll continue with this weekly practice, but here we go.

Mookies and Wookiees (Listia and webtraffic roundup) (12/10) 35 views. As I mentioned last week, my "reader reception" goal for every post is 50 views and a comment. This one fell well short of the 50 views. I blame leading with a basketball card. Hey, I get it-- I too am guilty of passing over posts in my feed that seem to have nothing to do with baseball. There's maybe a 50/50 chance of me clicking on a non-baseball post from a blog that I'm otherwise a loyal reader of. For what it's worth, there are baseball cards in that post once you get past the offending Mookie Blaylock auto!

year-end outstanding trades cleanup (12/11) 52 views. This post reached the goals, but was a failure in that it didn't really do anything. At least I can be relatively assured that I don't owe anyone any cards, apart from a few "I owe ya one" situations. (and in those instances, I typically wait for them to speak up for any tradebait I post, rather bug them with a bunch "do you want this?" messages.)

I went to school with John Barnes and he played in the majors (Guys from Granite) (12/12) 47 views. Sure, this series is basically "just for me" posts, but it's nice when other people read them too. I failed at coming up with a catchy title for this post, so just did my best to summarize it in a sentence.

Vintage from the beat-up box (card show recap) (12/13) 59 views. Not bad. I need to get around to posting about the rest of my haul from the recent card show.

Double, Double, Hoyle and Trouble (12/14) 51 views. The blogosphere has just about run out of clever titles for Mark Hoyle trade posts. I definitely scraped the bottom of the barrell here.

Topps Retired, but I'm still working (12/15) 48 views. Cool.

Too Many Verlanders From the Dollar Store (12/16) 34 views. Blogger again randomly held onto my post for over an hour till it sent it along over blogrolls and whatnot. Hate when that happens. Not that it's a huge deal, but still kind of annoying.

And now for bar graphs..

I think Wrigley Wax is a new one on the referring list, knocking off Torren' Down Yankees. Let's see if Zippy Zappy can mount a comeback and claw back into the ratings next week. (LOL, I should totally turn this into a contest. No, I shouldn't. But if I did, Night Owl would walk away with it.) I gotta admit I don't know what the difference is between "Referring URLs" and "Referring Sites." Seems to be mostly the same sites/URLs in a slightly different order.

As for Search Keywords.. If you look for a serial number and don't find one.. it's probably not a serial numbered card.
Cool that someone was checking out my ATHF poster signed by Master Shake. I have a couple more Aqua Teen collectables I should post about sometime.
I don't know how baseball cards are cut, honestly. Big pieces of cardboard cut up by big, sharp machines, I assume. That'd make for an interesting "How It's Made" segment. Sy Berger's recent passing is another reminder that there's never been a really good documentary made about baseball cards. Hopefully someday. Ken Burns needs to get on that.

Thanks for clicking. See ya next time.


UPDATE! Almost forgot.. speaking of Night Owl, I earned a new Listia badge the other day..

Suck it!