Another 2014 Prizm Draft box

A few months ago when I pre-ordered my two Archives boxes (*groan*), I threw a hobby box of 2014 Panini Prizm Perennial Draft Picks Baseball in my cart to push my order past the free shipping threshold. It's basically a "half-hobby box" at only 12 packs.

I busted a box of this back in December and it was fun enough, so figured I'd try another one. As with most Panini products, the base cards aren't that great, but there are enough colorful parallels and stuff to keep it interesting, and the guarantee of at least a couple on-card autographs is a draw for me. Plus I'd have an outside shot at pulling one of the several Gavin LaValley parallels I still need from this product.

I used this box as part of my "cardless day breaks," meaning I opened one pack on each day when I otherwise didn't get any new baseball cards; because a day without getting baseball cards is something that no one should ever have to endure. And I finally worked my way through the box, so now I'll show off the highlights.

Although the box doesn't seem to have stated odds anywhere, the types of cards I pulled in this box were all in line with what I had pulled with my first box: 4 autos, 4 color refractors, and 4 regular refractors. (I refuse to call refractors "prizms"! Prizm is the name of the brand! Does Topps have a trademark on the word "refractor"? Why doesn't Panini use that word? It leads to confusion.) I didn't pull anything "super sick" but it was a decent box.

Let's start with the autos:

Unlike last time when one of my four autos was a redemption, this time all are in-hand out of the pack. So that's nice. (..Although, the redemption I pulled last time was the biggest name [Mets' top pick Michael Conforto].. and none of these guys are really big names.)
Ti'quan Forbes hasn't done much yet.
Chase Vallot ("press proof" /199) hasn't been hitting very well.
Isan Diaz seems to be doing ok this year. He gets the award for best signature of the bunch.. reasonably legible.
Jeff Hoffman ("blue mojo" refractor #'d 53/75) - Biggest hit of the box. Hoffman was the 9th overall pick in the 2014 draft despite missing all of that year due to Tommy John surgery. Seems to be off to a solid start this year. I really have a knack for pulling decent Blue Jay cards. Someday I should vacation in France and bring a big box of cards for the Card Poppa Boy (sic).

Here are my color refractors. There's Chase Vallot again. I don't think these other guys are big names. At least they're tradeable teams for me. (assuming "Los Angeles" means Dodgers, not Angels.)

There are the numbered backs.

Here are the regular unnumbered refractors.
That "minors gold" insert seem to be seeded one per box (I pulled Jorge Soler last time).. Kyle Schwarber is a nice pull there.
I remember Zippy Zappy talking about Michael Mader.. it's cool that his Twitter name is DarthMader or something like that.

Here are four base cards (well, non-parallel, at least) of guys I've heard of.
Trea Turner.. *Sigh*.. swapped by the Padres for Wil Myers. I have a feeling San Diego is going to be kicking themselves over that deal in a couple years (if they're not already).
Schwarber again.
Carlos Rodon is good, right?
LUUUUIS Servino I only know because Zippy is big on him.

So that was my 2nd box of 2014 Prizm Draft. Could have been better, could have been worse. At least it was cheap (by modern "guaranteed auto[s]" hobby box standards) and served its purpose of getting me free shipping on my order. Don't think I got many dupes from my earlier box, either; always a plus. I don't see myself buying another box of this (or honestly any Prizm product ever again.. [really burnt out on that metallic silver at this point].. but never say never.)

It's funny that in two boxes, I haven't pulled a single goddamn Gavin LaValley.. not even the base card, much less a fancy parallel I needed. Bummer.

Pretty much all these cards are available for trade (I might wanna just hang onto the two Schwarbers and the Hoffman auto), so let me know if you're interested in anything. Otherwise, I'll hold onto them and hope 1 or 2 of these guys eventually pans out to be a quality major leaguer.

My first TTM request as a kid

To recap, last month I sent out my first-ever* pair of through-the-mail autograph requests. Both were to guys who graduated from the same high school as me and are currently trying to work their way up to the majors. Brian Humphries gloriously returned the card signed, but the other TTM attempt, to Johnny Omahen, is still at large.

Good news is Omahen was recently named a California League All-Star and was soon thereafter promoted to AA just a few days after I put the request in the mail. Looks like Johnny has had a couple quality starts to kick off his AA career in Mobile so far. Best of luck to him! But now I'm left with the uncertainty of what'll happen to my request (I mean, there's always uncertainty, I know, but even more now). Hopefully my request will find its way to him, or at least get returned to me unsigned so I can try again (I've only got one other Omahen card and don't want to risk sending it. And he doesn't have any cards on eBay right now besides expensive team sets he's included in.)

Oh well, that's part of the excitement of TTMs, I guess.

I also just dropped another request in the mail over the holiday weekend, this one to Gavin Glanz. He's one of the lesser-known Greatest Gavins, and the only active pro baseball Gavin of whom I don't have an autograph (not counting Frendy Gavin, who, after missing all of 2014, is pitching again in the Dominican Summer League). So finger's crossed that one comes back successfully soon.

These are two Gavin Glanz cards I recently bought online. I actually got a couple copies of the one on the right (an obvious homage to 1993 Topps) and used the extra for the TTM.

Glanz pitched for the Grand Junction Rockies on Monday night, matching the longest start for the team this season with 6.2 innings, giving up 1 earned run. I'd like to imagine that my TTM request arrived earlier that day and it inspired him to have a good outing! lol

Not really on-topic for this post, but here's another Brian Humphries card I bought from the same seller to combine shipping:

You always remember your first (TTM success)

Pretty cool.

*So while last month was my first attempt at a TTM with baseball cards, I kinda once sent out a TTM autograph request when I was a kid back in the late 80s. Might as well tell that little story here.

There used to be a drawing show on PBS called The Secret City (and I think later changed its name to Draw Squad). I really liked the show and watched it nearly everyday after school. It was a fun program starring "Commander Mark" (Mark Kistler) basically teaching kids to how to draw better, with emphasis on shading and 3D perspective. Commander Mark would show you how to draw silly things like happy pigs and cartoon aliens popping out of UFOs. I'd often try drawing along at home, and while I never stuck with it enough to be all that great, I suppose I can credit that show for encouraging my creativity and to at least have a desire to be a decent artist.

I even got my mom to order some of his Draw Squad VHS tapes for me. Heck, I even got a t-shirt!

On the show, Commander Mark would sometimes ask viewers to write in and tell him about their drawing progress. So one time, I actually did write him a letter telling him I really liked the show and it was helping me with my drawing and all that. I was hoping he'd write me back and maybe send a signed photo. I honestly can't remember for sure if I explicitly asked him for an autograph, but I think I did..?

I eventually got back a standard "thanks for watching" form letter and on the reverse was an unimpressive b&w photocopy of a signed headshot. Even as a kid I was very aware it was just a facsimile autograph, likely printed off by the hundreds, and not that cool to receive. But hey, it was something. I don't think I bothered to include a SASE, though I can't recall for sure.

Took me a while to dig up the letter, but I'm a sentimental packrat who hangs onto stuff like this.

I had it in a cheap frame for a while, hence the trimming.

As I got older, my local PBS station stopped carrying the show and I got out of it. A year or two passed and one day in 5th grade, Mark Kistler came and gave a presentation at my elementary school. But what sucks is I was unaware and played hooky that day (When I was a kid I was pretty bad about staying home from school at the slightest scratch in the back of my throat as an excuse to play NES in my jammies all day). My friends said it was a dumb assembly that bored them and that I was lucky to have missed it, but I was incredibly jealous and kicking myself hard for skipping school that day. It would have been very cool to see Commander Mark in person, and I probably could have gotten a real autograph from him, too! Damn.

Looks like Mark Kistler is still out there doing his thing and has an active online presence, with markkistler.com and plenty of YouTube videos and stuff. Hey. maybe I should give him another try at a real TTM these nearly 30 years later!

Chuck Muncie

As my time as a Chargers fan approaches its end (yeah, I don't think my loyalty will carryover to the Los Angeles Chargers of Carson), the direction of my football collection is up in the air. I suppose I can still celebrate days-gone-by with old cards. I'll still enjoy picking up cards of LaDainian Tomlinson, for example. But my heart won't totally be in it. Not that I've really followed the team much for the past 5 years or so anyways.

But cool vintage football cards, sure, still a place for them in my collection for now. This post is just to show off a couple Chuck Muncie cards.

Gotta love this card! Athletes with distinctive eyewear are easy to be a fan of, aren't they? (Chris Sabo, Kent Tekulve, et al.) The glasses and the facial hair would make him a stylish hipster of today. I think he'd fit in the band TV on the Radio just fine.

Muncie's heyday was before my time, so I wasn't familiar with him beyond a couple cards that made their way into my collection. But I researched it a bit (Wikipedia), and his is an interesting story. Essentially, he was an outstanding player with his career brought down by drug addiction, eventually leading to homelessness and prison. But he redeemed himself later in life, doing lots of good in the world, such as starting a nonprofit organization and working with troubled kids. He died in 2013 at the age of 60.

I went looking for an auto of his to pick up and found he had one in 2013 Archives Football (hey, same design as the card up top!). I set an eBay search waiting for one at a good price, and a few weeks later, this one popped up cheap. Got out the door with it for $5.80. (Not sure why the scan makes it look like the lower right corner is bent. Maybe a dog hair or something.)

Thanks for reading.

Smells like . . . Victory

Happy 4th, all!

I recently completed my first trade with Tim B. of I Love the Smell of Cardboard in the Morning. He hooked me up with the following good stuff!

My honeybunny, AJ Lee! I've been wanting her 2014 Topps and/or Chrome card for a while now, so I was very happy to find it among the cards from Tim. But truth be told, I don't think it's really all that flattering of a photo. It makes me think of this:

Bip! Always love getting cards of Mr. Roberts.

A few nice McCovey cards.

Khalil Greene! That rookie auto refractor may very well now be the nicest card in my modest Khalil Khallection. Great looking khard!

A couple sweet 2013 parallels of dark horse, Jedd Gyorko! He got sent down to AAA for a spell, but is back now and was the hero yesterday, pretty much single-handedly beating the Cardinals. Let's hope he keeps that shit up!

I know we're celebrating America today, but let's tip our cap to our neighbors up North.

Tim snuck some other sports on me too, with a 4-pack of Marshall Faulk (my fellow SDSU alum), Ricky Williams (another San Diego-raised guy) from his stint as a minor league baseball player, and Michael Jordan (no San Diego ties that I'm aware of.. but let's not hold it against him.)

2004 Topps Chrome black refractors are amongst my all-time favorite looking cards! Here's one more down to finishing the set (I've still got a long way to go). Plus a sweet Gavin Floyd rookie.

I also love these 2011 Topps diamond parallels or whatever they are. So sparkly!

And liquorfractors are also on my shortlist of all-time favorite parallels. Someday I'll seriously work on a frankenset of sparkly 2011 Topps parallels. Tim definitely helped me out on that quest.

Go Padres!

Some greats!

Finally, a really nice Marcus Giles relic.

Thanks so much, Tim! You really nailed it with this trade! Hopefully the cards I sent you in return can hold a candle.

And again, Happy 4th of July, everybody. Be safe.

A Garvey rookie, some 71s, and a drop in the Marquis bucket

This post is similar to yesterday's post.. leading off with an iconic RC of the 1970s.

My trader bud Kevin G. is also working on 1971 Topps and we swap our dupes sometimes. He recently hooked me up with the gorgeous Steve Garvey rookie card. Not only is this a key need for my setbuild, but a dearly-wanted card for my collection in general. Growing up in San Diego and becoming aware of baseball right around the time of Garvey's 1984 heroics leading the Padres to the World Series, he's always been a bit of a mythical figure to me, held in high esteem.

But yeah anyways, this is an incredible card. This one happens to be in excellent condition (by '71 Topps standards, at least). If this is the card Kevin upgraded, his new copy must be friggin' pristine!

The back looks great too.

Kevin kept the hits coming...

A Reggie third-year! I already have this card in my Reggie Jackson PC, but it's great to get this other one from Kevin so I don't have to share it with my setbuild. This one is a bit beaten up, but not too bad besides the paper loss up top. As I've stressed in the past, for my 71 Topps set, I will not care at all about condition. If an upgrade falls into my lap, great, but I don't plan on actively working to upgrade any cards.

I'm tempted to commit a collector sin and take a black sharpie to that spot up top just so it won't be such an eyesore. Thoughts? (Talk me out of it?)

Back doesn't look too bad.

More 71 needs!

And more!

I'm now on the cusp of hitting the 75% complete mark with this set. Thanks a lot, Kevin! I will continue to try digging up cards you need in return.

Before we wrap things up, here's a bonus 1-card PWE that arrived the other day from Nate at Big 44. We just traded a couple weeks ago, but he had forgotten to include this 90 UD Marquis Grissom for me.

Always love adding another copy of this card to my silly quest of 1000 copies. I've still got a long way to go and every one is appreciated.

Thanks again, Nate and Kevin!

And thanks for reading.. Hope you all have a great holiday weekend. Go America!

A Yount rookie, some 71s, and a 2x3 contest win

Mark Hoyle sent me some great vintage cards recently, as he's wont to do. Though he already owned one, he picked up this iconic card below at a recent card show for a good price figuring somebody could use it.. and happy to say, I was the lucky recipient!

Sometime in the past 40 years, somebody seems to have attempted to touch up the corners with a marker and they weren't all that precise about it. But hey, I'm very happy to have the card, regardless!

I'm only just now noticing the facsimile autograph says "Rob Yount." Didn't know he ever went by Rob.

And speaking of names, what's the "R." stand for? The internet is telling me that R didn't stand for anything, his middle name is just "R." (or maybe "Rachel"? But that might be an unsubstantiated urban legend. No parents could be that cruel. Robin is already a gender neutral name.)

I have this song in my iTunes.

"Does Robin Yount have a brother?" LOL at the question. It'd be funny if the answer was "No." and there was just a cartoon of a guy standing alone. "Larry Yount" isn't the proper answer to the question. It should be, "Yeah, he does. His brother's named Larry."

I wasn't familiar with Larry Yount, but turns out his was a pitcher who has a very odd MLB career stat line of 1 game, zero batters faced.

He has one of the stranger lines in the Baseball Encyclopedia. Yount was injured warming up on September 15, 1971. Since he was announced, he entered the game, but he did not throw a major league pitch. He was never recalled to the majors after that so he is listed with 1 game played but no batters faced. (baseball-reference.com)

But yeah, things worked out better for Robin, and this is probably one of the best cards of the 70s and I'm very happy to now own it!

Mark also hooked me up with several 1971 Topps cards he had recently upgraded in his set.

A few postseason highlight cards, a couple unchecked checklists, and a couple LL cards with some big names.

Great stuff! Thanks a lot, Mark!

Let's wrap up this post with a contest win from 2x3 Heroes. I didn't exactly have the correct answer to his question, but lucky for me, no one else did either, and at least I was in the ballpark with my answer, so the judges awarded me the prize. Here's what I won:

A couple prospect autos, plus a couple Gavin Floyd cards thrown in as a bonus! Big thanks, Jeff. You got that damn Police song stuck in my head for a week, but I think it was worth it! Sweet autos of Jordan Schwartz (#'d 749/799) and Andrew Triggs (#'d 33/50), two cards Jeff pulled that didn't fit in his collection. To borrow from Mel Brooks, "the Schwartz" has not been with Jordan this year, with an ERA over 10.00 in A ball. But Triggs seems to have solved the equation of AA batters, with strong numbers so far this year.

Thanks again to Mark and Jeff for the cards! I really appreciate it.

A Wallet Card Update (winner announced)

Hey, we're halfway through 2015! Although my blogging claim to fame may be "the guy who came up with Wallet Card" back at the beginning of the year, maybe you've noticed that I've only done like one or two real wallet card posts since then myself. Probably the biggest reason for this is, gotta admit, I don't actually own a smartphone. I've still got an old flip-phone without much of a camera in it. My main camera is big and heavy, so I don't lug it out-n-about very often. So most of the time if I want to take a picture while I'm out, I have to borrow my wife's phone. She had actually passed her old iPhone down to me, which I essentially just used as a pocket camera sometimes (no phone service or internet [unless I happened to be in wifi range]). But over the past few months, it'd been acting up, and was officially put down for good a few weeks ago as I accidentally cracked it in a desperate last attempt to fix it. Chances are I'll finally pony up for a smartphone of my own one of these years, but for now, my random wallet card pictures will be limited.

Good-bye, old friend.

But other collectors have definitely taken the ball and ran with it. There have been lots of great photos shared with wallet cards popping up in various awesome and interesting places. I love checking them all out on Twitter and the blogs and am proud to have had a hand in the phenomenon.

I don't think anyone would argue if I said that one individual in particular has risen to the king of wallet card. That's right, the Junior Junkie has been killing it. Let's see, there's been a trip to see the Northern Lights, an extensive multi-part feature at Mardi Gras (I'm still waiting on that link for the too-hot-for-the-blog photos), and meeting TV's Mr. Belding, just to name a few of the many highlights. Upper Deck has been supportive, with many re-tweets and even a blog post at the official Upper Deck site praising his adventures.

Therefore, it was an easy decision a while back when I went ahead and "officially" named TJ the first-ever Wallet Card Champion.

Yeah, I know the year is only half over, but I think it was a safe bet. Who knows, maybe I'll name another champion at the end of the year. Remember, there aren't really rules, it's just something fun to do. (And I don't necessarily have to be Official Mr. Wallet Card Commissioner. Honestly, that's more pressure than I'd like. Anyone is welcome to award prizes as they see fit.)

So what prizes did TJ win for his WC Championship title?

Check this out:

This is an amazing oversized "card" signed by The Kid himself.

Let's consider this his Grand Prize. ..though, yes, I admit, I didn't personally award it to him, but hey, that's the magic of wallet card! When you play the game with all your heart, prizes just come to you. Sometimes the "prize" is deeper and intangible, like going on a wonderful adventure, or learning a fascinating lesson or gaining a new appreciation of life or some crap like that. But in this instance, the prize was a sweet-ass autographed Griffey display piece.

I did actually send TJ some "prize package" stuff myself, though, including a few of those custom magnet cards I made a few months ago. I also made him a sketch card of one of his favorite obscure ballplayers, Bryan Clutterbuck:

 And here it is in action:

So congratulations again to TJ for his incredible wallet card performance!

And thanks to everyone else who has been going all out with #walletcard over these past 6 months! Again, it's great checking out all the photos and stories, so please keep them coming!

A specific honorable mention should go to Bo at Baseball Cards Come to Life who has been taking many great wallet card photos at various interesting places around NYC.

I'll go ahead and dump some of my walletcard photos here to finish out the post.

Here's Wallet Tony with a homemade card for my wife. I think this was from her birthday, but maybe Valentine's Day? Hey, they're both in February.

Here's Valentine's Day getting a nice flight of beers at a walking-distance-from-home brewery, even nice enough of a day to bring the dog and eat outside. That was fun.

Here's a blurry shot from another outdoor meal out with the pup. I think this was at a place called Lucky Lab, somewhat of a regular haunt for us. According to the "last modified" date on the photo, this was from January 15th.. wow, that was a long time ago. And a cold part of the year to be eating outside. Well, Annie's a cute, sweet pooch, so we love taking her with us whenever we can.

Oh, here's a crazy one.. One afternoon in April it just started hailing really hard. It was practically like snow.

Now let's close with a good one:

Back home after a nice weekend on the coast with the fam. Here's #walletcard Gwynn sticking his toe in the Pacific. pic.twitter.com/J7loPwEF8N

— Breakdown Cards (@breakdowncards) May 4, 2015

That was a fun little trip from a couple months ago. I don't think I'll have the chance to dip Tony in the Atlantic by the end of the year, but it'd be cool to "bookend" the country like that.

Well, that's it for today! Thanks for everything.