Swung a sweet trade with fellow Portland card-blogger Kerry from Cards on Cards recently.
I picked up the Topps Throwback Thursdays set inspired by this card a while back, and figured I should get around to adding the original to my little Jeter PC, and Kerry graciously hooked me up.
This George Brett jersey swatch was the catalyst for the deal. Kerry was lucky enough to pull it from a retail pack and was looking to swap it for redbirds, which I was definitely interested in helping him with. A couple other nice looking Brett cards along for the ride. With the relic to go along with the auto I picked up last year, just his iconic 1975 RC needed to complete a Brett trifecta. Someday!
Kerry also pulled this sweet 2016 Donruss Optic black bordered parallel 15/25, an excellent addition to my Cutch PC.
McCutchen's future teammate? If they trade for him, and he and Harper put up numbers in the range of their MVP years, look out.
Good boost to my Bryce PC here.
A couple legends.
Carlos Correa and Trea Turner, a couple slick young shortstops.
More slick young shortstops!
And some other dudes I collect.
I opened lots of 2016 Archives-- well, 2 hobby boxes and a blaster-- and the terrible collation gave me many doubles and even several triples. But I didn't pull the Trout base card. Kerry kindly helped me plug that PC hole.
Great stuff! Thanks, man! Hope you like all I sent your way.
You might recall I put together a little 9-card Stranger Things custom set of my own back in September. Travis at PunkRockPaint recently one-upped me with an impeccably crafted set complete with throwback box and wrappers.
You cardsphere old-timers likely remember PunkRockPaint as a fun blog featuring lots of cool customs and the like. (He's a Padres fan too! A Padres card-collector who makes quirky customs? It's like I have a twin!) Sadly, he doesn't blog much anymore, but you can still find him on Twitter, @PunkRockPaint.
Travis put out a really cool Star Wars inspired baseball sticker set a few months back, and I nearly pulled the trigger, but ultimately held off. This time he was offering his Stranger Things sets pre-ordered for the price of a blaster, and I went for it.
Comes in a cool box similar to old retail boxes of packs. Took a pic of me holding it so you can get a sense of scale.
4 packs, but 2 are dupes besides the alternate wrapper, so you get 2 complete sets of cards total.
Even the wrappers look pretty authentic!
Here's the first pack. Love the police cards! The fake Eggo gum is a nice touch.
Second pack in highlighted by faux stickers.
Here's a taste of the backs. As you can see, I got set #35 out of 100 produced (I think they've sold out already). I'm excited to take some time giving the cards a closer look and reading everything shortly.
So yeah, there you go. Awesome set of customs paying tribute to one of the best shows of the year. Great work, Travis!
Portland doesn't get much snow, so when it does snow here, it's a good excuse to take the day off and not stress over the chaotic commute.
That means a fun day at home with the pup.
She likes catching snowballs.
She even wrote her name in the snow. Of course, being an illiterate dog, she doesn't know letters, so she drew her face instead.
And a little something for the papa.
But you came here for baseball cards. And you're in luck because Matt over at Bob Walk The Plank just sent me a few good ones!
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and this 12/25 auto of one of my top PC guys at the moment is a great addition! Despite the design looking stickerish, those squiggles are on-card, which is nice.
I just showed off a 2016 Topps Chrome Travis Jankowski auto I got the other day, and Matt was concerned he may have just dropped a dupe my way. But nope, the card I got previously was the base, unnumbered version.. this here is the purple /250 parallel.. very cool!
Some trade rumors around Jankowski.. Rangers asking about him? Hmm.. I hope he sticks around.
Oh, speaking of Padres moves.. did you hear they stole away Cardsphere Hero Luis Torrens from the Yankees (via the Reds) in the Rule 5 draft?!! I'm excited about that (while also wishing Zippy Zappy my somber condolences) and hope he sticks around and flourishes in San Diego.
And the last card is this Trout RC reprint. Funny story behind this is that Matt emailed me a while back saying he had a 2011 Update Trout for me. So I had kinda be expecting it, and made reference to it the other day when I ripped some 2011 Update, unsuccessfully hoping to pull one. Matt then gave me a heads-up that there was a switch and the reprint was sent instead, but would be getting me out a real one soon. Ha, that would be a good way to punk a fellow trader.. send them a reprint of the card they were expecting. But no, this one is fine too!
Great stuff! Big thanks for the cards, Matt! I'll be getting a return package out in the mail to you very soon.
M for Mom? She came through with a super high-end box of baseball cards for me to break on my upcoming birthday. Pretty damn excited for it! With my luck, it'll be a Henry Owens hot box, but who knows, maybe I'll pull something to almost halfway justify the SRP. Check back on the 24th and we'll see what I pull.
In addition to waiting for the mail, I spent much of my day off yesterday working on little surprises for some lucky trader buddies. Remember last year I sent out a bunch of LaMarr Hoyt Santa ornament cards? Ha, I hope those of you who got one remember to put it on the tree this year! This year's gift is another fun one, though a bit more evergreen.
Oh yeah, I also did those Cardsphere Heroes customs last year. Those were fun, but there won't be a 2016 version of them. Unlike Topps, I don't feel obligated to put out certain products every year (Seriously, would it kill them to alternate Ginter and Gypsy Queen every other year? It'd probably help keep the sets fresh and boost sales.)
Anyways, I hope to get those mailings out this coming weekend. Gonna try to get 24 or 25 of them done.
Now let's check out a few random cards from my latest COMC order.
I went looking for fun Adventure Time autos and ended up with this Erik Estrada hard-signed card (and I do mean hard signed; you can see the indentation of the pen.Also, I'm pretty sure he had an erection when he signed this; They don't call him King Worm for nothing!). He's probably best known for his time on the 70s tv show CHiPs. I remember him fondly as the voice of Marco on SeaLab 2021. But yeah, another cool non-sports for my pop culture autos collection, along with recent pickups Val Kilmer and Arsenio Hall.
A fine addition to my Manuel Margot PC. 2017 NL ROY.. calling it now!
Or maybe I'm wrong and he'll be a bust on the level of another former Padres prospect such as...
I've been enjoying these campy Spokane Indians "mall cards" on the blogs lately, mainly on Baseball Cards Come To Life, and was happy to find one that fit nicely into my own collection. Dave Staton was an upcoming stud I remember being excited about back in my early days of collecting. He never got it together in the majors, but at least he's got this funky minor league card. Looks like he's in some herbal wellness store.. the box behind him seems to say Nature's Way Herb Garden and looks like there are various supplements on the shelves.
I grabbed a lot of Cubs in my COMC order, mostly loading up on trading fodder for my many Northside faithful trader buddies, but here are 3 for me. Always love adding to my Rod Beck PC, especially a sweet numbered Pacific parallel. Rizzo is a recent PC, and that Museum Collection card is pretty nice. That Turkey Red card is Phil Nevin. Gotta admit I saw that card on Tony Burb's wantlist and tracked it down as his only mainstream Cubs card. Sorry, Tony, but I collect the former Padres slugger, so I think I got to hang onto this one for the PC. But if it's any consolation, you're included in my holiday blast mailings!
December 6th, 2016 will go down in my personal history as The Day The Cards Came. I got my Black Friday order from Blowout Cards, a gift order from Blowout Cards to me from mom (one very expensive box!), and my big COMC order. (The COMC order should have arrived last Saturday, but the postman was lame and just left a slip rather than knock on the door for my signature.. I was home all morning but he snuck by like a ninja.) But anyways, yeah, this has got to be the single biggest mailday for me ever, cardwise.
As I've previously mentioned, my BF box order will be rationed out over the next year (as is my plan, at least). One snag to that schedule arose when Blowout let me know there was an inventory error, and they were actually out of 2008 Upper Deck SP Authentic Baseball. Honestly, that was a box I wasn't super excited about anyways, and had it penciled in for the last box on my list before the 6th and final 2014 Prizm Draft box (not saving the best for last, just sticking it down there because I didn't care much). So it was kind of a win-win for me, as I got a refund for that box, still got free shipping although factoring out that box would take me under the threshold, plus they gave me a $10 gift certificate for my next order. So that's cool. For now, I'll leave the October 2017 slot in my monthly box-breaking empty, and probably find something else to put there long before we get to that point.
Here's the box I've scheduled for December 2016. It was the most expensive box of my Black Friday orders, so I kinda wanna get it out of the way. These things typically run in the neighborhood of $100 these days, though Blowout had a pretty hefty discount going as part of their big sale.
The 2011 Topps Baseball Value Box includes 5 packs of 2011 Topps Update and 1 pack of 2011 Bowman Chrome. As with any product containing unopened 2011 Topps Update, it's not cheap thanks to the Mike Trout RC. If you pull that base card, you're sitting pretty. And if you luck out and pull a parallel of it, you really hit the jackpot. There are also a few other big rookies to chase, including Goldschmidt, Rizzo, and Altuve. As for 2011 Bowman Chrome, Trout and Bryce Harper are the best cards in there.
In addition to hoping to pull one or more of those guys, let's not forget my ongoing 2011 Topps parallel frankenset. So maybe I'll get lucky and score a couple decent additions there. In spite of that huge project of mine, this actually marks the first time I've busted any 2011 Topps product, if you can believe that, as I didn't ease back into the hobby until a year later when I discovered 2012 Archives.
So with those hopes and expectations (drafting this part of the post before I've ripped it), let's get to it!...
Looks like these boxes came with 1 of 3 different special Bryce Harper refractors. This was in a separate little pack with an expired diamond giveaway card. I thought I might already have this one, but now I can't find it, so maybe not.
First pack doesn't have much for me. Pretty sure I already have that Neshek.
I needed that Rick Ankiel parallel for my frankenset, so that's cool.
Third pack isn't too bad.. Moustakas RC, Kershaw AS, and a Blyleven mini.
Paul Molitor mini is kinda cool.
Last pack of Update gives me 2 shiny parallels.. but just my luck, I already had them both. Bummer. Kemp AS for the PC, at least.
And to close with the one pack of Chrome...
Well, I collect Wil Myers, so that's not a bad card for me to pull, somewhat salvaging the 4-card pack.
But yeah, pretty much a brutal break, as I was fearing. No Trout or anybody close to that, but I can find solace that I may have that card on the way from a trader buddy soon.
Hopefully I have better luck with the rest of my boxes, though I'll have to wait a while to find out.
A couple nice trade packages came in this week. One from a first-time trading partner, and one from an old trader-bud of mine.
First was a trade with a guy on Twitter, @Jmack. It took us a while, but we eventually hammered out a deal.
Here are a couple shiny, /75 autos of A.J. Reed. The kid can mash in the minors, but fizzled in an extended opportunity in Houston last season. I'm hoping he can figure out major league pitching in 2017, because these are pretty sweet cards to highlight my li'l PC of the guy.
This trio of young Padres outfielders will be counted on heavily for San Diego to put up a respectable record next year. Great additions for my Padres collection.
A couple pretty cards here doing their thing, with a cracked ice (or whatever) Mookie Betts and a rainbow foil (or whatever) Trevor Story.
A pair of Conforto additions for my PC. Last season he got off to a hot start, then cooled way down, got sent to AAA and hit .422 before getting called back up. Hoping he can put it all together in 2017.
These are the types of cards that are in SCC's wheelhouse.. funky 90s inserts. I think there are holograms in there somewhere, but they don't show up very well. Cool cards, regardless.
Very nice trio of Kershaws! The Studio picture is a bit odd (is he gonna do a baseball "mic drop"? Is he a baseball zombie? what?), but I'll take it.
And 3 sweet Chris Sale cards. Curious to see if he's gotta get dealt this winter.
And here's another guy not likely to be with the same team next year. That's kind of a bummer for the fans. But with me being a player collector, it's not a big deal to me and I'll keep on collecting him regardless wherever he ends up. Anyways, a couple nice PC additions here.
Love these Josh Donaldsons from Heritage.
Sport Lad snuck in a Yankee even though I explicitly state I only collect non-Yankee Bambinos. To the trash with this one! j/k
SSC is a big Junior collector, so he must've had a dupe of that Bunt. I'll take it!
And some more cool cards, too!
SCC gave me a heads up that a few dupes were included, as I pulled these 3 cards from a blaster last week just after his trade package was sealed up. But no harm done here, as I'm sure I can find takers to rehome them.
So yeah, very nice bunch of cards there! I'll round up a return package ASAP.
Well, thanks for reading. My big Black Friday COMC order is arriving today, so I'll have a bunch of stuff to post about this coming week!
I've been a big Ghostbusters fan since I was a kid. It might even be my most-watched film ever. Back in the day, my friends and I would pop in an old taped-off-TV copy everytime I had a sleepover. It was like a tradition. We loved it. I was a fan of the sequel, as well, and wore out the soundtrack cassettes to both films. I was also a loyal watcher of the cartoon and owned many of the toys.
As I got older, my fandom subsided a bit. Gotta admit I never bothered to pick up the DVD. And I realized Ghostbusters 2 wasn't very good upon rewatching as an adult. My wife and I caught the reboot a couple months ago after it made its way into the cheap theaters. I thought it was pretty decent, but nothing incredible. But yeah, I'd still rank the original film on the shortlist of my all-time favorites. We rented it last month (the reboot gave us a hankering for the original) and it's still great. I've never been great at quoting movie lines, but that's one I can nearly recite in its entirety as I watch.
Anyhoo, then the other week, I watched a doc on Netflix called Ghostheads about hardcore fans of the franchise. That was kinda cool. While it's not the same thing, there are some parallels with that fan community and us on the cardsphere... A bunch of people coming together to dork out over something we all love, but each with our own way of going about it.
So while I'm watching the doc, I took a look on eBay for any decent prices on autos from the Ghostbusters card set that came out a few months back. (I had been wanting to pick up a box if I could find a good Black Friday sale price, but came up empty.) The big names in the auto checklist aren't cheap. What you can find in the sub-blaster price range is mostly Walter Peck and actors from other ancillary roles.
But then I saw an auction for an Arsenio Hall autograph with a $9.99 opening bid and a few days left.. I didn't have high hopes of my chances bringing it home at a comfortable price, but a few days later when it ended, mine was the lone bid! I thought that was a pretty good deal, and checking the completed auctions confirms that for me, as it's easily the lowest priced sale listed for that card.
And this is like a double hit for me, as I definitely watched a ton of Real Ghostbusters when I was a kid, and not long after that, I remember Arsenio's late night show was the hottest tv show among us at my middle school for a while, and I'd often stay up late to try catching a bit of it. I don't think I even knew he was the voice of the animated Winston back then. But yep, he was (for the first 3 seasons, anyway), and now I've got this nostalgic double-whammy hit for my card collection.
As a little bonus story to tie into this post... I had been thinking about mixing Portlandia into our Netflix rotation after some time away from it, and yesterday we started rewatching it from the first episode. Not long into the episode, there's that sketch where a couple are dining out and they asks the waitress a bunch of questions about the background of the chicken on the menu. I thought the waitress looked super familiar, and some quick googling confirmed for me that, yes, I worked with that lady!
No fooling! At my last job, she was in the Sales department and I was in Quality Assurance. Dana started after me, but we worked together for around a year and a half. It wasn't that big of a company, and while we didn't really work directly together much, we had a few brief typical co-worker interactions.
I know it's not the meatiest part ever, but she's definitely got chops as a real actress. They must've liked her on the show, because she's appeared in seven episodes, including a couple from this year that I haven't seen yet. So I'll be looking forward to spotting her as I slowly make my way through the series. Checking her imdb credits, she's also had a recurring role on Grimm, another show shot here in Portland (haven't seen it but my father-in-law loves it and likes to tell a story about how he was the guy who gave the idea to the show's creator in a chance meeting.. I'm sure greatly embellished in typical "dad" fashion). [CORRECTION: He only claims to have suggested a certain character that appeared in one episode {mouse?}, not the entire show. I suppose that's more plausible.]
Anyways, that really tripped me out. If you live in Portland, watching Portlandia will often have you saying "hey, I've been there!" or "hey, I think I know that guy in the background!" but to realize you worked down the hall from someone who had a substantial role, that takes the phenomenon to another level.
And to tie it back into this post: I worked with Dana, Dana worked with Fred Armisen, who obviously had quite the run on Saturday Night Live, as did Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd. Fred and Bill did at least one skit together a while back. So that means I'm only a couple degrees of separation from working on Ghostbusters. Sweet!!!
