new best card of my collection

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Willie Mays 2003 Topps Retired autograph refractor numbered 24 (jersey number!) out of 25.

You know I love Topps Retired.. especially the autos.. and especially the /25 refractor autos. I'd been thinking about picking up a certified autograph of one of the greatest ballplayers ever (Hall of Stats has him ranked 4th greatest of all-time statistically), and pulled the trigger on this one.

I'm super excited to have a certified auto of the great Willie Mays in my collection now. Let's celebrate with a song. Here are a couple of my favorite little-known songs that mention Willie Mays in them...

A grungy rocker:

And a mellower tune, if that's more your speed:

Thanks for stopping by.

another Ken Caminiti auto

Picked up a new Ken Caminiti autograph recently.

Love these Leaf Signatures cards.

I don't really have many Caminiti cards, for a Padres collector. I wasn't collecting during his mid 90s heyday in San Diego. All the junk-era Astros cards I had from him were purged back when I dumped the bulk of my collection around 2008. For a while there I kinda considered him a black eye for the Padres and the game in general. But a few months ago, I finally came around on him and officially started considering him a guy I collect.

That's my Caminiti PC. Just 10 cards, 3 of which are autographed. So yeah, feel free to unload your Caminiti junk cards on me and help me bulk it up.

Haul from Nachos Grande's 2015 Topps group break

I try to stay away from group breaks since I'm not really a team collector. But they're fun. And I also appreciate a good deal. As Nachos Grande's 2015 Topps Series I break was about to get underway, I saw Chris was offering the 3 still-unclaimed teams together for one low price, so I got onboard.

Phillies, Marlins, and Rays.

No surprise the Florida teams didn't get grabbed, since they generally don't get a lot of love on the cardosphere, but it's a little surprising Philadelphia went unclaimed.

Honestly, I was mainly looking to get a couple decent Giancarlo Stanton cards out of the deal. I didn't hit any mojo blockbusters, but I ended up doing all right.

Here's how the cards stacked out. Phillies had the most cards, Rays the least. Seems I got about 7 or 8 of each base card, along with a few goodies such as inserts and parallels.

I only got a couple Rainbow Foil parallels, but hey, at least one was my boy Giancarlo.

These parallels are generally a bit underwhelming (especially in scans; nearly indistinguishable from the base), but can look kinda cool when the light catches them just right.

The Rays slot was pretty much a bust, with only a single friggin' non-base card coming out of it. But at least that one card was the only auto I got from the break:

Grant Balfour definitely isn't the best name to pull an auto of, but hey, I'll take it!

So yeah, Chris didn't pull any "sick hits" of Giancarlo, but still got a nice lot of his cards out of the deal:

Good stuff. The Chip(z) was a bonus throw-in pack break.

Some other decent Marlins pulls.
Koehler (gold) is #'d 0162/2015 (162? Yes! The "number of regular season baseball games" eBay 1/1!)
Baker (black) is #'d 29/64. Any Jeff Baker collectors out there?

The randomizer claimed a few non-team cards for me, including CNN (Ted Turner), Top 40 Countdown (Casey Kasem), and 3 of those Call Your Shot game cards which I suppose I should scratch and see if they'll win me anything.

The Phillies slot scored me a bunch of decent cards. Steve Carlton is getting a lot of insert-love in this set. The couple of open-mouthed buybacks are kinda cool.

Finally, here's my best hit from the break:

Cole Hamels framed parallel #'d 17/20. Very nice! I had been wanting to add one of these metal framed cards to my collection for a while now. And you could pull a much worse name than Cole Hamels, 3-time All-Star and 2008 postseason hero. Fellow San Diego boy, too.

Thanks for running the break, Chris! Nice bunch of cards.

And if anybody out there needs any Series I base cards from the Phillies, Marlins, or Rays, for the love of God, please let me know and take them from me.

Bob Walk Bow Wow Wows me (and other blogger generosity)

Matthew from Bob Walk The Plank is a hell of a trader. Truth be told, I nominated him for most generous blogger for the Bip Awards (though I'm kinda racked with guilt for not going with Zippy Zappy; and sure, you can't argue with JBF [who won], but I've only done one little trade with him), and I was kind of surprised to see Matt get shutout in the official nominations. It's almost enough for me to "pull a Kanye" over it and say JBF should respect "trade artistry" and hand his award over to Matt. lol. Nah, awards are dumb (yes, I'm a little bitter for getting shutout this year. Why wasn't there a Best Animated Gifs category? or Best Depiction of a Glow-in-the-Dark baseball card?)

But anyways, Matt always delivers with good stuff, but finding cards to knock him out in return is tough. He doesn't seem to have a "needs" or "haves" list for you to consult. But his collecting motto is "I need every Pirate card no matter if I have or not!" (direct quote.) So just send him Pirates (and maybe some WVU Mountaineers) and he'll be happy. Around Christmas, I made him a Jay Bell auto sketch card (at least I could be 100% sure he didn't already have it). More recently, I sent him a couple Pirate prospect auto and one of those silly blog-used relics of mine. We must have our trade cycles synced up, because the day he received my latest package, he had coincidentally just mailed one out to me moments earlier. Let's take a look at the goods.

Mark Loretta auto! Andy Benes buyback #'d 1/5! Jake Peavy jersey relic!

Sean Burroughs auto/relic #'d /999! Phil Nevin bat relic!

And the big boy, Dave Parker auto! With Matt being a Pirates hoarder, that must mean he had 10 of these and didn't want to start a new binder page so he sent this one to me. Thanks a lot for the great cards, Matt!

Next up, P-town Tom shot me a friendly PWE with some more San Diego Podres:

Good stuff. Especially love that see-thru Gwynn, which Tom scored from a dimebox. Thanks, Tom! I'll try to shoot you some Cubs you might need soon.

Finally, JT from the Writer's Journey dropped a surprise PWE on my a few days ago. It was funny because I don't think I ever got anything from him before and I didn't remember even giving him my address. But I figured out that I gave it to him several months ago to get in on his sporadic PWE blasts. So it was a cool unexpected bunch of cards.

Great selection of HOF-caliber Padres. Thanks, JT!

And thank you for stopping by. Take care.

Justin Upton 2013 Triple Threads proof card

Quick post to show off a recent acquisition.

Of all the big-name Padres pickups this offseason, one guy I didn't really have any decent cards of was Justin Upton. I rectified that with this "1-of-1ish" blank back proof card from the Topps Vault. This was really just a throw-in to take advantage of combined shipping (Stay tuned for my other recent pickups from the Vault).

From the description:

2013 Topps Triple Threads Baseball Proof Card! Justin Upton. Direct from Topps' legendary vault comes this original blank back proof card. Proof measures the standard (2 1/2" X 3 1/2") in size and is in excellent condition. This blank back proof card is without the foil stamping shown on the finished card. Collectors, this is a one-time opportunity to obtain a rather unique production item for your Topps baseball card collection!

Kinda cool. I'm hoping Justin thrives in San Diego in his contract year and puts up some big numbers.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

Even if we're just glowing in the dark

A few weeks ago I bought a few more '93 UD Fun Pack Glow Star cards (stickers) in an order from Sportlots or COMC or something.

I basically picked up the cheapest ones I could find (plus Griffey). Let's see, there's Junior, Benito, Baerga, Ozzie, Gooden, Clemens, and Salmon.

I've since officially added the subset to my wantlist, as I try to round up the remaining stickers (hell, I'd be fine with getting dupes, too.. I'd probably stick them somewhere.)

Needs as of today, 2/12/2015:
1993 Upper Deck Fun Pack - Glow Stars sticker subset
48 Mark McGwire, 54 Roberto Alomar, 61 Tom Glavine, 69 Robin Yount, 80 Ryne Sandberg, 86 Eric Karros, 93 Marquis Grissom, 99 Barry Bonds, 130 Cal Ripken Jr., 142 Darren Daulton, 148 Andy Van Slyke, 153 Juan Gonzalez, 173 Andres Galarraga, 179 David Cone, 185 Cecil Fielder, 191 Kirby Puckett, 204 Jim Abbott 

Speaking of glowing cards, I've also made a couple glowing customs already this year. First was an Anthony Rizzo sketch card, made by request for Lonestarr as part of the trade recapped here and here.

As usual, drawing faces is my main downfall. Really botched the chin on Anthony here. (Guess I took liberties and gave him facial hair that he doesn't actually sport.) And I didn't get too creative with the glowing; just the last name glows.

But CC seemed to be happy with it, so that's good.

source image

So that was card #1 from 2015 Baseball Card Breakdown Originals.

The second card in this year's BCB set is the first physical custom I've ever made that's not a "1 of 1." I wanted to make my own blogger card along the lines of the fun auto cards that Fuji, Nachos Grande, and Jaybarkerfan have. But I took it to a ridiculous level by making my own "blog-used" relic card.

Autograph button cards! See, I had an old silk shirt that I had recently decided to turn into a rag because it was falling apart a little. Then I had this "relic" idea, so I brought the shirt out of retirement and wore it when I blogged one day. Then cut it up and made these button relic cards. And yep, you guessed it: that yellow area where I signed does indeed glow in the dark a bit.

That's probably as close as I'll ever come to seeing my name in lights.
(How have real card companies not done something like this yet?? There I go again, making the trading card industry's innovations for them. Just a reminder that I'm open to negotiate for employment opportunities, Topps, Panini, Upper Deck, et al. )

Anyways, 3 of these 7 have already been received by "friends of the blog" trader buddies. Still got 4 left to spring on other folks I trade with over the next several weeks. So do a couple trades with me and perhaps you'll get your very own Baseball Card Breakdown #/7 glow-in-the-dark blog-used button autograph card! LOL

CC P2 (non-baseball from Life and Baseball Cards)

Remember when Lonestarr sent me a bunch of cool cards recently? I showed off some of the baseball cards already, but here are the non-baseball highlights.

Sweet vintage Les Josephson.. not familiar with him, tbh, but I do love me some vintage cardboard all the same. Some other quality pigskin dudes here as well.

Now to basketball. I'm not particularly a Lakers fan, but you gotta love Magic. Shaq and Kobe are ok too, in moderation.

Some more big basketball names.. and yes, more Kobe. The Bill Russell cards are pretty great.

Back to football, here are some Chargers. These names bring me back to the times I followed the team closer than I do these days.

More Chargers.

Finally, let's close this post with a racing card (Jimmie Johnson) and a couple hockey legends.

Thanks again for the great cards, CC!