Twelve new 12/25 cards

Merry Christmas to those who celebrate! I've picked up several additions to my collection of 12/25 "Christmas Cards" this year and rounded up 12 to show off on this special day. We're gonna ring the Bell to kick things off...

You can't spell "Jingle Bells" without J. Bell! Number 12 in our countdown is Jay Bell, though it might be hard to read with his name, being xfracted as it is.

Bell was among the game's better middle infielders during the 90s. Kinda weird for me when a guy I remember from when I was a kid in the overproduction era-- a non-star at that-- sticks around long enough to also have Xfractors and the like. Jay got a ring with the '01 D-backs and wrapped up his career in 2003 with the Mets. He didn't get any "final tribute" cards in 2004, so 2003 is his swan song for playing-days cards.

Mixing it up with some non-baseball. I like my Christmas Card Collection to be diverse, after all. Colby Jones and Julian Phillips are the basketball duo. Not familiar with either of them, but I got it for a few bucks in a recent combined-shipping eBay purchase. But the hockey card I targeted because the guy is named Gavin Brindley, and I sure love scoring a double bullseye of a guy named Gavin on a 12/25 card. (A rare triple bullseye is coming up in a moment, so get psyched for that! lol)

Are you ready for some football? I'm not-- haven't given much attention to pigskin for several years now-- but I'm omnivorous when it comes to my card collection. Another couple combined-shipping throw-ins. BJ Ojulari is a kinda fun name and Zach Charbonnet is representing my "local" team up here in the PNW. These are numbered on the back, so let's take a look...

Gah, sorry about the blurry photos. Like I said last post, I'm hoping the light box I asked for got this Christmas helps sharpen up my photos on the blog (elsewise I guess I should maybe try scanning more, but I tend to prefer the quickness of snapping photos.)

Another basketball guy in Villanova's Mark Armstrong, plus a soccer guy named Michele De Gregorio.

 12/25 on the back.

Another Gavin makes it into this year's countdown. A first round pick in 2022, Cross has spent the past couple seasons in Double-A with middling results, so his cards have been more affordable than back when he was a hotter prospect. Might as well pick up a cheap 12/25 auto when the opportunity presents itself.

Here's the triple bullseye I mentioned. Card numbered 12/25, of my favorite team, of a guy who went to the same high school as me.

I've had a big Trenton Brooks post drafting for a while now, but I haven't published it because I keep adding parallels and always seem to have another one in the mail, so I wait for that, but then there's another one also coming, and it goes on like that. LOL But no, sometime soon I'll stick a fork in that post and show off a bunch of modern parallels-- really my first taste of "rainbowing" in the Fanatics era. But for now, here's the lone Christmas Card of Trenton Brooks I've scored so far.

I wanted to kick up my Stephen Strasburg PC with a nice card, and this Ginter refractor fit the bill. He's looking like he just saw mommy kissing Santa Claus underneath the mistletoe, and he's not sure how to process it. The 12/25 serial number is in the lower right. He's another local "went to the same school" guy, but SDSU this time, and a rival high school from my conference. His pro career was hampered by injuries, but he had a few strong seasons including a big 2019 when he helped lead the Nationals to a World Series Championship. 

Pete Alonso brings some star power as we near the end of the post. This 2024 Tier One parallel looks great with Mets colors. I picked this one up over the summer, back when the Mets were in the playoff picture, before things fell apart and the team got dismantled. Best of luck to the Polar Bear in Baltimore.

Last card of the post..

Bobby Witt, Jr. has been putting together an impressive career and he's still just 25 years old. Took me a while to find a nice auto and land it in my price range. Happy with this Five Star Christmas Card featuring enough rainbow foil to help it pop.

There you have it. Again, Merry Christmas and/or enjoy your 12/25 this year!

Incoming birthday/holiday cards

Merry Christmas Eve, everybody! Yep, it's also my b-day, too. 

A while back, there was a Blog Bat-Around about cards numbered with your birthday. With mine so late in the year, it takes an extra large set to include a number 1224 in the checklist. But yeah, I've rounded up 3 of them so far...

A couple minor league sets from the 80s and one from the Conlon Collection.

Gotta love old TCMA, and I do kinda collect this Brian Giles as like quirky side-PC to my big PC of the better-known Brian Giles.

And I ripped a lot of those blue '89 ProCards packs back in the day. I started collecting in 1990, so they were "older" and I was looking for the hot '90 rookies, and yeah, even Mark Gardner had some hype, and went on to a respectable MLB career, sticking around through the 2001 season. 

I don't have much to say about Joe Bowman, but he was probably cool too. I think I threw these cards into my Sportlots cart months ago, and eventually placed orders with the respective sellers. Has anybody ordered from Sportlots lately? The past week or so, it's taken me to new "improved" shopping cart which doesn't let you separate between sellers. Not cool! Is it just me, like maybe I have too many cards in my cart, or did they really F up their cart interface? That'd be a bummer if they took a dump so soon after COMC also took a turn for the worse too. Running out of good, big online card shops to use! :(

The backs. The number on the Giles is in small text after the copyright.

-  - -o 

Now for some incoming cards that some blogger buds sent to brighten up my holidays.

First up is a nice package from Dennis at TMV. Sorry these, photos are dark, by the way. I took them last night, knowing the 24th and 25th would be busy, but I could sneak in some blogging time hanging out with the fam. (Keeping it tight for time.) But yeah, one thing I asked for this year is a light box, so I'm hopeful that I'll kick up my card-photographing game soon. But yeah, here's a sweet quad relic of Marcus Lattimore #'d 12/25 with a Gavin Sheets relic sporting a pinstripe.

Gavins!

More Gavins!

Good stuff. Thanks, Dennis! Very nice of you to keep up the string of holiday mailings that I've been lucky enough to be included in. I'll hit you back with a thank-you soon.

-  --o

Next up are some signed cards from Japan. 2011 Topps is a fav modern design for me, and Neshek is a PC guy.

And some Bowman cards, including a couple former Padres I remember rooting for in years past.

Thank you, Zippy! Merry Christmas, even if this wasn't specifically meant as a holiday surprise. 

-  - -o

Last is Bob from Best Bubble surprising me with a yuletide-timed card package.

Gotta pay the Gavin Tax when you send me cards, lol. Nice variety here.

This trio of neat Tony Gwynns off the beaten path might've been the highlight for me.

More Padres, including some autos.

Attractive ladies!

The backs.

More lovely gals.

Big thanks, Bob! I've been working on a package for you, and hope to get that sent out soon.

Thanks again to these folks for the cards, and happy holidays to everybody reading. I'll be trying to get a Christmas post out tomorrow if I can find the time to type it up.

Sunwashed Junk

It's another rainy day here in Portland, and so I thought I'd throw back to some summer cardartin' I did in collaboration with ol' Mr. Sun.

This post is also inspired by Nick V. who left the following comment on my recent Don Mattingly post:

"Okay it took me a moment to realize that the 88 mod was Baseball's Best. I was briefly SUPER impressed that you managed to fade the blue. Occurs to me to wonder how the red and orange 1990 borders would fare here."

Way ahead of ya, Nick!... 

This "white border" '90 Donruss Tony Gwynn took me a couple years, if I recall, maybe three. Got a little sloppy on the sides of the photo, but not too bad. If the player name had been in black or blue, this would look pretty cool, but since the name gets washed away, I wouldn't grade this mod variety as one I'm compelled to make more of, especially considering how very long they take to make. But it was a neat experiment and left me with another unique oddity for my big Mr. Padre PC.

And back to Nick's '88 Donruss comment, yeah, if you try bleaching the borders of a regular '88D card, all that will happen is the little red bits in the middle will fade, but the black and blue hold strong*. But then those orange Baseball's Best cards in the same design give you something more to work with. I haven't made much of these, just the Donnie, this Mark Grace, and a Barry Bonds for my Barry Bonds guy**.

*Probably after like a decade the blue would fade? 

**Actually, I think I stopped that one at yellow so it would be a Pirates colormatch

Here's another idea I have to give Nick V. credit for suggesting. Yeah, the folks at Topps bizarrely tinted the background on Billy Williams' 1974 Topps card, ostensibly to make the player pop better in the photo, but it just looks weird, like it was Free Bowl of Curry Day at the stadium and the crowd rioted. I've been making my own "collector corrected" variations, bleaching away the yellow but keeping Billy and his bat from getting faded with it. Above are 3 of my mods along with a regular card for comparison. I put one in my set, can use another in the PC, but have several that I've been meaning to make available FT/FS one of these days. I figure anyone with a "master set" of '74 Topps could use the unofficial variation to kick up their set. And I do still need several '74 Topps variations to "fully" complete my '74 set (spreadsheet) so I'm hoping these will make good trade chips.

With the '82 Kmart set, the AL MVPs feature a middle bar of blue in the background (won't fade), but the NL MVPs have yellow, so those are fun and easy to whitewash into a cleaner look like the Cobra here. I've also got Clemente, Mays, and Garvey versions that I couldn't locate in time for this post, but if any of my trader buds want one, just let me know.

Speaking of Steve Garvey, here's a funky one for gcrl if he wants it. There was a surface blemish in the background of this card, so I did a "blackout" style that came out ok. Sometimes figuring out the best way to deal with a problem helps come up with new ideas.

More playing with 1987 Topps. Some of these I tried to make the border sorta sync up to the photo, with the Pete Rose turning out the best of those attempts. These are up for trade.

 

But I'm still hoarding 1987 Topps Bo Jackson cards all to myself! Each of these is unique like a snowflake or someshit. Love 'em and hope to make more next summer.

Thanks for stopping by!

2004 Chrome black refractors mile$tone

Welp, I knew if I was ever to finish my quest for a full set of 2004 Topps Chrome Baseball black refractors that I was going to have to pony up for the big rookie card of the set that I regrettably hadn't secured years ago in the early days of this project. After a couple close second-place bids in recent years (and a relatively cheap buy-it-now that I tragically missed out on), I jumped at it when one popped up at the ceiling of my targeted price range. I ended up paying as much for this card as I did for both my previous two "priciest pickups" combined (a certified Clemente cut-auto and a Cognac Trout). (Oh, and I bought a sealed case of cards that was more expensive-- with a very long post about it that I should publish one of these days.) But no regrets! I had some birthday/xmas money from last year still holed away in savings, so I figured I could justify the financial frivolity as a "gift to myself" since we're in December and all. 

 Boom!

Yadier Molina was the game's top catcher for many of his 19 years in MLB, helping the Cardinals to a pair of Championships along the way, and you gotta assume he's a shoe-in for the Hall as soon as he's eligible. Glad I secured this card before the HOF hype puts him back in collector's minds. Also relieved there were no delivery issues to stress me out, as it seems the USPS hasn't been at their best lately. For safety, I'll keep it slabbed, though a grade of 8 is only "just ok" when it comes to modern cards. But yeah, fine with me. Just happy to be done chasing this card.

The heavy lifting is done now, but I still have a dozen cards left to go, five of which are /25 prospect autos (Kyle Davies, Estee Harris, Kyle Sleeth, Logan Kensing, and Korey Casto), and among the non-autos (which aren't serial-numbered but likely have a print run around 220 or so), the biggest name is Chase Utley, followed by Ervin Santana and a handful of lesser players that just haven't popped up much over the years. But I'll keep up with my frequent eBay searches and hope to sweep up these last remaining pieces before too long. Patience is nothing new to me when it comes to collecting 2004 black refractors, as I'm still waiting for another '04 Retired Alan Trammell ref to pop up so I can finish that set that I've been obsessed with since this blog started back in 2013, which became the impetus for branching out into the non-Retired baseball players who got 2004 black refractors. Sure would be crazy if I finish '04 Non-Retired (487-cards deep per my checklist) before I finish '04 Retired (only 76 total cards), but that's the quirks of the hobby for ya.

Instant Winnings

My weekend got kicked up a notch by an unexpected box of various good cards. Friday evening I won a cardsphere giveaway, and Saturday morning I had the winnings in hand. The Diamond King has been doing good work this holiday season running giveaways where you enter by committing to send cards to someone just to be nice. I was the lucky winner of the box of serial numbered cards, and since Kevin was in my neck of the woods for the Portland card show, he swung by with the winnings.

My first pass through the box was just picking out "PC guys" of mine, some highlights of which I'll show off below, but there are plenty more other keepers for me, plus some good trade fodder, with some teams that are in-demand in my traders (Can never have enough Braves for Johnny, for instance). I actually had a big project over the fall where I sorted my non-keepers, at least into groups of sets.. like getting all my available Ginter cards together. I officially dissolved my "sorted by team" trade box that served me well during the bustling blog-trading days, circa 2014-2019. I ended up filling a large flat-rate box of cards for my designated "you can dump any unwanted cards on me" buddy Billy to help my quantity get down to more manageable levels, and now I need to get around to further sorting by set and finally get a decent "for trade/sale" collection entered at TCDb.

That big box I surprised Billy with was from before Kevin started his contests, so I can't use that as one of my giveaway-inspired mailings, though hey, that might've helped me karmically with the randomizer. But no, I did mail off a couple surprise PWEs in the meanwhile, including one to a Twitter bud, but I've been meaning to mention that I haven't really been on Twitter/X and BlueSky since mid October, so if you talk to me there I might not get it for a while. My laptop got logged out when we dealt with a wifi issue at home, and it was so nice not feeling the need to doomscroll, so I've just resisted logging back in. I'm still logged into X on my phone, but I rarely use my phone for social media unless I'm bored and away from home (last time was after Thanksgiving dinner, before that was the dentist's waiting room).

Anyways, enough rambling! Let's check out some #'d cards!

I thought the Mattingly made a fitting first card in this post since he was the star of my previous post, but also because the gray wood on that parallel isn't too far off from the bleached border mods I make, and I coincidentally gave Kevin such a Mark McGwire '87 mod as a little thank-you when he stopped by.

I was happy to score another Gavin Lux auto, even if his stock is no longer on the rise. Tony Gwynn addition (shared w/ Garret Anderson) was another top card for me in the bunch. And I got a kick out the semi-interactive Scouting Report card that opens up to...

Cool Ichiro stuff.

Hobby heavy hitters Jeter and Junior.

Shiny cards of Padres team leaders Machado and Bogaerts.

This was supposed to be a grouping of "bad boys" or troublemakers or whatever, but that's a stretch including Pedro because I think everybody's forgiven him for the Don Zimmer toss by this point. 

I watched the new Alex vs. Arod doc on HBO and would recommend it to any baseball fan, even if you hate Alex Rodriguez, as I think you'll understand him better, even if you still don't forgive his mistakes. 

As for Robbie Alomar, he could be forgiven for spitting on an umpire that one time, but tougher to overlook is his irresponsible penis behavior. But as a Pad in the Hall, I still reluctantly collect his cards, and that's a nice looking green refractor.

Vlad Jr and Sr representing. Not often a manufactured relic excites me, but that Sweet Home thing looks pretty neat with the refracting piece of plastic featuring Rogers Centre in it.

Additions for a couple of my biggest active-guy PCs, Trout and Soto.

Colorful page-worth of cards. Loves me some gaudy-as-hell shiny! A couple more in the next photo.

When I first saw the Bench/Fisk card, I was faced with the Sophie's choice of which PC to put it towards, since I collect both backstops with equal gusto. But rejoice! Later in the box, I came across another of the /500 cards, so problem solved.

Coming to the end of the post, but yeah, lots of great stuff in there. Sort of feel like I got to enjoy a card show (or few) vicariously through Kevin, without the back pain and time navigating through the seas of slabs and pokemon, as these are exactly the kinds of cards I'd be adding to my stack from Bill's bins if I was still a card show regular.

A couple more big names to close out on. Oh hey, Nolan and Kirby both wore number 34. I collect Tom Glavine too (and was rooting for the Braves over the Twins back in '91), but he gets superseded here.

Big thanks again to Kevin for the awesome cards! It was a 660-count box, and I'd estimate at least half are keepers for me. As I say, the rest will likely get added to TCBb soon, but anybody reading who might want to swap PWEs based on team (ie, if OhioTim still reads and is interested in the available Cleveland cards, etc. Or like any of my Dodgers or Mets buds due for a trade with me..), just drop me an email or TCDb message or whatever (but again, I'm not on X or BlueSky much now, so don't message me there), and we can hopefully keep the holiday cheer and cardmail flowing.

Mattingly Madness

Donnie Baseball time! I didn't get into baseball until 1990, so, having missed out on his 80s peak, I wasn't really a big Mattingly fan growing up. But since returning to the hobby as an adult, he's become one of my favorite guys to collect and I've ended up with some pretty nice cards of his in my collection.

Very happy to finish his Topps Retired refractor trifecta recently. I wouldn't mind someday upgrading my '04 to one that is unfaded/ungraded. But still, so satisfying to have these three secured after years of chasing this set.

Another look at 'em refracting away in all their glory.

Here's another completed trio of Mattingly refractors from the years 2003-2005, these from Topps All-Time Fan Favorites. I've nearly completed the full set run of TATFF refractors (/299), with just a few from '04 remaining. 

 

Here's a trio of different rookie reprint refractors. I mentioned last post I've been going nuts for reprint refractors lately. I mean, years back I completed the Archives Reserve base sets (which are essentially all reprint refractors), but I've recently been expanding into Chrome inserts from other years. I think of the 2019 versions as "Refractors Your Mom Threw Out" because they've got a write-up on the back, while the 2014 versions are more desirable as "original back" reprints. Otherwise they look pretty similar on the front, even if the one on the right didn't shine much in the above photo.

Now to feature some cardart I've been whipping up lately.

Last time I checked in with what I've been up to in regards to cardart, you may remember I was all about coming up with silhouette cards. Further down that path lead me to come up with "logoman minis" which I'm really digging. The plan is keep each of these as a 1/1, but try to come up with several variations.

A second Mattingly style. I've also got Rickeys in the works.

I'm still making lots of "mods", tweaking real cards to spice them up as after-market parallels. This is the latest style I've been working on. Holographic overlayers on cards is basic "cardart 101" stuff, but I think it looks dumb when you cover up the player with it, so I don't cover up the player on mine. I plan to start putting some of these in my ebay store soon. Been trying to keep these all one-of-one and not repeat myself.

Took a long, long time to make this "white border" mod. I had intended to make it to sell, but with all that went into it, no one could ever appreciate it as much as me, so guess I'll hang onto it. ha

I've got a couple Mattingly cardart displays I made a year or two ago that I've been meaning to make available. But again, sometimes the combination of being lazy and liking it enough myself, I end up hanging onto stuff I originally intended to "side hustle" out of the house.

Last year I was all about making custom displays, but don't think I made many in 2025 other than for silhouette ideas.

More original cardart from a year or two ago. Available for trade or maybe I'll add some of them to my ebay listings at some point. I generally shoot for $10@ but settle closer to $5 if I don't find much interest after awhile. Yeah, maybe it's silly "making" cards like this when there are billions of real cards out there already that collectors would rather spend their money on, and if it was just about me making money, I have plenty of decent real cards I could list, but cardart is a fun creative outlet for me, so I'll keep at it.

Leftovers of some Mattingly customs I've made over the years. Funny, that Big League Chewing Gum custom I made in 2016 ended up getting "mass counterfeited" on eBay, even with the back crediting Baseball Card Breakdown. Dumb.

As far as Donnies I'm still on the hunt for, there's yet another rookie reprint refractor out there I need (the "50 Years" one), plus relics for my ARMS (Archives Reserve Master Set), and a couple tough "junk" era issues.

MY MATTINGLY MOST WANTED:
2004 Topps Retired refractor auto /25 (signature upgrade wanted)
2001 Topps Chrome Through The Years refractor reprints #32 (1984 Topps)
2001 Topps Archives Reserve Relics ARR7 (“1984” jersey)
2001 Topps Archives Reserve Relics ARR28 (“1984” bat)
2002 Topps Archives Reserve Relics TRR-DMB (“1985” bat)
1992 Leaf Preview - Black Gold parallel #22
1990 Topps Batting Leaders #4 (aka "Kmart greenies"; I'd be down for the '89 red, too)

If you happen to have any of those available, feel free to drop me a line.

Ok, I guess that's pretty much all the Mattingly stuff I wanted to mention. To keep things light, I've deleted my sour rantings about the HOF and the Dodgers and other things that suck the fun out of today's game. But yeah, baseball back in the 70s through 90s.. that's my wheelhouse. And Donnie Baseball is a major figure of that golden era.

Thanks for reading, guys!