Completed Pages, Complete With Joy.

     While my blogging may have slowed down some recently, my collecting never stops.  Today I have some completed pages, one quite recent and a few more than a decade in the making.

I haven't bought much Bowman the last few years.  In fact, I haven't bought any Bowman the last two years.  I used to be quite the Bowman backer, especially Chrome.  I liked the shiny and the speculation, and I also liked the vague rookies who you'd never hear from again (there is a reason my collection is eclectic and devoid of great value, after all).  This year, my interest in Bowman was renewed, well, my interest in one specific kind of card was piqued.  A while ago, Night Owl sent me an R.A. Dickey from the silver ice parallels and I was immediately struck by it.  I am such a sucker for the shiny and in this case it was a different shiny than I had ever seen before on a card.  I went to eBay with the task of finding myself a lot of them.  The cards themselves were only popping up one or two a box, I believe, so the prices were a little high.  I waited out a nice lot of 12 and snagged it at a price I could live with.  From those, I made this page:

The scan does not do these cards justice.  They are really really really shiny (no, really!).  They remind me of the 1998 Bowman's Best Atomic Refractors, my all time favorite shiny (and a page I have yet to complete).  I got a nice mix of players and colors in this lot; even the Yankee player is a tolerable one.  I am quite pleased with this page.

While recently rummaging through a pile of cards, I found a 1998 SP Authentic Jeff Conine.  I had forgotten all about this set but I remembered that I really liked it when it came out.  Back then, SP Authentic was very high end stuff and (I believe) this was their first baseball offering.  I liked the foil-like pictures and the use of negative space.  I looked around in a few boxes, but alas, that Jeff Conine was the only one I had.  So, in my quest to make a page, I went first to eBay, but eBay did not have any lots of the base cards (nor had they in a while - hint: always check completed auctions when looking for something vague to see how easy/hard it will be to find).  So, I went to COMC.com for these instead. 

I was able to pick off these cards for 20-25 cents apiece.  I went with a few beloved subjects (NOMAHHHH!! and a catcher pose) and a few reviled subjects as well (Clemens, Palmeiro).  Overall, I think I captured a good mix of players and poses and it only took me 14 years to get around to it. 

I also read a blog piece recently (the blog itself escapes my memory, lemme know if you recognize your dilemma) that was very puzzled with the 2001 Donruss baseball set and what they did for parallels.

This page here is of the 2001 Donruss base cards.  This page has been in my binders for quite a while.  See, 2001 Donruss was their first baseball set since 1998 - I am not sure if their exile was self imposed or contractual - and it celebrated their 20th anniversary.  For the parallels, they decided to fill in those two missing years by making "2000 Donruss" and "1999 Donruss" cards.  I always found this odd and I can certainly understand some collector's confusion over the cards, especially 10 years after the fact.

I had, along with that 2001 Donruss page a 1999 Donruss page. 

A pretty sharp (and Indians heavy) page.  What I did not have was a 2000 Donruss page to go along with the other two.  Since I decided my Donruss pages would not be complete without it, I went to eBay again, but only found a large (and way overpriced) lot for sale.  Back to COMC.com again for me!

Since I still had the 1998 SP Authentics cards still unsent, it made sense to grab the cards I needed for the 2000 Donruss page as well.  This is what I came up with.

Once again, a nice mix of players and colors, and, as an accidental aesthetic choice, a lot of batting follow thru pictures.  I snagged these at 20-35 cents apiece with the Tony Gwynn costing me that big 35 cents.  I had never actually seen the 2000 Donruss baseball cards and I immediately recognized them...they copied the 2000 Donruss football set.  I have had this page forever:

Now, Topps used to, and in fact still, uses their baseball set as a tablet for their football design, and some card makers use the same design for each name plate brand for each sport (like Prestige or SP etc.).  But this is the first time I can think of that a unique and singular football set was the basis for a baseball set and not the other way around.  Can anyone else think of one?  You know, if you can even understand what the heck I am talking about.

Anyway, COMC has had a nice cheap bulk shipping option for the last couple months, so I might load up on some more neglected or ignored pages in the future. 

***
And as one final update, I recently showed the spoils of a recent new product buying binge.  Some specific cards were put aside and dropped in the mail this week.  Some of you know they are coming and some of you don't.  Anyway, rest assured, they are out there and on their way...

Right now, if anyone wants to reciprocate, I am desperately trying to get my hands on the two SP rookie cup cards from this years Topps - #158 Josh Reddick and #207 J.P. Arencibia.  I am also looking for the Dwight Gooden Mound Dominance insert from this year's Topps and the 1977 Gary Carter reprint and cloth sticker from the Archives set (plus his Gold Foil parallel). I am always dubious of people actually looking at my wantlist, so if anyone has any of these, please please email me post haste. Thanks!