The Dark Knight (and this blogger) Returns.

       So the other day, while slogging through yet another long terrible winter day, something magical happened.  I turned on the TV and there was blue skies and green grass.  Even better, Matt Harvey was on the mound in a spring training game throwing pitches for the first time in 18 months.  I have had an awful go of it the last few months between the weather and health and death and car crashes and a dozen other things that seem to get to me this time of year every single year.  I haven't been in the mood to get out of bed much less focus on my hobby (and my complete lack of writing the last 8 weeks can attest to this) but like magic, the Mets show up in Florida and my brain suddenly snaps back into shape.  Sure, it doesn't solve all my problems or issues, but it sure as hell makes me feel better and look forward to spring.  Harvey was brilliant in 2 short innings and my mood improved ten fold, to the point where while I did some shopping, some new cards found their way into my basket.

So while I am a little late, lets take a look at the new 2015 Topps.

My blaster came with ten 10-card packs and a little manu-patch pack as well.  I had seen some previews and reviews of the new flagship offering, but I like to wait until I have them in my hands to formulate an opinion.

Well, they certainly are colorful.  But even with all those bursts of color in the borders, there is a cleanness to the design.  No extra waves or flourishes like last year, just name, position, logo.  Sure, the little graphics in the color splashes looks like something out of Upper Deck circa 2002, but hey, what can you do?  It's not too boring and not too busy; Goldilocks would eat this design.

There was some parallels in there, of course, and I like them. They jazzed up the obligatory gold parallel a little for a change and though you can't see it from the scan, the one in the middle is called Snow Camo, certainly more than a little different.  The one on the right is a rainbow foil, sort of a discount refractor but reminiscent of the 1995 Cyberstat parallels that I am so fond of.  I'll need to put together a page of those shiny badboys.  They also seem to have eliminated the store-based rainbow of parallels, a most welcome addition by subtraction.

The inserts are a predictable range, one with yearly highlights, creatively named Highlights of the Year, a then-and-now type set called Inspired Play, and some current and past stars mixed together in a set called archetypes. I am keeping the Frank Thomas/Jose Abreu card, but any of the others here are available for trade.

Let's go a little deeper into the base...

I think this design actually works better horizontally.  It allows the texture in the color border to breath and opens it up a little. 

They expanded the base set to 350 cards, giving Topps more room to add players and concepts, and yet they seem to have stuck to the template they have used for a while in terms of subsets. 

The leader cards are top-three across, the checklists have stars' seasonal highlights or milestones.  Plus, since I am picking nits here, I can see squeezing another last Jeter card into the set, but is 2500 hits something that deserves mentioning?  Garrett Anderson and Steve Finley didn't get cards when they recently reached the big 25-0-0.  Topps is weird.

Topps thankfully didn't include a theme as they have the last couple years, but they continued and seemingly expanded the Future Star designations from last year.  I noticed the All Star Rookie Cup cards all have the Future Stars logo on top and it clutters up the works, in my opinion.  I think the handsome little cup deserves the spotlight all to itself.

The rookie logo celebrates it's 10th year on the flagship and Topps continues to release Bowman every year, making that logo completely useless.

Okay, one last thing before I go.  With all the color flying around on these, you would think Topps would mix up the photos a little...

...and you would be wrong.  One thing I have noticed, at least from the 100 cards I got, is a bland sameness to the photography...lots of pitchers mid-motion from the waist up...

...and lots of hitters in their follow through from the waist up. 

Lots and lots of them. It almost makes me long for a few goofy "candid" portraits with the cap off, or maybe I am just getting old and jaded.  Plus I can't tell if there is too much photoshop going on in the quality of the pictures or if the border just makes some of the presentation look too busy.  It's not quite the cropping and quality nightmare of the 2008 set, but this is definitely a step down from the last couple of years, picture wise.

Oh, and I got this thing.

My manu-patch card, which is actually a manu-coin card, is a big bust.  It holds no appeal to me, and since Heyward was traded from the Braves late in the off season, it will probably garner little attraction to either Braves or Cardinals fans.  *sigh* some kid in Atlanta no doubt opened his blaster and got a David Wright and is just as pissed off as I am.

Last but not least, Topps is running one of their epic contests and I got a card for it.

I haven't scratched this thing as I am not interested in such nonsense, but it anyone wants it, drop me a line and I'll send it along.  I think I can see enough of a chance of spring that I might even answer your email. 

Just Check Out My (Not So) Common Birthday Present To Myself.

       Tuesday was my birthday; I hit the immortal Jack Benny number.  Much as 29 sounded much older to me than 30, 39 seems to be bumming me out much more than I imagine 40 will.  My mood increased tremendously, though, when I went to the mailbox and found not one but two fat jiffy packs waiting for me - one from COMC.com and one from Just Commons.  Granted, I didn't actually plan for them to arrive on my birthday but I'll take a thin slice of serendipity any time. 

The stuff I ordered from COMC was pure frivolity.  Like many of you I'm sure, I have plucked away at their Challenge to help reassemble their database.  Over the last few weeks, I've used my insomnia time to squirrel away $42 worth of found money for cardboard.  The next couple of scans show the bounty of my superfluous harvest:

Shiny Mets.  Shiny Mets everywhere.  Normally, these Fan Favorites refractors are overpriced but with a fistful of loose dollars, I made offers on as many as I could.  I got the four you see for between 2 and 3 bucks each.  Speaking of shiny, those Tribute cards finish off a set I started making 11 years ago.  Well, I started making it a couple months ago with some cards I found in a long forgotten box from 11 years ago.  Funny how that works.  Nolan and Roberto there weren't cheap but in my world, they were free.  Those bottom three Finest cards are pre-production models that finish off a page that has had six of them for as long as I have been making pages of sets.  Of course, now I have to figure out what to do with the 3 1994 Bowman promos that have been occupying that page for a while.

Following that trend, I finished off a few other pages that have long eluded completion.  This buying spree was like finding two $20 bills in a winter coat:

Those 1996 Playoff Pennant football cards are not just die cut triangles, they are made of felt, so they are all fuzzy and touchable.  I have had seven of them laying around forever.  Now they have the required nine.  The Donruss Champions sent from 2005 was not a favorite, but I liked the award winners subset and now there is a page of that too.  I had Legends pages of 2002 and 2003 Diamond Kings, so for completistism's sake, I now have 2004.  Half of them are in color and half are in black and white.  I am not certain if that is part of the design or if they are variations or something but I like the B&W ones better.  Lastly, I bought one each of the Heritage buybacks I didn't have so they can hang out on my Topps pages.  I picked those up for $2 pretend dollars each. 

My other spree from mid-May was on Just Commons.  Once again, I blame my current bought of insomnia.  Over three or four nights, I filled up my shopping cart with about 100 cards and $20 worth of stuff.  Sadly, these cost me a real Andrew Jackson.  Happily, Just Commons is a wonderful site to pick up random cards you never thought you'd find and/or refuse to buy for $3 each on ebay.  Aside from the first card on the first scan, nothing was more than 37 cents.

I discovered that Brooks Robinson and David Wright card while I was obsession of one of the same players of a slightly different caliber.  While going through my HOF binder, I noticed I didn't have a Lou Brock card of him on the Cubs, so I rectified that issue.  I recently decided to make a Gregg Jefferies page of cards of him not on the Mets, since that was when he was most successful.  My last package of JC cards had boatloads of Rookie Cup needs, this time, it only has three but it does complete the 1997 team.  The bottom three are some Sandy Koufax cards for his page and a Jim Bunning card to start his page.  I wrote about this year's Gypsy Queen on A Pack to be Named Later; I might have been too kind.

I finished off a lot of player pages, here they are in condensed pile form:

Jimmie Foxx, Joe Torre, Starlin Castro, Luis Tiant, and Bobby Murcer are now all completed (I underestimated my needs and still need one Walt Alston).  I was born a bit too young to have seen Luis Tiant pitch but from everything I have seen about him, I am absolutely convinced he would have been my favorite pitcher.  He's like the best parts of Hideo Nomo, Fernando Valenzuela, and Pedro Martinez all thrown together.  I think we all should worship at the alter of El Tiante.  Right in the middle there is Matt Harvey, I mean, how could go on a spree and not buy some Harvey cards?  The last two piles are of cards with a particular number (527) and of players named Max.  I couldn't think of anything more appropriate to get on my birthday. 

Night Owl Trade: Part 2. (or The Night Owl Strikes Back)

       Last month Greg of the indefatigable Night Owl Cards sent me what was promised to be "part one" of what is our never-ending volley of trades.  Part two arrived in my mailbox a week or so ago and, you know the old cliche about sequels never living up to the original?  Well, the Owl outdid himself here and sent me the Godfather 2 of trade parts (or it could be The Empire Strikes Back, depending on your level of film geekiness). 

Turns out ol' Greg was playing possum with me on this particular pile.  He knew all along that he had these cards for me but gave me no indication.  I knew it was you, Fredo, except he didn't break my heart this time.  He made it all a-flutter with shiny Mets cards. 

You have to wonder where this cadre of randomly awesome Mets cards came from...seems he was part of some massive group breaks and he chose the Mets as his secondary team for some of them.  This landed me those shiny ones from before and these Archives short prints that I never would have gotten around to acquiring.  Plus it landed me a Kevin McReynolds autograph which will go nicely on my page of 1980's Mets signatures. 

Look, more sparkly shiny Johan goodness!  Though you will also notice which player I chose to cover up with Greg's nice little note.  And I know how it must have pained him to send me minis, much less hall of fame Tom Seavery minis.  In fact, all those cards on the bottom there are tiny.  Those 1980's league leader minis are held in high regard in my world as I vividly remember finding a big lump of change in the cushions of my couch when I was 12 and buying out the Rite Aid of the 1987 variety.  You will also notice he didn't even Bip me this time around.  And to think I was looking forward to making a page of 9 1989 Donruss Lance Blankenships.  Oh well, you can't have everything.  Thanks Greg! 

Trade with Tony of Off Hiatus Baseball Cards.

       Oh, how could I have waited so long to post this trade?  Last month I ran into a new blog (to me at least) in Off Hiatus Baseball Cards.  The proprietor Tony is a huge Brewers fan, as you can tell from his blog's wonderfully dramatic nameplate and background (makes my blue and orange motif seem understated by comparison). He also is very eager to trade and posts trade bait on a weekly basis.  I just happened upon one of these posts when this beauty appeared...

I immediately commented and emailed him that this card must be mine.  Must. Must. Must.  Turns out I was just ahead of someone else that had to have it too - timing in life is everything.  Tony promised I could have the card and we worked out the details.  I put together what I thought, and luckily what Tony also thought, was a wonderful Brewers-and-Gary-Carter laden package.  The low numbered Black Refractor Matt Harvey Heritage card was mine.  His smiley-smirking visage will see me through until he recovers from his surgery.  

Tony also threw in some random Mets cards, my favorite kind of Mets cards:

That first "card" with the logo is actually a tattoo.  I might put it on my face Mike Tyson style next time I go to a Mets game in person.  Those Heritage cards on the bottom were from my wantlist and completed my (base) team set for the year.  Someone reads my want lists...yay!

Tony also included a little note, like I needed to identify who sent me that awesome shiny Harvey card.

Oh, believe me, I will enjoy these cards.  And since you are a Gary Carter fan, I have a feeling we will be doing it again.

Zapped!

       I am a little behind on posting (what else is new) but I would be remiss if I didn't point out the awesome altruism of the quickly-becoming-immortal Zippy Zappy of Cervin' Up Cards.  I went to my mailbox recently to find a mystery package.  I was not expecting a 9x12 manilla envelope, but oddly. there one was.  What was inside?  Free stuff, my favorite kind of stuff. 

There were some premo Mets cards featuring Matt Harvey and current minor league sensation Brandon Nimmo. 

Also, some awesome 8x10s from the New York Times that never reached my collection and consciousness.   Look at these things:

While we had already completed an awesome trade, these were sent unsolicited...

If you look on the note he left with the cards, he referred to this as being Zippy Zapped...

This is the best way to get Zapped since Scott Baio and Willie Aames (and if you are old enough to get that reference, I apologize).  Thanks Kenny!  When I get my hands on some Yankees prospects and oddballs, I will be sure to return the electricity.

Mail Call: Little Letters from Listia.

       I have covered this phenomenon before, but it seems my mailbox is always jam packed on Mondays, as though the post office does everything on Sundays.  Either that, or Monday is the regular delivery guy's day off and he leaves the bulk of the heavy lifting to the fill in.  I would be easily persuaded to believe either theory.

Today's odd twist is that all of the letters in the box today were short ones - #8 to use the vernacular as opposed to #10 (business size).  Well, all except that one large manilla envelope.  One envelope to rule them all!

So enough postal jargon and minutiae, what goodies are inside these?  Let's take a look:

Two of those top three were straight impulse buys.  I like those 2008 Stadium Club base cards, even if the whole set and execution of that product was a disaster, and that Magglio called to me.  That Sidney Johnson is not only a nifty photo but a card #527 I did not have, so it is easy to see why I sniped that one up.  The top left card is a manu-patch silk card thingy from this year's Topps flagship of Matt Harvey's rookie card.  I wouldn't pay money for that thing, but I was happy to nab it for much less than the GIN credit price.  The Matt Moore is from this year's Heritage and since I am fond of the design, I thought maybe I would put together a page of these badboys.  The Heritage Chrome refractors always seem extra shiny to me for some reason.  Oooooo shiny....  The bottom row is a batch of Walmart parallels from this year that I got on Listia, yet another type of card I will never pay money for, at least not from the source that is.  I will put together a page from these.  I now have two of the three retail parallel pages covered with just Toys 'R' Us not represented.  I kinda like the odd symmetry that the colors are blue, red, and purple - it's a color wheel thing.  Okay, I am rambling now.  Last but not least is the little packet there.  While I am 99.99% certain my mother does not read my blog, inside that homemade little pouch is part of my mom's Mothers Day present, so I will err on the side of caution and not reveal what's in that until after the first Sunday of May.  And no, it is not a Saints football card; I have offered my mom those on countless occasions and she always says "that's nice, but what the hell am I supposed to do with this..." so I don't even try to give them to her anymore.  Moms?  Amirite?

Night Owl Trade Post #8000.

     I have lost track of all the jiffy packs and PWEs I have sent to upstate New York for Night Owl.  Our constant trading alone should be keeping the USPS in business.  While I am sure the number isn't quite 8000, I am sure it's gotta be about 50.  He also posts my stuff a lot more constantly that I post his, but that is why he has the best card blog on the block and why mine is merely a curiosity to about a dozen of you. 

So anyway, after busting my 2014 Topps packs and putting aside all the nifty Dodgers cards, I packed up those and a few other cards we had negotiated for and in return, I got what is promised to be "part 1."

Pretty sweet "part" if you ask me.  I got the last 2014 Zack Wheeler TFIN insert I needed, a great Matt Harvey insert (who am I kidding, all Matt Harvey inserts are great), and a couple Walmart parallels that I will never get on my own.  Not forgetting the Kaz Matsui rookie I didn't own and a super sweet David Cone jersey piece with a pinstripe and a low serial number, though anyone who reads Night Owl (which is everyone) knows how he now feels about jersey cards.  While I am a skeptic, I also am compelled to touch fuzzy things, so you can send them all to me if you want. 

Oh, and he bipped me.

Mutherfucker.  Last laugh is mine, though, I am putting these nine "devilish" Mickey Hatcher cards into my nine of a kind pages.  Nice try, Night Owl, nice try.  I eagerly look forward to part 2.

Double Trade Post*

*in which I am grateful for my trade partners' generosity and then a dick about their idiosyncrasies.

I am way behind in my trade posts so I am gonna try to tackle them all this week and I am going to start by taking care of two of them, both dealing with two first time traders and new Topps cards. 

First comes a wonderful swap with Gavin of Baseball Card Breakdown.  During the flurry of 2014 Topps posts, I noticed he had posted a Red Target Zack Wheeler parallel and dropped him a line saying I would love to have it.  He immediately got back to me and we were off and running.  He sent that wonderful Wheeler and a few other goodies.

The first was a chrome card of the gone-but-never-forgotten RA Dickey - sure it's metallic, but not shiny.  Now if it is shiny you want, that Pacific John Franco can't be beat.  That is not only a spectacular card, but also a card I did not have, which is always a marvelous surprise when trading blind.  Then came a few recent cards of Mets players and then some junk wax.  Okay, I always appreciate the effort.  But wait!  This is Gav we are talking about and he does a special thing to junk wax:

This is the best I could do to capture the magic - Ansel Adams I am not.

He makes those mutherfuckers glow in the dark!!!! And he sent three of them for me, all of them numbered and signed buy the artist...

My only issue with Gavin's package?  He used header cards for protection (always smart) but he wrote his note on this graphic filled Ultra Pro card when he had a nice blank canvas to scribble on this Fleer checklist.  Boy, can I be a nitpicking dick or what?  Anyway, sincere thanks Gavin for the great surprises in the trade, I am certain this won't be our last.  I hope what I sent makes up for my being a bastard.

My other 2014 Topps swap was with Chris of The Raz Card Blog.  After I had listed my 2014 Topps  series 1 goodies, Raz asked me about my four Power Player inserts.  I told him if he had any Mets from this year that I didn't have that I would be glad to send them.  And boy did he send some Mets:

Two Zack Wheeler inserts and a Matt Harvey for my player collection, not to mention a sparkly red Daniel Murphy - that is a great picture on this year's card with the Home Run Apple in the background.  He also sent me three of the All Rookie Cup Team inserts, of which I had pulled exactly zero.  Along with an incomplete eBay lot, I was able to put together the whole set in easy frugal fashion and take it off my want list. 

And my lord, look at how neatly these cards were packed:

I have received hundred dollar cards from eBay sellers that weren't so well protected.  Not to mention the penmanship on the note...way to make the rest of us look bad Chris.

So this is what I have become?  The kind of person who find fault in the kindest of gestures?  What is wrong with me?  I am such an asshole.  Chris, on the other hand, is awesome.  Thanks for initiating this trade and I am sure we will do it again soon. 

Triple Trouble.

       I miss breaking high end product.  Oh, I am well aware of my reasons for not doing it anymore (money, sanity, etc.) but that doesn't mean that every once in a while I don't crave the rush of dropping a few hundred dollars on a small shiny box of cards and the heart pounding anticipation of opening the thing.  For all its dangerous fun it is, in the end, merely dangerous.  The end game usually winds up being disappointment and despair and you can't keep chasing the card dragon without it stealing your soul.  But I digress.  My Bukowski-esque romanticizing aside, the one product I can't seem to leave behind is Topps Triple Threads.  I had great luck with the first two incarnations of this stuff and I guess it has never left me.  Even after some very lean pickings in the next couple attempts, it has its hooks in me and has not let go.

After an aborted attempt to join a case break of this year's Triple Threads, I decided to apply that money to some eBay purchases instead.  Not only did I succeed in getting the cards I wanted, I used my new found frugality to do it right (prepare for some humblebragging):

I bought a small lot of game used jerseys for the price of one Matt Harvey by waiting out a couple people on a late night auction.  Selling off the other two cards ended up paying for that Matt Harvey.  The ones numbered to 27 are the gold or sepia tone...it is hard to tell sometimes.  The nice big swatch and the fact that it is much shinier than my scan would indicate make that a tremendous card.  The real star and the card I really had to hold out to get was that Amazin' Triple.  The Triple relics can be real hit or miss as they have gotten very corny and odd in what the pieces spell out.  Here though, you see a classic that can't go wrong. The Mets have been "Amazin'" since 1962 and since this card features David Wright and the two great hopes for the future - Zack Wheeler and the aforementioned Matt Harvey - this was an absolute must have for me.  I really really wanted one that was numbered to /9 and very very shiny but the bidding got out of hand, so I had to settle for the slightly more muted version numbered to /36.

I truly don't care about the numbering as much as I care for the look of the card.  Case in point is that the parallel of the base I loved the most this year was also the highest numbered, the "amethyst" version, or as the laymen would call it, purple.  I am a sucker for purple, so I nailed down a nice lot that not only had three of my favorite players ever (see above) but also allowed me to make a page of current players:

All that blue and purple is jarringly contrasted with the orange of the Kung-Fu Panda in that first spot on the page (and to a lesser extent by Buster Posey in the middle).  Sometimes I just can't help myself. 

I also picked up a lot of base cards so I could make a page of retired players:

Yankees?  Braves??  Tom Glavine?!?!?  At times you are simply at the mercy of the lot you buy.  Aesthetically here, you get a nice George Brett powder blue uni breaking up a ton of old school flannel.  I think this page works well, even with Tom Glavine involved (never forgive, never forget).

Could I have blown a couple of C-notes and gotten my fix?  Sure.  But for a fraction of the cost, I got the cards I really wanted and some piece of mind that maybe as I grow older, I might even grow up.

Everything Old Is New Again.

       As you know I don't do resolutions, but seeing how today is New Year's Day and this is my 200th post, I figured it might not be a bad idea to do a little State of the Blog address.  Of those two hundred posts, only 71 came last year so I would like to get around to posting a little more often than every 5 days.  I also have about 20 half written posts in the drafts that I would like to try and take care of in the dead time between now and spring training (6 weeks and counting!).  I have added some blogs to the blog list (and removed a few dead ones) and if you would like to be added to that list, drop me a line.  I have some series ideas that my intermittent posting hasn't let me bring to fruition, I would certainly like to get those off the ground and bring them to all six of you who read this blog with regularity.  That said, I have an awesome blog and if you don't read it all the time, you should and if you haven't read all my posts, you should go back and do just that, don't worry, I'll wait.


If we are going to do old and new, tried and true today, let's look at a couple of recent trades - nothing more tried and true than a trade post.  First off is one of my oldest and steadiest trade partners, Night Owl.  A few months ago he wrote a platonic love letter to me about how I get him.  Seriously, that shit made me blush.  Well, I can pretty much say that notion is reciprocal.  As I have pointed out before, we have gotten to the point where we don't even set up formal trades, we just put cards aside for each other and when we point out cards in the comments of posts, those get put aside as well.  Then eventually one of us will email the other and into the mail the piles go.  Honestly, my trade relationship with Greg is better than most of my current face-to-face interpersonal relationships and I have never met the man.  Anyway, this pile came to me at the end of November right after I sent him this pile. 

Oh those David Wrights.  Since the All Star game was held in Citifield this year, it figured all the Topps Update AS cards would be Mets centric, but wow, Topps outdid themselves with the official logos and some great pictures.  That Chrome Wright on top is probably in my top 10 all time favorite David Wrights already.  Zack Wheeler is going to get most of my love this year while poor Matt Harvey is on the shelf so I will probably end up doing a rainbow of his rookie card so that Chrome is a good start.  I am holding out hope that Juan Lagares turns out to be Steve Finley and not Alex Escobar.  Last in this scan is a marvelous little juxtaposition of a 2013 mini 1971 David Wright and an actual 1971 Topps Mets card.  I am not sure if Night Owl planned it to be such a nice contrast, nor could he have known that I did not have that awesome Sadecki card, but it sure as hell worked out well.  Someday, I want to know why Topps has decided to reprint the 1970's designs in mini form with modern players.  I would really like to have been in on that little committee meeting - and it had to be a committee, because only groupthink could have come up with such an odd and misguided idea as that one.

Not only does the Owl take direction well, he also reads my posts and wantlists:

I asked him for that Frazier All Star Rookie card and he threw in the Rosario as well.  I had stated in a recent post that I didn't have a complete nine pocket page of Clayton Kershaw and in an altruistic gesture (or perhaps in a doubles dump) he provided more than I needed to put that complete page together.  I must say, that red bordered Dodger card just pops. 

Oh, and he also bipped me with Strawberrys:

But the joke is on him, I love pages of single cards, even junk wax ones.

Everything was properly packaged as always and he used blue painters tape to hold it together, but I do have one issue...

...he wrote a little note but I am completely puzzled as to its meaning. A little help, Greg?

The "new" part of this presentation is my first unsolicited trade with a reader who does not have his own blog, a man known in the blogiverse as Zippy Zappy. 

He emailed me out of the blue that he had a bunch of Mets cards and that he had looked at my want lists (hey, someone reads my want lists!) and that he had a bunch of those for me too.  You see here in this first scan some of those Mets cards.  I am gonna miss Johan Santana but since he hasn't pitched much the last year and a half, I guess I am already used to it.  I hope one of those three Prizm rookies pans out.  And it's hard to tell, but that Zack Wheeler is purple.

He also looked at my player want list and came up with some great stuff:

I have a weird attachment to Alex Gordon and now I have a page of his cards to accentuate that odd infatuation.  ZZ is a Yankees fan and filled my odd request for horizontal Derek Jeter cards.  I had obtained a Listia lot of Jeter cards that I had earmarked for trades but it turns out that seven of them were horizontal, so of course instead of getting rid of them I decided to make another page of Jeter cards.  With those two, it is now complete and I hate to say it is pretty sweet.  The Trout, Bautista, Bruce, and Votto go towards finishing their pages as well.  That Bautista card is very very blue.

Zippy Zappy collects Yankees cards and in exchange for this pile of booty, I sent him a nice assortment of 40-50 random Bronx Bomber cards.  Since I did not have a want list to go by, I just kind of picked as many oddball and obscure cards I could of players I figure he liked.  He told me I did a pretty good job as he only had 3 or 4 of the cards I sent.  Who knew I had pinstripe instincts?

Here you see some 2013 Topps Update Mets needs and a wonderful Mr. Met insert from Opening Day.  I have never heard of Logan Verrett but I assure you, he is a Mets prospect.  It is so rare to see green on a Mets card that isn't the grass.  Also here are a couple of Gary Carter cards, one of which I didn't have (the white GQ parallel) and one I already had which featured prominently in this snarky post.  And that lower left card is a gold shiny Matt Harvey rookie card.  Wow, I might not have sent ZZ enough for this package, huh?

The last scan covers some junk wax era stuff he sent, 99% I already had.  I believe that Rick Cerone might be the only one I needed but I certainly appreciate the effort.  Those Knight and Strawberry cards are tremendous to look at so I included them here.  The last card in the package blew my mind...

It is a 2007 UD Kellogg's David Wright card that I didn't even know existed, probably because it is Japanese.  Not only did he include this fabulous oddball food issue, he even translated it for me in his little note for me.  Believe me fellow bloggers, if you get an email from Zippy Zappy requesting a trade, answer that thing ASAP.  Thanks Kenny!  You have been proudly added to the trade wall of fame.

***Update*** Turns out right after I posted this, I found out Zippy Zappy started his own blog literally yesterday (thus making a liar out of me;). You should go check it out: http://cervinupcards.blogspot.com/

Mail Call: COMC Black Friday.

       Today is the infamous "Black Monday" in NFL coaching circles - the day when poor head coaches find out their (usually poor) fate.  Watching ESPN this morning is like watching a funeral procession, one after another crappy coach after crappy coach is thrown on the fire.  It is schadenfreude at its finest especially when your teams aren't involved.  What better day to check out all my Black Friday booty from COMC (how's that for a segue?) Every year they run a special for free shipping - plus most sellers have kickass sales - so it is the best day of the year to load up on cards.  I nabbed some stuff I have had my eye on for most of the year and broke down and bought a few things I had been aching to have but wanted at my price.

First we'll start with some die cut numbered 2004 eX rookies:

To be honest, I only wanted a page of the base cards and had been striking out in trades or at shows finding any.  As I perused my wantlists, this was the first incomplete page that stood out for some reason.  This set just screams "millennium design" with all its metallic highlights and swoops and blocky modern fonts.  When I searched the site, I saw that these die cut rookies were more readily available (and cheaper) than the base cards.  So I switched gears and nabbed nine of these instead and made this nifty page out of them.  

I also loaded up on some of this year's Mets cards I had not yet added:

In a minor upset, I got many more Zack Wheeler cards than anything else.  That orange refractor is just spectacular, as most Mets cards in orange refractor form are.  That overly ornate die cut Matt Harvey was a must-add as it is so over the top and silly looking, it belongs in 1996.  I also think you could use those cards as shurikens.  I also nabbed a low number shiny 2004 eX rookie of Mets failed prospect Aarom Baldiris.  He deserved to washout just for the silly spelling of his name.  I might own more of his useless cards than any other Mets prospect that never got to the majors (he was big in Japan, though).

I also got some single cards to complete some pages:

I am trying to put together a page of all the Topps Finest and that Livan Hernandez finished off the 2004 page (check my want lists to see if you can help).  I also found that Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds cards are pretty cheap - gee, I wonder why? - and grabbed a couple of those to complete a couple of vague pages.  That Gary Sheffield finishes his page in my retired book; I wanted to get a card for each team he played for and since he only played for eight different teams, I decided on a minor league card to round it out.  The bottom row shows piles of cards I needed to finish two pages I really really wanted to get done.  I suppose it is my love of shiny, but I have wanted to do a page of those 2005 UD Reflections Legends cards for a while.  The other cards were to complete a page of 2001 UD Decade inserts.  I would have done a page for each of the different inserts, but for some odd reason most of the inserts in that set are only 6 total cards and that just doesn't jibe with the Starting Nine theme.  The patchwork page practically works better as a dayglow memorial to 1970's excess and now has a place of honor in my faux vintage book. 

One more card on that last scan deserves to be seen in its rightful place:

I am kind of a sucker for all of the Upper Deck Heroes sets and subsets, so when I saw a couple of years ago that Martin Brodeur had one, I had to have it.  Getting the first 8 was easy enough, but Upper Deck being Upper Deck, the ninth card, the fancy painting checklist card, was severely short printed.  The thing cost $20 or more on ebay if you could find one.  I love #30, don't get me wrong, but this nonsense seemed a bit extreme.  So there sat a hole in the very front page of my hockey binder for a long long time.  I just couldn't/wouldn't give in to short printed extortion.  But as often happens during these kinds of shopping sprees, you get on a roll.  I plugged that card into the search and came back with a few hits, one of them for $8.20 - a 50% sale that would only last Black Friday weekend.  So I sighed, swallowed my pride and bit; it is by far the most expensive card I bought.  I'm sorry but I'm not sorry. 

I filled in holes old and new in my Topps All Star Rookie needs:

I grabbed those two 1964 and the 1963 cards on the super cheap and finally added the 2012 Brett Lawrie which had somehow eluded me.  My modern needs have now been whittled down to (mostly) parallels and inserts.  I have plenty of vintage ones yet to go, though.  Also in this scan are a couple more faux vintage pages finishing cards.  The Eck and Bench cards are from the Shoebox set back at the height of retro reprint mania.  The 2004 retired set page leaves only the 2005 Topps retired page left to be completed. 

A few more odds and ends and some non-baseball cards:

That Bob Gibson finishes off one of the first pages of faux-vintage cards I had made but it had a Cal Ripken card in it, who at the time was technically a current player.  If you are going to have rules about your pages, you have to be a stickler and I just don't like to mix current and retro players (unless I feel like it, of course).  Those top two football cards are from an obscure Collector's Edge set that I had to have a page of just because of its 90's see-thru acetate goodness. The Gene Sykes completes one of my last 1960's football pages (hopefully that post will happen soon) and that Wayne Babych is an OPC hockey card that finishes off that vintage page.  I think those old school hockey cards work so much better in poorly cut Canadian style, don't you?  Finally, the last four cards all have something in common and 64 silver dollars* to the person who figures it out.

*may not be actual silver or dollars