Mail Call: Shiny!

       I am a sucker for free shipping.  Yes, I am the kind of buffoon who will buy extra stuff just to qualify for it.  Like when COMC.com has one of their free shipping promotions there is usually a minimum number involved, but this really isn't a problem for me since I am pretty active buying and selling on their site.  Well, this spring has thrown all sorts of curve balls and I just haven't been as card-centric as I normally am.  So when I noticed they were having a free shipping for 30+ cards promotion a couple weeks ago, I was forlorn to see that I only had 6 cards waiting in my shipping queue.  Do you think this deterred me?  Did you read the first two sentences of the post? 

I delved into my watch list but only saw high priced stuff for the most part.  I did, however, notice two very reasonably priced inserts from last year's Bowman set.  These inserts were not only Mets cards, they were shiny.  Very shiny.  I got swept up in the moment and decided it would be easiest to make a page of each of these inserts to qualify for my free shipping.  Hey, a bargain is a bargain and shiny is shiny.

The first page is of the 1989 Bowman is Back inserts.

The scan does these no justice.  They are glittery and atomic refractor-esque.  They are like the Diamond Anniversary parallels from a 2011.  I picked out 9 of the most interesting photos I could from the first page of the "lowest price" tab and voila!

The other page is from the Bowman Chrome Fire Die-Cut set. 

I cannot express how much I like the concept behind this set.  I like die cuts.  I like shiny.  I am a bit of a pyromaniac, at least I was in my youth when I almost burned my house down once by making a camp fire in the basement (gimme a break, I was like 8).  I had not seen these in real life and it took me holding one to realize that they weren't just shiny and die cut, but the design itself was the base design, only melted.  I am usually not one for prospect cards, but damn, I love this set.  They are amazing.  Once again, I picked 9 off the first page and now I am sorry I didn't build the whole set.

Keeping with the theme, I nabbed some Mets from those two sets, which were the cards I had watched in the first place.  They were the Noah Syndergaard and Michael Conforto to be specific.  I also got the David Wright and Gary Carter BiB and Travis d'Arnaud of both sets. 

The bottom cards here are three of the six I had in my original queue. They are from an early 80's oddball Cramer set of vintage players in sepia tones.  I chose players I don't have a lot of since the six I had were of the Hank Aaron/Willie Mays very-well represented type.  Brief aside: I have an obsession with pie along the lines of Agent Cooper in Twin Peaks so it stuns me that I don't have a whole Pie Traynor page or player collection.  That is a situation I might have to rectify. 

Here are the other orphans from the original six. 

Nothing very surprising here.  A New Orleans Saint.  A Mike Piazza.  Another Michael Conforto card - and with the Mets quite literally scoring only 1 run a game for the last 2-3 weeks, I am bewildered as to why they haven't called him up, he's only hitting like .330.  So I got my free shipping and it only cost me like ten bucks.  My little buying binge left me with .42 cents credit left and while that is a very good number, I just couldn't leave that in there even though I had hit my magic number of 30.  So one last check of my watch list showed me that the most inexpensive card I had was that Topps 60 Keith Hernandez.  Price: 41 cents.  I love it when a plan comes together.

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.

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?

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. 

Mail Call: Ten! Ten Plain White Envelopes!

       Ahahahaha! Okay, well, to be all nit-picky and specific, it is nine plain white envelopes and one yellow one...

                                                                                                                                                                      ^^^ See? Yellow one.

I swear to god, my postman hoards my mail and delivers it all at once.  This represents almost two weeks of purchases on Listia and eBay all spread out on different days and yet somehow, magically, they all get delivered at once.  I mean, yeah, there was three snow storms and a holiday but still, it makes me imagine the Newman style of postal delivery.

Now sprung from their PWE prisons, what you see here is an odd mix - but really, if you read this blog with any sort of regularity, it all makers perfect sense...

In the first row, you'll see I picked off that Pujols and those two 1985 Topps hall of famers for literally nothing on Listia.  I grabbed that gold Jimenez parallel on eBay for a dollar for my pages.  In the second row is some very typical Max pickups, New Orleans Saints and New York Mets cards.  I got that Sid Fernandez for 100 credits on Listia and bought a whole lot of nine cards to secure that Hojo, which I am 98% sure I don't have.  Of course now I have 8 Mets doubles - that I will probably put on Listia.  Oh the circle of life.  The final row shows a couple of Oakland A's players who are both #527 in their respective sets.  Somehow, I still have not written my post about my 527 collection.  At least I - and by extension you - have something to look forward to.  Lastly is one of those Olivia II smutty art cards.  Shiny and boobies for free?  How could I resist?

Football '13 Week 3: Shiny!

       I have my snacks and adult beverages.  I have the Saints and Giants (and Mets) all on at 1pm.  I am still in my pajamas and there is a beautiful first-day-of-autumn breeze blowing through my living room.  Life is pretty good right now.  This is easily one of my favorite kinds of days, so let's look at my favorite kind of cards...shiny!!!

2012 Bowman Platinum:

These are the rare cards that actually scan better than they look in real life.  Pay no attention to the man in the lower right hand corner (gotta get a replacement for that one).

2001 Topps Archive Reserves:

This set was done in the early aughts faux-vintage retro reprint phase of card companies.  They did two years of baseball, they only did one year of football.  You don't see the name Elroy a lot anymore - I think the Jetsons killed it - and he also had one of the best nicknames ever, Crazy Legs. 

2005 Topps Chrome Gold inserts:

I have no idea if they did refractor versions of these cards, but it would hardly matter.  They are very dynamic all on their own.  Vegas baby, Vegas!  This is the rare page with a mix of current and retro players.

2000 Bowman Reserve:

This is an all refractor type set that is the exact opposite of the Bowman Platinum above; no scan I have ever seen does these justice.  It's like they put extra rainbow shininess in the mixture before they went to press.

1998 Topps Gold Label:

There are a million variations to these; I am pretty sure that was their only reason to exist.  It's like they all sat around in Topps HQ and said "hey, how infuriating can we make a set to collect?" and came up with these beauties.   Of course, they then outdid themselves and came up with these, though they never did that design in football.  I have no idea if that is a good thing or not.

1994 Topps Football Special Effects:

I always found these parallels fascinating.  It features a shiny bit that I had never seen before or since.  The player name is done in silver glowing letters and there is a plastic sheen of little checkerboard lens flares over the whole thing.  They never did this to any other set and I wonder why (update: I just looked it up and they also did it to Premiere Hockey that year).  Maybe it wasn't received well?  Maybe it was too expensive to do?  It is a shame, because it looks damn cool. I once considered building the whole set of these, but decided a single page would more than suffice.

1993 Stadium Club:

Look! Little tiny squares of shiny.  Remember when little tiny squares of shiny were reason to get excited?  Now little squares of fabric don't even get people excited.

1998 SPx:

Die Cut! Shiny! Holograms! So 1990's, it hurts.

1996 SP:

This is a great example of a set that is deceptively shiny.  There is no extra foil or refraction or anything else going on, but the texture of the borders and the darkened backgrounds make everything stand out a little extra.

1994 Upper Deck Electric parallels:

It's electric, boogie woogie woogie!!!

1991 Upper Deck Game Breakers:

This is the entire nine card set -- I love it when that happens.  These are nothing but shiny.  Did Upper Deck fall in love with holograms in the early 90's or what?  My scanner does a pretty good job with these.

1998 eX football:

Talk about a 90's card maker's wet dream...half shiny, half clear plastic.

1998 Fleer Brilliants Blue parallel:

With a name like "Brilliant" you think it would be a lot shinier.  The blue parallel at least adds a little interest to the background, the regular issue was just flat silver.  I'm not sure why I included this page.

1998 Flair Showcase:

Unlike those lame Brilliants above, these are so well done.  The background is in one solid shiny muted color and it makes the foreground picture pop.  Throw in the simple design elements and font and you have well hell of a good looking card.

2004 Press Pass Big Numbers inserts:

This is one of the first football pages I ever put together and it is exactly the way I made it nine years ago.  Larry Fitzgerald turned out to be a pretty good player, as did Will Smith (this one, not this one). The rest?  Very hit or miss, though it is a shame that Jarrett Payton (Walter's son) never got much of a chance.  I was really rooting for him.

2007 Score Atomic parallel:

On these, the shiny is done in a series vertical streaks.  They seem to have been influenced by the credits in the movie The Matrix.  With three games going with high interest now and none the rest of the day, maybe I should watch that, I mean, come on, anything is better than watching the Jets.

Trade with Brian of Play at the Plate.

       It is a sad coincidence that I am posting today about a trade that features the 1971 Topps Thurman Munson. Lord knows I hate the Yankees, and I certainly was never a fan of Munson and his act, but perhaps it would be wise to show a modicum of respect on the 34th anniversary of his death.   

And whether you like Munson or not, one cannot deny the sheer beauty of this card (even in this rough of shape). It has always been one of my absolute favorites.  This particular copy sat in my Rookie All Star box for decades.  I recently found myself an upgrade and this card was relegated to the ebay/trade/listia limbo pile.  A sad end for such an epic card.  Ah, but not so fast.  Last month, I saw a comment on Fuji's blog on a post about plays at the plate and whom should extoll the virtues of this card but a man who runs a blog with the tremendous and apt name Play at the Plate. Not only did he praise it, but he mentioned he did not own it.  It all clicked in my head.  I would swap this badboy to a man who will truly appreciate it.  After all, how can someone whose blog is called Play at the Plate not own this card?  That'd be blasphemy, I tells ya!

So after a few emails, we agree I'd send the card and he would put together some stuff from my want list.  I must say, it was quite a nice pile:

Right away, a couple of this year's Heritage and some Series 2 Mets.  Also, there are some shiny Mets Bowman Platinum prospects.  The one on the left is PURPLE and the other two are X-Fractors that did not scan well.  Trust me, they are very shiny indeed.  I now have 4 different versions of that Cesar Puello card and the only thing I have heard about this kid is that he was somehow mixed up with the PED-biogenesis nonsense. Wonderful.

The second part also has some shiny to spare:

Any Matt Harvey card is always greatly appreciated.  Brad Emaus was a spring training sensation a couple of years ago (much like Collin Cowgill this year).  Seems the Mets have one of those every year and they never even seem to end the year with the team. *sigh*  I am glad I own a Shawn Marcum card wearing a Mets uni to remind me of his 1-10 record from this year. The Gary Carter in the center is a white border parallel and I must say, these Gypsy Queen cards work much better in white.  The prime shiny, though, is that Ike Davis on the left center.  The scan does not do it justice; it is a wicked looking card.  I plan on picking up the other 5 Mets from this parallel and may even break down and make a page of them.  On the bottom are two David Wrights and a Darryl Strawberry.  It is interesting that Wright just claimed second place on the Mets all time home run list this evening, and he will soon top that list, taking the title from Straw alluded to on this card. 

Third and final part:

Minis!  Tom Seaver mini!  Another GQ card of Wright looking dashing in white.  The three Walmart parallels that are greatly appreciated since 1) the Mets cards look good in that light blue and 2) I don't shop at Walmart.  Last but certainly not least is one last shiny David Wright and a Top Prospect card of Zack Wheeler, specifically one I did not have.  That is a fabulous card.

The denouement of this trade post is the little note Brian left in his package to me.  Absolutely, these cards are of use.  Thank you very much.  I am glad that old Munson of mine found a good home. 

Football Week 7: Random Shiny!

      I have spent the last few months trying to sort out the miasma that is my football binders into something with the appearance of a collection.  The deeper in I get, the more messy everything appears to be.  I want to streamline things the way I have my baseball and (for the most part) my hockey collection.  I want nice nine pocket pages with a single theme.  I want my favorite players and cards well represented.  I want it to look like someone applied a modicum of thought to the whole thing.

That brings us to this couple of pages I found this morning.  They are kooky.  They are full of random cards.  Sure, random can be fun sometimes, but wow, these bring random to a whole new level.  I truly would like to know what I was thinking when these pages were created: "Hey! This one is kinda shiny...this one is die-cut...this one is die-cut and kinda shiny, I think I'll stick it in here!"  That would seem to be the maximum amount of brain power that went into this one:

Ahhhh, the late 90's and early aughts were such a wonderful time.  Cards with a patchwork of foil, cuts, see-thru, reflectors, refractors, and whatever the hell dufex is.  This page is glorious in its representation of that era.  I am almost tempted not to change this one at all.  It is so organically haphazard that it almost seems planned.  I really wish it was.  The scan does not do it justice either.  That Tamarick Vanover (great name alert!) in the upper left is a Trophy Collection card. The Jim Harbaugh (current 49ers coach) in the middle left is a Stadium Club Dot Matrix parallel.  Yeah, maybe those card styles mean nothing to you, but in real life, they are sooooooo shiny.  The scans of the Kevin Greene and Edgerrin James on the right kinda show how shiny these cards are.  I could probably blind drivers from 50 yards with that Greene card.  The bottom row is a a trio of foil drenched die cuts.  Upper Deck really loves that little curved notch they used on the Kerry Collins card; they used it as recently as 2010. 

This page has a companion.  Unfortunately, it is not nearly as connected by its randomness:

It would seem that with this page, I really was just sticking cards in the pages.  The Rocket Ismail in the upper left is a Members Only Stadium Club cards and is very shiny (shouldn't he be wearing a jacket?) and apparently, I went completely 5th grade and put in a couple of Marion Butts cards.  That Joey Harrington card in the center square is just as epic as it would appear.  All foil and lightning bolts, it looks like ol' Joe is getting his comeuppance for years of sucking by being electrocuted.  Too bad that insert set was only 6 cards, because a design that dramatic deserves a page of its own.  Sadly, it is downhill from there for this page.  There is a Rick Mirer card that is 1 out of 90,000 - wow, so limited - and a couple of Raiders cards, though one of them is an Upper Deck hologram card of Fred Biletnikoff.  Then it looks like I just stuck a Tom Jackson card in for no reason, since it is neither shiny nor die cut nor a parallel nor anything that would tie it in with the rest of these.  Last but not least is that Earl Campbell card in the middle bottom, which is from 2005, proving I have looked at this page in the last couple years and did nothing about it.  That said, Earl Campbell was a monster.  Never saw him play?  Go take a look...he was amazing.

Trade With Stackhouse at Tim Wallach blog. aka Goals.

       You gotta have goals.  Long term, short term, midterm, it is always best to have something to aim for.  Not to get into deeper life lessons here, I will specifically apply this concept to a card collection.  Your collection can get out of hand real quick, both in terms of size and scope, if you don't know what you are trying to accomplish with it.  I have narrowed my collection in recent years to a very personal group of criteria.  But not everyone wants to narrow their collections down.  Some people want to expand and grow.  I respect that.  I envy that, in a way.

       There is one collector who has a vision I think we all should envy.  We all have favorite teams and players that we like to collect en masse.  This collector I am speaking of is a fan of Tim Wallach, former third baseman for the Expos and Dodgers.  He has a simple goal: collect all his cards.  And I don't mean one of each of his cards, I mean ALL his cards.  There is a fine line between madness and genius, I believe J Corey Stackhouse straddles this line perfectly. 

After finding his blog and immediately embracing his audacity, I sent him an email praising his insanity and promised him I would comb my collection for every Tim Wallach card I could find.  While I only found 14 of them, it was a nice mix of rookies and oddballs and Stackhouse reciprocated by sending me a nice selection of Mets and Saints cards:

I mean, how can you go wrong with a shiny David Wright and a vintage Gil Hodges?  Short answer: you can't.  And the hit parade continues with more shiny of Mike Pelfrey (that is a refractor, trust me) and Lucas Duda.  I really should collect the entire Mets set of those 2011 Topps Diamond cards.  They bring shiny to a whole new level.  Also here are some nouveau Gary Carters and Tom Seavers - a couple nice additions to two of my favorite players to collect (though I couldn't dream of collection all of their cards).   Plus, I love vague Mets stickers and that Panini is one I do not have.  Sweet.

Wait, there is more:

Stackhouse said he was going to come up with some of my Rookie Cup needs, but he only found one.  One is always enough if you don't have it.  There are a couple more oblong Mets inserts there that I am not sure if I have, but will go in the team book regardless.  Rounding out the package were some recent Saints cards that I did not yet have.  I didn't even know Topps did an Attax for football.  The caption on the Marques Colston insert is "Ringmaster of Offensive Circus" OK, sure.

I will now implore all my readers: please check out Stackhouse's blog.  Please search your collections and help him with his goal.  His chutzpah alone should be an inspiration to us all.  You gotta have goals, even if they are crazy.  Nothing is impossible.  Thanks, Corey!

America.

O beautiful


for spacious skies


For amber waves of grain,


For purple mountain majesties


Above the fruited plain!


America!



America!



God shed his grace on thee


And crown thy good


with brotherhood


From sea to shining sea!