Chrome Is Where The Heart Is.

       People use the term "house-bound agoraphobe" so loosely these days.  One would think while one has been kind of cooped up in the house for a month (by choice) that one would have all sorts of time to blog about his hobby.  Yup, you would sure think that, wouldn't you?

Anyway, I have these packs to open this evening...

One would think I made a trek to Target to get these - but one would be wrong - I nabbed these off of Listia.  Didn't you even read the opening sentence to this post?

I have quite the love affair going with Chrome; it is one of the few brands I have a complete run of pages for.  Here you can see the page that has been devised from these packs:

Some great facial expressions going on here, though I am not sure that is what Chrome does best.  Also some very colorful uniforms, which pop off the chrome even better than you can see in the scan. 

So of course I keep nine cards for my page, what else is gonna stay?  Well, funny you should ask...

I pulled three of the Rookie Cup cards, which is always a plus.  I got one (1) base Mets card, Wilmer Flores, who more and more does not look like shortstop of the future.  The one X-Fractor I got was Raphael Montero, which makes this a more than successful pack ripping for Mets rookies.  Also there are some cards I have put aside for other bloggers, though I already found out the Dodgers are not needed, so those are up for grabs.  

You are supposed to get a refractor in every two packs, so let's see if I came out ahead:

With the x-fractor above, I came out way ahead.  In terms of players, meh.  Any and all of these five are up for trade if you want them. 

The bonus to these packs are the three orange refractors included.  This means I have nine, a perfect page maker, if I so choose:

The orange works better with some teams than other but I think it looks great with Mets players.  Plus, that photo of Curtis Granderson is 1000x better than the one they plastered on the base set.  And I must say, pulling Mike Trout and Jose Fernandez in the same pack was quite nifty.

And to pull the old Gilligan's Island Theme on you, here's the rest:

Derek Jeter and Stephen Strausburg might thrill some, but not me.  There are a dozen other players here that I have no use for.  If you do, feel free to drop me a line and we can work out a deal.  I am gonna go hide under the covers and wait for football to start for real tomorrow.

Mail Call: Double Dutch.

       As of the beginning of March, I had never traded with continental Europe and now, just six weeks later, I have done so twice - both times have been with the appropriately named Dutch Card Guy.  When I posted my Topps Heritage box break, the big "hit" I got from that box was a CC Sabathia Mint card with a 1965 nickle embedded in it numbered to /15.  A neat card for certain, but not one exactly in my wheelhouse.  Enter DCG.  I knew he was a CC collector but I wasn't sure if he'd want the card so I put it on eBay.  I got a bid on it immediately, which wasn't too surprising, but low and behold, it was by the aforementioned DCG, which was.  He messaged me that he wanted the card and was willing to bid for it.  I told him, nonsense!  I am sure we can come up with a trade for it.  He told me he had this card he pulled last year:

A coin for coin swap?  Perfection!  I pulled the card's auction immediately and we hammered out some details and this wonderful trade was complete.  I don't know if I am ready to become a Mike Trout super collector but a card like this might get the ball rolling on such a thing.  If I can trade awesome hits for cards like this, it might be doable; his cards aint cheap, ya know...

The details included that wonderful 2005 Topps Steve Trachsel red x-fractor you see below.  Those red refractors really pop and I have found for some reason, the 2005 ones really work, not to mention that is a nifty picture of The Human Rain Delay.  I didn't have a Mets one of these and now I do. As good as the scan here shows it, believe me, it is ten times shinier than that, even.

He also threw in a couple awesome unexpected goodies, that 2014 Donruss Puig and that 2008 UD Masterpiece Ryne Sandberg, great cards both, ones I did not have and will definitely keep.  So thank you once again, Jeroen, for a unique trade. I also want to thank the Dutch Postal Service, which once again got a package across the Atlantic to me in less than 10 days. Sometimes the USPS can't get things across two states in less than 10 days.

***

Also in the mail today were these two cards, both interesting in and of themselves even if on the surface they appear rather bland.

I picked up that Roy Campanella on the right from Listia and is just a glorious card.  It is a TCMA card from 1979 and it emulates the classic 1953 Bowman Color set.   It does two things for me: it completes my Campanella player page and it also shows him on a card with a full photo standing - something I neither had seen before nor owned.  Given his tragic accident, I think this was a necessity for his page. 

I picked up the other card on the left from eBay and it doesn't certainly look extraordinary at all, does it?  I mean, it is a player so obscure I had to look up since I have never heard the name - turns out Mike Leclerc had himself a decent couple of years in the NHL before retiring at the tender age of 30.  I will chalk up his anonymity in my world to the fact that he played on the west coast and the Devils don't play the Western Conference much.  I kinda like it because it shows the old garish purple and teal-green colors of the old Anaheim Mighty Ducks plus that so-awful-it's-kinda-neat logo of theirs.  It is a jersey card too, so I get to touch the fuzzy.  But the key to this card is the serial number; anyone who has dug deep into my wantlists knows I have an affinity for the number 527 and lo and behold, yes, this card is serial numbered number 527.  But there is something very special about this particular card, look at the back and see if you can spot it:

Here, I'll make it very obvious for you, in case you are missing it...

Enhance!!!

^^^^^^^ look here dummy.                               

Yes, you are seeing that correctly.  That is a card serial numbered higher than its supposed edition.  I gotta say, there is a lot of reasons that Pacific went out of business and I wanna say quality control might be one of them.  I have never seen such a thing on a trading card?  Have you?  

Lots of Mets.

       I love lots.  No, that is not an incomplete sentence, I love buying and selling lots of cards on eBay.  All sorts of people will tell you all kinds of strategies for getting a good price on the venerable auction site; ideas ranging from searching misspellings to sniping to days of the week, etc. etc.   I have bought and sold on there for over a decade and I find the best way to get bang for your buck is lots.  When I sell in lots, I always list everything that's involved, including names, card numbers, and serial numbers - not just one of these but all of them.  Sure, it can be time consuming, but such completist actions gets results.  And conversely, when I am looking for a card, I will always use the "search description" option to see if I can find it in a lot to get some other cards with it, either to add to my collection or turn around and resell.  I find this adds to the fun and since this is a hobby, that is the name of the game.

       I don't always have a specific target when I search, sometimes I just plug in a few words and "lot" and see what comes up.  "Mets lot" is one of my five most common searches on eBay and last week I found a rather vaguely worded listing, offering 50 cards including "serial numbers" and "refractors" with nothing listed and only one card pictured.  Normally, I would not take a chance on such a lot, but I was feeling frisky and the price was right.  Lucky for me, the lot was all refractors and serial numbered cards.  It is one of my favorite buys of recent memory.  Lets take a look:

Right away, there are some Topps gold parallels, I happen to love these cards.  Johan is always appreciated, I am still a little weary of Pelfrey.  Pagan is now gone, but he did have one good season on a bad team and, last but not least, Brandon Looper.  I like Brandon Looper strictly because in MVP 2005, he was listed as B. Looper - so that means the Mets closer was literally a Blooper!  How appropriate. *sigh* Moving on, there is some Heritage Chrome and those wacky Topps Co-Signers cards, with their labyrinthine system of colors and numbers.  Luckily, Jose Reyes is in the dark shadows of two of them and not featured.  My love affair with Jose Reyes is over and I am very broken-hearted about the whole thing.  It is always nice to see David Wright's smiling face, with any luck, we will see more of it on the field this year. 

Let's move on to the shiny, OOOOOOooooooooooo..... shiny...

Night Owl was right when he said the 2010 Chrome cards were the worst offenders of the curling, that Jason Bay bows something awful and it was packed tight with these other cards.  Oh, but those Blue and Orange refractors are purdy.  I can't tell which color works better.  That David Wright looks 100x better in person, with its orange popping right out at ya.  More stately and beautiful is the 2011 Johan Santana; that might be my favorite new Johan.  Heck, the blue even makes Armando Benitez look good.  There, once again, is a mega-shiny X-Fractor Jose Reyes...there was a time when I would have been thrilled to own that card.  Then there are some Bowman refractors, which are always hit or miss.  The shine on the black borders is hard to see in person, much less in the scans here.  And while I love the color purple normally, it does nothing for Mets cards.  I do like that those cards are numbered out of /777 - I like it when they mix it up from the usual /999 or /500 or what have you.

Here are some more Mets shiny.  Told you there were a lot of refractors...

Lots of painful memories in this scan, but being a Mets fan is knowing the meaning of the words "what might have been."  That Daniel Murphy X-Fractor is quite something in person; he is the only potential positive here.  The less said about the others, the better.

Even more shiny and some die-cut rookies:

Kurt Presley's claim to fame is being a cousin of The King; too bad Lisa Marie has a stronger arm.  That gold refractor David Wright is the rare card that looks better in the scan than it does in person.  The colors don't quite work in real life, but the scanner seemed to get the right angle on it.  Odd.  Oh, and Darryl Strawberry.  I have been in an abusive relationship with Straw since 1983.  I wish I could quit you, but a low numbered blue shiny Topps Tribute card is not going to help at all.  Deolis Guerra was one of the pieces of the Johan Santana trade, I think he parked my car last week in the city, I can't be 100% sure.  Then there are two more Orange vs. Blue examples.  These are both off colors to the Mets colors, but both work; yes, even with Victor Zambrano prominently involved.  Matt Den Dekker opened some eyes in Spring Training this year, and this is the first card of his I have.  The only thing I have to look forward to this year is some young bucks going out there and showing something, so I hope they keep some of these kids up.  If you're gonna fail, you might as well do it with rookies.  I remember we picked Steve Matz in 2009 and this is the first I have heard of him since.

Getting a little older with these, and a little more random:

Mike Piazza and Tom Glavine.  You cannot get further on my love list than those two.  I have never said a kind word about Tom Glavine and I never will.  OK, Carlos Beltran.  I avoided commenting on his cards now long enough.  I want to like Carlos Beltran.  Heck, I want to love him.  I have a boatload of his cards.  And yes, I know he had some good years for the team, but I am afraid in the long run, the best thing about Carlos Beltran for the Mets is he got us Zack Wheeler.  Sad.  The bottom row has a neat old Topps Gallery Players Private Issue card of Rey Ordonez.  I now look back on Rey Ordonez fondly, so I guess there is hope for Carlos Beltran.  I have that Dynasty card in a gold ultra-low numbered version, so having it in orange is nice too (the back has Keith Hernandez and Darryl Strawberry).  That last card proves the old Meatloaf lyric correct: two outta three aint bad.

This was a 50 card lot, so the last scan only had five cards:

The top row are three rookies that didn't pan out, two of them from Japan.  I love all of the Mets failed experiments in free agents from the far east, so these cards will find themselves in good company with Kazuo Matsui and Tsuyoshi Shinjo, et al.  The last two cards kind of belong together...Darryl Strawberry and Jose Reyes.  Probably the two best position players the Mets have ever developed.  Both of them left for greener pastures and fatter wallets.  One of them regrets it, I hope the other one lives to. *double sigh* To end this post on a more positive note, those Upper Deck Baseball Heroes cards sure look wonderful in blue.