Do You Have a 2nd Favorite Team - I Guess I Do

Many of the sports card blogs around the blogosphere have a team centered focus, it seems we all have a favorite team.  Mine obviously focuses on my love of the Giants and while I do collect other things and share them here, I doubt anyone would question where my loyalties stand.

My boys are 10 and 7 and are always asking me all sorts of sports related questions.  Every game we turn on the television is followed by a "Who do you want to win?" to which I usually reply "I don't care, I just want to see a good game" unless one of my favorite teams is playing (or one of my least favorite).  My 10 year old spent the entire Super Bowl asking me questions about the rules of the game.  This excited me (that he is starting to take more of an interest in sports) and annoyed me (can I please just watch and listen to the game) at the same time but the excitement won out and I patiently answered every question.

I bought each boy a pack of 2015 Topps recently and as they were going through the packs they asked who my second favorite baseball team after the Giants was.  They have asked before and I always say I am all in for the Giants.  However, I was thinking through my collection, my player collections and a couple new random pick ups and have decided that I do have a 2nd favorite team - the Oakland A's.

I grew up near Sacramento, CA and our local paper The Sacramento Bee had fairly equal coverage between the A's and Giants.  There were years where each team had better TV contracts and we could watch more of one team over the other.  I attended games at both Candlestick and the Oakland Coliseum. When they played each other in 1989 my extreme disappointment in the outcome made it clear who my #1 is.  But thinking through my card collection, the A's seem to come out as #2.

First off, my player collections come to mind.  These are all recently acquired Rickey Henderson cards:

 Rickey played for a bunch of different teams but is most remembered as a member of the A's and my affinity for him definitely started when he was a member of the Oakland club.  BTW, the Stadium Club Legends die cut inserts are amazing and I have been considering going after the entire insert set since I cracked my first box of Stadium Club.

Another player I collect started his career in Oakland and had a couple stints on the team:

This great looking relic card shows Reggie Jackson in his early years with the A's.  I remember Reggie more for his time with the Yankees but clearly recall my dad sharing stories about his time with the A's while watching the 1977 & 78 World Series games.  I also enjoy his cards from his Oakland period over any other uniform.

These two player collections alone didn't result in the conclusion that the A's are my second favorite team but these last 2 cards I will share put it over the top:

I was drawn to this relic from 2005 Topps Pristine Legends for its 1983 inspired design and the presence of HOFer Dennis Eckersley in his Oakland uniform.  I will casually keep my eyes open for other cards from this set as I really like the design, but this Eck card has a permanent place in my collection.

This is the card that sealed the deal. When I started watching box breaks of 2014 Topps Tribute and saw cards of Dave Stewart with the A's popping up, I knew I needed one in my collection.  I may never add another Stewart card to my collection but I am really happy to have this beauty.  This card has a great design, this Yellow version parallel matches great with the A's colors and takes me right back to watching Stewart's stretch of years where he was one of the most feared and dominant pitchers of the game.

Time to tell my boys that upon review of my card collection, I do have a 2nd favorite team.

New 1960s Vintage Giants

Recently I shared that I had finished off all the Giants Topps team sets from the 1960s so why are these two cards entering my collection:

The condition of these cards are not stellar so it isn't a condition update.  There are no variations to these cards like odd colored backs or incorrect statistics.  If you turn over the cards and check out the backs, the mystery is solved:

The bottom right corner shows the Printed in Canada notation - these are O-Pee-Chee cards from the mid-1960s.  As best as I can tell, 1965 was the first year for OPC baseball.  If you check out my Giants Base want list you will see that I have a big void in my collection of Giants OPC cards from 1965 to 1976.  I haven't made these sets a priority and really don't even know the supply or cost of these cards compared to their Topps counterparts. However I saw these two at pretty reasonable prices and decided to add them to my collection.

This year is my year of the base card and these do qualify but so far my focus has been on much more recent releases.  I don't know if I will get to aggressively pursuing these cards in 2015 but I suspect that at some point these sets could be a good collecting goal.

Trade Post - Infield Fly Rule

Not too long back I received a small flat rate box from Adam over at Infield Fly Rule packed with 5-6 team bags of cards.  There was a pretty wide variety of cards and I always have fun digging through those types of packages.  I had quite a few of the cards but that is always okay as I have a couple outlets for my dups - my boys when their card collecting interests are peaking or a friend's son who I have dumped a few flat rates on over the past couple of years.

I thought I would share some of my highlight from the package:

First to share are a few stickers and holograms.  For many these aren't super collectible but I love getting them in trade packages.  I have a big stack of these types of items that will one day have their own binder in Giants collection.  9 pocket pages are currently in need at the arpsmith household but I have a possible line on some gently used pages.  I was at my LCS recently and he bought a collection of basketball cards that included several binders with clean Ultra Pro Platinum pages that he is going to clean out and set aside for me.  He said he would shoot them my way for a nickle each which is about 75% off what new pages typically cost.

 Usually my trade packages are mostly Giants or set needs but Adam included a fairly sizable stack of non-Giants.  There were a few Barry Bonds cards as a Pirate, a bunch of former Giants and a few I didn't see any real connection to my collection.  These two stood out as they feature Giants who are not the main subject of the card.  I haven't typically collected these types of cards but these two stood out and will be set aside, this may be a mini collection option in the future.  I particularly like the Dodgers card where the only strong visual representing a team is the Giants jersey.

Finally I scanned a group of the cards new to my collection.  The Bonds Revolution card in the upper left corner didn't scan well but is an awesome looking card in person.  As I work on trying to acquire as many new Giants base cards this year as possible getting Bonds cards in trades is always appreciated as they are typically the most costly.  The two Topps Reserve cards were ones I had never seen and the T206 card I had in mini form but not full sized.  The McCovey is a duplicate as I have it in my McCovey binder but not my Giants.  The two bottom cards will fit nicely in the minors binder. Believe it or not, the Chris James card is my favorite of the entire batch.  It was a card that wasn't previously on my checklist - I needed it but didn't know I needed it.

Adam, thanks for all the great cards. I will be working on something to return the favor soon.

Nachos Grande Case Break Goods

Chris, over at Nachos Grande, held a case break for 2015 Topps Series 1 and I quickly jumped in and got the Giants.  Overall Chris did a nice job on the break and there were quite a few hits spread over several of the collectors that bought in.  I was very happy with what I pulled and want to show off the goods.

First off, the base cards. With Jumbo boxes you typically pull and entire set plus some dups in each box.  I bought a box for myself and did get the entire base set.  As luck would have it, not only did I get my expected 6 team sets, I was able to put together a seventh.  And with 20 Giants base cards in the set, it was a pretty nice stack of cards.  I am keeping one set for myself, one for each of my boys and two for fellow collectors of Giants cards so if you are interested in a Giants team set let me know because I will still have a couple left.

Here are the base cards from the set:

The set starts off strong with the first 4 Giants featuring 2 playoff highlights and two of the Giants biggest stars.  There has been a lot of talk about the Pence card, I think it is a perfect indication of who he is as a player and character.

This group of cards features the World Series Game 7 celebration card and shows the perfect picture.  Also, OF Gary Brown gets his flagship rookie in Series 1.  I am wondering if he is going to stick as a back up this year.  News states that Lincecum will be the 5th starter to start the year, should be interesting.

Another MadBum card, this time from Game 1 of the World Series.  I am banking on Matt Cain bouncing back this year, he is much needed and one of my favorite players.

 MadBum yet again.  A lot of our hopes in 2015 rest on the shoulders of Jake Peavy and Brandon Belt.  We need consistent pitching from Peavy and Belt to stay healthy and drive the ball.  I feel more comfortable with Susac as the backup catcher than I have with the Giants last few years of backups.

There are a couple of questionable inclusions in the set. Tyler Colvin's last game with the Giants was July 30th and Brandon Hicks' last game was July 10th.  I could see them being in 2014 Update but somewhat out of place here.  As I have mentioned before, I wish more of the photos weren't so tightly cropped but I do like the Buster picture.  The Arias picture is a recycled one.

 I also got 4 parallels from the case, I thought that number was a little low but was glad to get one of the Bumgarners and a Posey.  The 20 player checklist will make it pretty challenging and costly to build the Gold and Rainbow parallel sets.  I am personally a little happy that Target and Walmart don't have their own parallels of this set. I usually like chasing those sets but with so many it may have diverted my collecting budget and focus.

 The Giants had 5 inserts in the main retail insert sets and I got multiples of these 4. I believe I got 3 of each Archetypes and 2 of the Highlights of the Year card.  I am a fan of the design of both and have actually purchased the entire insert sets of both.

 Two more inserts as well being highlighted by the Mays Gallery of Greats card.  I pulled one of these in my jumbo box so I now have the 2 I need in my collection.  These are great looking cards and I am still working on building the set.  They aren't cheap on the secondary market and if you have some of the ones I need for trade, let's try and work out a deal.  I was also lucky enough to get one of the buy-backs, a 1970 Bob Burda card.  I have decided I won't chase after all these but will try to grab them when I see them.

Finally my last card from the break, a World Series Relic card numbered 52/100.  These are very hard to come by, I haven't been able to pick one up in the prior years after the Giants won the World Series.  This thing has a book value of $200 and my LCS owner told me he sold one on consignment of a marginal player for over $150.  I think this may have been the hit of the break and I am so glad to have it as part of my collection!

Chris also included  a few extras:

 I need the Chipz item but has the rest but they will go nicely in my next Giants care package.

Finally some minis.  This is my second Chris Reed Auto and I am excited to now have the rare, limited to 20 copies, green ink version.  I have no idea who Ryan Rodd is but with the recent announcement, the Floyd Mayweather Jr. card is perfectly times.

Chris, you run a great group break, thank you so much. Looking forward to the Heritiage break coming up soon!

Awesome Basketball Rookie Card

We interrupt this primarily baseball themed blog for a feature about a mid-80s rookie basketball rookie card.

I was going through an old document a few weeks back that listed a bucket list of cards I wanted to add to my collection.  This doc was pre-blog and even prior to expanding my collection to go after anything and everything Giants.  The list included some 49ers certified autos, USC football autos, Baseball HOF autos and a few other random cards.  When I was looking at the list, one card caught my eye that I don't think had crossed my minds since I made the list.

I went on the lookout and found a copy for a reasonable price so I pouced.

 Spud Webb was an NBA point guard for 14 years and is best know for his height (a diminutive by basketball standards 5'7") and his amazing ability to dunk a basketball (he won the Slam Dunk championship in 1986).  Spud spent more years with the Atlanta Hawks but I became a big fan of his during his 4 year stint with my hometown team, the Sacramento Kings.  His time with the Kings was probably his best statistically and he was so much fun to watch.

My memories of him as a King and this amazing card showing him high over the rim has always drawn me to this card and I am very happy to finally have a rookie card from this basketball legend in my collection.

My Favorite Insert Set of 2014

With 2015 releases already out I may be late to the party but I recently picked up a card from the 2014 Topps Chrome set that is so awesome, it gets my vote for insert set of the year.

I believe these cards were only found one per box and with a checklist 50 cards deep there is no way that I will go after the complete set.  They have a refractor finish with a cool geometric design in the background. The foreground has a great picture of Buster Posey although the effect on the card make it looks like he really needs a shave.  I like how the pictures is cropped, close enough to see some details but back enough to see the swing follow through and a majority of his body.  Just a great card front and the others I have seen on blogs and online auctions look equally great.

 The card backs are pretty cool as well.

The subset name of Topps Shelf is obviously a play on the card manufacture name and the players being Top Shelf (best of the best) players.  The back of this Buster card shows 4 career highlights. I think I found the fact that Buster didn't have his first walk off hit until 2013 as pretty surprising, not one in his MVP 2012 season.

I am sure there have been a couple posts on favorite inserts from last year but let me know if you have a favorite and why.

A Couple of GOATs

A few weeks back I picked up a couple cards that don't technically fit into any niche in my collection but the price on the bid board was too good to pass up.  I have a box of random cards I like that continues to grow with no common theme and these fit right in.

First up is the Greatest Running Back of All Time, Sweetness Walter Payton.

This is a 1978 Topps card of Payton.  I really like the design of this set with the team name on the side and the position in a football in the lower corner. The color scheme of the All-Pro banner screams 70s to me and Topps did a great job on photo selection.  Payton is coming off an MVP year where he rushed for over 1800 yards including a single game record of 275 in one game.  He was also MVP of the Pro Bowl, I wonder if the players played hard in that game back then.

The other GOAT I picked up is the first card I have ever purchased from this "sport":

Hulk Rules!  This card came from an Upper Deck release celebrating All-Time Greats.  I have seen a few box breaks on Youtube and it looks like you get 3 base cards/parallels per box and one hit.  The cards serial numbered to 99 are the biggest print run.  The hit often, but not always matched the top card in the box.  I can't imagine buying a box at this price point and hoping for a Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan and getting a Hulk Hogan autograph card.  However, I am happy to have a card of my favorite wrestler from my childhood back when it was WWF, Hulk Hogan.

1961 Giants Team Set

Back in 2013 I set a goal to complete half the Topps Giants team sets from the 1960s and I was able to exceed that goal by finishing off 7. The other 3 were major challenges and I set a goal to finish those off in 2014.  I was able to finish them off at the buzzer and celebrated the final card in my 2014 Collecting Recap post.  I never got a chance to show off the 1961 complete Giants team set and now that I have finally gotten around to scanning it, here it is for your viewing pleasure:

 The Giants had team members on 3 league leader cards, to me it was a surprise that 2 of the 3 were pitching leaders as they were known in this era for their hitting more so than their pitching.

 

I really like the rookie star from this set, it is one of my favorite features.  The Jim Marshall horrible airbrush job stands out like a sore thumb in this team set.  Not sure why Willie Mays doesn't have a hat on, did Topps think the Giants would trade him?

This is a great page.  2 Giants Rookie stars, a nice combo card featuring those league leading Giants pitchers, an appearance of all time great from 50-60 years prior in Christy Mathewson and two Hall of Famers in Marichal and Cepeda.  The Juan Marichal is his rookie card and is considered a short print.

The final page was a beast to put together.  I had the McCovey from my player collection but there were two Mays cards to pick up and a bunch of high numbers.  The high numbers are pretty scarce with very few on the market.  To finish off the page, I inserted the 2 Giants Magic Rub-Off cards.

I am so excited to have finished off all the Giants team sets from the 1960s and I have had the chance to show them all off on the blog.  The HOFers, high numbers and scarcity of some of the earlier cards made this quite a quest but now I turn my attention to the decade of the 1950s.  With all the early Willie Mays cards, this one will take a while and a decent chunk of my budget.  I didn't set a goal for the 50s team set completion this year but will still keep my eyes open for set needs at reasonable prices.

McCovey Monday #72 - 2005 Leaf Sportscaster

My favorite player of all time is Hall of Famer Willie McCovey.  I have amassed a collection of over 1200 different  McCovey cards since I started collecting him in the late 1980s.  I will show off one of my favorite cards every Monday.  Stretch was one of the most feared hitters of all time and I am excited to show off my collection.


I get super excited when Willie McCovey is included in a new release. Even though it is a Padres card, I am happy to see him make an appearance on an insert in 2015 Topps.  I see each new card as an opportunity to add another card to my collecting celebrating my favorite player.

However, during the 2005 season, things got out of control.  My McCovey checklist has 2643 cards listed as of right now (and I may be missing a few) and more than 800 of them came in 2005 - that is over 30% of all his cards. Rickey Henderson had something similar happen to him as well.  One of the biggest culprits was the Leaf Sportscasters inserts with 139 McCovey versions.  I have idiotically collected 47 different cards from this set and here is the last one I purchased:

I have had this card in my scan folder since 10/19/12 and am finally getting around to showing it.  This one is affectionately known as 30 Beige Fielding-Ball.  The 30 refers to the print run (this one is serial numbered 22/30), the Beige is the color of the top section, the Fielding refers to the image in the biggest box on the top right and the Ball is the top of the 2 smaller boxes to the left of the fielding image.  The print runs on these run from /5 to /70.  The colors include Beige, Green, Orange, Red, Teal, Yellow, and White. I am not going to take the time to count up the number of images used.  All the McCovey cards feature the exact same picture and everything is the same with the exception of the top tab color and the 3 images in the box.

If you haven't been able to decipher my disdain for this set from the tone of my notes above, I will be more clear - this is a stupid concept! The player collector in me decided to go after as many of these as I could but the more reasonable me has stopped since getting this one back in 2012.  Would I reject a new card, of course not, but I will not be pursing more of these.  I love thumbing through my McCovey binders but the 6 pages of these cards always makes me cringe.

Does anyone else have a part of their collection that they just don't really like yet keep?

Mailday - Eclectic Eleven Card Purchase

My primary goal this year is around filling in the base card gaps in my Giants collection.  Since 2011 when I started my serious Giants collecting, I have made a concerted effort to get every new base card that comes out and despite my efforts there have been a few elusive cards that I just can't get my hands on. 

Recently I was going into eBay to look for some of these cards and set up email search reminders and noticed that one seller had the only copy of a couple of cards.  The price was a little high so I placed them in my shopping cart but didn't pull the trigger and commit to purchase them.  The seller then put out a deal for free shipping if you bought 10 or more cards and I decided to jump.  The overall purchase hit on a few different areas of my collection so I thought I would share the cards as a group.

First up the Giants base cards:

The Buster Posey 2011 Tribute card and the 2013 Topps Turkey Red Lincecum were the start of this adventure and knocked off Giants Base needs.  When doing my search for additional cards to get to the free shipping, I excitedly ran across the 2011 Elite Extra Edition Andrew Susac card that I needed as well.

I usually put in more effort to finish the prior year's Topps sets before the release of the new year but that didn't happen this year.  I think the main driver is the lack of availability of the Future Stars that Never Were inserts from Series 2. I still need 11 of those cards in addition to the 89 Mini Die Cut of Derek Jeter to finish Series 2.  My lack of enthusiasm carried over into update where after these 3 World Series Heroes cards I still need 5 more to go along with 4 more 89 Mini Die Cuts. 

 I am having a lot of fun picking up Chili Davis cards for my new player collection.  I was able to pick up these new additions including the Devil Rays and D-backs Inagural cards and a Topps Traded Tiffany card.  In a  pretty short time period I have acquired 253/605 of Chili's cards. Many of them are cards I haven't seen before and from sets I haven't collected much.  Most of my player collections are HOFers so to have someone to collect who is affordable is a new twist.

I also picked up a new Rickey Henderson card for the collection.  It comes from his dark period where he played for the Dodgers.  This Throwback Threads Player Timelines card was an insert and also shows the period of time he played for the Yankees and Padres.  My love of Rickey is strong enough to spend some of my hard earned cash on a Dodger card.

Finally, my favorite card of the package.  I hadn't seen this card until I was scrolling through the sellers cards.  I only needed 10 cards to get free shipping and had reached that when I ran across this awesome picture.  With the stands being empty it appears this is a staged photo but the broken bat over the knee and the expression on his face makes this cardboard gold.

An Almost Lott Rainbow

One of my player collections is Ronnie Lott.  At one time when I was active on message boards I was deemed a Ronnie Lott Supercollector although since then I have connected with a collector who has an even more impressive Lott collection.  He apparently is the guy I always lose out to on eBay auctions for 1/1 card as he has a ton of them.  In years past that would have frustrated me but my collecting focus has changed, I am not hellbent on getting every card of all the players I collect.

The 2014 Panini Prizm release had a bunch of parallels this year in the football release and I was lucky enough to have my favorite player appear in the set.  I have been working on putting together the rainbow.  However I have lost hope and patience on finding the last few cards so I decided to post my almost rainbow and get the cards off my desk and into a binder.

To start with are the base card and the Prizm parallel.  I am very happy that Ronnie is featured as a 49er.  Too often these days he is pictured as a Raider or Jet but the 49er part of his career is how I want to remember him and have him immortalized.

This group features the Red Power 101/125, the Red/White/Blue, the Team Logo 34/50 and the Tie Dyed 23/25.

 Next up with have the Camo, the Light Blue Wave 53/99, the NFL Shield 73/75, and the Green.

Finally to round off my collection we have the Neon Green/Yellow, the Orange, the Purple and the Panini Logo.

According to the checklist I found on Beckett.com I am still missing the Black Finite /1, the Blue, the Gold /10, the Red and the Pink.  I have not been able to find examples of any Ronnie Lott cards of these versions with the exception of the Red (but I cannot say that I search daily).  I believe the pink was a retail version and features a Pink Breast Cancer Awareness ribbon in the background.  I will keep up my search but wanted to show off the first 14 cards of the Rainbow.

Hall of Fame Auto - Sparky Anderson

I set a goal this year to add 6 new autographs of Hall of Fame baseball players to my collection.  I have set up a few eBay searches for players like Rod Carew, Robin Yount and Eddie Murray.  Other than Craig Biggio, who I picked up last year prior to his induction, I will wait a couple years on the new guys.  There seems to be increased interest in the new HOFers autos each year and I like to try and get deal when I add these cards.

I was looking through auctions on Sportlots a little while back and a card of a Hall of Fame manager caught my eye.  The design was solid, a must when I look for HOF autos to add as I don't just want a card but one that I enjoy looking at, so I put in a bid.  A little bidding war ensued but I was lucky enough to pull it in for a reasonable price.  Check out the newest edition to my HOF Autograph collection:

Here is my new auto of George "Sparky" Anderson, Hall of Fame manager of the Cincinnati Reds and Detroit Tigers.  He was elected to the HOF in 2000 and has 3 World Series titles to his credit, 2 with the Big Red Machine and one in Detroit.  Sparky passed away in 2010 and has quite a few autographs on the market.  Beckett lists 93 different cards although quite a few of them are limited to 10 or less including several cut signatures since his passing.  This one is numbered 246/375 as of the cards with an announced print run it has the highest.  I am sure that helped keep the price down.

Some of the things that drew me to this card, I wanted a Reds card. While I better remember him as the manager of the Tiger, his time with the Reds is what makes him an immortal manager in my mind.  I like the design of this card, the gears are a unique design and Sparky sitting in the middle one prominently looks very nice.  His autograph is pretty clear, it looks like it is on a sticker but you get a nice view of his autograph.  Ultimately it just caught my eye and I was happy to add it to my collection.

This card brings my collection to 71 different Hall of Famer Autos.  If I meet my goal by year end, I should be at 76.

The Year of the Base Card is off to a Strong Start

Once I decided to focus my 2015 collecting on base cards, I set out to devise a strategy to maximize my collecting dollars and the number and quality of cards I wanted to add throughout the year.  I looked through my vintage want list to identify a few of the cards I wanted to chase and saved some searches on eBay.  I decided to look through the daily email reminders and look for some good deals.  Right after that I hit Justcommons.com and filled my shopping cart with Giants cards from the mid 2000s, a time in which I was collecting but not yet focused on the Giants.

Justcommons provides free shipping on orders over $10 and you can get a 10% discount on orders over $50.  I decided to go for the $50 mark and ended up securing 188 Giants cards, almost all base cards.  I don't have the time/patience to scan that many cards and you don't have the attention span to look at that many so I am going to scan a sampling and list out how many of each I received so I have a nice record on the blog.

I added 9 2004 Bowman, 2 2004 Bowman Chrome Draft, 2 2004 Bowman Draft, 2 2004 Donruss Elite Edition, 1 2004 National Pride, 2 2004 Playoff Honors, 1 2004 Skybox LE, 1 2004 SP Authentic and 7 2004 Topps Chrome cards

There are a lot of Jason Schmidt Giants cards during this time frame.  The right handed pitcher was the ace of the Giants staff and for a couple of years when Barry Bonds wouldn't allow any cards made of him, Schmidt was the go to guy in the smaller sets that needed a Giant or two.  I was real happy to score the Matt Cain Bowman rookie card for a very low price.

I added 20 2004 Topps Total, 5 2004 Ultimate Collection and 3 2005 Artifacts cards

For most of this post I am just scanning one card per set but I was really excited to find these numbered Ultimate Collection and Artifacts cards on justcommons.com.  The trio of HOFers looks great.  I didn't have many 2004 Topps Total Giants but did some quick research and found that buying them as singles was more cost effective than buying the team set on eBay.

I added 4 2005 Bazooka, 1 2005 Bowman Chrome, 1 2005 Bowman's Best Green, 7 2005 Diamond Kings, 4 2005 Donruss Elite, 1 2005 Fleer Showcase, 2 2005 Leaf, 2 2005 Leather and Lumber and 1 2005 Playoff Prestige cards

It is funny how your mind can shift and impact much of how you look at your hobby.  I purchased a Bowman's Best base card of Barry Bonds but was sent a green parallel that is serial numbered /899 and was actually upset.  A card that is more rare and worth more used to make me happy.  The Prestige card of Vizquel somewhat bothers me since he is wearing an Indians uniform but he is listed as a Giant and it has the Giants logo so I have to pick it up.

I added 1 2005 Reflections, 3 2005 SP Legendary Cuts, 3 2005 Sweet Spot Classics, 10 2005 Topps Chrome, 20 2005 Topps Total, 2 2005 UD Baseball Heroes, 1 2006 Bowman, 5 2006 Bowman Chrome and 2 2006 Bowman Chrome Draft cards

Here is another Topps Total set that I was able to score quite a few of my Giants needs.  Giants playoff hero Travis Ishikawa makes a rookie appearance from 8 years back, what a path he has taken.  The SP Legendary and Sweet Spot Classic cards are great looking sets.

I added 2 2006 Bowman Chrome Prospects, 5 2006 Bowman Heritage, 1 2006 Bowman Draft, 2 2006 SPx, 3 2006 Topps '52, 3 2007 Bowman Chrome, 1 2007 Bowman Chrome Draft Prospects, 5 2007 Bowman Chrome Draft, and 1 2007 Bowman Draft Prospects cards

Shortly before deciding to go all in to collect Giants, I started a Brian Wilson player collection and the rookie card in the middle of this scan was crazy expensive.  I didn't ever pick it up and got this one for under a quarter.  BTW, I stopped the player collection and just decided to incorporate his cards into my Giants collection which worked out well as his Dodgers cards add no joy to my life.

I added 1 2007 Bowman Heritage, 1 2007 Topps '52 Chrome, 1 2007 Topps Opening Day, 1 2007 Upper Deck Spectrum, 2 2008 Bowman, 3 2008 Bowman Chrome, 1 2008 Bowman Chrome Prospects, 1 2008 Bowman Draft Prospects and 1 2008 Donruss Elite Extra Edition cards

The Fred Lewis Chrome parallel was a nice pick up.  He has a ton of cards from his not too long stint on the Giants.  As a Trojan, the UCLA card of Brandon Crawford is a little unnerving but he came around to the good guys and just signed his contract to reup with the Giants so he is okay in my book.

I added 1 2008 Bowman Prospects, 1 2008 Donruss Threads, 1 2008 Upper Deck Baseball Heroes, 4 2008 Upper Deck First Edition, 2 2009 Bowman Chrome, 1 2009 SP Authentic and 1 2009 Upper Deck First Edition cards

This group is all pitchers and catchers although I never remembering hearing Klimas' name as a real Giants prospect.  The two Lincecum cards are probably my favorites, the Bowman one in particular.  It is a good looking design and a great picture.

I added 3 2014 Bowman Chrome Draft Prospect, 3 2014 Bowman Draft Prospects and 2 2014 Topps Heritage High Number cards

Finally some 2014 cards to help out on the most recent year of base cards.  The 2 Heritage High Numbers actually started this shopping spree.  I was sad to see Morse go but understand why they let him.  I am optimistic that Panik will continue to improve and will have a solid year in 2015.

There you have it, some representative scans of the first big purchase in the Year of the Base Card.  I am looking forward to finding some more creative ways to secure some large lots of needed base cards.

Contest Winner

A few days back I posted my box break for a 2015 Topps Jumbo Box but left out one hit.  I held a contest and the person who guessed what the hit was or was closest in my opinion will win my other 2 hits along with my duplicate base cards.

First up, let's take a look at one of the best hits I have ever gotten:

This is an amazing Highlight of the Year Relic Auto of Strike Out King Nolan Ryan.  The swatch features 3 colors of the amazing rainbow Astros uniform and the card is numbered 06/10.  The card celebrates Ryan passing Walter Johnson for the all time career strikeout record back in 1983. I remember the event well.

A few years back I made a big trade on a message board that added a Nolan Ryan auto to my HOF collection.  I am currently trying to decide if I will keep both autos, sell the other card or put this one up for auction.  I find this card amazing to look at and love that I pulled it myself.

Now for the winner of the contest.  Nobody nailed the card exactly which I have to say I anticipated. However, only one person guessed a card from this subset and while he didn't chose Nolan as the subject of the card, he did pick another HOF right hander - Juan Marichal.  The contest winner is Josh D of the Royals and Randoms blog.  Thanks for all the entries and congratulations Josh. Shoot me your mailing address and I will send your winnings and a few extras your way.