It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I am so excited baseball is back with the start of Spring Training a few days back.  New baseball cards are out for 2017, I am prepping for my fantasy baseball draft that takes place in a week and I am contemplating purchasing the MLB TV package so I can watch all the Giants games this year.

Speaking of Giants games, they are coming to KC this year in April for a mid-week 2 game series.  I have a buddy from CA coming into town with his son and I am taking my boys to both games.  Single game tickets go on sale on the 24th and I hope to be online right as they go on sale to score some good tickets.

I am pretty optimistic about the Giants this season.  The bullpen was their Achilles Heel last year and I believe Mark Melancon will answer the bell as the closer.  I have to admit I am a little worried about bullpen depth and the LF situation but overall I think a playoff berth is in the cards this year.

Every so often I check in over at Sports Card Forum to see if I can pick up some Giants cards.  I typically only check out the Sale threads as trades are done by BV and it is just too complex at times to get a deal hammered out.  I made two purchases in the last few days and both showed up in last night's mail.  Thought it would be fun to show them off together.

The first package was a 2-card package, both very nice cards:

 I picked up this nice gold parallel from 2011 Topps Tribute of Giants great Christy Mathewson.  There have been a few years when I have aggressively sought out as many of the Tribute parallels as I could but 2011 was not one of those years.  Outside of my McCovey collection, this is my only non-blue parallel. It sure is a nice one.

The second card was this great looking relic from 2005 Topps Pristine Legends of HOFer Monte Irvin.  The seller didn't include scans of these cards and I was so pleasantly surprised when this card popped out of the package.  I don't recall ever seeing this card or this design before.  I think it looks great and I am so happy to have made it a part of my collection.

The next seller had a long list of autos and serial numbered cards.  For convenience, he had them sorted by team which was great!  I went through the Giants selections and pick out these that I needed:

 For whatever reason, I really like the Career and Season Stats parallels from Donruss so when I saw these in the scan I knew I needed to make a purchase.  The Buster Press Proof card in the '81 design looks amazing in hand.  The Hot of the Press Bumgarner is a pretty rare card although it isn't numbered.  I bought quite a bit of this product when it came out and only pulled one.  I do have the McCovey but it was hard to track down.

 In addition to the Donruss cards, this seller had a ton of Bowman Chrome cards.  I was able to find 6 that I needed, all from 2014.  The Matt Cain card in the upper left is called a Carbon Fiber Refractor and it is a beautiful card.  It is numbered 08/10 and I was very glad to bring it home.  The three refractors along the bottom are all numbered /500 and bring me to within three of the team set so I may try to hunt the rest down.

I made a mistake on the Harper/Bumgarner card as I already had a copy. If you happen to be interested in it, let me know and I can send it your way.  The Flores auto was a need and I couldn't pass up a needed Giants auto for a buck or two.

Lots of fun to bring in some new Giants cards and I am glad to have SCF as a resource.  I have considered trying to get more active in trading on the site again but right now I don't have enough time to post as much as I would like on this blog.  Maybe some day.