Recent Mail Days - A Variety of Collecting Interests

I haven't done a Mail Day post in quite some time, I have just typically picked and chosen my favorite cards or ones I think someone may be interested in.  However, when I was sorting through the cards I got over the past couple days and entering them into my checklists I noticed that I have been making purchases that hit on a wide array of my collecting interests.

I thought showing off all the cards at once could give a sense of where my collecting head is at right about now.

The first few scans here are of Day 1:

First up are a pair of 2013 Panini Cooperstown Short Prints.  The short prints are the only ones with color photos in this set.  If you can imagine it, I actually gasped and almost dropped the card stack that awas topped by the Lasorda when I saw his ugly smiling mug looking up at me.  The things a set collector will buy...  These two happen to be the last 2 cards I need to finish up this set, and that includes the insert sets I decided to chase. At some point I will do a comprehensive review of the set.

This was a cheap Sportlots auction win of former USC backup QB Matt Cassel.  Whenever I see a USC relic on the cheap I try and jump on it to enhance my Trojan collection.  One of my 2014 goals is to put some focus around my football card collecting but I suspect cheap autos and relics of former Trojans will always be something I pick up.

Dave Parker is someone I have decided to collect, he was one of my favorites in the late 70s and early 80s. I am only focusing my collection on his cards that feature him as a Pirate, I love the unis and that is where I best remember him.  This card is unlicensed but the photo and swatch are obviously from his Pirates days.

Another collecting focus is of course the greatest lead-off hitter of all time, Rickey Henderson. Two more unlicensed cards, a 2012 Panini Prizm Dominance Insert and a 2013 Hometown Heros Sportdiscs insert. Both very cool additions to the Rickey collection.

 Check out this beautiful on card auto of Vida Blue from Tier One.  I really like the Tier One product, the cards are high quality, pretty solid designs and usually have on card autos.  I still have some work to do on Vida's 2013 releases, he has quite a few autos and auto parallels to track down.

The final two cards of day 1 are some nice Barry Bonds pickups.  The Turkey Red is the Grey Uniformed SP and finished my run of Giants Turkey Red cards. That was one of my goals in 2013 and I put a goal in place in 2014 to tie up some loose ends like the Turkey Red collection.  The Elite Series in serial numbered to 10,000 but are tough to track down. I picked up the Matt Williams card from this year a few weeks back (featured here). Not technically a 2014 goal but rare inserts from Barry Bonds will always grab my attention.

Here are my Day 2 pickups:

 I made a purchase off of Beckett to secure a card that I will show in a couple of scans but in an effort to grow my newish Dave Parker Pirates collection I did a quick search of the seller and picked up these for between 25 and 50 cents each.  I am loving the 70s Decade cards. I bought a couple packs of these in the day and have a couple McCovey's and Reggie's in my collection but these were the first I had seen of Parker.  Fleer did a nice job back in the early 2000s, I miss having multiple companies competing.  Of the 3 Topps cards my favorite is the Pristine.

 Same seller as the Parker's netted me these Giants.  The Buster and Pablo finished off my Museum Collection base set, another tie up loose ends goal for 2014. The Cain and the Golds aren't official goals but they fit nicely into the Giants collection.  I plan to actually finish off the Giants gold and emerald parallel sets from 2013 fairly soon if I can track them down for a solid price.

 This is the card that drew me to the buyer.  This ties up a big loose end, it is a Heritage SP and the final Giant Heritage card I need in my collection (at least until 2014 is released). You can mark off another tied up loose end.

 This eBay purchase is of my favorite football player, Ronnie Lott.  I haven't given his collection too much attention lately and that is part of the reason for my desire to focus my football collection.  He will be a part of if for certain and I am loving this 2 color Niners swatch.

The final card in this 2 day mail day is this awesome Vida Blue box topper from 2013 Archives.  It is numbered to 99 but seems much more rare.  This was the first one I saw on eBay and I jumped.  I shared the Will Clark one prior and put another card next to it if you are wondering how big it is.  I love this card and am very happy that Vida was featured in this set and I was able to track it down.

Hope you enjoyed my somewhat eclectic and very satisfying 2 days of mail.

Mailday - Best. Patch. Ever.

A couple weeks back I got into a little bidding war on a redemption card that was up for auction on Sportlots.  For those of you who haven't used Sportlots, the auction bid has to stay stagnant for 3 days before you win.  There is no timeline on when an auction ends.  Another potential buyer and I kept going back and forth and one upping each other but I finally prevails.  I thought it was kinds silly but I ended up paying $2 shipping to get this:

This came in a PWE in a top loader which kinda annoyed me for $2.  I also paid $13.50 for the card.  I didn't closely watch the Museum Collection release this year.  I have picked up a Lincecum relic on the cheap and several base and parallel cards.  When I got this I wasn't sure what the card would look like or what the print run would be.  I looked on Beckett.com and saw there was a regular version of this card along with cards numbered out of 25 and 5.  I figured this had to be the 25 version so I figured I would get a nicely signed card from my favorite current Giant with 3 jersey swatches.  If I got lucky, maybe I would get one of the swatches with a little orange on it.

Well imagine my surprise when I got a package from Topps today from FedEx and opened it to find this:

WOW!!!

This is by far the best patch now in my collection.  Each of the windows has a swatch from a different part of the jersey and each contains 4 colors.  The middle swatch seems to contain part of the word baseball and the third shows most of the San from the city name.  There are gold accents all around the card including the sticker and this wonderful card is numbered 3/5.  My wife cards little to nothing about cards (other than her complaints that I spend too much) but even she appreciated this gem.  I still can't believe I picked it up for $15.50 delivered.

I have to think that if the seller had redeemed it himself and sold it on eBay he would have scored quite a bit more and I am certain I never would have even seen the card from a search much less own the card.  A very nice mail day.

Mail Day - The Don't You Hate it When This Happens Edition

Yesterday I arrived home to find one of the worst things I can find in my mailbox:

 The dreaded Post Office Damaged Mail envelop.  I have received empty envelopes with no cards in these in the past.  I have received parts of cards and mangled cards.  I have learned to always expect the worst.  As I lifted it up I realized that there was some weight to it, so I suspected that there was something still inside.  As I extracted the PWE from the Post Office envelope, here is what I got:

 There are some tears on the front and what looks like a team bag and a toploader sticking out.  Not looking great, not looking like a total loss either.  Flip it over and...

The back is looking a little worse for the wear.  Some decent sized rips and what looks like some machinery marks.  I am still a little worried.  When I open it up, what do I see:

 It is a team back and as I recall I won two Carson Palmer Relic cards from the same Sportlots seller in some auctions.  This side doesn't look too back, flip it over:

 This side shows a dual relic card and also looks pretty good.

I pull them out of the team bag and inspect the cards.  Not only was there no damage to the cards, the toploaders look pretty good as well.  Two nice additions to the USC Football collection and a sigh of relief.  That was a close one.

I might as well finish off my mail day - it was all USC themed.  I picked up two more cards from Sportlots auctions.

 First up is a nice 2011 Panini Xtra Points green parallel of WR Steve Smith. It is numbered 18/25. 

The final mail day card is of injured and unloved QB Mark Sanchez.  This one is a 2013 National stamped card and is numbered 3/5.

Pretty nice to pick up two low serial numbered cards and of course the two Palmer relics.  Dodged a Post Office bullet this time.

Mail Day - The Joys of Combined Shipping

I really like to take advantage of combined shipping on eBay. It is tough for me to pay $3 to ship one card but when you can get a decent stack for $3-5 it makes it much more palatable.  I ran across a single card I really wanted from a seller recently and did some searching in his inventory and picked up a pretty nice stack of cards.

 First up is this nice card featuring two HOF Giants, Johnny Mize and Mel Ott, although Mize is in a Yankee uniform.  This is from the Rival Factions insert set and is numbered 0309/1000.  This is kind of an interesting choice of players as Mize and Ott were teammates during the last couple years of Ott's career and Mize didn't play on the Yankees until after Ott was retired.  Regardless, I like the card and the Ott picture is pretty cool featuring the Giants across his chest.

 A couple of cards from my favorite Giants 3B of all time, Matt Williams.  Although the bottom card doesn't look it, these are both gold. I love the photography in the Collector's Choice set, for a low end set, Upper Deck sure did it right.  Williams is stretching out to snag a grounder and in the Flair insert he is honored for his Hot Glove.

Speaking of Collector's Choice and great photography, I was able to pick up 7 Gold Signature parallels from the 1996 set.  I was surprised to find these all with one seller as I thought the Gold Sigs were pretty tough pulls.  The photography on these is great, particularly the 4 horizontal cards. One day I am going to have to pull a bunch of Kirt Manwarings cards for a post, the man has some great looking cards - gotta love catchers.

 I also scored 3 Barry Bonds cards.  I am tempted to peel the Finest insert but the coating has been in place for 14 years so I am not sure I can actually pull the trigger. I am sure it would look much Finer in a peeled state.  The UD Ionix insert looks great in person and actually scanned better than I suspected. The final card is an SPx Radiance parallel from 1998.  I really like these cards but there are somewhat hard to come by.  This one is serial numbered to 1000. I knew these cards held high book values from my days of trading on the forums so I looked this one up - $50!  That is crazy for a card /1000.  I am happy to add it to my collection.

The final card is the only non-Giant and the card that started it all. I don't know if I had even seen this card but I needed it for my Rickey Henderson collection.  When marking it off my checklist I noticed that I only need 3 more cards of his that were released in 1993.  The only years I have all his cards are 1979 and 1980 where he had only 1 card in each year and 1983 - with 40 cards.  Adding those final 3 cards might be a fun side goal, there are a total of 51 of his cards in 1993.

I was pretty happy with this package, thank goodness for combined shipping to allow me to put together packages like this.

Recent eBay Purchases - Dollar Cards

I was browsing eBay a few days back and stumbled across a Relic card from 2010 that I was hoping to add to my Giants collection.  As I typically do when hunting on eBay I looked for combined shipping and then search to see what the seller has in their inventory.  The seller with this 2010 relic has a bunch of Giants cards for sale in an auction format that I didn't have in my collection, all with a starting bid of $0.99.  I referenced my checklist and quickly put out some $1 bids on all the cards I needed.

I ended up scoring all but a couple of cards that I bid on which made me quite happy.  Here are the cards I scored:

 Here are 2 cards from 2001.  The Ransom is a serial numbered (to 625) short print to the Donruss Class of 2001 base set, not a huge card or a huge score but I always like knocking of a base card from the want list.  Speaking of knocking base cards off want lists, this Willie Mays from 2001 Topps Archives is actually a card from my 2013 collecting goals list!  Very happy to get this rookie reprint for a buck.

These cards are all from 2002 starting with a couple nice gold parallels from the Bowman Prospects set.  Cain has obviously emerged as a star, there are still days I wonder what would have happened if Francisco Liriano was never traded.  The Rich Aurilia is a Spotlight parallel to 100 and the Bonds Donruss Original is an SP - both good pick ups.  The Mays is one of 4 color variation inserts from the Topps American Pie release.  The Santos is from UD Diamond Connection and is considered a base card despite the serial number to 1500.  Finally an UD Vintage insert of Barry Bonds.  Great card and photo showcasing the wall after Barry hit number 500.

 This is an amazing collection of HOF star power from 2005.  7 total Willie Mays cards and 2 Mel Ott cards, that is 1171 career home runs between the two!  I am a huge fan of the Diamond Kings set from 2005 and have very few cards from the set.  There are quite a few Giants so I am really not sure why I have so few but scoring 4 Mays cards from the set from the same seller is quite nice. The first two have the raised borders while the other two come from insert sets.  The middle card is from Throwback Threads and I am familiar with this set due to the large number of Rickey Henderson cards so getting a Mays on the cheap worked out fine.  The two Ott cards are from UD Baseball Heroes are cool, another set I am under represented.  Finally 2 Zenith inserts of the Say Hey Kid - a set I am quite a fan of.  I actually bought a box of this a year or two back and it is a nice product. 

 Finally the last of the non-hits.  The top 2 cards are xfractors from 2008.  This Lincecum card is one of his last releases with short hair and if you haven't heard the short hair is back - hope that leads to a bounce back season.  Still a little hard to believe they won it all with his awful season.  The Bowman Chrome xfractor is of Giants closer Sergio Romo, very cool card of one of the newer Giants stars.  The bottom card is an insert from 2007, it is nice and shiny and the star of the show for me is The Freak.  It is serial numbered to 199 and he is on 2 additional cards with different pictures. I may have to go after the last two.

In addition to these base/parallel/insert cards, I did pick up 4 "hits" including the one that started it all.

First up this random Auto of a Giants prospect that never made it:

I can honestly say this is a card I never would have sought out on my own but when I saw it in the sellers inventory I decided to throw down a dollar.  It is numbered to 950 - man that is a ton of autos to sign.

Next up Mr. Perfect:

I have said it before and will say it again, I am usually a fan of blue on a sports card.  This card is a bright blue and to me works even with the Giants uniform.  Not sure how these were inserted into packs, I am thinking it might be a retail only as Beckett.com doesn't show a price for it or a print run. I do think they are somewhat rare as I don't see them around a lot.

Next is a Giants HOF that you don't see too often in a Giants uniform on cardboard:

Lefty, Steve Carlton is featured on this card tipping his cap after recording his 4000th strike out.  I thought back then that is was cool that he hit his milestone as a Giant.  I guess I was rewarded almost 20 years later with this relic card.  It is the Emerald parallel version numbered 17/99.

And finally the card that started all the madness:

A Kung Fu Panda relic from 2010 Topps Series 2. Apparently this was a redemption so I wonder how many made it out into the public.  I was glancing through my checklist and saw that I only had 1 of the 7 relics from this set, it happens to be an insert and relic set that I really like.  I thought the Pablo Sandoval mike be a little more reasonably priced than the Buster, the two Mel Otts or the Monte Irvin.  I have a Matt Cain already and apparently there is a second but a quick search for the Pablo lead me to this great purchase.

Mail Day - 2011 Topps Chrome - The Quest for a Rainbow

When last year's Topps Chrome came out I decided to make a concerted effort to collect rainbows of all the Giants in the set with the exception of the 1/1 Superfractors.  I really focused on the 2011 Giants as they were released since this was the year after their World Series win and the colored refractors of Topps Chrome are some of my favorite cards.  I made some decent progress but when the 2012 releases started to come out my quest stalled.

A few weeks back I was able to score the Matt Cain Gold Refractor in a trade with Play at the Plate.  This got me reinspired to see how close to my rainbow goal I could get so I went searching on eBay.  I was able to find a few:

 
Here are the Sepia Refractors of Brian Wilson, serial numbered 13/99 and Pablo Sandoval, serial numbered 60/99.  I wasn't too keen on these at first but they have grown on me.  I still enjoy this photo on the Wilson card and am glad to see The Beard in the dugout cheering on the Giants while he rehabs from Tommy John surgery.  He and The Panda have a pretty sweet dugout dance they do time to time.  I need 2 Sepia Refractors to finish out this team set - Tim Lincecum and Brandon Belt.

Speaking of Lincecum, I picked up this Blue Refractor, serial numbered 32/99.  I hate to admit it but the blue refractors is one of my favorites.  As a Giants fan I should be genetically predisposed to hate the color blue but Topps does a nice job on these.  These must be pretty popular as I still need 4 of 8 for the Giants team set - Brian Wilson, Pablo Sandoval, Matt Cain and Brandon Belt.

My favorite pickup of this trio is this nice Lincecum Gold Refractor, serial numbered 49/50.  I was happy to get it for a very reasonable price, $9.50 delivered.  I have been lucky to pick up quite a few of these and just need the Buster Posey and Brandon Belt to finish off my team set.

Here is a status of all the cards of the team rainbow I am seeking out by type:

Base - Complete
Refractor - Complete
Xfractor - Complete
Orange - Complete
Purple /499 - Need Brandon Belt
Atomic /225 - Complete
Black /100 - Need Buster Posey, Tim Lincecum
Blue /99 - Need Brian Wilson, Pablo Sandoval, Matt Cain, Brandon Belt
Sepia /99 - Need Tim Lincecum, Brandon Belt
Gold /50 - Need Buster Posey, Brandon Belt
Red /25 - Need Buster Posey, Tim Lincecum, Brian Wilson, Madison Bumgarner, Matt Cain, Brandon Belt

If you have any help or happen to stubble across any of these at a reasonable price, drop me a note.

Mail Day - Cards from Community Gum

A couple weeks back I was able to strike a deal with Community Gum to acquire some 2012 Topps Series 2 cards I needed for my 2012 Giants collection and my insert set.  I am getting close to finishing off both so I thought I would showcase my new cards and also take a shot at promoting my want list to finish these off.

First, let's take a look at the Giants:

 I really like these Gold Rush Wrapper Redemption cards and I was able to pick up three of the 4 from series 2.  Didn't have much lucky myself with the Series 1 redemption so I didn't pick up the extra Jumbo packs to send in for Series 2. A little off topic but I do think it was lame on Topps part to make the redemption need 14 Jumbo packs when a box comes with 10.  You get a full set typically with your Jumbo box so why the extra 14 (I know it is to sell additional product but that is lame for the regular collector).  It just makes them available for those big case crackers - although it is great to have connections with bloggers like Community Gum so you can pick up your team needs.

I was also able to get some Giants inserts.  Of course the McCovey has to be one of my favorites, celebrating his inclusion in the 1500 RBI club.  From a visually appealing perspective, I think my favorites here are the Mays A Cut Above and the Posey Golden Futures.  The die cut design is great on the Mays and I really enjoy the mid swing picture and look of concentration on his face.  With the Posey card, I always enjoy seeing guys in their catcher's gear and you just know he is tracking a foul pop up in this photo.  The design of this insert set isn't necessarily my favorite but the photo makes the card.

Here is my want list for Series 2 Giants minus the Target/Wal Mart/Toys R Us parallels and some hits:

2012 Topps #379 Sergio Romo

2012 Topps Career Day #CD15 Willie Mays

2012 Topps Gold Rush Wrapper Redemption #96 Willie Mays

2012 Topps Historical Stitches #JM Juan Marichal S2

2012 Topps Team Rings #WM Willie Mays

I also mentioned I picked up some needs for my insert sets.  For the last several years, I have collected all the inserts from the Topps sets in addition to the base. I got tons of help in this deal.

I cheated a little last year and picked up full inserts sets of everything minus the 1987 Minis and the Gold Standard cards.  I had some extra cash and felt it was going to be challenging to trade this year.  Most of my trades for inserts were on SCF over the past few years and I have been fairly inactive there since starting the blog.

Check out the player selection on these Gold Standard cards.  Most celebrate pretty big milestones with a couple celebrating a season or streak.  I always enjoy cards celebrating retired players and HOFer and was glad to pick up 14 of these cards in this deal.  I also got 5 of the minis towards my set, 2 retired greats and 3 of today's all stars.

Here is my current want list of the 2012 Series 2 inserts:
2012 Topps 1987 Topps Minis #TM71 Carlos Santana
2012 Topps 1987 Topps Minis #TM72 Hunter Pence

2012 Topps Gold Standard #GS31 Hank Aaron
2012 Topps Gold Standard #GS41 Mike Schmidt
2012 Topps Gold Standard #GS45 Derek Jeter


With only 5 left, I should be able to finish this one off before the Update set comes out which is always the goal.

Thanks to the guys over at Community Gum for the help on completing these two.

Inching Ever Closer to the 1975 Topps Set

Late last year I picked up a starter set lot of 75 Topps on eBay for $93, it had 528 of the cards including the Yount rookie.  I quickly picked up the non-star, non-team card, non-checklist cards from my LCS and also added 7 cards I had from my collection prior to buying the lot bringing me to just over 600 of the 660 cards. 

After that I stalled.  I picked up a few cards in Sportlots auctions including the Aaron and Ryan Highlights, Steve Carlton and Reggie.  Picked up a couple at a not so local card shop and through Topps Diamond Giveaway.  I picked up around 15 over a few month period, not too good on the progress side.  A few weeks back I finally landed the George Brett RC.

Less than 2 weeks ago I decided to remedy the situation and found an online cards store with fairly reasonable prices.  I did some shopping with a goal to keep the condition pretty good and for the most part succeeds. I got a couple with wax stains and one team card with a few markings that will eventually need to be updated but otherwise I am pretty happy with the haul.

Here are the first 9:

 This set has a pretty impressive roster of highlights to showcase. Picking up this Gibson and Kaline finishes this subset for me.  In addition to these two there are cards of Hank Aaron, Lou Brock, Nolan Ryan and a second highlight featuring Ryan along with Steve Busby and Dick Bosman.  The only card not featuring a HOFer is Mike Marshall and despite being a Dodger he was a pretty impressive relief picture.  This group of 9 also features 2 base cards of HOFers in Rollie and Bert along with 2 perennial All Stars in Parker and Garvey.  By happenstance, they happen to be one of my favorite non-Giants of this era and my least favorite, can you guess who is who?  This group is rounded up with an O's team card and two of the MVP cards.

Next up we have some more HOF love with the Goose, Lou Brock and Don Sutton. Goose looks odd without his facial hair and to me Sutton and Brock look older than they are in their cards.  The Sutton along with the McClain/Brock from the previous scan are the wax stain cards while the awesome floating heads checklist of the White Sox is the team card with the markings.   Two more MVP cards and some team cards finish up this group.

Finishing up my haul are another team card, another HOFer in Killebrew and two rookie cards.  Manny Trillo and Doug DeCinces were both very solid major leaguers for quite some time and the young Keith Hernandez RC was a nice score.  Never been a big Hernandez fan but I needed the card for the set.

Down to only 8 cards to go and I am going to push to finish this one up in the next few weeks.  No huge cards left, the Mantle and Aaron MVP and Carlton Fisk are the only non-Checklist/Team Card needs left.  Glad I was able to finally knock a chunk off the want list.

McCovey Monday #12

 My favorite player of all time is Hall of Famer Willie McCovey.  I have amassed a collection of over 1100 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 recently picked up an interesting card to add to my McCovey collection in a large group of Giants I bought from someone on SCF.  I will start by showing the back:

Not too interesting really.  Just a Congratulations! and a certificate of authenticity of a Willie Mac auto out of 1999 Upper Deck Century Legends.  I like the picture on the back but as you will see, the same picture appears on the front and back. It would have been nice to mix it up a little.  Typically when seeing this card back you would expect this when you turn it over:

This is not a new card to my collection, I have had this a number for years.  I have been trying to hunt down the gold version which has a gold hued background instead of this silver and is serial numbered to 100 copies.  I have seen some gold ones pop up on eBay but they have gone for ridiculous prices. This card was produced in 1999 and I only have 3 older certified autos in my McCovey collection.  There were 3 autos produced in 1998 which I believe were McCovey's first.

 So what does the front of my new card look like:

 It is a card with a large redemption sticker on the front.  In order to exchange this card for a signed McCovey it had to be postmarked by 12/1/99 and received by 12/31/99.  Since this was a 1999 release I have to think that was a pretty short window and must have hurt the value of these boxes.  I am not sure how many of the other autos were redemptions.

These must be fairly common, although I haven't seen one before.  They are listed in Beckett as a separate entry and have a book value of $5 compared to $40 for the auto card and $80 for the gold version for those who are interested in values.  For me, I am just happy to add another unique card to my McCovey collection.