2016 Black Friday COMC Order #8 - Giants Hits

My Giants collection started around 2007 or 2008 and focused only on "hits" auto and jersey cards. After the Giants 2010 World Series victory I went all in as a team collector.  This post goes back to my roots and showcases 5 hits that I picked up in this order.

First up is this nice jersey relic of Buster Posey.  The higher serial number to almost 200 copies probably helped keep the cost down and I couldn't help but add this card for a couple bucks.  I like the 2016 Tribute set and should seek out some more Giants.

Next up is my only 2016 Bowman Inception card of Giants prospect Hunter Cole.  Cole was a 26th round selection in the 2014 draft and has risen to the AA Richmond Flying Squirrels.  He has spent time at 1B, 2B and 3B in his brief minor league career but it looks like he is settling in as an Outfielder.  He doesn't appear on any of the Giants Top 10 Prospect lists but I think the card design is cool.

Next up is a Finest Gary Brown.  Brown was the go to rookie in a bunch of releases in 2015 including this one, the only problem was that the Giants released him in the spring so by the time any got out in the market place he wasn't part of the team.  Regardless, I decided to pick this up on the cheap - it is a Giants card.

Here is another former Giant. It hurt to see Matt Duffy go, I hope he has a bright future.  However I am very excited to see Matt Moore for a full year with the Giants coaching and playing in AT&T Park.  I have very high hopes.  Sometimes you have to give up quality to get it back and I hope both players have tons of success moving forward.

The final card is a beauty and one of my favorite pick ups in this order.  The awesome patches more than make up for the sticker auto.  Cain is one of my favorite Giants and has had a couple down years with injuries. I am hoping he bounces back this year, maybe the lack of pressure at being a #5 starter will help a bit.  This scan looks pretty nice but the card looks even better in person.

While my Giants focus has expanded beyond the "hits" I still enjoy picking them up here and there.

My First Experience with Panini Points

I picked up a blaster of Donruss Optics a little while back and pulled my first Panini Points.  I have heard and read some discussions about these points and it seems like most collectors aren't fans of the program.  On high end products like Immaculate or Flawless, I get it.  You pay hundreds of dollars for a box of cards, you should get your cards.  However, out of a blaster, I saw this as a bonus and went shopping.

I only got 150 points which is pretty low and about the fewest amount of points to secure a card.  I found the web site to be very user friendly.  I was able to select the point range I wanted to shop in, the sport and even the team I was interested in.  I of course went right to the Giants and after a little pondering, selected this relic card:

I admit the big, logoless hat staring right at you isn't the most attractive, but I decided I liked the large swatch and the overall Silhouette design.  As I reflect back on the experience, I think I would have been very happy to pull a Giants relic out of any blaster so I am a fan of my first Panini Points experience.

Trade Post - Plaschke, Thy Sweater is Argyle

Time for a past due trade post.  I believe Greg from the Dodger centric blog Plaschke, Thy Sweater is Argyle posted his end of the trade over a month ago.  Better late than never :-). 

I pulled a low number 10/10 auto out of 2014 Donruss Series 1 of Chad Billingsley (why couldn't it have been Nolan Ryan!) and was glad to flip it to a Billingsley collector. In return I scored an auto of my favorite Giants pitcher who unfortunately is out for the year but that doesn't diminish the coolness of adding another of his autographed cards to my collection.

 This is just a great looking card from back when Upper Deck had a baseball license - I miss those days.

 Greg was also generous enough to add in this card of former USC Tailback Chauncey Washington that I needed for my USC collection - a cool Senior Bowl card.

He also included some nice random Giants.  I didn't even know Ragira was in the Giants system until getting this package.  The Bowman mini is pretty sweet and I always like adding cards from Will the Thrill Clark.

Thanks for a second great trade Greg!

Trade Post - Off Hiatus Baseball Cards

I am trying to keep better record of what I have sent out in the way of packages this year and if my record keeping is accurate, this trade with Tony L. from Off Hiatus Baseball Cards is the second trade we have made this year and the first blogger I have made multiple trades with in 2014.

Tony is a Brewer fan and the first Brewer blogger I have found to trade with I believe so if he can keep digging up great Giants cards like these, I foresee quite a few more trades in our future.

First up is some sticker goodness:

These stickers are from Topps in 1988 and 1989.  Reviewing my checklist I have some major gaps with the Topps Sticker issues in the 80s. I am a pretty big sticker fan so I think this will need to get corrected.  Tony helped me out with these 9 stickers.

I also scored this eclectic trio of cards, an oversized 1983 Donruss card of Greg "Moonman" Minton, a 2004 Sweet Spot Classic card of Johnny Mize and a 2014 Super Veterans insert of Barry Zito.  All needs and all great additions to the Giants collection.

Last but not least is this card that started the trade, a 2014 Topps Turkey Red Matt Cain.  This year's design for Turkey Red is quite different and I am not particularly a fan of these Topps.com only releases but this is a nice looking card.  With this trade and another I am down to only needing the Pablo Sandoval for the team set this year which is pretty cool since I still need 2 from last year's release.

Thanks Tony for another great trade!

Trade Post - Phungo

It seems to happen fairly often.  A quick note about a card or two turns into a much bigger trade, especially when you are trading for the first time.  This trade with Paul over at Phungo started out with Paul asking me if I was interested in this Matt Cain Heritage black border card:

I said sure and we exchanged a couple emails and a trade was born.  I was super excited to get some of Paul's signature home made cards.  Check these out:

These are very cool and I got a nice selection of Giants.  Even though Terry Mulholland is listed as a Phillie, I remember him from his Giants day as well.  I really like the photo in the Cain/Lincecum card and all of these are very welcome additions to the Giants binders.

But it didn't stop there, all of these were included as well:

A great collection of past Giants from a bunch of different years and sets.  The Nen is looking quite psychedelic.  I really want to get more of the Giants from the Legends of NY set, I have a few but these are sharp looking cards.  The photography on the Jeff Kent card is perfect, right after contact.  It is a great use of the horizontal card design.

The Cain was great, the Phungo cards are better, but this card was by far the best of the package and completely unexpected.

A 1960 Vintage HOF card of Orlando Cepeda!  This was one of the last cards I needed for my 1960 Giants team set and I am so thankful to Paul for this awesome trade package.

Thanks for a great trade!

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.

Despite the Poor Season, I Still Think the Future is Bright

It was a tough year for the Giants, with a little bit of a rally by winning 6 of their last 10 games they pulled into a tie for 3rd place in the division with a record of 76-86.  I had high hopes going into the year and while I thought 3 World Series Titles in the past 4 years wasn't likely, I thought a return to the playoffs was in the cards.  I can honestly say that the 2 titles makes a season like this much easier to deal with.  Also thinking forward to next year already (I sound like a Cubs fan!), I have quite a few reasons to feel optimistic.

I thought I would share my reasons with a few recent pick ups for the Giants collection.

First up is the Giants ace:

Madison Bumgarner truly stepped up to become the ace this year.  I believe he is easily one of the top 10 pitchers in the game and could possible by top 5.  He is still very young and locked up for a few years and I expect a Cy Young or two from him.

One of the Giants major issues this year was their starting pitching and Matt Cain contributed greatly to the team's challenges in the first half.  However he pitched quite well over the second half of the season despite a lack of run support - is there anyone over the last 5-6 years who has suffered the consistent lack of run support that has plagued Cain?  Like Bumgarner, Cain is locked up and I am very happy the Giants poured their resources into Cain instead of Tim Lincecum.

 The Giants just locked up Hunter Pence for the next 5 years.  He was their statistical leader and their inspirational leader and I, for one, am very happy to have him back.  If you look at his numbers, he had quite a year finishing off with a walk off hit today to win the final game.  Many Giants and baseball fans are complaining that he was paid too much but I don't agree. With the Dodgers bottomless pockets and the every increasing revenue to baseball teams I think his salary is probably just about right.  You also have to factor in how hard it is to put up power numbers at AT&T Park.

Brandon Belt had a fairly decent season, he ended up leading the Giants in OPS to go along with 39 doubles, 4 triples and 17 homers.  These aren't All Star numbers but fairly solid.  There is talk that the Giants may pick up a new first baseman in the off season and move Belt to LF.  He is a pretty awesome defender but I would support the move if it improved the lineup, LF was an offensive black hole in 2013.

All 4 of these are 2013 Ginter relics that I have picked up.  There are 8 total Giants relics in this year's release so I guess I am half way there.  Didn't really hear why there are 2 different designs for the mini relics, I think I like the darker border of the top 3 the best.

There are a couple other reasons I am feeling optimistic as well, these two guys in the 2013 Topps Chipz release:

Angel Pagan signed a fairly lucrative 3 year contract and spent most of the season injured.  I am hopeful for a bounce back season next year.  In 2012 he was a key piece to the team and this year in his absence the outfield consisted of Pence and a couple scrubs.  Belt, Pagan and Pence makes for a pretty solid OF.

Beyond solid is Giants C Buster Posey.  He is locked up for most of the next decade and in my opinion is the best catcher in baseball.  I will admit that Yadier Molina is very good but I would want Buster on my team.  He didn't have a repeat performance of his MVP year but had a pretty nice year in 2013.

Not sure about these Chipz, I bought a few packs at Target and only have these 2 Giants to show for it.  Now I have a stack of poker looking chips on my desk and most aren't even from teams I usually trade.  They are only 50 cents/chip ($2 for a 4 pack) so they are easy on the wallet but I really don't have a solid way to display them so I will probably go after a few more Giants and try to rid myself of the dups.

Maybe I am the eternal optimist, but I am already looking forward to next year.  As for the year, I think I am going to have to cheer for the team across the bay - the Oakland A's.  As long as the Dodgers don't win I am happy - I am already sick of all the fair weather LA fans talking about the team.