Group Break - Home of the Toddfather

I had the privilege of participating in the first Group Break hosted by Tim over at Home of the Toddfather. Tim opened 3 2012 Topps boxes - Update, Chrome and Pro Debut.  I was pretty excited about filling in some Giants needs from Update and Chrome (although Chrome would have had to be a colored refractor to help me out) and didn't have 1 card from Pro Debut yet.  Take a look at the Giants goodies I scored.

First the Chrome cards:

I only scored 4 Giants from the Chrome and none of them filled needs.  However the Belt and Posey are both refractors which is pretty sweet and hopefully I can flip them in a trade or on Sportlots.

Next up are some of the Update cards:

I got a bigger stack of Giants besides these but these all filled needs for my Giants team set.  I am pretty excited to get so many cards I needed plus getting the insert was huge.  I also got 6 or 7 dups, overall the Giants had a nice haul in this break.

Finally the box that got me into the break, Pro Debut:

I scored 7 different base cards and had no idea there were so many Giants.  Most of the names I am pretty familiar with.  The Giants farm system isn't super strong but I think Gary Brown, Joe Panik and Heath Hembree have a good chance at a solid big league career. I also scored a Hembree All-Star insert.  I picked him up in one of my minor league slots in my keeper Fantasy League last year, I think he has the potential to be a future closer for the Giants.

Oh yeah, I also scored this:

What a sweet pull!  I scored the auto out of the box and it is of one of the Giants better prospects, Joe Panik.  It is my second Panik Auto, I scored a 2011 Bowman Chrome Blue Refractor Auto in a trade several months back.

Great first group break Tim, can't wait for the next one!

Mail Day - Another One Bites the Dust

Just a quick post tonight to share a quick package I got in the mail today.  Amazingly not 24 hours after this post where I was whining about the lack of 1992 Donruss Updates on the market, guess what showed up in a saved eBay search I had saved?

 This is card number U-21 from 92 Donruss Update and they are pretty rare.  They were only available in factory sets and only 4 of the 22 cards in each set.  I have been searching for the two Giants for months and couldn't find any to purchase on any site.

This cost me $5 which is more that I really wanted to pay but I had to leap on it as it was the first time I had seen one for sale.

This leaves me with 10 cards to complete my 2012 goal of all Topps, Fleer, UD and Donruss regular and update cards from 1981 - 2011.  I have about run through my November budget so I am hoping to finish this off in December.

2007 Fleer #428 Tim Lincecum RC
2005 Fleer Tradition #325 Aardsma/Knoedler/Simon TP
2003 Fleer Tradition Update #317 Todd Linden ROO
2003 Fleer Tradition Update #391 Kevin Correia ROO RC
2002 Fleer #90 Carlos Valderrama
2001 Donruss #202 Barry Bonds FC
2001 Topps Traded #T25 Brian Boehringer
2000 Topps Traded #T17 Sean McGowan RC
1997 Upper Deck #270 Bill Mueller UPD
1990 Donruss #217B Scott Garrelts COR# (Born 10/30; corrected in factory set)

Wish me luck!

Trade Post - 2 by 3 Heroes

After posting a box break of 2012 Topps Update and whining about the lack of a Giants All-Star Stitches hit, I got a very exciting email from Jeff over at 2 by 3 Heroes letting me know he had pulled a Pablo Sandoval relic and wanting to work out a trade.  I quickly sent him over a list of White Sox relics I had for trade and we struck up a one for one trade.  Before either of us could package up and send out the cards, Jeff picked up some more Update cards and pulled a Matt Cain relic as well!  Well the trade ended up expanding and I couldn't have been happier.  Here are the two relics in all their glory:

 I am half way to the team set just needing the Buster Posey and Melky (cheater) Cabrera to finish it off.  How cool is it to knock off two new relics like this in one set!

As these trades often do, some extras got tossed in. First up, here are some minis:

A couple nice black border Ginters and a gold retail Ginter.  The Bumgarner is a Gypsy Queen back and all 4 fill some nice gaps in my 2012 pages.

I also scored some other cool 2012 Giants.  The Posey blue border leaves me a Sergio Romo short of the Series 2 team set.  The Hensley is my second Update Walmart parallel.  I also scored a nice Bumgarner insert and a Vogey in my favorite Chrome parallel color.

Some other random Giants.  The Schmidt Authentix is the only Giants base card in the set so it is an automatic team set!  I only had 1 of the Team Heroes cards prior to this trade. The Bonds is now my 6th of the 73 different card #365.  I am not necessarily seeking all of them out but similar to the Home Run Heroes Bonds cards, I will happily add more and more cards to the set.

Jeff, thanks for the great trade.  Keep me in mind if you keep pulling those Giants inserts!

Wednesday Weekly Contest - Winners and New Contest

For the second week in a row the results and new contest are coming out on Thursday instead of Wednesday.  If I don't get on the ball, I may have to change the name of the contest.  For this week, I asked when you started collecting and what your favorite set of all time was.  I really enjoyed getting to read everyone's responses and I thought I would share mine.

The first year I started collecting was 1979:

 Not the most exciting set but I do have a soft spot for the All Star cards with the banner across the bottom.

My favorite set is challenging as there are so many I like - 1963, 1965, 1972, 1975, 1983 and I could do on but for nostalgic reasons I have to say my favorite set is 1959 Topps.

When I was about 8-9 years old on a visit to my grandparents house my dad pulled out a box that had all his old baseball cards and they were mostly from 1959 and 1960.  Both sets were relatively close to complete and I was able to complete them at card shows throughout the 1980s.  I enjoy the design, the colors and the memories it brings back of wandering around card shows with my buddy trying to track down affordable copies of those last few cards I needed.

So onto the contest, we had 18 entries this week:

 And after 3 randoms, the winner is....

Steve D.!!!  Steve, you win one of the prizes off my Weekly Contest Prize Page. If you would like to wait until the end of the weekend, there may be a few other things added to the page.

Now onto this week's contest. 

With baseball season being over, a lot of the attention of sports fans shifts to other sports.  We are in the sweet spot right now where the NFL, NBA, College Football, College Basketball and Hockey (when it is actually playing a season) are all in gear.  Most of us have made our favorite baseball teams well known in the blogging community.  This week's question is:

Outside of your favorite baseball team, what is your favorite team in another sport, college or pro? 

Feel free to share some insight into why, if there is a why as well.

Same thing goes for a winner, random 3 times and will close the contest out a day or so ahead of announcing the winner.

Group Break - My Cardboard Mistress

It was a little crazy at the arpsmith household last night so I didn't get a chance to random the winner for last week's contest or put together a new contest post.  Hopefully later today or early tomorrow on that but I did want to share the results of a group break I entered recently.

Spankee over at My Cardboard Mistress had a unique group break a few weeks back.  As I recall, he had quite a few random packs, blasters and boxes, some of which had been opened and stashed and he decided to break them up by team and sell them off in a group break. At first I wasn't too interested, I already had quite a few of the Giants from the sets he was offering.  Knowing that I am one of the few Giants fans in the blog world, he pestered me a little and I finally decided to jump in and participate.

I got a pretty large stack of dups as expected but did score some nice cards to add to the Giants collection.  He also threw in a hit as the break didn't result in any Giants hits.  I was very happy to pick up the cards I did and glad to have participated in the break.

 Here is a random assortment of cards if I do say so.  The Milner is a card I never would have known existed if it didn't pop up in this batch of cards.  This card alone almost made the break worthwhile. I was also happy to score the Schmidt silver parallel - I have very few Giants parallels from this Fleer set.  The Kevin Mitchell is an awesome numbered insert from a great sets - Upper Deck Classics.  The three guys along the bottom were pretty new to me. Not big names but great additions to the Giants collection.

 Here is a quad of 4 more very nice cards.  2 new Bowman Platinum cards including a top prospect and the Kung Fu Panda.  I also scored a very nice Bonds Gold Label - this card looks amazing in person.  The Bowman Chrome Sandoval is a refractor and is bowed like crazy but it will go in a 9-pocket page quite nicely.

 There was a draft for cards that didn't belong to a particular team and I had a pretty high draft spot and scored this Brett Favre card as a bonus.  Hoping to flip this in a trade.  I believe it is a short print and books for around $10.  Might need to hop on Sportlots and see what this can get me.

Finally the aforementioned hit that was toss in as an extra.  I didn't have this in my collection and very glad to score a relic from the Big Cat during his time on the Giants.  I scanned front and back to show how GU cards should be done - give us a photo of the actual relic that was used.

Thanks Spankee for talking me into the break, it was well worth it!

Trade Post - Reader Jim aka mr haverkamp

Out of the blue during the playoffs I received an awesome package of cards from a reader named Jim. We have made a couple trades and he is fairly unique in that he is actually a reader of this blog who likes the Giants.

When I opened up the package, it started off great. Jim sent me these cards in hopes of generating some good karma to help the Giants get into the World Series and boy did it work!  I am pretty jealous because we have exchanged a couple emails and he got to attend the championship parade, I thought about dropping everything and heading north but it was quite possibly my busiest work week of the year.  Jim also sent me a link to some photos that I happened to miss, check out these double rainbow photos.  It was definitely a sign of great things to come.

Now onto the cards.  A majority of the package were these 1968 McLaughlin cards.  I love the look of these and only had 1 in my collection prior to getting this package.

 These first 3 showcase Giants World Series appearances vs. the A's.  Looks like we took 2 out of 3 of these.  You have to think that Christy Mathewson's 3 shut outs is one of the best feats ever in World Series play.  I laugh whenever I hear about the $100,000 infield, that is about what A-rod collects for every game he plays.

 Here are a couple World Series where the Giants didn't have the best of luck against the White Sox and Senators.  Finally in a rematch against the Senators, the Giants pull one out with Mel Ott leading the way.  Again, I am such a fan of the art work on these - fun, silly but just enough detail to really tell the story.

 Wow, 7 cards depicting World Series match ups between the Giants and Yankees.  The Giants didn't fare too well in a majority of them. Can you imagine what baseball was like back in those days with 3 baseball teams in one city and numerous World Series match ups pitting either the Dodgers or Giants against each other?  That would have been an amazing time to be a baseball fan.

 I am thinking someone should produce a new series of cards to catch up.  This year would definitely feature the Kung Fu Panda and his 3 HRs in Game 1.  Not exactly sure what the 2010 card would feature, probably the Beard and Posey's embrace at the end.

 Jim also included this cool Sportcaster card of the Giant's former home of Candlestick Park.  I don't recall going when they had the artificial turf as showcased in this card, they had changed it back to natural turf by the time I started going.  I do however believe that I sat in about this area for a Giants vs. Dodgers doubleheaders one year.  The Stick was old and nasty but I do miss it.

 I also received this Famous Feats cards which again showcases Mathewson's 3 shut outs.  This card is slightly over sized so I need to figure out how to story it but it is a very cool card.

 Finally the highlight of the package is the McCovey postcard.  I loved all the content but whenever you can add a new item to your collection of your favorite player it is a great day.  Now I just need to figure what the heck to send Jim back.

Thanks for a great trade Jim!

McCovey Monday # 26 - Famous Flannels Postcard

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.


Every so often I will run across a non-card item of my favorite player and if the price is right I will pick it up.  Today's McCovey item is something I picked up several years back on eBay and I think it was pretty affordable. It is a postcard measuring 5 X 7 inches that was produced in 1994.

 The back shows it was published by Historic Limited Editions and the set appears to be titled Famous Flannels by Max Z Cards.  I know nothing about its origins but the front is pretty cool.  The big picture showing McCovey's famously retired #44 jersey is towering over Candlestick Park with an SF logo in the background.  The picture is actually a silky material.  The text is fairly short and to the point and highlights Willie's status as the first home grown San Francisco Giant superstar.  It also shows a limited print run of 300.

I am very happy to have this as part of my collection.  I would love to get more info about where it originated if anyone happens to know.  I have been a little to lazy to seek out any additional info but it sure is nice to look at!