Bringing Home the Bronze

A little while back, John of Johnny's Trading Spot had a contest similar to Wes' Big Fun Game and I was lucky enough to earn a spot.  I jumped in on the contest and even had a little dialog in the comments section about what I was hoping to win.

When my turn came up, I made a steal and low and behold my desired item entered my collection.  I was surprised at the size and weight of the item I won and took a few pictures to try and share via the blog.

First up is the "binder" the card was contained in.  It is plastic with a nice Highland Mint logo on the cover.

Here is the spine, showing the player, the year and the material of the card.  There is even a serial number.  Could you imagine a shelf with a bunch of these stacked like books?

Sorry for the sideways picture but here is what it looks like opened up.  There is a nice place on the left to hold the folded COA and the right has an area to contain the encase bronze card.

Here is a nice close up of my Will "The Thrill" Clark bronze card.  It is modeled after his 1986 Topps Traded rookie card - Nice!

The back is spot on accurate as well.   I hadn't seen one of the bronze cards from this release, I am very impressed by the quality.

I took a picture of the card and the case next to a regular sized card.  Note the thickness of the bronze card but also the case the card is in.

Here is the unfolded COA with the 0917 serial number matching the side of the plastic binder it is contained in.  Looks like there were 3000 Clark cards made.

In his typical generous fashion, John also included a few extra Giants for my collection.  This Barry Zito is my favorite, when I see base cards this nice I always reflect on how nice it was when Upper Deck was still in the Baseball card business.

Here are some other great cards from 2017 that John tossed in as well.

John thanks for the contest and for allowing me to add the great Will Clark to my collection.  With the success of your contest, Wes' contest and a couple others I am strongly considering to have my own give away as well.  I have a few things set aside as prizes and hope that once this Hurricane Harvey tragedy allows work to even out a bit (I am in the insurance business), I am planning on taking a day off and get all the contest stuff ready to go.

Just for the "F" of It #10

Wow, just realized that this is my first Just for the "F" of it post of 2017.  I am a bad blogger.

As a reminder, these are cards I don't really fit into one of my core collections, be it sets, player collections, team collections or HOFer Autos but I picked them up to add to my collection for the "F"un of it.  This is a PG rated blog, what did you think the "F" stands for???

Today I am sharing an autographed card of Bobby Grich, retired second baseman of the California Angels.  Grich started his career on the Orioles and played there until 1976 but my memories of him we from his tenure with the Angels from 1977-1986.

From a looks perspective, this card looks quite a bit better in hand, the scan mutes out some of the shine.  This card comes from 2005 Topps Pristine.  Despite the sticker auto the design seems fine to me.  The card wasn't expensive and isn't worth much, you can find one on eBay or COMC for under 10 bucks, but it is a perfect Just for the "F" of it card for my collection.

My memories of Grich center around his comparative offensive prowess as a second baseman.  I started following baseball seriously and collecting cards in 1979 which coincided with Grich's best offensive season where he hit 30 HRs and knocked in 101 RBI.  In a day of fairly light hitting second basemen, this season impressed the heck out of a young kid.

Outside of the Dodgers, I also had a fondness for all the CA teams.  The Giants were always number one but I liked following the A's and Angels quite a bit and the Padres to a lessor extent.  Grich was one of the top players on the Angels and even managed to get some MVP votes a couple of years, including 1979, and made 3 All-Star teams.  Going back and reviewing his career in whole, he had as good of a stint with the Orioles making 4 All-Star teams, 4 Gold Gloves and got MVP votes in 3 different seasons.

His stats don't elevate him to Cooperstown levels but he is definitely a member of the Hall of Very Good in my book.  Another "F"un card for the collection.

COMC Adds to my Player Collections with a Special Nod to Dwight Clark

My final post from a COMC order back in April focuses in on my player collections.  I have found my attention drifting more towards my player collections over the last few months probably driven by the terrible season the Giants are having.  I am still trying to pick up all the Giants base cards along with a few parallels and relics but not as aggressively as the past few years.

First up is a new McCovey, always great to add some parallels from the 2014 Panini HOF set.  I have cracked a few boxes (I love the 2 HOFer autos/box) and really like almost all the cards from the set. This Crusade card brings my want list for this parallel set down to one die cut card /5 for my McCovey collection.

It has been tough to find many new Vida Blue cards to add to my collection, most of what I need is pretty rare.  I was able to pick up this nice pennant and a couple of minis from Panini Golden Age.  The pennant card is actually fuzzy like felt, pretty cool oddball.

While my want list for Rickey Henderson is much longer than my Vida want list, finding affordable cards from his playing days that I need is sometimes a challenge.  With a couple of offers and some deep searching, I was able to add these 5 to my collection.

My most prominent football player collection is of fellow USC alumnus and HOF CB/S Ronnie Lott.  My Lott collection may have benefited the most from my COMC orders over the past couple of years and this order brought 3 more home.

I believe my sheer card count, Chris Webber is my biggest basketball player collection although I have collected Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing much longer.  I collect cards from throughout his career but always prefer cards from his Sacramento Kings days.  I was able to pick up 2 relic cards at very reasonable prices.

One of my player collections that doesn't get much attention is that of 49ers great Dwight Clark.  Although he only played 9 seasons, he is one of the most beloved players in Niners history.  He was a part of one of the most memorable plays in NFL history and "The Catch" launched the 49ers dynasty of the 80s and early 90s.  To this day I can remember exactly where I was and who I was with when "The Catch" happened even though I was only 10 years old.

Prior to asking for this purchase to be shipped I decided to do a quick search to see if any new Dwight Clark cards were on COMC.  To my surprise, Clark had been featured on a few recent releases, none of which were represented in my collection.  I went on a bit of a shopping spree as you will see below and grew my collection quite a bit.

I don't know if you all heard the news but about 2-3 days after placing my order, the announcement came out that Clark is suffering from ALS.  For some reason the timing struck me as odd, just days after getting so excited about adding a bunch of his cards to my collection, I grew quite sad with the news.

That finished off my April order, I can't believe how far behind I am in sharing my spoils but I think I have 2 more COMC orders scanned since this one.  Not sure if or when I will share those spoils but despite diminished time to focus on my collection and blog, I am still having a blast with this hobby.

A Tale of Two Purchases - Stupid and Smart

It was the best of splurges, it was the worst of splurges.  I have a monthly budget I use to spend on cards.  It is a solid budget and keeps me in line.  While just about every card you could ever want is somewhere for sale on line, I have to prioritize my purchases to stay within budget.

Last month I saw something on eBay that was discounted.  It was something I considered purchasing directly from the Topps site prior to the beginning of the season - I remember that as the very short window when I actually held out hope the Giants would be good.  I didn't pull the trigger on the Topps.com purchase but it was early in the month, my budget had been deposited into my trusty paypal account and in a moment of weakness I pounced and bought this:

This is the Spring Training Topps Now set of the Giants.  When I got this in the mail and opened it up I immediately regretted the purchase.  For the price of this set I could have knocked off a couple star cards from my 1969 Topps want list or grabbed a few 1972 Topps high numbers.  Don't get me wrong about I am far from a fair weather fan and this fits well into my collection.  However I have fully accepted that I will never have every Giants card in my collection.  It just seemed like a lot of cash to commemorate a team that is perhaps the most disappointing team in my lifetime.

Let's move on to a more positive tale.  I haven't had as much time to peruse the blog role as I would like but one day a couple weeks after that terrible Giants purchase I was checking out some posts from the blog When Topps Had (Base) Balls and noticed Gio has posted a custom set he had designed and had printed up. He ended up printing off a couple for his personal collection and was offering the rest up for sale. 

The cost was about half of the Giants set but I hesitated for a bit.  It still wasn't that late in the month a my Stupid purchase put a dent in my budget.  I went back to the blog post 2-3 times over a day or two and finally decided to pull the trigger and buy the custom set.  It is a set of 40 cards (20 from each league) featuring the stars of 1930.  I should have taken a picture of the packaging (a killer box to hold the cards) but forgot.

The quality of these cards in hand, the subjects, the design - this set is flawless and one of the smartest splurges I have ever made.  This set doesn't technically fit into my various parts of my collection but I believe it has started a new subject - custom sets done by @wthballs.  I decided to scan all the cards to show them off - enjoy! 

The backs are great too but I only scanned one of the Bambino to share.

Gio, you outdid yourself.  Great work my friend and you can put me on a list to secure any sets you do in the future.  In a way I feel buying your set helped redeem my stupid Topps Now purchase and I thank you for that as well.

McCovey Monday #93 - 2014 Panini Golden Age 5X7 Box Topper Relic 47/50

My favorite player of all time is Hall of Famer Willie McCovey.  I have amassed a collection of over 1300 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 made it into my LCS on National Baseball Card Day.  My plan was to look through some of the random boxes of singles to get to the $10 threshold for the Mike Trout card and if I didn't find any singles I would buy a couple boxes of pages.  My wife and 13 year old were on a Boy Scout camping trip so I had my 4 year old daughter and 10 year old son with me - it needed to be a quick trip.

When I walked in I noticed several tables piled high with wax boxes that hadn't been there before.  I decided to extend my trip with a bribe of Chick-Fil-A shakes for the kidos so I could look around the wax.  I picked up 4 boxes of cards ranging from $5-15 each - 1980-83 Cramer, 1992 Stadium Club Series 3, 1994 Ted Williams and 1989-90 Pacific Senior League.  I was hoping of scoring sets of each and I ended up only 1 card short of my goal, card #2 of the Ted Williams set Bernie Carbo.  I also got a 2nd set of the Cramer cards that I am holding onto for a potential contest but if you are interested in near sets of the Ted Williams Set or the Senior League set let me know.

But the star of this post is a random find sitting on the counter at the LCS.  This LCS isn't the most organized.  I usually experience a bunch of random cards on the counters in the process of being organized, priced and filed.  I lucked out and saw this beauty on the counter:

 This is a box topper from 2014 Panini Golden Age with a nice piece of jersey relic.  I had already picked up the regular box topper so this was an awesome find.  I know I had never set eyes on an actual copy of this and don't even remember seeing a copy for sale on line.  In all honesty, its existence had escaped me and I wasn't even on the look out.  I asked the owner how much it would be and after doing a little online research he tossed out a $10 price tag - SOLD! 

 Here is the back with a fancy design and the 47/50 serial number in the upper left hand corner.

Since there were three of us in the store and I spent over $30 we were gifted 3 packs of cards and 3 Mike Trouts.  Unfortunately I didn't get the Brandon Crawford Giants card, if you have one for trade drop me a line.

A Ten Year Quest is Complete

I have been collecting USC Trojan football players since around 2004 or 2005, about 5-6 years prior to starting my Giants collection.  USC had a great run around that time and it ended up producing a pretty large number of pro players. It made busting boxes fun and I was always on the lookout for the newest draft picks.

There have been a few players that have become bigger targets of my collection.  On such player was Ryan Kalil.  Kalil was a great offensive lineman for the Trojans and was drafted by the Panthers in 2007.  He was immediately inserted into the starting lineup and has made a couple of Pro Bowls.  When his first cards came out in the Sage releases I made a decision to try and "super collect" Kalil. My goal was to track down all his cards, including 1/1s.  I was thinking with him being an o-lineman, competition would be light.  Unfortunately once he became Pro Bowl material some of his cards got outside of my price range.

I have a saved eBay search still for Ryan Kalil 1/1 cards and a little while back a new one popped up.  I made a bid and ended up winning this card.

This is a Magenta Printing Plate from 2007 Sage Hit DECADEnce.  The card is a Playmakers insert.  When I got the card, it looked a little familiar and when I cataloged it on my spreadsheet I got pretty excited.  I went to my box of USC hits, pulled out 3 other plates and boom!

I am now the proud owner of a complete set of 1/1 printing plates, all picked up at different times over the past 10 years.  This is a first for me and maybe a last - who knows.

I also thought I would share this other sweet Kalil card out of 2016 Donruss Signature.  Another low numbered (1/5) card added to the USC and Kalil collection.  I may not ever acquire every Ryan Kalil card but my collection is shaping up quite nice.

The Joy of a Completed Insert Set - 2001 Topps A Look Ahead

Since 2006, in addition to the Topps Flagship base sets, I have been collecting most of the insert sets as well.  I little while back I decided to fill some gaps in my collection and pick up the Topps insert sets from 1993 to 2005.  While I do have all the base sets in that range, this was a period where I didn't do a ton of collection.  Most of the sets have been picked up in factory form or bought complete without opening many or any packs.  I have decided to share the different insert sets as I complete them to document my progress and share the sets in case they came at a lull in your collecting as well.

This 10 card insert set was released in 2001 Topps and featured a group of players that were headed for the Baseball Hall of Fame.  I like the design of the card fronts, they are nice and shiny and feature a near full body photo of the player. 

Let's see how accurate Topps' prediction on the future HOFers was.  Vlad picked up 71.7% of the votes last year on his first year on the ballot - strong odds he gets in.  Jeter is a sure fire first ballot HOFer once he is eligible.  Helton is eligible in 2019 and I would say he is border line but my money is on eventual election to the HOF.  A-Rod has all the numbers to be in but who knows what will happen with the steroid ear players.  Griffey was a first ballot no brainer.

Nomar started his career strong but didn't have the longevity to make it to Cooperstown.  Chipper is eligible next year and will most likely get in on his first year.  Pudge just got in this year and Pedro back in 2015. Rick Ankiel is the only player in hindsight that seems like a silly inclusion.

Here is a look at the back of the outcast's card as an example of the backs.  The backs feature a second picture, a nice write up and career statistics.