Fat Pack Loveliness + This Week in eBay Scores

You know, eBay sucks. Often. Not eBay itself- they've revolutionized independent commerce (is that the right term?). The sellers are the villians, but most of the time bad sellers can be avoided, and it's your own fault if you win an auction for a Rocco Baldelli jersey card (JUST $0.35!!!) and forget to read the $6.99 s&h fee. But I digress.

I love eBay. if you use it right, you can score sweet loot like I did this week. Here we go.

I snagged a 2007 Fleer Ultra Fat Pack (32 cards) for a swell $5. These are on sale at certain SprawlMarts right now for $2.49..but this one was special. The seller advertised it, with scan as "Dice-K Gold Medallion Showing." Nice! So I grabbed it. Here's what I got out of it:



Daisuke Matsuzaka Lucky 13 Gold Medallion Rookie Card.

Since Daisuke was an international free agent, Bowman couldn't get their trigger-happy rookie card logo on Daisuke before other, ENJOYABLE brands could. Take that, Bowman. So this is more or less a "true" rookie card, and a base set parallel to boot. It's numbered to /999, which is irritating, because Lucky 13's are short-printed, but base card GMs are also numbered to /999.

Fleer Ultra 2007 Set Progress:



For those who have read this before, you may remember my affinity for this set and my run at completing it. I bought THREE Fat Packs last week and got nine cards (out of 96!) for completion. Bummer. This ONE Fat Pack yielded fourteen. I am starting to suspect there is some seeding of cards based on geography (as this pack came from Texas, and contained two Rangers I needed.)

Other Sweet Scores:

I mentioned the Kei Igawa Lucky 13 last week, which I got in the mail yesterday. Not worth a scan.

2000 Skybox Skylines #6 of 10



I love these things. Got any? I only have two so far, Piazza and Chipper, so I would love to take 'em off your hands.

Saving the best for last...

2000 Metal base Shredders #NNO Matt Williams



These are the greatest inserts EVER. Back when relics were hard to come by, these were a tough pull, seeded 1:288. My buddy in high school, when we were collecting 2000 Metal, bought a Eurubiel Durazo for $10 on Induction Weekend (Kirby Puckett, Dave Winfield, Bill Mazeroski). It will be mine.
Again, if you have any of these, I want 'em. The checklist is awful, full of players like Eric Munson and the aforementioned Durazo, but they're sooooo sick.

See you later kids, should have another post tonight.

Plain Beautiful Cards: Volume 7 - 1994 Upper Deck Collector's Choice David Justice #156

SMOKED!

I just found this one a few days ago in the "meh..." box. I actually found a lot of good ones, and have a nice stack for this segment, but with Alomar not making the Hall as I expected, we go with this card tonight.

A few things:

• This is the oldest card I have ever scanned. I was approximately 8 when I got this one, maybe a Braves fan at the time but could have possibly fallen for the blue corvidae by that point.
• You can tell by the look on Justice's face that this ball is either about to land in the right field bleacher seats or about to obliterate some kid's first baseball game popcorn bucket beyond first base. Either way, he must have hit this one hard.
• Pretty nice card all around, not in very good condition, but I was 7 and you can't tell much from the scan. If only the Braves on the bottom right had been real logos like Upper Deck usually produces, this would have been on of my favorite sets ever. Pretty decent though (700 cards + I believe.)

That's it. Congrats to Andre Dawson, please go in as an Expo and not a Cub.

Plain Beautiful Cards: Volume 2 - 2004 Upper Deck Rafael Furcal #145

This card has it all:

• Night Card
• Action Shot
• Panoramic Stadium Shot (blue at bottom)
• Composition & Centering
• Team Logo
• Player Success (more on that in a later post)

The scan really brightened the card up, which is kind of a downer. The light in the card is really great, and Furcal's jersey has more of a rich hue rather than the bleached-out white of daytime shots.

Oh yeah, and he's like 3"+ in the air. Always a plus.