Plain Beautiful Cards: Volume 8 - 2002 Uppere Deck Jason Kendall #708

Sick play at the plate. 'Nuff said.

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.

Maybe I'll Make The Trip

So, Whitey Herzog may or may not be as frustrated as I am that Robby Alomar and "The Dutchman" Bert Blyleven didn't make the HOF vote today. Andre Dawson did, and YES, he deserves it.

But John Heyman just made a good point on (last night's) this morning's MLB Hot Stove. Andre Dawson is soft-spoken and the other inductee, Umpire Doug Harvey is in poor health and will probably not give a speech. What does this mean for fans of baseball, within driving distance of Cooperstown, who need a reason to head down this July? Whitey Herzog. As Heyman noted "Whitey will tell any story, of any length, on any subject" (paraphrased). Sounds like it's worth the trip to me. Plus, seeing as the last year I went to induction was 2001 - ahem: Kirby Puckett, Bill Mazeroski, Dave Winfield; I am hoping for slightly less traffic this time. And yes, I will find a cozy place in the woods around Coop and set up a tent.

More on Whitey Herzog

I firmly believe that it is impossible to argue with the Veteran's Committee selections. Take a look at who decides:

• Hall of Famers: Jim Bunning, Tommy Lasorda, Eddie Murray, Phil Niekro, Tony Pérez, Robin Roberts, Ryne Sandberg, Ozzie Smith, Billy Williams, Dick Williams
• Executives: Jim Frey (retired), Roland Hemond, Bob Watson
• Media: Tim Kurkjian, Jack O'Connell, Tom Verducci

It's copied from Wikipedia, so there are active links. Hate Wikipedia? I don't care.
Oh. Wait. Whitey Herzog.

Let's just quote him a bit:

"If you don't have outstanding relief pitching, you might as well piss on the fire and call the dogs."

"I'm not buddy-buddy with the players. If they need a buddy, let them buy a dog."

"Some people asked me if I would be interested in managing the A's. I said a definite no thank you. At night, that place is a graveyard with lights."

"The only thing bad about winning the pennant is that you have to manage the All-Star Game the next year. I'd rather go fishing for three days."

"The only way to make money as a manager is to win in one place, get fired and hired somewhere else."

"The rules are changed now, there's not any way to build a team today. It's just how much money you want to spend. You could be the world champions and somebody else makes a key acquisition or two and you're through."

"The way we have been playing, I might tell my players not to cross the picket line (umpire strike of 1979)."

"We need just two players to be a contender. Just Babe Ruth and Sandy Koufax."

"We need three kinds of pitching: left handed, right handed, and relief."

"What counts aren't the number of double plays, but the ones you should have had and missed."

"You sweat out the free agent thing in November then you make the trades in December. Then you struggle to sign the guys left in January and in February I get down to sewing all the new numbers on the uniforms."

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.

Baseball Blog Detritus from the Day

HOT DAMN LOOK AT THOSE PANTS

So, pretty eventful day in our little circle here on blogspot. Some posts of great pulls as well as cant-miss HOF debates...here's some links:

• Thorzul Will Rule has got me wishing I had $60 to throw down on a box of '08 UD Baseball Heroes. Hell of a box there...maybe someday.
• Beardy's Baseball Blog has some strong opinions, all well processed and hashed out, as well as a huge debate stemming from today's HOF selections. No Alomar for me this year, so probably no 2 hour drive to Cooperstown (unless Andre is signing some cheapie autos)...
• Drunk Jays Fans, notoriously pessimistic and generally way too angry to be that close to my Blue Jays should, gets my hopes up on hot-shit Aroldis Chapman (Man Crush #1). Jays and Angels appear to be front runners...but really? If you're Aroldis Chapman do you go to Anaheim to play with fellow Cubano Kendry Morales, work for a hispanic GM, live in sunny South CA, or go to bleak Toronto, with very few remaining hispanic players, and play for a Canadian GM?

Aaaand I thought there were more, but I guess not. Might post a Plain Beautiful Card tonight, might not. Currently searching for a better "career" in case grad school doesn't work out ("But Roy, you mean high school substitute teacher isn't a great career?!")

2010 Collection Goals

Tired of seeing this posts yet? I don't care. These are my goals for collecting this year. Most are petty, selfish goals, but whatever. Cards make me happy, and so does accomplishment. So I intend to accomplish the following:

• $ave money on collecting (see what I did there?) Kinda sick of paying $4.50 on ebay shipping charges, so through other sources such as CheckOutMyCards, SportsLots, and hopefully a few one-on-one trades, I'll be able to do so. Also, read blaster boxes more carefully before I end up purchasing another box of 2008 UD First Edition.
• Finish the 2007 Ultra Baseball Set
• Finish 2006-2007 Ultra hockey set.
• Finish 2000 Skybox Skylines insert set (2/10 so far...not a good start)
• Accomplish trades with fellow bloggers and/or followers of A Paper Chase. I'm anxious to get a good trade under my belt sooner or later.
• Join some modestly priced box breaks throughout the "blogosphere". Someone mentioned a new phrase to replace that term, and I am for it. Also, possibly hold some box breaks or pack breaks of my own.
• Start busting boxes and packs via video blog. Hopefully I will get the nards to do this eventually, still afraid of the wrong people getting a hold of videos of myself. Of course, Oh, Snap! (my brief foray into directing...) has been out there for 3 years now. [I removed the YouTube link. Very bad video involving poorly faked drug usage, awful acting, and me falling out of a clothes dryer and one off a pool table. Fun!]
  
• 30 Followers. Whoo hoo! 10%!
• Post my rosters of fantasy teams...in baseball card form. Get used to Jayson Werth!
• Double my Ken Griffey, Jr.; Carlos Delgado, Joakim Soria and Roy Halladay collections (what, like it's hard?)
• Pull an autograph. Seriously, getting sick of lame ass John Lackey and Fred Lewis relics.
• Start legit Blue Jays and Rockies team collections.
• Attain These:

Plain Beautiful Cards: Volume 6 - 2002 Fleer Ultra Steve Finley #88

Awww. A little bit more heatwarming than when Barry Bond's little one almost got trampled back in...2002? Who cares, Giants lost. Back when I didn't like the Giants. Now they've got Timmy. Back to the card at hand. This is by far my least favorite Fleer Ultra set ever. But anyways....awww.

Plain Beautiful Cards: Volume 5 - 2004 Fleer Inscribed Ichiro #63

Perfect. This is a set I intend to collect eventually, but just never see it in anywhere anymore, whether it be in foil, box or single form. These guys were pure eye candy. The scan just doesn't do it justice. Speaking of Justice...look for David in this segment soon.

The Plight of the Incomplete Set

So I wandered down to WalMart today to see if they still had any fat packs left of 2007 Fleer Ultra. They did. Marked down to $2.48 and only three remaining, I grabbed all three and a 50% off box of 2007 UD Future Stars. The Future Stars blaster was abominable, one red parallel (though a gorgeous card) and 35 base cards. No doubles, though.

The fat packs, each containing 32 cards for a total of 96, 6 of which are gold medallions. The gold medallions are awful with the digital numbering on the back, but whatever. I'm not here to collect them.

So out of 96 cards, I got 6 gold medallions (BJ Upton, Miguel Cabrera, Dontrelle Willis, Tom Glavine, AJ Pierzynski, Jim Edmonds, all #ed to 999), 90 base cards. In a set notorious for their inserts and nice rookie short prints, one thing was obvious to me: they had been searched of Lucky 13's and Ultra Rookies. Royal pain in the ass.

So out of my 90 available cards to work on my set of 200 with, I got 9 new cards. Nine. Looks like I'll be building a second set of doubles along side this one or shipping a bunch out in trades for basically nothing.

Sigh.

Plain Beautiful Cards: Volume 4 - 2004 Upper Deck Mike Sweeney #98

While scanning and uploading this card, I realized that Rafeal Furcal's 'o4 UD card was listed just a few days ago. I really want to avoid repetitious posting, so the readers will have to forgive me here.

Why this card needed to be here:

Seriously, if I was in Sweeney's place, even playing ball for a considerably poor franchise, I'd be this elated, too.

I don't know how many others have spent summers traveling their local geography on buses and overloaded carpools, waking up for 5AM before-school pitcher/catcher practices, walking door-to-door collecting bottles and cans to fund trips to sunny southern baseball tournaments, or anything related to playing baseball as a youth. I have been out of the game for four full summers at this point, due to injury, financial bounds, the enduring pursuit of science or just growing up, and I miss it.

Card collecting keeps me closer to the game than I ever thought it could, and is probably what keeps me sane outside of fantasy baseball and the MLB Network. If you ever wondered what it feels like to play baseball, please consult 2004 Upper Deck card #98.

Vote for the Gummies

....HERE

And since all my posts have pictures:

The world's most underrated moustache - George Parros.

Ladies and Gentlemen...Your 2010 Starting Third Basemen...

...Has burned a good portion of his face with a New Year's firecracker explosion.

Yeah, that's right. E-5.

I'm not going to do a great job of explaining it, so read Parkes DJF's take:

Encarnacion Faces the New Year

He's doing fine, now. What was (George) Brett Wallace doing for New Year's?

(Yeah, I had to add a Griffey picture to the post. Wanna fight about it?)

Double Take Volume 1 - David Wells Perfect Game

For about 10 years these cards were sitting only a few apart from one another in an unmarked 700-count card box. Little did these twins know, they were right next to each other all along.

I thought a lot about these two cards in the past few days, wondering how this could happen. Then I kept looking through more cards, more or less sorted by date and players, and noticed it a few more times. In one case, I may be on to a three-card progression of a Hank Blalock fly ball to right, and in another, a single pitch thrown in an away game by then-Red Sox Ace Pedro Martinez.

If anyone stumbles by this...blog (I still just don't like the word "blog") and has more similar circumstance cards, I'd love to hear about (see) them.

Stay tuned for more "Double Takes", "Plain Beautiful Cards" and the short-printed (see what I did there?) "Pitchers with Bats" themed posts here at Paper Chase.

Plain Beautiful Cards: Volume 3 - 1998 Topps Vladimir Guerrero #5

What a great shot. Vlad will always be a favorite of mine, and this card is probably my favorite of him.

What's great about it:

Look at the smile. Vladdy loves him some baseball.

He's still rocking the Expos jersey. Nothing better than players in defunct jerseys. Okay, maybe relics of defunct jerseys and throwbacks.

The pose is fantastic. The glove is blurred because the focus is on Valddy's chops, but I think that makes the card work better.

What originally got me to love this card way back in '98 was the background, though. Most definately a Spring Training shot, the clouds in the background are big and puffy, and the close up of the perfectly trimmed grass along with the darkened tree background make this an incredible card.

2007 Fleer Ultra Baseball - Want/Need List

2007 Fleer Ultra Baseball Want/Need List

1-10: Complete
11-20: 14
21-30: Compete
31-40: Complete
41-50: Complete
51-60: 60
61-70: Complete
71-80: 74
81-90: Complete
91-100: 94
101-110: Complete
111-120: 116
121-130: Complete
131-140: 137
141-150: Complete
151-160: Complete
161-170: Complete
171-180: Complete
181-190: Complete
191-200: 192

Rookies & Lucky 13

201-210: 207, 209, 210
211-220: 213, 216
221-230: 224, 225, 228
231-240: 233, 234, 236, 237, 240
241-250: 245, 246

Thanks to Dan W. from It's Like Having My Own Card Shop, Ed from Roll Out the Barrel Duane from Democratic Roadkill, Brian from Play at the Plate and Paul from Carl Crawford Cards for contributing cards to this set

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.

12/30 eBay Scores?

Tonight, I purchased two cards on eBay. Not often will I post eBay purchases, but these were both compulsive and dirt cheap. I think it all stems to my desire just to get mail, really. Since I never really got mail until college, and at that point all the mail pretty much said was "PAY US FOR PAYING YOUR TUITION" so...positive things in the mail are just a necessity for me.

Card #1 - Want List Checkmark:

2007 Fleer Ultra Lucky 13 Kei Igawa.








What an awful player. Yankees have the tendency to spend money where they don't need to and Igawa is no exception. According to Cot's, his contract is as follows:

"Kei Igawa lhp
5 years/$20M (2007-11)

• 5 years/$20M (2007-11)
  
• posted by Hanshin Tigers of Japanese League 11/06
• Yankees bid $26,000,194 for negotiating rights with Igawa 11/06
  
• signed by Yankees 12/06
• 07:$4M, 08:$4M, 09:$4M, 10:$4M, 11:$4M
• performance bonuses: $0.125M each for 180, 190, 200 & 210 IP
• sent outright to AAA by Yankees 7/26/08
  
• agent: Arn Tellum
  
• ML service: 0.104"

Cashman paid $20,000,000 for .104 years of Major League Service. I paid $.21. That's it. Free shipping. as you can tell from the photo, the seller just wanted this thing gone. Didn't even bother capitalizing Igawa's name.

Card #2 - New Want List Checkmark:

2000 Skybox Skylines #6 of 10 Mike Piazza.


These cards are just awesome. Backdrops of the cities the (ten) players played in in 2000 in a very eye-catching but not tacky foil (in team colours). Hats off to Skybox, next to Fleer Ultra, I miss them most of all after the Topps/Upper Deck uprising and buying.

As you can see, this one went for $1.25 for free shipping. Unfortunately, there are 10 cards in this set (of which I only have two), so fitting them into one 9-slot card sheet won't happen. Thinking of aligning them all in a horizontal row 1-10, or finding an American map and slapping them on their respective cities...unfortunately two cards, Mike Piazza and Derek Jeter, would be nearly on top of each other. I would hate to disgrace Piazza by putting him on Long Island...

Plain Beautiful Cards: Volume 1 - 2007 Fleer Ultra #115

Within this space I am going to debut a new string post, honoring cards in which everything works: design, player pose, photograph (player and background) and overall composition. Our debut card is one of my favorites of all time, from one of my favorite sets: 2007 Fleer Ultra Jose Reyes. I don't know what it is about Reyes, but expect to see him back here often. Maybe it's the excitement he brings to the game that always makes the photographers ready. In this case, however, Reyes is stoic and proud, though it seems by his gaze that the ball may very well be behind him.

What makes this card is A) Horizontality (always a plus) and B) Background. What a great background shot. The card appears to be shot at an angle upward from the camera, and the dark background provides nice (a white home jersey would be perfect) contrast.

2009 Topps T206 Jumbo Pack Rip

Solid pack. Steep in price, but the quality was premium. We'll start with some solid base cards...

Card 1 - Mickey Mantle Checklist 2 of 7
Card 2 - Todd Helton #200

Card 3 - Tommy Hanson #262 (Rookie Card)
Card 4 - Derek Holland #61 (Rookie Card)
Card 5 - Roy Campanella #224
Card 6 - Derek Lowe #45
Card 7 - Luke Scott #152
Card 8 - Alex Gordon #256
Card 9 - Cy Young #143
Card 10 - David Ortiz #24
Card 11 - Troy Tulowitzki #293 (Added to Player Collection)

And Now for the HITS. Yes, HITS. Although this was a jumbo pack, and I never expect to pull much out of them, this one had two solid hits within it.

Card 11 - Josh Outman Framed Piedmont Autograph

I've got a few autos lately, mostly from ebay bargains (see: Dexter Fowler, Jesse Carlson) but I haven't seen a good on-card auto in a long time. Outman has a solid, legible auto, as you can see in the scan, and the sunset background goes well with the blue framed border. Though I had been a fan of Allen & Ginter's Framed sets prior to this pull, I have to side with T206 here, again, as their mini doesn't rattle around inside and worry me of corner dinging.

Card 12 - David Wright #171 CYCLE Mini #/99.

Very solid pull. I was wondering if there would be minis or bronze/gold parallels in the jumbo packs, and now I know they at least have minis. Pulling my first mini T206 short print was great. Now I want more.

2006-2007 Fleer Ultra Hockey - Want/Need List

This is the first want list of the many (6 Current) sets I am trying to collate, and is the most complete of all six. I have mainly been picking up blasters here and there, usually discounted.

Briefly: I seem to be missing a lot of Calgary Flames, Toronto Maple Leafs (of course, my team) and rookie short prints, which are the least of my concern as the rookies in this set, well, Ultra was never great for rookies anyway (except Baseball sets).


1-10: 2, 6
11-20: 19
21-30: 28,29
31-40: 32, 33, 36
41-50: Complete
51-60: Complete
61-70: 63
71-80: 73
81-90: 82, 83, 89
91-100: 98
101-110: Complete
111-120: 116, 119
121-130: Complete
131-140: Complete
141-150: 148
151-160: 151, 160
161-170: 164
171-180: 179, 180
181-190: Complete
191-200: 192, 193

Rookie Short Prints:

201, 202, 206, 207, 208, 211, 212, 213, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 224, 227, 228

Rookie Redemption Short Prints:

231, 232, 234, 235, 236, 237, 240, 241, 242, 243, 245, 246*, 247*, 248*, 249*, 250*

*Do these even exist?