Some eBay thoughts.

So, I may have done something kind of dumb and unncecessary on eBay the past 48 hours. A certain seller starts his auctions @ $.50 + $3.00 shipping, and $1 shipping for each additional card.

There was no way I wasn't going to purchase the one card that got me to the store, as I need it for my life to ever be complete (you'll think I'm crazy when it is revealed.)

However, I ended up buying four cards. So, I paid $6 to ship these four cards...rediculous, right? I agree. However, the four cards which I purchased totaled a minuscule $3.33. In all, four cards for a total of $9.33.

After the auction I kind of regretted it, but I wasn't going to let card #1 get away.

Some more information:

Card 1 = Relic from 2000 (Career year = .284, 47HR, 102 RsBI)
Card 2 = Relic from 2001 (One of my favorite players of all time and the only one I have held a long conversation with besides Shawn Green)
Card 3 = Autograph from 2006 (player saved 30 games)
Card 4 = Autograph from 2008 (No accolades yet)

So I ask you, would you have paid $9.33 for these cards of similar players to yourself? I say "similar to yourself" because three of these guys are/were Toronto Blue Jays but one is just kind of rediuclous, you'll see why in the eBay Score posts coming up eventually.


And since I always like to post pictures, here's Jonas Hiller's player page for the Vanny Olympics. I was lucky enough to draw Switzerland, the country of my own heritage, in JD's Olympic Contest Part Deux. If you haven't submitted an entry yet, please go do so. Too bad though, because you wont get Poland or Switzerland. Please don't invade me, Germany.

Target Bargain Bin Score

So today was one of those rare days in which my own incredibly inconsistent schedule of sub-teaching actually aligned with my overly-ambitious/absurdly busy girlfriend's schedule. I planned on a boring day of watching the Weather Channel, but she wasn't into it.

"Let's go to New Hartford."

New Hartford = Target. Target = baseball cards.

So I agreed.

And watched her shop, for close to two hours, and not buy anything. I waited until the end to exit out the Target entrance of the mall, and in less than two minutes in the card section, grabbed a $1.59 pack of 2007 Fleer Ultra and two "Casers" (18 packs) of 2010 Upper Deck. I'm guessing 18 cards is retail this year.

Out on the way to the car, I ripped the Ultra. There it was, a nice, thick card sitting happily in the middle of the pack, after being damned to silvery foil insides for what now amounts to 3 to 4 years of captivity. Knowing that Ultra never throws decoys in the packs, I slipped the thick one to the back went through the base cards. Rich Hill, Jason Bay, Bob Abreu, Scott Olsen. All doubles. Then, this guy:
Ha. and you thought it would have been the hit. Also, this was not a double. Nope, this was a new, cherry-flavored rookie for the binder.

Now for the hit:

Quick! What does this card have in common with anabolic steroids? They were both used by Miguel Tejada! I kid, I kid. I'm down with Miggy, and look forward to his Baltimore renaissance.
I've been waiting to pull a Hitting Machines relic, because, well, they're badass. The colors aren't as awesome as the Freddy Sanchez I saw on eBay, but still. I like this card. The black swatch helps, too.

On to the Upper Deck, if anyone cares.
Francisco is my boy. Can't wait until he's out of those damn pinstripes, though.

I wanna hang out and throw down some saki with Kurt Suzuki. Lots of great players coming out of Hawaii these days.
Umm. Awesome. This is the best Ballparks card I've seen come out of the 2010 UD set, aside from SafeCo, but still. Very excellent. I'm surprised they didn't exploit the Cien Tower across the street and try and get them both in the shot.

On to Upper Deck 2010 and what I think of them. They're alright. I'm looking at 20% of the base cards so far, and it's only February, so I say, bring on the set. They're kind of bland, but I honestly have not liked Topps flagship since 2008 and 2007, two of the most hated Topps sets in years. Plus, I'm the rebel of the cardblogospheroid. And no, you probably cannot convince me to like 2010 Topps. I'll wait a few months until the Halladay, Thomas and Molitor Cap Logos come down in price, and those, unless other cards are acquired by trade, will be the extent of my 2010 Topps collection.

Also: I am going to try to collect the Biography insert from this years 2010 UD. I like the design, and some of the cards I actually remember the day that whatever happened (such as SB-27 making my fantasy week, look it up), and to me, that's pretty rad. So, if you want, send me your unwanted Biographies.

Want List - 2006 Fleer Tradition Baseball

Originally I thought I'd just bust a blaster of these, and if I liked them, I'd pick up a couple more. There were at least 5 in the store at that time. Anyways, after the one blaster and accumulating a few Jays and Rockies in trade, I wound up with 54% of the base set. Upon my return to the store, no more '06 Fleer Tradition blasters, so, I'll need your help. Here's who I am missing:

1, 6, 7, 8, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20, 24, 25, 26, 30, 31, 32, 43, 48, 49, 50, 42, 54, 55, 56, 57, 60, 61, 62, 66, 67, 68, 72, 73, 74, 79, 85, 90, 91, 92, 96, 97, 98, 99, 102, 105, 106, 107, 108, 111, 112, 113, 117, 118, 119, 123, 124, 125, 126, 132, 138, 142, 144, 146, 148, 149, 150, 153, 154, 155, 159, 160, 161, 166, 167, 168, 173, 180, 184, 186, 189, 190, 191, 192, 195, 196, 197.

Thanks to Duane from Democratic Roadkill and Chris from On Card Autos for help with this set!

Contestiacos

Contest over at JD's Wild Cardz. It's a great site, so don't just enter the contest, give it some reads, follow it if you'd like...but do it before the 90+ teams fill up!

Yeah....$800

...but only $3 to ship!

Ultimate Wish List Card #3

I haven't posted in days, so here's Ultimate Wish List Card #3:

Go Bip Yourself, San Diego

My First Ever Patch Card

...And it was a "gift" from a family member.

My Uncle operates a little store at Carousel Mall, one which used to be a sports collectibles shop. While looking for something in storage, the other day, an item fell behind a shelving unit. So he moved the unit out of the way, and found this UNIT:
A 2004 Fleer Platinum Name Plates Patch serial 049/290. Very excellent. Now for the not-so-good news of it all. The card, which had fell into the depths of the storage some 3+ years ago, did so with no protection whatsoever, not even a penny sleeve. So, as you can see from the scan, it is in rough shape. Also, I have it cropped enough that the chipping ALL around the edge is not visible. The worst of it all is to the left of the Fleer Platinum logo.

Incidentally, this is not my first Unit relic. I bought this at a card show in high school for a cheap price, along with Ivan Rodriguez, Carlos Delgado, and probably a couple others.

Getting to this part of every post gets me thinking...I need a snappy signoff line.

2009 Goodwin Champions Night Variations

While going through hours of debate, and never even posting or letting anyone know I was working on it, I compared and contrasted the popular vintage sets of 2009 - UD Goodwin Champions, Topps Allen & Ginter's, Topps T206 and UD Goudey. It was very easy for me to decide my favorite, which was far & away Allen & Ginter's. I hated Goudey, enjoyed T206 greatly and remained incredibly frustrated with my awful pulls in Goodwin Champions...but knew that the potential was there for them to be great.

Researching Goodwin on eBay showed me some slick pulls - on card autos featuring Michael Jordan and Derek Jeter, and, well that's about it. The Memorobilia Series is dreadful, bad swatches of either white or gray jerseys, no patches, poor checklist.

But when it came to variations, Goodwin got my attention, and still does. Why? The Nighttime variations. These cards are amazing. It's kind of lame that all 15 in the set (why not all cards, and why not on mini's?) have the same background, but still, these are art. It's a refreshing change of pace from bleached-out daytime photography of most sets (I'm looking at you, Topps flagship).

However, I still have questions about these nighttime variations. I thought all of the cards in the GC set had Night parallels, and I was wrong. I snagged a checklist off of Collector's Universe forums, a site which I do not frequent, but just happened to come up in a Google search. (Google doesn't show up underlined in red, is it already a true "word"?)

Here's the '09 Checklist:

1 Ken Griffey Jr.
7 Ryne Sandberg
20 Grady Sizemore
44 Barack Obama
56 Ozzie Smith
65 Tiger Woods
69 Ichiro
74 Gerry Lopez
87 Andy Pettitte
101 Cal Ripken Jr.
106 Ryan Howard
115 Smarty Jones
126 Troy Tulowitzki
132 Chien-Ming Wang
140 Gordie Howe

They picked some solid gamers here. So far I have only seen evidence of a few of these - Wang, Tulo, Ripken, Pettitte, Ichiro, Tiger, Barack. I am debating if I want to put forth the capitol to chase these 15 cards. The only reason for this desire, other than the sleek look of the cards, is that the checklist has some of my favorites - Tulowitzki, Griffey Jr, Wang and Ichiro. Maybe I'll just chase those, but I've seen no evidence of a Griffey, yet.

Oh, and if you think I should write up a post or series of posts on the Vintage Wars as I like to call them (the Goodwin Champions vs. Goudey vs. Allen & Ginter's vs. T206) I will do so. Anyting for the...fans?

Gettin Milestoned

It took me about an hour (half of the second period, the 2nd intermission, and the first 5:03 of the third period of Maple Leafs @ Devils game), but I have recorded, collated and scanned the THREE trade packages I received today. The first, and girthy-est of the packages came form Dinged Corners. Now, I don't precisely remember what I did to earn this package, some sort of contest I think, but nonetheless, there it was, and here I am smiling about it.

Inside was a total of (I think) five loaded team bags, and in this case, aptly named team bags. I know when I throw team bags into a trade, it usually involves about forty cards of mixed players and teams with absolutely no pattern, unless there's a relic, and in that case I make sure it's sandwiched warmly between commons and, if necessary, a bip blanket...

On to the cards.

DC sent me loads of Blue Jays and Rockies, included a load of Moments and Milestones. Hence the post title.

Text, from here on, will only involve the cards. No more mindless scientist chatter.
Dave Stieb Diamond Kings. Very cool. I believe I used to own this, but if I did, it is nowhere to be found. This is probably my favorite DK set, aside from that one year that the cards had a canvas/UD Masterpieces feel to them.
Shaun Marcums: Always welcomed here at the Paper Chase. Or A Paper Chase. I don't even know, I don't like the title, and hey, it might even change eventually.
First CarGo card. I'm not an '09 Topps homer like so many others out there. It's a good set, but hey, I loved 2008 and everyone seems to hate them.
DC really kicked my Halladay collection in the ass, and with some good ones, too. This is a Bowman Heritage from 2007. It's shinier than the side of a rainbow trout (I didn't know there would be fish jokes...) and I dig it. Is this a parallel? I don't know anything about 07 Bowman Heritage, and the three she sent me like this, were all rainbow-trout foil board. (That's going to be my new thing. Rainbow Trout cards...)
Rarely do I have trades without Tulos. However, the next two I will post have no Tulos, but that's just fine. This is a nice one. There was a healthy amount of these M&M cards, which 've never purchased, but seem like the biggest pain in the ass to collect. Ever. But I was sent two which were #'ed/25, which are now tied with my Mauer Jersey card for for lowest numbered cards.

That's all I'll post for this package. Much thanks to Dinged Corners. If you've never check them out, please do so. They were one of the first card blogs I discovered, and have been a constant source of cardawesomeness these past two months (really...I've only been here since December...)

Friday Rock Out: Bayside

I sniped this idea from both Tao of Stieb and DJF, but they're tough Canucks so they can get over it if they're pissed. Were all Tank Nation fans anyways.

So here it is.

Paper Chase's version of the Friday Rock Out.

This video kind of sucks, kind of an Alkaline Trio (Stupid Kid) ripoff, but the song rocks my ass purple and was featured in EA Sport's MVP NCAA Baseball '06, the greatest baseball game for PS2, Ever.

Here it is- Bayside's Devotion and Desire.



Hopefully I'll dish out a trade post or four by this weekend and within a week "The Plan" will fall into place...

Ultimate Wish List Card #2

2002 Stadium Club
World Champions
(Regular Season Worn Jersey)
Al Leiter

Office Bipping

CarGo Custom

Jesus Wansa Bip You

2010 Upper Deck First Looks

Awesome, really. From the limited number of inserts (almost no base cards) listed on eBay, this is a pretty solid release. Here's some highlights:
Decent. Ramon Vazquez is one of the only base cards I could find...the rest had "Star Rookie" logos on them. I think due to the lawsuit, UD also cannot use the RC logo on their cards, so they designed their, own, and it's kind of obnoxious, but whatever. This Vazquez is actually a gold parallel /99.
Holy Fleer Ultra circa late '09's. These are siiiick. Die cuts are back with a vengeance...and Joe Mauer dons this one. Absolutely awesome insert, saw some others with Pujols and other stars, looks like a legit checklist for a sweet die-cut set. Very cool, will be collecting all of these.
So after seeing the Mauer and promptly jumping up and down (both for the return of die cuts and, let's face it, FLAMES!) this set stunned me equally. Perhaps it didnt need to be die-cut, but it's still really badass and features one of my favorite parts of the game, it's World-Wide reach (I'm a WBC homer, too, want to fight about it?!) This insert is a great cool-coloured answer to the too-hot-to-handle Pure Heat inserts.
And lastly, the relics. I am yet to see a patch or a multi-colour patch, but they're okay. The big portrait on the right is great, but instead of the small action photo on the left, I think they should have transferred the patch to inside the diamond and rid the card of a busy, second photograph. I'm so tired of circular patches, it's a waste of a swatch seeing as ~20% of the swatch ends up between cardboard.

I dig 'em. What do you guys think?

Excellent

From ESPN's Streak for the Cash game:

eBay Scores and the Beginning of my Chad Jenkins Collection

So, I'm pretty happy that I socred these three beauties (and when I saw beauties, that's an understatement) from eBay on, oh, Thursday or so. Today, on Monday, I already had them. Pretty solid. Each was $.99, and all three shipped together for $3.00. That's right, three Prospect autos for less than $6.00. I think I made out pretty well.

First up is Rinku Singh. You may remember a few days, maybe a week or so ago I posted how much I loved Rinku's inks. I posted the Bowman '09 Auto, which isn't nearly as attractive as the Bowman Sterlings. I had already purchased this one, so I didn't want to ruin the surprise.

Next is Dinesh Kumar Patel. Patel finished second in the Million Dollar Arm contest, but ended up being the more successful pitcher this year in this summer's Pirates Florida League teams. Mechanically he is mroe sound than Singh, but Singh also has the magic ability of being able to throw with his left arm.

Finally, Chad Jenkins. The back of the cards details a bit about the our newest baby Blue Jay (1st Round, 20th Overall in 2009) saying that he never intended to play professionally, just wanted to play some ball at Kennesaw State and get a Business Degree...then he won '09 Atlantic Sun Conference Pitcher of the Year, going 8-1 with a 2.54 ERA. Welcome to the Jays, Chad.

Play at the Plate Contest!

So my man B-Snide over at Play at the Plate has a groovy contest going on right now, named after Groundhogs Day, I suppose, but this has nothing to do with PETA's latest ridiculousness.

Over at Play at the Plate, 30 packs were opened of new 2010 Topps, and 66.7% of the set (220/330) was completed. Now, 25 more packs have been purchased, and you have to guess what percentage of the set will be completed...the prize? More 2010 Topps packs! And extra goodies involving whoever your favorite team is.

I suggest ya'll act on this one, its open until Wednesday I believe. Also, Play at the Plate is a fantastic trader and all around solid gentleman. Follow his blog and try and work out a trade!

Bonus: I just turned my calendar over to February, only to a smiling Dachsund staring back at me. Good start to the month right there.

Ultimate Wish List Card #1

2009 Bowman Sterling
Black Refractor
Dexter Fowler /25