Prelude

I recently completed my first ever trade with Brian from the Cutch-centric blog Collecting Cutch. It was a BIG trade.  He has already discussed the five cards I sent his way. 

You probably remember Brian's old blog, Pirates Treasure Room.    Around the beginning of the year he decided to refocus his collection to where the majority of his effort would be devoted to Cutch. This opened to door for Brian and I to do some trading.  

While obviously I like to collect the Pirate star myself, I'm by no means a super collector.  My Cutch collection is relatively large, but it has been dormant in terms of high end autos/relics since he became a bona fide superstar.  I enjoy variety too much to spend big dollars on one player.  I'm sure I can speak for Brian and that we miss the days a Cutch auto would cost  in the $5-10 range.  

A few weeks back Brian sent an email with a list of Cutch cards I owned that he would be interested in trading for. He had six cards in mind and I ended up trading 5.  Because I knew Brian had an awesome Pirates collection I gave him free reign to build the return package.  I was not disappointed.

This post is only showing the Gerrit Cole portion of the trade package.  Brian sent a priority mail box full of great cards that I will showoff over time. He wasn't joking when he said he could give me a years worth of blogging material for the Cutch cards I sent his way. 

If you read my drivel on a somewhat regular basis you know that I love the framed Topps parallels. I found a decent amount of them when they were numbered to /20 and /16.  For some reason Topps decided to make them 1/1's which ultimately stopped my hunt.  Thanks to Brian I now can finally add a 1/1 silver frame to my collection.

This was the WOW card of the return package.  Nice patch, high end set.....this card has it all. 

A very nice /25 auto!

Last but not least is a dual auto from Platinum featuring another very good pitcher in Sonny Gray.  Lots of cool combos from this Bowman Platinum set.

This was such a fun trade Brian.  I'm glad we were able to break the ice.  In the coming months I'll continue to show off some of the cards you sent my way, but I wanted to make sure to show these Cole's right away.

Thanks for reading.

Making the Most of it

Today was a fun adventure. My brother and I hopped in a car and went beer distributor hopping in Pennsylvania looking for new beer. I also had a significant list from co workers looking for specific beers. We didn't find anything to rare, but hit a lot of stuff you can't find in WV. Founders, Ballast Point, and Deschutes were all available. I will be very popular at work on Monday. Also met a nice guy who said he would be happy to order some of the harder stuff since I bought so much today.

Boy oh boy did my Mountaineers take a beating. Baylor learned from their mistakes last year and came out with a masterful game plan. They ran tons of qb options that opened up huge running lanes. This has been a brutal stretch  as WVU has had to play Oklahoma, Ok State, Baylor and TCU. The last two are rated 2 and 3 respectively.

2014 Immaculate Collection Andrew McCutchen /10

This is one of those cards that I really wasn't interested in, but the seller had a ton of stuff I wanted so I talked myself into putting a bid because of the huge shipping discount. My streak of adding a ton of Pirate Immaculate cards continues. I miss the dreads... Don't remember the exact price, but I think this was less than $10 which is not a great deal, but that is the price you pay for Cutch these days. 

Hope everyone is having a good weekend. Thanks for reading. 

Top Play and a Great Deal

I went to the WVU baseball game against Pitt last night. The Mountaineers took the loss, but we made the top play on SportsCenter.

That was quite the catch!

Views from my seat. 

It was a beautiful night for a game. Perfect temps and a nice crowd of over 3,000. That number is pretty impressive as the spring semester ended last week so many students have went home for summer vacation. The new stadium seems to be a hit. In about a month the Black Bears will begin play!

Now for a new card!

2014 Immaculate Collection Cole/Ryu Dual Patch /10

One of these popped up last month in which I proceeded to be outbid at the last second. I was pissed because the final selling price was around $13 which seemed like a pretty good deal considering the rarity and the set. Losing the card proved to be a blessing as the one pictured sold for a whopping $4.25!

I went back to try and see if the card was listed poorly, but other than not mentioning "patches" it seemed like a decent description. In the long run if you buy enough cards off of eBay, you are bound to have some fall in your lap. 

On a side note every time I see Ryu I automatically think of Street Fighter.

HADOUKEN!

He should yell that when he pitches. 

Thanks for reading!