Night Owl Sends a Brave...

.... Only the greatest Brave card ever produced.  I will hear no other arguments.  The hair and the stache were only in their infancy, but the greatness to come is obvious.

This was the first noticeable card in the package sent to me by long time trade partner Night Owl. It definitely got my attention. One of the few times a Brave card can jump ahead of a Bucco.

Also, a quick plug.  Go read Greg's countdown of the top 70's cards.  Look forward to seeing all Pirates in the top ten.

 I believe this was the card that probably started the package.  Greg opened some Chrome and was nice enough to hold the Bell for me. Bell quietly has had a nice rookie season.

 This card became 10 times more awesome when someone took it upon themselves to showcase Alley's positional flexibility.

 Throwback uniform for the win!

 Gold parallel of former Pirate reliever Jared Hughes.  Nice to see a fringe middle reliever get a little cardboard love.

Three great ones here. Love the Solomon the most although it looks like Don Robinson's picture was taken in my Grandmothers backyard. 

 I'm always a little disappointed when a Stadium Club card features a normal pose like the Polanco.  It is still a nice card, but I expect more from the best base set.  The Marte is awesome.

 Minis! I was at the game Cutch hit two dingers including his first Grand Slam the other night.

Round things out with a nice assortment of early/mid 90's Buccos. The Alex Cole expansion draft card is my favorite of the bunch.

Thanks for the cards Greg.  I'm way past due to hit you back.  Rest assured, I will!

Thanks for reading!

Owl Trade

Couple nice trade packages have arrived in the last week!

Greg from Night Owl Cards took time away from celebrating Cody Bellinger homeruns to sneak a few Buccos in my mailbox. He apologized for not having any Bob Walk's but he still sent some very nice cards.  I'll let it slide this one time....  I'll go ahead and apologize in advance for not sending any Bellinger autos your way. The way he is going if I ever have one of those I'll send my kid to Harvard when I sell it.

 A nice shiny Opening Day Glasnow rookie to start things off.  I haven't opened any OD in a few years because I just got tired of it. With that being said I cherry picked a Josh Bell rookie online a while back and this Glasnow goes well with that pickup since they are the two big Bucco rookies.

Glasnow was recently just sent down. The guy just can't seem to master any resemblance of command of the strike zone. Hopefully he can figure things out because the Pirates really need him to be a front line starter.

 Shiny Heritage! This is a refractor /999 that features a very happy Cutch. Thank the good lord he is playing like his old self the last month.  Watching Cutch struggle for the better part of a whole season made me a sad Pirates fan.

 I'm very familiar with Bob Robertson as he lives in Lavale Maryland which is only about an hour from Morgantown. He would sign at a lot of local events back when I was in high school and college.

 While I like a good celebration card this Ralph Kiner is the winner of the Bunt bunch.

The Pirates predictably have had a hard time feeling Starling Marte's shoes while he serves his suspension. The use of fringe rookies and infielders playing out of position has cost the Pirates several games already. The weird thing is the Central has been a dumpster fire and the Pirates are only 4 games out.  Marte is due back in a month so if they can keep their heads above water until the All Star break maybe they will have an outside chance.  I'm not holding my breath...

I hope the Pirates hold off on trading Cole this year....


Thanks for the surprise mail day Greg!

Night Owl Sends His Snow

I live in an area that sees its fair share of snow, but nothing compared to Night Owl territory.  One winter of constant lake effect snow would likely have me heading south for good. A few weeks back I decided to help Greg with his surplus of snow....cards that is.

 Are these silly....sure, but for whatever reason when Greg put this Cutch on his blog I was interested. Do you think once spring comes around they will replace snow with flowers? That would be funny.

I'm always appreciative when I can get help with retail cards that interest me. Night Owl being the nice guy he is decided to throw in some cool extras!

 Here is Gregory Polanco pulverizing some snow with his bat. I still feel like Polanco has a lot of room for growth.  Already a good player, but an All Star level player is well within his ceiling.

 Let it snow!

 This is a cool night shot.  I'm hoping for a revamp of Opening Day soon. The last couple of years have been rough. The best part of that set is the mascot autos. That is not a good thing when it is a budget set. At least Topps Bunt was cool.

 I need to do a battle royale between Kent Tekulve and Jason Kendall cards.  Obviously Teke has the million dollar look, but for photo choices Kendall is top notch.  For whatever reason I've received a ton of Kendall cards the past month. No complaints here!

 Mitch Keller is the fastest rising prospect in the system. The Pirates have had a lot of luck developing pitching lately.  Hopefully that trend continues. It is possible that 4 of the 5 starters could be home grown this year.

 Double Pops! Any set celebrating the 70's will have a lot of black and gold.

 I heard that Mr. Mint Al Rosen passed away a few days back. I'll never forget his adds in Beckett. I'm pretty sure he sold his share of Wagner cards over the years.

It always kind of cracks me up when players are featured in poses that I would have done in Little League.  I wonder if Brian Giles mom bought the platinum package that came with a bunch of wallet size pictures like my mom did of me.

Jerry Reuss looks a lot like one of my uncles. That same uncle even had that moppy blond hair look.

Thanks for the Cutch snowflake card and all the extras Greg.  I'm sure I'll find something for you soon. Hope you are not getting pounded with snow this weekend.

Thanks for reading.

I Just Saw an Owl

A few weeks back I was heading to work very early and an owl flew off a tree at the end of my street. I think it was the first time I've seen an owl out in the wild.  It was so early it took a minute for my brain to register what it actually was.  The experience would have been much cooler if it was a more exotic type.

This is a snowy owl picture actually taken in West Virginia. I'm guessing the one I saw was the basic barn owl.

One of my coworkers is an avid bird watcher and she told me that she has never seen one. She seemed upset that I had the experience over her.  I told her it tasted like chicken. She didn't laugh.

You ready for a silky smooth transition? I just received some cards from the Night Owl.

Greg sent a note claiming an unknown person sent him this Maury Wills.  He said it was definitely a Pirate card so he was nice enough to forward it my way.  The other mystery is the grading company.  Finest Grading Service? Gem mint or not this card will likely find a new more relaxing home rather than the plastic slab.

I've received a few Bunt cards via trade.  It is nice to see another bargain set out there that actually looks a little different than the flagship set.

This is my first taste of Heritage High Number. To me the allure of this set is seeing first issues of newer Pirates.

John Jaso's Pirate dreads are a national treasure.  

Vogelsong's second go around with the Bucs.  It looks like the photo shoot was at the Field of Dreams field in Iowa. Is this heaven? No, its pitchers fielding practice. Hurry up and finish the stupid photo shoot.

Nice to see Taillon have a healthy season. He will look to slot behind Gerrit Cole to make a nice one two punch.

Bowman Platinum is back. I think that is a good thing.

So shiny! Seeing Cutch have a poor season made me sad.  Now all I get to here is hot takes on why the Pirates should trade him.  The funny thing is these hot takes would probably be even hotter had he had huge year. Instead of him being done or regressing it would be needing to sell high.  The fun of being a small market team!

I never opened much Ginter in my day, but I always liked to accumulate the Buccos.

Thanks for the cards Greg. Good luck to your Dodgers.

Have a nice weekend!

Night Owl

I've had one of those days where things don't quite workout the way you planned. Today I had about 4 and half hours of car time with a couple coworkers to take care of a few last minutes items at the location of our work retreat next week. Turns out these items were already taken care of for the most part and the trip didn't serve much of a purpose. It was nice to be out of the office, but all of the work that was in the office today will unfortunately be there tomorrow.

When I got back from my trip my wife and daughter were going to join me at a Black Bears game. Sure enough it got rained out after we had waited there for about an hour. It was one of those days where your time was occupied but you accomplished little.

To make sure I ended the day on a good note I started looking through some recent trade packages. Greg of Night Owl fame may get the award for quickest return fire on a trade I've ever seen. I sent him a card early last week and three days later I had a return package.  That is cardboard dedication!

 Some cards just have a habit of bringing back memories.  This is the Opee Chee version, but anytime I see 90 Topps it reminds me of long car rides with my parents. This was in the day you could stop for gas and actually go inside to pick up cards. I must have traveled a lot during this time.

 I remember eating a lot of cereal during this time to get cards.  Oddballs rule!

 I forgot how thick these Heritage parallels were. This Cole is numbered to /999 and is a beauty.

 I think these late 90's sets are either loved or just confuse the hell out of collectors. These were right in my wheelhouse! The card designers at Skybox were obviously on acid.

 You may think the Snider card is out of place, but this was a big set need for me.  I'm pretty close to putting to bed Stadium Club.

Take some time and try to find something wrong with this Teke card..................trick question, nothing is ever wrong with a Teke card.

 I think I only have a couple of these Diamond Anniversary cards. I love the way the Correia cards looks. Just wished I loved the way he pitched during his tenure as a Pirate.

Jameson Taillon has been strong for the Pirates since his call up. You don't have to worry about licensing as much with catchers!

Thanks for all the great cards Greg. Looking through some cardboard can really save a day from being a total stinker.

Thanks for reading!

Trade: Night Owl Cards

Always nice to get some cards from the Night Owl! We would probably swap more if it wasn't for all the great Dodger blogs out there. Only so many Dodgers cards to go around. Check out Greg's latest installment. 

 Might as well start out of with the franchise. Maybe I should start a post dread Cutch mini collection. I was a fan of the Topps design this year. Change is good!

Heard a neat story about Zach Duke the other day. Current Bucco Joe Blanton credited Duke for bringing him back to baseball. They are neighbors in the offseason in Nashville and started working out together. After some convincing by Duke, Blanton decided to give baseball one more shot. So far the results have been pretty good.

I like the Panini Cooperstown sets. The checklists are fantastic. Probably the neatest thing about Grimes is that he was one of the few guys that were allowed to continue to throw the spitball after it was banned.

 Some Topps magazine cards of Drabek and Bonilla!

 Jeff King was a personal favorite when I was growing up. I was sad when he went to Kansas City. That Score Brian Hunter is a wild card. Yay 90's!

Former Dodger James McDonald. Still not quite sure what the Dodgers were thinking when they sent McDonald and Andrew Lambo to the Pirates for Octavio Dotel.

Taillon's prospect status has taken a hit the last two years because of injuries. Tommy John surgery cost him 2014 and now and abdominal injury looks looks to have finished off his 2015. By the time next years rankings come out I'm assuming he'll be 4th or 5th in the system. 

For auto collectors Bowman Platinum and Sterling were nice ways to accumulate top prospect autos at a much cheaper price than Chrome. 

Thanks for all the great cards Greg! I'll continue to try and find some unique Dodgers for your collection. 

Thanks for reading. 

Trade: Night Owl Cards

Today I received a nice mailer full of cards from the Night Owl. Greg becomes my first trade of 2015! This is a nice mix of both old and new.

This 58 Rand was my favorite of the bunch. He is the epitome of an obscure player only having played 72 career games.

I wasn't too familiar with Eddie Solomon so I looked him up.  He saw action in part of 10 season in which his best was probably with the Pirates 1981, He tragically passed away in a car accident in 1986.

Jim McDaniel never made it out of the minors in his 14 years of being a professional. You have to admire that dedication. He is like Crash Davis minus the 21 best days of his life.

Dick Groat played both basketball and baseball. He was the first person to be elected to both the college basketball and college baseball hall of fames.

 Some current Buccos including a personal favorite in Starling Marte.

Some former Buccos. Grilli just signed with the Braves and Pirates traded Justin Wilson to the Yankees for Francisco Cervelli.

Today someone sent me a quiz to name every player to play shortstop for the Buccos since 2005. Let's just say I didn't remember Pedro Ciriaco. 

Thanks for all the great cards Greg. The vintage cards were a nice surprise! That is one aspect of my collection that has grown leaps and bounds since I started my blog. 

Thanks for reading! Tomorrow I'm going to pick my wallet card.