On the Road Again

One of the things I love more than anything is travel. Today ends a long dry spell and starts a crazy period where I'm on the road 4 of the next 5 weekends.  While it isn't the greatest timing it should be a good time because all are for pleasure where I'm either with friends and/or family. It will be a much needed break from work. I was getting to that point where everything little thing was starting to piss me off.  Tell tale sign getting out of town is in order.

Being gone all those weekends means I needed to be more diligent with my card organization. I think subconsciously this caused me to start my major organization and start shipping cards out. For the first time in a long time I'm getting a better gauge of where I'm at with my collection.  I also know that Wes is lurking with some kind of showstopper package that will probably cause me to shut down my blog for two months.  Wes preparation is like disaster preparation. You need to make sure you have ample space for supplies and have inventory of what you have. Right now we are at Wes level 5.

Another exciting development is that I've found some new Pirate cards. Nothing recent other than a few Leaf Trinity cards, but real actual baseball cards.  Most of my purchases the last couple months has been WVU related.  Watching actual baseball on tv must have motivated me.

Here is my favorite of the most recent purchases.

2005 Diamond Kings Rob Mackowiak 1/1

I've mentioned a thousand times how I love mid 2000's DK releases. The design is nothing that great, but it more than makes up for it by having one of the best Pirate checklists during a barren cardboard era.

I don't really think I have a collecting niche, but I do favor finding these type of cards of obscure players.  Mackowiak saw time in parts of 8 seasons, but was never really a regular.  His best years were as a Pirate where he was a super utility player. He was the type of guy that would have probably never had much of a career had he not played for some poor Pirate teams.

Either way I'm super pumped to add this card to my collection!

By the time you read this I hope to be at least two or three deep! Hooray weekends.

Thanks for reading!

Diamond King Challenge

One of the fun aspects about our hobby is finding out about cards you had no idea existed. A few weeks back I made such a discovery and really cashed in on some unique cardboard. 

A set that I hold near and dear to my heart is the mid 2000's versions of Diamond Kings.  I'm a fan of canvas cards so that got me interested right away, but what set DK apart was that the checklist was Pirate heavy.  As many of these cards I purchased over the years, one parallel set flew under the radar until my recent eBay discovery.

Have you heard of the DK Challenge Factory Set? Apparently the first 450 collectors to send in the complete base set of 450 cards received a special DK Challenge factory set. Each set would also come with 4 printing plates and two random one of one inserts.  That was news to me. 

When browsing eBay I often look for DK cards and came across a seller liquidating a huge collection of the 1/1's from the challenge set.  I'm not sure if he had them all, but it was close.  I put all the Pirates on my watch list. 

If I recall correctly 11 Pirate 1/1's were listed and I managed to secure 9 of them. The Jason Kendall and Aramis Ramirez were the only ones I lost. High end Kendall cards sell well for whatever reason.   While it may look like I broke the bank, only 2 sold for more than $5 (Jack Wilson and Dave Parker).  Obviously some of the big names went for some huge coin, but overall some good deals were for the taking. I'm guessing the obscurity of the set scared some people off. 

The cards themselves mirror the normal DK cards minus the word "challenge" embossed on the bottom right.  You can't really tell from the scan, but you can notice what looks like some squiggly lines.  That's the work challenge. 

Here they are!

I'm most excited for the two Jason Bay cards.  I'm to the point where it is hard for me to find new ones and I was able to add two from the same seller. For appearance purposes the Cobra would be my first pick.  The guy just has a ton of good cardboard.

Did you know this set existed?

PS: If you want to join Secret Santa 2017 click here.

Thanks for reading.