A Real Giant

When I made my card shop visit in Providence I went it with low expectations and came out with over 100 cards.  Needless to say I had a good time. Most of the cards I came home with were WVU related so it doesn't make for the greatest blogging material.  I'll probably show the notable ones on football Saturday's.

The Pirate cards I did come home with were low end autos and relics.  The one notable outlier was this beauty....

1964 Topps Giant Bob Clemente

When I was getting ready to negotiate my final purchase price with the shop owner he brought one of these bad boys out to show me. The crazy thing was he had stacks of all the high end guys from this set.  He told me a few weeks earlier an older gentleman came in looking to unload a ton of these Giant cards. The owner bought all of them, sent a bunch for grading and pieced out the rest for individual sell.  

After some negotiation the owner decided just to give me the Clemente card because I had spent a good amount of money on all the other cards. I was pretty pumped up.  Right as I was leaving I added the Yaz copy to my stack to give to Mark Hoyle when I met up with him the next day. He did have that card already, but he happily took my copy as it was in much better shape. 

From what I understand this set use to be very expensive, but several years back a whole bunch of these were found and hit the market. Obviously the big names still sell, but as long as you are buying ungraded copies it is affordable. 

Thanks for reading. 

Blogger Meeting

Tonight I'm meeting up with Mark Hoyle and Shane from Shoebox Legends.  I picture Mark going in somewhere and handing out Ted Williams rookies to everyone. I'll take pictures if that happens.

Big shout out to both Mark and Shane for hooking me up with a great local card shop. The shop had everything from high end patch autos to all the commons from recent sets.  I bought over 100 cards! If you are in the Providence area anytime soon I highly suggest Central Sports Cards. 

Card time

I have a sneeking suspician this will likely be the last Pirates Topps Now cards. Playing poorly doesn't lend itself to great moments.  At least the last two have been pretty cool.

The Clemente card was a nice suprise.  That is like card catnip for a Pirate collector. I think it was the best selling one minus the Jameson Taillon debut.

The walkoff cards make for good Now cards.  Love the pictures that actually capture a specific moment rather than the generic photos.

Thanks for reading..

Attention Grabber

1956 Topps Roberto Clemente

Clemente is by far the hardest Pirate to collect.  If you search for his cards on eBay you can see very quickly that demand and prices are high. Before blogging I only had a couple cards of the Pirate legend. 

Thanks to great trade partners I've slowly accumulated a respectable Clemente collection. The beauty pictured above was courtesy of the greatest French baseball card blogger in the world, Kevin aka The Card Papoy.  Talk about a one card bombing! 

The card itself is in fair condition.  The centering is off and the corners are a little rounded, but that just adds character. You really hooked me up big time Kevin! I was blown away when I opened the bubble envelope. Just something about seeing Clemente cards that really makes me excited about collecting cards.  Obviously I love modern cards, but star vintage cards are just on another level.  

Thanks for reading! 

Go Penguins

Walk, Papoy, HSCA Collaboration #11 (Marte Partay Addition)

As you can tell our box breaks were very close together this time around. I received packages from Brian and Kevin just a couple days apart. Obviously not a bad problem to have.

Kevin decided to roll the dice with a box of 2002 SPX. This set doesn't provide much in the way for base cards, but gives the opportunity for a monster hit. While that didn't happen, part of my haul was a Frank Thomas jersey that I immediately traded to Kevin for a Pirate card to be named later and some foie gras.

Since that was really my only card of substance I'll just show a couple of base cards that proves we actually opened the product. SPX is a very star oriented set so most of the big names are in there.

 I'm guessing the Captain is enjoying retirement.  I believe he is engaged to Hannah Davis.

 She seems nice.

 I got two Pirates out of the set. Giles and Ramirez are welcome additions.


So that pretty much sums up the break, but we are far from done.  Kevin sent some crazy nice Pirates to keep our long blind trade going.

National Treasures was stocked full of great Pirate cards. I made it a mission to find the Notable Nickname cards and hunted down Polanco's like it was my job. Well, Kevin has helped me in this crusade by sending this unique on card auto of the Pirate right fielder.

A couple weeks back Kevin busted a box of flagship. He was nice enough to send the gold Polanco. 

 Vintage is something that is always welcomed. How can you not love the 55 Bowman tv design.

Holdzkom has one of the more unique signatures you will ever see. He came out of independent baseball in 2014 to help the Pirates make a playoff push. Injuries and command issues kept him in AAA all of last year.

You ready to have a Marte Partay?

 Cool auto from one of the coolest sets.

 Things are getting crazy! A Bowman Sterling rookie auto of the gold glove left fielder.

 How about a Topps Supreme Marte auto /35.

 Or a Triple Threads jersey /27!

Holy smokes Kevin that was a lot of Marte's. You really outdid yourself.......but wait

 The showstopper. A 68 Clemente All Star card. Heck of a way to end the trade.

This Bieber kind of creeped me out.

Thanks a ton Kevin. It was really exciting to see so many great cards in this trade package. Rest assured I got big plans for our next trade. I'm not really sure what direction I'm going in for our box break...maybe PANINI????

Thanks for reading.

Premier Cards

2008 UD Premier Clemente/Parker/Bay Triple Jersey /50

If you were a Pirates collector in 2008 variety was hard to find. Most new releases included Jason Bay with the possible sprinkling of Freddy Sanchez. One of the hidden perks with Bay being in every release was that he helped bring down the cost of cards that would normally be too expensive for my tastes. 

Anytime you have a game used Clemente card you can expect to pay top dollar. In some instances the inclusion of certain players can work in the buyers favor. While Bay at the time was putting up star numbers he was not expensive in the world of cards. I can't remember exactly what I paid for this card, but the price must have been low enough to get my attention. I'm guessing it would had to been less than $50 maybe ever more.

I made a similar purchase when I got a Magic Johnson/ Joe Alexander dual auto. I'm the only person on earth that wanted that card because of Joe Alexander and it showed as the price was well below what a normal Magic auto would pull on eBay. 

One of the more one sided dual autos you will ever find. 

While I want all Pirate and WVU players to do well, it sometimes can be rewarding to use the secondary market shortcomings of one player to acquire one that normally would be out of reach. Thanks Jason and Joe for helping me obtain Roberto and Magic!

Surprise Surprise

Eric is a great guy! He came into some great Pirate cards and decided to send them my way.  Take a look!

I've mentioned a few times how I like Bowman Inception.  It's a great set to get some bigger prospect autos without having to break the bank like you would with Bowman Chrome.  Barrett Barnes was drafted a couple of years back late in the first round out of Texas Tech.  The Pirates are hoping the power progresses, but he has shown to be a good obp guy which is really preached on in Pirate system.

This is a rare oddball.  Steel City Collectibles gave these out.  Eric may have to comment below on what the stipulations were to receive this awesome card.  All I can tell you is that is awesome looking and numbered out of 500.

Thanks again Eric.  If anybody has any Twins around please give a shout out to Eric in the comments section.  He is a great trader!  This is the 3rd time he has sent me cards and it has been great each time.

Have a great weekend everybody.  I'm heading to the Pirates game tomorrow to watch them play the Padres.  Kind of a double bonus for me as Morgantown native and WVU alum Jedd Gyorko is off the DL and will be in the lineup.

Clemente Parker Bay

UD Premiere Robert Clemente/Dave Parker/Jason Bay Triple Jersey /50

I don't own much Clemente stuff as the prices are usually out of sight.  This triple jersey is a little higher numbered than most Clemente items and also features Dave Parker and Jason Bay which might have helped keep the price more affordable.  You get a nice timeline of uniforms when looking at the card with the extra bonus of having the awesome pill box hat being worn by Parker.  

Hope everybody is having a good weekend.  Thanks for checking out the card!