Sneak Peak

I wanted to give a quick sneak peak of one of the cards I received in a trade from my good pal Dennis from Too Many Verlanders.  This one will be hard to top when I send him a return package.

2004 Leaf Bill Mazeroski/Willie Stargell 1/1 Auto

Well done my friend.  I have my work cut out for me. Challenge accepted! 

Quickly Making Progress

My Black Bears Will Craig quest is going well..  The extra bonus was getting the blank back 1/1 as I was the only person to bid on it.  Here is what has arrived so far.

Base Auto

/99 Auto

/25 Auto

/10  Base Parallel

Blank Back 1/1

I haven't seen any of the printing plates or the true 1/1's hit the open market yet.  I will consider my quest complete once I get the /10 auto and the /25 /99 base parallels.  The parallels are all over eBay, but I'm waiting for someone to have free shipping as I don't want to pay $7 bucks in shipping for cards that will sell for .99.  The /10 auto may be a little tricky as only one is on eBay for a BIN price of $75.  He does have a best offer option, but I haven't attempted that yet.  Hoping one hits regular auction.

Thanks for reading

Defined Roles

It is not fun watching several of your favorite players struggle.  I've touched on McCutchen's struggles a ton, but another Pirate has been a shell of his former self.

Tony Watson was probably the best reliever in baseball you never head of because up until the trade deadline last year he had never closed games. If you ever watch those MLB Network shows where they rate the top 10 at each position, Watson would show up every year for relief pitchers.

Late last year he started to show some cracks in the armor. While he still never gave up a ton of hard contact, balls were still going into play a ton which lead to some rough outings.  This year has been more of the same, but with the added addition of becoming more susceptible to the long ball. He blew his 4th save tonight.

I'm one that hates defined roles for pitchers. Several people are calling for Watson to move out of the 9th inning role.  To me that thought process never makes any sense. Let's move a guy that is struggling to the 7th inning and he can give up homeruns there.  It is all about high leverage situations. Watson just needs to pitch in some games where the score is already out of hand. The inning doesn't matter. Just as the Pirates moved Cutch down in the order, Watson can pitch in mop up duty for a while.

It is fun to vent via showing off a baseball card.....

Unicorns

My local Target always has a well stocked card aisle. So whenever I have a hankering for some cardboard therapy I'm sure to find something.  What made this trip unique was the discounted baseball. While their is always discounted blasters, usually it consists of NBA and Nascar.  This time around they had two blasters of baseball and I bought them both.

Here is the contents of what turned out to be a really nice box of 2016 Archives.

 I don't pull many Harper's so this is a welcome addition of one of my favorite non Pirates.

 I pulled three Buccos with Kiner being my favorite.

 A few random cards that I really liked.  The Cargo has a nice shot of left field at PNC Park. The Lou Gehrig is super cool as well.

Socrates Brito is one of my favorite names in sports so I always show his cards.

Both Sano and Seager are having big years in their sophomore campaigns.  I want to see Sano, Judge and Stanton in the homerun derby this year.

This is the big hit from the box. 

I've pulled a few printing plates over the years, but this is probably the best one I've hit. This one has Zippy's name all over it since he loves Jennifer Lopez's boyfriend. 

So all in all it was a nice 12.99 investment.  I'll showoff the Stadium Club in the coming days. 

Thanks for reading. 

Cartes de Baseball Français

Yesterday I showcased my portion of two different box breaks from Kevin.  Let's get to all the fun extras he sent.

I was surprised how thick these relics were.  The picture doesn't really show, but I'm guessing it would take at least 100pt top loader to house one of these bad boys.

While I'm more of a Cole fan than Harrison, it is nice to add a relic of the versatile Bucco. It had been quite sometime since I've added one.

High end base parallels are hard to come by.  Not many in our community bust products like this so they are rarely shared. Pretty pumped to see this purple Cutch.

While the Cummings card is pretty cool that Kendall is on a whole different level.  For about a five year stretch I would put Kendall cards up against anyone in the late 90's early 2000's for shear coolness.

Some various numbered goodness. While Bay is my boy, the Kendall Prizm card is my favorite of this bunch.

Nice bright jersey swatch of the Cobra. Golden Age was a great set.

Canada's number 1 son.

This was a really nice surprise.  This is a numbered to /25 Bowman parallel of Pirate top prospect Austin Meadows. Good chance the Buccos will call up Meadows at some point in the summer.

Thanks so much for the cards Kevin. Your continued generosity ceases to amaze me.  Now I need to go find some cool Blue Jays....

Thanks for reading.

Walk, Papoy, HSCA Collaboration #20 and #21

Kevin sent two installments of our box breaks in one envelope as he has been a busy bee getting settled into his new place. This is actually a blessing in disguise as I've been a little slower accumulating trade bait lately.  This portion includes a box of 2011 Ginter and 2016 Diamond Kings. 

Cutch has been showing a little more life the past couple weeks.  I'm sure the Pirates are hoping he can carry this into the summer so they move him to another team.  That makes me sad saying that, but baseball can be a cruel bitch sometimes. 

A West Virginia card! I'm actually closer to Pittsburgh than Parkersburg, but it is nice seeing a card featuring a small WV town.

You truly do get a little bit of everything when you buy Ginter.

Is the cornhole guy wearing eye black?

I've been on the Queen Mary boat as it is docked in Long Beach California. Supposedly it is haunted, but I did not see a ghost. They don't have a money back guarantee.

 Anybody super collecting Rasputin?

Here is a reminder that Manny Ramirez played for the Rays.

Kershaw is one of my favorite non Pirates to watch.

Some random Buccos including a cool Hometown Heroes of Neil Walker. Gibsonia is a suburb of Pittsburgh.

Diamond Kings.....

I'm always fascinated on the fanfare players get when they retire.  You could not escape Ortiz last season if you collect cards.  Topps created about 10,000 different cards featuring the Red Sox slugger. Red Sox sell!  

Diamond Kings is probably our most frequent box break.  It is the perfect mix of high end possibility and price point.  

It was cool that Kevin pulled a rookie autograph.

Peter O'Brien has been struggling to find a home in recent days. He has been balancing around a ton lately.  He is an extreme power hitter but lacks anything resembling plate discipline.

This is numbered to /25!

Socrates Brito is one of the best names ever.

Legend cards!

A nice looking Cutch card.  Love the canvas look.

A 3 time gold medalist soccer player relic!

Thanks for the break Kevin.  This may be the most diverse group of cards I've received in a long time. From Cutch to Mitts to Rasputin......and everything in between.

I'll show all the cool extras Kevin sent sometime this weekend.  

Thanks for reading.

Lottery Cards

I was fooling around on eBay the other day and came across two cards that just blew my mind.  Both of these are actually on auction right now which is rare.  Usually you see these type of cards with BIN's of $99,999,999 or best offer.

I took the pictures off of the current eBay auctions.

I really couldn't even imagine pulling a card like this.  The best card I've seen pulled in person was a Johnny Unitas auto and these two blow that out of the water.  By most accounts I'm a calm person, but I'm sure I would have some crazy reaction.

Most of us have what we consider whale cards but what would you consider these? In my title I call them lottery cards.  I think winning the lottery is about the only way I could attain these. What would your lottery cards be?

Here are a few of mine
- high grade Clemente rookie
- the above two cards
- T206 Honus Wagner

The two autos would actually be really cheap compared to the Clemente and T206.

In case any of you are looking for a birthday gift for me, you now have some ideas....