COMC Black Friday Parade: Rangers Rangers Rangers!

Man, I had a lot of fun with the Black Friday sale on COMC.com.  I got some really great stuff and it didn't set me back all that much.

I had all kinds of sweet spots in my collection, with some of my favorites being the various Rangers I picked up :

This was by far the most expensive card I bought, and it actually wasn't that bad.  It's an incredibly beautiful card, and if Profar lives up to his potential, the cost will be well worth it.  Even if he flops, it's still a great looking card.

Here are some other great looking cards:

 I think my only regret is that I didn't pick up more Darvish cards.

 I also had my last dalliance with Ian:

Oh Ian, I miss you already.

Turning The Page On Ian...

Now I understand why some people are depressed during the Holidays.  When major tragedy strikes a person this time of year, it stays with you and and weighs heavy on your heart.  I hope we can all find the strength and courage to get through the next few months knowing Ian Kinsler will not be in a Rangers uniform next year. 

I think we should remember the good times with Ian.  And the good cards.  So I picked some of my favorite pages from my Kinsler album.  You should know tears are dropping on my keyboard as I type this:

Here's his Topps base card run.  2005 to 2013.  9 Years.  9 Cards.  1 Page.  1 Awesome dude.  Thank you for making this a clean break Ian and not running over to another page.  I assume his 2014 card will be some horrific Photoshop job of him in a Tiger uniform.  Sure, I'll put it in my Kinsler album.  But I won't like it.

My 2010 Triple Threads page.  It's got (2) 1/1s.  I need one more Sepia in the upper corner. 

Why did this have to happen to me?

Some of my favorite relics and autos.  I have more.  I don't have the strength or will power to scan any more tonight.

I guess you should live life to the fullest but whatever because life will wind up beating you down in the end and trade your favorite player anyway so who cares right?

The Rangers Through Sepia Colored Glasses

Yeah, these scans look terrible.  But I got a couple of Sepia parallels of two of my favorite players and had to show them because I have a blog and that's what it's for.

The scans are terrible, but the cards are not.  I'm shooting for Darvish next.  And I would probably have already bought an Andrus, but Andrus wasn't included in 2013 Chrome for some reason and I am plenty steamed about it let me tell you.

Creeping Back In With a New Ian Kinsler Card

Fellas, the fire I have for blogging these days has turned to a weak flicker.  In fact, I've got a retirement post queued up in my drafts and was close to hitting the publish button when the Daily Dimwit sneaked in and pulled the plug on his blog first.  (An aside- Sam, you were a blast to follow and best of luck to you!)

So since I can't be seen as a copycat to the Dimwit,  I'll stick with it a little bit longer.  

Anyway, I got a little boost of cardboard adrenaline this week when I got this sweet Ian Kinsler card on eBay:

I have plenty of Kinsler relics, but none with such an awesome patch. 

I've heard suggestions that Kinsler could be traded this offseason.  I honestly don't see that happening, and frankly, I hope it doesn't.  Kinsler sometimes drives me crazy with his frequent pop-ups and base-running snafus, but I watch a ton of Ranger games every year, and he comes through a lot more than he lets down.

Plus, he's one of the few guys on the team that seems to have a chip on his shoulder, and that is cool with me.   You know, since I'm so edgy and hardcore myself.

Listia-ing Wins, And Some Are Not Crap!

Wow, I've only written 9 posts this month.  This will be my lightest month by far since I've started this thing.  I don't know if I have just hit a max on my bandwidth this month, or if my interest is starting to fade in keeping up this blog.  I don't think it's the latter.  I think I'm just maxed out, but bear with me while I list out what I think are the contributing factors to my slow-down for my own benefit:

• The Rangers are playing horrible baseball this month in general.  It seems likely that my boys will be on the outside looking in for the post season this year.   That kind of dampens my enthusiasm for anything baseball right now.  However the Rangers did give me at least one more thrill last night.
• We had the inside of our house painted last week and I had to move all my cards into storage temporarily.  Out of sight, out of mind, no posts.  The cards are back out now, ready to be played with.
• We are two people short at the office and at the same time we are wrapping up the fiscal year.   Lots of projects, ridiculous timelines and pressure.   DING DING DING, we have a winner!  I guess work truly has had my full attention, which explains the lack of desire to post, or do anything with cards right now.  I haven't even been to Cleve's in 3 weeks.  Now that I'm coming out of the work black hole, I'm starting to feel my interest in cards picking back up.

Something else that's been nagging at me is that I feel like my blog has become stale.  I need something new and different to do, but I don't know what that is yet.

So allow me to be stale for at least one more day and simply show my recent Listia wins, some of which are really great cards:

 

 

I need to figure out how to get my scanner to stop cropping the hell out of my cards. That way you could better view this great lot of Adrian Beltre cards I won.  The top 3 are all rookie cards that I didn't have.

This Manny Machado was the most "expensive" card I got, at around 2,000 credits I think, but I'm still happy to have it.



 These "Greats" inserts from 2013 Topps are fantastic.  I think I managed to get this Ernie Banks for only a couple hundred credits.

 

 

I also won a lot of Texas Ranger cards, but this Ian Kinsler base card was what I was after.  I realized after looking through my Kinsler album, that somehow I didn't have this base card from 2012.

Ah, that felt good.  I think I'll go to Cleve's now.

Pie Face Funded: Kinslers and Beltres

I love waking up on days when I know I'm due a padded envelope of cards in the mail that day!  That was Saturday for me, as my "Pie Face" funded purchase from COMC.com came in.  I don't at all regret my decision to purchase a bunch of smaller value cards rather than one or two big vintage cards.   Besides, I'll be able to produce at least 5 or so blog posts over this shipment, starting with some great Ian Kinsler cards:

These two Bowman's Best rookies were the main highlights of the Kinsler portion of this purchase.  I don't have either of these, and therefore my Kinsler collection was not serious.  The Green version on the left is numbered to 899.   I apologize for the cruddy scans.  We bought a new scanner and I haven't played with the settings yet.  I was thrilled with the speed of the scans- but now I see what I get with that.  Guess I need to increase the resolution next time.

For good measure, I picked up chrome and gold versions of his Bowman rookie.  Didn't have them either.

Finally, I tossed in a pair of rad die cuts.  Yes I said "rad."  These cards are rad.  If these aren't rad, I don't know what rad is. 

I added a few cards of one of my other favorite Rangers, Adrian Beltre.  I was going to do a separate post on these, but since it's only four cards, I might as well add them in:

Beltre is frequently referred to in social media as "OS!" As in "Oh Shit!" which is something he is sometimes overheard yelling when a fellow Ranger hits a home run.  Or when he hits one  himself.    I think he's yelling "Oh Shit!" on this card.  This beautiful blue refractor numbered to 250, that is.

 He's saying it on this green parallel, too.  The green isn't numbered, but it's just as pretty as the blue. Have I mentioned I love Adrian Beltre? 

I now have 3 of these green parallel Finest cards.  They're numbered to 199.  So if my math is right,  that means I have about 20% this run in my possession.   

I only have 1 of these orange cards, numbered to 99.  I can't figure out about what percent that equals.  Probably like a dozen % or something like that.

Pie Face Funded: Ranger Relics

A while back I bragged about stumbling upon a Mark Teixeira "pie in the face" variation card while digging through my boxes. 

I sold it online, and got a LOT more for it than I expected.  As soon as the buyer put his funds in my paypal account, I was ready to turn around and spend it, but I was also faced with a decision:  should I get one or two really nice cards, or should I get a bunch of little stuff and maybe knock off some of my checklist needs?  I was spying a T206 Eddie Cicotte card, as well as a 1952 Topps Bob Feller.  Either would have been great additions to my collection.

However, once I started shopping on COMC.com and sportlots.com, I came across too many cards that I "need" for my checklists and decided to go that direction.  But man, that Cicotte would have been nice...

My first pie face funded cards came in today- a group of Ranger relics, starting with 3 from 2013 Allen and Ginter:

This Ian Kinsler card is really nice.  I love the cardboard stock and the bright red swatch.    These full size Allen and Ginter Relics might be something I want to collect later on.  Super nice card.

I like the minis too, just not as much as the full size.  At first I was excited to see a stain on this Elvis Andrus card.  But couldn't that just as easily come from some doofus handling the card and rubbing dirt on it from his back yard?

Does anyone know why the frames are different colors on these?  Does it mean anything? 

Finally, I picked up my first relic card of one of my newest favorite Rangers, Martin Perez. 

Love these cards, and there is more great stuff on the way!  Still, that Cicotte would have been nice....

Shining It Up With Brad's Blog

My Rangers Album just got a little brighter, thanks to a nice lot of shiny cards from Brad's Blog.   I had some old Phillies cards that I didn't need and he gladly took them off my hands and sent back these beauties:

These two numbered refractors were the cards I knew I was getting, and they are fantastic.   I definitely need to build a team set of the sepia cards.

However, that wasn't all that was in the padded mailer from Brad, much to my surprise.  He also sent a big stack of other cool Rangers:

I love these "ice" cards from Bowman, and am really stoked to get the card of Luis Sardinas.  He's a SS in the lower levels of the farm system and the Rangers are pretty high on him I hear. 

 Brad also sent a few great base chrome cards.  I don't have many cards of Leonys Martin, but he's quietly turning into a star, so I'm very excited to get this one.

I'm hearing lots of noise about Mike Olt being part of a trade package for Matt Garza of the Cubs.  I like Olt a lot, but I'd be all for that trade, considering the volume of the Rangers starting pitchers that are on the DL. 

There were several other cards in the package, but this by far was my favorite "bonus" card.  I love getting Darvish rookies!

Thanks for the great trade Brad, and I hope you enjoy the vintage Phillies!

Kins Patch

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July and is benefiting from an extended weekend.  I myself went into the office this morning, read a bunch of blog posts, drank some coffee, read some more blog posts, ate a Red Velvet Pop Tart (so good), and then played Words w/ Friends.  After that I goofed off the rest of the morning and headed to Cleve's card shop to reward myself for a hard day's work.   I got some sweet cards at Cleve's that I can't wait to show.

I came home to find a nice little bubble mailer with my fake name on it.  Inside was this beauty:

Hey, that's a pretty patriotic looking card, so I'll show it here today and wish you all a happy 4th of July long weekend!  Now I'm going to have an ice cream sandwich and watch the Rangers.

A Kouple of Kool Kinslers

Actually, one pretty cool Kinsler, and one INSANELY cool Kinsler.

We'll start with the one I'm most excited about:

This came in the mail today, and I was showing it to anyone with eyeballs.  I really like Topps Museum, even though I will likely never bust any boxes of it because I'm a whipped married man.  That's fine.  I'll just grab up the cards I really like on the secondary market. 

This is a really sharp card, numbered to 30 and with a huge piece of a bat that may or may not be Ian Kinsler's.  The back notes Topp's obligatory "This relic is not from any specific game, event, or whatever.. blah blah blah" warning.  As long as it doesn't say "not from any particular player," I'm not too concerned.  Point is- it's a beautiful card and I'm thrilled to have it.

A little less exciting, but still a nice pickup for me was this:

I happen to like these framed mini relics.  I could see trying to build a nice assortment of them if one were so inclined.  Which I'm not.  Not today anyway.

I'm looking forward to Kinsler getting off the DL, but I gotta say it's been a blast watching Jurickson Profar play.  That dude is electric, and the Rangers have an interesting decision coming up on what to do with him. 

Let's go back and look at that Museum bat card again shall we?

I Want Cards On Cards In Charge Of Me

I always get the "Charles In Charge" theme song in my head when I read the blog "Cards on Cards."  I wish my blog name could easily be interchanged with a classic '80's sitcom, but alas, it cannot.  You whipersnappers don't know what I'm talking about??? Charles in Charge????  Oh, you want to know the lyrics to this great TV theme?


I've fixed them a bit to help show you the cards I picked up from Kerry from "Cards on Cards:"

Cardinal blog in the neighborhood

 Lives somewhere and it is understood.

He’s there just to make trades with me,
Like he’s one of the family.

Cards on Cards
Of our Rangers in Heritage
Cards on Cards
Of our Rangers in other Topps

And I sing, I want,
I want Cards on Cards of Kinsler.

Cards on Cards
Of our days and our nights
Cards on Cards
Of our wrongs and our sampler album 1995 page and former Naturals and Razorbacks

And I sing, I want,
I want Cards on Cards of Torii.

source: http://www.lyricsondemand.com/tvthemes/charlesinchargelyrics.html

Ranger Hits... And No Misses

Someone put together a Napkin Doon dream lot on eBay a few weeks ago, and thank god for us all, I won it.

It included a nice big handful of Ranger hits, including my first ever Yu Darvish relic:

Yeah, it's an all star game jersey, but so what?  My first Darvish relic!

The lot also included a pair of Heritage relics, including my main man Adrian Beltre.  I look at these and can't decide if they are boring or not. 

Two more of my favorites- Nelson Cruz and Ian Kinsler.  The Kinsler card is really sharp, and I love the blue swatch.

The lot also included one auto- David Murphy.

Finally, there were a few nice regular cards in the lot, including a gold parallel Elvis Andrus rookie, and some minor league cards of Jurickson Profar and Ian Kinsler.

My kind of lot!