A Pack Of Spring Fever Cards

In my recent Topps 13 Hobby box, I had one of those Spring Fever cards that can be redeemed at participating hobby stores.  Thankfully, Cleve's is a participating store and I got a pack:

Ohhh, the mystery!  What's inside I wonder?

Wish I had gotten a Ranger in here, but not bad overall.  Still debating if I want to trade these or not.

AJMcCarron'sgirlfriend's Junk

I assume that Wes from Jaybarkerfan's Junk will be changing his blog name soon to take advantage of the name recognition of the current Alabama quarterback's best asset.    If you do, Wes, and your viewership explodes, just remember who gave you the idea.

I imagine there is general agreement that Wes is one of the most generous members of this little fraternity of card bloggers.   Last week I came home to another unexpected envelope from him containing some nice Ranger cards:

I was happy to get all of them, but especially the 3 1997 Topps cards on the bottom because my sampler album page for that year is pretty sparse.

Not only do I want to publicly thank Wes for these nice cards, I also think he deserves some kudos for yet again holding a Blogger of the Year award.  It's a pretty cool thing to be able to have an outlet to give recognition to the guys out there with exceptional blogs.  The only thing I didn't like about the contest was that he would not allow himself to be nominated.   

Thanks for being such a positive part of this community Wes!

Cleve's Christmas Auction Part 7: Other Stuff

Welp, tomorrow is the big day.  And it looks like I may not be able to make it to the auction.  Fret not friends- I was able to put in several write in bids, and have my fingers crossed extra tight.  If I get blanked, I get blanked and the world will go on spinning.

To wrap up my auction previews, here are some of the other primo items up for sale tomorrow night:

 Here is the original art used for the 2003 Topps Gallery John McGraw card. 

 Traitor Josh...

 Some cool game used cards- the two pictures above are actually the same card.  The relics are on the front and back.

 This is a 1/1 of former Razorback Joe Adams.  I guess this is the NFL shield from one of his "event worn" jerseys.

Finally, a cool Cal Ripken Patch card. 

For those of you interested in these, or any of the other cards from the Christmas auction (or any auction for that matter) Cleve does take write in bids.  You can reach him at:   479-927-0067 

Fanfest Part Three: Other Favorite Booths

I've could spend a whole week talking about the various booths and experiences at FanFest.  In the interest in time, I'll just highlight some of my favorites.   Note to anyone planning to go to FanFest in the future:  entry times are staggered out on the tickets, so if you want to go and want to have enough time to see everything, purchase your tickets early so you can get early admission tickets.  I guess I got mine a little late, because 4 pm admission was all that was available to us.  I could have easily spent a few more hours taking it all in.  On the flip side, 4 hours was probably about all my little ones would have been able to handle, so there's that.

And going to FanFest was really meant for the kids to enjoy, so while I would have liked to spend a little more time at the Cooperstown and Negro League Museum exhibits, I wouldn't trade that for watching my kids participate in the throwing and hitting activities that were there for them.

I also don't regret that I didn't spend more time looking at the card/memorabilia tables, other than spending a little time at the Topps booth.  I looked at the dealer booths long enough to see that the stuff was pretty expensive.  However, I did pick up this snazzy metal sign:

Overall, we saw a lot of great stuff.  Here are just some of the highlights:

 The Rawlings Booth had a little stage where it looked like they were holding exhibitions of the process of sewing a baseball.  Unfortunately, we never did see it happen.

 This was a big map showing all the minor league parks across the USA.

 We just missed Fergie Jenkins at the autograph booth, but I was able to catch a few minutes of his interview afterwards.

 Here is that grass that is used at the Rangers Ballpark.  Yippee.

 I thought this was cool.  There was a mock up locker room with the actual jerseys of several players.  At least I'm sure they were the real things since several attendants repeatedly advised the crowd not to touch the jerseys.

 One of the dealer booths. 

 The awards booth was very cool.  Pretty much every major award that will be given out for this season was on display, including the World Series trophy.  Above is the 2012 AL MVP award, hopefully with the name Josh Hamilton and not Mike Trout inscribed on in in a few months.

The Roberto Clemente Award

 Nap Lajoie jersey.  I have a T206 card of him...

An autographed ball from Honus Wagner.  I have his T206 card... oh wait I'm thinking of my Kris Benson rookie.

All in all, There were tons of great booths, but I'm saving the most inspiring for Monday.  Prepare to be energized...

Bowman 2012 And The Art of Spending Wisely

I happen to be a fan of Bowman products.  Not because I consider myself a prospector, but because I live in AA baseball country, and it's fun to get cards of guys I see come through here.  It's with Bowman cards that my son has been able to get real baseball cards (sometimes autographed) of players he sees play live. 

I've built, or should I say, am in the process of building complete sets from 2010 and 2011 Bowman still, which I mostly put together through blasters.  2010 yielded me a few Strasburg cards, and last year I had monster luck with Bryce Harper cards.

I'm in for the 2012 set as well.  However, one tries not to go through life without learning how to do things better and smarter.  I realized that it could be so much easier and cheaper to pass on building the 2012 set through blasters, trades and sportlots.com.  A quick scan of eBay reveals that I can buy a master set (220 card base, 110 card prospect set and 110 chrome prospect set) for about the cost of 3 blasters.  Or, I could be patient and wait for the inevitable lot of Bowman cards that will surely be auctioned off at Cleve's from someone who buys a hobby box or two for the big hits and sells the rest for a steal at the auction.  It happens all the time.

Today at lunch, I had to go to Walmart for business purposes.  Seriously, I did.  Before I went in I reminded myself of my wise strategy:

• No blasters- maybe buy one pack to see what the cards look like
• Buy a master set online and be done with it and then chase a few good cards that I really want (i.e. Ranger parallels, autos of guys who might play for the Naturals soon, etc.) or..
• Wait to get the bulk of the set from a Cleve auction, and finish off the rest through trades

I was proud of myself for such a level headed, disciplined approach to my collection.  Confident, I went into Walmart.

Let's take a look at the blasters I bought:

 Mr. 4 Home Run- Josh Hamilton and other Rangers

I like the base set design just fine.  It's simple, and I like the placement of the team logo.  The font size of the player name is a little small though.

Of course, there are the obligatory parallels.  The orange (#d to 250) and the gold do nothing for me, but I have to say I really dig the "silver ice" parallel and the international parallel with the player's home country flag as the backdrop.  The silver ice cards have a hologram/3D look to them, and are really neat under lights.  The flag cards are very sharp too.  I'm seriously considering building a 3 pronged base set with the base card, silver ice and international parallels as well.  That would look great in a binder with 3 cards of each player layed out in rows in 9 pocket pages.

Each pack contained 2 Bowman Chrome cards.  I didn't get any big prospects as far as I know, although I've heard some good things about Josh Bell.

One thing I was pleasantly surprised about this years Bowman offering was the lack of inserts.  From what I can tell, the Bowman's Best set is the only one.  That's fine with me, as it will make building a master set much simpler.  The Bowman's Best cards are pretty nice looking I think.

Oh, I almost forgot the hit I pulled in blaster #2.  Unfortunately, I didn't get any Yu Darvish cards, which is what I was really hoping for.

Now the question becomes, do I still go ahead and just buy a master set online, or do I do this the hard way again? 

Trade With The Dime Box Master

Nick from the prolific blog “Dime Boxes- the Low End Baseball Card Collector’s Journey” will heretofore have his blog referred to as the “Dime Box Master” for short on this post.  Or I guess I could just say "Nick's Blog" for shorter.  Or "Nick's" for shortest.

Anyway, I completed my first trade with him recently, and was able to help knock out some of his Heritage needs.  I was certainly happy with what he sent in return.  The best card wasn’t even one that I was expecting.  I was expecting this Nelson Cruz sticker:

Poor Nelson Cruz.  He will have that misplay of what should have been the final out in the World Series follow him the rest of his career.   If life were fair, people would also remember the walk off grand slam he hit against the Tigers in the LCS.  But life isn’t fair I guess.  I’m still a fan though, and I still remember the LCS grand slam, and my guess is that he will be just fine this year.

Nick also sent a nice group of other players I collect.

 

But the best part was this:

A 1984 Fleer Darryl Strawberry rookie.  I would ask if he found this in a dime box, but I probably don't want to know the answer.  About 20 years ago, I would have gone to great lengths to get this card.  I still love it, and as an unexpected add-in to the trade, it’s an incredible bonus!  That would have been worth the trade on its own.  Very excited about this, and I’m very appreciative of the Dime Box Master.    Keep up the great work on your blog Nick. 

But, I still can’t believe you passed on that 1971 rookie Concepcion for a dime.  That pains me every time I think about it.

Topps Value Packs Are Back In Stores

I had some good luck with “value packs” last year, so I was  happy to see them make a return for 2012.   This year’s value pack is basically the same as the first value pack that came out last year:  5 packs of Topps Flagship, 2 Hobby Packs of Heritage, a code card and a special chrome card (either Willie Mays, Ken Griffey Jr. or Mickey Mantle).  I saw some today at my local Walmart and couldn’t help myself, even though I’m not especially interested in building either set.    He are the highlights:

 I love this Hamilton card, and I'm glad to get the gold sparkle parallel.

 Nothing too interesting.  The Golden Moments set is sort of interesting to me.

Here was the Chrome card- Willie Mays

Other than these two cards, my Heritage packs didn't provide squat.  The Vogelsong is the Chrome parallel.

So, nothing earth shattering.  I got 2 total code cards which yielded 2 ridiculous coins.  I’m really due for a big hit in wax.  I’m also due for a Die-Cut card from the code redemption program.  I am 0-9 so far this year, with only a bunch of fictional worthless coins to show for my efforts.

Everything is for trade except the Hamilton Gold parallel.

This Post Cost Me $.98

Having something to blog about was the only reason I bought this pack of 2012 Stickers.  I haven't yet seen any posts about the 2012 stickers yet, so I thought I would do my good deed of the day and show anyone who was curious what they looked like.

When I first saw the package I was pretty excited thinking there was a new mini set out from Topps I was unaware of, similar to the mini sets back in the late 80's.  But it turned out to be stickers.  I didn't see any albums, but I assume these are available now too.  Here were my 8 cards:

 I like the mascot stickers, and Josh Hamiltons are always welcome.  I'll give these to my kids, and see what interesting things they wind up stuck to here in a few days.

.........Wow....

I don't have a good title on this post because nothing that I would have come up with would have been good enough.   I have been stunned by the generosity of a very good man.  A man you all know as Cleve.

I was in Cleve's today looking around at Tuesday's auction material.  The past couple of times I've been in his store, he told me he had a nice Josh Hamilton card he wanted to give me, but was having trouble finding it.  I thought that was really nice of him and had no idea what kind of card he had in mind.  Today he told me he had found the card and went to the back to get it.  I looked around and a bit later saw him bring out a card that looked incredibly thick.  It was a Josh Hamilton card alright, and when I saw it, I almost passed out.  It was thick because it was a book card.  From Triple Threads.  With Josh Hamilton's autograph.  And jersey relics.  And oh by the way, the other side of the book had Evan Longoria's autographs.  And jersey relics.  And the card is numbered to 9.

Look at this!

I told him I didn't know what to say, and I still don't.  This is just about the best card in my collection now, and it was a gift from someone who had no reason to be so generous with me.   I hope I can think of some way to return the favor to him some day in some way.

If you are reading this, thank you Cleve! You are a special individual, and I am grateful more than you will ever know.

Ficociello a la Dimwit oooh la la Magnifico

Hey, you like-a the Dominic Ficociello? Is good eh?  He play-a for the... emmm how you say: Arkansas Razorbacks?

Ok, it's taking too long to write this post in Italian, so I'll just go back to my backwoods English.

So, Sam at the Daily Dimwit was giving Topps the what-fer about a month ago for a) terrible collation on some redemptions of Topps Chrome USA autographs (2 of 5 of the autos were of Razorback stud Ficociello), but worse b) mucking up the autographs of one of the Ficociellos, and worst of all c) refusing to do anything about it.   It's actually an unbelievably poor display of customer service, and the above links have to be read to be believed.

I'm a little embarrassed to look back on these posts regarding Sam's ordeal.  If you read the comments on the first post, you'll several offerings of concern and support from considerate folks... followed by yours truly asking if he could have the Ficociello card that wasn't screwed up.    What a guy I am.

Well, what a guy Sam is, because he was willing to send the Ficociello my way.  He liked a couple of Jeff Bagwell cards I had, including a really cool "game used dirt" card and we worked out a deal.  My cards arrived Friday, and the Ficociello is every bit as awesome as I thought it would be.  You never know on  prospects, but I think he's the real deal.  Of course I am a tad biased about my Razorbacks.  Even if he doesn't get to the Majors, I'll still have a great card of a great Razorback.

And I got a few bonus cards too.  You may be familiar with the gentleman on the bottom right.  Yes, that is former Governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton.  I'm thrilled there is a card of him out there.  I know Arkansas is a small state, but Clinton was a pretty high profile governor and made a few appearances on late night shows like Letterman and Leno, so he has some national appeal.

Thanks for the trade Sam!  Hope you enjoy the dirt I sent you!

Royals and Winnings

I was fortunate enough to be picked to participate in a clever game at Royals and Randoms a few weeks ago.  It was a hybrid draft/yankee swap game with hundreds of cards to choose from.    I'm not sure how Josh kept up with everything, but he did a great job and is building himself a nice blog over there.  My winnings came in this week, and it was fun to dig through:

These Flair cards were the main thing I was targeting.  I've got a decent handful of these in my own collection, and it's one of those sets I may decide to back my way into completing if I can get enough to get started. 

I also picked up a few Rangers.

 

... and some non- Rangers I collect.  The Biggio card is pretty slick.

To round out my winnings, a have a few misc cards I liked.  The Larkin card is part of a Fleer Tradition set I was building, but scrapped, but may decide to start up again.

Josh also had a "Mystery Pick" wrinkle in the game.  You could, or could choose not to, choose a mystery card as part of your winnings.  Of course I had to take a chance on it.  This is what I got:

It's a pretty cool looking Jeff Gordon card that apparently used to play some sort of audio.  I guess Josh wore it out before sending to me, because when I pushed the play button, all I heard for the next ten minutes were scratchy pained screeches coming out of the card.  It went on and on and I couldn't make it stop.  Josh is now on the lovely wife's sh*t list.  But I still think it's a cool card though.

Thanks for the great contest Josh!  Be sure to check out his blog, it's a lot of fun!