Wantlist Help From Another World

I received an awesome package in the mail today from Dan of "The Other World" blog, a great read, especially if you are a Phillies fan, which I am not, but I like his blog anyway.

He contacted me about helping out with my 2011 Gypsy Queen set and sent a huge group of cards for it, as well as an unexpected stack of 2011 Kimball Champions cards.

Here are some of the Gypsy Queen highlights:

These are awesome!  I'm going to start fining people who don't like Gypsy Queen, especially the 2011 set.  How could anyone not like that Bob Gibson card?  The Valencia card up top is a SP, too.  The Speaker "Great Ones" insert gets me to 93% done with that set, and thanks to Dan's shipment, I now only need 32 more of the base set (not including SPs).

My momentum on the Kimball Champions set had pretty much stalled out, but Dan gave it a nice kick start with these:

Yeah, these are pretty darn cool, and I'm going to have to jump back on building this set since I now can see the finish line.

Thanks for the great cards Dan!  For those of you looking for a different kind of box break, check out his high end offering that is filling up now.  Tell him Napkin sent you and you will get a $0 discount, and a "who is that?" response, but you should say it anyway.

Happy Vietnamese New Year!

Aside from being exquisitely beautiful and talented, the lovely wife is of Vietnamese descent (eat your heart out suckers).  We spent this weekend celebrating the Chinese Vietnamese New Year with her family.  It's always a nice time, and our kids will love it more and more as they get older.  One of the traditions that I'm sure they will be especially fond of is the handing out of Li Xi (lee see).  Li Xi are little red envelopes containing various amounts of cash and are meant to bring good luck.   I got a red envelop myself this weekend:

See if you can guess what I spent it on, less than 24 hours after getting it.  Yep, just like Play at the Plate, I'm Weak. 

In my defense, these value boxes were marked down 25%.   $11 for these value boxes is too much for me to pass up.  Each box contains 5 packs of 2011 Topps Traded, 1 pack of 2011 Bowman Chrome, 1 Bryce Harper card and 1 Diamond Giveaway code card (I got 4 total codes out of both boxes, but the site has been down a few days so I don't know what my codes will bring yet).  Do you want to see how the little red boxes bought with my little red envelope turned out?  Sure you do.  First,here are the two Bryce Harpers. 

Yes, I'm drinking the Kool-Aid on this guy, and I actually like these cards.
I guess my little red envelope did bring me some luck too:

I don't know much about Guyer, but this Bowman Chrome auto is numbered to #50, so I'm geeked out over it.
Other than that, I didn't get much to write home about in the 2 Bowman Chrome packs.  Here are the highlights from the Topps traded packs:

 Lot's of shiny, and the Ethier is #d to 60. 

I also got a few Kimball minis and another Hosmer to add to my PC of former Northwest Arkansas Naturals.

Aside from the Hosmer and the Silver Harper, everything is for trade! 

Gypsy Queen Life Vest- Courtesy "O" No!!! Another Orioles Blog

My assault on Gypsy Queen continues.  This week, I received some much appreciated help from Ryan at "O" No!!! Another Orioles Blog, who not only sent some nice GQ, but some other sets I'm working on as well.  Ryan has a beautiful blog, and I kind of want to be an Orioles fan whenever I read his posts.  Here are the GQ:

 I'm most excited about the Green Framed Paper cards.  I think this will wind up being my favorite set from 2011.  The set is only 100 cards large, so getting 4 of these guys is a big help.  He also sent a couple of Bowman's Best Prospects, which takes me to 68% done on that nice insert set.

Speaking of Bowman, Ryan sent several base and prospect cards that are getting me that much closer to completion on those sets as well:  76% complete on prospects and 93% complete on base.  I didn't scan the base, but he sent a lot.  A LOT.  He even added some 2010 base as well (interestingly, I am also 93% complete on the 2010 base also.)

Finally, he added 10 Kimball Champions, which takes me to 57% on that set, not including the 50 cards from Topps Update, which I suppose I need to add if I want to truly complete that set. 

Thank you to Ryan for a great trade, and I look forward to many more!

On The 2nd Day of Brycemas..

My Harper Gave To Me:

2 Series Topps Box...

Ok, it was just one box, but it was of series two, and I had to work it into the song.   Humor me.

I decided that my shopping spree wouldn't be complete without a box of cards.  My hope was that I might get another big hit and go on yet another big shopping spree.  I probably should have waited for A&G to come out, but that seems like a long ways off, and I need to burn up these funds before the lovely wife gets her lovely little hands on them.  And Gypsy Queen is too expensive.  So I got a hobby box of Topps Series 2.  No big hits, but I enjoyed opening it just the same.   Here are the pics: (I'll spare you the Diamond Duos and 60 series)

I got 10 Diamond Parallel cards, with a really cool Pee Wee Reese.  But other than that at the Ichiro, nothing too exciting.

The Diamond Stars should excite me more, but something about them looks kind of cheap to me.  The Prime 9 was something I didn't know about.  I hope one of the 2 card shops in this area are HTA stores and I can redeem these.    This is a pretty clever program from Topps, and I like the incentive to get people into card shops.  Having said that, I have a feeling I will forget I had these and miss the redemption weeks.

I won't chase much of 2011 Topps, but this is one I want to build.  The Series 2 Checklist is loaded with vintage players. 

I am not sure how I feel about the reprints.  The Mantle is an original back though!

And finally, the hit.  Mark Teixeira.  Not bad, but I'll be happy to trade it for a Game Used card from one of my top 5 players.