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.

2013 Bowman Platinum: The Bret Saberhagen Of Card Sets

I assume most of you that around my age or older will get the reference.  For you young 'uns, Bret Saberhagen, a pitcher for the Royals and Mets among other teams, was known for being a great pitcher in odd number years, and mediocre to bad in even number years.  See for yourself.

That's how I feel about Bowman Platinum.  I didn't much care for the 2011 set- it seemed a little cheap.  I loved the 2012 set- it seemed high end.  I don't much care for the 2013 offering, but maybe I'm just bitter that I didn't get a Puig card in the wax I bought today.

I've been looking forward to Platinum coming out, and did a quick check at Walmart during lunch today and grabbed a trio of value packs.  I have to say I was a little let down:

 I'm not disappointed to get a Manny Machado card.  I'm always good with that.  But the cards seem a little flat to me.  This is a time when the scanner does too much justice to the cards.  They aren't as nice as I think they look in scans.  I'm not smart enough to explain what's wrong with them.  They just don't do it for me.

Again, maybe my disappointment lies with not getting any Puig cards.  Christian Yelich is ok I guess.

Or perhaps my disappointment stems from not getting any cards of players I like in the purple parallel cards that come in the value packs.  I got one Ranger, and nothing else I care about.

Getting two doubles right off the bat is pretty crappy too, but I'll just chalk that up to bad luck.

One aspect of the cards I was really not impressed with were the "ice" parallels:

These look great in the scan, like there is a crystal background with a refractor-ish finish.  But they look like crap in hand.  Just bland,  boring non crystally backgrounds with no life.  Blech.

On a positive note, there are some decent inserts, especially these cut cards:

And the top prospects cards are not bad either, although, this is again a case where the scan actually looks a little prettier than the cards in real life.   These cards just aren't as bright and shiny as they look here.

Finally, Bowman is continuing to insert blue chrome parallels of well known Bowman rookie cards.  I really like these and was happy to get one in these packs:

I guess I'll skip building Platinum this year.  There are a few Ranger autos in the set that I really want- Jorge Alfaro and Rougned Odor for those of you keeping notes at home.  But otherwise I'm not getting involved so other than the Posey and Machado, everything is available for trade for those that are interested.

Looking forward to a rebound set next year!