Always Listen to Jackie

I’m sure blogger Dean of Vintage Dayf or Dean of Vintage Dodgers Night Owl could’ve told me that, but when I saw that lone cereal box at K-Mart with Jackie Robinson staring back at me, I… ignored it.

"If you don't buy me now, you'll be sorrrrry..."

I thought my luck at actually pulling some  stinkin’ Million Card Giveaway codes might have changed by now, and maybe I could pull two or three.

Yeah, no.  Went 0 for 5 again, bringing my total to about 1 for 15 or 16 (including two fat packs) pulling Million Card Giveaway cards.  I suppose it wasn’t a total loss, I did pull three Red Back Minis I needed from the Target Packs, bringing my total to 6 of the first 15, so I’m almost halfway finished with that set.  But dang it, I wanted some codes!

So I went crawling back to K-Mart and Jackie, humbled and ashamed and an unnecessary $10 broker for ignoring him.  But Jackie is a classy fellow and forgave my foolish ways.  And thus the purchase was made.  Within the box bearing his likeness contained, the 40-some base cards I have no place to put (Seriously, I’m sick of this mess if cards and want 90% of my collection gone!  Want to start over!  More on this soon…), the promised mishmash of low-level inserts, plus an original back Yo Momma card of Eddie Murray (1:3 cereal boxes) and a When They Were Young of… someone.  Johnny Damon maybe (1:2).  The Platinum Refractor was Ty Cobb.  I’m not sure if pulling maybe the meanest jerkass in baseball history out of a box bearing the classiest dude in baseball history is ironic or not.

Not classy...

(Jackie box & Cobb pics box yoinked from ebay)

And then, what I came for, my golden ticket, my sweet sweet Million Card Giveaway redemption code.  Surely Bob Gibson wouldn’t let me down the way Mike Schmidt did.  I planned to hold on to my little piece of cardboard gold till it started raining ’50s again, but I saw it was dropping almost entirely ’60s and ’70s, with intermittent ’50s when I checked in shortly before starting this post.  So I logged in my card and what did I pull?

La... LaCock?!?

To be fair, though I was impatient and went for it immediately, I was apparently only one code late on redeeming a 1962 Richie Ashburn… I got LaCockblocked!  All that trouble in really freakin’ cold weather to pull a LaCock (insert immature giggle here).  I bet Cobb was behind this.  That bastard. 😡

What a serious waist of money.  I’m an idiot and I hate myself right now.

A Trade Post You Say?

Yep, and I think I’ve about got a return package ready for this one finally.  It comes to me from Baseball Card Stuff, and it is awesome as can be, so let’s get right into it and check out the majority of what was sent!

That 20-10 topps card isn't part of the trade, for some reason I combined them with scans of this trade (twice as you will see). Poor planning on my part.

Why does Opening Day get so much crap for being the same as the base set when almost every year, the little tweaks actually make it BETTER looking than the original??  The blue foil is better (or at least more interesting) than the regular silver on the ’06s, and the white border completely and utterly destroys the black-bordered design of the ’07 set.  I’m not normally all about the white borders (if you’re going plain white borders, just make it full-bleed, cuz that’s much less boring), but it actually makes the ’07 design look nice.

Also, Derrick May!  And a nice Upper Deck design, which brings me to my next rant.  To the people that dislike Upper Deck’s general lack of base set design, I strongly disagree with you (and they change it up enough to tell the difference from year-to-year, so come off that BS).  An analogy: I watch my wrestling for THE WRESTLING, not the silly skits & promos and crap.  The extracurricular crap only works to raise the interest in a match when it’s good, and quite frankly, it usually isn’t.  This is the same reason I generally prefer Upper Deck’s flagship base sets over topps’, they tend to be free of the frequently not very good design clutter of topps and let the great photography do the talking.

To each their own I guess, and it’s not like I’m a set collector anyway, but topps, ehh… I can take ’em or leave ’em.  They may have the history, the tradition, but I think tradition is overrated, especially when it comes to baseball.  I may catch heat for that, but I’m not saying it all willy-nilly.  There are reasons for it.

Rant mode off.

For now.

Maybe.

No rants here, just some good ol' quality Mark Grace action. This is the other one I foolishly combined with 20-10 topps scans that I'll probably never use, though I managed to put a keeper up in the same row as the trade cards this time.

I guess the lack of mid-’90s baseball card collecting (I was all about the basketball back then when I was first starting out) is why I have so few Mark Grace cards in my collection, so these are all greatly appreciated.  The ghostly Graceface on the Pinnacle card is foilboard I think.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have sudden urge to go grab a bottle of RC.  Dunno why… 😛

Now we're gettin' to the nitty gritty. Griffey, Dawson, Bell, that Fukudome I have about a half dozen of now...

Yeah, I have a lot of that UDX Fukudome.  If anyone has a spare Heritage or Goudey Kosuke Rookie, I’d gladly send a UDX (or two!) for it.

I’m planning to pare down my Griffey collection, but the Profiles and Record Breakers will be staying.

I think I might have to make a player collection for George Bell, since I’ve been keeping the few pre and post-Cubbies I have of him too.  He’s just cool.

Speaking of cool, Andre Dawson, ladies & gentlemen.  I think that Hawk is my first very first Leaf card of that year.  I don’t even recognize the design, though I’m sure I’ve seen it before.

And wow, I never realized this, but ’84 topps is like the unholy offspring of ’83 and ’86 topps, lol.

This scan is so full of win!

A Kosuke parallel #ed /99 flanked by two different ’83 Fergie Jenkins’!! ~ Win x3

My first ever ’80s Sportflics! ~ Win

The total mindblowage that is Eck & Lee Smith being on the same team at the same time combined with the fact that I’m pretty sure I’ve never even seen an ’85 Donruss card before! ~ Win x2

And as my dad noted when he saw the card, not only the is mustache above Buckner’s lip impressive, but the mustaches above his eyes are pretty amazing too! ~ Win for my dad’s sense of humor.

And that’s not even getting to the fact that I need both the Hawk & the Ryno. ~ Yet more win.

See?  Full of win.  Thank you very much, Jake.  Awesome cards.  I will get stuff sent as soon as I can.

Oh, I almost forgot.  Jake also sent this lil guy along:

Andre Dawson Coin! I was pretty geeked up to find this in the package. 🙂

Now then, though the interest has been better than I was really expecting, we’ve still got 9 or so more spots still to fill to make the Opening Day Group Break happen.  It will be a max of $25 for two random teams and the boxes busted will most likely look pretty similar to the rough draft from a couple posts ago.

Next time, Gadget…

March & April are Gonna be Busy

Especially if there’s enough interest to make the opening day group break possible.  I’m pleased to say that the turnout is looking fairly promising so far, so this might actually happen!  If anyone out there could be so kind as to promote it, I would greatly appreciate it.  And anyone interested, let me know in the comments!

That’s not all though.  I saw a retweet from The Wax Wombat on twitter yesterday afternoon about Breygent Marketing looking for some artists to contribute to some upcoming sketch card sets, which is pretty dang awesome of them.  Well, almost immediately after checking out the link, I sent an email, and less than an hour later, was officially signed on to do cards for two of the sets.  Unfortunately, they are the two with the shortest deadlines, but those are the ones that piqued my interest, and I’m confident that I can get them done on time with the required degree of quality.

Still, though I’m excited, I’m also extremely nervous, because though I’m confident I can be timely on this, I’m just not so awesome when it comes to deadlines (most of those who’ve traded with me can attest to my general slowness).  This is essentially the first paying job I’ve ever had (not just artistically speaking here), and I really don’t want to screw it up.  Hopefully I can plan things out some and be fairly prepared, maybe try to tweak a little old school into my style while I wait on the cards and to see if I can get enough interest in group break to go through with it.

After I signed on for the sketch cards, I started thinking that there’s no way I’ll be able to do both the them and the group break, but the more I considered it, I think I can do both without messing up either.  I have the group break pretty well planned out already, so that shouldn’t be a problem.  The sketch cards may just push the group break’s shipping back a little, but basically I just need to be smart with my time, and things should work out.  The only thing left I need to know for the group break is to figure out how to do the team randomizing thing, because it’s gonna be random teams I guess.

Enos!

Why close out the post with this card?  Well, I just wanted to say thank you to the person that offered the ’75 Enos Cabell for my ’05 Grady Sizemore on the topps Million Card Giveaway site.  Awesome. 🙂

Until our next…

An Olympic-Worthy Sketch

I’ll return to the regularly scheduled desperate attempt to drum up enough interest for the opening day group break soon, but first, art!  I hadn’t drawn anything since the Markaki & HanRam sketch cards a couple weeks ago, and I was dying to get out of that slump.  So, I found a big piece of cardstock amongst my pile of sketchbooks and how to draw books and other random arting materials.  I have no recollection of where it came from, but whatev, it was there.  So I decided to draw someone I started following on twitter a few days prior, US Olympic Bobsledder Elana Meyers.  Check it out!

What a champion looks like...

So I guess I had no rust from the time off.  This took a little over four hours and was done entirely in 4H pencil, and with one possible exception, this is easily biggest portrait pic I’ve ever drawn.  Might be one of the best too, but that’s not really for me to decide.  I’m actively avoiding focusing on what I messed up though, just because it seems like I tend to go overboard with that my own worst critic business.  Anyway, she totally approved of the work, so that’s good enough for me.  That was nice to wake up to.  Still blushin’ and this smile won’t go away. 😀

Until our next…

Opening Day Group Break Rough Draft

Looks like we’re up to three people (not counting myself) that want to participate in the this potential group break.  We’re still in the very early stages, but it looks like there might be hope, so I did a first draft of what this break might look like.

The first draft boxes look like this:

2002 Leaf Certified Materials (4 hits)

2005 Donruss Champions (8 hits)

2006 Flair Showcase (3 hits)

2006 Upper Deck Future Stars (5 hits)

Two 2007 Upper Deck SP Rookie Edition (2 hits each)

2008 Donruss Threads (4, maybe 5 hits)

2009 topps Series 2 Jumbo (3 hits)

As it stands right now, the above break would be about $25 for two teams.  It’s a little higher than I want to go, but this is just a rough draft that’s very subject to change.  Some of it we can probably use, but I’m gonna need lots of input before we come to a final decision.

If you are interested in joining this break, be sure to comment and let me know!

.::~Outtro~::.

Old School Group Break Loot & Stuff

I was a little late to the party so there weren’t many teams left to choose by the time I happened across the Old School Group Break, but there were a couple I thought might give me a chance at something of interest.  So, on a whim, I decided to enter and chose the Chicago White Sox and Minnesota Twins.

I did okay I guess.  Three so-so hits and one insert that’s apparently a really tough pull.  Read that the Upper Deck Rivals inserts only fell around 1:240 packs on someone’s blog.  But I was really hoping for some crazy early 2000s inserts and parallels, so I was a little sad to be completely shut out on those.  It turned out okay though when I gave up my Twins base cards for a few Cubbies.  I just figured I’d get some nice base cards & maybe & insert or two, but woah!  Take a look…

I think I'm gonna keep a couple of the Franks. Think I'm going to pare down my Griffey collection too, and then just keep a few of each guy that I like. Also keeping the throwbacks from this bunch.

I had completely forgotten David Wells played for the White Sox for awhile.  And look at the size of Frank’s arms in that Studio card.  Great googly moogly…

Here's some backs and a couple of the Cubs I received in lieu of Twins base. The Gibson and Youk came from packs of topps and I don't know why I scanned them with these. Sorry. >.>

And what fine backs they are.  I don’t think I scanned but maybe half of the White Sox base cards I received, so there’s plenty more where these came from.

Here's the hits and inserts and extras and extra hits!

Amazing cards all around, but those extras just blew me away.  Though a bit unnerved by him turning white all of a sudden, I never could bring myself to dislike Sammy, so I greatly appreciate the three in the top row.  I for one loved what he did at the congressional hearings, because quite frankly I think the whole steroid thing was/is a bunch of BS.  And though his time with the Cubs ended poorly, the good times still override it for me.

The Kerry Wood/Rick Ankiel dual bat card is really nice looking, though I’m not sure I can keep it.  Why would you make a dual card of hated rivals in the first place, let alone a hit?  I’m not so sure a Cardinals fan would care to have it either.  Did Kerry make any fans with Cleveland yet?  W/e, the card itself is really nice looking and I have no dual hit cards to speak of.

The Sam Fuld auto is epic.  I have high hopes for the guy.  I guess Nady is useful if he still has power, but I hope there’s room for Fuld to get a lot more playing time this year.

Oddly enough, I have no issues with the Morneau/Thome card.  In fact I quite like it.  I guess the rivalry thing just matters when it comes to your own team.  Huh…  Hard to believe it’s an Upper Deck card from the end of the decade, when they seemed to not be able to get much of anything right (I been there Upper Deck, no disrespect).  It was kinda cool to get both teams I picked on the same card though.  And as mentioned near the top, somewheres I read it was a very tough pull.

The hits were meh, as also mentioned.  Durbin’s yet to do anything of note.  I dig the Kip Wells just for the fact that it is an Autographics and the fond memories of the past I get from that.  The Mark Buehrle is easily the best player of the three, and the card is #’ed to /56.

Thank you very much, John.  If you do another group break in the future, you can count me in.  Hopefully next time I’ll get there early enough for the Cubs and maybe Mariners or Dodgers or some other team in my upper tier.  😀

Finally, while we’re on the subject of group breaks, I kind of have the itch to host a group break.  I enjoyed this one so much that I’d like to do mine in a similar style and price range.  I’d like to do pick out boxes from throughout the decade though.

This proposed group break wouldn’t take place until around opening day of the baseball season, because I want to get a lot of my ridiculously overbooked trading queue caught up on first, and besides, wouldn’t that just be an awesome time of year to do one?  Also, I’m still not going to have a scanner by then unless I get it one for free or win one or something, but the weather should hopefully be getting a bit nicer by then, so I will hopefully have a good bit more and faster access to the one I have access to now, so that I may be able to pull this off fairly efficiently, or what qualifies as such for me anyway.

The actual box bustin’ itself for this group break would happen on either my justin.tv or ustream channels over the course of multiple days, because I like to take my time when busting boxes of cards.  And that way everything will be documented, and people can come and go as they please during the breaks (hopefully a decent amount of people will bother to show up for them anyway; sorry in advance for not having boobs or an especially flashy personality :P), and they will be highlighted for those that can’t be there for the festivities, but do want to see what went on before the scanning.

So is anyone interested?  Let me know if you are, and please spread the word.  I think this would be a pretty exciting way to count down and kick off the baseball season.  I’d like to have enough people on board and everyone paid and get the teams chosen by mid-March at the very latest.  Otherwise we probably won’t be done in time.

We’ll start delving deeper into this should people start getting interested, deciding on the actual boxes to buy and cost to enter and whatnot.

I totally came up with most of these initial details on the fly, but is everything sounding sensible enough so far? 🙂

Cards from the Owl in the Night

Time for a trade post! Hopefully I can get in one more of these and the booty from the Old School Group Break before I have another art-related post, though it’s just a sketch card-centric mail day (been lazy & haven’t done any drawing since HanRam & Markakis).

Anyway, I got some noice cards from Night Owl to show you all today, and hopefully I can quickly get through it without going off on any tangents, which I was shocked to learn I am apparently capable of, if the post before this is any indication.

Though you will see I scanned it upside down in the (chronologically) first scan, the Cey was supposed to be showing the back of the card in this one. Oy, was not on my game that night.

There was almost a massive rant here about getting rid of stupid pointless redundant Bowman Chrome or yet another unnecessary retro set and replacing it with old school-style (as in mid-to-late-’90s) Bowman’s Best.

I want Upper Deck to bring back UD3 too, though their current design team (in baseball at least) probably lacks the touch to pull it off.

Next question.

A little bit of everything on this page. Always like getting early & mid-'80s Fleer & Donruss, because until very recently, not only did I have none, I'm not sure I'd ever even seen some of the sets.

I think I must be over the halfway point on Sandberg cards from 1989-1992 by now, and somehow I’ve managed to not have many duplicates yet.  Maybe I should put up what I have somewhere so I don’t start getting overrun bby dupes.

Need more Billy Williams cards.  I think that’s only about my fifth.More Fergie Jenkins too please.

The one in the middle is the back of a Kerry Wood topps Tek card.

I have no idea why I did the first scan last. Or why two of the Ceys came out looking sorta Co-Signer-ish Hyperplaid. I am tempted to finish cutting the '87 topps box card of Cey to proper size, but I won't unless Night Owl gives me his blessing to do so..

Mmmhmm, lots of Ron Cey as a Cub.  Too much for Night Owl’s liking, according to the note that came along with the cards.

Man there were a lot of bad-to-mediocre third basemen that bridged the gap between Cey and Aramis Ramirez.

Awesome cards, good sir.  I had exactly zero Ron Cey cards before this.  Now I have enough to consider tracking down more; his Cubbie ones at least.  Well, the idea of being a team collector requires it, but now I have some idea of how many there are, and have the option of spinning him off into a player collection if the mood strikes.

Finally, I have two packages completely ready to go out on Monday (Baseball Dad and Roll Out The Barrel), and will hopefully have three or four more sent by the end of the week (Blazer Shane, Baseball Card Stuff, Play at the Plate’s uncirculated contest winnin’s, and maybe just maybe the Great Sports Name Hall of Fame and/or da Rook‘s cards).  And since nobody has seen fit to Bip me yet, I suppose I shall have to fire the first shot myself to get people’s attention.  Mwahahahaha… Yes. >:3

Actually I only have one or two shots worth of Bippin’ material to fire…

Better Late than Never: Random Packs of Kindness!

Went back to about 150 posts to see if I posted these yet, and it looks like no, which is just sad.  There were some cool cards in my 8 packs from David, who is currently in India* meditating and doing yoga to help realign his blogging focus back to Indians baseball cards (though I hope there will be occasional updates on his writing adventures) and preparing for the big return.  Here be a (very) small sampling that you may ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ at so I don’t have to say much.  Consider it a warmup for March 1st and refresher on his coolness.

*He’s probably not in India.  Not sure about the meditating or yoga either…

Kool Moe Dee!

Heathcliff is a keeper!

'83 topps! The most perfectly designed set ever! Oh yeah, I said it.

The best stuff (that I remembered to bring with me to scan those many moons ago).

Frank, Willie, Griffey & the Phillies dude, and Bell are keepers.

Backe is numbered /100.

And I forgot to scan the presumably TTM or IP auto of I think it was Pat Mahomes and a gold version of Griffey & Dykstra.

I still have almost all of these (the Marlins are with Wicked I think, but otherwise yeah, they’re probably around here somewheres), including the hits, and everything but the keepers can be had if anyone wants them.  Click on my blogger profile link on the sidebar and shoot me an email.

David and Jay Leno both redebut on March 1st.  What are the odds David’s first post gets more hits than Leno’s first show back in his old timeslot? 😛

Are You Sick of Art Yet?

Umm, too bad?  Haha, seriously though, I’m finished with the art-related posts for a little while.  How do you feel about trade posts? 😛

Click to enlarge for some ludicrously awesome football card photography... and Troydberg.

Back to waiting by the mailbox for a Bip.

PS: I totally forgot to finish the cool thing I was going to do in the wii hours yesterday.  Crap.

Coming soon… cards!1!!

Tales from the Mailbox

Click this pic for the eBay listing..

This isn’t the thing I mentioned at the end of my last post, but I think it’s still pretty dang cool.  It’s a sketchbook by Ian Walker.  It is about comic book-sized and 24 pages in length.  All the pics within are done in black & white, hence the title.  I picked up two on eBay, one for myself and one for my dad to put up till Father’s Day and/or his birthday.  The cost: $5 each + free shipping (for disclosure purposes, that means I bought them myself and wasn’t compensated in any way for this promotion, in case that’s not clear).

Click this pic to see Ian's deviantART gallery page. The gallery itself will require one more click once there,

I scanned a few pages for your viewing pleasure.  Clicking on them will take you places.  Ian is very a talented artist and you can see a lot more of his work at his deviantART gallery.

He is also taking commissions.  You can check out his deviantART page linked in the scan above for more info.  Just scroll a ways and boom!… commission information, prices, etc..

Click this pic for more of The White Ninja Guy..

White Ninja Guy is Ian’s own creation, the titular star of his own webcomic.  He’s got his own website and everything!

Click this link for Ian's ustream channel.

Stop by when he’s on sometime and watch the magic happen.  Never know who you might meet.  I ran into  A Pack a Day contributor darkship there recently (I think it was Ian’s channel anyway).

Finally, as if $5 a pop and free shipping wasn’t enough for these great sketchbooks, he is also offering a free sketch (drawn on the last page in the book) of a character of your choice, for the time being at least.

Here are the characters I chose for myself and my dad:

My sketch: Raven of the Teen Titans

Pretty awesome, huh?  Another great reason to check out his channel: You might get to see your art being done live, as was the case with these. 😀

My dad's sketch: obscure-ish Green Lantern Jack T. Chance

I think Jack is the best one Ian drew all night.  Just outstanding!  He’s an old favorite of my dad’s and an obscure enough character that he wouldn’t expect me to choose him (he asked me to “surprise him” when I chose the sketch).

Well, there ya go.  Definitely amongst of the best five bucks I’ve ever spent.  If you have an extra $5 burning a hole in your pocket, I highly recommend picking up a copy.  I do believe you will be glad you did.

Until our next…