The Trading Post: CamClow of Cardboard Heaven

‘Ello ‘ello, old chums.  Back with another trade post.  This one is from CamClow of Cardboard Heaven.  Only three cards in this, but they are all great ones.

MJD Jumbo Jersey /50, FergiePants, and Colston refractor..

As far as plain jerseys go, nothing beats a Donruss jumbo swatch, I tell ya.  It’s hard to explain, but they just do it better.  Maybe this is where the designing cards backwards comes into play (not that that makes it right).  I dunno, but I rarely see one I don’t like, even when the design blows (not the case here, thankfully) or the swatch isn’t that jumbo (it’s more medium-sized really).  The design on the Jones-Drew is nice and simple, especially considering this is Donruss we’re talking.  It frames the player and cool turquoise jersey swatch quite nicely and incorporates the Jaguars team colors into the card in a coherent way.  Good job, designer person!

Next, that Fergie Jenkins pants card is just a thing of beauty.  Upper Deck Vintage were amongst the greatest sets of the past decade, if not all-time, and the hits are no exception.  Just a stunning card.  Definitely one of the highest highlights of my Fergie Jenkins collection.

I’m a huge fan of late-rounders that go on to become big stars, which is why I loves me some Marques Colston.  Taken 252 overall (out of 255), he has put up numbers that are right there with the very best of a still very good draft class, even with some bigger name early picks stumbling to outright bombing.  He’s put up the second most receptions (369, behind Brandon Marshall’s 413), yards (5069, behind Greg Jennings’ 5222), and is tied for most touchdowns (40, with Jennings).  Overall, I’d say he’s easily top-10 in his draft class (he is tied for 8th in the 2006 draft class in career AV at 44, which backs that assessment up).  So yeah, Colston is a favorite and the rest of you should send me cards of him too. 😛

Needless to say, excellent trade, Mr. Clow.  I will get my end of the trade out to you as soon as I pick you up another jersey card for your 3000K collection (Clemens most likely).  Thanks for stopping by!

I’ll get you next time, Gadget…

Quick Hits

Just a few odds and ends while I’ve got a minute.

• No one ever won the guess the card suit contest, so I’ll do a drawing with those that bothered to guess when I get around to it.

(The answer was the Queen of Hearts, by the way.)

• You can count me amongst the many bloggers collecting the 2011 topps Diamond Parallel set.  I’ll start a wantlist on the proper page as soon as my loot from the group case break.  Everything I have is Rays, but I’m not quite sure which Rays they are just yet.

• I am also after Kimball Champions.  Those are some hella nice cards as well.  I’ll start the wantlist for these when my first trade involving them comes in.  Right now all I have Shin-Soo Choo and David Price, and I’ll need a second Choo, since this one is for my Choo collection.  Choo.

• I haven’t forgotten any trades in progress or to be sent.  Thank you very much for your patience.  I hope what I send will be worth your respective waits.

• I’m adding Josh Freeman and LeGarrette Blount to my player collections, dropping Pablo Sandoval for the time being (barely have or ever received anything of him anyway) and making other minor alterations to the PC lists as well.

• Are there any Minnesota Timberwolves collectors out there?  I have a Lazar Hayward redemption that is being redeemed as we speak and will be available for trade in maybe four months or so.  Does it help that it’s a Rated Rookie from the new 2010-11 Donruss set?

That’s it for now.  I’ll try and have an actual post for you all tomorrow.   Seeyas.

Woogadoo!

Trading Day Pt. 2: The Search for Curly’s Gold

Here is the other package I received (last) Monday.  These are from Too Many Grandersons hisself.  Behold!

Suh-weet Walter Payton reprints, Gold Hester, base blue Manning parallel /500, Urlacher (foil and thus poorly scanned) insert from rookie year, and more Urlachers (have at that code)! How much better does that blue parallel look than the boring black borders that they've trotted out most of the last 10 or so years?? A set that looks that good I might actually consider collecting, as I once did the the '02 Gridiron Kings (even picked up about half the Legend SPs in a lot once upon a midnight's dreary).

More Bears! Greg Olsen, Bernard Barrien black parallel from one of the single greatest set designs in the history of cards, Cutler, some rookies, and my personal favorite, my first and Julius Peppers as a Bear.

Last of the Bears... The more I think about, the more I think Rex' dad was right about the Bears mismanagement of QBs, especially in the Super Bowl. Fortunately, in getting Martz, they seemed to have wised up to some degree. Not sure I like the total abandonment of the running game though. Somehow Bronko was the only card I already had amongst the Bears.

Moving on to baseball now…

Vladdy! I may have the Own the Game & one of ToppsTownies, but the rest are new to me, three I've never even seen before. The Diamond King is the gold parallel version #'ed to /2500.

Ichiro! Don't get a lot of him in trades. The '04 Own the Game in the middle just insane. And a rookie of the BEST catcher in baseball. Well, he's in that elite group with Mauer, McCann, and Victor Martinez (and maybe Posey in a year or two) at the very top anyway.

And a few of my favorite Cubs to finish it off. I really hope Big Z sticks around if it's between keeping him or Dempster. In fact, I think I'd just rather Dempster leave regardless. Something bothers me about him.

Thanks for the great cards!  I’ll get together something worthwhile to send in return… eventually. *sigh*

.::~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? 🙂

The Lonestarr Personal Collection #4

Here’s the key card of a four card Donruss Americana II lot that I won cheaply on eBay many moons ago, Julie Newmar:

Catwoman~! 'Nuff said.

Actually, the caption is a lie.  That’s not enough said!  Julie Newmar has a hella impressive resume spanning 6 decades!  See for yourself.

Also in the lot was a John Saxon-used swatch, and a couple of #ed cards, a parallel of some actor dude, and an insert of an MMA guy, but they were just the icing on the Americana II cake.  I’m not sure exactly what the cost was anymore, but I do know I payed less than $8 for the lot (possibly less than $5). Regardless though, I do loves me some Donruss Americana, so it was more than worth it.

I think I like Americana because I am fascinated by historical stuffs, and it brings the goods.

I’ve got a few more suh-weet Americana hits to show off soon, including a legitimate sports LEGEND that had no business being in my price range.  That my friends… was a tease.

Let’s meet again, in another place… and a better time.

Cards From Walmart

Sunday night I bought a pack of 2008 Upper Deck Timeline, 2008-09 Topps Treasury, and an 8 for $10 repack box that boasts an $18 value, at Walmart.  Uhh, hell NO!  A box with packs of cards from 1989 not named Upper Deck (Donruss and Topps specifically), 1994 Fleer Ultra, a 99 cent 6 card pack of 2007 Topps, three $1.99 packs (the dinky 5-6 card packs ’07 Upper Deck and Fleer Ultra, and regular-sized Topps), and only one $2.99 pack (Bowman Chrome) do not an $18 value make.

Well… maybe if your math works like Scott Steiner’s.

The sad thing is, even though you could hear the steam shooting out of my ears when I saw the old packs, I got better cards from those three than the five new ones.  First though, a break of Timeline and Treasury packs…

2008 Upper Deck Timeline (6 cards per pack; look for two inserts in each pack, on average!)

46 Torii Hunter

10 Chase Utley

36 Jim Thome- The Pride of Peoria, dontcha know.

9 Mark Teixiera

123 Max Scherzer Rookie- On a forgettable old school UD design…

301 Rick Ankiel- I guess this would be a subset of some kind.  Zero on the insert count though, unless they are trying to pass off the subsets as such.  If they are a bit harder to get, that would mean shortprint, not insert, so WTF Upper Deck?  There better be a 4 insert pack out there somewhere…

I mentioned in the shoutouts from my most recent post, these cards are FUGLY.  What an incredibly boring design.  At least Upper Deck X’s design fit it’s theme.  This is just so… blah.  As for the backs, they only have career stats and a little blurb, because of a second, different picture taking up half the back.  This giant picture on the back may be a dig at the 2008 Topps base set design, as this picture is nearly as large as the ones on their fronts.

That was observational comedy, my friends.  Onward to Topps Treasury!

2008-09 Topps Treasury (5 cards per pack; why isn’t Larry Bird on money?)

27 Zach Randolph- A big scoring presence that gets rebounds, but is still fairly soft nonetheless.  Still, a fair few teams are lacking the good things he brings.

60 Rip Hamilton

59 Jeff Green- My first Thunder card!  w00t!

83 Brandon Roy

120 Kosta Koufos Rookie Refractor #’ed to /2008- I assume this is a bronze.  This guy is a rookie Center for the Jazz it doth seem.  Here’s hoping for something better than Ostertagian for the ginormously tall youngin’.

The base design is simplistic, but it FITS THE THEME.  Lack of easily fingerprinted up gloss is nice too.  And the refractor version, much like what 2008 Topps Chrome baseball to the regular set, just makes it POP.

Now then, back to the recrap box.  We’ve established that the packs in it are even more garbage than usual.  Now for the contents of said packs.  I stated earlier that I got better cards from the 1989 Donruss and Topps, and 1994 Fleer Ultra, than the five packs from 2007 (6 and 12 card packs of Topps series 2, 5 card packs of Upper Deck series two and Fleer Ultra, and a 3 card pack of Bowman Chrome.

So here are the best of what I got from each.  You can judge for yourself.

Old Junk-

1989 Topps- Barry Bonds, Fred McGriff, Dwight Evans

1989 Donruss- Ken Griffey Jr. “Rated Rookie”, Lee Smith

1994 Fleer Ultra- Mike Piazza Award Winners insert, Roger Clemens, Kevin Roberson (<3) Rookie

New Junk-

2007 Topps- Joe DiMaggio “The Streak” 26 and 48, David Ortiz, Dan Haren Gold #’ed /2007, Brandon Morrow Rookie

2007 Upper Deck- Mark DeRosa?  The rest of the pack consisted of David DeJesus, Carlos Silva, Alex Rios, and Olmedo Saenz, so… there are no winners here.

2007 Fleer Ultra- Hideki Okajima Rookie

2007 Bowman Chrome- Either Chien-Ming Wang or 29 year old “Prospect” Jonathan Van Every.  Hmm… prospects are grim, methinks.

So whatcha think?

Griffey RC, Bonds, Pizza insert, Clemens, Lee Smith, the Crime Dog, and Dwight Evans

vs.

Two Joe D inserts that are cool but worthless, Okajima RC, Papi, Gold #’ed Haren, Chien-Ming Wang, and a pushing-30 prospect…

I didn’t even get any other good base cards in the 2007 packs.  They were remarkably similar to the old school packs in that regard.  A couple couple nice players, and then a whole lotta nothin’.  Only difference being there are a whole lot less cards in the new packs.

Overall, the Griffey rookie makes it worthwhile, but it still won’t make me tilt my thumb upward.  The Griffey is wonderful, but it’s the principle.  The packs in this thing were garbage enough that I actually mean it when I say “never again” to Walmart repacks, and maybe ALL repacks in general.  It’s just horrid to charge more than $6 for this CRAP.

Peace.