Siblings Rock

I have just a quick post for today, but it's something of a milestone post for yours truly.

My sister, who frequents my blog more than any sane person should, has made three donations to my collection.

The first two of these gifts pieces of cardboard filled TWO gaps in my Cubs FrankenSet.

 The FrankenSet will never be finished, because I'll constantly look to add new and interesting Cubs cards to the pages.  The next card might be a 1984 Fleer Umbrella Hat card of Jay Johnstone or maybe a 2016 card of the Cubs newest pitching ace, David Price.  A guy can dream, right?

Jane has now given me a total of eight cards (including the epic Iowa Cubbie Bear) which have found their way into the FrankenSet, and these two filled the place holders for cards #530 and #586.

Only twenty-seven vacant slots left to fill!

The third card from Jane is the LAST card for 2012 Panini Triple Play master set.  I opened somewhere around six boxes of packs and never did pill this Nolan Ryan Hall of Fame Card.  The subset usually only had two or three of these cards per box, which in my book counts as short-printed.  Let's not talk about all the weird looks I received at card shows and brick & mortar card shops when I asked if they had any Triple Play cards.

 Yep, I've finished my first master set!  Base cards, subsets, relics, puzzles, stickers, tattoos, and eye black. What a task that was!  And, for what it's worth, it looks awesome in a binder! What a pretty great surprise from my sister!

Now that the Triple Play set has been put to bed I don't have any other sets left to finish. I was working on twelve sets back in January, and I set a goal to complete six of them before 2016, but instead I knocked off each and every last one!  It's been a good collecting year.  That's for sure!
 
Thanks for the help, Jane!

Yellow Tape? Pshaw!

I found a few more 2012 Panini Triple Play to send to Madding, the author of Cards on Cards, and he returned the favor with a nice little trade package.

Yellow tape?  I don't think I can argue here.  I'm not sure what it's true purpose is, but it is removed from the protective holds with ease.  Two thumbs up for the yellow tape!  Personally, I'm a huge supporter or "painters" tape, but I have only seen it in rolls of blue and green up until now.

Enough tape talk... let's get to the cards!

I'm working on a second and third short set of 2012 Triple Play.  One of the Granderson cards finished off the second set.  Nice!

Rizzo has been on fire this week.  The Cubs have run off four wins in a row and Anthony has either driven in or scored the deciding run in each of those four games.  

 A Flashback of Mr. Cub!  Yes, sir!  We'll add it to the binders for sure.

 And lastly, a pair of Nomar Garciaparra cards that have me wrinkling my brow.  Nomar has a page in one of my binders (Cubs uniforms only) and these cards are both new to me.  So, I'm ecstatic about the new additions.

 But, what in the world is going on here?  It's as though Topps is trying to show off their Photoshopping skills.  With 95% certainty I'll announce the bottom card as the original/base card and the top card is some sort of short print.  I don't recall the Cubs going all retro back in 2005 (old C on cap and retro stirrups), but I've been wrong before and I'll be wrong again.

Thanks again for another quick and easy trade, Madding!

A Stack of Cubs Courtesy of Chipp 'n' Dale

Earlier this spring I found my collection of 2012 Panini Triple Play cards had grown out of control so I searched for want lists pertaining to this set and ran across Chipp 'n' Dale.  James is the curator of this Braves-centric blog and much to my delight I was able to package up and ship off 175+ cards from the aforementioned set. 

I was floored by James' generosity when his trade package arrived.  Let's take a look!

  Holy smokes!  Vintage!  Vintage for 2012 Triple Play?  Um, sign me up!  James, I have another 600 Triple Play cards or so if you have more vintage you would like to get rid of!

Young Bruce Sutter... nice.  My only copy of the '78 Sutter had to go in my '78 set, so I was pretty stoked to have another one to place in my Cubs binder.  The 1980 card with Sutter sportin' the powder blue uniforms with white pinstripes is just magnificent.  I really like how Sutter's leg kick is nearly parallel to the two banners AND his autograph. 

 Here we have two of my favorite boys from the 1969 team: Don Kessinger and Glenn Beckert.  I have mini collections of both players and these will make fantastic additions.

 As far as my player collections go all of the following were hits:

 Can Ryne be a legend if he retired less than a score ago?  In my opinion it's way too early to call him a legend.  I think I have mentioned this before, but the 2001 Golden Moments card of Kerry Wood is one of my favorites.

Glenallen Hill seemed to one bad dude when he played for the Cubs, but in the fierce competitor way, not in the PR nightmare way.  Fujikawa is a guy I got behind early and he's getting some love in the 2014 sets, which I don't quite understand.  Hopefully, he'll truly merit a card before too long.

A Ryno coin and a mini sticker card of Wild Thing.  A Ryno and a Wild Thing.  I'm sure there's a pun there somewhere I'm missing.

 Other favorites and why: EY because of his smile, Henry Rodriguez because he reminds of "Oh Henry!" candy bars, Bob Dernier because a friend of mine knows him personally, and Ryan Dempster because he's such a cut-up.  The Hawk?  No explanation necessary in my mind.  He's The Hawk!

 Lastly, two of the prospects I'm hoping will pan out in the near future: Arismendy Alcantara and Junior Lake.

 Am I the only one who wish Topps would take a chance and make the flagship product in 2015 with a non-white border?  I don't know that lime green would do the trick, but something with color would be a pleasant change.  If they really want to go crazy and set the collecting world on its ear, then Topps could make white bordered parallels.  Wouldn't that be something?

James, this was a stellar return package!  Thanks so much for the cards!

Cardinal Fans Are Cool: Part 2 (A Trade Post)

On contacted Madding, author of Cards on Cards, about the possibility of swapping some 2012 Panini Triple Play.  Mr. Madding is a Cardinals and I'm sure one of the "Cards" in his blog's title reflects his favorite baseball team, but my mind keeps going back-and-forth on which one represents cardboard and which one is about the Redbirds.  Huh.  I'm a Cub fan... I shouldn't spend my time on such trivial items!

Here's what started the trade:

Yep, I'm down to four cards to complete the master set of '12 Triple Play.  I've had a rough time tracking down the "Real Feel Pants" card.  You don't have one laying around, do you?

Madding, an ever-generous Cardinal fan, tossed in a few Cubs.  You know what's great?  All of them will find a spot in my binders!

 What kind of baseball card collecting Cub fan would I be if I didn't keep my Mr. Cub cards in a binder?

Topps Stickers!  I don't have any of these yet.

My unofficial collection of Starlin Castro is growing much faster than my official player collection of Kosuke Fukudome.  This is my 93rd unique Fukudome card and Starlin is not too far behind!

Here are my two favorites, a 2013 gold parallel and a 2014 red parallel of Junior Lake.

 I remember sitting behind the first baseman in Peoria while Junior played shortstop and always being alert and ready.  He threw as hard as Shawon Dunston from the position, but he made Shawon look accurate.  That takes some talent!
Currently, Junior is knocking over ball-hawks on Waveland Avenue with his mammoth home runs.  Good for you, Junior!

Madding, thanks for the set help and the extra Cubs!  They are great additions to my binder!  And dare I say it?  For the second time in as many days, Cardinal fans are ... gulp... pretty cool.

Spring Break - The Cards

I used the "Card Shop Finder" app on my smartphone and it sent me to my first card shop in Mesa: Showtime Sports Cards. I was surprised to see that it's main demographic was the "Magic" crowd and there a couple of tables full of younger individuals moving non-sports cards around and talking about things that seemed unrecognizable.  The stored had plenty of monster boxes of cards to sift through, but they weren't sorted by year, or by set, or by team.  What a nightmare.  I left without making a purchase.

I was not deterred, I contacted Daniel.  We all know Daniel as the guy who's always showing off his terrific D'backs bling.  I figured if anybody within the blogosphere would know where to go he would.  I e-mailed him late that evening and by the next morning I had an e-mail waiting for me.  Clutch.  So clutch.

Since Daniel's favorites were a bit out of the way from where we were staying we headed off for the nearest shop: Hot Corner Sports Card & Memorabilia.  After a twenty-five minute drive while following GPS directions we finally arrived. 

Closed.  Craptastic. 

I peered into the window and my friend and sister suggested we try another spot.  Man, the next closest spot was NOT close.

We began to walk back to the rental car and some guy comes jogging out of the laundromat next door.  The next thing I know we're in the card shop and the owner is explaining that he mans both the card shop and the laundromat.

"Would it be okay if I lock you in the shop while I go next door?  You can just bang on the wall when you're ready to check out."

Mind?  Holy cow.  This guy doesn't know anything more about us than we're Cubs fans because of our attire.  Baseball card people are pretty awesome.  His shop had a homemade shelving system with about twenty monster boxes settled inside and each read "10 cents each" on the outside.  And, wait for it...  the cards were sorted by year and set.  They weren't collated by number, but it was a HUGE step up from the other place.

I pulled up my wantlist from Google Drive on my smartphone and my sister dug into the monster boxes.  She was very patient and pulled a number of singles I needed for my sets.  What a huge help! Thanks, Jane!

My friend helped with the sets for a little and the perused the rest of the store and eventually bought some vintage cards from the shop owner once he returned. 

Meanwhile I looked through each monster box looking for some cool sets.  I'm attracted to sets that feature retired players and I was not disappointed.

 2005 Topps, "The Legendary Years"

2003 Upper Deck, "SP Legendary Cuts"

2005 Upper Deck, "Sweet Spot Classic"

2005 Upper Deck, "SP Legendary Cuts"

 And then I found another set in the dime boxes that made really excited.  I'm in the process of putting together a "vintage" binder of reprints.  I'll never be able to own cards of stars from the 50's, 60's, or 70's, but I can offer cards like "The Cards Your Mother Threw Out" and the like a good home in my binders.  Reprints aren't worth much coin, but they sure are fun to look at!  I'm all about the fun.

I bought every 2004 Topps "Fan Favorites" card I could scrounge up. 

 

C'mon, isn't that Roger Craig card awesome?  In all, I wound up with thirty-two unique cards from the Fan Favorites set, twenty-eight of which are shown on this blog post. 

Three picture of nine cards each.  Where's the twenty-eighth card?  I found two Andre Dawson cards that I bought for my sister, one of which is a Fan Favorite!  The least I could do for her troubles sifting through the Donruss junk wax.

I also found four Kerry Wood cards that were new  to me.  The Topps Finest in the lower left if my favorite by far.  It's beautiful in hand.  I'm up to 309 different cards of Kerry Wood!

 The price for the above cards?  Five bucks.  I was pretty happy the total, especially considering I walked out of there with more than sixty cards.

Unfortunately, I didn't stop there.  No, I didn't by the 2014 Heritage hobby packs he was peddling for five dollars each or the 2014 boxes of Turkey Red for forty-five dollars. My LCS in P-town offers much better deals.

Nope, I caved and bought 130 retail packs of 2012 Panini Triple Play.  At thirty cents a pack I couldn't pass them up.  I was twelve cards short of finishing the set and I was bound to complete the 300 card set after opening 910 more cards.  Right?

Wrong.

I'm still trying to polish off that master set and I'm now down to five cards. I didn't even have a fighting chance, because I came to find out later that the game-used cards aren't inserted into retail packs, so I'm still missing the "Real Feel Pants" card.  Bummer.  

No worries.  My friend, my sister and myself spent our last evening ripping into the packs.  It was lots of fun.  I can only imagine the maid's face when she emptied the trash from our suite the next day.  Pack wrappers galore!

By the way, if you need any 2012 Panini Triple Play... yeah, I'm your guy.

My Angels were In Order, but now they're gone.

I have all my trade bait sorted by team in a 3000 count box... nicely labeled and orderly.  My Angels stack was pretty large and then Tom, from The Angels, In Order, contacted me and now my stash of Angels is quite depleted!

I'm okay with that though, because Tom sent lots of set help my way and some other fun Cubs.  Let's take a look, shall we?

Set help!  I still need just over one hundred cards in my Topps Total set from 2002, but I can cross Mr. Palmeiro off the list.  

I found it pretty cool that Tom was able to knock of the last piece of the Holliday and Halladay puzzles in the 2012 Triple Set.  Only seventeen more cards to go in that one!

Eleven more cards to cross off from the 1994 Fleer set; only about eighty to go!

My seventy-first different Kosuke Fukudome card: 2010 Topps Turkey Red.

 I like that these appear to be painted/sketched.  The cards are pretty sweet looking and it's a set that I'm a little bummed about not completing initially back in 2010.

I'm a big fan of random Cub cards.  Especially those cards that are from sets that I'm not familiar with.   Here we have examples of Fleer Ultra sets from three different years.  Nice!

I also love my Cubs prospects.  Yes, I'm a bit of a prospector, but these days I think most Cubs fans are.  Let's face, there hasn't been much to cheer about in the last five years.

 Above we have some 2012 Bowman Platinum of Trey McNutt, who was the 2010 Cubs minor league pitcher of the year, and Javier Baez, who is a virtual lock for the 2013 Cubs minor league hitter of the year.    I love me some purple parallel platinum (and alliteration)!   The 2013 Bowman Chrome of Gioskar Amaya is certainly welcome in my collection as most of Cubs cards from that set are in my FrankenSet.

Thanks for the trade, Tom.  When I've replenished my stock of Angels I'll be in touch!

Yellow Bubbler from Jaybarkerfan's Junk

Wes, from Jaybarkerfan's Junk, has kept very busy sending me little plain white envelope bombs as of late.  But then something different happened: a yellow bubble mailer arrived in my mailbox.

To be honest.  I'm kind of lost.  My head is spinning a bit.  Why?  Well, nearly four weeks ago Wes left a comment about possibly having a 2012 Panini Triple Play "Real Feel" card for my set.  He said he would get it out in the mail.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks later.  No "Real Feel" card, which I had already forgotten about, but a couple of PWE Bombs.  To thank Wes for the Cubs that keep randomly appearing in my mailbox I sent him a little something.  He seemed pleased.  As was I, as I thought I had evened the score.


Now, back to the present: the yellow bubble mailer.  Guess what the key component was in its contents?  Yep, you're right: the "Real Feel" card for the set I've been chasing.  Check here for the cards that are still alluding me.

Pshaw!?!  What's the score now?  You'd think as someone who keeps receiving copious amounts of mail, from the same generous blogger, that I would have a better idea of what's going on!  Nope.  But it sure is fun!

Me thinks it's time to play catch up again. I'll have to be on the look out in the next couple of months to make a worthy surprise package for Wes.

Scroll down for some more of the loot that Wes sent in the yellow bubble mailer.

Some early 1980's Topps love:

All-Star Ken Holtzman's last regularly issued Topps card:

My favorite super-utility player from the last decade, mark DeRosa:

 I've always enjoyed the design of this '84 Donruss set, but never had the coin to chase it when I was younger.

I remember Spring Training back in '91 and how Gary Scott was setting the world on fire.  I rushed out to snag all of his cards, and well, overpaid for the career 0.160 hitter.  Somehow I missed out on this red boarded card from Score.  I'm glad I didn't for over a fiver for this one back in the day!

At some point I'm going to add checklists of my personal collection to the blog.  Kosuke's will probably be the first to debut.

 

 Here's a Cub I never heard of before.  This the '87 Fleer update card of Mike Mason.  He only pitched 17 games in his Cubs career.  Coincidentally, one of the two head coaches I had in college was named Mike Mason.  Nope, not the same guy, but their beards were similar.  Still pretty cool.

Thanks again for the package, Wes!