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Check the Tek-nique

You know, sometimes you just need to put together an easy post. I spend way too much time looking through my scan folders for cards that have a theme that I feel like talking about on any given day. I try to avoid the easy stuff, even if it doesn’t seem like it. Color matching is too obvious mostly. Same sets and same brands? Sometimes…please see below.

Possibly more importantly is can I think of a title? Something that screams, “Yeah, sure. Good enough.”

Today, I’m going with a weak bit of word play and a brand that I’ve passed over so, so many times in the past because it didn’t seem interesting enough. But hey, I gotta feature them sometimes, and honestly the Teks are piling up a tiny bit (as are the Moments & Milestones).

Like always, we’re going to be playing a little game called “Name the Pattern.” You all are welcome to help me out. I’ll throw out my random thoughts, but if the group outwits me (a strong possibility) I’ll change it.

1999 30B

Pattern #30B – Wafer Cookie

I haven’t had one in a long time, but this makes me think of splitting open one of those wafer cookies with that frosting cream stuff in the middle. You know the ones, right?

2000 3

Pattern #3 – The League

Wow, you can see the card number and pattern poking through on the left side. Anyway, this is a bland pattern.

2000 7

Pattern #7 – Hometown Star

The name of the city will change for each player, which is pretty interesting. This level of customization would never happen now.

2000 11

Pattern #11 – BA Pyramid

Pretty self-explanatory. I wanted to incorporate the tri-force on this, but I already used it once and don’t want to repeat myself too much.

Running away from the vortex

There are no pattern numbers for these from 2014 and newer and the names are pretty widely, but not universally, agreed upon already. This one is Net

Unphased by the vortex

Some may call it a Grid, but I prefer Net.

Follow the..oh we’re back at the start already

This is the spiral bricks pattern, and I think it’s the most common one from this year. A simple numbering would help identify that.

1999 7A

Pattern #7A – Worst Maze Ever

Back to unnamed patterns. I’m definitely open to other suggestions on this one.

1999 16A

Pattern #16A – Deco Balls

A lot of the 1999 patterns have that art deco feel to them. The stitching from the balls going into the straight lines creates a neat optical illusion.

Alright, well, that’s a start. Not a start because I’ve done this before. A middle. Part of a middle. It’s a thing you either read or scrolled through quickly or ignored completely. Whatever the case may be, odds are high that I’ll be back with more as soon as I can think of more word play with the name Tek.

26 left to show before taking Sportlots delivery.

Last Year’s Card Shop Visit

Back in April of last year, I had to go to Rockford where my company’s home office is for some office-wide training. That was pretty standard stuff, but also only lasted half of the day. They let everyone go home afterwards, which was fantastic. Since my home was over an hour away, I planned in advance to kill some time at a local card shop before heading back.

At this point, unfortunately, I don’t think it’s even worth mentioning the name of the shop as it’s since closed down for good. I learned that when I tried looking up their hours for a repeat visit recently. Their advertised last day was a couple days before I was scheduled to be in town with time on my hands. That’s too bad.

The owner also sets up at the nearby mall for their regular card shows (or at least did in the past, and I think he helped organize them). Those shows are kind of tiny, but were fun to browse the couple times I’ve been able to go.

I spent probably close to two hours or so in that card shop on this first and last visit. It was a big place and I did want to go back to look for more. Most of the space was memorabilia and supplies that I didn’t care for. But I gravitated towards the ten-to-fifty cent boxes and loaded up heavily, mostly on the dime side. After I was done with that, I picked up quite a few Kerry Wood relics from the case, but I’ll show those another time. For the time being, I’ll simply showcase a tiny portion of those cheapy deals.

Star power

I really don’t make it a habit to buy base cards, but these were a dime or less. I think there was a buy X get Y free thing so it probably landed in my stack to meet a quota

Wood designs look okay in chrome, too

Same goes for the next few. I didn’t find a lot of Maddux cards that I needed, but I’ll snag an old Bowman Chrome.

No non-refractor versions

I don’t like Bowman’s Best, but I like the price. Crazy that I didn’t have this yet.

Not wild about the name placement

Sweet Spot is a high end thing, so it’ll be more rare for a fellow card blogger to have one of these to trade me. Love the red foil.

Smirk

A small end to the Maddux portion of my haul. Yep, this was it for him, but I’m cool with that. A gaudy Goudey to move on to some of the main attraction.

Welcome to Broder country

I’m currently writing this with thunder storms passing through the area. Let’s hope for no actual power surges.

Some of these have no year or other identifiers

I’m not sure who had the most unlicensed cards made, but Frank Thomas has to be in top 5 for baseball, if not top 3. Look at that foil! Look at that meteor that’s gonna get smacked away from our precious planet!

1990 Rookie Superstar

By now you’ve probably guessed that most of my stack was Frank Thomas oddballs and unlicensed stuff. Makes sense they would end up in a mostly local shop, and of course I’m going to pile up when they price is right.

Put that in your locket

Several were from this American Sports Monthly thing, and they’re not terrible looking cards. I’m not too familiar with that institution or how these were distributed, but it went on for a while with several different designs and Frank was heavily featured. You’ll see a lot more later.

Overall, I have a couple dozen more cards of the Big Hurt that look equally awesome and not-major-company quality. The toughest part is identifying them, and checklisting them, but maybe I’ll save that discussion for another day. Too bad I can’t go back to that shop another day.

35 left to show before taking Sportlots delivery.

Still Stuck On A Trade From 2017

I’m at the point now where I want to start building up some more trade bait for the blog so I can get new packages coming in, since I’m so close to giving credit to all the packages that have come in. I just need a little time and motivation to actually work on that instead of other hobbies.

It’s hard to balance my time properly and I always feel like I’m not giving enough consideration to something I really enjoy. I’ve also been having computer problems lately and am slowly transitioning to a new laptop. I haven’t scanned cards that came to me in February or updated my spreadsheets yet. Anyway, these are all just ways to slightly rationalize how pathetic it is that I still haven’t shown everything from a trade package that came in back in 2017. If you recall, not so long ago I mentioned that Kerry, also known as Madding, also known as Cards on Cards just keeps sending me more stuff out of nowhere and I’m very far behind in showing off every card.

I think the next post I make for his mailings will put me into 2018 finally.

Arrieta was not a 2015 All-Star…

I’ve purchased the NL All-Star blisters for 2017 and 2018 (and might for 2019, depending on who’s in it), but didn’t get this year since the Cubs hadn’t won the whole thing yet. Thankfully they’re available nationwide so I can get this slight numbering variant that’s oh so important to fools like me.

Digging the potato sack set

Kerry is a Heritage set collector as well as a Cardinals collector, so I like to try to help with his sets here and there as I can. In return, he sometimes sends me his duplicates like this Rizzo short print.

Crazy how much the border changes

Hendricks is not an SP, but he is someone I needed as I only bought a single blaster of this.

You lead that league!

I’ve said it before but it always bears repeating until the quest is complete. Base cards are a trading-to-me-person’s best friend. There are so many I need.

I don’t know the other two people

He may not be named on the front of this card, but I do count this as a Dexter Fowler card on my checklist.

More obviously a Fowler card

It was nice of Dexter to continue playing for the Cubs while technically playing for the Cardinals.

Such a pained look on his face

I really haven’t begun on this chrome rainbow except for one of the gold refractors, but I’ll take any start I can get.

Glad I don’t have to also go after a league leader

I haven’t paid close attention to Chrome, so I don’t know for sure if these X-fractors are retail exclusives or not, but I like that the design is changed each year

Mr. Willson

No matter where they came from, I’m glad they’re with me now. Just a handful more players to obtain. If any of you out there have them, let me know!

Thank you again to Kerry for the old trades, for the new trades, all the surprise packages. There’s still way too much to show, but at least I’m moving forward on the timeline.

44 left to show before taking Sportlots delivery.

Introducing the Jon Lester Collection

This is part twelve of a twenty-five part series chronicling my budding collections of the 2016 World Series champion Cubs. Obviously, I’ve already starting showing off some of those cards, but I wanted to offer a formal introduction to the various players. With my legacy player collections, I’m still going to attempt to show every single card on the blog, but with these new guys I’m taking a different approach as you’ll see here where I lump cards in one scan, and will probably skip many of the more basic cards I get unless I can get a good theme together.

I’ll be honest. A big reason why I’m focusing on Jon Lester today is so I can get that Sportlots delivery number down in a quick and easy fashion. Those 200+ cards are waiting for me to pay for shipping and I really don’t want to wait a whole lot longer to meet my goal. Back-to-back larger posts will certainly help quite a bit in that regard. So, how’s about we take a look at the career of Lester so far.

I started out with a nice array of Lester cards – more than I expected

Jon came into the league in 2006 with the Boston Red Sox in June after being drafted by them in 2002. In that first year, he posted a 7-2 record before being put on the DL in late August.

Takeaways from my Documentary case and a heritage to even out the scan

What started as back pain complaints turned into a diagnosis of anaplastic large cell lymphoma. Luckily, it was treatable and Lester was pronounced cancer free just a couple months later and he returned to the majors in the middle of 2007.

Side note: As with all players in 2008 Documentary that I collect, I’m tracking their card record to see how well the team fared in the games represented by his picture. I don’t count the gold parallels. Lester has 12 cards in the set and I’ve shown one elsewhere before.

Lester Red Sox card record: 4-2

See? I had some good stuff already like inserts, #’d and minis

2007 also saw Jon’s first World Series championship. He pitched and won the clinching game against the Colorado Rockies, completing the four game sweep. The next year, he kept rolling and pitched his first no-hitter, only allowing two walks and recording 9 strikeouts in the effort)

And, I had a lot of it for Lester for whatever reason. Must have been a magnet without knowing it

He would stay consistent, if not improving, with Boston and earned his first three All-star appearances in 2010, 2011, and 2014. Shortly after the 2014 AS game, he was traded to the Oakland A’s with Johnny Gomes for Yoenis Cespedes.

Some of this was from slightly after I started collecting him, but 4 full scans is great

That tenure with Oakland only lasted the one half season and later in 2014, he signed as a free agent with your Chicago Cubs on a six-year deal. That first year saw him post a 3.34 ERA with over 200 strikeouts, but 2016 would be better.

Last hurrah for Fleer

In that famous 2016 year, my shared namesake would win 19 regular season games (for what that’s worth) and lowered that ERA to a career-low 2.44. He found himself on another All-Star roster and finished second in the NL Cy Young voting. And then there was the playoffs.

I should have shown Cubs cards, but I didn’t for whatever reason

He pitched in one game of the NLDS against the Giants, which he won allowing zero runs over 8 innings. The NLCS gave him two starts. He went 1-0, allowing two runs, nine hits and two walks over 13 innings with 9 Ks and nabbed the title of NLCS MVP. In the World Series, he pitched three games (two starts and in relief for game 7), had a 1-1 record and struck out 16 over 14.2 innings while giving up 7 runs, 6 earned on the way to the title.

I just think these are cool looking and wanted to show them

Since then, he’s still been solid for the Cubs and 2017 saw him hit his first career home run and notch his 2,000th strikeout, and 2018 was another All-Star year.

At least I included a blue border

In terms of collecting, the team switch and the pretty clear career trajectory means his cards aren’t too expensive. They are plentiful, though at nearly 1400 total for me to chase. As of now, I’m doing well at nearly 20%. Onward and upward!

55 left to show before taking Sportlots delivery.

Maddux Overload – 2002 Edition

2002.

The New England Patriots beat the St. Louis Rams for their first NFL championship shortly after the tragic events of 9/11, so a lot of people put extra meaning on that team winning, but I’ll let you decide if it was warranted.

The Los Angeles Lakers win their third straight title, this time against the Nets, so of course they did. The Charlotte Hornets moved to New Orleans creating a string of team naming events that still confuses me to this day. On the WNBA side, the LA Sparks also repeated to take their second straight title. The New York Liberty returned to the finals after a year away for the loss.

Lennox Lewis keeps the Heavyweight Boxing title after beating Mike Tyson in real life, but I don’t know he would be able to beat him in the NES game.

Lance Armstrong wins the Tour de France. Again. Again. Oh, oops. Wait. No he officially didn’t. Again. Again.

Tiger Woods wins the Masters in back to back years and was the only player to end the U.S. Open with a score under par.

Canada wins both Olympic gold medals, but Detroit takes the Stanley Cup against the Carolina Hurricanes. I’m unsure how many Canadians played for either of those teams.

Serena Williams wins 3 of 4 major tournaments, but misses out on the Grand Slam as Jennifer Capriati takes the Australian Open.

The Anaheim Angels (not yet of Los Angeles) win the World Series in seven games over the San Francisco Giants. Mike Trout, and even year bullshit, were both still several years away for their respective clubs.

And in 2002, card manufacturers released 384 cards of Greg Maddux that I deemed worthy of my collecting efforts.

Thanks to the generosity of reader Jeremy, originally mentioned in our landmark 500th post (and in my 1993 Overload post, and 1994 post, and 1995 post, and 1996 post and 1997 post and 1998 post and 1999 post and 2000 post and 2001 post), I now have 38 more of those cards as I did before.

2002 Before Jeremy – 17/384 cards – 4%

2002 After Jeremy – 55/384 cards (including zero upgrades) – 14%

After seeing the yearly totals go down for three straight years, 2002 gave us a leap of over 100 more cards over 2001’s total. We’re going to keep going up for a bit, too as the industry collectively decided to cram a bunch of new parallels into everything.

In the many years since Jeremy’s package, I’ve acquired 27 more 2001 cards, bringing my total to 82 for the year ’02, and putting me at slightly over 21% for that year. Still, as always, there’s plenty of progress yet to be made. For now, let’s focus on what Jeremy sent.

Not a real piece of jersey on the right side

The collecting road is going to be long for Absolute Memorabilia. A good portion of this product is, understandably, memorabilia. Not as much this year as in other years, but there are also a lot of insert parallels that makes this daunting

Creepy eyes

There are too many Bowman sets these days. Heritage didn’t last all that long and my quest for this year’s Heritage is over. Regular Bowman, Chrome and Best haven’t even begun.

Normal eyes

It’s still weird to me that Diamond Kings is its own product. It’s like Gallery meets Studio, which is fine, but it’s hard to break free from the idea they should be subsets in regular Donruss (like how it is now…while also still being its own product).

Not a diamond King subset

I never noticed that those corner icon things are baseball diamonds. And terrible ones at that.

Big E

Elite is elite. It always looks the same, but somehow continues to exist. At least the inserts and things haven’t gotten too crazy yet.

It’ll be a while before I’m done with Originals

This card looks like it’s primed for a relic window, but there isn’t a relic version. There are of other Donruss Originals inserts, but not this one.

One time when “L” is good

Super Estrellas is not such as super design. At least it’s a basic set collecting-wise.

This would stand out in a pack

In fact, after this insert, which looks better in person for obvious reasons, all I need is the poster from this set.

The background is like a 90s after school special title screen

E-X parallels are highly sought after, if I’m not mistaken. It looks like there’s also a jersey card, which should be interesting with the acetate.

<<<<<

Finest is so hit or miss. This one is a miss for me. Too busy in the background with a bunch of useless garbage and the dot matrix font along the edge does it no favors.

I don’t see Maddux in that clipping

We’re moving on to Fleer and holy hell there are a lot of Fleer cards to collect each year.

Not how the stars and stripes works

For instance, there are three more versions of this insert card to get. All three of them are relics: single and dual and patch.

Genuinely dumb

I’ve never liked the Genuine set. I don’t get it. Here’s the good news, though. This is a one and done set for Maddux.

Old man Maddux with his bat cane

So many relic cards in Fleer products. Three of the 5 I still need are jersey or patch cards here too. You’d think with this kind of flood, it’d be easier to find some of them.

Back when I scanned things dumb and cut off the sides of some cards

Tradition is a relatively basic set compared to other Fleers, but most of what’s left is very low numbered parallels.

Anyone have these curtains in their house?

Tradition update is basically the same thing, but adds an autograph #/99 to the chase.

make sure to adhere your pictures with blue tape

Alright, we’re at the end of the Fleer portion of our program. Time to put it in the scrapbook

Black sheep of the family

Did you ever want to know what 2001 Leaf would look like? Well, 2002 Leaf has you covered for some reason. Nope, that wasn’t confusing for me to find in my checklist at all.

Star

Buckle up for a slew of Rookies and Stars. Here’s what I believe is the normal base card showing a sweet throwback uniform.

Closer to rookie

This throwback photo is listed as a short print. I don’t know if that’s true, but I’ll go with it.

Get used to this design

This set had a subset, which is surprising. Most would be turned into inserts instead.

Different pictures are good

I don’t know how many other players are in this part, but Maddux shows up 4 times.

Aaaaannnd…scene!

I got three of the four. Next step is the longevity parallels of all the above #/100. Easy!

Oh look, half a background

I know I say this pretty much every time, but…man is SP Authentic extremely boring. I just don’t get it. Was this a hit chaser’s product or something?

Dead ball era, but for card designs

SPx has had ups and downs. This is a down. I need some flair. Some holograms. Some die cuts. Something that brings it back to its more premium roots.

Even Stadium Club isn’t immune from a boring look

Surprisingly, Stadium Club is very light this year. No parallels to chase. Just a relic. That seems like a mistake, but I’ll take it.

Meh

2002 Topps is an okay design, I guess but that border kills it. They liked to pick odd colors and they don’t always work.

Far too busy

Remember when there were some interesting subsets in Topps? Now it’s all about rookie cups and rookie debuts and rookie’s first rookie rookie who led the league in being a rookie.

Iceman the best

A rare mini appears. Well, not rare in that it’s an SP, although maybe? But I don’t think so. Rare in that this massive package that we got, there simply were not many in there. This is still the only 206 mini I have so far.

Since I’ll never buy a box

This is the second time in the last three posts that 2002 Heritage has appeared. What an interesting photo effect that was used for these. Not ideal, but interesting.

Ah yes, good old shoulder number and shoe letter

Topps Reserve is suffering from SP syndrome. What is this supposed to be accomplishing here?

Don’t want it back

I’m not on the Topps Total bandwagon. The only benefit is that some people get cards when they wouldn’t otherwise. Everything else about it is terrible.

Pointless timelines bug me

I think that Upper Deck is the toughest company to keep track of. It’s really hard for me to tell what is an insert from their flagship product and what is a brand new one. I’m pretty sure that this is its own thing.

Just need two more Ultra cards

I hadn’t thought about it before, but there are very few pictures of pitchers running to cover a base (or field a ball). Them in set position waiting for a grounder, yeah.

Missing the electrics

I’m also okay not seeing 40-Man, although I like the look of these a lot more. Crazy that there’s a jersey card to chase in this set too. Seems like every set had a Maddux jersey.

Have this insert, but not the base card

This is a card that’s begging for texture. Foil, embossing, die cuts, or something.

I’m okay with everything but the photo choice

Okay, so not every set had a Maddux jersey. This one had a Maddux bat card.

Need the silver parallel

Here’s the texture I was looking for. Ovation is usually good for that and I appreciate it. I’m not standing up or anything, though.

Two balls on the same play? Sounds like cheating to me

Last one is a checklist from the Collector’s Choice successor. It’s a simple set with just a single parallel to chase, so that’ll be a small Victory once I’m done with that. For now, I will go ahead and thank Jeremy again, wherever you are. It’s amazing that I’m still working through this in some fashion so many years later, but I hope to finally put a bow on it by the end of 2019.

104 left to show before taking Sportlots delivery.

A Hot Dog Of A Trade – Part 2 of 2

Time once again to check in with a name that should be familiar to frequent readers of the blog. Bill, known as minibbcards on the Trading Card Database (his want list is found here) sent me a huge stack of cards earlier in my World Series Cubs pursuit, and I was able to turn that into 8 separate posts over the course of a year (because I’m slow).

This time I’m slow in showing off the second part of our latest trade. Here’s a link to the first part of this trade, which was posted in November. I’ve had longer gaps, sadly. But the good news is that I’m not taking a full year to finish off this trade showcase, because this is the second of two parts. I did it!

If he wasn’t on the Cardinals, I’d hope for a bounce back year

Sliding into another completed trade!

Hoping for continued improvement here, however

Leaping at the opportunity to close out another set of scans!

Not the best start to the year, I hear

Pumped to add a rainbow foil to the collection, even if it doesn’t scan too well.

Bryce’s teammate

Out of descriptors based on the picture. Here’s that other rainbow foil I mentioned.

Holy cow that glove looks massive

Yikes, those printing pox are contagious. Someone needs to make a vaccine for that.

Sorry Bill, I’m glad the minis are gone

GQ is the hot thing for now and I haven’t touched it so far this year. Maybe I’ll buy a box at the National if it’s part of the pack redemption program.

Looks staged, but probably isn’t

Sliding into another…oh wait…I already said that. Crazy that I didn’t have this already.

No one would stage this

Not so crazy that I didn’t have this. I am happy to accept any checklists that feature players I collect (I’d prefer if they were ones I don’t already have, of course).

Shot in what looks like a little league field

I had to do a little research on this one to find out it’s one of the Woolworth’s cards from the mid-80s. I’m very familiar with the K-Mart and Kay-Bee sets, but there were no Woolworth’s near me growing up so this was my first exposure.

This may or may not be my shirt. You decide

To end things off, we have what some may consider the star of the trade. Relics are so prominent in the hobby and yet elusive. It’s really quite something to get one in a trade.

Speaking of, I imagine that Bill and I will trade again in the future. I’d have to restock my minis first, of course. Maybe when 2019 A&G comes around? We shall see. For now, I’ll say thank you again for what was sent this time!

143 left to show before taking Sportlots delivery.

The Happiest Guy On Cardboard

Ha ha! Happy April Fool’s Day! You Fool!

Thrilled

This guy isn’t happy! He never smiles on his cards.

Hmm? Were you trying to tell a joke?

You fell for it! He won’t even smile when he’s on an All-Star team!

Die cut version

That’s not how you wear your baseball hat! April Fools!

Better than my yearbook

Uh oh! He’s tipping his pitches, right? Nope! Fooled again!

I can see my house from here

You thought those would be the only two Studio cards? So gullible! Here’s a silver parallel.

No I can’t! Got you again

This is the same card again! Haha. Got you again! This one’s gold! Can’t you tell? Pay attention!

The only thing evolving is the definition if a moving card

He smiles if you move the card a certain way. Psych! No he doesn’t. The lenticular is meaningless

Shiny parallels don’t make him happy

Ugh, this is exhausting. In all honesty, this face is my reaction to just about every April Fool’s joke out there. It’s tired and annoying and amazing how much effort some people and companies put into that fleeting moment.

Looks like he has fur

By the way, the whole post was a lie (except that last part). See? He really does smile on his cards. The happiest man on cardboard.

153 left to show before taking Sportlots delivery.

Picking Up The High-End Scraps

High-end products confuse me sometimes. I understand what they’re trying to do, but thinking about them with a critical eye makes them less appealing. I mean, let’s think about this a bit. Pay a lot of money for a handful of base cards (usually, but not always), one or two parallels, and then however many “hits” of relics and autographs.

Sounds okay on the surface, but these days every product has some form of relic, and the materials or swatches in the high-end stuff isn’t that much better. Autographs are prevalent as well and high-end isn’t completely immune to stickers.

To add to that, in my opinion, most of the designs are relatively similar in structure or thought process. To make them look fancy, they have ornate flourishes or marbling or some other element that’s reminiscent of luxury.

I guess what people are really buying are a better chance at getting a better player’s autograph or relic, and that seems to be all they care about. If it’s not one of the top 5% of desired cards for the high-end product, it’s tossed away in the virtual dumpster.

Possibly the most basic of them all

That’s where I come into the game, I guess. You see, these products are prone to include people I collect and I’m one of those rare sorts that actually doesn’t care about those low-numbered fancy autographs and relics for the most part.

Fancy frames are also common

I do care about other player collection needs and so base cards and these high numbered colored parallels.

What is this? Argyle?

Whereas an old parallel from the 1990s numbered to 10,000 could fetch several dollars, a contemporary card that cost more than several dollars to acquire (if you’re looking at the per-card average price of the box) typically sells for $1 or less.

Parallels are named after gems, like emerald

It’s strange how that works. Most of those hits from the boxes aren’t worth the price of admission either. And, yes, I know that fun an experience is part of the value.

Amber

Still, I’d much rather avoid the odds by not buying unopened expensive stuff and instead just pick up the discarded scraps for my pennies on their dollars.

Amethyst

There are just so many of them, too. If it’s numbered higher than 100, then basically no one cares.

Back to emerald

At this point, it’s really a matter of waiting for them to be available and also a matter of whether or not I’m in the mood to spend my money on them at that time.

Aside from a little bit of shine, it’s not much different than other relics

The relics and the autos may not be as quick to fall into my lap, but I’ll keep looking. There are a bunch of these, too.

And this is all for one player. Multiply this quest by…I don’t know how many, actually. That’s a lot of scraps.

162 left to show before taking Sportlots delivery.

Can’t Spell “Really Big Card Trade” Without GCRL – Part 2

I’ve talked about how I’m very close to being caught up with trades. While I still have three new packages left to show off, I figured it may be a good idea to do a couple “part twos” so that future trade posts aren’t just bouncing back and forth between the same couple older packages. It still might happen, but you know.

Today I’m revisiting one from later last year that came from Jim. He’s originally known for his blog GCRL (hence the title) and creator of several side blogs. He is now writing for cards as i see them. You can catch the first part of the trade here, if you’d like.

There were a lot of cards in the bubble mailer and I’m going to need at least a couple more posts to get through it all. That’s even considering that I’m lumping a bunch of stuff together. However, after today, I think we’ll mostly be looking at single card scans. That’s next time, though. Let’s focus on the task at hand.

Give me a base set with different borders like the old days

Everyone seems to be going crazy for the Opening Day blue and red (and purple) foil parallels this year. I don’t recall anyone talking about OD for several years other than to bitch about how its the same set, but truncated. Goes to show that parallels actually drive sales more than we really want to believe, I think.

Sampling of 2016 Topps

I still need a ton of base cards from a whole lot of sets, even regular ol’ Topps. Never underestimate the benefit of trading those to me!

One remains

That goes for a lot of sets and products, honestly. Especially if they’re not pictured with the Cubs because when I do buy into group breaks, I get the Cubs and that would leave out guys that have left or been traded.

A different one remains

I have been buying A&G for quite a while, but even if I get a couple boxes for myself, I’m still usually missing a few base cards. It’s great to be that much closer now.

Recently retired Royal Hammel

So, this grouping is pretty loose, but it’s basically a random assortment of Topps base sets with a single Donruss mixed in. I regret not putting them in order by year. Not sure why I didn’t.

I love adding David Ross cards because each one is a high percentage of completion! Also, you can’t hate a Heyward rookie!

Crazy that Rizzo has been with the Cubs for as long as he has

We’ll close things out with a couple of minis. I’ve started to make more of a concerted effort to get these. I have a decent stack in that Sportlots box. Super glad that GQ doesn’t have minis anymore, though.

Squinting pictures are not great

Lastly here’s a bold black bordered mini. I like the ornate designs of the recent black borders, but there’s still something to be said about the solids.

Thank you very much again, Jim. I look forward to showcasing the rest of your package soon!

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Road To Opening Day

Baseball season is fast approaching. So fast, in fact, that the first game was actually played last night/this morning in Japan. The excitement that many feel with spring training is sure to quickly devolve into despair with the first 2-game losing streak of your favorite team. But, until then, anything can happen! This is the year!

What it has also meant these past three seasons is a Topps Now spring training set is released. Even though I’m not watching the games for now, I still pulled the trigger on the set this year. There’s only one of five autograph subjects that I don’t collect (David Bote), and there are still enough players on the team that it seemed worthwhile. I can always sell the Bote auto if that’s the one I get.

But that’s this year’s set which is a ways away from shipping out. Last year, I showed the first version of the set and my Jason Heyward auto. We don’t want to skip over year two.

Decent nickname

But first, I’m also going to show the cards from the first Players Weekend set. I don’t buy singular cards through the various Topps programs, but these multi-card sets seem to be just barely worth it for me.

Meh

This was a fun event, and I’m glad it came back in 2018.

Nope. Terrible

I see that little logo on the pants. That exclusive is still worth something!

Initials are not a nickname

I especially liked the uniforms they used. Can’t go wrong with baby blue.

Best nickname of the bunch by far

This is the only one that clearly shows off the patch that became replicated in blaster manurelics. My biggest complaint about this set is that the photo selection isn’t too exciting.

Gold = bonus

One reason I bought into this was the possibility for bonus cards. If the team won 6 games in a row, you get another card. Well, that happened in 2017…

This is also listed as a Rizzo card on Beckett for whatever reason

…twice. I already forget Rene Rivera was on the team. I sort of remember the grand slam.

Totally templated jerseys

If you’re curious, this is what the backs look like. They have a little holo logo effect that isn’t coming across in the scans that act as a watermark. It’s nice that Rivera got a face shot on the back of his bonus card.

Here’s hoping for a comeback year for Darvish

On to the main attraction. I’m not going to bother splitting these up. The set gives people their first glimpse at what the Topps Now design will be for that year, even though plenty are released before these get shipped to people. I do appreciate that the pictures are at least partially from spring training games and workouts.

Not a bad lineup

I think that Rizzo is my favorite in the bunch. The angle says “larger than life” but lugging equipment with his expression says “don’t trip over the photographer.”

There was also a bonus card for this set as well. The Cubs managed to get 1st place in the NL central by the All-Star break and so we got that bonus card. There could have been other bonuses for a no-hitter and a cycle and I think something else, but obviously this was the only one to hit (and it was close thanks to those Brewers).

So, I buy the autographed version of this set. Like I said before, I got Heyward in the first year. On offer this time were Rizzo, Bryant, Contreras and Baez, and who’d I get?

Not breaking the seal

Yup, Ian Happ. I honestly don’t remember his name being on the list of autograph subjects initially. I looked at the page after this arrived and his name was there. Maybe I just assumed I would beat the odds and get someone I collected. Not that I won’t collect Happ, but that would only happen if the Cubs win another World Series with him on the roster.

For now, this is up for trade or sale if anyone happens to be interested. Will lightning (in the form of 20% odds) strike twice with the 2019 set? I guess I’ll find out in a few months when it arrives.

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