Going for Gold

Chasing more framed autographs with @midwestboxbreak and Topps Gold Label. 

  

I don't usually get sucked into any particular product all too often, but I apparently can't help myself when it comes to Topps Gold Label. After scoring a couple of the framed autographs for my team collection in previous breaks, I bought into an 8 box PYT (Pick Your Team) break from Midwest Box Breaks for a very reasonable price.

Paul Goldschmidt is the guy whose autograph continues to elude me, although it still makes me wonder why I decided to be into collecting signatures of dudes in the first place. It's really not my thing. I did snag a couple of unsigned Goldschmidt needs, with a Class 2 and a Class 3 Black entering my collection.

After previously getting a KK auto and a Junior Fernandez auto, this Rangel Ravelo was new to me. There's 4 Cardinals in the set in total, so you now know who exactly I'm missing.

Hey, it's... another Rangel Ravelo? Not bad. His signature is a little bit different here as compared to the previous card.

And for good measure, I ended up with another Junior Fernandez framed auto. Three Cardinals autographs out of eight boxes? That's definitely beating the odds, especially when this is a set with only one expected auto per box.

Midwest Box Breaks throws in some bonuses for new people, which is really nice (and probably encourages people to come back!) I had actually bought into at least one of their breaks in the past, but the only one I could find in my records was from back in August 2019. In any case, it's really nice when you get something extra that you weren't expecting.

These two Twins cards (they're not actual twins, that would be weird) will be heading to the trade box, which is looking more like a box and a pile these days. I should probably get a little more reorganizing done around here.

For Best Results, Just Add X

A #CrackinWaxMailDay from @CrackinWax to close out October in black. 

 

While I didn't receive any cards for my birthday, I managed to avoid splurging big on cards for myself as Halloween came and went. I did go for a few more box breaks from our friends at Crackin' Wax, with a couple of new products dropping as they say.

Fresh on the heels of this year's delayed Allen & Ginter release is the online-only Allen & Ginter X, one of Topps's more shameless cash grabs year after year. They toss aside basically all of the insert cards, re-do the set in black and add a shot at a few low numbered minis and autographs. I don't mind this set usually, because it's not the type of thing I see a lot, but this year in particular just kind of bugs me. Maybe it's the player names, which instead of being white-on-black are just outlined in a little bit of white.

Perhaps my dislike of the 2020 Allen & Ginter design is also making me like these less than usual. The base cards really stand out (and not in a great way) next to the minis, which are black bordered this time instead of completely blacked out (see Flaherty at the top of the post.) In any case, it was still cool to pick up a few cards for my team collection that aren't sold in traditional stores. (Although, for the most part, everything is "online only" for me this year.)

The other breaks I bought in to in the last week of October were for the 5th and final wave of Topps 206. This set did not get a lot of love from the fans this year, perhaps because there were scarcely any "hits" to speak of. If you recall, all of the cards are tobacco mini sized, which I feel is an excellent choice relative to the full sized sets that popped up a few times in the '00s (2003, 2009 and 2010, I think?) And each card comes with an array of parallels, but they all look the same on the front, which probably scares away the rainbow chasers. Ah well.

While I didn't get any of the Cardinals parallels this time around, I did end up with two cards of who we now know to be the AL Rookie of the Year runner-up. One of them was even a Piedmont parallel. The White Sox were unavailable for sale and could only be assigned as a random team, which for one of the breaks happened to fall in my lap. I have a small stack of LouBob rookie year cards that I'll probably pull out some other year to see if they're still sought after. Selling cards right now just seems to be a bit too intimidating.

Feathery eBay Wins

Quack, quack, quack. 

 

Due to the things and the way they are, I promised that I wasn't going to be posting about the Ducks or college football this year in the way that I usually do. At the time, it was not expected that the Pac-12 was going to attempt to stage a season this year, but of course they ended up caving in eventually once all of the other Power 5 conferences decided to put their young unpaid athletes at risk for the sake of a few entertainment dollars (and the schools' coffers, no doubt.) I'm still going to watch, but there's really nothing to celebrate here.

I thought I'd show off a couple of recent eBay pickups today. I can't pretend that this is some sort of coincidence that tonight is Oregon's first game, but you shouldn't expect these posts to continue for what's left of the fall.

I've been so focused on Justin Herbert's NFL debut, and even managed to score a few of his cards before prices got too unruly. It's made me overlook the rest of last year's excellent Ducks team and their cardboard debuts. I got this Troy Dye autograph for super cheap, and it shows off the new(ish) uniforms quite nicely. 

This one I teased on Twitter about a month ago. With an h/t to Dennis for the find, I scooped up this late career printing plate of the Portland native and former Oregon star Joey Harrington from the 2008 Topps Chrome set at a very reasonable price.

Here's the back. Harrington didn't have the best career, but he was a starting quarterback for the bulk of it, which is something not a lot of players can say.

From Behind Enemy Lines

A few Cardinals goodies from @WhiteMamba52 includes fishfractors and signatures. 

Sending cards to a fan of a rival team is almost twice as satisfying. Not only are you potentially making someone's day, but you also get to get rid of cards from that team you love to root against. That's what I assume Colt, who talks and occasionally sells a few cards on Twitter, was feeling when he sent some stuff my way earlier this year. I know him primarily as a regular in the Crackin' Wax group breaks that I've posted about quite a lot this year.

Inside the package were a pair of 2020 Topps Chrome prism refractors, which some of you like to call "fishfractors". Hey, maybe the name is finally starting to catch on with me?

I'll always feel a little nostalgic for the '80s Topps designs, because I start collecting cards in the '80s. I feel like Topps has done a better job with these the past few years than they have with Archives. There's something really off about the majority of the Archives designs, at least to me.

Topping off the bunch of Cards cards were a pair of autos from last year's Topps Chrome set. Ponce de Leon's eight COVID season starts were a bit of a mixed bag, but I still expect him to be in the mix to be a starter in 2021, especially with the budget supposedly tightening up quite a bit.

Adolis Garcia didn't work out with the Cardinals, but he popped up again briefly this year to log a handful of hitless plate appearances with the Rangers. This one is a refractor, numbered to the usual 499 copies.

Thanks again to Colt!

A Post-Election Day PWE Roundup

Counting those ballots with @dvdgao @BucsHere and more! 

 

Let's just say we're going on two days now of being on the edge of our seats. In the mean time, let's check out a few small envelopes that came in back in August, which both seems like yesterday and far away at the same time.

Fellow Cards fan David hit me back with an eclectic mix of cards (and some cool Cardinal stationary) after he snagged a spot in my last free group break here. I'd like to squeeze at least one more of those in before the end of the year, considering that we're still in a mostly "stuck at home" situation and certain card supplies have come down to slightly more reasonable prices of late. Melancon was another set need (i.e. non-Cardinals need.)

Every once in awhile a Bowman Draft card will surprise me, and you can count this card among them. This is primarily because I have no idea who Nick Dunn is. This is kind of cool, because Topps (and, sure, Panini) tends to put the same five prospects in all of their products, which is super annoying. There are a lot of baseball players out there!

Upper Deck had put out it's Victory set for a few years at this point as what I understand to be another budget priced offering that sort of continued on when Collector's Choice was ended. This final set from 2003 decided to be printed in the TCG/CCG style for some reason. I think there might have been a game here as well, but it wasn't very obvious. This is one of the apparently short-printed subset cards.

Here's a Chrome refractor of the former Cardinals closer celebrating with the hopefully not former Cardinals catcher. Great card, though.

Prizm's version of refractors are officially called Prizms, which is confusing because the set is (sometimes) called Prizm. So technically, this is a Prizm Prizm. That never caught on, though, so most people call them Silver now... which is not any less confusing considering the cards are, by default, silver in appearance. I hate Panini.

Next up are a couple of really nice parallels from Kevin of The Diamond King. I've never been a big fan of pink cards, but the Pink Fireworks design is just crazy enough that it sort of works.

Although the fireworks are nothing to sneeze at, I was really blown away with this numbered-to-25 orange Matt Carpenter card from the 2017 Topps Gallery set. The art is actually... impressive?! Using the old Bowman design here probably helps it a bit.

The last but certainly not least power packed envelope came from The Bucs Stop Here. This one came chockful of set needs, including last year's Allen & Ginter offering.

Giraffe Calf! It rhymes, and it's cute! I have been really fascinated with baby animals that look almost exactly like miniature versions of their parent animals lately for some weird reason. (See also: elephants.) I've also spent a fair amount of my Saturday mornings this year watching BBC America, which turns into an all-day animal show extravaganza.

Trevor Bauer is surely some kind of wonder.

My big priority set for the year has unfortunately fallen by the wayside a bit, but it's still nice to document a few more pickups from the 2020 Turkey Red project. I haven't looked into whether or not this is continuing into the soon-to-be-released Update set, but I lost a lot of steam when Series 2 blasters became scarce. Stupid LouBob.

These Cardinal Turkey Reds are heading straight to the team binders, though. Actually, Ozzie has his own binder. He gets special treatment apparently.

What Will Waino Do?

The latest #CrackinWaxMailDay from @CrackinWax includes shiny cards from the long time Cardinals battery and the original Topps Heritage. 

 

It's difficult what path forward remains for Adam Wainwright and Yadier Molina, both nearly inseparable for their long careers, as they both enter free agency. With budgets being slashed right and left, retaining the two players may be the only thing the team spends on this offseason. That they've entered free agency in the first place just adds to the uncertainty, though. It's a bit nerve-wracking to this Cardinals fan.

Coincidentally, Waino and Yadi cards were at the forefront of another week's worth of box breaks from Crackin' Wax. Wainwright's black refractor from 2019 Topps Heritage High Number is one of the nicest cards I've seen in awhile, and it's numbered to just 70. This one is exclusive to the Walmart "monster box" configuration. I also pulled a Vlad Jr. black refractor from the same set last year, but it's numbered to 69. I'm not sure of why there's an inconsistency. (I suppose they were honoring 1970 Topps and the year 1969 all at the same time?)

I seem to have terrible luck with getting cards for my team collection out of Panini Chronicles, but the truth is that there just aren't that many cards to be had. This green Certified Yadi parallel does really look nice in hand, though, and was a nicer pull than one of the regular base cards. (Does anyone know what the regular base cards actually look like?)

 

For the trade bait pile goes this Anthony Rendon Spectra card, as the Angels must have been one of my randomly assigned teams. These are very chunky and could probably inflict some considerable damage if I tossed one across the room.

What is this... is this gum?! Decades old gum? That must mean one thing.

Old school Topps Heritage cards! In fact, this break was for the very first Heritage set from 2001. Unfortunately, the break went live too early in the morning for me to have a decent chance at snagging the Cardinals, but given that I collect Heritage cards and have relatively few from 2001, I ended up buying in anyway. I took the Dodgers on the off chance there was a Duke Snider autograph somewhere in the box as he was one of the bigger names on the "hits" checklists from the remaining available teams.

My randomly assigned team was the Royals. Mike Sweeney is a black back variation.

There were no rare Duke Snider cards for me, but I did get one of the original Then and Now inserts.

I also ended up with a checklist. A checklist! Actually, this is really cool. I'm not sure that I have any checklists from this set, and I always try to get the checklists and some packaging material to set aside for each of the Heritage sets.

It was another interesting bunch of breaks. Who knows what awaits me in my mailbox later this week? (Probably spiders.)

Free Stuff Friday: Vol 11

 

#FreeStuffFriday makes its spooky return!  [UPDATED 11/1/2020 1:05 PM PST]

 

I feel like things are starting to get a bit more organized here, so it's finally time to bring back the free stuff. If you aren't up to speed on such things, please refer to the original post for the rules, especially in the first paragraph of the post (it's really only one rule.)

First up are some leftovers from some box breaks I recently participated in. The bottom six are from the very first Topps Heritage set from nearly 20 years ago. CLAIMED: Randa, Karros, Gibson/Scherzer

A few old school Cardinals are here, plus a weird Pacific Biggio mini and some Series 2 2020 inserts. Tatis?! CLAIMED: Slaughter, Schoendienst x2, Canseco, Biggio, Tatis x2

If you're a history buff, or a fan of the late '00s Upper Deck sets, maybe some of these A Piece of History cards will interest you? I've considered at times breaking up all of my non-collection cards into team lots, but I'd never really know what exactly to do with these. CLAIMED: U.S.S.R. Crumbles, Treaty of Versailles, Transcontinental Railroad

A few more pieces of history, some Brewers from the fancy 2020 Topps Gold Label set, and more! CLAIMED: Nevin, Yount, Yelich x2, Hiura, Jamestown

Here are all of my 2020 Allen & Ginter doubles. I only was able to buy a couple of blasters and enter into a couple of breaks. The design doesn't do it for me, but I'm hanging on to my non-doubles for now I guess. CLAIMED: Gibson, Rodriguez

More new Ginter. A Paul DeJong short print. A couple of 2020 Topps 206 (online exclusive!) cards. And a chance to become a Lehigh Valley IronPig for a day and get your own baseball card! (Yes, the code is unused.) Plus... a couple of other guys! CLAIMED: IronPigs, Decades Best Cardinals, Mike Yaz, Griffey, Brock