I'll Buy That for a Dollar!

Came across these cases of cards at the local Mission Mart last summer:




Did a double take when I saw them, but, they were real.

Stage fright? UFO? Bigfoot?

Joaquin Arias seems to be absolutely perplexed as to explain what he is seeing...........

.......and he has been perplexed since last year.........

I do hope he gets the helps he needs.

Thar's gold in them thar packs!

No, not that thar gold:

This here gold!:

Shiny gold!

My precious!

2015 Topps Carlos Gomez?

I got this card in a hanger box at Walmart and it is hard to tell in the scan but it is holographic foil.

Does anyone know the name of this parallel set?

Let's Play Two.........Forever

When he didn't show up for last weeks Cubs Convention most people feared the worst and it came to pass but he is in a better place playing a doubleheader today.

                                             Ernie Banks

                                              1931-2015

The greatest, most insane, mind boggling season.......EVER!!!!!!

This is Jorge Polanco:

He came up to the Twins as a 20 year old straight from single A, which is impressive.

But what he did in the minors in 2013 will forever defy the laws of nature physics and.....math........

Roberto Clemente was as tough as iron.......

.......and I have the card to prove it:

2013 Topps Pennant Chase Wrought Iron Medallion

Clemente was a tough ballplayer and he is a worthy recipient of this medallion on his card.

It is one of those cards which is 125 point stock thick which isn't anything odd but how many thick cards do you come across that weigh a fifth of a pound?

This card almost fell to the floor when I opened a cello pack of 2013 Topps Update cards. Glad I caught it.

I bought the pack at my local card store and the owner let me pick the pack and I think I picked right.

I do not know if wrought iron rusts or not but that would be an interesting card to see.

The hardest of the Pennant Chase Medallion cards to get are the steel ones which are numbered to 10.

But it doesn't matter which metal makes up a card of Clemente because it takes a special player to be adorned with metal.

A player like Clemente.

Listia Loot: 1962 Topps

Picked up five 1962 Topps cards off of Listia from Napkin Doon and while they aren't in great shape they are my first '62s.

This card is in the best shape of the bunch:

Topps pulls a fast one

Well, technically, I did the pulling which I covered in this crazy post but Topps came through quickly on one of the redemption card I pulled.

This card.........

.........became.................................

A trifecta, a TRIfecta, and a FOURFECTA!

Trifectas in horse racing are generally good things to have happen to you.

They are also good when it comes to baseball cards.

I recently picked up two 2013 Topps Update hanger boxes and one 2014 Topps hanger box. That's nothing special but what was in each box was.

First, I opened the 2014 Topps hanger box I got this trifecta:

Phenomenal Fuji 'Trade'

I put the word trade in apostrophes in the title of this post because it was never meant to be a trade.

I commented to Fuji and let him know I had most of the cards he needed to finish a 1993 Upper Deck baseball set he had picked up. He sent me his address and I got the cards ready to ship and............TOTALLY forgot about them.

I know we have all done this. But I forgot about them for the better part of a year!

So, when I suddenly recalled them after looking through old emails I sent them on their way, hoping he still lived at the same address.

And he did, thank goodness.

Then I saw they had arrived safely there and he posted about the cards.

Then he mentioned in the post he was sending a package of Cubs and White Sox cards my way.

I was not expecting to get anything back for the cards since I sent them as a favor but I was excited to find that out since I root for all Chitown teams equally.

A few days later I get a package in the mail and start to open it not knowing what to expect and certainly not expecting what he ended up sending.

What I received was an insane amount of awesomeness compared to what I had sent out, including a hard to find card which only a few lucky people get to possess.

On to the cards!

First there was this card:

1994 Pinnacle The Naturals Insert

Listia Loot: Old Post Cards

Here are a three post cards which I picked up on Listia a few months ago.

Don't remember what they cost but they were too neat to pass up.

This first one is my favorite but it was a close vote between it and the second card:

In real life the colors are more vivid than a scan can reproduce.

If you live anywhere that is actually affected by this awful winter then this card might make you wish for spring(and baseball) that much harder.

The paper has a smooth back on this card and the next one but the fronts of both have the same 'air cushion' effect applied to playing cards.

Here's the back:

Going by the one cent postage I think it is safe to assume these predate most of us.

I notice the typography is, by today's standards, low class but it was probably grade A back then.

Plus, that font used for "POST CARD" is beautiful.

Here's my second rated card(although I would mind being there right now):

Nice picture of where I would love to be instead of this white wasteland of Illinois.

Colors are, once again, more vivid in real life.

I've been playing so much GTA 5 lately that I feel I have been there since the game is based in about the same area of California.

The back is about the same as the first card except for the purple palm tree on it. And the typography seems to be much lower quality than the first one so I think it might be a few years older than that one:

This last card was more or less acquired since it was included with the first two and has since not grown on me:

Not a very exciting subject but it appears to have been made of higher quality paper(gloss replacing the 'air cushion' effect") but the back is the same as the other two:

Yea, post cards!

On another blog note I'm going to get back to my Topps Without Borders series soon and continue my Conlin Cards series which I have not done much on in the last oh.......half year or more.

I'll get to posting some other stuff but this winter is like a big writer's block. I look out at planet Hoth outside my window and hope to at least see a Tauntaun galloping across the tundra to pique my interest but it doesn't happen and I just sort of blank out on anything to do(or more accurately, the motivation to do it).

With the Cubs reporting to spring training tomorrow and unveiling their massive new $84,000,000 spring complex(renderings below) there might be something to get me out of the blogging doldrums.

Video: Cubs unveiling new spring training facility

Not so fast, Mr. Morales!

Just opened my first two hanger boxes of 2014 Topps and I like the overall product.

I love the fact that there are more parallel sets, especially the yellow border cards.

There are a lot of good action shots in the set and many great photos overall.

But one card stands out, not for the action, but for what is happening on the card.

First a recap of why the card is interesting:

That is Kendrys Morales, formerly of the Angels.

That is a player experiencing the highest of highs as a ball player and immediately suffering the biggest agony of da feet(had to say it). Or rather a broken leg, from celebrating the event.

According to this article it made the Angels adopt a plan that they have used since that day.

Which brings us to the card:

Here we see a Morales that is being cautioned to slow down while entering the group of teammates.

I guess the Mariners are in the process of adopting a similar philosophy to celebrating.

No agony on this day, Mr. Morales.

Nice surprise in 2013 Topps Update hanger

I'm really liking this Update series.

Tons of 'RC's and a lot of rookie inserts.

Plus the variations are always fun.

In fact, I had forgotten about the SP cards until a day later when I remembered them and went to to the best site for SP cards.

Glad I did or I never would have found this card was an SP:

Glad I bothered checking.

Was going to try to Ebay this card but I abhor that site and its draconian user policies so I used another site with slightly less draconian policies-Listia.

I set the credits high since I like the card and the ones sold on Ebay are bringing $55-80.

If it doesn't sell I might just give it away in a contest-if I ever figure out a topic good enough to make into a contest.

Stay tuned for an even rarer hit and two hanger boxes that were terribly-yet, fantastically-collated.

Nature sucks!

Been a while since posting here but just wanted to pass on my condolences to those lost during the recent Midwest wave of tornadoes.

Parts of my hometown of Washington, Illinois were wiped off the map thanks to these freak storms.

We had some close calls where I live just 20 minutes away as well and parts of my current town got nailed by these asinine weather events.

If it wasn't for my health issues I would have been volunteering help but they turned away a ton of helpers for the onset of relief efforts so they could secure the region, which makes sense.

My brother and his boss and owner of a company there went in with the company's tractor to help out with cleanup. I imagine a lot of people did the same.

Here's what it looks like now:

And here's a before and after:

The two sections were new that are in the middle but the first lot of homes were old and the homes at the top were the same.

Luckily, most people were at church or going to church. Make of that what you want.

The Panthers spirit will rebuild-and remember.

Even an app doesn't like Tim Tebow

Saw this update on my ipod and thought it was amusing.

This app always describes their bug fixes creatively but this was the best one yet.

Hey Mike, touch his head

Go on, do it!

He doesn't mind:

Audio Artistry: Capital Cities - Safe and Sound

I was watching the Cubs game and they came out of the break to a song which a viewer had requested be played.

If you know Len Kasper and his love of music I'm sure he was happy to oblige.

While it might not be audio artistry, most of us who grew up from the late 1970's to the late 1980's recognize a solid, catchy, and most importantly, a melodic tune when we hear it.

It certainly sounds better than what 99% of the muck-a-muck is currently accepted as music sounds like.

Plus, it's just right for baseball under the sun.

And no, that's not Brian Wilson.

Topps team photographs..........wait, who, what, why?

I get that sometimes Topps team photo day has never been a perfectly executed effort on all the team cards but sometimes you have to wonder what the photographer was asked to shoot and what he was ordered to shoot and who was to be included in the photograph:

A perfect symmetrical team shot ruined by an insurance salesman.

I knew I've seen him before

You have no idea how hard it was to find this pic.

Finally googled thumb face guy and there he was.

I was thinking more of an earthworm than thumb.

Also reminds me of Will Sasso from MadTV.