Spoiling Myself, Bobby Orr Style

I recently ended up with a nice little bit of cash in my Paypal after doing some custom graphic design work, and instead of doing something responsible, or even saving it for the two boxes of 2016 Gypsy Queen I will inevitably buy, I sent out to spend it on cards I normally couldn't afford. Above was the first purchase and the one I wanted the most. I opened a few packs of Masterpeices when it came out and really liked it, and have always wanted an on-card auto of Bobby Orr, or Saint Robert as he is know in this house, so this was high on my list of "someday, maybe, I might own one of these" cards. It's absolutely gorgeous and is currently, and will be for a long time, displayed most prominently off all the cards in my collection.

Acetate Appreciation: 2015 Topps Strata

A fairly new release for the Acetate Apprec series featuring an autograph of the only Rockies player in the set, DJ LeMahieu. Why Topps chose DJ over Nolan Arenado or Cargo I have no idea, but here it is, probably the cheapest auto in the set, so at least it was easy on the wallet for an all autograph set. As you can see by the scan there is not much use of the clear part, just the auto basically. Not a bad card design, but what really bugs me is the clear area is in such a noticeable box, it really takes away from the card. I know Strata is more about the Shadowbox cards, which I have yet to get one of, but I feel Topps really could have done something better here with the base or regular autos.

Just Commons, Just Catchers

Justcommons.com is hardly a new thing, but I finally had enough cards to dive in and make an order. I ended up with 63 cards and will summarize what I thought of the site in my last post, the first few will just be shown off what I picked up. I don't know how many catcher collectors there are out there, but this post is for them. One of my first Justcommons quests was to finish the 1998 Collectors Choice "Masked Marauders" subset. They didn't have the Piazza, but had the rest I needed. Some nice late 90's painted goalie style masks, the most famous probably being Charlie O'Brien, and Sandy Alomar with a sweet Chief Wahoo painjob.

LCS Trip with a Nice Pull

The standard LCS trip for one-touches and a sampling of packs, spreading it around to a couple sports, a jumbo pack of Bowman Draft, a couple packs of Upper Deck Full Forse Hockey and some Panini Complete Basketball.

Black Friday (The Rest, Finally)

I know these are pretty late, but a few cards I wanted to show off before putting away. I might have to stop trying to convince myself I don't like relic cards as my favorite pick-ups were a 30 year old sock card, a couple tie-dyes and this quad relic of Paul Lo Duca. As far as I can find this is the last of the 4 mask cards made that I needed to go along with the Johnny Estrada, Ivan Rodriguez and John Buck.

Gregory Campbell: Bruins Stanley Cup Auto (Kind of)

Something I saw over at Baseball Card Breakdown, dressing up autograph cards. Gregory Campbell never got a certified auto with the Bruins, so here is the other option to peeling off the sticker, printing out a new card with a cutout to show the auto.

I am pretty happy with the end result, with the drawbacks being from the original card. First off the autograph is terrible, for a guy with 15 letters in his name, that is not much ink. Secondly, the auto is very close to the middle of the card, meaning it doesn't allow much room for the photo, and it's also off-center making it look even worse. The custom design is pretty simple, with a nod to the 1962 NFL set. The nice thing about this is, if I decide that I hate it, I can just try again and print a new one off. The original is below for comparison.

Last Trade of 2015

A small 4 card trade to end the year, starting with a sweet Expos painted card of Dennis Martinez and his perfect game. This just shows how nice these painted cards can look when the picture actually looks like the player.

Black Friday Rockies

Plowing through my backlog here with some cards I needed to scan, so why to post them. First off Ryan McMahon, a Rockies third base prospect from the absolutely beautiful Bowman Inception Origins autographs. Nice thick card, silver ink auto, this ranks up there with any of the Bowman Black Collection cards I have. The best part might be the sweet spring training Mountain Logo hat.

My 5 Favorite Sets of 2015

Enough with the "look-what-I-got-in-mail" posts and something with some actual content, although lists barely count, lists are easy, but I like lists, it's like mini articles and year end lists are unavoidable. So, here are my favorite sets of 2015, in no real, with no real rhyme of reason.
 

Topps Archives -Like Heritage only better, in-game action photos and designs that aren't from the boring 1960's (yes, they are classic vintage designs, but there are boring).  Well, there was the super boring 1957, but we did get 1976 with the cool little position icon and the two photo design of 1983.