First TradingcardDB Trade

I did finally start using TradingcardDB for some things, there is little chance I will enter my whole collection, but hopefully it will become a new trade resource. After some dicking around with their trade system one came up that worked out. Mostly Redskins and highlighted by a new Sean Taylor card, and pretty nice looking one from Bowman Chrome.

2016 Black Friday COMC Rockies

Yes, that is how far behind I am, just starting to post by Black Friday shipment from COMC. This Tulo was at the top of my to-buy list completing the 2015 Prizm Tie-Dyed parallels Rockies team set.

2016 Bowman Draft - Just a Taste

Usually my LCS trips are for supplies and I buy cards because I feel dumb buying supplies and no cards, this time I went to buy cards. I try and buy some Bowman Draft every year, even though every year it gets weirder to buy pictures of high school kids, most of which I will never hear of, and the rest will make more money by the time they are 25 than I will in my life, but if I quit doing weird things, I wouldn't do much of anything really.

Small Zistle Trade

That's right, there are a few stubborn zistlers still around, and a few trades being made. If zistle does indeed one day go to that big web server in the sky, these are the trades I will miss. Random stuff that wasn't really even on my wantlist but found browsing peoples tradelists. Weird stuff like 1991 Leaf catchers, the veteran Jamie Quirk who has a Rockies connection as a former coach and even more veteran Rick Dempsey with a very oddly cropped card.

Sportlots Set Help

Continuing the impossible task of the 2011 Gypsy Queen Mini Photo Variations. The shipping was high on these, but the actual price was reasonable when spread out over a few cards. I had never even seen the Gibson before so that really sold me on making the order. These bring me up to 17 out of 100.

Top Baseball Parallels of All-Time (as voted by me) 1-5

Continuing where we left off....

5. Topps - Clear (2014-2016)
Topps Flagship makes it second appearance on the list, and you know there had to be something acetate coming. This is not the first time a set has had a complete acetate parallel, two football sets, 2000 Bowman's Best and 2013 Panini Momentum come to mind, but this the the first baseball one to come to mind, and I seem to remember these being kind of a big deal when they came out in 2014.

4. Topps Finest - Gold Refractors* (1999)
The second asterisk in the list, along with Fleer Brilliants, 1999 Finest Gold is another hard to find, sought after parallel that I don't actual have in hand. The Larry Walker above showed up on COMC the day after I requested a shipment, so while I "own" the card, it won't physically be in my collection for a few moths until I amass enough cards to warrant a shipment request. The weird deckle edges add to the uniqueness of the parallel, it's really a shame how ugly Finest has been since Topps brought it back a few years ago when they used to do things like this.

3. Gypsy Queen - Mini Black (2011-2015)
It took me a while to warm up to minis, and I eventually did, but I always liked the Gypsy Queen black minis, even the 2015's (which I feel is the ugliest GQ set) look good. I was pretty disappointed when they limited them to 5 in 2015, and even more gutted when they dropped them altogether in 2016, and it sounds like 2017 won't have minis at all, so that sucks.

2. Panini Prizm - Tie-Dyed Prizms (2015)
Not much needs to be said about these, just look at them, bask in the tripped out glory. You almost don't notice there is no logos on the card (honestly these might be number 1 if they had logos). Panini has tried this with other sets in other sports, but they never got it as good as these. Numbered to 50, so they are limited, but not impossible to find or ridiculously overpriced. Sadly it looks like Panini dropped the Prizm baseball line altogether, hopefully it comes back next year with something similar to these dead-head acid-trip beauties.

1. Bowman Platinum - Prospects Camo Refractors (2014)
Throughout the original run of Bowman Platinum (so not counting the lackluster release of 2016) I thought it was consistently one of the best designed of the Topps products, with 2014 being my favorite. The purple, orange, red, green all looked good, but the camo blows them all away. Topps has done camo before and has done it since (as has Panani), but it is just borders, nothing really different, this is different. The only thing I don't like about these is that they are limited to 15, so I still need two to complete the team set.


There you go, a fun little exercise that got me to did through my collection and post some actual content. So, what did I miss, what set was way better than these that I completely whiffed on? Post them in the comments, or make your own list, I am legitimately interested in other people thoughts on this. Thanks for reading.

Top Baseball Parallels of All-Time (as voted by me) 6-10

This is a post that I have been mean to do for a long time and finally just getting around to it. Honestly, I am not overly fond of parallels, for the most part I find them annoying, but I still get sucked in and search out a few, the ones that really catch my eye. So, because I like lists and am lacking an real content, here is my two part, top 10 baseball parallels that I could think of this past week.

10. Upper Deck Collector's Choice - Silver Signature (1995-1996)

Probably the least flashy of the bunch, but the first really baseball parallel I collected, 1994 had them, but 1995 was the first year the border matched the color. I opened a ton of 1995 Collectors Choice SE and always loved pulling a silver parallel, I know the Golds are harder to come by, but I still like the look of the silver better.

9. Fleer Ultra - Gold Medallion (1996)
Ultra had Gold Medallion in other years, but 1996 was the year they went all out, going from a small icon in 1995 to making the whole background gold in 1996. Incredibly gaudy and over the top and oh so mid-1990's.

8. Topps - Red Hot Foil (2014)
Topps did a lot of this style from 2011 thru 2014, they had Cognac, Diamond, Hope Diamond, Gold Sparkle, Silver Slate, Sapphire and a couple I am probably missing, but the Raining Blood remains by favorite. They don't look as good with the Rockies, any red teams like the Angels and Cardinals make for a pretty sweet looking card.

7. 1999 Fleer Brilliants - 24KT Gold (1999)*
This one comes with an asterisk because I don't actually own any of them, numbered to 24 and in pretty high demand, you can have the Larry Walker I stole the scan of for only $299.99. This set was released for baseball, football and basketball and they all go for high prices, maybe the fact they are so hard to find makes people want them more, or maybe they are just really nice cards, hard to say until I actually track one down.

6. Upper Deck SPx - Radiance (2000)
These are hard to judge by the scan, but are very cool in hand. Very swirly and refractory. Limited to 100 and not as high in demand as Fleer Brilliants, but still a little more than I usually like to pay for a parallel.