Favorite Card of 2017

P-Town Tom is doing a neat thing over at Waitin' Til Next Year that most I wanted to take part in, your favorite card of 2017. It took some thought, but I came up with it, it was the obvious choice, not really a close second even. 2017 Topps High Number Heritage Andrew Albers. Not a team I collect, or a set for that matter, one of the very few Saskatchewan MLB players, and the only one born in the same town that I was.

Black Friday Box 3: 2016 Revolution

Black Friday box 3 of 4, my recent obsession with Panini Revolution continues, this time with the second year of the product, 2016-17.

Black Friday Box 2: 2015 Revolution

The box I was really going after on black friday, 2015 Panini Revolution. These are super shiny foily cards, something Panini has really been moving towards and making some nice looking sets, albeit maybe a little over the top.

Black Friday Box 1: 2015 Clear Vision

I don't usually do the Black Friday thing other scouring COMC for sales and buying the christmas gifts that I has saved in my amazon cart. This year I had some extra paypal funds from selling my video game collection, so I decided to try blowouts black friday thing. It was honestly kind of frustrating and I missed out on some stuff I had my eye on with the whole rotating in-stock out of stock thing they do. I did end up with 4 box, the Revolution being my main goal, the extra being Clear Vision.

Tradin With Canadians Pt 2

The second of two packages from friends in the Great White North. Coming from Sportscards From The Dollar Store, one of the more prolific package senders around. After my King-less packs of Hoops these are much appreciated, especially the Frank Mason III card, I am still a little leary of "The 3rds" one teams I like, but this guy seems pretty good so far.

Tradin With Canadians Pt 1

Part 1 of 2 featuring trading with fellow Canadians, starting with andyroy3 from TCDB. The highlight being a new acetate Dante Bichette from Collector's Choice Crash the Game. I was a big Dante fan, but he was not made for close-ups.

My First Pack Pulled NBA Auto

As usual, my rare LCS trip for supplies and my feeling of obligation to buy some packs there. I was hoping for some new NBA Prizm, nope. Rookies & Stars Football? Nope. Panini Playoff Football? No 2017, but there were packs of 2016 left. I didn't even look at the baseball, between the usual poor selection and my lack of interest in most things Topps is wasn't worth a look. 2017 Hoops was the best pick, it was newish and with lots of Kings rookies, worth a shot.

Sean Taylor - 10 Years Later

10 Years. I have done Sean Taylor posts before, so I won't go overboard here. He was my favorite player, if he would have had a full career, a Hall of Famer, no doubt. Talented and terrifying. Instead of going here, I will just provide some links to remember Sean.

John Keim had a pretty good article back in October.

Espn did a video, ever notice how many Safeties wear 21, you might now.

Also the NFL Network Football Life special is out there and worth a watch.

TCDB Trade #13

Short on fancy titles today, just a trade post from TCDB. As I update my wantlist and tradelist a few more things are coming up, including this trade with a lot of different things going on. Starting of with some 2017 Bunt. I always expect Bunt to be a boring, low-end set not worthy of much attention, but I am really digging the parallels here

Check Out Everything Else

I already went through the Basketball and Rockies card, so here is the rest out of the scan folder. If you are will to put some serious time in trading you can get some decent card from the Upper Deck e-pack program, this Tokarski is the Gold version, I really don't want to do the math, but 10 Base = 1 Blue, 5 Blue = 1 Red, 5 Red = 1 Gold.

Check out my (Mosty) Shiny Rockies

My collecting goes in phases, sometimes with the season, sometimes it's not. Most of the time I don't realize it's happening, but when a COMC package come that has around 4 months worth of purchases, including stuff from the mailbox program, I tend to see a trend. The trend here seems to be shiny. See above, 1998 Flair Showcase, beautiful cards that actually scanned well. I love the looks of these and will have to pick up more

Vintagey Redskins Trade

Getting into the NFL season, I started re-organizing my Redskins collection and updating my One-of-every-Redskins master list, as well as getting my TCDB profile in order. This led to a real nice trade checking of quite a few older guys, including Rickie Harris above from 1969. This is a really weird set, some cards have white borders, some don't, but they all have crazy loud colors, as I start to get into more vintage football I have some to appreciate sets like this.

Welcoming back the NBA with some recent pick-ups

I was on a mission to improve by Kings collection the last few months, so in honor of the NBA season starting, I am emptying out the scan folder. Starting with one of the few on-card auto rookie cards of Buddy Hield in a Kings jersey. A pretty nice card from Grand Reserve, it was a redemption so I probably got a bit of a deal by redeeming it myself. 

4 (Plus 1) More from Sportlots

I have a love-hate relationship with Sportlots. I love the shear amount of random, cheap singles, but I hate searching for cards, trying to fill an order from the same seller after finding one that doesn't charge $99.99 for shipping to Canada. My search began looking for Redskins cards, but ending up with none. The big one was the above 2015 Gypsy Queen Madison Bumgarner. The short prints I need are all way overpriced on COMC, so I am starting to look elsewhere to complete the set, check card 350 off the list.

Coffee and Cards

Nothing says the start of hockey season like cards at Tim Horton's. As usual Upper Deck puts a nice looking product out through a chain of Canadian donut shops. The base cards are a nice foily embossed number that really pops. My want list was pretty small and nothing got checked off, the highlights being Trocheck showing off the Panthers very nice shield logo and under-rated jersey, my only goalie in Devan Dubnyk and some kid that plays for the Oilers.

Custom Card: 2017 Panini X/R Football - Jon Garland

Panini is doing some really nice things design wise, and once in a while a design really catches my eye and makes me wonder what it would look like as a baseball set. Panini X/R football came out recently and I really liked the design so as an exercise to keep my graphic design skills in use, I tries to recreate it. It's not perfect, but after playing with the layout, I still really like the design, I have said it before, but Topps is light years behind Panini in my eyes, especially with a lot of ugly 2017 sets, including the terrible flagship and the first looks at 2018 flagship are pretty rough as well.

Jon Garland would fit into the Short Term Stops if he actually had a Rockies card as he started 12 games in his last year in the majors, and this checks off another from my project of making customs of Rockies without cards.

A Fool and His Money (will buy Topps Now Cards)

Something about Topps Now does not sit well with me. I love what I call "Moment in time" card, and these are exactly that. 1997 Upper Deck did a great job of this with little notes as to what game to picture is from. But something about Topps Now seems greasy, like Topps is has a license to print money (and fully capitalize on the Aaron Judge phenomenon) and is taking advantage of collectors. Case in point, this was a 5 card set for $20 or 4 bucks a card. This set was limited to 78 copies, so it is low numbered, but 4 bucks a card is more than I like to spend, but spend I did. (I also bought the postseason set so I am a total hypocrite). One of the big reasons was the The Rockies don't mess with their jerseys, and these focus on a pretty big change, even if its for one weekend (and they do look like pajamas)

Not Your Regular Rookie Card Mailday

Near the top of the list of sets I will probably never finish is 2014 Upper Deck CFL. I finished the base and the 100-150 sport prints, but the 151-180 Rookies falling at 6 per box have been hard to find for a reasonable price. A recent online lot of 9 cards checked 4 off my list (I thought I needed more of them, but my collection is still in a post-zistle, office reno mess). The most interesting is the Chad Johnson, a 36 year old Rookie and veteran of 11 NFL seasons, Johnson played in 5 games, caught 7 passes including a touchdown, while struggling with injuries and not being a star anymore.

Group Break Result: 2016-17 Select Basketball

After not getting a hit in my last break, I got a $5 credit towards my next one. So with the credit burning a hole in my virtual wallet, I jumped in on a very cheap 6 box break of 2016 Select with Sacramento. There are lots of Kings cards with the three rookies and on-card autos, so why not?

Mexican Mailday

My quest for the Redskins 1977 Mexican team set has been going on for a long time, but I think this is the first mail-day actually from Mexico. Not a very exciting card, but I believe it is short printed, and pretty expensive normally, so I was pretty happy to get this copy for around $15 shipped, even if it isn't in the best shape. That just leaves the Redskins checklist and the team set is complete.

A big thanks to Angus who alerted me to this card on the last 1977 Mexican Eddie Brown card I posted, I might have missed this otherwise, Thanks for the tip!

Group Break Results: 2017 Unparalleled

I don't do group breaks very often, mostly because they are never with the gamble. Sometimes I forget this though and enter a group break just to remind myself how much they are not worth it. Here is my latest reminder in the form of 2017 Panini Unparalleled. I bough the Redskins in an 8 box half-case break, here is what I got.

Minor League Mail-day 2017

Something many people either forget or overlook, is how awesome and weird minor league baseball cards can be. Take the 2017 Albuquerque Isotopes set, all the cards have the players with mostly dogs, and a few cats I think. The Isotopes are the Rockies Triple-A team so I added Ryan Hanigan and Anthony Bemboom to my Rockies minor league card collection. I really hope Hanigan gets a Rockies card in 2017 Update, but if he doesn't, this is the next best thing. Sadly, Anthony Bemboom probably won't get a Rockies call-up, but he is in the lead for best Rockies MiLB name.

2017 Stadium Club - Rockies Custom Card Re-Do

I did this last year and I am doing it again this year. Basically this is what I would do if I had picked the images for 2017 Stadium Club. This started as I felt the Rockies photos were always a little boring, but more because I like doing customs and have a huge Rockies photo library I like to browse though. This is NOT meant to take a shot at Topps or to say they do a bad job, just a different look from someone who has no timeline, only one team to worry about and doesn't have to worry about photo copyrights.

First Rockies card gong numerically is D.J. LeMahieu, not my favorite photo, but different from the usual and definitely Stadium Club Worthy.

Trade with ketchupman36

It's been a busy summer and I haven't put the time I would like into my hobby, but there are still a few trades rolling in, this one from the awesomely named ketchupman36. My favorite part might be the above Rockies sticker that is all shiny and refractory. Weird, but I like it.

White Whale Landed

As I get older, my tastes are getting more expensive, I feel like I have broken my personal record for most spent on a single card a few times this year, and this one broke the record again. I was down to Eddie Brown, one of the Dirty Dozen, as the last player in needed for the 1977 Mexican Redskins team set (still need the checklist and the Mark Moseley leaders card), so it was time to pull the trigger. There just comes a point where you say to yourself, "Hey, I'm and adult, I have a good job, if I want to spend around $200 on a football card, I can"

Topps Now Mailday (Still on the Fence)

I am still undecided on what to think of Topps Now. I love "Moment in Time" when a base card has a iconic moment it or even mid 1990s Upper Deck that captioned the photo on the card. I also like that it occasionally spotlight a lesser known player who doesn't get much cardboard love. Take this card, the second Topps Now card to make it into my collection. This is Ryan Raburn's only 2016 card and only card with the Rockies. The only thing that sets me back is the cost, it was around $10. I have a hard time spending a tenner on a base card of Ryan Raburn, but I did, and it's here, and I can cross one more name off the "One of Every Rockies" list.

TCBD Trade #9

I can't think of a clever title or opening sentence, so right down to business. TCDB, still not in love with it, but it keeps some trades coming in, like this one, that had a Green Jon Gray parallel. I still don't like 2017 Gypsy Queen (BRING BACK THE MINIS), but I will probably be adding some in trades.

LCS Trip ends in disappointment (aka Series 2)

My LCS is lacking in a few things, first off it's about a 90 minute drive away (more my fault than theirs obviously), everything is super expensive (mostly due to the Canadian dollar being so weak), for a variety of reasons their selection is very poor. It's located in a mall and about 90% of the store is shirt, signed photos, pucks and anything else you could dream of slapping a team logo on, so I don't think cardboard really pays the bills. My missing this trip was to get some packs. My first choice, Topps Archives was sold out, so was Heritage (thanks Aaron Judge). I don't think they ever got Diamond Kings or Donruss in, and I am not opening any more Gypsy Queen out of protest for ditching minis. I looked at the football and all there was for 2017 was Score. So Series 2 it was. I had not planned on opening and flagship this year because I hate the design and the parallels are weak, but my will was even weaker as I picked up and 20 bucks with of loose packs.

Budget Blown Basketball Edition

If you want been following along here, you might have noticed a lot more basketball. I finally landed the one basketball card that I wanted, A Jason Williams on-card autograph. Williams still has a strong hobby following, so this cost me a little more than I would like to spend on a single card, but it was totally worth it to add to my collection. Nothing better than getting a great card and not having to deal with buyers remorse. 

Custom Card: 2005 Team Heroes Jose Acevedo

A weird custom of a weird player from a weird set. After 4 years with the Reds, Jose Acevedo was traded to the Rockies in April of 2005 for Allan Simpson (another weird player). He bounced between the rotation and the bullpen, but mostly bullpen, and earned his only career save pitching the final 3 innings in a September 11-3 win over the Dodgers in a game that featured such great names as Choo Freeman, Sun-Woo Kim. Hee-Seop Choi, Hung-Chik Kuo and Steve Schmoll (my personal favorite by the way), all real people, you can look it up if you want.

After looking through some 2005s, I can honestly say it was not a banner year for cards, Topps Total was the obvious choice for a player like Acevedo, but there is something about Donruss Team Heroes other than the overly cumbersome name that I like. And why Jose "Don't call me Juan" Acevedo? He is the first alphabetically in the list of Rockies who never got a card with the team.

TCDB Trade #7

It is always nice when a trade doesn't have to cross international borders or go through customs as was the case with a small recent trade from tcdb. It even has a little Canadian theme, starting with what was probably a big deal when it came out. Eric Lindros was going to be the next great player and Score pumped out cards of him like crazy, even including him in their 1990 Score Rookie & traded set. 

COMC Spring Cleaning 3: Everything Else

On to part 3, everything else. I have been looking for a Yogi Berra bat card for a while and this is one of the nicest ones I have seen design-wise. The relic is very small, but I am still very happy to add this card to my catcher bat card collection.

COMC Spring Cleaning 2: Redskins

On to the Redskins, and more credit to Panini, they are the current kings of crazy parallels. This one is from Spectra and I was surprised at how thick this card is, I honestly can't keep up with Panini's many releases, but I guess this is a high end product? Whatever, crazy parallel and my first Josh Norman are enough for me.

COMC Spring Cleaning Sale 1: Rockies

A recent sale over at COMC led to a few purchases which led to a shipment coming my way which led to a stack of cards to scan and post. Starting with one of my top 2 favorite cards from 2016. There were a lot of Trevor Story cards covering his rookie year, but this one really stood out, not an action shot, but a different look with a dugout shot. The high socks and the black vests really sell it for me.

Not quite Bowman Black Collection, but it's close.

One card mailday from 2017 Topps Inception. My love for the Bowman Black Collection series spanning multiple brands and years is no secret here, so I was pretty choked when it disappeared. This is the closest Topps has come to bringing it back and it's pretty damn sweet. There is something about a black card with silver ink that is just straight classy. 

A Small TCDB Trade

Along with slowing adding my collection to TCDB, there have been a few trades happening. After the Rockies called up Ryan Hanigan his cards made their way to the want-list. Just a professional catcher who is a joy to watch behind the plate, with the added bonus of fitting into the Goalie mask catchers collection.

Combined Shipping Mailday

Bored browsing online leads to weird places, the above Metal Red Pelle Lindbergh caught my eye, as it should, it is an awesome looking card. I noticed it was a Canadian seller, so the "sellers other items" search began.

Custom Card: 1988 Topps Stephen Cardullo

A small tribute to the recently released Stephen Cardullo in the form of 1988 Topps. Cardullo was signed by the Rockies before the 2016 season after 4 years of independent league baseball, winning the Canadian-American Association MVP in 2015. He eventually earned a call-up and hit two home runs, one in each game of a double-header, on his birthday (disappointingly no Topps Now cards though). Earned a spot in the 2017 roster mostly due to Ian Desmond being hurt. Not a household name, but a great story, Purple Row recently has a great article on him that is worth the read.

To Peel or not to Peel (aka Golden Mailday)

I fought the urge to call this post "From now on, we'll all be taking golden showers" but couldn't resist mentioning it. A couple recent acquisitions in my current parallel madness phase I am going though. Really nice looking cards, but I am not thrilled with now they scan, this was the best one with the scanner lid open, any tips on scanning refractors?

Recent COMC Order

COMC mailday also means my other online purchases come though the mailbox service, the above Rocket Ismail autograph was liberated and returned to it's rightful home in Canada. This was when the CFL was a big deal with Wayne Gretzky, Bruce McNall and John Candy buying the Argos and signing The Rocket to a big deal. This is from the 1991 All-World set that might beat any junk wax era in terms of production. Oddly the 100 card base set has 10 Rocket Ismal cards, not including the above auto and a Promo card.

Custom Card: 1996 Upper Deck SP - Ryan Hanigan w/ Parallels

I love doing customs, especially when I am happy with the result, and I am very happy with this one. Instead of modifying an old scan, I built this from scratch, obviously using 1996 SP baseball, one of my favorite designs of all time, with a few tweeks. Foil is nearly impossible to duplicate digitally, so that is gone giving it more of a 2007 SP Rookie Edition feel. Also gone is the gold foil border, replaced with a black border, trimmed with gold. Another foil element was the SP logo, which I redid adding the gold faux-foil border as well. The last thing that bothered me was the team name. I replaced the all caps team name with something more normal, and added the full position instead of the abbreviation.

Panini Fake Patches (aka Maybe Topps isn't so bad?)

Wow, look at that card, 4x Hall of Fame Quarterbacks, 1/1 laundry patches, that is the kind of card people pay big money for. But wait? Game-used Mitchell and Ness jerseys? Mitchell and Ness doesn't make NFL game jerseys. This is a $600 per box product with Jerseys they went down to the sporting goods store and used. Panini released a statement on this basically saying that this card was made in error, along with three other laundry tags. But trust us, everything else in the product is legit, really it is, trust us, buy more boxes.

30 Year old Socks

My Pelle Lindbergh collection is coming along nicely, with the latest addition being my second relic card feature hockey socks. It is labeled as jersey, but as a good hockey playing Canadian, I am pretty sure those are socks. In fact I was playing hockey when I won the auction for this card, set the bid in the dressing room and it ending while I was on the ice.

This is from 2014-15 Masterpieces, a set I really like and have a couple really nice cards from. Upper Deck has only done this set in 2009 and 2015, hopefully we see a release a little sooner than a six year gap. 

Señor McLinton

A one card mailday, but a pretty cool one. A 1977 Topps Mexican Harold McLinton, from a team set that I have been working on, off and on, for a long time. It's a little off-center, but in good shape and while not one of the "Dirty Dozen", it is still one of the harder cards in the set to come by. I hope to get this one to PSA, my dream is to PSA the whole team set, and hopefully there will be an update on that soon.

McLinton himself played for the Redskins from 1969-1978, and was named one the teams 70 Greatest Players in 2002. He died tragically in 1980. 

2017 Gypsy Queen - The Good, The Meh, and the Ugly

It has been a few weeks since 2017 Gypsy Queen dropped and having time to get used to this years offering of the only set I build every year, I came with up some thoughts on what was a very different product from past years.

The Good:
- The autographs are always gorgeous and this year they really shine with a slightly different, and in my view better design than the base cards. As with the base set, the parallels are pretty meh, but overall I am a huge fan of the autos and the checklist has a nice mix of current and retired players.
- The base card design has grown on me, it's not my favorite GQ design, but it is fine. I really dislike the top with the team name, if it was more like the auto design I would be a bigger fan. I love the card backs, the number in middle was a complaint of some, but after sorting two boxes worth of base I had no issues with it.
- The high end cards look great, booklets, auto patches and Leather and Laces all look good, but way to high end for me, for a retro style set Gypsy Queen does high end very well.

The Meh:
- The inserts were fine, but a little boring, I liked Fortune Tellers more than I thought I would. In the past we had photo-centric sets like Play at the Plate, Glove Stories and Sticky Fingers. Nothing like that this year. I really miss Glove Stories, there were some great cards in those sets.
- The parallels were a big "meh" for me, if you read this blog (or care to go back to Top Parallels posts One & Two) I like parallels that give something different and usually flashy. Leaving a players name off, taking the black out, or making the photo Black & White doesn't add anything, in fact it literally takes things away.
- The short prints going from 6 per box to 2. Less cards to chase, but less chance of pulling one, again leading to me not wanting to buy more packs.

The Ugly:
- I think 2017 Gypsy Queen will be remembered more for what it didn't have than what it did.
1. Minis and all the mini parallels - This one really bugged me, for me in the past it has added value in pc cards and trade bait. I would pick up the odd pack hoping for a cool mini, no chance of that now. I feel very certain I won't rip another pack of Gypsy Queen this year.
2. Framed parallels - These have been around since the start in 2011, and they wouldn't have been such a huge loss other than the fact this was the only set that did them, and if they were replaced by something worthwhile, but they were not.
3. Base and mini framed relics - I don't collect relics so this didn't bother me personally, removing them takes some value out of a box, but with the price drop, it's a wash.
4. Printing Plates - Did these get scrapped as well? I have seen none, just more value removed by Topps.

Summary: Overall, I am very disappointed in this years offering. I just feel Topps took a lot of the fun out of this set, comparing my wantlist to other years, I really don't care that much about anything other than the base set. I will admit, my two boxes sucked and if I had pulled a big card I might feel a but different, but if I knew this years product was so boring, I would have just bought a base set off ebay and chased the short prints. Topps if you are reading this, please, bring back mini's at least, come up with some good parallels, the mini retail foils last year were great, how about full size foil parallels, how about some acetate, even take the price back up, just please, do something interesting with it in 2018.

Gypsy Queen Set Help

Set help going both ways between Sportscards From The Dollar Store and myself, staring one of the box loaders, I am still torn between "looks amazing" and "hard to store/display", but leaning toward looks amazing.

Remember the Astrodome / TCDB Trade

A Trading Card DB trade that I didn't realize until later was with Remember the Astrodome, giving my first taste of 2017 Heritage. I will probably never be a huge heritage fan (unless they start the use in-game photo's, or until we get to 1971) but I always like the expanded checklist that give players like Saskatchewan born and Team Canada vet Dustin Molleken cards. I also get to check Cristhian Adames' weirdly spelled name off the One of Every Rockies checklist.

2017 Gypsy Queen Trade/Wantlist

Wantlist

Updated Feb 27, 2019

Base
Complete!

Short Prints
303, 305, 306, 307, 309, 314, 316, 317

Autos
Raimel Tapia, Trevor Story

Green Back
David Dahl, Ian Desmond

Tradelist

Base

6, 8, 8, 17, 21, 27, 29, 33, 43, 44, 46, 48, 49, 58, 62, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69, 74, 76, 76, 80, 86, 88, 92, 94, 95, 97, 103, 104, 107, 108, 109, 112, 117, 124, 127, 130, 131, 133, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 152, 159, 160, 161, 164, 167, 174, 176, 179, 180, 181, 182, 189, 190, 192, 193, 194, 198, 201, 206, 208, 210, 215, 216, 218, 220, 223, 224, 225, 227, 229, 230, 232, 234, 236, 238, 239, 242, 243, 246, 251, 254, 256, 257, 259, 260, 261, 262, 264, 265, 266, 269, 270, 272, 274, 275, 277, 290, 291, 292, 296, 298, 300

Short Prints
301

Purple
23 Blake Snell, 47 Solarte, 144 Lindor, 264 Adrian Beltre

Green Back
157 Kipnis

Missing Blackplate
100 Mookie Betts, 111 Freddie Freeman, 113 Edwin Encarnacion, 155 Max Kepler, 284 Tommy Joseph

Missing Nameplate
205 Alex Dickerson, 207 Hellickson

Original Art
CH2 Hamels, RC2 Cano, XB2 Bogaerts, RCL2 Clemens, MS1 Schezer, ZG2 Greikne

Fortune Tellers
Pujols, Trout, Cano, Ivan Rodriguez, Bregman, Lester, Hamels, Bumgarner

Purple Auto
Joe Musgrave

Glassworks
Jose Fernandez, Zack Greinke

2017 Gypsy Queen Box Break 2

Forgive my laziness but I am not breaking down the second box as much as the first. Mostly because they are so similar. A couple differences, box 2 contained 2 base doubles, and switch a Black & White parallel for a green back, that's about it. My box topper is Zack Greinke, despite the potential storage issues, these are very nice looking cards.