Acetate Appreciation: 1997 Metal Universe Blast Furnace

Another post dedicated to clear plastic baseball cards, this time an insert from 1997 Metal Universe. One of the most bizarre sets I have ever seen, 1997 Metal Universe features player photos on a heavily foiled background with dragons, space ships and paratroopers among other random and nonsensical things. 

I will limit this post to the Blast Furnace insert set, 12 cards featuring power hitters of the day. A subtle design compared to the base set with the clear part having a red/orange tint to look like fire, despite not being really flashy, these rank pretty high on my list of acetate cards.

Small Sportlots April 2013

Another small Sportlots order, I noticed the seller lowered the price on the Toys 'r us Purple Ramon Hernandez, probably the hardest to find of the retail parallels, so the search began to find more cards to even out the shipping. I can't believe I didn't pick up the 2011 Gypsy Queen of Gary Carter in an Expos uniform until now, I love seeing Expos jerseys in newer products. I already had the Craig Counsell base but not the foil, that completes the Craig Counsell Rockies Rainbow. Jim Abbott was a player I collected as a kid and didn't have a card of him with the Brewers until now, it fits into the "pitchers batting" collection and is my first 1999 Upper Deck card. Brandon Inge fits into the catchers with hockey masks collection featuring a pretty decent paint job on his 2000 Just card.

Acetate Appreciation: 1997 E-X2000 Hall or Nothing

A 20 card set inserted into 1997 E-X2000 at a rate of 1 per 20 packs. These cards are not only acetate but die-cut as well adding to the weirdness factor. A nice clean design without to much going on, I really like the design of these.

The interesting part of this insert set is the idea of predicting Hall of Famers. In 1997, most of the 20 players featured were on the path to the Hall, but we all know that things happened in that era to change that. Below is the checklist and the players current Hall of Fame status.

Frank Thomas - First year eligible in 2014
Ken Griffey, Jr. - First year eligible in 2016
Eddie Murray - 2003 Hall of Famer
Cal Ripken, Jr. - 2007 Hall of Famer
Ryne Sandberg - 2005 Hall of Famer
Wade Boggs - 2005 Hall of Famer
Roger Clemens - 1 year on ballot (37.6%)
Tony Gywnn - 2007 Hall of Famer
Alex Rodriguez - Still active
Mark McGwire - 7 years on ballot (21.3% average)
Barry Bonds - 1 year on ballot (36.2%)
Greg Maddux - First year eligible in 2014
Juan Gonzalez - Removed from ballot in 2012 (4.0%)
Albert Belle - Removed from ballot in 2007 (3.5%)
Mike Piazza - 1 year on ballot (57.8%)
Jeff Bagwell - 3 years on ballot (52.4% average)
Dennis Eckerlsey - 2004 Hall of Famer
Mo Vaughn - Removed from ballot in 2009 (1.1%)
Roberto Alomar - 2011 Hall of Famer
Kenny Lofton - Removed from ballot in 2013 (3.2%)

How to spend 1,600 Imaginary Dollars

A pretty interesting contest over at Drop the Gloves asking what you would buy if you had $1,600.00 to blow on eBay. As someone who is on a tight budget and is mostly limited to lower end cards, this is kind of a fun little time waster.

1) 2007-08 Upper Deck Trilogy Ice Scripts Bobby Orr ($170.00 / $170 Total)
 In my biased opinion as a Bruins fan, Saint Robert is the best Hockey player ever when you consider what he did as a D-Man and in the era that he played. It would have been amazing to see what he could have done with good knees and a couple more healthy seasons. I do have a Bobby Orr autographed puck, but I still don't have a certified auto card. Not the most expensive Orr auto around, but my love for clear thick plastic cards makes this a easy pick.

Ramon Wrapper Redemption Rainbow

Two separate eBay auctions merged into one post. Part of the quest to complete my first rainbow, the 2013 Flagship of now former Rockie and current Dodger Ramon Hernandez.

Pretty nice cards, I overpaid for the blue thinking they would be hard to find, but for cards that are reportedly limited to a print run of 150, they are very easy to find for reasonable prices. They don't scan great, but look really good in hand, similar to the emerald green parallels. I thought I made out ok with the silver as it's limited to ten and only 2 have shown up on eBay so far. The silver is a framed border, think Gypsy Queen framed parallels, and looks really nice with the name and the logo having an etched look, really simple and works well.

Acetate Appreciation: 2006 UD Future Stars

This is one of the few acetate sets that I have run across with autographs, the 2006 Upper Deck Future Stars set has cards 1-75 featuring veteran players on regular card stock and cards 76-159 being on clear acetate with sticker autographs of "rookie" players under the label "Clear Path to Greatness Signatures". All of the 84 autograph cards have the RC rookie logo, but only 15 of the are "true" rookie cards. None of the cards in the base set are serial numbered, but there is a parallel red ink set numbered to 35. With a checklist so big there are some are scrubs and some stars, the Verlander short print looks to be the biggest card in the set. The Rockies get failed prospect Choo Freeman and Josh Wilson who spend his only season in the Colorado organization split between the disabled list and Triple-A, never making it the majors that year. Honestly, I find these card to be terribly ugly, the black and white portrait doesn't really look good, and that is the only part that shows to the back, luckily most of this set is pretty cheap so this didn't set me back much.

2013 Gypsy Queen Want and Trade List

2013 Gypsy Queen Wants

Updated Dec 4, 2017

Base Set & SPs
Completed

SSP Photo Variant
1, 3, 9, 14, 20, 26, 34, 35, 45, 61, 62, 64, 99, 100, 110, 117, 150, 172, 189, 259, 276, 310, 311, 321, 324

Mini
110, 202, 270, 305

Mini Black
110, 202, 270, 305

Autographs
Wilin Rosario, Jim Abbott

For Trade

Base
1, 4, 10, 16, 20, 22, 25, 38, 44, 49, 52, 55, 64, 73, 80, 82, 88, 89, 91, 94, 98, 100, 104, 117, 118, 121, 123, 128, 132, 136, 138, 155, 156, 159, 165, 169, 170, 171, 175, 194, 203, 217, 223, 227, 231, 234, 242, 246, 250 ,254, 264, 265, 266, 268, 270, 274, 278, 282, 283, 287, 291, 292, 296, 298, 300, 307, 311, 313, 315, 316, 324, 326, 333, 339, 343

Mini
21, 25, 38, 41, 167, 177, 235, 244, 263, 284, 

Mini SP
239 Reddick, 340 Mays

Mini Green
Cahill 297

Mini Sepia
Fernando Rodney, Brandon Morrow

Mini Photo Variant
20, 85, 121, 172, 208, 258 (x2), 275, 276

Framed Blue
Zach Cozart, Wade Boggs

Dealing Aces
Strasburg, Weaver, Sale, Lee, Price

Glove Stories
Snider, Crisp x2, Harper x2

No-Hitters
Bob Feller x2, Felix Hernandez, Philip Humber

Sliding Stars
Adam Jones, Griffey, Harper

Autographs
Vida Blue, Michael Morse, Jean Segura, D.J. Lemahieu

Relics
Danny Espinosa, Scott Rolen

2013 Queen Box 2 with an extra hit

Box two ended up being much better than the first one. No dupes in box two, and both boxes together leave me 32 cards from the 300 card base set. I got my 6 SP's per box leaving me 38 cards away from the 50 short prints. Oddly enough I got the same four Gloves Stories and No-Hitters as in the first box, giving me doubles of each.

My autographs were better with Michael Morse and Vida Blue, the Nationals and A's are my number 2 & 3 behind Colorado so they kind of fit into the collection, but I would trade them for Rockies autos. The relics were just a disappointing as the first box with Scott Rolen and Corey Hart. I am not sure if Rolen is part of the active player part of the set or the classic players (because he is old you see, it's kind of a joke). The coolest part of the box was pulling a yellow printing plate of Torri Hunter, the first plate I have pulled from a pack. Printing plates are not going for huge money on the secondary market, so I might hold on to it was trade bait for a bit.

My want and tradelist will be up soon, if anyone is interested in swapping some cards.

2013 Gypsy Queen Box 1 Recap & Review

Box number one is ripped and sorted, this post will count as a box recap and a product review with box 2 and a summary to follow. While I did not get much of a return on investment, that's not really why I buy boxes. I enjoy this product and as a set builder, getting a box with 4 hits is pretty nice.

Base cards (177 cards, no dups) - I am not confident that the number 177 is correct, but I am sure that there were zero doubles in the box, and for a set collector this is great. As someone who started collecting in the late 1980's this is still amazing to me. My love for Gypsy Queen is no secret and this year is no different, I would put this years design ahead of last year, but not as good as 2011. This years design is a little busy and the elaborate borders do take away from the photo in some cases, I hope that 2014 goes in the other direction and simplifies the design a little. (and hopefully they can get some new photos to use)

SP (6) - I don't mind the SP's, but scattering them around the set is pretty annoying. 2011 did it best by putting them in order as the last 50 cards.

2013 Qypsy Queen Mailday

A week behind everyone else, my boxes finally came, after a few slow months in the card department it's pretty exciting to have these to rip through.

Custom Card: 1971 Topps Jaromir Jagr

Because I never liked Iginla anyway.

Seriously Topps?

Not an April Fools joke, although I wish it was, here we have 2012 and 2013 Gypsy Queen Yogi Berra. I noticed Topps used the same couple photos for a bunch of 2012 Drew Pomeranz cards, but they at least were cropped a little different, but using the same photo of the same player in the same brand is seriously ridiculous. I also noticed the Tulowitzki card looked familiar.WTF.