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.

An Endangered Species (AKA Zistle Trade)

Taking a break from moping and pouting about my favorite website to post a trade with one of the few die-hards left lurking around. I have a ton of cards that scans just don't do justice, but this is the opposite, they actually look better scanned than in-hand. Not true acetate cards, only the cloudy window is see through, but very cool cards, and the complete team set of 1997 E-X2000.

On the Impending Death of Zistle and the Current State of My Collecting

I you are a reader of this blog you have undoubtedly seen multiple mentions of www.zistle.com, and if you are familiar with zistle, you know that there is mass speculation surrounding a very long state of silence from the admins, very little to no website support, the lawsuit from Beckett and the little info that is out there leading most to believe that zistle has been sold to Beckett and will probably be shut down or just simply un-maintained to death.

This is crushing news to me as my finding zistle really lead to me getting back into the hobby to the level I am now. The hardest thing, probably with any collection, is knowing what you have and what you are looking to add.

I remember going through Beckett's organize, and this was the previous version which I found superior to the current rendition, and finding little things, cards missing images, cards with wrong images or bad scans, cards with the wrong team listed, cards I had that were not listed. All very minor things for a database of that size, but soon found that little was done to fix these. This among other things lead me to zistle, there I could add cards, add images and flags on errors were quickly dealt with, the people running the site seemed eager to help and interact, and with the base of the site being user submitted data, a person felt they were helping making the catalog better, more complete, more correct, actually contributing to something.

It was fun, it must have been, part of getting a new card was scanning it, posting it here and adding it to zistle. In the six plus years I used it I added 123,741 cards to the database, 22,611 images and had 45,253 flags accepted, it had to be fun to spend that much time on something.

Then we get to trades, and that is really why most of us blog isn't it. It's not just to show off what we got, it to interact as a part of a community. I completed 68 trades on zistle, that is a large percentage of the trading I do. Part of what lead me back into buy packs was for trade bait. It was so easy, enter a card as trade-able and check for people that wanted it, and you could go through and check want-list and trade-list, and see the cards, a little more stimulating that scrolling through a spreadsheet.

I will continue to use zistle until, one day, probably, it is just not there. Hopefully my spreadsheets are up to date at that point. I will continue to buy, but probably in smaller amounts, and probably mostly singles. I have tried other sites, most people seem to be migrating towards tradingcarddb, while it is an adequate site, I find it hard on the eyes, full of adds and hard to use. Being on that site feeling like driving a new car that runs fine, but isn't as nice as the one your previous had, the one you were used to and loved. And there is zero chance I will use Beckett, the name tastes like bile in my mount.

Speaking of Beckett, it is very disappointing that the biggest non-card producing name in the hobby is carrying itself the way it is. Their Organize feature is a joke compared to zistle, and instead of making themselves better, the just bully a small site, and with it a small community, out of existence. Zistle was free, but I paid for zistle gold just because I wanted to support the site, that's how things should work isn't it, you give a company money because you want to, not because you have too.

The frustrating part right now is not knowing, is zistle owned by beckett? Is it getting shut down? Maybe Beckett will realize the ill-will they creating and keep it up, assigning admins to keep it alive. Maybe something better will come along, who knows, as for now, I will wait, in a sort of limbo, buying here and there, but not nearly as much, maybe finding the odd trade, but not nearly as much, and still enjoy collecting, but not nearly as much.

2017 Gypsy Queen First Look

Every year I have a small dread that Topps will discontinue the Gypsy Queen line, there is no reason for this, just a little voice in my head that likes to torment me with worse-case scenarios. My fear can be eased for another year as details of 2017 Gypsy Queen are out. First impressions, not good. It looks like it is not finished, I really don't the look of the faded photo, as opposed to the framed style of every other year of GQ. The Gypsy Queen logo is also nothing like previous years. Honestly, I don't mind the bottom half of the card, but the top half is a disaster.

A Catching up on 2016 Trade

A nice little zistle trade knocking off some 2016 Rockies needs, chipping away at the Archives team set, I have said it before, I am not really high in the 1953 design, we have seen it before through Heritage, but I do like the 1979 design. The Blackmon made the want-list for the beard close-up if nothing else.

Zistle PWE Trade

I nice little trade from zistle showing a little more diversity from what I am usually looking for. Of course there would be Gypsy Queen though, another short print down from the 2015 set, a card with a good photo, kind of a rarity for 2015 GQ.

Check out my Cards from COMC

COMC package day is always one of favorite days, I usually only make an order every 4 months or so, and not only do I get the COMC cards I picked up, I also get my "Shipping to Canada is Crazy" Mailbox cards, including, yes, another 2013 Ramon Hernandez, the last non-printing plate needed, the mini black numbered to #5.

Jose Fernandez

There was a post sitting here ready to go, but it seems wrong to put it up right now. We awoke to the news that 24 year old Jose Fernandez died in a boating accident. I don't follow the Marlins, but I was a fan of his, he had fun playing the game and was always a treat to watch. My thoughts are with the family, Marlins players and fans. Even for people that had no connection other than baseball it is hard, and it doesn't go away soon. Take it from someone, who started this fall Sunday like so many, by putting on a old #36 Sean Taylor jersey to watch the Redskins game.

1996 Sp Box Break Summary

I have to say, this was a pretty outstanding box. Out of my 30 packs I hit the above Cal Ripken (1:45 packs) a die cut Special FX (1:75 packs) and a die cut Marquee Matchups (1:61). There no way I am doing the math to figure the odds of getting all three in a single box. As far as the set build, I got 167 out of 188 with 57 doubles (including a couple triples). Collation was weird as I got a ton of White Sox, Red Sox and almost no A's, Rockies and Marlins.

1996 Upper Deck SP Trade / Wantlist

Want List

Main Set: 87, 89, 100, 122, 125, 127, 131, 135, 139

Trade List

Main Set: 16, 17, 18, 19, 24, 32, 34, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 59, 60, 61, 62, 67, 73, 79, 82, 90, 111, 118, 129, 130 ,133, 134, 136, 140, 141, 145, 146, 153, 160, 163, 168, 172, 174, 176, 179, 186, 187, 188

Special FX: 13, 14, 23, 25, 28, 32

Marquee Matchups: 2, 4, 8, 13, 15, 19

Special FX Die-Cut: Roger Clemens

Marquee Matchups Die-Cut: Jeff Bagwell

Cal Ripken Collection: 20

Last Updated: Feb 16, 2017

Bowman Black Collection NFL - Jordan Reed

Might as well post a Redskins card on the Sunday of Dallas week. I seems like the Bowman Black Collection auto's have been retired in Baseball, but I managed to find one to add to the collection. This one comes from 2013 Bowman football and is numbered to 10. Jordan Reed is one of the better tight ends in league when healthy with 11 TD's and 952 yards in only 14 games last year.

Minor League Mailday

It's always interesting to try a new source for cards, after having the above Chris Iannetta high on my want-list for a while I decided to try out www.gosportscards.com, a site specializing in minor league singles to knock off the last Iannetta minor league card I needed. The cards came in standard bubble mailer, but inside each card was inside a penny sleeve that was inside a Card Saver II that was inside of a team bag. I am always happy to get something from someone who obviously cares about packing. It's just one order by I cannot recommend this site enough.

1996 SP Base Highlights

Continuing on with the 1996 SP box break, highlighting some of the more interesting base cards. A nice double exposure card of Ken Caminiti, this was something that Upper Deck did quite a bit of and something you don't really see anymore.

Retro Box Break Preview - 1996 SP

I hadn't ripped much wax in a while, and after being scared of by the high cost of 2016 Upper Deck CFL and having a good paypal balance after selling of a few old PS2 games, I decided on a box of 1996 Upper Deck SP. One of my favorite design of the 90's, or really ever, I guess I am a sucker for wood grain. I started with 5 packs and stopped to make a post, might as well spread it out as my posts have been few and far between, and have a cold Banquet while I do it.

A Card Room in Transition

As a part of My Cardboard Habit's contest and a way to add a post in a serious card dry spell for me, I introduce you to my card room / office. Starting with the huge office desk I first showed off in a previous post, and that I am still in love with. The top has a small collection of bobbleheads and figures along with some stadium giveaway cups and an autographed Jeff Bostic helmet.The right side is a mini-library with books I want to keep handy, favorites, to-reads and things I have yet to put away, along with a small row of display cards that is always changing in and out. You can also see the couple posters I have cheap frames for and have decided on a spot for. Somewhere I lost the clip for my Sean Taylor towel and it is hanging sadly my one corner. Fixing that is now priority 1. The empty space is for a spare monitor that will become this rooms TV.

3 Card Sportlots Mailday

A small Sportlots mailday featuring probably the only non-Rockies minis that I collect, 2011 Gypsy Queen Mini Photo Variations. Jose Reyes is another addition to the "Set collecting makes you do funny things" category, I never liked Reyes as a player, and I like him even less as someone who throws his wife around. I kind of feel bad lumping in Mr. Padre Tony Gywnn in between these two as Mr. Chapman had his own issue this off-season.

What the Heck is going on with Panini Unparalleled?

Most of my Football card news comes from searching for "2016 Redskins" on the old popular auction site and comc, so I had never heard of Panini Unparalleled until a search come up with the monstrosity above. First off, it took me a while to find Bruce Smith, tucked away in the top left like a bad "Where's Waldo". Not really the best use of space on this card, and the whole set is pretty much like that, a small cropped photo among an expense of refractory, foily insanity.

My 2016 Update Wishlist.

Update is usually my favorite of the flagship releases, as a team collectors there are usually new Rockies cards of either rookies or new guys. It's still a couple months away but I have been thinking about what I would like to see in Update this year.

A Very Donruss-y Trade

I don't buy much Donruss (or Panini) but it does make it to my wantlists from some weird part of me that misses junk wax and middle names on backs of cards, so here are two need additions to the Nolan James Arenado collection.

Massive Man-Cave Upgrade

Not much card related recently other than a big-time upgrade to the card room, the above is a before shot, a couple old desks and stuff randomly piled everywhere, ans this was taken midway through the clean-up so it was actually worse than this.

And this is after picking up a used office desk, the color is nice and it is sturdy as hell, and has tons of binder storage in the top shelves. And look, I finally hung some of the posters than have been in frames leaning against the wall for months. I am still only slightly more organized, but it least it looks like I have things under control.

2016 Stadium Club - Rockies Custom Card Re-Do

Since rebooting in 2014, Stadium Club has been about the photos, full bleed, gloss stock with high quality photos. But for Rockies fans, it has been kind of boring. Sure we got a nice Todd Helton in 2014 and another winner in 2015 Drew Stubbs, but other than that, pretty much straight forward baseball card photos. So this year I decided to make the set my way, with my pictures, for the most part, while keeping the blatantly ripped off 1997 Fleer design.

The above Trevor Story photo is from opening day and while not a great action photo, it works with what he did on that day. A case where the tale the picture tells is more important than the actually picture.

Archives Sampler

Same days I don't look forward going to the LCS. I know I need supplies and want to support the local guy, but I feel kind of like a douche buying supplies for cards that I obviously didn't buy from him. Not that I don't want to buy from him, but being in Canada it is a hockey focused store and the baseball he does have seems really overpriced too me. So this trip, after passing on the $8.00 packs of Gypsy Queen, I decided to try out some Archives, probably my second favorite yearly set that Topps does. My 3 packs gave me nothing but base and no Rockies (so I borrowed some scans from Zistle), but I did get to rip some wax.

Happy Canada Day!

Just a quick post wishing everyone a Happy Canada Day.

Zistle Trade #62

A really cool zistle trade starting with a really cool Darren Daulton Slideshow insert from 1994 Leaf. Not really an acetate card, but the picture is like a piece of film, hence Slideshow, making for something different and a really interesting card to have in-hand.

May 2016 Pick-ups Feat. Trippy Parallels.

I have to admit, I am still not a fan of the logo-less Panini stuff, but when they put out something like the above Tie-dyed parallel, they deserve to get some credit. I don't know if Prizm will return for 2016, but if it does, I hope these show up again.

Custom Card: 2015-16 Panini Absolute - Tony Wolters

Once a staple of this blog and looking back, something I am pretty proud of is custom cards. It has been over a year since I posted one and I finally found a couple reasons to start messing around. First was the 2015-16 Panini Absolute Basketball set. I have yet to actual hold some in my hands, but I have a few in my COMC account waiting to get shipped out, but based on the scans I really like the design. Whenever I see a nice Panini design I wonder what it would look like as a baseball card, and this one worked pretty well. I made a few adjustments as foil doesn't really scan well or lend itself to digital designs that well. I also lightened it up and put more of a focus on the brushed metal background. I really like how this one turned out. The other inspiration was Rockies rookie catcher Tony Wolters. A 24 year old middle infielder turned catcher, Wolters was claimed from the Indians and was a surprise addition to the opening day roster. He has earned rave reviews behind the plate and has been a nice change from the mess of catchers the Rockies have employed recently. I noticed he was not in Topps Series 2, but there is still hope for update, or maybe he will do something special enough to get on a Topps Now card, but for now, this will have to do.

10 Card Sportlots Mailday

I like Sportlots, although it takes a lot for me to make an order, adding things until there is enough from one seller to justify placing an order. One card that was on my list for a while was this 2001 Topps Traded Roberto Kelly. Kelly played in 1,337 MLB games, but none of those with the Rockies making this a true "Zero year" card. He did play 63 games with the Rockies AAA team in Colorado Springs, but never made it to the majors in 2001. A two time All-Star and the guy that broke up Dave Stieb's perfect game with 2 outs in the 9th in 1989.

Awesome Relic Card Reminds Me I Don't Like Relic Cards

From the recent pick-ups pile, a card, that if you suspend disbelief, is an awesome card. I collect catchers in gear, and bat cards of the top home run hitting catchers of all-time, which Dickey sits 14th by my count. It is Panini, but the pose and the gear make no logo airbrushing necessary. A nice photo of a Hall of Famer on a super thick high end card with a piece of bat that may or may not have hit one of his 202 career MLB home runs, and I only paid $8.00. What's not to like?

Gyspy Queen Pick-ups with Some 1/1 Action

I'm getting really bad at not scanning and posting thing, so I am making a point of getting back to it, starting with a compilation of recent Gypsy Queen additions. I am pretty excited about the above card, a Charlie Blackmon 1/1 Framed Black from this years GQ. I got this for $11 plus shipping probably due to the auction being listed with an un-descriptive title. I think this is only my second "true" 1/1 as I don't really count printing plates.

Zistle Trade #60

My 60th Zistle trade, way more that I thought, as I didn't really keep track for a while. Starting off with an acetate of Greg Maddux from 1994 Studio, the oldest acetate MLB card in my collection.

First 2016 GQ Trade

My first set help from 2016 Gypsy Queen comes from Judson over at My Cardboard Habit, but the coolest part wasn't the set help, it was the Mini Foil. I don't get a chance for much retail, and I think these are retail only. The shiny foil look is something different for Gypsy Queen and is a nice change of pace.

Big, Big Zistle Trade, Part 1

The fat stack above just by itself would be a big trade for me, but that is not all of it, that's just the 2014 Bowman Platinum portion, putting a big dent in my wantlist for a set that I really wish I would have bought more of when it was around.

Mike Nikorak - Bowman Black Collection

Card number 15 in this collection and up to date until something new comes out. Mike Nikorak was the 27th overall pick in the 2015 draft and struggled in his pro debut, going 0-4 with a 11.72 ERA over 8 starts, but as a 18 year old high school kid, you never know what you will get.

2016 Gypsy Queen Box 2

Box 2 is torn apart and sorted and won't be posted in as much detail as box one. Above we have the short prints, all the short prints this year are retired players other than Kenta Maeda, The Killebrew being the highlight of these with a bat barrel photo. Surprisingly, two boxes completed my base 300 card set and left me with 69 doubles. Just out of curiosity I checked previous years two box totals. 2014 gave me 298/300, 2013 gave me 268/300 and 2012 gave me 282/300. I didn't keep track in 2015, but seeing as I still need base it doesn't seem close.

2016 Gypsy Queen Trade/Wantlist

Want-list
Updated June 10, 2017

Base: Complete!

SP: 307, 328, 350

Mini Retail Foil: 302, 303, 305-307, 309-316, 318, 320, 322-328, 330, 333, 334, 336, 338-341, 343, 344, 345, 347, 350

Framed Green: 24, 76 (Jon Gray)

Framed Blue: 24, 76

Framed Purple: 6, 17, 24, 76

Mini: 76

Mini Gold: 24, 76

Mini Purple: 24, 210, 244, 272

Mini Variations: 76

Autographs: DJ LeMahieu

Autographs Orange: DJ LeMahieu, Vinny Castilla

Trade-list

Base:
2, 4, 9, 24, 25, 32, 39, 45, 52, 59, 60, 68, 73, 74, 77, 87, 93, 94, 100, 102, 117, 123, 124, 126, 129, 131, 140, 148, 155, 161, 162, 166, 173, 174, 178, 180, 194, 199, 204, 206, 207, 208, 236, 238, 243, 269, 284, 288, 299

Autographs: Brian Johnson, Rob Refsnyder

Autographs Green #99: Ketel Marte

Photo Variation: Paul Goldschmidt

Full Sized Relic: Matt Carpenter

Mini Relic: Shelby Miller

Mini Relic Gold #50: Javier Baez

Framed Purple: A.J. Pollock

Mini Base: 4, 15, 50, 56, 67, 70, 75, 82, 83, 105, 111, 136, 156, 170, 175, 178, 182, 204, 219, 238, 245, 249, 251, 265, 273, 274, 283, 289, 295

Mini SP: 317, 343

Mini Photo Variations: 1, 5, 15, 18, 34, 44, 57, 61, 71, 88, 90, 105, 125, 138, 155, 158, 163

Mini MVP: Hank Aaron, Sandy Koufax, Stan Musial, Buster Posey

Glove Stories: Mike Trout, Juan Perez, Kevin Pillar, Billy Burns, George Springer, Freddy Galvis, Joey Votto

Power Alley: Willie Mays, Jose Canseco, Carlos Delgado, Dave Winfield, Andre Dawson, Stan Musial, Eddie Mathews, Babe Ruth, Eddie Murray, Albert Pujols

Walk-Off Winners: Eric Hosmer, Manny Machado, Andruw Jones, Jackie Robinson, Josh Donaldson, Wilmer Flores, Kris Bryant

Ancient Era Remnants: Player's Cigarettes