Contest Pimp

Awesome contest going on over the The Dutch Card Guy, check it out

My Top Acquisitions of 2013

A quick post just showing of some of my favorite pick-ups of 2013, I don't bust a ton of wax so only one was a pulled by me.

9. John Buck 2005 Absolute Memorabilia - Possibly the ultimate catching relic card.

2013 Collecting Goals Summary

 Last January I posted some collecting goals for myself and for the state of the blog. As 2014 starts I thought it would be interesting to go over these and see how the year went.

2013 Goals

1. Keep the blog active, the minimum I have set for myself is 2 posts a week but I hope to stay more active than that. I think I did OK on this, 121 posts for the year puts me over 2 week with a few longer planned breaks.

2. Complete more trades, in little over a year I did 15 trades, so about one a month, not bad but a few more would be nice. 17 trades in 2013, 2 more than 2012.


3. Finish the "One of every Rockie" collection. This was a success, with Aaron Ledesma being the last pre-2013 card needed.

4. Complete a 2013 set, I will be buying 2 boxes of 2013 Gypsy Queen which should get me close to the base set leaving me to work on any short prints. Success, 2013 Gypsy Queen base set was completed as well as most of 2013 Topps Series 2.


5. Complete 2 older sets, right now I am looking at 1992 Pinnacle and 2012 Gypsy Queen short prints, or at least all of them other than the Darvish. Success, both of these were completed in 2013.

6. Get my 2011 GQ set above 50%, right now I have 147 out of 350 (42%) including 33 of 50 short prints (66%). Success, after a big ebay lot, I now need one card (#308, Kila Ka'aihue) for the set with SP's.


7. Acquire at least one more 1977 Topps Mexican NFL Redskin, I am down to 7 for the team set with mostly expensive short prints left. Success, with a PSA 7 Frank Grant.

8. Get a TTM autograph, I was going to try this last past year, but the NHL lockout put this on hold, I will try a few over the year and see what happens. Success, Tomas Kaberle on a 1987 Topps custom.

9. Get an in person auto, more on this next week hopefully. Success, 4 Blue Jays as part of the 2013 Winter Tour.


10. See a pro baseball game. Success, a trip to Vancouver seeing a Canadians game.


11. Buy a box of cards other than Gypsy Queen. I would hardly call my two crappy boxes of Topps Chrome a success, but it does fulfill the requirement.

12. Add to my Rockies autograph cards, Matt Holliday, Larry Walker and Andres Galarraga top this list. I did well on this with a nice Matt Holliday and a few prospects, but the Walker and Galarraga are still on the want list.

Final Trade of 2013

The last post of 2013 featuring the last trade of 2013. A mix of stuff from the wantlist via Zistle. The above Ellis Burks was almost on my 30 best Rockies card list, and is a welcome addition to the Rockies binder.

Tulowitzki 1/1 Addition

While not an active collector of printing plates, the odd one shows up that I feel the need to add to my PC, the most recent being a Troy Tulowitzki Magenta plate from 2012 Gypsy Queen, only my seventh printing plate and my first from 2012 Gypsy Queen.

Snobby Trade

A quick trade post to catch up on, Paul over at The Baseball Card Snob was interested in a Granderson relic I had and I noticed he had a Brad Hawpe auto in his trade-bait. Trading a Yankee relic for an auto of one of my favorite players in Rockies history is pretty exciting for me. Hawpe's decline was pretty fast, always a streaky hitter, Hawpe lit it up in the first half of 2009, and might have been the All-Star game MVP if Carl Crawford had not robbed him of a go ahead home run in the 7th inning. 

3 Newest Hall of Famers with a 71 Topps link

Most people have heard about the three newest Baseball Hall of Famers, the much deserving Bobby Cox, Tony La Russa and Joe Torre so I won't really go into that. The thing that I found interesting as a fan of the 1971 Topps set, a set that partially let me to start blogging in the first place, is that with Joe Torre's addition in 2014, there are now 46 Hall of Famers with cards in the black-bordered masterpiece that is 1971 Topps. I have no idea if that is close to a record for base cards of then current players, but something I thought was worth noting.

To save typing them all out I found a Sporcle quiz, a pretty fun way to test your knowledge.

http://www.sporcle.com/games/jaysee/1971thof

edit: After seeing CaptKirk42's comment I looked and Night Owl did start on a "Most Hall of Famers" project, his links are below. It looks like 1971 might have the lead with 1969 second at 44.

http://nightowlcards.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-most-hall-of-famers.html
http://nightowlcards.blogspot.ca/2013/05/the-most-hall-of-famers-update-1.html
http://nightowlcards.blogspot.ca/2013/07/the-most-hall-of-famers-update-2.html

Check out my Rockies (Dec 2013)

Another COMC order, another edition of Check out my Rockies. These packages are always fun for me as I usually forget what I all bought so there are usually a few surprises. The highlight is the card to the right,the only card of Jim Leyland with the Rockies, from the 1999 Police issue set that was probably released as a stadium giveaway, coming from ebay via the COMC mail box service. I have never even seen a scan of the card before so it nice to have one find it's way to my collection.

Acetate Appreciation: 1999 Finest - Peel and Reveal

An insert set from when peel off protective film coatings were a common thing to see on cards. These cards came in packs of Topps Finest with a black film on both sides that had to be peeled of to see which card you got. The three parallels were Sparkle, the most common (roughly 1 per box), Stadium Stars, the least common (roughly 1 in every 5 boxes) and Hyperplaid being somewhere in the middle (about 1 per 2.5 boxes). These cards are very hard to identify by scans so I used a black background below to help out. The Sparkle are just what you would expect, with shiny specks in the clear space, Hyperplaid are probably the best looking in person looking similar to X-Fractors from recent Topps Chrome releases. The Stadium Stars are the hardest to see with Stars and Circles that create a slight 3D effect.

Why did I even buy this?

I usually have a small niche that I collect, and try not to stray to far from that for budgetary reasons. I mostly collect base cards, and an un-numbered autograph means just as much to me as a low numbered color-fractor parallel. Sometimes my itchy bidding finger gets the best of me and I end up with something outside my comfort zone. This is one of those things. A Topps Vault Blank Back 1/1 card, from Topps Mini no less, and with all apologies to mini fans, a set that I have absolutely zero use for.

First off, I find it disgusting that Topps produces these things as a straight to ebay item. They are nothing more than a quick cash grab that really adds nothing to the hobby. If they were released into packs as redemptions (I know, that last thing we need is more redemptions) or something like that I would have no problem, but as a straight to ebay only item, that's what I have a problem with. I realize that most cards end up on secondary market sites like ebay anyway, and it is an easy way to get things like this into collectors hands, it still seems a little shady. As someone who hates redundancy (hence my Topps Mini dislike), these things don't really need to exist.

Obviously, I am not as outraged at these as I thought I was, because I bought one. It was relatively cheap and is pretty nice in it's Beckett graded case, and it fits into my 2013 Topps Ramon Hernandez rainbow that any regular readers (If I have any) have seen me working on for a few months.