Black Friday Rockies

Plowing through my backlog here with some cards I needed to scan, so why to post them. First off Ryan McMahon, a Rockies third base prospect from the absolutely beautiful Bowman Inception Origins autographs. Nice thick card, silver ink auto, this ranks up there with any of the Bowman Black Collection cards I have. The best part might be the sweet spring training Mountain Logo hat.

My 5 Favorite Sets of 2015

Enough with the "look-what-I-got-in-mail" posts and something with some actual content, although lists barely count, lists are easy, but I like lists, it's like mini articles and year end lists are unavoidable. So, here are my favorite sets of 2015, in no real, with no real rhyme of reason.
 

Topps Archives -Like Heritage only better, in-game action photos and designs that aren't from the boring 1960's (yes, they are classic vintage designs, but there are boring).  Well, there was the super boring 1957, but we did get 1976 with the cool little position icon and the two photo design of 1983.

Redskins Pickups in Honor of NFC East Champs

Wow, no one was more surprised by the Redskins winning the division than Redskins fans. Yeah, it was a terrible division, but it still counts. The incredibly young O-Line played well, Jordan Reed stayed healthy and Kirk Cousins stopped throwing interceptions for now. The above Jordan Reed is from 2013 Elite, a really nice acetate card that is pretty much all clear other than the photo, a card I have had for a while but never scanned until now. With one game left Reed has 83 catches for 907 yards and 11 touchdowns, one of the best years ever for a Redskins Tight End.

Black Friday Hockey

Not all Friday Black pick-ups, but all part of a COMC shipment that contained my Black Friday cards. Starting off with the most exciting card in the package. A dual sock relic of Pelle Lindbergh. This is not near as gross as it sounds as these are from the hockey socks (which are more of leggings really), and not actually worn on the feet. Lindbergh is a pretty tragic story, an All-Star and Vezina Trophy winner who died in a car accident at the age of 26. It does make you wonder where Upper Deck got hockey socks from a guy who last played in 1985. The only bad part about this card is that the sock portion really bulges out of the card, there is no real creasing, but it creates a really weird 3D kind of effect.

Acetate Appreciation: 1998 Upper Deck Amazing Greats

These seemed pretty hard to find for cards limited to 2,000 copies, but were worth the search. Nice looking cards, a little busy but not over the top. Fairly large set for inserts at 30 cards they also come in a die-cut version limited to 25.

 All I can think of when I see this is the Orioles "This is Birdland" gif.

Cleaning out the Scan folder again

I intended to clean up my office, but that quickly took a back seat to catching up on scanning and cleaning out the scan folder and to be scanned pile. These are all from a previous COMC order, and with a new one on the way it was way past time to post some of these and scan them in. Starting with some 2011 In The Game Canadiana of Terry Puhl, one of the very few Saskatchewan born MLB players. Nice to have an auto of his and a sweet red patch from the old Astros uni even if they are unlicensed.

Binder 9

I have seen a lot people around doing this, so I took some time to go through my collection and see what I could come up with for my top 9 cards, I started limited to baseball, but there was a few that I really didn't want to leave off, so it became multi-sport.

Slightly Confusing Bowman Rockies Trade

I like to think I keep my want-list pretty organized and current. So when this trade was proposed to me, I was confused because I was sure I already had this Wilfredo Rodriguez card. It turns out the card I had is the one on the left, BCP58. The one in the trade was BCP148, seen on the right. One is the Chrome inserts in 2013 Bowman, the other is from 2013 Bowman Chrome. The only difference being the photo is cropped a little tighter on the BCP148. Someone at Topps was very fond of this photo as it also appears on this autograph from 2013 Bowman Chrome, Scout Breakouts insert from 2013 Bowman Draft and the Diamond in the Rough insert from 2013 Bowman Platinum, so every card he has had with Topps.

2015 UD CFL Box Break and Review

This is the second year of Upper Deck CFL license, and just like last year I picked up a box. (Link the the 2014 box break here). Very similar to last year, the main set is made up of 100 base cards, all offensive players. The next 50 are defensive short prints, last year they were 1 per pack, are now 1:2 packs. The new additions is All-Stars (151-175) at 1:4 packs pushing the rookies back to cards 176-200 at 1:4 packs as well. Relics stay at 2 per box with the patch parallels numbered out of 15. The big jump is in autographs, while 2014 only had 6 autographs in the set, 2015 has 86 in the base autograph variations, and 10 more in the CFL Marks set. OPC retro, Grey Cup moments and Team Logo patches are all back from 2014 as well. The only thing that disappointed me was the the box was $94, while I am sure last year the were $75. $100 after tax is pretty steep for what you are getting here.

Retro-ish PWE

I am seriously behind on posting things here, this PWE came from Doug over at Buckstore Cards and has been on the "to scan" pile for far too long. The bulk of it was 2015 Minors Heritage, with a new Jon Gray card and my first of the Rockies new AAA affiliate Albuquerque Isotopes. The thing I love about this set every year that regular Heritage is lacking is the action shots, I get that the old style sets lacked in game photos, but I still find posed shots in 2015 to be a waste of time.