As promised

I finally took advantage of a day off of work and got around to scanning the 2019 Gypsy Queen Green parallel set that I finished off a few weeks ago.  

Took about an hour, but for me it was well worth it.

Heavy on the scans coming up, so it may take a little bit to load all 34 of them...

My favorite card in the set is in the very last scan, it was the first one that I pulled when I bought a couple of packs a couple years ago.  The Odubel Herrera card really got me excited about this set and each green parallel card that came in only enhanced my love for it.

300 cards later, it is done.  And now it's on the blog.

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

On the 405

I've watched enough TV during my lifetime to have heard a few times about the 405 highway in California.  Doing a quick Google search found me an old article from a few years back showing that the 405 was the busiest Interstate in any US City.  If you click on the link you'll see photo evidence of why that's the case.

Lately I've been quite busy on the TCDB website and passed the 400 transaction milestone; with a couple trades that I received this weekend I'm now sitting at 405.  

Both of these were on the small side, I traded away a few early 80's baseball cards to get 2 cards closer to each of the 86 and 79 Topps football sets.  

The '86 set has moved along really quickly as I'm down to just 31 cards (10 RCs including Rice and Young) to finish the set.  Had no idea when I started the set in 2020 that I'd breeze through the set as quickly as I have.  

The '79 Topps FB set is already taking shape as I'm just a card shy of 100.  This set is much bigger than the '86, 528 cards compared to 396.  It's already fun seeing a lot of the older players such as Gene Upshaw though.  

The card that stands out for me on this 2nd trade scan is the Larry Fitzgerald.  It is the base card from the 2009 Topps set.  I know that the baseball design is not similar, but I think this design could be a good one for Topps to use/reuse in a future baseball set.

Slowly but surely the Prizm hockey set, one of my Next 10, is being whittled away.  I have a few of them in my current Sportlots box and the want list is down into the 30's.  

The John Olerud PC has grown quite a bit during my lack of posting so far in 2021.  This Leaf card from the '97 set brings the total to 262.  The Olerud collection is climbing up my list of PC's with help a lot of my recent trades, including one where I received 15 Olerud cards!

I Still have the goal of hitting 500 TCDB trades by the end of 2021; if I have more months like April (16 so far), I could make it there....

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

Serial Saturday #43: 99s and another parallel set(s) to work on

Many of you know that I finished off the '19 Gypsy Queen Green parallel set a few weeks ago ( I do still need to scan those and show them off).  For fun, I decided to hunt around on ebay a while back to see what I could find and I accidentally ran across this card, serial #'d to 99

This Troy Tulowitzki sea foam green parallel was just $1.25 and fit nicely into the cheap #'d/99 collection.  I've always liked this set, 2008 UD Baseball Heroes, but never really chased any of it over the years.  So I decided to take a look at all of the parallels from that set and decided on a couple that I really like.

The green is a common theme, moving from the GQ to now the UD Heroes.  It's serial #'d out of 499, so it may be a bit of a challenge.  The black parallel is another that I've always liked and I used to see them all the time at shows in boxes, but never bothered to buy any.  Now I have a reason to grab them.  

Two more sets to work on...why not right??

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

Inspired

Most of you who read this blog also (or likely preferably) read the Night Owl Cards blog.  Greg recently celebrated the completion of one of the great baseball sets of the 1950's, 1956 Topps.  

I know Greg worked on the set for quite a long time and his '56 of the Month posts were something I enjoyed many times.  When I saw that he had finished the set, I thought that I could start working towards a vintage set that I really enjoy.

1971-72 OPC hockey is a set that I've been working on for 3 or 4 years now, off and on.  I love the look of the set and the 264 card size is something that makes it a lot more bearable to build than baseball sets from that era.

Last weekend I decided to get to work.  7 cards were purchased off of ebay from another of the larger sellers on the site and they arrived today.

One thing that I have noticed about the uptick in card prices is I'm no longer finding cards from this set anywhere for under a dollar.  A lot of the sellers who have cards from this set are charging $1.50 and up, these 3 above cost me $2 apiece.  To be fair, the McKenny and Widing cards are their RC's so it's not surprising that they cost a little more.  

These 4 were either $2.50 or $3 apiece, but starting to knock off more cards from Original 6 clubs is going to be a little more pricey.  One card that hits home for me is the Fonteyne; I love the old school powder blue Penguins jersey (I own one myself) and I will always say that the skating Penguin logo is the best, even better if its the older one where the Penguin is wearing the scarf.

Still a fair way to go in this set build, 104 cards left out of the 264 card set.  Looking at it though, the 3 big names, LaFleur, Dionne and Dryden will combined cost me about what the Night Owl spent on his '56 Mantle.  

I've got a lot of sets on the go right now, but this one is moving up the list...

Enjoy the hobby!!

Robert

5 out of the Next 10: Green is clean

After grousing, complaining, chasing, trading and trying to do everything right, the 5th set out of the Next 10 group of sets I'm working on is finally complete.

I finally have the final card for the 2019 Gypsy Queen Green parallel set, Manny Margot, in hand with a very big thank you to Gavin at the Baseball Card Breakdown blog for the assist. 

I haven't taken the time yet to scan the entire 300 card set as promised, hopefully one day this week that will be accomplished, but I can tell you that I love the look of it in the binder.  

5 sets remaining on the list, everything modern (post-2000).  A pair of football sets and a trio of hockey sets are my upcoming chases, combined the total amount of cards I need to finish them off is 169.  

RC's mostly in football, a lot of SP's in hockey.  These next 5 sets aren't going to be as easy as it looks.  But it will be very sweet when they are all done.

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

Opening Day is upon us

 

I'm sure a lot of you in the north are probably saying "thank God it's opening day!"  The pictures I've seen of the winter that many of you have experienced makes me pretty sure that sentiment holds for a lot of you.

This is season #45 for the Jays, and I thought of Dave Stieb and wondered how many opening day starts he had.   I went and looked up on Baseball Reference just how many times Dave started on Opening Day, and I was surprised to learn it was just 4.  The list below shows what game he actually began each season and how the team fared.

1980 5th game against Milwaukee (won)

1981 2nd game against Detroit (lost)

1982 2nd game against Milwaukee (won in extra innings)

1983 Opening Day win against Boston

1984 4th game against California (won)

1985 Opening Day loss against KC

1986 Opening Day loss against Texas

1987 4th game against Boston (won)

1988 4th game against Minnesota (loss)

1989 7th game against NYY (won)

1990 2nd game against Texas (won)

1991 Opening Day loss against Boston

1992 became a spot starter in his last season with the Jays (first time around)

Dave was 1-3 on opening day starts, but you can see that the Jays won 6 other times on his first start of the season.  

Hyun Jin Ryu starts for the 2nd straight year on Opening Day and I'm hoping that the Jays young guns put up a big season this year.

Just finishing ahead of either the Yanks or Boston this year would be good as well....

Enjoy the season!!!

Robert