This might become a collectors item

Take a look at card #234 from 2013 Topps Series 1...

This might be the only way that you see A.J. Burnett this year pitching in the home whites in Pittsburgh.  While listening to the Pirates broadcast on the radio tonight, I'm almost positive I heard one of the announcers say that every time that A.J. pitches this season, the Pirates are going to wear their alternate black tops with the gold P on the left breast.

Hell, the way he's pitching so far, I'm sure that the Pirates will do almost anything imaginable to make this guy comfortable.  A.J. may even return to the Pirates next year instead of retiring.....maybe the turn around is finally happening in Steeltown?

Stay tuned...

thanks for reading, Robert

The 2nd season

It started last night.  16 teams with one goal, survive the next 8 weeks for a chance to lift the Holy Grail of hockey. 

My Leafs are there for the first time in 9 years.  They haven't won a cup during my lifetime (I was born 5 months after the last cup in 1967). 

The Leafs drew the Boston Bruins, probably the one team in the Eastern Conference that they match up poorly against.  It will be the first time the two teams have met in the playoffs since 1974, when the Bruins swept the blue shirts in 4 straight.

There was a bright spot on that Leafs club, a young Swedish defenseman who finished 9th in club scoring with 39 points, and was a +38 that year to lead the team.  That man, was Borje Salming...

To my absolute delight, this 77-78 OPC card of Salming arrived in my mailbox on Monday, courtesy of Max from the Starting Nine blog.  Salming was the one constant on the Leaf roster through the great teams of the late 70's through the insanity that was the first half of the 80's. 


"The 2nd season" this year is quite appropriately named, with a team potentially playing 28 games in the playoffs after having played a 48 game schedule during the regular season. 

To be honest, I'm just glad that the Leafs are back in after such a long absence, and here's hoping this season is the start of another long run of playoff appearances.  My belief is that management has them heading in the right direction, and with another piece or two there's a possibility of them becoming Cup contenders in the not too distant future.

I hope....

thanks for reading, Robert

Spring has sprung

I got lucky today.   No, not that way, get your minds out of the gutter.

I had a few bucks left on the weekly budget, and on my trip to Wal Mart today, I picked up a rack pack of Heritage.

I didn't realize what I had on the first trip through the pack, but when checking the card backs to see if I had pulled any SPs, I came across a card #'d ROA-JSP.

Yep, I pulled an auto!!  It also might be the smallest certified auto I've ever seen on a card...

What is cool is that the card back, aside from the card number, is exactly the same as the original 1964 Topps card.  The original was card #71 in case you were wondering.

Any Angels fans wishing to trade for this, I'd be more than happy to hear your offers.

thanks for reading, Robert

Blue Jay Monday: Staying within my limits

Part of the "re-born" vigor I have with the blog is the fact that I'm striving to stay within the budget.

When I first started the blog, I was anal in keeping track of the dollars and cents, probably a little too anal.  The past couple of weeks has been an exercise in maintaining the $30 budget, which for the past 15 months has been pretty "soft".  Card shows like the National, and the Hockey Expos in Toronto found me spending several times the weekly budget, and not giving it a second thought.

Attending big shows like that were good for the collection, and while I budgeted for the extra expenditures that those shows bring, I still was left with a bit of guilt for going above and beyond the stated parameters.

By focusing the past couple of weeks on keeping spending below the $30 limit, I have kept my eBay purchases to zero, while adding cards to the sets I'm working on for 2013, flagship and Heritage.

Thankfully, recent envelopes of goodness from a couple of bloggers have allowed my Blue Jay collection to increase.   First off, everyone's favorite Owl sent me about a dozen Jays, 4 of which I'll show off for you...

A lot of you may recognize the John Mayberry name from the Phillies roster this season, on the left here is his dad, John Mayberry Sr., the first real slugger that I can remember the Jays ever having.  Another jr. appears here, as Joe Coleman Jr played for the Jays in '78 before finishing his 15 year career the next season pitching in SF and Pittsburgh.  Bob Bailor has the distinction of being the first Blue Jay to hit .300 in a season by hitting .310 in 1977.

To go along with the 3 '79 Topps cards, I really enjoyed seeing this card:

Numbered 36/250, this Bowman Chrome blue parallel of Adam Lind is a welcome addition to the Blue Jays collection.

Not to be outdone, Josh from the Royals and Randoms blog sent me a handful of Jays out of the blue as well.  Speaking of serial numbered cards, Josh included a couple for me as well...

Again, neither of these were needed for the SNI set, but still they'll fit well into the Jays collection, which continues to grow.  This next card that Josh sent threw me off a little...

Designed very similar to the 2013 Topps die cut cards, this 2012 Bowman Chrome Legends in the Making die cut is a very cool looking, and confusing card.  No matter, it's still welcome here. 

Gents, thank you both very much for the cards!!  They are really appreciated.

Thanks for reading, Robert

Sakic Sunday: Slowly getting my mojo back

It's been about two months for me, but I have the itch again.   The itch to write.   It feels good to have the drive to sit at the keyboard, and get involved in the blog world again.

A big part of that drive is getting my own shit in order.  That's right, you read it correctly.  My shit was out of place...

Part of it was starting to get cleaned up around what we call "the computer room" at my house.  It's still not 100% where I'd like it to be, but it's a helluva lot better than what it was. 

Another part of what's turned me around was starting to get myself back in tune with how I collected in the past.  Putting sets together is the main focus, yes, but also getting back to focusing on my player collection of Joe Sakic.

I started typing the list of Sakic cards I have on a spreadsheet months ago, and got 45 cards deep when the typing stopped.  When I say months, I mean last hockey season months, meaning almost a year went by before I bothered to get that part of my collection organized again.

The procrastination is another thing that I'm striving to get away from, and listing the 200+ Sakic's that I own will definitely be a big part of that.  Another reason I need to do this is to prevent buying cards that I already own during eBay spending sprees. 

Cards such as these three serial #'d favorites of mine:

2003-04 SP Authentic 10th anniversary #SP6.  SP Authentic is likely the one set that I regret not collecting more of over the years, and this card is a good reason why.  The design has always been clean and easy on the eyes, and the short printed rookies are always a great find if you can land one.

The next 2 cards are a little more limited, both have print runs less than 100...

The 2007-08 SP authentic SP notables card on the left is numbered 55/100 was part of a series of Sakic pickups from the Fall Expo last year in Toronto, as was the 2002-03 Atomic Die Cut on the right. 

The serial numbered versions of Sakic cards are one part of my PC that I would like to beef up a bit, looking through the collection I notice that there aren't a whole of these in there.

You may or may not have noticed that there's a tab on the top of the blog now for the Jim Thome PC.  That one was quite easy, only 28 cards total was an easy exercise in typing.  The Sakic PC tab I hope to have up by the end of Tuesday night, it will be a little more difficult what with almost 10x the 28 Thome cards I have to type up.  

It will be done sooner rather than later....

Thanks for reading, Robert

Desperate times bring blasters of Series 1

And the blaster brings mixed feelings to the table.  It was good to open a 10 pack box, largely because I've been sticking to my budget the past 3 weeks (more on that in tomorrow's post), and pack busting before that was pretty dry for a few weeks.

I've read a lot of mixed reviews on the manupatches that come in the series 1 blaster boxes, so I finally decided what the hell, I'll get a blaster for myself and see how lucky/unlucky I am.  Naturally, I wasn't lucky enough to pull a Jays patch, but I do like the look of the one that I pulled.

Come on Matt, smile!!!

I don't know what it is about Matt Holliday, but he just does nothing for me as a baseball fan.  I'm sure that a card of oh, let's say Yadier Molina or Adam Wainwright would have been a better pull (in my opinion), but I'm sure that there's a St. Louis Cardinals fan out there that would enjoy the 2011 WS Champions patch a lot more than I. 

Give me a '92 or '93 WS Champions patch with a Joe Carter or Robbie Alomar on it, and I'd be quite happy myself....

Another reason I chose the blaster is that the baseball card aisle at my local Wal Mart is dry.   Bone dry.  No looseys or racks of Series 1, no Heritage at all (save for the empty box), and the only other cards on the racks were GQ, which I'm doing my best to avoid this year.

Now, I know that I'm out of the norm and prefer to build base sets as the rule rather than the exception to my baseball card experience, but managing to only pull 49 base cards out of 10 packs, well that's just a little hard to swallow.  That for me is the down side of this blaster.

The up side, at least from what I can see, is there are cards that I feel are tradeable.  And trading, or the lack thereof, is maybe why I'm in a bit of a funk.  I've really had no connection to anyone out there.  If I've sent 20 packages/PWE's out to the blogosphere so far in 2013, I'll be shocked. 

The '72 minis aren't something that I'm collecting, but I'm sure that there's someone out there that's interested in them...

There's that Matt Holliday character again...

I know, a bunch of stiffs....

the emeralds still look great, but none of these fit here, so I'm hoping somebody will give them a home...

I'm going to try and get a temporary 2013 traders page up on the blog sometime after the Pirates game this afternoon, so hopefully somebody out there will give me a reason to get to the post office during the next two days (which I have off!!).

Thanks for reading, Robert

The Red, White, Blue, Green, Pink, Slate and Camo that is 2013 Topps

I'm sure that I have probably missed a color or two, but the rainbow that is the 2013 Topps parallel universe is a wide one.

The sad thing is, I like them all.  I've owned a copy of each color save for the pinks, and I think that they work well with the design.

Now, the work begins on obtaining the Jays team sets for some of the colors.  I doubt that obtaining full team sets for the pink, slate and camo parallels are going to be within reach of my wallet, so maybe owning one or two of each of those colors is probably a more realistic target.

On the other hand, Wal Mart blue, Target red, base set white and emerald green are all in my sights.  They are going to be added to the want list today.

I have all but 2 of the base set white cards, and have exactly half of the blue and red parallels.  As far as the greens go, I only have the Colby Rasmus (what is it with me and Colby this year, he seems to be following me around...) so I need 11 more of those.

Here are the blues that I have so far:

Here are the reds:

The only other parallels that I own are the green & slate of Colby Rasmus. 

I'm probably going to pick up some more packs of Series 1 before it's all said and done, so hopefully I'll be able to get a few more cards that will help out with trades as well.

Keeping the want list for Jays cards down to more modern releases seems to be the way to go for me now.  It's just a lot easier to manage, and whenever I want to start looking for older team sets, I can just post my want list for those one by one.

Got any that I need?  Email, comment, both are good....

Thanks for reading, Robert