Week in review: Close on a couple of fronts

I decided to take today off so I could enjoy a 3 day weekend.  With the weather finally starting to turn the corner a little bit, it was nice to get out of the house for an hour or two with the mrs., even if it meant having to run a couple of errands.

Those errands were in the early afternoon, which meant I had the morning to continue work on the Blue Jays piles on my desk.

Let me correct that.   Pile.

Yes, I've finally cut a swath through the massive piles of cards, and am down to roughly 100 cards to go before they are either removed from the want list, or found to be one of the many duplicates that I have.   Even with 24 days to go before my self imposed deadline, the goal of having these cards cataloged and the want list up to date is very close at hand.

Speaking of close, I received the 2nd part of my Sportlots order today, and I'm now 12 cards closer to completing the 2008-09 OPC set.

One of my favorite players to ever wear the #27, Frank Mahovlich, is in the upper right corner.  Great card except that he's wearing the dreaded CH instead of the blue and white.  Shack and Bower on the bottom row more than make up for that.   I wish that there were more coaches cards in products like OPC; instead of spitting out the same retired players every year, put all 30 coaches into a set.  For me it would be a nice change.

Even with OPC, the rookie lottery is in play.  You just never know what you're going to get with the RC's.  Joey Mormina played 1 game in the NHL.   Erik Ersberg played 3 years in the NHL, and now plays in the KHL.  Mattias Ritola played 43 games over parts of 4 seasons, and is now back in his native Sweden.  Jack Hillen has had an OK career so far, playing in 257 games with 4 clubs.  Brassard and Abdelkader are both NHL regulars, but neither are top 6 forwards. 

I guess that's why I got these SPs on the cheap....

Money spent this week: $15.36

That means that I have a little extra to spend on the show this weekend.  Now if I can only figure out what my plan of attack is for tomorrow, I'll be all set.

Thanks for reading, Robert

Who needs this year's Heritage?

I heard through the Twitter verse that the '14 Heritage release was put off for a week, much to the dismay of a lot of people.

I have no need to worry about that.   I've already got my set started.  This checklist will tell you so...

What would have been really nice is for this checklist to have been accurate when I purchased it.   Ernie Banks would be in hand, which would mean one less pricey card to pick up. 

Packs are 8 cards total usually for Heritage, correct?  OK, here's the other 7 cards for you.

Not a bad pack if I do say so myself.  The Rico Carty is my favorite, largely because he played for the Jays during the '78 and '79 seasons to finish off his career.  Carty also finished 2nd in ROY voting in 1964, losing out to Dick Allen. 

OK, so my Heritage set has 590 cards left to go.  And yes, it will probably cost a little more to build than the '14 set. 

At least I didn't have to wait an extra week to get it started.

Thanks for reading, Robert

Cross 5 more off the want list

The one good thing about finally getting the want list up?  Being able to remove cards from the list.  I figured for tonight's post, I'd go through the remaining piles of Jays cards on my desk, find 5 that I was able to cross off the list, and show them off.

Nothing fancy here.

 

It wasn't that long ago that J.P. Arencibia was the next big thing behind the plate for the Blue Jays.  J.P. can't say that he didn't get a chance in Toronto, he was the #1 catcher for the past 3 seasons.  Even though the power was there, a .212 career average wasn't what the Jays were looking for out of their #1 backstop.  So they brought Dioner Navarro in.   I have a feeling that J.P. will do well in Texas...

With all the diamond parallels that came through my house in 2011, I was surprised that I didn't have this card.  Fingers crossed that he can stay healthy this year and join Edwin Encarnacion in the 40 homer club.

I'd forgotten about Jesse Litsch until I saw this card.  It turns out that he had some serious health issues and didn't pitch at all in 2012.  Jesse chose free agency over a AAA assignment to the Buffalo Bisons, and hasn't signed with a club since.  It looks as if he's trying to make a comeback though.  His twitter feed @JesseLitsch shows some pics of his new "arm slot". 

I remember buying what seemed to be a million of these cards, 1992 Donruss.  I guess there wasn't as many as I thought.  Tom was a rental for the '91 Blue Jays and pitched fairly well, going 6-7 with a 2.98 ERA.  He didn't fare as well during the postseason; his 2 starts were not great, with an ERA over 8.  The Jays lost to the eventual WS champion Minnesota in 5 games.

Another card that I was surprised to find I didn't have as part of the Jays collection.  I was always under the impression that Gruber was a Blue Jays draft pick, but I found out that he was actually a rule 5 draftee from the Cleveland Indians.  Kelly spent the entire 1984 season with the Jays, basically taking up a roster spot by playing only 15 games with the Jays.  It would be another two years before Gruber earned some regular playing time in Toronto.

There's a chance that I may be able to find enough time this weekend to get all the remaining Jays cards sorted through.  That would mean I would only have to update the want list with the 2013/2014 needs.

So you're saying there's a chance.....

Thanks for reading, Robert

There's a reason I keep going back

I've bought stuff on eBay off and on for over a decade now.  I've used Sportlots for a couple of years to pick up some singles for sets that I'm working on.

In all those transactions, there's probably only one seller that I really have no qualms going back to on a regular basis.  Let me tell you why.

First, part of his Sportlots user name is "dork".  If that isn't right up my alley....

Second, the guy is just that damn good.   I ordered cards on Sunday night. I placed the order after 7 pm.  It's Tuesday, and the cards are already in my hands.  You just cannot beat that for turnaround. 

Yes, this seller lives in western PA as I do, so the cards should arrive quickly through the mail.  Even so, the speed at which he gets the cards to me is still unbelievable.  The cards are also well packaged, another plus.  And, unlike the one eBay seller that I bought a 25 card gold Topps lot from, the orders never get screwed up (that eBayer sent me emerald green instead....close).

I hit 3 different hockey sets that I've been working on in my order. 

 

For the most part, a lot of good talent on this scan.  Sometime soon, I'll start hitting the short prints that I need from the 2012-13 OPC set.  Still need 65 of them, so it might take a little time to round them all up.

If you thought there was talent on the first scan, this group of 7 includes 6 Hall of Famers, and the 7th who isn't in the HOF (Wilson) certainly had a great career in Chicago and San Jose.  The 2008-09 OPC set that I'm working on still has 28 SPs to go. With more to come in the other half of the order that has yet to arrive, I can see the light at the end of that tunnel.

Finally, I picked up 14 of the 95-96 Collectors Choice Players Club parallels.

 

With these 14 in, I finally hit the 2/3 mark.  With only 130 to go, and nearly 19 years gone by since this set was first released, I should complete this set sometime around 2024.  A lofty goal no doubt!

It would be nice to find a couple of other reliable sellers like this on eBay, but I certainly am not complaining.

I consider myself lucky to have found one great online seller that I can go back to again and again.  If there's a seller that you'd like to recommend because you've had good success with him/her, let me know in the comments.

thanks for reading, Robert

One if by land, or is that PWE?

Envelopes that arrive here from the blogosphere are always welcome, even if they only contain one card.

That's all that Marcus from All the Way to the Backstop sent to me recently, but the one card works just fine.

Serial Number 678

This Ben Revere (no, not Paul) card is the 3rd 2014 Topps card to be added to the SNI set, and overall is card # 1090.  I now own 34 out of the 50 Phillies needed to complete the set. 

With 96 stolen bases and zero career home runs, I guess you could say that Revere does all his work by land.

Thank you for the card Marcus, it is appreciated!!

thanks for reading, Robert

Two months here, 3 months there

After spending a good portion of my "blog time" yesterday on the piles of Blue Jay cards that line my desk, I decided to treat myself and pick up a few cards for the hockey sets I'm building.

Before I get into that, I actually noticed that there was a dozen hockey cards inside the envelope that Kenny from Cervin' Up Cards sent my way. 

First up a couple of pairs of Maple Leaf cards from different sets.

I'm still hunting for the final 6 cards from my 99-00 MVP silver signature set; these cards happen to be from a few years later, namely the 08-09 Upper Deck MVP set.

How about a couple of cards from a competitor?

I was happy that Ben Scrivens received a 2 year extension from the Oilers today, he's played quite well since getting out of the Blue and White spotlight.

I was also disappointed to hear that the NHL went the way of MLB and granted an exclusive license to Upper Deck.  I thought Panini was doing a pretty good job with their sets; they had quite a few good products that had a good following.   Losing their license sadly is going to reduce Panini's share in the marketplace, especially in this household.

Finally, 8 cards from this year's O-Pee-Chee release came this way.

Still a long way to go for this set, these 8 cards leave me with a little over 200 cards to pick up for the 600 card behemoth. 

One sad thing that I noticed when removing these from the want list is that the last time I had updated the hockey want list was in November.  Yep, well over 3 months ago.   Then I looked at the baseball want list.  That hadn't been updated since early January.  Almost 2 months for that one.

It's no wonder I really haven't felt like writing about anything.  Nothing is coming in.   At least on the want list front.  Unless it's a Blue Jay.  People have been trying to work on that list....now that it's up!!

Another reason the lists aren't being updated/attacked is I haven't been to a card show in a couple of months.   Thankfully, that will change this weekend.   Plus with my Sportlots purchase last night, the want lists will finally receive a little trimming.

Months later....

thanks for reading, Robert

It's up there--but there's still a ways to go

You may or may not have read this morning about having to complete 33 posts in 30 days in order to get to the "magic" 1000 post mark.

What I neglected to add is this----look up at the want lists.   Go all the way to the right.   Did you see what I finally added?

Yep, the Blue Jays want list is finally up.   But it's still under construction.  I still have to update all the sets from 2008 to the present.  I'm working on it.  Kind of diligently as far as my standards go. 

I plowed through another 100+ cards on my desk this morning.  I was able to complete a couple of team sets, including this one.

1991 Stadium Club is in the books!  The last card I needed was the one above, Duane Ward, #363.  I still rank 1991 Stadium Club as one of my favorite sets from the overproduction era that was the early 90's.   The photography was great, and the lack of borders made the cards stand out (at least for me).

29 days to go.  I'm going to get this list completed by then, so help me.  I think I only have about 6 or 7 hundred cards still to go through.

On it!!

thanks for reading, Robert

33 in 30

In order to reach my 1000 post milestone by the end of March, I have to post 33 times (including this post) in 30 days.  Certainly attainable, but again, I have to prod myself to get it started.

Not good.

To be honest, I think the weather this year has really "bagged my spirits" (for lack of a better slang phrase) and I just haven't felt up to posting lately.

However, I did do something useful yesterday.   I sent out 5 bubble mailers.  The total is now 10 (for 2014) with the help of those 5 mailers which are on their way to folks in the following zip codes.

76063
03801
T2Y 5E1
13601
10707

I still have more trades to complete from a couple of weeks back with Nick, Alex and a few other people.   Believe me, I'm getting there folks.  It's already great that the 2014 Topps insert pile has already shrunk by half!

One card rule still applies:

1962 Topps, card # 68

Outside of players who are known by their initials (J.P. Arencibia for example), how many cards do you see where the player's middle initial is listed on the card? 

Just another thing that struck me as interesting when I looked at this card.  Well that and the near unibrow. 

Thanks for reading, Robert