By the page: R.A. Dickey

Lost in all the pitching talk surrounding the Blue Jays in the off-season was R.A. Dickey.  With Buehrle retiring, Price moving to Boston, the J.A. Happ signing and all the talk about the younger pitchers, R.A. Dickey and his knuckleball come to spring training totally under the radar.

I'm hoping that he has one more good season left in his arm to help get the Jays to another post season this year.

I managed to find a page worth of cards to hopefully entertain you for a few minutes.

Top row:  Regular shiny

I thought about putting the Topps Tribute card in between the 2 Prizm cards, but in the end I believe the row looks better with the non-licensed cards together.

Hard to believe that 2016 is already going to be Dickey's 4th as a Blue Jay. 

Middle row:  Shiny with some color

Aligned the blue Tribute (#'d 8/99) with its mate above it, just because I thought it was best.  The Orange 2013 Chrome is the only horizontal card on the page, so I figured why not in the center?  I also just noticed that the Chrome photo of R.A. is different than the base.   A good thing!

Yes, I know that the Topps gold on the right isn't shiny...

Bottom row: The base cards

It's funny that I seem to notice things on cards more after I've scanned them and started writing.  The majority of cards featuring knuckleballers show them with the knuckleball grip.  Check out the Gypsy Queen on the right, that's definitely not a knuckleball grip. 

No jokes about Dickey being old enough to have actually been a part of the '57 set....

I thought after 3 seasons in Toronto I might have more R.A. Dickey cards, but I struggled to find 9 cards to fill a page. 

No doubt next week when I'm looking for someone else, I'll find a whole cache of R.A.'s cards.  That's just the way it is, right?

Thanks for reading, Robert

Two swoops

Not one, but two PWE's arrived last week from one of the more frequent trade partners of mine over my blogging time, Brian from the Play at the Plate blog.  Brian decided he was going to knock out a bunch of my '16 Topps want list, and he came close to knocking them all off.

I thought that Brock Holt was going to be a player for the Pirates for a long time when they brought him up a couple of seasons ago.   It was disappointing to see him go to Boston, where he's become a solid utility player.  That shot of him has a good shot of going into my top 10 countdown when I finish the set (hopefully in the next week or two).

Nothing much to write home about on these cards, not a photo that stands out.  Scherzer getting coated in chocolate after his no-hitter could have been a great base or variation photo.  Now that I reside in south Florida it will be interesting to see how much I hear about Christian Yelich (bottom center) as part of what appears to be a great outfield for the Marlins.

I made two swoops, or passes if you will, through the cards I have for the '16 series 1 set to make sure that my want list was correct.  I've made so many mistakes in the past trying to complete sets that I kind of make this a rite of passage when the want list gets small.   It is correct now in case you were wondering.

Two swoops through the entire set I'll also make to pull out my top 10 cards in a week or 2, that Carlos Gomez horizontal card just might be one of the best. 

Thank you for the cards Brian, much appreciated!!

thanks for reading, Robert

OK OK I'll do it

A fat envelope of cards arrived the other day courtesy of Nick of the Dime Box Heroes blog.  He dug deep for a lot of the cards that came out of this envelope for sure!  High number '15 Heritage on the bottom row featuring Pillar and Osuna.  Wal Mart Blue Steve Tolleson turning a double play.  There's even Jose Bautista and his upcoming $30 million a year contract in the middle row on the right.

I'm going to miss Jose in Toronto....

Love, love, love the Pastime's Pastimes A&G inserts.  It must be something about the 100 card inserts from A&G each year, because they seem to be the only inserts that I'll even consider putting together as a "set".  The Dave McKay buyback from the '79 Topps set was definitely an interesting add to the envelope. 

OK team set collectors, ? for you.  Write the Dave McKay in your spreadsheet as a 2016 or a 1979 card?  What would you do?

Chromey goodness is never lost on me, and the bottom row helped that even more.  I think the Martin is the first 2015 Topps Chrome Blue Jay I have.

A trio of '84 Topps Traded leaves that want list at just 1 card, not unlike a whole lot of other want lists on the Blue Jays page.  Speaking of #1, the Gold parallel of Scott Copeland is the first gold parallel from 2015 Topps that I own.  Man, am I behind...

Maybe that was a hint to make sure that my Blue Jays want list was up to date.  Get the 2016 team list on there, and decide what I'm going to chase after this year.

One Jays card that I don't have in my possession yet, and I'm going to need 2 of them, is the Jose Bautista bat flip.  Card #96 is going to be on two lists, hopefully I won't have to fork out a whole lot of $$ for them.  (NOTE: while writing this post, I found an auction for a lot of 5 of them for 3 bucks.  Problem solved)

So there you have it folks, a real lot of dime box cards from the master himself.

Thank you Nick, the cards were really appreciated!!

thanks for reading, Robert

Knocked a few Jays off the want list at the show

Modern technology is wonderful.  Typing out that massive Blue Jays want list on the blog was very time consuming, but this past weekend it came in very handy. 

That dime box marathon I put in at the card show helped knock quite a few cards off the Blue Jays want list, all without having to print a piece of paper, or carry a pen.  Just simply pull up the blog on my iPhone, and off I went...

Seeing these 2002 Topps base cards made me take a quick look at the want list.  I was amazed at how many Topps base cards from a lot of different years I still need.  I love the 2004 Studio cards with the picture of the Toronto skyline in the background.  Not your standard baseball card photo for sure, but as far as "different" goes, it's a winner for me. 

The Pacific Omega design on cards in spots 5,6 and 7 on this page reminds me of the Iron Throne on the Game of Thrones series.  Not sure if it's the greatest design on a baseball card.  The silver background on the SP cards in spots 8 and 9 is also something that isn't the greatest in my opinion.  The top row of Cruz, Jr., Mondesi and Delgado reminds me that the Jays offense in the early 2000's was also a solid attack.  Not as formidable as the current squad, but it still had some big names to drive the ball around the yard.

This page shows cards as simple as 1999 Upper Deck or 2002 Topps Chrome, or as wild as a couple of years of Pacific Revolution cards.  I never really noticed the backgrounds on these cards until I scanned them and looked at them on the post.  Yikes! 

I did manage to knock off 41 cards from the want list, a pretty good showing for an unexpected dime box haul. 

Speaking of dime boxes,  I have an envelope of his to go through now...

thanks for reading, Robert

Better off for knowing the Dime Box Man

Not that he's dead or anything, it was sad to see that Nick from the Dime Box Heroes blog bid the blogosphere a fond farewell recently.  I still remember running into him on the Bench website, right as he decided to start blogging, and was asking opinions on how his fledgling blog looked.  

I loved that blog right from the start.

All the dime box digging he did amused not only himself, but the blogosphere as a whole.   While we all may not admit it, we're a bunch of cheap bastards when it comes to cards, and Nick just made it a little cooler to be that way.

I went to a card show in West Palm Beach today, and for the first time in who knows how long, I got to sit in front of a boat load of dime boxes.   Yes, you guessed it, I thought of Nick while doing it.   As the pile started to grow I thought to myself how many times Nick has done it over the years, and brought home piles of cardboard (some of it for me).  

He showed us pictures like this....

OK, maybe that's more my speed...

Maybe there were pics like this...

Now the 59's and the '71 checklist were a quarter apiece, but the 1980 Murphy and Trammell cards were both a dime, which I thought was outstanding.

I managed to add a dozen Thome's to my collection.  $1.20 was all they cost.  Doesn't get much better than that.

I did also pick up a big stack of Blue Jays cards, which I'm saving for my next post because there's so many to scan. 

But the final card I wanted to show off today is something that Nick would enjoy just a much, even though it cost me 100 dimes.

Same dealer, at the other end of his run of tables had a bunch of discount vintage, and seeing this was the cherry on this apple pie of a table.  I hadn't bought a '62 in quite a while, so this was a good way of putting that set back into my head, even if it was for a brief time.

For $18, I had a blast for over 2 hours, and finally learned first hand a bit of what Nick preached all along. 

You don't have to spend a fortune to have a good time at this...

Thank you Nick.  You taught this old dog a pretty good trick

- Robert