Minor 9er

To this day I still remember my first day of high school, nervous and sweaty.  Used to walk the halls going to my next class and hearing the upper classmen call us "Minor 9ers", hence the inspiration for this post.

Daniel at It's like having my own card shop recently celebrated his blog's 9th anniversary and challenged the blogosphere to write a post containing 9 cards.  Anything at all.

So I'm sneaking my contest entry in under the wire, and writing about 9 of my player collections.

Still not quite at 100 cards, the Brett Lawrie train has slowed down over the past year.  I'll probably pick it up again at some point, but I'm sure that I'll be able to find cards cheaper as time goes on.

The John Olerud PC is something I should have started a long time ago.  I have 48 of his cards now, no hits or autos yet so I scanned this '92 Topps gold winner card  to show.  This is a PC that will grow over time as well, no rush.

I started collecting Keith Tkachuk a long time ago, but stopped for a long time.  I have just 72 of his cards, no hits or autos on this PC as well. 

Felix Potvin I just added to the PC train a few months ago, but have never really sat down to find out how many of his cards I have.   Need to rectify that.  I do have some nice jersey cards, and a pair of Mask cards as well, so his collection is coming along nicely.

 I recently found about a dozen pages of his cards in a binder, so this PC should be well over 100 cards now.  As with any Leaf player, any time I find a blue jersey card it's going to be added quickly.

I have almost 120 Andrew McCutchen cards now, but this is the only jersey card of his that I own.  I've been too busy adding parallels to his PC recently to worry about "hits". 

I'm already closing in on 150 Larry Fitzgerald cards, and I'm going to say this.  I really don't give a shit that this is one of the manufactured patch cards, I really love this card.   It has become one of my favorite pieces of any of my PC's.

Some times posts such as this make you dig up cards you forgot you had.  Ultimate Collection Thome jersey #'d out of 25.  Doesn't matter that it's a Philadelphia patch on a White Sox card.   Love it.   Have over 500 Thome cards now, and about 15 jersey/bat cards.

This guy will always be my no. 1 PC.   Over 700 Sakic cards in my collection and counting, I will never get tired of adding cards of him to my collection.  Love the three colors on this jersey card, it is probably one of my top 3 Sakic jersey cards.   Still have a lot more of him to add.

I didn't include Ichiro in my PC countdown, largely because I had to stop at 9 and he became the odd man out.

Thanks for the contest Daniel!!

Thanks for reading, Robert

Sur-prize

Johnny from the Johnny's Trading Spot blog recently ran the "big fun game" similar to what Wes does at the Willinghammer rising blog. 

I took the #1, and wound up with a page worth of 2013 Panini Hometown Heroes cards/inserts.

I never did buy any packs of these a few years ago, but the look of the cards is sharp.  I can see now why the Night Owl is trying to complete the set.

But that wasn't all that was in the envelope, Johnny added a few extras for me.  Blue Jays of course!!

Now Tu-lo is a current Blue Jay (and popular at that), but unfortunately this Sportdiscs card features him as a Rockie.  I'll have to see if Johnny from Cards from the Quarry might want to add this to his Rockies collection.

There's Tulowitzki featured as a Jay!  Love the '79 design so this card is an instant winner for me.  The pennant was an instant hit when I pulled it out of the envelope, I think I'm going to affix it to my monster box of Jays cards so I can tell it apart from the other monster boxes that I have in the closet. 

I had never participated in one of these games, so it was fun watching others pick and steal cards from other people.  To be honest, I didn't have the heart to steal anything from anybody, so I decided just to pick the number 1 and see how lucky I got.

Thank you for running the game Johnny and including me!  It was fun and I'll be up for it again sometime.

Thanks for reading, Robert

My Top 10 PC cards for Joe Sakic

Nothing like leaving a contest entry to the last minute, right?  As many of you may know, Joe Sakic has been my longest running, and favorite Player Collection.  I haven't counted in a while, but I'm sure that 600 cards is a good estimate for what I have that features Sakic right now.  Lots of parallels in varying colors, shapes or signature styles (think MVP) account for quite a few of those cards. 

Limiting this post to 10 was tough.  But I managed to do it, and here they are...

2010-11 Score #1  Joe Earns a Spot in the Rafters

Colorado didn't delay raising Joe's #19 into the rafters, retiring his number opening night October 1, 2009.   Part of Joe's history with the Nordiques/Avalanche was the great battles that they had with their Western Conference rivals the Detroit Red Wings, featured on the next two cards.

1993-94 Upper Deck Next In Line #NL3

A pair of 19's, both the leader of their franchises.  If only Upper Deck knew what was coming over the next decade, they could have named this card differently.  Yzerman was the reason that Joe wore #91 for Canada in international tournaments.

2013-14 Panini Totally Certified Red #CC-YS

What better way to show off a pair of legends than with a piece of their jerseys!  I picked this up not too long ago from COMC for less than $10, and I'm very happy to add it to my Sakic collection. 

1994-95 Upper Deck Electric Ice #404

One of the cards that suckered me into the parallel collecting monkey that still exists today for me.  As I mentioned earlier, I have so many different parallels of Joe they probably account for a 1/3 of my Sakic collection.  But this is one of the first, and will always be one of my favorites.   I'm still trying to collect that set.

2008-09 O-Pee-Chee Retro Rainbow Parallel #369

Getting this card from fellow blogger GCRL (Jim) was one of the highlights of my holiday season last year.  Upper Deck going out on a limb and using one of Topps designs was also a great thing to see.  The 79-80 Topps/OPC hockey set was one of the best designs of all time, and seeing Sakic on one of those cards is just awesome for me. 

2003-04 Topps Lost Rookie Cards #LRC-JS

I had Gavin from Baseball Card Breakdown make me a custom card using this design as well.  I loved the push pin set from 88-89 and would love to see a company re-use it a la Topps Heritage. 

1994-95 Parkhurst You Crash the Game Gold #19

I was never very big on redemptions, my mistrust of the Postal Service having a lot to do with that.  But getting a gold set of these back in the day was one of the biggest joys of my collecting career, and having the Sakic was the icing on the cake.

1996-97 Upper Deck #240

Here's what it's all about, raising Lord Stanley.  How can you not like a card featuring your favorite player raising the greatest trophy in sports. 

2006-07 Upper Deck MVP Gotta Have Hart #HH5

Look at the hardware on the table in front of Joe.  Stanley Cup.  Hart Trophy.  Lady Byng Trophy.  What shocks me about the whole thing is that this is on a MVP card.  MVP was never known for their great insert sets, but this card to me is something else. 

1989-90 OPC #113

Have to end this post with the ultimate Joe Sakic card, his OPC rookie.  I once had about a dozen of these, but in need of money a long time ago, I sold a bunch of them.  I don't regret the decision as I kept this one, the best of the bunch.  It's also one of a few cards that feature him wearing the #88, which he did only in his rookie season before switching to #19 in year 2. 

A quick thanks as well to the Collecting Cutch blog for the contest and allowing me a chance to go over my Sakic collection again.   There's a lot of good stuff there and any chance to look over it is well worth the time for me.

thanks for reading, Robert

1453: I've said it before, people collect some great stuff

Remember about 2 months ago, I tortured a bunch of people into writing 100 word posts so I could send them five cards?  Yea, I'm sure about 20 of you do...

Well, I learned a lot from that little exercise, the main thing being that collectors collect a lot of great stuff.

I learned a little more about a couple of collectors this past week in celebrating my 1500th post.  Both Don and Nick sent me lists of cards that they wanted for their COMC store credit.   It was interesting to say the least to see what they were after.

Don's list?  4 cards.  Quick and painless.  The key card was this one...

According to Don's email (if I read it correctly), this Frank Robinson card finishes off Don's 1970 Topps set.  Congratulations Don!

The other 3 cards were a 64 Topps Kaline, a 1952 Topps Frank House and a 1979 Kellogg's Tom Johnson.  Great stuff, and 4 cards for $20 made the shopping easy on me.

Now, I didn't want to give away the entire envelope for Nick, but I figured showing off these 3 '73 Kellogg's Pro Super Stars cards couldn't hurt.  I'm hoping that the purveyor of the Dime Boxes will take the time to show off the envelope he's getting on his blog, because there are some cool cards in there (and not all of them baseball!). 

Needless to say, I added some extra credit for myself to buy some cards during the spring cleaning promotion.  I bought cards for 3 of my PC's and still have quite a bit of credit to play with for some future needs.

Playoff contenders is a product that I'd never buy a pack of.  Never had any interest in it.  But adding the cards to my player collections is a no brainer.  This is one of 5 cards I added to my Joe Sakic collection, which I believe is closing in on 600 if it isn't there already. 

Love this card.  Can't mince words here, this card is a fabulous photo of Andrew McCutchen post swing.  Same as Playoff Contenders, Stadium Club is a product I never bought many packs of over the years, but adding cards to the PC's from this product is easy.

Felix Potvin is one PC that I would really like to build up a bit as I currently only have about 40 cards of his.  I bought 4 on this last order, with this 2003-04 Pacific Prizm card being the one that stands out the most.   The only thing that could have made it better is if Felix was still in a Leafs jersey at the time.

I've been pondering hitting a few want lists again by grabbing a handful of cards off of COMC and sending them out as a surprise.  Learning what people collect has been great so far and I'm looking to learn some more...

$1528-$75 COMC credit = $1453 left.  On pace to spend $1479 for the year.

Thanks for reading, Robert

It's been a long time coming for a couple of things

As promised, I am going to start showing off the complete set of 1964 Topps tonight.  It took me quite a long to complete the journey, as my first post of cards from that set was way back in December, 2011.   That post was #68.  

Finally, I've hit post #1500.  After hitting the 1000 post mark back in 2014, it's taken a while to get to 1500.  Changing addresses had a lot to do with that, but now I've become more comfortable with posting about every other day on average.

Seeing the greats on the first 6 pages above reminds me of the chasing I did all over the place to acquire cards for the set.  The Yogi Berra was at one of the National's that I attended.  Mickey Mantle was purchased on ebay.  A few of the league leaders cards were spotted on the last day I was at the 2012 National, as I was on the way out the door.  For five bucks apiece, they were one of the best buys I can recall.

There's a good article on the collector who hoards the '64 T Curt Flood cards here.  A lot of great names as well in pages 7-12, such as Elston Howard, Jim Fregosi, and a combo card featuring Harmon Killebrew.  Ernie Banks is there, Felipe Alou and Joe Torre are on these pages also.

I remember being ecstatic at find the Pete Rose card for just $38 at a show.  Duke Snider for $5 was also a good find, even if it is off center. Rusty Staub was around $5-$6 as well. I believe that the Tommy John card was $12.  It's amazing how much I remember about all the stars cards and how much they cost.  Almost as if I was making a mental checklist as I went along.

Lou Pinella RC, Harmon Killebrew, Yaz, Sandy Koufax for $20 if I remember correctly.  They're all here. 

Dick Allen, Tony LaRussa RC (which I waited a long time to find a cheap copy of), Wilbur Wood, Frank Robinson, Al Kaline, they're all here.   I was patient on a lot of these cards and waited to find reasonable copies at reasonable prices.

I decided to show the first half of the set tonight, 33 pages/297 cards worth.  I still am shaking my head that I've finally completed this set. 

I'm so happy that I've reached a couple of milestones that I've decided to do a little giveaway.  I'm going to let a couple of people do a little shopping on COMC during COMC's spring cleaning in order to fatten up their card collections.

Anyone that leaves a comment on tonight's post gets an entry.  The remainder of the pages will be shown tomorrow.  You can comment again there for another entry.  Want a 3rd entry?  Pimping is easy.   Just show me the way to the pimp (twitter or the blogs is good) and that'll earn the 3rd entry.

Tomorrow starts the run to 2000 posts.  Hope a few of you will still be around when I get there.

Thank you for reading!  Robert