OK, so Gypsy Queen hasn't been that bad to me

Nothing major in this post, just wanted to show off a card that I pulled out of a blaster last weekend.

Hiya Pops!

Willie Stargell relic, not too shabby for my normal luck!!  Yes, it's not an epic pull similar to what Sam at the Daily Dimwit  snagged (and sold for a nice chunk of change, wtg Sam!), but considering I don't pull too many great cards of legends, this card works for me.

thanks for the quick look, Robert

Numerology, JABO style

I'm not sure what it is, but I'm into card drafts lately.  I'm actually in the middle of two more that are in the process of gaining drafters, you can see them here and here.

I was into box breaks for a while, but I had one where my luck was really poor and that kind of soured me on box breaks for the foreseeable future (it was no fault of the blogger, that's just the way the balls roll sometimes...).

As I had mentioned the other day, I participated in Kyle's card draft a couple of weeks ago. I'm following up on the promise to post what I obtained.

Needless to say, part of the allure for me was a string of numbered cards from '08 Heritage and other places.  I was fortunate enough that nobody else really keyed in on these particular cards, and I scooped up a good portion of them.  First, the handful that will actually fit into the insanity set...

4 more towards 1500!

I also scored some others that I can use as trade bait in the future...

All the Heritage Chromes that I grabbed turned out to be refractors #'d/559, an added bonus!  The Barajas will stay here as part of the Jays collection (of course), and if anyone is interested in the Miles, Beato or Morrow cards, just let me know.

Yes, we really didn't study any numbers here, but at least the cards shown involved numbers...I tried!!

thanks for reading, Robert

The silver seven and one step closer to insanity

For a guy who has sat in his chair and pontificated (a word my wife uses to describe my blog writing, more on that in a later post) about many a topic on this blog, I sure have been an absolute disappointment as far as trading goes lately.

The 2nd week of April saw me hit 43 envelopes sent so far in 2012, and I thought to myself that I would hit my New Year's goal of 100 pretty early.  3 weeks later, I'm at 44.  Not good. 

I finally completed a trade last week with blog reader Brendan, who had sent an email to my g mail account a while ago.  You know the one that I apologized to everyone a couple of weeks back on the blog because I don't check it?  Yea, that one. 

Well, Brendan was very patient with me, and once he prodded me (again!!) about our trade, I got off my butt and we finished up a deal pretty quickly. 

First, he knocked off a couple of wants on the 2008 Upper Deck series 1 list...

I'm down to needing 7 cards now to finish that set (hence the silver 7 reference).   They are #'s 100, 136, 138, 225, 257, 291 & 349. 

In tune with other themes on the blog, Brendan also sent a couple of other cards my way as well.

Blue Jays, you betcha!  '10 Topps Toppstown insert TTT9.  The Russell Martin is a '11 Heritage Chrome towards the insanity set, one step closer to the magic number of 1500.

Every little trade helps, and maybe this one will get me off of the schneid and start hunting through people's want lists again.

Thank you Brendan for the trade!  Much appreciated..

thanks for reading, Robert

This post is not X-rated

Sorry guys, have to try and keep it as clean as possible.   I've noticed that there has been the odd curse word thrown into my posts lately, and I am almost beginning to wonder if I should be setting up a swear jar for each 4 or 5 letter word I mistakenly post (lol..mistakenly, yeah right).

Well, I'm hoping that this post will help me along to a weeks worth of posts describing the loot I received from Kyle over at the JABOs blog.  Kyle's card draft went quickly and without a hitch and was a great value from where this guy sits.

(Speaking of card drafts....Greg over at Plaschke, thy Sweater is Argyle is getting one together and needs 4 more peeps....let's go!)

OK...enough pimpage...let's get on to the cards.  This post is not X-rated, but it is about cards from the Upper Deck X sets.  I had never seen one of these cards before I had joined a couple of box breaks at other blog locales, and the sets quite intrigued me.

This card draft netted me just one X card, from the 2009 set, but it's a good one for me...

Roy Halladay from the 2009 X set.  Compare/contrast this one from the 2008's that I have in my collection:

Reminds me of a beer I used to drink when I was younger.

I would say that the 2008's look a lot more like an X than the 2009 die cut does.  These cards became kind of a curiosity for me, because I thought that the X die cuts were kind of cool, so I decided to look them up in the magazine.

100 cards?  That's it?  Disappointing that is for sure.  If the set had have been 200 cards, I probably may have put that on the list to collect it.  100 cards is a time waster for sure, I wonder if Upper Deck was just looking for a place holder set later in the season and came up with this.  The '08s are for trade if anyone is looking to add to their respective team collections.

Sorry if you were expecting something else when I mentioned in the title that the post isn't X-rated.  Maybe you were expecting some Benchwarmers photos?

 All right then, but just a couple....

Hopefully they weren't too provocative for you!!

Thanks for reading, Robert

Random Jay Monday: '90 Fleer Tony Fernandez

I loved watching Tony Fernandez play baseball.  Everything he did both at bat and on the field looked effortless.  You can also see from the scan below that he had a helluva lot of fun playing the game.

1990 Fleer #80

I will always remember the flip throws he would make from short left field to get guys out at first...just amazing!  A lot of his swings at the baseball it appeared that he was just flicking his bat at the ball, and he'd end up at 3rd base with one of  the 72 career triples he hit while a Blue Jay.

Tony had 4 tours of duty in Toronto...83-90, 1993, 98-99 and 2001. This is one guy whose number I would like to see retired by the Blue Jays, because to be honest it pains me to see anyone else wear the #1 in a Jays uniform. 

I'm not a big person as far as trifectas go, but if I could put one together of Tony, it would hold a special place in my collection.

Thanks for reading, Robert

Are GQ minis actually Rookie Cards?

I kind of stumbled upon this post today, because I had planned to do another angle to go along with the Gypsy Queen posts that I had made last week. 

I purchased two Gypsy Queen blasters yesterday during a trip to Wal-Mart.  I didn't have a chance to open them yesterday, so I opened the first one this afternoon.  Nothing fantastic to shout about, but I did get one card that kind of made me think.

Exhibit A is below:

Card # 208, regular back, Adron Chambers of the St. Louis Cardinals.

Notice the prominent RC stamp in the lower right corner.  This made me think for a minute.  Aren't RC's supposed to be from the base set, and not portrayed by any kind of insert?  This was always my impression, so I did a little hunting, and found this definition of a rookie card from about.com.  [NOTE: the paragraph below is the 2nd paragraph of the webpage, and is used to illustrate my question/point.]

Note that a rookie card is not necessarily always produced during a player's rookie season, as there may have been cards that fit the definition printed in previous years. It is generally agreed that to be a true rookie card, the card must be numbered as part of a product's base set. Thus, insert cards of any type are generally not considered to be rookie cards.

Minis have always been inserts as far as I'm concerned.  Does this further muddy the waters of how RC's are defined, or has Topps over stepped their bounds here by stamping GQ minis as Rookie Cards?

I am curious to hear the responses out there....

Thanks for reading, Robert