eBay Masterpieces?

Kind of like an oxymoron, huh?  Come on, you all know what an oxymoron is.  A figure of speech in which contradictory words appear with one another.

Bitter Sweet
Jumbo Shrimp
Free Love (I have Dan Fielding on Night Court to thank for that one...)

All kidding aside, I had some good luck last week picking up some more of the SPs to get closer to finishing the 2008 UD Masterpieces set.

6 more off the books, leaving me with only 8 to go!

4 of the 6 were from a seller that I've dealt with before, great people in the great state of Alaska!  Since they combine shipping, I decided to pickup a little something extra for myself in the process. 

Roy Halladay '07 Masterpieces for less than $4 shipped!  You betcha...

LOL, I kind of cut the top part of the card off, but rest assured it's in great shape.  An even better surprise with this seller from Alaska is when I requested the total shipping...it was $0! 

I'm hoping to knock the Masterpieces set off of my Fab Five list soon...8 SPs can't be that tough to track down...can they?

Thanks for reading, Robert

You'll have to excuse my friend, he's a little slow...

As promised a few days back, here's my "rant" about Allen & Ginter.  It's a rant against myself. 

The rant against myself is the inspiration for the post title.  I'm "the friend", and yea, I'm a little slow (but you knew that already, didn't you??).   There's a video for you at the end of the post to look at, once you see it you'll remember the line.

I was on the way to work the other day, and finally started thinking about how I felt about A&G this year, when it dawned on me.

Topps has released two "vintage" sets, with exactly the same specs.

300 cards.  50 SPs/Variations.  Basically the same, but different.  Grasping at straws I guess.  It seems that Topps has the idea that more sets like these are good for the collector.  Why didn't this dawn on me last year you ask?  Well, I was late to the GQ gravy train, and didn't bother even buying a pack of that release.  If I had become serious about collecting again about 6 months earlier, this post wouldn't have come to be, because I probably wouldn't have tried to collect both last year.

Now that I've realized this, I say to myself "why in the world am I going to collect both this year"?  Not going to happen my friends.  Since I'm closer to completing the Gypsy Queen set, I'm going to scrub the attempt to collect the A&G set. 

That means I have a bunch of cards up for trade for those who are looking to complete the set.  Among those are 18 of the SPs. 

Need em?  Got em?  If you're looking for any of these, please leave a comment, I'll be sure to get back to you as quick as possible.  I'll even try not to be slow...

 Enjoy the video, and thanks for reading, Robert

I've never had the surgery, but now at least I have his card

I wonder if Tommy John should trademark his name.  How many times have we heard over the past several years that this pitcher or that pitcher has had "Tommy John" surgery.  The commentators don't even call it ligament replacement surgery anymore. 

Now, I have a very young Tommy John to look at, card wise at least.  While hunting on eBay, I found John's RC and was able to pick it up for $7 + shipping.  When I received the card, it was much better than I expected.

Outside of the centering issue, the card is in awesome condition.  The corners are good, the original gloss is still there, no creases or markings of any kind.  A great pickup as far as I'm concerned. 

thanks for reading, Robert

Blue Jay Monday: 2012 Triple Play Brett Lawrie

Once again I took the opportunity of a Blue Jay Monday to not randomly select a card to discuss.  During the August group break over at Colbey's Cardboard Collections, there were a few A&G cards that he needed that I was able to send to him.  In return, he threw in a few extra Blue Jays on top of the group break haul, and one of the extra cards he sent me was none other than this.

Panini Triple Play #85, Toronto's Brett Lawrie.  Of course, you have seen many reviews of these cards on many other blogs as I have.  To be honest, I didn't know what to think about this product after seeing all the posts. 

To be honest, I'm OK with it.  I'm not floored by it, nor am I repulsed by it either.  Panini took as much liberty as they could with what limited ability they have to release a baseball product without licensing. 

The black bar with the brand logo and the player name is rather big, but in this case why the hell not?  It's not as if the extra space is taking away from something that is relevant on the card; it is a drawing after all.  The maple leafs (oops) on the red background is a cool touch as well.

The back has the same drawing, a nice little write up (Great White North!  anyone else hear the McKenzie brothers?) and a little trivia for those of us who like to brush up on our baseball knowledge. 

Will I collect this set?  No, that's not happening.  Will I turn my nose up at any Blue Jays from this set that come my way?

Absolutely not.  Thank you Colbey for the extras, great stuff!  Thank you as well for the TSC break in August, there were a lot of great cards in there for me.

Take off you hosers, Robert

How's it going, eh?

Sakic Sunday: The Pro Set Legacy

A little over 20 years ago, a new company hit the card landscape, and offered the collector yet another choice in the exploding world we all know as card collecting.

Pro Set came to town.  Boy, was it riddled with errors.

The hockey set came to pass as one of the most talked about sets ever, because of the 100+ errors that were spotted on the cards.  Names spelled wrong, incorrect jersey numbers, wrong birth dates, stats that were someone else's, etc etc.  If Pro Set could make the error, it did.

What's the old saying though?  There's no such thing as bad publicity?  These errors, along with the novelty of being a new product, gave Pro Set a brief lift in the early 90's.  Problem was, the company couldn't capitalize on their new found publicity, and wound up dying out within a few years.

Every time I look through the Sakic collection I have, I see these Pro Set cards, and it brings back memories of me in college (the first time) ripping through pack after pack of these cards.  I'll be damned if I know where all those cards are now though...

1991-92, the cards were a little better, still not good enough though to make a dent into the titans that were Topps and Upper Deck.

I would have to say that they are middle of the road...nothing exciting about the cards, but nothing really bad about the design either.  The borderless design was different at the time, so they had that going for them, but that's about it.  What surprised me about these 2 particular cards when I took them out of their pages is this:

Both the cards that I own are in French. I don't have an English version of either of these cards.  I know that my PC of Joe has been lacking in more recent years, but this realization today let me know that the early years of Sakic's card history are not complete for me either.

At least I've got a couple of months to get a list together before I hit the hockey Expo in Toronto in early November.  Everything in my collection can't be big hits bought off of eBay, right?

By the way, the old Nordiques uniforms on the card on the left?  I have a feeling we may be seeing them for real within a couple of years...

Thanks for reading, Robert