The other half of the Zapping

I've kind of gravitated away from being a Blue Jays team collector the past couple of years, largely because of my rekindled interest in set building.  Not that I'll sneer at any cards that come my way featuring the blue birds.

The other half of the envelope that Zippy Zappy sent a few weeks back feature various types of cards which I was able to group together for this post.

A pair of cards from the top two pitchers in Blue Jays history (IMO).  Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of Dave Stieb's no hitter against the Cleveland Indians.  Doc, you are still missed.

Both of these gentlemen were homegrown Jays; Stieb was a 5th round pick in '78 and made his MLB debut a year later, while Halladay was a 1st rounder and made his debut with the Jays 3 years after he was drafted.

Stieb's career ERA in Toronto was 3.42.  Halladay's was 3.43.  Jimmy Key's Blue Jay ERA was also 3.42.  Only Henke and Ward (relievers) have better career ERA's as a Jay.

Parallels!  What would an envelope be without a parallel Blue Jay card inside?  I especially enjoyed seeing the Pink Chrome Dioner Navarro card.

Great photography!  The fact that Russell Martin is tagging out a Texas Ranger in Texas makes it even better.

Bluefield Blue Jays!  While Pillar made himself a bit of a cult hero in Toronto with his flying acrobatics in centerfield, A.J. Jimenez wasn't as fortunate.  A.J. just managed a dozen AB's with the Rangers in 2017 (yes, that's 12 more than I had as a major leaguer).

It's amazing how Vlad dropped off of collector's radars now that he's not a rookie.  I didn't realize that he was born in Montreal; I imagined it may have been in CA during his dad's time with the Angels.  I'm hoping that once 2020 is over and this COVID-19 craziness flies off into the distance (hopefully) that Vlad rebounds and has a great career with the Jays.

Many thanks to Kenny for the great cards, they truly are appreciated.  Maybe this pocket schedule reminded me of how overdue this post is...

Enjoy the hobby!!

Robert

Want List Wednesday: 2017 Allen & Ginter

Thanks to some generous trades and envelopes sent my way over the past few weeks, the 2017 A&G want list took a nice hit recently.

Haven't posted a card featuring a female in quite a long time on the blog, so card #30 featuring Brooke Hogan came along and I decided it was time to change that.

I need just 22 more cards to finish off the set, 8 of them are SPs:

58, 172 (Judge RC), 175, 198, 201, 209, 232, 241, 244, 268, 272, 276, 286, 288, 301, 305, 308, 314,
315, 325, 333, 344

For those of you on TCDB, hit me up with a trade.  For those that aren't, here's a link to my cards for trade.  I just reloaded on stamps on the weekend, so let me know!!


Enjoy the hobby!!

Robert

If this overdue post were a library book, I couldn't afford the fines

Many of us in the blog world have been fortunate to be zapped.  I, on more than one occasion, have received a good zapping from everyone's favorite Luis Torrens fan Zippy Zappy.  He may be in mourning right now, I'm not 100% sure, but I do know that there was some distress shown the other day as Luis was traded to the Mariners from the Padres.

I'm going to try and distract him a bit and show off part of the hockey portion of the Zapping he sent my way.   Yes, Zapping needs to be capitalized now....it's a blog thing

This is most of the 2018-19 MVP Leafs team set, add John Tavares who had signed with the team as  a free agent before the season, and subtract Auston Matthews who wasn't part of the envelope.

It's always a challenge when I see the silver signature parallels from MVP to not go out and start buying them.  I've been a fan since day one of those parallels, it is some kind of illness that I have and seeing Travis Dermott's rookie silver signature almost got me started again. 

Almost

I didn't buy one pack of 19-20 MVP this past season, I've shied away from the 20-21 release that's on shelves already I believe.  I've cut way back on the pack busting the past few months and it's served me well as I'm able to purchase and trade more for pieces that I want to add to the collection.  These 3 cards were a welcome sight, I'll have to try and grab the remainder of the team set at some point.

I've never seen Parkhurst at my local Wal Mart.  Ever.  I've heard tales of others finding blasters by the handful, but maybe I'm just in a place geographically that will never see these.  Zach Hyman over the past couple of seasons has become a favorite Leaf, I especially enjoy watching him dig for pucks and take punishment in front of the opposing team's net.  Twenty goals for him this season was well deserved; I fear that the Leafs may lose him when the expansion draft for the Seattle franchise comes around next summer.   Nonetheless, I'm happy to have a rookie card of him in my possession.

I would say that I've had these cards on the desk now for several weeks.  I've had them for so long that the overdue library book analogy came to mind.

The baseball half will be shown tomorrow.  It's an interesting group of Blue Jays for sure.

Thank you for the cards ZZ!!  More to come...

Enjoy the hobby!

Robert

Happy > Prolific

It's funny what will spark an idea for a post.  I saw this tweet on twitter yesterday from BigDinAZ Cards & Collectibles:

https://twitter.com/BigdinazC/status/1300173095332790272

( I tried to get a screen shot of it on here, but had no luck)

Basically, he was quite happy with his collection of Steve Young cards so far, even though it wasn't prolific.   When I saw it, I immediately tweeted this

Happy > Prolific

Isn't that what a lot of us have been preaching for years?  For some reason, the thought came instantly to my head when I saw that tweet.

There are player collections that I have that I wouldn't consider prolific but I'm happy with what I have so far.  Take my Andrew McCutchen collection so far.  While it's nowhere the fantastic PC of  the Collecting Cutch blog, I'm very happy with what I have to date.  It's now up to 267 cards thanks to Jenny (TCDB ID: JennyMiller) and our quick 4 for 4 trade that netted me 3 cards for the McCutchen collection.

Yes, there's no flash or substance, but in a lot of cases I've added some nice looking cards to the collection.  The Spring Fever card in the middle comes to mind, as I am enjoying my life in Florida now watching the palm trees sway in the breeze.....

But I digress.

All of my player collections will never be prolific, as I'm pretty frugal and will likely not divest in pricey autographs or fancy patches.  But I can easily say that I'm quite happy with what I have so far, and trading to add to the collections via trading has been quite enjoyable. 


I believe that I can honestly say that Happy is greater than Prolific for me.

Enjoy the hobby!!

Robert

Time-consuming yet therapeutic validation

I'm sure that there's a few people saying "thank God he's done with the trade posts!!"  The trade posts are usually quick and easy to create, and they keep the blog going.  Plus you never know when someone will come across one of your posts and realize that they have something that you may need.

I've had trades sparked that way in the past...

Sunday afternoon was initially spent starting to page some insert sets that have been sitting in boxes/plastic cases for a while.   The first one that I worked on was a recent favorite, 2019 Gypsy Queen green.

Now putting these into pages was a bit time-consuming, which can be said for any set I imagine.   This set is more difficult for me because the numbers on the back are quite small (Fuji mentioned this in one of my previous posts about this set); I have to use a magnifying glass to see the numbers to ensure that I'm putting them in the correct spot. 

While paging the set, my thoughts on why I wanted to build this parallel set in the first place were validated.  I really do like it.  The green borders work really well, and the set design is appealing to me.

I even managed to find an extra copy of the Manny Machado card in the box....

I have about 2 dozen other sets in boxes, maybe I should check those for doubles as well.

Nah

Enjoy the hobby!!

Robert