A Card Fit For Veteran's Day

I wanted to take a moment out of the normal blog content to say that I hope everyone had a great Veteran's Day. I'm not going to get on my soapbox about how much this holiday means to me and my family, so I'll just skip to a card that is fit for today's celebration of our country's veterans.

I pulled this from a box of 2001 Heritage. At first, my younger self thought of selling or trading it, but I'm glad that I never did. Like many, I feel there is a huge lack of variety/originality when it comes to the types of relic cards that are available. This truly stands as on of the most unique cards in my collection. The only downside is that the patch of uniform did not belong to Mays. It's still pretty interesting that it is a 'war-worn uniform' though. Plus, it's the only Mays card I have that depicts his service time. In fact, I'm not sure if there are any others and if so, how many. Thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings.

Crossing One Off The Cardboard Wishlist - Single Card Post Sunday #4

I am rapidly approaching my one year blog-aversary. For the majority of the time I've been blogging, my Cardboard Wantlist has been mostly the same. Thus far, I've only crossed one card off that list and that was accomplished via trade. Well, I finally scan say that I can cross off card number two from that list. About a week ago, I found the card that has inhabited the second slot on the Wishlist for the majority of the time the list has been in existence on eBay.

This Bernie Williams hails from the 1990 Topps TV glossy set. That year, Topps created 5 team sets and an All-Star set that were sold in factory set form through a 1-800 number on a television promo. It is a rookie year card of one of my favorite Yankees of all time. I haven't seen many of these sets or singles floating around since I learned of their existence shortly after starting the blog. I have been watching two complete Yankee sets for months on eBay, but the cost was a bit more than I really wanted to pay. I had only seen one single previously, and the asking price on it was around $50 which is way more than I wanted to pay for this. When I found this listing a little over a week ago, it had a few days left to go and had a starting bid of $3.59 plus $2.50 shipping. I waited until the final hour of the auction and placed my best bid. As it turns out, it ended up being the only bid on it.

The win shortens my list of Bernie 'rookie' cards that I need to the 1990 OPC and the Topps Tiffany. I plan to check those two off the list in the not-so-distant future. For now, I want to enjoy the feeling of crossing a second card off the Wishlist. I think going into year two, I'll reconfigure the list a bit to hopefully facilitate being able to cross more off in 2016. As always, thanks for reading. Happy Sunday!

Holiday Mega Box = Chrome Update Packs

The other day, while once again perusing the card aisle at the local Target, I stumbled upon one of the Holiday Mega Boxes of Topps Update.

The big draw of these things are the two exclusive Update Chrome packs that mingle among five regular update packs.

I'll get to the contents of these in a few. Once again, I had my two year old with me and I asked her to pick between the two boxes. Let's see how she did this time.

I'm trying to build the base set and I came away with a good number to help me with that goal. In case it doesn't come across in the scan, that Bryant is of the rainbow foil variety. I also happened to pull a former Durham Bull that got to play in the All-Star game this season in that Boxberger. I thought I'd tack the Joey Butler I pulled from one of the Chrome packs since he too spent a good bit of time with the Bulls. I was blown away when I saw the printing on those Chromes. For a split second, I thought it was just a parallel, but the entire set is done in that 'bubble refractor' finish.

Bouncing back to the regular packs, the Syndergaard is the only base card I scanned. Those last two inserts are some pretty popular guys too. I did way better than I thought in the base packs. It's a good thing that I did too, I didn't pull anything Earth shattering in the Chrome packs. The Posey is up,for grabs if anyone needs it. It's really nice that the insert set is done in the same refractor pattern(though it's hard to tell in the scan), but I'm going to focus on just chasing down Jeter. That being said, the base cards are really nice. I'm going to have to do my best to chase the 50 card set. I'm happy my daughter picked a great box, but if I had known that the set was going to have been so nice, I would have grabbed both boxes while I had the chance.

While on the same errand running outing, I had to make a stop at Walmart as well. I took that chance to look for another blaster to bust(since I'm also chasing the Walmart exclusive throwback variations). They had a bunch on the shelf and it had my daughter point out which one we should get. She picked and we were on our way home. I opened the blaster after the mega box from above, so I knew my little girl was 2 for 2 in picking great boxes for us. I was hoping that once I cracked the blaster, she'd still be batting 1.000!

Once again, I pulled a good number that were set needs, but I didn't scan any base cards from the blaster. I was pretty happy with the two gold parallels, Ramirez was pretty decent for the Rays and King Felix continues to be pretty great for the M's. The Tazawa was a needed throwback. I've decided to put together that retail only All-Star set too and both Gray and Donaldson helped put me a total of three cards closer to that goal on the day. If I wasn't going to pull the Jeter Rookie Sensations, Jackie Robinson is a pretty darn good alternative to pull. At this point, the blaster was already pretty decent. As stated previously, I always leave the medallion pack for last.

Another Trout insert, another good pull. I'm digging the Springer throwback card. It's one of the better photos from the set that I've seen in person thus far. The Donaldson was the first card of the blaster to beat the odds. The snow camo parallels fall one in every 86 packs. I thought that was the icing on the box...until I picked up the pack that I thought would have the medallion card. For the second blaster in a row,the pack was way too light to contain one of the manu-relics. I opened it, flipped it over, and was amazed by that incredible Mr. Cub relic with that nice stripe running through it. It's #/99 and really beat the odds. The standard 1st Home Run relics fall one in every 28 blasters. A quick glance at the checklist and I can definitely say that I was fortunate enough to pull one of the top five players available. So there you have it. My daughter will be picking all of my retail box and pack purchases for e foreseeable future. She's made the choices that have led to some of the best retail pulls of my entire collecting career.

Thanks for reading!

A Refractor-filled Swap

As it turns out, I never really caught up with my trade posts before I got preoccupied with card show stuff, new products and a few repacks. So, I think it's about time to finally write up the last few trade packages I've received. The steady influx of packages has slowed since I haven't had much chance to stuff padded envelopes full of cardboard goodness. The good news is that I finally have the first bunch of long overdue return packages packed and ready to go to the post office today. More will follow shortly. I hope that everyone I owe cards to will find the contents worth the wait.

Today I focus on the (mostly) shiny contents of a (not so) recent package from madding over at Cards On Cards.

First up are the not-so-shiny highlights. I love those Donruss HOF Heroes, Negro League cards. It's hard to believe they've been around since 1983 and I somehow didn't have either of those. Bo's 1st Home Run card puts me one closer to completing that set. The rest of the package was quite refractor-y.

An X-Fractor, a purple, and sepias...oh my! True, the Rendon and the Desmond are not refractors, but they too are shiny and needed. These are all great additions to the various parts of my collection, but the centerpiece of this particular package was this prismatic beauty.

The scan of this one came out better than I thought it would but it looks much better in person. I've got a bunch of Cardinals packed and ready to drop at the post office to make up for this incredible trade package. Thanks for the swap, I hope we can do it again soon!

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory - Single Card Post Sunday #3

Almost a full week after opening my first blaster of 2015 Update, I finally found another one to bust. I happened to be at my local Walmart and I saw two blasters on the shelf. I had my two year old with me, so I had her pick which one we took home. The 'bonus' pack from this blaster provides the subject of this week's Single Card Post Sunday.

I always save those packs for last when I'm busting blasters. I could tell right away when I picked the pack up that it didn't contain the typical medallion card. It was no where near heavy enough. I slowly opened the pack and peeked at the card inside...

I went from disappointment(when I saw it was Biggio), to excitement(when I saw it was an auto/relic numbered 4/5), back to disappointment when I saw the following:

It's a bit difficult to see, but the card is significantly damaged on two edges and has multiple creases on the front surface. I'm not really sure what to do from here. I've sent a message to Topps Customer Support and I know that I could send it to them for a replacement of 'similar value'. Sadly, I feel like whichever way this goes, I'm going to come out on the short end. I'm not big on flipping cards, but this is one that I likely would have put on eBay. Biggio is a HOF player that has a fairly strong hobby following. Such a limited card would have brought a decent return that I could use on a bunch of other cards for my collection. It's not going to bring any return in its condition and if I leave it in Topps' hands, I'll probably end up with a base prospect auto if some guy that will never make it in the majors.

Anyway, it's still one of the best pulls I've ever had, especially from retail product. I'm sure that this isn't the last that I'll talk about this card on this blog, so if you're interested in the saga that is to come, stay tuned to see how this situation plays out. Has anyone had a similar situation with any company? What would you guys do if you pulled a really great, but damaged card? Thanks for reading!