Stadium Club - Luminous Triumvirate

I have two brothers-in-law who also collect cards.  I mentioned one in my last post about Black Friday.  The other one lives a little farther away, but he has a nice collection of graded Cal Ripken, Jr. cards and lower-grade tobacco cards (T206s, etc.).  About a month ago, his mother (my mother-in-law) asked me to help her pick out some small presents for him, so we went on COMC and found some newer serial-numbered Ripkens that I knew he didn't have.  Since she was placing an order anyway, the shipping would be free for me if I snuck a few cards onto her order.

The picture at the top is from 2016 Stadium Club - These are the Luminous Triumvirate cards.  Each of these is Die-Cut, but then when you put them together they become a larger picture.  These are all chromed-out and look great in-person. I've had my eyes on these ever since they came out and felt this was the right time to pull the trigger.  I spent WAY too much on the Salvy, but he's the middle-card in the triptych and was the last one available on COMC.  I don't regret it.  :-)  LoCain, Salvy, and K-Mo were all integral pieces in our 2015 World Series Championship.

The picture below shows the triumvirate from 2015 Stadium Club -- Salvy once again serves as the hub, Hosmer is on the left, and the right is covered by ??  Oh no!  I'm still missing one of these guys! 

The card in question is T-8C - Alex Gordon from 2015 Stadium Club.  It was not for-sale on COMC at the time of my order, but it looks like there is a listing for one now.  If any of you have one for trade, please let me know. 

They didn't make these in 2017, but I think these are a GREAT concept for Topps to continue implementing.  Die cuts are awesome, anyway, but then when you have 3 to chase, it adds that much more of a treasure-hunting aspect to it.  The task is hard, but not impossible.

Black Friday Shopping and Other Men's Wives

All the big online sites had tons of doorbuster deals on hobby boxes for Black Friday...and I didn't buy from any of them.

Instead, I hit up a LCS with my brother-in-law while we each left our children with Grandma.

The LCS in question was MVP Sports Cards in Laguna Hills, CA.  This is a small shop, but they had some good stuff.  My BIL came out of there with a 1968 Mickey Mantle and a 1973 Nolan Ryan.  Needless to say, he spent a little more money than I did.  :-)  But all my digging yielded some great stuff to add to my collection.

I have felt like I need to focus my Royals collecting a little more to make sure that I have team sets of all the major releases in team history (starting in 1969).  This focus helped me pick up 12 cards for the 1969 Topps team set that I still needed.  Here are my 6 favorites -- Joe Keough can't decide on a bat (the Paradox of Choice) while Dave Wickersham is just happy to be here.  I still need #619 and #662 to finish that one off.

 

I added some oddballs of #5.

  

Bo knows Classic.

Out of the dollar-bin I pulled this 1969 Deckle Edge (#22) of Joe Foy.  Foy was the only Royal in this set during KC's inaugural season.  He's not quite as notable a name as some of the other players on the checklist (Clemente, Carew, Aparicio, Gibson, McCovey, Mays), but I think it's a beautiful card and I was lucky to find it.

 The cards above were all Royals, but let us not forget my affinity for "Randoms," too.  This bad boy caught my eye as I was pawing through some cheaper autographs and he had to go in my pile.

Autographed.  Mascot.  Oddball.  I headed to Google to find out who the Phoenix Firebirds were.  Apparently they were the AAA team for the Giants in the early '90s, but left when the Diamondbacks arrived to become the Tucson Sidewinders (D-Backs AAA Team).  This lead the Tucson Toros to move and become the Fresno Grizzlies.  Mr. Phineas T. Firebird had a few other cards made of him before he rose from the ashes and skipped town.  This one is autographed by a real purple bird, so I'm sure it's worth serious coin.

That's the end of the cards, but I had one other thing that I noticed in this LCS.  The staff here were super-friendly and helpful at letting me know what they had, what was on special, and pulling out boxes from the back for me to look at. It was also pretty obvious that "the staff" were a husband-and-wife team who own the shop.  This is the 3rd shop I have been to with a husband-and-wife running the place (see Valley Sports Cards and Pal's, too), and those shops have always felt more welcoming than the shops I visit who are just run by one guy.  I think the feminine influence helps a lot.  The "lone wolf" shop owners need to get hitched ASAP!  Has anyone else noticed this effect in their LCS?