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?

 

This Post Is Immaculate

 

The best-looking product this year that I have seen was Panini Immaculate.  It came out in the summer and people immediately started pulling out some amazing cards from it (that Brett went for $460).  There were quite a few case breaks happening for it, but the prices for a slot were going for more than I wanted to pay, and I just kept getting outbid on them.  Instead, I decided to take the money that would have gone for a slot in the case break and just pick up a few singles on Ebay...creating my own cheaper break.  I watched several breaks that I had bid on (and lost), and there were no Royals cards in there that were better than these (and about half of them were shutouts for the Royals), so I don't feel like I missed out on them. 

The card at the top was a great value -- Raul Mondesi /99 - Immaculate Materials - 5 swatches.  The fabric is blurry in the scan since it is so thick.  The Royals have rushed Mondesi before...hopefully they are patient with him and he will develop into a solid player.

The second card I picked up was Alex Gordon /99 - Immaculate Duals.   It shows the Alex Gordon low follow-through...best exemplified here. 

 

While I was on the site, I looked for any other cool, cheap Royals cards I could snag.  The first card I picked up was this "Zebra" from 2016 Donruss.  I believe they called these "Holoflow" parallels.  They are numbered /199 and are very shiny/refractory (you can pick that up in the bottom of the scan).  LoCain is showing a little of his "lean-back" follow-through on this beauty.  

 

Another quick pick-up was this Danny Duffy 2017 Chrome in the 1987 Topps style.  It was free shipping and the seller likely had a negative profit on this one.   It's a beautiful glossy card and I'm glad to have it.

All in all, these cards cost me WAY less than a case-break slot would have, and I am pleased with what I got. 

If you are looking for what's still available from that set, you can check COMC or the 'Bay.

What is your favorite Panini Immaculate card that you have seen?

Bountiful Bonus Booty Bestowed by Benevolent Blogger

Who is the Benevolent Blogger?  Why, Bubba's Bangin' Batch of Baseball Bits, of course!

Matt ran a contest last summer to see who could identify a player that he had selected, based on a series of clues that were increasingly specific.  When all was said and done, I narrowed down the answer to just a few players, then finally down to one - Wilson Ramos!  That qualified me for a prize, and when the randomizer was done spinning, I came out of it with a whole lot of 2017 Ginter cards!  Knowing his affinity for Ginter cards, I figured it would be something good.  It was.  :-)

Here you can see the box that hit my mailbox.

 

To be specific, that box had a full base set of 2017 Ginter (Cards 1-300), and then half of the short-prints (301-350).  1987 Topps (favorite set!) were used as filler.  No respect for the classics!  :-)

Here's the full team set of 2017 Royals (non-SP). 

 

He also included one SP (LoCain), and a mini of Hosmer and black mini of LoCain.  

It didn't seem like the Ginter base set had as many interesting non-baseball cards in it as it has in past years, but there were still a few good ones.  All of the cards in the next two pictures are other cards from the base set that I wanted to keep. 4 Ex-Royals (Kendrys, Manaea, Zobrist, Cueto), guys from my earlier days (Canseco, Smith, Banks, Johnson, Dawson), Random current guys I like (Ichiro, Werth, Wilson Ramos(!), then the miscellaneous ones.  Vashti Cunningham and Laurie Hernandez were Olympians.  I watched a Crossfit documentary on Netflix and Ben Smith was the winner of that (Spoiler!).  There was no "Revolving Door" or "X-Ray" card in this set, so a Panda and a Waterfall will have to fill that gap. 

As I mentioned, there were also half of the Short-Prints from this set.  Those are shown below and are all available (except for Lorenzo) since they don't fit my PC.  If anyone still is working on this set and needs one of these, let me know and I can get that to you.  I have a lot of base to trade/give, too.

I really only need one more full-size base card from this set -
Base SP #313 - Matt Strahm. 

Do any of you have that one for me?

Thanks so much, Matt!  You might be wondering why it took me 3 months to post this.  Well....this package hit my mailbox the same week my wife gave birth to our daughter.  Between her and my two older boys, I've had limited card-blogging time since then.  But these were all much appreciated and will be given a good home!  

My Wife - The Prognosticator

Before the playoffs began, everyone in my family filled out a bracket with their postseason predictions (motto:  "Bracketology:  It's not just for March Madness anymore!").  That paper you see in the picture above is my wife's bracket.  She got every series right except for the Indians/Yankees series.  Next year I am going to take her to Vegas and we are going to get rich.

Four Packs To Be Named Later

I recently did a four-pack series of 2017 NFL retail football cards for A Pack To Be Named Later.  You can see them all at the links below.

In order of my personal preference:
2017 Score Football
2017 Donruss Football
2017 Panini Prestige Football
2017 Panini Football

Card Meme

I mean, really, what's better to chase?

This?

Or this?

20,000 Cards - Box 2 - All Layers

Hello to the Blogosphere!  This has never been a blog that was big on video posts, but I have one for you today.  My in-laws took my sons to their house for the week, so I had both the time and the safety to sort out another of the boxes from my 20,000 card purchase.  See it below, and let me know:  What is your favorite set or favorite player from all the ones I pulled out of this box?

Don't CALL 1 (877) CARD MLB

Working through the 2nd giant box of my 20,000 cards purchase, I came across this card...well, actually there were four of them together.

Front:

Back:

The card features Sosa, Ichiro, Randy Johnson, Piazza, Jeter, and Pedro, and instructs us to call 1 (877) CARD MLB to find a card shop near us.  This is from 2002, and has MLBPA and MLB licenses.  It might have come from 2002 MLB Showdown?  There were quite a few Showdown cards around it.

2002 was the year I graduated college.  This card was a vestige of the era where the internet was rapidly becoming well-developed, but there were still many people (like my parents) who were on dial-up connections who still used the phone for most things.  Only 20% of Americans had broadband at that point.  This is pre-iPhone by five years.

Anyway, this morning, I wondered....IS THIS LINE STILL WORKING?  Does MLB have some bored intern manning a phone line waiting for people to ask where the nearest card shop is?  Or is it just a recorded message telling everyone that card shops don't exist anymore and you can only get cards at Target?

So, I called it.  I was hoping for a live person.  Otherwise, a recording telling me where I could buy cards.  Mostly I expected a "this line has been disconnected" error message.  What I got was even worse.

MLB has abandoned this line.  It has been taken over by a scam company offering "free" cruises (you just pay them some "small" FEES, of course) and "free" medical alert systems to prey on the elderly.  Because the elderly are the only people who call 800 numbers anymore.  (Sorry if I offended anyone out there.)

Does anyone remember calling this line?  I hope you aren't relying on this anymore.  If you are ever out-and-about and urgently need to find a card shop, just give me a call.  I'll be happy to point you in the right direction.  :-)

Stealing Home Every Night

I've been away for awhile, but had to jump in and post two gift packages that recently landed in my mailbox.

First, Peter at "Baseball Every Night" was giving away team slots from his recent Series 2 purchase, so I snatched up the Royals from that. 

My fave pickups here were the Alex Gordon gold parallel, along with a Matt Strahm insert.

There were lots of new cards to me here -- good to see a card of Cheslor Cuthbert -- but can't help but wonder why Peter O'Brien got a card when he never made the 25-man roster for us and was waived by us in May (then waived by the Reds....then waived by the Rangers...).

Thank you so much, Peter!  Everyone remember to send him your Kruk and Strawberry cards!

Right after that one came, I got one from Stealing Home at "All Trade Bait" -- He was running a Big Fun Game of his own and my selection of Lot #6 netted me a big pile of rookies.  Here were my favorites from that stack.

Everybody was so young in these pictures!  Mostly I remember Charlie Hough as the first pitcher ever for the Marlins.  He was 45 when he did that (in 1993), so I would say he had a little longevity in the game of baseball.

These are great!  Thank you, sir!!!

I may be vanishing again soon...baby #3 is due in two weeks, so who knows how that will change everything.

A bientot!

20,000 Cards - Box 1, Layer 4

Hello Readers!  It's been awhile.


Good News:  My wife is pregnant with our third child (our first daughter)!
Bad News:  This has been a rough pregnancy for her, so I've been taking on a lot more of the care for the house and our older boys....thus minimizing my baseball cards time the last two months.  That's what's causing the delay in my posting.

However, those big boxes from my Craigslist purchase have been calling my name again, so I wanted to at least go through the last layer of Box #1 to see if there was anything else good in there.  I had originally hoped to keep a full record of each set that came out of these boxes and how many cards from each set I have.  But that was slowing me WAAAAY down so I'm scrapping that.   I'll just be posting the highlights and sets that have a significant amount of cards in case anyone is putting those sets together.  Hopefully that will get me through these a lot quicker.

Starting simply, this layer had a pretty sizable chunk of 2002 Topps flagship if anyone is looking for some of those.

Next up was a bunch of 2001 Fleer Focus Football, including a bunch of (future) Hall of Famers.  Lots of commons, too.

1969-1970 Topps Hockey - Val Fonteyne - #119

Right after those football cards, I saw this thing.  Hockey?  OLD school hockey?  What's that doing in here with all these modern sets?  I am not a hockey collector, so I have never seen anything like it before. A little research turns up that it is a 1969 Topps base card.  Still looks pretty cool to me!  That ties the Roy Hilton football card for the oldest one to come from these boxes yet.

Digging deeper, there was a decent chunk of 40-Man also...including these two guys that I do not associate with these teams at all.  Raines is an Expo and Punto is a Twin in my mind's eye.

MORE Starting Lineups!  I can't escape these!  :-)  Most of these are Starting Lineup 2 (or is that "squared"?).  Some big names on there.

This card doesn't look like much in the scan, but it's VERY nice in person.  It's 1995 Black Label, and it's printed on stock that feels a little like acetate, but is not fully clear.  It gives the picture a very crisp, HD look.  There's a dot-matrix serial number on the back, but it's pretty large, so I don't think the print run was too limited on these. 

Speaking of another card whose scan doesn't do it justice, tilting this one in the light makes that background light up like flames.  Steve is trapped in the inferno!

Right at the end of the row, when I thought the rest of this was just going to be more 1990 Topps (yes, there was more 1990 Topps), I see this one:

1964 Topps - Cubs Team Card - #237

That's a 1964!  We have a new leader for oldest card pulled.

Behind it...these two!  1962!

And then finally these!  1960!  That Yankees card has quite a few stars on it.  None of these 5 was in pristine condition, but they are still pretty nice things to add to my collection, as I do not usually go after anything older than the founding of the Royals (1969).

In conclusion, please comment below and answer one or both of these questions:
1) Which card of these do you think is the most interesting?
2) Which athlete should I name my daughter after?  Her brothers think "Luke Skywalker Girl" is a good name for her, and I need some alternatives...

100 Words - 5 Crows

Life Cycle of a Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos):

At hatching, newborn Crows have naked skin, devoid of feathers and hair.

Shortly thereafter, feathers and other body coverings are added which turn black and the Crows develop an iridescent shine.

Between the ages of two and four, Crows reach sexual maturity and begin to breed.  Multiple smaller Crows are born in each hatching, bearing a resemblance to their parents.

The average life-span of a Crow in the wild is eight years.  Crows are susceptible to West Nile Virus and Ulnar Collateral Ligament problems.

The Crow in his natural habitat.

CAW!  CAW!