A Blue Chicken and Some Sparkly Suits

Back in late July I made a purchase from "Erik's Fire Sales" on Twitter (@EriksFire)...well it was really a large quantity of very small purchases.  He was posting tons of cards for sale, and you could claim whatever you wanted.  Here are the highlights for my keepers...in addition to these, I grabbed some cards for the PCs of my frequent-traders.

Obviously, my stack would always start with Royals.  I love the red Guthrie, the green Holland, the Black Gold Montgomery, and an assortment of unusual Salvys.

Here are some Basketball Coaches.  This is a VERY minor, back-burner PC of mine, but I grab them when I can.  However, I've got to say something about the Panini photo selection here...is this the best you can do??  Coaches just standing there - arms crossed or hands on hips?  Do these guys actually DO anything?  Can I get a pointing and a screaming coach, please?

On the plus side, it's not every day you get an X-Fractor of a guy in a suit.

 I grabbed a few football cards:

1. Kurt Warner - my favorite player ever.
2. David Johnson - another UNI alum and prime contributor to my Fantasy Football success in 2016, so I have a small PC of him.
3. Alan Page - Just in case anyone doesn't know his story, the guy had a Hall of Fame football career, got his law degree while he was still in the NFL from the University of Minnesota, and THEN became a member of the Minnesota Supreme Court.  What a life!  

Brush with Greatness:  When I offered to pay my dime for the Alan Page card....his wife liked my Tweet.  :-)
https://twitter.com/DenHartogJ/status/1016475151372836864

This blog is called "Royals and Randoms" for a reason...I do like my oddballs. The chicken is a blue parallel and my sons are trying to get me to trade it to them.  I like that I am developing two oddball collectors.

His prices were quite reasonable...I don't think anything you will see here was more than 50 cents --  the Luminescent die-cut was the most expensive.  He hasn't run a sale in the last month or so, but he's definitely worth following on Twitter for some good cheap pickups next time he runs a sale.

Which of these cards was your favorite?

The Night Owl Mixtape

Better late than never??  Let's hope so.

The one-and-only Night Owl recently sent me a bubble-mailer (thank you!).  Does October count as "recently?"  I'm going to say yes and show you the goodies in it regardless of my belated response.

This was during the Playoffs, so Free Agency hadn't even begun, but Night Owl kicked off the package with this note:

Lorenzo Cain was expected to be on his way out the door.  Same with Moustakas, Vargas, Minor, Escobar, and Hosmer.  The Royals went hard after Hosmer, but the Padres went harder.  Somehow, we re-signed Moustakas!  Escobar too (for some reason?).  But of course, that note reminded me of this song:

So I figured, let's make this whole post a music post!  Every card I'm showing will get a music video.

I am still slowly working on this subset from 2013 Ginter.  The addition of Mercury is like the addition of Freddie Mercury!

 X-fractor-y David DeJesus just collided with...somebody. Was it Howie Day?

 A "sepia parallel" is just another name for Brown.  Like Zac Brown.

 

Night Owl threw in a good little stack of 1973 Topps Royals, including Mr. "Monty" Montgomery.  That's his real name.  Perhaps he should have been named "John Michael Montgomery" instead?  

Steve Busby threw not just one but two no-hitters for the Royals between 1973-1974.  That's why he was immortalized in lyrics by Wham!

"Wake me up before you go-go,

Busby just threw another no-no." 

Really.  Those are the lyrics. Trust me.

This card of Sluggerr features him wearing the Johnny Cueto dreadlocks from 2015.  Speaking of unexpected dreadlocks, here's P.O.D.!

This is a mini "black" parallel of Alex Gordon from Ginter, but these black parallels have so much white in them, I can't tell if they are black or white.

  What can I say about Salvy?  This Salvy is BLUE.

There we go - a song for every card.  Which card/song is your favorite?  Which songs would you have used for any of these cards?

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!  

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!

Night Owl Confuses Me

Well, it's more like Topps confuses me.

All of these cards came from the one, the only, Mr. Night Owl in two packages -- one last summer, and one recent one.  He included the above monstrosity.  This flips the traditional traded-player display of "new logo/old uniform" on its head, by showing James Shields in his new uniform (KC), but with his old logo (TB).  Chalk this one up to a mistake -- whoever was maintaining the player database at Topps never updated it with the correct logo.

Night Owl sent a bunch of other good stuff, too.

And he finished it out with a #/99 double-jersey card of Raul (Adalberto) Mondesi.  This will definitely be Mondesi's year to show what he can do in the big leagues.  He's got to start hitting better if he is going to stick around.

Thank you, Night Owl -- all of these were needed and are very much appreciated!

-Josh D.

2015 Topps Royals Outfielders - Same Pose

2015 was a charmed season for the Royals.  Seven players on the All-Star team, the AL Central Division Championship, and, of course, WINNING THE WORLD SERIES.

A big part of that team was the dynamic defense, particularly in the outfield.  Apparently Topps predicted this at the beginning of the season, as they decided to portray each one of the best KC outfielders in a similar pose -- making a diving defensive gem.

LF - Alex Gordon :  Winner of four consecutive Gold Gloves in LF, he was the winner of both the Platinum Glove and Hutch Award in 2014.

CF - Jarrod Dyson : 1.1 Defensive WAR over only 560 innings in 2015.  He lead the league in Double-Plays turned as an OF.  People thought he was just a burner, but he has a fast, accurate arm, too.

RF - Lorenzo Cain :  2.3 Defensive WAR in 2015.  This was good for 4th in the AL across all positions, and was actually a decrease from 2013/2014 when he was 2nd in the league.  He was also chosen as the "Wilson Defensive Player of the Year" in CF.

The "Superman" poses from all of them make for a neat set when seen as a group.  Are there any other sets you know of that have teammates in a similar pose?