I'm a White Guy

2014 Panini Immaculate - Frank White Autograph - #/99

I must admit, I'm a "White Guy".

Now, that's not saying anything about the pigments of my epidermis, but rather, my fandom for Royals legend Frank White.

The man won eight Gold Gloves, and got immortalized in this Bobblehead for it:

But still, he doesn't show up much in trading card releases since his retirement...let alone have many autographs or relic cards.  The last Topps product he was in was 2013 Archives.  However, Panini has done a little bit better job with Frank -- including him in 2013 Hometown Heroes, 2013 America's Pastime, and 2014 Immaculate.  Apparently he had a low-numbered card (#/3) in a repack product called "2017 Leaf Greatest Hits", but I have never seen that one.  The only relic card I have of his is 2002 Topps Gold Label. 

But going back to the card at the top of this post, that is an on-card autograph from 2014 Panini Immaculate that arrived at my door yesterday, and it only cost me $1.75 total.

How?  Last week Ebay released a short-term coupon code ("PERKMEUP") for $5.00 off of any purchase of $5.01 or more. (**Hat-Tip to The Lost Collector and $30/Week Habit for posting/liking this code on Twitter so that I saw it.) I had been watching the White auto for awhile, but wasn't willing to pull the trigger for $7.  However, I could do it for less than $2!!  

It is numbered 30/99, signed in blue pen which goes with the uniform, and is a great addition to my Royals collection.  I would have to say that collectively the Immaculate line is probably my favorite product out there in the last several years, so getting any more Royals from there is awesome.

Did anyone else use the PERKMEUP code or score any crazy deals lately?

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?

 

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!  

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!

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?

A Foolish Decision Pays Off

To get a particular card for your collection quickly,  you really should just find it online and click buy-it-now.

It's never smart to buy packs looking for one particular card.  The vast majority of the time you end up several dollars poorer and holding a stack of cards you don't want.  Plus, there are probably Giants and Cardinals in that stack (ewwww....).

There are still blasters of 2015 Topps Series Two floating around out there in retail-world, and they each contain one of the "First Home Run" medallion manu-relics.  I was at Target with my son, and we were looking for something fun to bust together.  The side panel of the blaster box had the checklist for the medallion cards, and there were THREE Royals on there.   Alex Gordon, Bo Jackson, and Carlos Beltran -- A, B, and C.  Getting a "Gordo" would be ideal, but any of them would be great to pull from the box.

I put the Series Two blaster and a Fairfield Repack -- the six-year-old LOVES Panini Triple Play -- into the cart and we headed home.

The first thing we opened was the Blaster.  The guaranteed hit comes in its own opaque wrapper.  We cracked it open, and found this:

2015 Topps - First Home Run Relic - Alex Gordon

 
There was lots of screaming and giggling between us.  I won't say who giggled more.

So there you have it -- sometimes a foolish decision turns out to be the right one.  :-)

He's Back!

A4!  The one-and-only!

Let's Celebrate!

 

Royals Rookies Roster

There was an announcement this week that the Royals had added Raul Adalberto Mondesi to their World Series roster, even though he had never played in a Major League game before.  That's all well and good, but the big impact is going to come from these two rookies here:

Those are my two little guys, repping the Royals with their new shirts from Grandma and Grandpa.  One of the helmets was my souvenir from going to my first Royals game in 1986.

This is an exciting time to be a Royals fan.  We stole Game 1, and then Cueto dominated in Game 2 to put us up 2-0.  Tenets of Wilson's projections have us at an 82% chance of taking the series now.

My little guy is almost two...He has never seen a World Series that didn't have the Royals in it -- what a charmed life.

Bonus points to anyone who recognizes the trading-card-related item that's seen in one of the pictures of my sons.  Can you spot it?

Royals Sweep the Angels

I just back from watching the Royals sweep the Angels in Anaheim this weekend to go to 6-0 on the year.  I think my thoughts on the matter are adequately summarized thusly:

Win It For Them

One game.

One chance for the Royals to finish this great season tonight with an incredible flourish.

One chance to win it for all those to have loved this team and worked over the years to make it what it is.  Win it for them.

Win it for Mike Sweeney - who gave the Royals everything he had, even when it clearly wasn't enough.

Win it for Billy Butler - who saw us through some lean years but is hitting in the heart of the order in the most-important game of his life.

Win it for Frank White - whose analysis on the broadcasts rekindled my wife's love of baseball and eased her conversion from an Angels fan to a Royals fan.

Win it for all the KC fans spread across the country - the small contingent who show up for road games in places like Anaheim, San Diego, and Seattle to cheer on the team they love.

Win it for Sung Woo Lee - who loved this team from across the globe.

Win it for all the guys who contributed this year, but aren't on the WS roster - Colon, Chen, Hendricks, Crow, Ibanez, and Giavotella.

Win it for those players that hustled for teams who could never catch a break - David DeJesus, Joakim Soria, Kevin Appier, Gil Meche, Joe Randa, Mark Teahen, and John Buck.

But most of all, win it for my son, James - who saw his first live KC game this past Memorial Day, wore his Alex Gordon shirt for preschool picture day, and snuggles up to me on the couch to catch an inning or two every night before bedtime.  I can assure you, there will be no bedtime enforcement tonight. 

#TakeTheCrown

Best Game Ever

2014 AL Wild Card Game Win Probabilities

Speed Kills.

My Boys

Tuesday night - one game.

The first KC playoff game I've seen.

Whatever happens, Royals, you made me smile this year.

Thank you.

#TakeTheCrown

Extreme Posting Delays - TTG Edition

TTG from "Friars on Cardboard" has been very good to me in the past. 

He's been good to me again...with these guys showing up in my mailbox on....May 1st.  So...I'm a little delayed, no biggie.  I'll just pop over to the FoC blog to leave a comment and let him know I'm really appreciate it.

Blog not found???

You know it's been awhile since you posted when a blog shuts down in between the time you get the cards and when you post them.  It looks like he's doing all his posting at gaslampball.com now.  I know "Gas Lamp" is the SD district, but I like to picture the Padres playing all their games with flaming spheres of gas that explode upon being hit.  You'd get a lot fewer Home-Runs that way....but the opposing infielders would all be really scared.

But I digress...here's the oddballs he sent me!

I've seen the "Rub Downs" before, but the "Pro Stamps" were completely new to me.  Thanks again, sir!

Bombs Away - The Grand Finale

Due to work, life, health, etc....I've been slow posting lately, so I figured I would just dump the rest of the pics from Jaybarkerfan's ridiculous PWE Bombing of me.  It's kind of like at the end of the fireworks show when they just shoot off everything that is left....

These Cards Are To Dye For

Back in April, I got a package from Colbey with my plunder from one of his "Affordable Group Breaks."  It had a bunch of Pacific Online, Pacific Paramount, and Topps Gold Label cards for the KC Royals.  He also threw in some extras for some stuff I had sent him.  These were a lot better than the usual throw-ins, though.

The first one was a 2001 SP Game Bat - Milestone Edition Auto/Relic of Jermaine Dye.  It had a LITTLE sliver of bat in it with a "KC" imprint, plus an auto.

2001 SP Game Bat - Auto Relic - Jermaine Dye - #S-JDy

The second one was another Jermaine Dye -- with more tiny stuff in it!  This one had two parts of a base. 

This one was a "Home Opener Souvenir" from the game on April 6, 2001 with two chunks of memorabilia -- one smooth and one textured.  There's a picture of the base!  That's way better than the current Topps disclaimer..."This memorabilia was not used in any specific game, event, competition, play, day, zoo, restaurant, bathroom, or submarine."  I think it goes like that.  Oh yeah, it was #'d /200.

So that's some good stuff, eh?  Thanks a bunch, Colbey!

What I Like About Blue

I could have titled this one, "What I Like About Night Owl," but that doesn't sound like a song-title.  At least not one that I have heard, anyway.  Maybe it's a dubstep song, but I don't know anything about that.

Night Owl sent me a PWE back in March and it was blue, through-and-through.

He sent these blue Royals:

He sent these blue Dodgers:

He even used the BLUE TAPE. 

 I can not stress enough how much better it is to get the packages with the painter's tape versus the ones with clear scotch tape 3-layers-deep over everything (that's right, Listia, I'm talking to you).  Bloggers, if you aren't using this stuff for shipping, do everyone a favor and go buy some.

So I told you this package was blue through-and-through.  That was a lie.  He included one more color.......

YELLOW!!!

1991 Fleer...can't beat it.  :-)  Thanks, Night Owl!