Mailday From The Mitten

I received a nice envelope of cards a week and a half ago from Julie over at A Cracked Bat.   I will run through the cards in a minute, but I really need to get a business card or something catchy to stick into packages.  This is nice.....

My eight year old son was initially really excited about this package of cards.  He checks our mail as part of chores around the house.  If it is mail for me then it is a baseball card, and there is not much excitement over the mail for the day.  However, this package threw him off because the return address was from Michigan.  He was jumping up and down. 

My wife is from Michigan, so there are grandparents, aunts and uncles who live there are mail him stuff.  

Her hometown is actually on this map.  It's right there, next to one of the lakes.  It's a nice place.

So naturally, he opened the envelope and was a little disappointed to see that it was baseball cards, but I was pretty excited.  So, here's what I got:

First off, this was a card from a set that Julie had posted on Twitter, and we had spent some time talking about it one day.  I had never seen anything out of this Church's Chicken card set before.  Are there Church's Chickens in Missouri?  According to Google there are a dozen of them around St. Louis.  I just missed out on these back in the day.  There are even Cardinals players in the set. 

Love the design on these cards, they look like something from the mid 1990s too.  I am going to have to find more of these.  I appreciate that Julie introduced me to these cards.

More cards.

These three Cardinals are out of the 2003 EX set.  Always one of my favorite products from the late 1990s and early 2000s.  These are from the 2003.  Great looking cards.  

Next.  

I know that the Action Packed cards were an oddball set from the early 1990s that featured older players, but I do not know much about them.  I actually have two other Action Packed cards in my collection, a Bob Gibson and a Jerome Bettis, but I am a little fuzzy on how they got here.  Never really got into collecting Rams cards.  I love the photograph on the card.  Nice action shot of Lou Brock running the bases is always a winner. 

 I do not do much with Furcal, but he was on the 2011 Cardinals World Series winner.  Kind of easy to forget he was there.  This is a gold sparkle variation of his 2012 Topps base card.  Not sure the scan really did it justice, sometimes shiny and bright does not scan well, but it's a sharp card. 

This is a really sharp looking card of Cardinals second baseman Kolten Wong.  Love the die cut.  

Last.  

There are not many Ray Lankford cards in this world that I do not own.  However, he is one of the few players whom I actively welcome duplicates of in my collection.  This is a 1998 Donruss Preferred card, which was not only a great set, but also a card from Lankford's prime years as a player.  The years where card companies sort of paid interest in him. 

A great package of cards.  Thank you Julie, I will get you a return package at some point in the near future. 

A Trade With Big D

I recently had a chance to sit down with Jimmy, from the card shop previously known as Big D's, to trade a few baseball cards.  Even though Big D's is not open Jimmy still takes care of all the old store customers with boxes and still looks out for cool single cards for our collections.  He had been putting together a pile of cards for me over the summer and I was happy to sit down, look at the cards, and help him add a few nice cards to his collection.  

Here are my newest cards:

Starting off small, but I needed this card for my Heritage High Numbers.  This was one of the cards I most eager to add to my collection from this product.  Honestly, if I had not touched High Numbers at all I still would have gone after this great looking Mahtook rookie card.  Mahtook spent last year with the Durham Bulls and this year going back and forth between the Bulls and Rays.  Snorting Bull favorite for sure and a cool looking card.  

Next up is a Kolten Wong Museum Collection autograph.  I have other version of this Wong autograph, but not the double jersey piece.  I really like the look of these cards, nice card, cool autograph.  

Another Durham Bulls favorite with this Blue Bowman Chrome Hak Ju Lee autograph.  The card is numbered to 150 and is a variation of this card I did not have in my collection yet.  and the final card......

This gem is from the 2004 Playoff Prime Cut set.  The scan does not really do the card justice.  This was a high product that had tons of relics and autographs from Hall of Famers.  Not just the garden variety either, but a lot of players from the 20s, 30s, and 40s who do not have a lot of relic cards.  Hornsby was the first superstar player in the history of the Cardinals and there are not a ton of relics of him floating around.  He has had a few in some Panini products the last year too, but there are not many in nice looking products like the 2004 Prime Cuts set.  Definitely a great card to add to the collection.  

Reddit Trade

I have traded for cards on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Email, the comment section of blogger.....Whatever and whenever something catches my interest.  The last month, or so, I have been doing a little bit of posting in the Baseball Card area of Reddit.  It's a pretty diverse group.  Anything from the "I found 10,000 cards from 1990 in my attic, am I rich?" to "Check out these cool cards I found" and everything in between.  

After making my post about my Archives hits a few weeks back one of the frequent posters/commenters FFFHFT approached me about trading a pair of the Mets cards I pulled, the Franco autograph and the Wright silver, for a similar pair of Cardinals cards.  

Here's what I landed:

A copy of the Kolten Wong Gypsy Queen autograph.  I pulled a Matt Adams autograph out of my box, and have picked up a few other Cardinals along the way, but still have not picked up a copy of this card yet.  Wong is having a great year and I am not doing anything with his cards....I will work on it.  This is a really nice on-card autograph of the Cardinals second baseman.  Really happy to add this card to my collection.  

Speaking of good seasons, I also added a copy of a Jhonny Peralta silver bordered Archives card.  These are numbered out of /199 and run at a rate of about two per box.  Here's a look at the back of the card.....

Two really nice cards and a great new place to trade some cards.  

  

Odorizzi, The Machine, and Kolten

A short quick post for Saturday afternoon.  I picked up a few cards this week in a trade with Tim from I Love the Smell of Cardboard in the Morning.  Good blog if you have not checked it out yet.  Tim had a few holes he was trying to fill in his Archives set and I swapped out a few inserts for a couple of nice cards for my collection.  Here's a look at the four newest cards in my collection:

I love the look of all four cards.  Sometimes I wonder why I do not make trades like this more often.  I always have a ton of doubles and love picking up some of these variations.  I am still not chasing down the complete rainbow of cards, but cards like the xfractor parallels always look cool.  I need to update my want list.  Perhaps some cards like these should be added.....

and finally....here's Gypsy Queen (Part 1)

When did Gypsy Queen come out again?  It was several weeks ago, but I am just writing a post about the two boxes I opened up now.  What happened to cause this delay?  The statistics of page views do not support what I am about to say, so I will first thank you for continuing to visit my page in spite of the fact that I did not post as regularly as a normally do in terms of both quantity and quality.  The beginning of April started with a vacation.  By the time the vacation ended and returned to work my schedule of writing and posting cards and the whatnot was completely in taters.  I managed to get to the end of April and have worked my way back into shape in terms of posts. 

So, to actually answer the question at the top of the post the product arrived on April 15th.  I attended the Durham Bulls home opener that evening and left my boxes of Gypsy Queen in my car.  The next day, after work, I opened them live on Periscope.  Something I am playing with, but I need to use an Ipad instead of my phone.  I also need to have the camera set up so that it is somewhat still.  If you are on Periscope my user is the Snorting Bull. 

After the Periscope broadcast these cards just sat on my desk.  So, between a post this evening and tomorrow I am planning on catching everyone up on my Gypsy Queen cards including my two cents on the set and design this year. 

Lets start off with the good stuff.....


Autographs 

I opened two boxes of Gypsy Queen so I was supposed to receive a total of four autographs.  I kind of made it there.  I have not run into a redemption this year, but after last year I have decided to sell/trade all of my code cards this year.  Probably next year and the year after that too...... Yes, I got three autographs and a redemption card.

Obviously I really like the Matt Adams autograph.  It's always cool to pull an autograph from your favorite team out of a box that you open.  Adams is not my favorite Cardinal, but I probably would have ended up with this card at some point, so it's all good.  Someone asked me on Twitter whether Pompey was one of those guys I liked because I saw him in Triple A, but he actually was never in Buffalo before the Jays sent him down there this season.  Gausman and Johnson are nice autographs too.  I will let you know what the Gausman brings me when it is traded/sold. 

Relics 

Last year I did really well with the relics in this product pulling a button card from Greinke.  I was hoping for a similar card this year, but I guess that would have been beating some pretty long odds.  Here's what I did ended up landing......

Gypsy Queen can have some rather ordinary relics, so I was happy to draw out the Kolten Wong, again a Cardinal, and the low print run Miggy with the nice frame border.  Honestly, as much as I was hoping for something cool, like a button card, I also feared drawing four relic cards with names like Adrian Gonzalez.  Nothing against Adrian, but he's not my favorite player and that's a rather ordinary looking relic.  Back me up Dodgers people....

Plates-

and here is where my box was made.  I have heard different collectors say that there seemed to be a lot of plates being pulled out of Gypsy Queen this year and I have to agree.  I have seen numerous box breaks and different collectors on social media open boxes/cases and post their hits.  Lots of plates.  My two were pretty nice, so I cannot complain. 

This one was kind of a surprise to me.  I am not a huge plate person and I do not actively seek them out to buy or trade.  If one happens into my collection at the right price, so be it.  I am not sure how many of these I have pulled over the years, but I do not think that I have ever landed a printing plate of an insert card.  This seems to be a first as far as I can remember.  It's a nice card. 

Lastly, a Liriano plate.  I like the frame around the plate.  Really nice card and made for a nice finishing touch for my two boxes of Gypsy Queen. 

Seriously, Last Trip To Big D's

My Saturday started with a trip into my local mechanic after my engine light popped on during my drive home Friday evening.  A gas cap later I had a lot more time on my hands Saturday afternoon than I had anticipated.  What to do?  Well, Jimmy from Big D's started sending me a few pictures of cards that collectors had landed out of 2015 Topps boxes.  I was happy with my box, but apparently there were some other Cardinals hits hanging out in some of the other boxes in the store.

These were really nice cards, so I decided to take my car, with it's new gas cap up to Big D's for one last time.  Seriously.  So, here's what I ended up adding to my collection while I was in the store:

This card was picked up by another customer at Big D's who found it at a Flea Market in Raleigh.  Being the resident Cardinals fan at Big D's the guy asked Jimmy if I would be interested in this card.  Of course I was interested.  I have always loved these Postseason cards and thought this patch piece looked really cool.  I was trying to figure out what part of the Cardinals logo this piece came from, but I cannot quite put my fingers on it.  As nice as this card is this is the second best Cardinals card I picked up Saturday.  

This card is just awesome.  Alan, an Orioles collector, pulled it from a box of 2015 Topps, along with a cool looking Pujols coin card.  After talking it over for awhile we agreed to a trade that landed me this cool Carpenter and another Cardinals autograph which is en route, for a Ripken autograph.  You have to give up something, and while the price was high, I am ecstatic to have landed this Carpenter Postseason autograph.  Probably the best Cardinals card I have out of this long running insert set from Topps base sets.  

Road Trip Cards

I spent a few days traveling to the far reaches of northern Michigan for a few days with my in-laws.  There are not a ton of people in Northern Michigan, but there is loads of cool scenery and I dig being in a small town for a change.  It's not like I can walk a few miles from my home in suburban Raleigh and hang out by Lake Huron.  I found a nice picnic bench with this view.....

I also managed to pick up a few cards while I was in Michigan too.  My brother in-law has been collecting cards for awhile now and we had done a little trading back and forth.  I picked up my part of our trades while I was in town.  A few nice Cardinals, a nice Rays autograph, and the last few 1989 minis.  And Ozzie......

A pretty awesome group of cards.  While it is not the most valuable of the cards, I really like the looks of the Wainwright card.  Topps has so many parallels these days it's hard to keep track of them all.  I have a couple other sepia parallels, but they were pack pulls and players I do not collect.  Has a really cool look.  I might have to go out and find a few more Cardinals card like that one.

Heavy Bottomed Chrome Cards Make The Rockin World Go Round

I did not buy a box or open any packs of Topps Chrome this year. This is actually the second year in a row that I have decided to skip this product.  Nothing to do with chrome rehashes or anything like that, but more to do with the fact that the product could be described as "bottom loaded".  To some degree all products are "top heavy" in their concentration of high-end autographs being the hardest to pull and low end autographs being easy to pull, however Topps Chrome takes it to a different level.  Again, not "top heavy" like most products, but "bottom loaded"

Here's the skinny on the Chrome autographs.  The originally sale price on Chrome boxes was around $75.  Collectors received two autographs per box.    Think about this way:

If you go on Ebay and search sold items under 2014 Topps Chrome Autographs the first page (I'm using 50 items per page sorting high price to low price) has a few listings which go for over $500 (there are seven as I am typing this) and then several pages of cards that cost somewhere between $200 to $100.  After that it goes off a cliff quickly.  Let's explain it this way.  Flip the search around and look finding the lowest sale priced cards first....It takes 41 pages, with 50 items on each page, to clear the price of $5.  Now, resale price on your hit cards is not everything in the world, but over a quarter of the 2014 Topps Chrome autographs on Ebay sold for less than $5 and over half sold for less than $10? 

Here's another comparison.  Half a box of Triple Threads (or one mini box) cost the same as a box of Topps Chrome.  At the quarter mark of completed Chrome sales on Ebay, collectors reach the $5 mark.  On Triple Threads, the completed sales for the bottom quarter sales on Ebay top out at $10.  At the $5 mark on Chrome collectors can find names like Ethan Martin, Enny Romero, and Tommy Medica.  Sure there is a Taijuan Walker and Yordano Ventura autograph slipped in there, but most of the low end autographs in that product are low end for a reason.  The quarter mark on the Triple Threads sales include names like: Christian Yelich, Matt Adams, Mike Napoli, Sonny Grey, and Adrian Gonzalez.  

So really, for the price of Chrome, collectors should call up a friend and go halveses on a box of Triple Threads.  Better names, better value for the price hence the term "bottom loaded"  So about those Chrome autographs...I still like the looks of the products, but why should I spend $75 opening a product for two $5 autographs when I can let someone else do the work for me?  I bought two lots of Topps Chrome autographs in the past two weeks each lot of cards cost me roughly $10.  Here is the first:

Get on your bikes and ride....

Memphis Redbirds Hat Logo

I have been working on my Collecting the Durham Bulls thread the during the past week which took a little bit of guess work during spring training to prepare for some of the perspective players on this year's roster.  Besides having a good head start on getting some of the cards for this year's Durham Bulls team, I also have been able to go back and pick up some minor league cards for that other team I follow: the Cardinals.  

In my last Durham Bulls post I showed off a cool patch card of Rays prospect Mikie Mahtook which came out of Topps Heritage.  While I now have several of these cards from the Durham Bulls, Montgomery Biscuits, and Charlotte Stone Crabs I do not own any of these cards from Cardinals minor league teams.  I changed that a few weeks ago when I picked up a copy of the Kolten Wong card from last year's Topps Heritage Minor League's set. 

Wong was actually called up by the Cardinals at the end of the last year and appeared on the Cardinals World Series roster.  While he seemed to struggle at times during his cup of coffee, and was picked off of first base to end a World Series game, the Cardinals felt good enough about Wong's skill set to turn over the starting second base job to his this season.  That meant that All-Star second baseman Matt Carpenter was moved back to his natural starting position at third base and native St Louisan, and 2011 Postseason hero, David Freese was shipped out to Anaheim.  Wong has done pretty well for himself to start the season.  

Hawaii's Finest Redbird

It's a warm Sunday out here in Raleigh after a cold and snow last week.  We are ill-equipped for winter weather around these parts and I would love love to flip over another page or two on the calendar at this point and just get to spring.  The warm weather today also has me thinking of Spring Training and is making me a little bit eager for the start of the baseball season.  It seems there are a lot of other baseball fans and collectors also gearing up.  While we are still waiting for the official start of spring and baseball I have a few new cards on their way in this week.  

I spent this past week working on the new Topps release and have already started to fill in some holes.  I kind of assumed that I was not going to be lucky enough to snag a Kolten Wong autograph out of my box of Topps, so I went ahead and bought one ahead of time.  It arrived yesterday:

2014 Topps Trajectory Kolten Wong Autograph

Most people will remember Kolten Wong for getting picked off of first base to end Game 5 of last year's World Series, but the future is actually pretty bright for him.  The Cardinals had been playing Matt Carpenter, a natural third baseman, at second last year since the team had David Freese manning third.  Freese continued to decline and Wong continued to impress in the minors.  Last season in Triple A Memphis the second baseman out of Hawaii posted a .303/.369/.466 line with 39 extra base hits (10 homers) in 107 games.  Wong struggled at the Major league level, but was also not given a chance to play consistently by the Cardinals.  

Since the end of last season the Cardinals have traded away David Freese to the Angels and shifted Matt Carpenter back to third clearing a space for Wong on the infield.  The Cardinals seem like they are going to make him the starting second baseman, but the team has also signed Mark Ellis...just in case.  

Wong will also be one of only five active players from Hawaii next year.  There have only been a grand total of 38 in the history of the game, so Wong's emergence has been pretty well followed back in his home state.  An internet search of Wong's name yields dozens of articles about his trek through baseball and some of the milestones.  For example, he was the first ever Hawaiian player to be selected in the first round of the baseball draft.  The press in Hawaii even covered his infamous pickoff and put a positive spin on the play by noting that Wong stood by his locker and answered all the press questions.  

I am eager for the season to start and eager to see what Kolten Wong will bring the Cardinals at second base.  I am hoping to see lots of good press coming out of Wong's home state about his great play.  Maybe some of the newspapers and television stations should call ahead for All-Star game credentials.  Okay, I am getting ahead of myself.