8th Annual Almost the Easiest World Series Contest on the Web - 7th inning stretch

I'm home with a sick son today the bonus I upgraded my HULU account so I can now watch my Brewers play in the playoffs!!  Anyways the Wild Cards are over so just another friendly reminder to get you picks in for the contest.

For rules and to enter  Go HERE to enter.
I did find a nice little door prize for entering.

How about a 2011 Bowman Mike Trout Rookie Card?

Good luck everybody.  I'll be putting out a final call tomorrow.

8th Annual Almost the Easiest World Series Contest on the Web - Just a Friendly Reminder

We had a first couple days for the contest with quite a few getting picks in early.  Should be a great couple of early series.  Remember you have until Saturday to get your picks in and yes that means that you can wait to see who makes it through the Wildcard games.  But don't wait too long!

Go HERE to enter the contest and for full rules and prizes.

8th Annual Almost the Easiest World Series Contest on the Web - Official Sign up Post!!

Hard to believe it's that time of year again.  Also hard to believe this will be my 8th World Series contest.   And man a couple down to the wire divisional contests.  I've got my fingers crossed the Brewers can upset the Cubs in Wrigley tomorrow to take the division.  And while the divisions may not be decided the post season has.

Like years past all I want you to tell me is who's going to win the whole thing!  Of course it's likely will have more than one person pick the right team so we need some tie breakers as well.

So you'll also need to pick the opponent, the number of games the series will go, and total number of home runs hit by both teams.

Your pick should look something like this.

Brewers over the Yankees in 5, 15 HR's

Here are your choices
National League
Milwaukee Brewers
Chicago Cubs
Atlanta Braves
Colorado Rockies
LA Dodgers

American League
New York Yankees
Boston Red Sox
Cleveland Indians
Houston Astros
Oakland A's

You'll have till Saturday Oct. 6th, 4pm Alaska Time, Noon EST to get your picks in.  Feel free to wait till after the wild card games if you want.  

So what are you playing for?  How about a nice stack of 6 1979 Hostess 3 card panels.  Most still have enough of the border to be nicely cut out.  Full discloser there is some staining on the backs of a few of these. But included is a nice Garvey/Schmidt and Stargell. Plus the prize will include a bunch of cards from the winners favorite team(s), that might include autos, relic, parallels, inserts, who knows depends on what I have and find in the stacks.

And as like usual there will be a door prize. Not sure exactly what that will be yet, but it will include cards of that winners favorite team as well.  Plus if you share or promote this post on social media or your own blog you'll get an additional entry into the door prize contest. Please leave a link to your share or promotion so I know you did it.  Alright get to picking! And I'll have reminders all week.

TTM Success - Franklin Stubbs

Wow it's been a long time since I've had a TTM success.  But it's also been awhile since I sent any out.  I had seen some recent success with Franklin Stubbs.  And the beauty is I also got to fill a hole in my TTM project filling in the 1993 Topps and Donruss spots.

Address Used: 

C/O The Visalia Rawhides

300 N Giddings St

Visalia, Ca 93291

Date Sent: 8/20/18

Date Received: 9/17/18

A big old box of cards for National Baseball Card Day

So for National Baseball Card Day a couple weeks ago the son and I hit our two LCS's to pick up free packs and check out the deals.  While at Don's Sportcards here in Anchorage I spied a Super Shoebox full of randomness that I couldn't resist for $10.  Let's see what was inside.  

First off 1/3 of the box was 2012 Triple Play and close to another 1/3 was 1990 Topps, but mixed in was some great inserts, a few player collections, and even a card that paid for most of the box.

First up 3 1991 Fleer Ultra Ultra Team inserts.  Sadly one of the was not Bo Jackson

Next up a nice pile of Kevin Youkilis cards.

and a stack of Manny Ramirez..

What would a box of random 90's cards be without some Barry Bonds?

How about a stack of Evan Longoria?

Any Uggla fans?

Some Gary Sheffields.

A really nice collection of Arod, too bad I don't collect him.

Even more and rare Uggla cards!

A nice stack of 1990 Swell Baseball Greats.

This the stack that actually sealed the deal for me.  1989 Panini baseball stickers.  And it's almost a complete set.  And had a Robin Yount sticker I didn't have for my PC!  There was also an almost complete set of 1989 Topps Mini Leaders, which also had a new Yount for my collection.

Complete 2007 Topps Boston Red Sox team set

A little more randomness and gold from 2003.

Chipper rookie?  Yes please! And a cool insert of Chuck Carr, who? Yeah.  Oh 94 inserts!

2000 Pacific Prism Mariano Rivera Rapture Silver parallel.  Neat.

But the money card was this 2011 Phil Rizzuto SP Legends Variation.

In all I'm pretty pleased with the contents.  The Triple Play and 1990 Topps will be used to fill Halloween giveaway packs.  And getting two new Younts was surprising and well worth the price of admission, plus the box alone is worth almost $5, so all in all a fun buy.

The Keepers - Darryl Strawberry edition

As collector's we tend to impose arbitrary rules to our collections and our collecting habits.  These rules help us focus on what type of collection we have.  I'm sure there are those out there that might argue with this logic, but it's these rules that separate a collection from an accumulation.  We can put labels on the types of collector's we are.  Team collector, player collector, set collector, autograph collector, etc, etc.  As a collector of cardboard I'm no different I have my own rules governing over how and what I collect, but......but there are those cards in my collection that break those rules.  Cards I keep and cherish in my collection, but don't fit into my collecting rules.  I call these cards my keepers.

The first card in my keepers collection is this great 2010 Topps Tribute Darryl Strawberry Auto Relic.

I personally pulled this from a pack over 8 years ago and even blogged about it back then.  That pack of Tribute marks the most I've ever payed or will pay for a pack of cards.  And I remember pulling it and thinking dang that's a pretty sweet hit.  If you grew up collecting cards in the 80s, like myself, you most likely had a few Darryls in you binder.  Regardless of his personal tribulations he was a fun player to watch.  I'm not a Mets fan or really a big Darryl Strawberry fan, but this card found a place in my personal collection.  Maybe it was the nostalgia, maybe it was the fact that this was my hit from the most expensive product I've ever ripped a pack of, or maybe it's just a sweet card.

Anyone have any keepers?

Clearing off the Desk - Thank yous and a new addition

Been a busy couple of months here at world headquarters, but I would be remissed if I didn't at least make an effort to say thank you to a couple great bloggers and their generosity.

First up Chris aka Raz from Raz's Card Blog. He sent me an unexpected packaged a couple weeks ago.  Chris was the door prize winner and a finalist in my World Series contest from last year.

 First up was a pair of shiny Braun cards.

 A nice trio of 2017 Topps Holiday cards.  I didn't pick up any of the holiday boxes last year and these are my first 3 holiday parallels

 There was also a pair of 2017 Topps Mini cards.

 There was also this Eric Thames 2018 Donruss card.  I haven't had time to see if this the base or one of the many parallels available in the set.

 A nice Orlando Arcia Topps High Tek rookie card.  I have a small PC for Arcia (I know he's a Brewer and I would be collecting him anyway), but I'm cautious because every time I decided to add another Brewer to agressively collect the team trades them away (Scooter Gennett ahem).

For me the best card of the bunch was this Robin Yount card.  Anytime I can add a new card to my PC is a boon.  It might be hard to tell but this is the Rainbow Foil parallel.


Next up another Chris this time the proprietor of  Nacho's Grande sent me a nice little package as well.  Chris had ripped some 2018 Donruss and pulled a Brandon Woodruff autographed card. I had asked Chris before I left for my vacation if he'd be willing to trade for it.  The card is the blue parallel numbered to 99.   It's my first auto from the young player.

Chris also sent along a nice selection of Brewers cards (there were a lot more I didn't scan).

And a nice 2017 Topps Gallery Arcia Artist Proof parallel

 I still need to send Chris my end of the deal, but we've traded enough to know that I'm good for it.  I'm hoping to get my package sent next week.



And finally I broke down and bought another Topps Now card.  I have a feeling, like last year, this will be my one and only card, unless the Brewers manage to make it to the World Series and then all bets are off.  I picked up Josh Hader's recent card for setting a MLB record throwing 8 strikeouts in less than 3 innings.  That hair is dreamy and I've jumped on the Haderade train.

Thank you to both the Chris' the cards were great and well apprciated.