Holy Sheets

First off I want to wish all my Christian readers a Merry Christmas, and too the rest Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanza, Merry Festivus, Joyous Yule, or whatever your holiday flavor is.  And a Happy New Year as I will be traveling to see my wife's family this season.  I'm hoping maybe I can find time to make a few more posts in the new year, but I wouldn't hold my breath.  That being said my 6th Annual Super Bowl contest will be happening.  Not sure what the prize will be, but I have weeks to work that out.

But let's take a look a cool card that I recently added to my Brewers collection.  One of my collecting goals for the new year, which will be expounded upon in my State of the Blog post early next year, is to try to add more and many certified Brewer's autos to my collection.  This may seem daunting and expensive, but just a precursory search though the COMC inventory tells me that there are over 200 Brewers autographs for under $2.  I many not have any World Series' to boast about, but I do have cheap autograph cards.

That being said I ended up picking up this sweet, pun intended, Ben Sheets autograph card a few weeks ago.  I already have a certified auto for Ben, but he's featured in this Team USA jersey and I really wanted a nice example with him in a Brewers uni.  So for a couple bucks this guy found his way to my mail box.  

I couldn't pass up this unique card and the price was just right.  This card is from the 2002 Fleer Showcase set.  There are three types of Sweet Sigs cards: Leather, Lumber, and Wall. Ben has cards in all threes sets, with this one obviously being the Lumber version.  And while the wood piece isn't a bat relic, it's still a great oddball insert, for the time of great oddball inserts.  This is what competition produces!  After getting this card I really want to chase down the other two versions.

Star Wars!!! Star Wars!!! Star Wars!!! Star Wars!!! Star Wars!!! Star Wars!!! Star Wars!!! Star Wars!!! Star Wars!!! Star Wars!!! Star Wars!!!

Are you getting excited??  I am. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much.  I've also stopped reading all the articles about the movie.  Went completely cold turkey.  I decided I didn't want to know any plot spoilers.  That being said I know it's been quiet here at the Crack, but I'm hoping the new year will bring new vigor to my card world.  Anyways, I'm going to be headed down to the lower 48 to visit family so let's let this Star Wars post also wish you a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Festive Kwanzaa, or a Joyous Yule.  Or simply a Happy Holidays and a great New Year.  Oh and I still plan on doing my Super Bowl contest this year so stay tuned for that.

TTM Success - Paul Mirabella

It's been a while since I've done any TTMs.  I sat down a few weeks ago and sent Paul Mirabella a nice letter and a few cards and I found these in my mailbox this afternoon.

Paul played 13 seasons in the MLB.  Playing for the Rangers, the Yankees, the Orioles, the Mariners, and ended his career with the Brewers.  This is a great success for a couple reasons but most of all that I don't have any TTM success for the three sets I sent.  

TTM Stats

Address used
Paul Mirabella
15 Jenks Rd
Morristown, NJ 07960

Date Sent: 11/22/15
Date Received 12/5/15

Thanks Paul.

Black Friday My Way!!

 I had to take my son to the doctor on Friday.  It wasn't anything serious, but after we got out I decided to head on down to Don's Sportcards and say hi since I haven't been in a while and I wanted to see if there was anything good on the drop board.  I ended up splurging on a box of Prestige Football since it was a good deal and I got 4 packs of Panini's Black Friday.  I won't do a pack by pack just the base cards and the hits.

Each pack came with an advertisement for Panini's new digital football card app.  If it's anything like their basketball app I'll pass.  You also get one "base" card and one other card.  At least that's how my 4 packs worked out.  Let's take a look
First up Pujols and Trout.

 My other two base cards are part of the Panini Collection set, according to Cardboard Connection.
I really like the look of these cards.

Alright lets get to the meat!
This Kevin White and the Joc Pederson are what's called Thick Stock parallels and are numbered to 50. And they are very thick

 I didn't get any autos, but did manage a few relics.  This one of Jahlil is from the Happy Holidays set.

Cha-ching a keeper!!  Everything else is already up on Ebay.  Anyone get anything cool?

The Keepers

As a collector I have rules, general rules, but rules none the less, that govern my collection and collecting habits. But every so often a card or other collectible falls into my hands that doesn't really fit into my collection, but I keep it for various reasons.  This is one of those cards.......

I pulled this beautiful card out of pack way back in 2005.  I know I did because while I like Andre Dawson I don't collect Andre Dawson and I wouldn't have gone after this card.  That being said a lot of the cards in my Keeper collection come from 2005.  A time where I had a lot of disposable income and card companies were putting out great products like this.  Sorry for the blurry scan Mr.  Dawson is well encased in a screwdown holder.

 I usually think of Andre as a Cub. Mainly because when I started caring about baseball and baseball card that's who he played for.  But even if he's featured with his original team this is still a pretty kick ass card.  Sure it's a sticker auto and the relic is a plain white swatch, but I'm sure I squealed a little bit when I pulled this out of the pack.

Why I keep it.  Well I do like Andre Dawson and it's hard to let go of personally pulled autograph and relic of a great HOFer.  Plus Andre has a great signature and I think everyone should have an auto of the Hawk in their collection and it's also why he's on my Top 100 cards.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner. The 5th Annual Almost the Easiest World Series Contest on the Web comes to a close

Well that seemed quick.  I was kind of hoping the Series might go 6 or 7 and KC could win it at home.  I didn't get to watch too much of the game as the Packers were playing in Sunday Night Football, but once it was pretty clear that they would not be winning I switched over to watch the end of game 5 and I picked the perfect time right before KC tied the game in the 9th.  Anyhoo

So in the end we had 6 people correctly guess who would win the World Series.  So we go to the tie breakers. 

If anyone had guessed everything correctly the pick would have been

Royals over Mets, in 5 games, 8 Home Runs

Out of the 6 contestants the picked the Royals no one picked their opponent to be the Mets so we move on to games in the series and arpsmith correctly predicted the series to last 5 games.  Congrats Adam.  And an honorable mention to John Hazen for correctly guessing the right two teams. If the Mets had won the contest would have been his.

Here are the final 9 entries:

Jeff S - Royals over the Dodgers in 7 games with 9HRs (PIMP)

Josh D. -  Royals over Cardinals - 7 games, six HRs.

JediJeff - Royals over Dodgers in 6 games. 11 HR

John Hazen - Mets over Royals, 6 Games, 11 Home runs.

arpsmith -  Royals over Cardinals, 5 games, 7 Taters

Need More Cardboard - Royals over Cardinals, 7 games, 8 homers

Jupiterhill - Royals over Cardinals 6 games, 11 Home Runs

Keith G - Mets over Jays 6 games 10 homeruns

defgav - Mets over Astros, 6 Games, 12 Home runs.

Adam came pretty close to predicting total home runs too.  So what does Adam win??!!??  Well I was terrible this contest, in that I didn't have a prize already picked out. I was hoping to be able to snag something cool at the last card show I went to last week, but while the show featured some really cool stuff, cool = expensive, I didn't find anything really unique, but I'll probably write a post up about that experience later.  So I decided I'd wait and try and tailor the grand prize to the winner.  Adam who has his own blog ARPSmith's Sportcard Obsession  is a huge Giants fan and he collects a couple other players.  So digging through my eTopps collection I came out with a couple cards to add to his collection.  First up is a 2011 Topps 206 Rickey Henderson card and I also found one lone Giants card in my collection a 2007 Fred Lewis rookie card.  Both cards are numbered to just 749 copies.  I'll also be sending Adam a nice stack of cards from his team and if I can find anything from his needs lists.

But wait there's still more.  We have to pick our door prize winner.  I entered everyone's name into a list randomizer over at Random.org, those that pimped the contest got two entries.  I randomized the list 3 times and......

Nick from Dime Boxes - The Low End Collector's Journey wins it.  And what did Nick win, well this should be right up his Dime Box alley.  4 unopened packs from the height of the Junk Wax era.  Plus there's a piece of 26 year old gum, a Stan Musial puzzle piece, lenticular trivia card, and team sticker to be had. Plus there might be one of those cool Pro-Visions cards in the Fleer pack.  I'll also be sending Nick a stack of cards  from his needs and wants lists.

Thanks to everyone who entered. Thanks to you guys who still read the blog even though I don't post as regularly as I use too.  That being said we are only about 2 months away from my 6th, yes 6th Annual Super Bowl contest.  Hopefully I'll have a few posts between then and now.

An unexpected addition from the LCS and an addition to the Top 100

I stopped in at Don's Sportcards here in Anchorage last week.  My wife was picking up my son so I was kid free and decided to just pop in to Don's to see if there was anything interesting and to pick up a couple boxes for a couple sets I was putting together.  Don has a great feature in his shop called the drop board.  It's a huge section of wall with peg board and hooks and he hangs a bunch of cards and packs up.  Each card is listed with a price.  Usually a good 20 to 25% off from the Beckett price and ever week that card doesn't sell it gets marked down a little till it reaches a dollar and that's the lowest it'll go.  But I've picked all sorts of good relics, autographs, and vintage from that drop board for crazy low prices, a lot of them for the bottom dollar price.  Well to my surprise Don had a ton of this year's Panini Cooperstown hanging on the wall.  All sorts of inserts and autographs from the set.  And then I saw the Ignitor just sitting there marked down to I think it was six whole dollars.  I couldn't pass it up.  I'm not a huge collector of Paul Molitor, but he was a Brewers for most of his career, is still beloved in Milwaukee, and I do have a nice stack of his cards in my collection, but I didn't have an autographed card till now.  I have a sweet relic I picked up years ago, rookie cards and everything in between, and now I have my first, but hopefully not last auto of the #2 all time top Brewer.  On top of that I haven't added a card to my Top 100 in while.  I had to look and see what number I stopped on.  So this is card #72 in my Top 100 cards in my collection (the number is not the card's rank in the Top 100, the Top 100 has no rankings).

Welcome to the collection.