TTM Success Amaury Rivas

I got to see Amaury pitch a little this spring training. I for the life of me can't remember how he did, but somehow I ended up with quite a few of his Bowman cards, both the regular and chrome, this year.  So I figured I'd send him a couple to see if he would sign.  This season Rivas was pitching with the Brewers AAA club the Nashville Sounds and I've had some pretty good luck getting guys from the club to sign.  Amaury didn't have the best record posting a 5-8 season, but he did play in over 50 games this year.
I sent to Amaury way back in May and I had pretty much written this one off, but a few days ago I got one of my TTM return envelopes in the mailbox.  I hadn't sent any new requests out in a while and the postmark was hard to read but low and behold it was this one.  There was also a nice note in the envelope from Amaury's friend Elizabeth.  It was the first ever reply I'd gotten from a TTM. And while not from the player, from the content of the letter, at least someone close to him.  I was a little worried that she signed for him too but after looking at a few other autos online I'm pretty sure that's his sig.  And while it would have been nice to have it signed in Sharpe I'm not going to complain about a return and getting a guy who might very well be in the bigs next year.

TTM Stats:
Date Sent 5/18/12
Date Recieved 9/7/12

Sent to
Nashville Sounds Baseball Club
Herschel Greer Stadium
534 Chestnut Street
Nashville, TN 37203 

Second jumbo box of 2012 Topps football

As promised and way late are my hits from second box of Topps Football Jumbos.  I picked this up at Trade Night at Bosco's earlier this month. Mainly it was to get more tickets for their pack drawing which was worth over $780. And like I posted earlier I didn't win, but neither did anyone else.

So I won't bore you with any fluff just the hits.

First up we have the golds.

And Eli's Ring of Honor card.  This might not seem like a hit, but I'm not too sure how hard these are to hit.  This is my second jumbo, but I've also opened a blaster and few random packs and this is the first Ring of Honor card I pulled.  And last year I opened a ton of 2011 Football and never pulled the Aaron Rodgers Ring of Honor card.

This box also had a little more color in the parallel department.

I got me one camo parallel. I don't know why I like these so much, but they're pretty cool and numbered to 399.

I also got a black Darrelle Revis parallel.  I hope the poor guy is alright last I heard he had a concussion.

My rookie patch card was this LaMichael James.  I know the relic is only player worn at an event were they get the rookies to put on as many jerseys as possible, but man they look so nice with a dual color and stitched seam.

Hmm this card looks familiar.  Yep another Ahmad Bradshaw auto.  

And my other auto was a Matt Kalil rookie auto.

So there you go.

And I found out I'm leaving Monday for another and hopefully last work trip of the year.  I'll be gone from the 17th till no later than the 27th, but who knows.  I apologize for not getting my act together for some trading, but once I get back I'll be free and clear.

cb out.

2012 Topps Football Something snazzy.

That's my dad's word. Snazzy. Kinda fits here.  I apologize for the lack of posting, but we had a huge storm roll through and knock out power to most of the city.  It was pretty crazy and we all survived, but not the roof of my shed which I get to reshingle next week.  Anywho enough about that.  I recently went to Bosco's trade night on Wednesday. They host a pretty nice trade night with pizza and soda. They have special deals and they giveaway a pack of everything that's come out in the last month. You 1 ticket for each $5 you spend and they draw only one ticket on trade night.  If you're there you win it all, if not it rolls over till the next month.  There was over $780 worth of packs to be given away and there still is. No one's won in a few months and no one won Wednesday either.  A bunch of us were trying to do the math and figured if all products come out on time next month the giveaway might be over a grand!  I ended up buying another box of jumbo football while I was there and I'll post those hits when I finally get around to scanning them.   But in the mean time. I picked up a blaster of football about a week ago to get one of those cool manupatch cards that come with it.  I didn't hit up a Target or Wallyworld so no exclusive parallels or inserts, but I did walk away with this..

Snazzy.  I have to say these cards look absolutely awesome!  I really would like to pick up the three Packers  cards in this set, but they are all going for way more than I want to pay for a manupatch.  I'm excited to see how Manning does in Denver this year. I ended up picking him up as a back up in one of my fantasy drafts really late and who knows he might become my starter if things work out.

The card is up on ebay right now if anyone's interested. Auction here.  And I have a few more things up.  Doing a little table cleaning.  I've been planning on listing a bunch of stuff, with ebay offering unlimited sports card listings and 500 free listings a month till December, but with another work trip looming over my head in a week or so I don't want to get too into the house cleaning.  I also plan on offering up a bunch of stuff for trade too.  That'll come probably next month when I know I'll be around for a while.

cb out.

Lego Mini Figures Series 8

Jeez seems that Series 7 just came out. I was picking up some stuff at the local Fred Meyers and just happen to pass through the lego aisle and saw they had two new boxes of Mini Figures.  Not being able to pass it up I had to pick a few packs up to add to the old collection.

Here we have the checklist.

Another interesting smattering of themes and genres.

1. Robot
2. Conquestador
3. Bavarian
4. Cowgirl
5. Football Player
6. Deep sea diver
7 Skier
8. Banker
9. Fairy
10. Santa Claus
11. Man Bat
12. DJ
13. Cheerleader
14. Hamlet or an actor I guess
15. Pirate..arggg
16. Alien

Here's the three I got.

The Man Bat!!

Santa freaking Claus!

The Alien was probably the most complicated mini figure I've ever put together.  Three pieces for the head and two for the cape. But it looks great.

2013 Topps, Topps better hope the Mayans were wrong!

I'm late. I know it. I saw JayBee's post over at his blog about the 2013 Topps Sell Sheets being live and  the first images came out over 2 weeks ago.  Of course I love when the sell sheets come out.  Our first look at next years design.  Over all the reviews I've read are ecstatic for the stuff.  You can see the sell sheets here at JB's Blog.

Well get ready for one not so ecstatic. This years theme is the Chase. 'Cuz you gotta have a theme I guess.

Let's take a look at the base.

I like the base design. Simple, unique to baseball.  There's no way they are going to carry over this design to it's flagship football, ah but that's another rant and post for later. Seems like a lot of wasted space on the bottom, but whatever. I'll assume the name, home plate, and the Topps logo will all be foiled.  It would be kinda neat if the swoops and baseball diamond were color foil, but that might be too much foil and I'm sorry I mentioned it because Topps loves to use foil.  It's so shiny.  No preview of the backs of the cards.  Probably nothing too exciting there but I'm a completist and I believe while the moneys in the front of the card the substance is on the back.  That's why I try to include scans of the backs of my cards. And I did a whole post a while back about the beauty of the backs of Topps cards through the years.

Of course there will be parallels.  Lots of parallels!  Back this year are the Gold, Black and Platinum parallels. Numbered to 2012, 62, and 1 respectfully.

And new for Baseball are the Pink, Emerald foil and Desert Camo foil parallels. Emerald are not numbered, Pinks are numbered to 50 and Desert Camo to 99.

It'll be interesting to see this in person.
There will also be silk parallel cards and printing plates and I'm sure variants and other goodies to look for.
And of course this year there will be more Manurelics to look for.
Here's where my review gets a little negative.  While I like the looks of the cards and even the concept.  It's been done, to death by Topps. But if there is one thing Topps likes to do is beat a dead horse.

Proven Mettle player coin cards.  There will be 3 levels of Mettle cards, at least on the sell sheets. Copper #d to 99, Wrought Iron #d to 50 and Steel #d to 10.

MVP Award winners with a mini replica MVP trophy embedded in the card.

And Cy Young Award winners with mini replica Cy Young awards embedded in them.  It wasn't stated if either one of these will be numbered or have different tiers like the Mettle cards.

There will be 6 insert sets in this offering and of course those 6 inserts will have relic, auto and auto relic parallels as well.

Since Topps is on a Mini kick again we get 72 mini's! I'll be honest I love mini's and I've been batting around the idea of putting together a 70's set and 72 is right at the top of my list to try. Mainly because out of all the 70's sets it's the most unique.  It just reminds me of 70's kids TV shows.

we also get 72 relics...

And of course autos.  All low numbered and on card which is a big plus.

Next up Cut to the Chase.

Seems these chrome die cuts are just too good to keep in Topps Chrome.  I like die cuts and I love the chrome cards, but it just seems to be that Topps is recycling again.

There will also be relics and auto relics.

Next we have Calling Cards. A set dedicated to showing off unique things players do when they're awesome I guess.  There will be relic and auto parallels of this cards as well, although none were shown on the sell sheet.  Autos number to 10, relics to 25 and auto relics numbered to 5

Next the Greats.  I love inserts featuring great historical players, but again Topps does this every year and it seem like they keep choosing the same players over and over.

The Greats autos will also be on card. And don't forget the auto relic here too!

Chasing History is next.  No scan of the base, but we do have the auto and relic.

And the last insert is the Chasing the Dream.

And we only get the auto example from the sell sheet. I wonder if these cards will be chromed out?  Probably not but they would look super sweet if they did.

And of course lets not forget the 1 of 1 super rare cards I will never see except on eBay auctions. Topps is calling these cards the Ultimate Chase.  Did Tristar already do that?

I do think these Ultimate Chase cards look amazing.

Over all it looks to be another decent set.  I won't be jumping over grandmothers to get to the card counter, but I'll be picking up at least one jumbo.  There's also the possibility that Topps might do another wrapper redemption and no word if they are finally giving up on there online redemption contest.

One insert I noticed was missing and I'm thrilled that it is, is some kind of duo match up card.  Topps has been kicking that around for what seems like forever and I won't miss it.  Of course Topps tends to throw stuff in at the last minute and unannounced, so there might be a few surprises in here.

At least Topps isn't touting this as a game changer.  Nope just 2013 Topps. Come and get it. Well come and get it in January. hmm this wasn't nearly as negative as I thought it would be.

TTM Success Sal Bando

Before I left for my month long trip down to Haines for work, I decided to send out one TTM request. I had seen over at Sports Card Forum that there had been quite a few successes for Sal Bando and I had him high on my list to get.  So I dug around in my Brewers leftover box and found a 1978 and 1980.

Sal played for both the A's and Brewers. He's a 4 time All-Star and 3 time World Series champ (1972, 1973, and 1974) who was on the team with two of my other favorite baseball players Reggie Jackson and Rollie Fingers. Sal ended his career with the Brew Crew playing with them from 1977 to 1981.

A great addition to my TTM Brewers project, thanks Sal.

TTM Stats
Date sent 7/30/12
Date Recieved: 8/5/12 or so.   Postmarked 8/3/12

Address used.
Sal Bando
6225 Shore Acres Rd.
Heartland, WI 53029