Contest Winnings from The Diamond King!

Recently, The Diamond King held an end of the year contest. It was pretty awesome, to qualify all you had to do was comment on any one of his posts for the entire year. He offered 9 different lots of cards and all you had to do was leave a comment that you wanted in! The only catch was you had to choose between 3 different lots! I picked my three and random.org was kind to me and I won the one I really wanted!

The David Wright is his rookie card (a rookie I did not have!) The Billy Ripken is the best variation in my opinion (a certain curse word is there if you wish to zoom in!). This is my 2nd copy of this card but its still quite nice. Dan if you want me to hold it for you just let me know. The Roberto Clemente is the original Deckle Edge. I really liked the Topps archives version this year so I was quite happy to add the original. This is my first original (might be a future set to complete). The Jason Giambi is a relic of the amount of homers he hit that year. The Joe McCarthy is a manufactured relic thats a pretty sharp and thick card.

Thanks again Kevin and if you need any more refractors let me know!

Booklets!

Just a quick post this morning since its a bit past 6 am and work is soon. Just wanted to share my recent booklet pickups. I now have 3 total booklets and they all look real nice. I got those plastic magnetic one touch cases to hold them in and display. My sports shelf is fun (at least for me) to look at and I will be sure to share that at a later date.

As I said before these are my 2nd and 3rd and all 3 either have Ryan Howard, Mike Schmidt or both! The 1980 WS and 2008 WS one I really do like a lot. It's great to commemorate the Phillies only 2 championship teams in history (should've won in 1993). Happy almost new year!

An Eclectic Mix!

I've been fairly active this past month of the acquiring of cards. My vintage Phillies and relics/autos have grown by leaps and bounds. I recently picked up some trade bait as well as Phillies that I scanned all together since well they all fit on the scanner together! Good as reason as any. I enjoyed my one day holiday break with my girlfriend and her family. Wish I had more then one day off!

Check out the wares:

If you look at my Phillies Hits you'll notice I really enjoy picking up Five Star singles. I just tracked down the Cliff Lee Jersey numbered out of 25.. which completes the Five Star set of Lee, Halladay and Hamels gold relics. The Mike Schmidt above is numbered out of 25. It fits in with the booklet and 3 other auto/relics I got from that set. Never thought I'd grab so many singles of such a high end product (it was way cheaper then busting 6 card boxes for 400 bucks a piece). The top right is a Roy Oswalt/Mark Prior dual auto. The scan doesn't do it justice its a nice looking card.

The Ortiz is also a nice big swatch of red numbered out of 25. The Upton is the silver version numbered out of 97. I had no real reason to buying it but I like it. The Matt Kemp is the platinum base version numbered out of 10. I was surprised when I won that one but its a sharp and rare card. And lastly but not least I got an on card auto of Jim Bunning. I was searching for the right one and that fit the bill. It commemorates his perfect game.

All the non Phillies are for trade if anyone is interested. I would like some sort of Phillies relics/auto or vintage in return for this higher end stuff. If anyone is interested please let me know!

An Awesome Rookie Card!

I recently got an amazing deal on this amazing rookie card.. my favorite player and yours Fritz Ackley. (Check out the brow).. Oh yea Hall of Famer Steve Carlton is next to him too. I had been looking to pick up this card for a while but I didn't want to pay a ton. I was able to procure this one for 26 dollars. I think I did well and was quite happy to grab it to add to my 'rookie cards that I like collection' (thats the official name). I've shown off the Brett, Yount, Griffey Jr and Thomas in previous posts. This card goes right along with it. It's graded PSA 3 with a MK qualifier. I had to look real closely to find the mark (theres very light pencil markings on the back) If that lowered the price ultimately... Thanks PSA!

Hope everyone enjoys their holidays!

I will strike you out with my unibrow!

Trade with Nomo's Sushi Platter!

I recently completed my 2nd trade with Spiegel over at Nomo's Sushi Platter. He writes a very entertaining blog so if you haven't checked it out I would recommend that you do so after reading this insightful and inspiring post. He is a real great trader and we came to a superfast agreement. I said hey I want that sweet Pat Burrell Relic, and he was like sure give me that Bill Madlock relic and bam Trade! He also threw in a whole bunch of Phillies and a couple more Frank Thomas's to add to my list!

 

The three Thomas's were all new and I love the 84 Topps Pete Rose!

 

Anytime I can get a 84 Donruss card in a random trade I am all for it!

 

The Pat the Bat relic was the star of the show and is added to my Phillies Hits page (which also has grown a ton since starting this blog!) 

Thanks for the trade Nomo and I look forward to the next one! 

Quick Test and some new cards!

I just bought a new computer so I want to make sure it works with the blog.. or I am returning it. Gotta have priorities. Check out 3 new cards I just received yesterday!

The Cole Hamels is a sweet silk card from last years Topps set. This is my 2nd silk card and I like them a lot. The Chase Utley is from 2010 Triple Threads and is the Sapphire version numbered out of 3. It commemorates his mashing of the ball in the World Series the previous year. Unfortunately, no one else got a hit and the Phillies lost to the Yankees. The Matt Moore card just had a awesome saying. That's the only reason I decided to get it. I'm adding it to my awesome/ridiculous Triple Threads saying collection!

Happy Holidays everyone!

Free Cards from TooManyVerlanders!

A few weeks ago Dennis from Too Many Verlander's posted a whole lotta piles of cards and said if you want them claim your team. I naturally claimed the Phillies and I was not dissappointed one bit. To my surprise a few days later I had an 800 count box in my mailbox. It was holding about 700 cards. I still have quite a few Phillies to sort which is a good thing! I'm psyched to get to sorting by year and player or set (haven't really decided how I want to do it all yet). 

I scanned a few of the ones that caught my eye:

I love the mix from Lieberthal looking real young to Charlie doing his strut to the mound. I really hope the Phillies play well this year so Charlie gets to stick around. I don't agree with all of his moves but I think the players really like him and as long as hes there the Phillies are a desirable location to other players.

Thanks again Dennis for all the cards!

My High-End Phillies Pickups!

I recently went a little spending spree on ebay but I got some real cool stuff to add to my Phillies Collection! I already shared my Mike Schmidt rainbow from Five Star but this card is just the icing on the proverbial yummy chocolate seven layer cake (had one of those on Saturday night: one word, awesome). Without further ado the loot!

The Schmidt card is numbered 49/49 (EBAY ONE OF ONE WOOO). It's pretty sweet just need a good way to display it without destroying it. The Cole Hamels is my first auto of his and numbered 30/30 (ANOTHER EBAY ONE OF ONE!) from this years Museum Collection. I never bought any of these products but I do like picking the singles off. (not sure if that sentence made sense I just worked 14 hours or so). The Carlton and Kruk and Hamels relic you may have seen before.. well thats cause I bought one more of each just cause I liked them so much the first time. The Halladay relic is the fancy gold version numbered out of 25, it is a big red swatch which is nice.

The gem of the bunch (besides the Schmidt of course) is the dual patch Steve Carlton/Jim Bunning relic numbered out of 10. I went hard after this one cause I don't believe I've ever seen a Jim Bunning relic. It is a great addition to my collection and a really well put together card. Literally just search "Jim Bunning relic" on ebay and got one hit. If I see another pop up I'll probably throw a few bids at it and see what happens!

Thanks for reading!

Panini Cooperstown!

At the Philly Show I picked up 2 boxes of it. I really enjoyed opening them. They have a wide variety of inserts that have been posted throughout the blogosphere. I have decided to collect a few of the insert sets as well as the base set. Please take a look at the want list and let me know if you have anything to trade. (I also posted a for trade list on this set directly under the want list portion). I opened 2 boxes so naturally I was expecting 2 Autographs as the odds stated, but we were lucky and pulled 3 auto's!

The Al Kaline made me happy cause I had been looking to pick up an auto of his! The Gary Carter is a short print and only numbered to 75! It's a sharp looking card. The Tony Kubek was the bonus out of the 2nd box!

The lack of logos doesn't bother me on this set. I don't mind that they chopped a lot of hats off in the pictures.

Thanks for reading, let me know if you want to trade!

Frank Thomas Frenzy!

I recently acquired a ton more Frank Thomas cards thanks to reader Scott! He contacted me and said hey I have 77 Frank Thomas cards lets trade! (I paraphrased) I sent him some things he wanted off the Trade Bait page and he sent me all of The Big Hurt's. I have already added them to the Collection page so if you want to trade more of them you will know if I have it. Also, I acquired my first Frank Thomas autograph from ebay quite a nice one.

I didn't scan all of the new ones but I gave a nice representation:

There was a good variety of inserts and different cards I hadn't seen before. I love gaudy 90s inserts. The more ridiculous the better!

Check out my first Frank Thomas auto, I was quite pleased to win this one:

A sweet auto bat relic from Five Star! The tape on the side isn't actually on the card just on the thick one touch case it came in. Thanks to you guys and willingness to trade I now have 328 unique Frank Thomas cards and counting!

Also, hardly anyone read my last post (I guess everyone was Philly Showed out) but if anyone knows where I can buy a decent case for those book cards it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

And Thanks for the trade Scott! 

Philly Show Pickups Part 6 (Final part!)

This is the modern portion of my pickups. We did have some time to search through some boxes and see if we could find some cool singles. We did alright in this regard considering the bulk of the time there we spent searching through vintage cards. (Spent about 3-3.5 hours there)

Picked up 3 Ex Phillies autos. Michale Bourn, Placido Polanco and recently departed Vance Worley. I had high hops Bourn would re-sign this offseason but the Ben Revere trade squashed that. These are the first Ginter autos I have acquired. I'm a fan with the nice borders and good space for the autos themselves.

Three new Ryan Howard relics. The Triple Threads is really cool since it spells my favorite team. The Bowman Sterling is definitely nicer then the Ovation card but I didn't have either so just grabbed them both. I haven't cataloged my Ryan Howard cards but I've slowly been building quite a decent collection.

This is the non Phillies porition. The Dual auto is Mickey Tettleton and Frank Tanana (already on the way to someone if not already there). The Frank Thomas is a crazy cool insert from Fleer Ultra. That is going into my Frank Thomas PC. The Helton is a sweet diecut relic preclaiming that he is #1. That is up for trade if any Colorado fan is interested. It's a pretty sweet card though picked out by my girlfriend.

That concludes my journey through the Philly Show. I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did. I will get back to posting my usual (whatever that is) in the next few days.

I recently acquired one of those book cards from Five Star.. anyone know where I can buy a case to display it? I'm having trouble finding one, Thanks!

Philly Show Pickups Part 5

This will conclude the vintage portion of the show and tell. I wish I had such cool stuff when I was in elementary school to actually show. Did pretty well with the 59 topps set and knocked off a bunch of 60s needs but that team set is quite large.

The George "Sparky" Anderson is his rookie card. It's nice to get the real thing and not just have the reprint from this years Archives. The nicest card is definitely the Ashburn-Mays Hitting Kings. It's in pretty good shape and its two iconic players. I was real happy to be able to find that card.

I like the 60 Topps design. Very colorful. I wasn't able to find the big names but I was able to knock off a good bit of the commons. The design reminds me of a teenage girl (or younger) who likes to color in every other letter or tYpE lIkE tHiS. Oh the days of AOL (I don't really miss them).

On that side note, the next post will be not vintage!

Philly Show Pickups Part 4

Onto the next years! I really enjoyed this show. My girlfriend was kind enough to go with me and help look through boxes and find what we needed on our list! I added all interesting or vintage cards to my collection and some other hits as well.

1956 Topps we made a ton of headway. Check it out!

I really like the face of these cards. The big heads and the action show really do look nice together. The Ashburn is probably the nicest card condition wise. As you can see I picked up most of the big Phillies names from that year. Only missing 4 cards for the team set! Hopefully it won't take very long to knock those off!

I got precisely zero 1957 topps cards.

Did a little better on the 58's:

 I mistakenly bought 2 Robin Roberts.. but thats ok I'm not upset by that mistake. If another Phillies collector needs one I will swap it for some vintage back. The Ashburn (got that in a trade) wasn't a part of the show but it fits in nicely.

Thanks for checking it out so far.. only a few posts left!

Philly Show Pickups Part 3

Let the vintage train continue! I posted up my want lists so if anyone can help out let me know! I sure do use a lot of exclamation points! Anyways, I'm excited to show my next batch of cards that I picked up at the card show.

This was the only 1953 topps card I was able to acquire. Love the Fightin' Phillies Logo on it.

I ventured into 55 bowman (really like this kind). I recently lost out an auction to acquire all but 40 cards of the set (including the Mantle). I haven't decided if I want to put those kind of resources into acquiring the set but I will go after the Phillies team set. Grabbing the Ashburn was definitely a big plus!

 Only picked up 2 1955 Topps cards. I believe there are only 10 total cards in this team set so it shouldn't be too hard to acquire them all. I'm expecting the 52's to be much harder.

As always if anyone wants to trade let me know!

Philly Show Pickups Part 2

Vintage!!!!! I separated the scans by year. The 1952s still are tough to find even with vintage dealers. I was quite happy to find what I did. Only missing 13 for the Phillies team set. I knocked off the 2 biggest ones in my mind. The Richie Ashburn and Robin Roberts!

Check em out:

The Con Dempsey is his rookie card so that carried a bit of a premium. The top of the Roberts isn't really cut off but one of the corners is dinged pretty good. Either way it was a good find and I'm glad I grabbed it. How does one adequately store these cards? Right now I just have them in penny sleeves and they won't fit in a top loader with the sleeve. I'm hesitant to take them out. Any advice is appreciated.

This Ashburn is very well protected. It's slabbed and graded a 5. I'm tempted to just spend the money to get em all graded so they'd be well protected. The Ashburn itself ran 60 dollars but considering the condition and rarity I'm happy with knocking it off the want list!

That's it for 1952! Stay tuned for the later years coming soon!

Philly Show Pickups Part 1

I went to the Philly show in Valley Forge on Saturday. It was packed and as usual there were a ton of different stuff there. I didn't partake in the live autographs but it was cool to see Chase Utley and Hollis Thomas (working for the local sports radio station). I wanted to showcase some of the pickups I made. I had a large focus on vintage. I am trying to complete the team sets of all the Phillies from every year pre 1980. This post won't be focusing on those cards.

I also had a list of rookie cards that I want to acquire. I was able to knock off 3 big ones!

Mike Schmidt, Robin Yount and George Brett! The Yount and Brett I got from the same dealer and we settled on 35 dollars for both. The Schmidt I bought from another dealer for 55. They aren't mint condition but the faces are real nice with some minor corner wear. Next up to get is the Steve Carlton RC.. just have to find it a not insane price!

Stay tuned for my next pickups (lots of vintage!)

Hockey Group Break loot!

I recently joined a group over at Cardboard Conundrum. He's run 2 hockey breaks and so far I've enjoyed both and I've gotten a few nice things to add to my small hockey collection. This time he was opening boxes heavy on hits and low on basecards. He was kind of enough to offer anyone that joined if they did not get a hit he would put one in from his own collection. I of course picked the Flyers and got the Canadiens as my random team.

The Combatants card with Dave Schults and Terry O Reilly is really cool. It's from ITG Enforcers and I was happy when I saw a Flyer come out (and even happier when the randomizer chose my team!) The Rookie Rivalry card is pretty neat but I would trade it for a Flyers hit if anyone wanted it.  The real shiny card is a rookie card of Erik Gustafsson. He was pretty solid for the Flyers last year after all the injuries he had. Oddly enough he hasn't done anything this year... (I can't stand Gary Bettman!!!)

As a side note, in college I did a 25 minute presentation for a class on why the NHL lost that season. I can't believe they are dumb enough to repeat that history.

And THANKS MOM!!! for buying me a brand new scanner!

Quick want list update!

I cracked 2 boxes of Panini Cooperstown, I really like the kind and decided to go after the base set and a number of the insert sets. I added the ones I have for trade and what I need to complete the sets.

Highlights of the boxes to follow, I'm real happy with the autos pulled!

Edit: Just updated again, added Phillies cards I am collecting from the 50s, if you have any let me know and hopefully we can work something out!

Freeeeee Cards (from other generous people!)

This week has been a banner mail week for me. I believe I received roughly 15-20 packages of all different things. A little bit of everything, some I've shared and some I will share in the near future. This post is to thank 2 awesome people who sent me free stuff just for saying hello at their blog.

Those 2 people are Jack at All Tribe Baseball and Wes at Jay Barker Fan.

They are both great card bloggers and great guys.

Wes holds contest every friday and just gives away random really nice cards.

Jack held a really fun contest where all you had to do is claim a card and bam that card is yours no questions asked.

When I saw that contest at All Tribe Baseball I jumped all over the first Phillies auto I saw. This is the first Phillies auto I have of him and am happy to add it to my collection. Without asking he added 3 more Frank Thomas cards! (That PC is really getting good!)

 

The auto is of Phillies pitcher Carlos Silva. I love the Thomas Topps Finest card with the protective film still on it! (I won't be freeing it) 

Wes also provided a Phillies auto in his free package! 

 

As you can see thats Bake McBride from this years archives! The card that flashed out is of Chris Sale (a really surprisingly thick rookie card) Also included is a auto relic of Cory Hahn! Doesn't look like he made it out of the minors but its still a really cool card.

Thanks again Jack and Wes! I hope my write up did you guys justice.

Also thanks to the generosity of a couple of other bloggers I have about 1500-2000 Phillies cards that I need to sort. I will post those up hopefully in the next week or 2!

A Hall of Fame Rainbow

I recently completed my first rainbow of Ryan Howard (including superfractor!!!) If you want to see all of those cards check it out here.

This is only a 3 card rainbow but a pretty tough one to complete. It's of Mike Schmidt the greatest third baseman of all time! I obtained all these cards off ebay with patience. I did not crack 50 cases of Five star. Although I bet that would get me in the club!

By the way all 3 of these cards are autograph relics!!

 Numbered out of 97 (silver)

Numbered out of 55 (gold)

Numbered out of 25 (rainbow)

Check them all out together:

When I saw the Rainbow version become available I had to take a run at it, Thankfully it landed in my price range! This is now my 4th,5th and 6th Mike Schmidt auto (one on another card, one on a painting and one on a program) I am still chasing the Five Star Mike Schmidt booklet but none have landed at a price I'm comfortable paying. Not the end of the world if I don't get it but it would be nice to put with these 3 cards.

Thanks for reading!

A Ridiculous Michael Jordan Card!!!

I recently picked up this card for I think an extremely reasonable price. Its really striking in person and there's only 2500 made! It was made in 1994 by Upper Deck and oh yea its completely plated in 14 Karat Gold!!!

This card looks great next to my other sports memorabilia:

 

 

Even came in its own Chicago holder!!

 

I do cheer for the Sixers but I couldn't pass up a card of the greatest player ever. (sure we can debate that but its hard to not put him at minimum in the top 3).  The plastic on the card is ridiculously thick and it even came with an insert not to handle it because it will leave fingerprints and to clean it with a jeweler's cloth.

This is not my normal pickup but I'm very happy to add it to my collection!

Thanks for checking it out!

 

A 2 Pack of George's

I recently picked up a couple of Five Star Auto's. I really like these cards but I really don't want to pay for a box. The autos are really sharp and on card. Some of the cards show some chipping but for what I paid I don't mind. Unfortunately, I haven't written my essay to join the Five Star Club. I'm tempted to write and send an essay and fake a letter of recommendation just to see how serious it all is.

Check em out!

This is a nice George Bell Auto numbered out of 208. I picked this one up for a cool 2.99. I felt pretty good about that. George Bell was actually signed as a amateur free agent by the Phillies in 1978. He of course never played for the Phillies. He ended up having a pretty solid career. His best year was 1987 when he hit .308 with 47 Home runs and 134 RBI's.

This card looks amazing in person, it is a George Foster gold ink auto numbered out of 5!! He had a really solid and long career playing from 1969-1986. He was a large part of the Big Red Machine of the Reds in the 70s one of the best lineups in the history of baseball! Interesting quote from wikipedia:

" He famously began using a black bat during his prime because he wanted to "integrate the bat rack" in Cincinnati.<sup>[1]"


Seems like he has a good sense of humor!</sup> 

Trade with Jeff!

Recently, I participated in a 100% of artifacts group break over at The Daily Dimwit. It was a fun break and I got one John Kruk Relic. Apparently my team hit another relic and Mr Dimwit nor myself noticed (In fairness the jersey was different then the text which is easy to miss). Jeff of 2 by 3 Heroes did notice and happened to want the relic. He kindly offered to mail me a relic in exchange.

He sent me a sweet Jeff Carter relic, my first of the former Flyers star:

 

Not only that he threw in a whole bunch of extras!!

 Some sweet Frank Thomas's to add to my growing collection!

Some more Frank Thomas's! and a couple of cool Phillies. (What is the Joe Blanton from? 2011 Topps Black but its not numbered any info is appreciated!) The card that is flashed out (love my 10 year old camera) is a Ryan Howard gold numbered out of 2007.

My Frank Thomas collection is quickly growing thanks to the generosity of you guys out there!

Football is over ... So Contest Results!

I hope everyone enjoyed todays games. On a personal note my fantasy teams finally broke through and I won in all 5 leagues (too little too late for a few leagues).

Thanks to everyone who participated in my first ever blog contest!

The winner after Randomizing 3 times!

True Random Number Service

List Randomizer

There were 9 items in your list. Here they are in random order:

1. AdamE
2. Arpsmith
3. Jeff Wilk
4. sg488
5. Roy-Z
6. RyanH
7. Greg Zakwin
8. Brian Conrad
9. Night Owl

Timestamp: 2012-12-03 00:51:37 UTC
You have randomized this list 7 times.

Congrats Adam! I will set the Valverde and Dominiguez auto aside for you. If I'm not mistaken you collect red sox cards? Please shoot me an e-mail with your address. At the latest I'll have them out for on Saturday, all depends when I can make it to the post office.
 

Some Random Pick-ups !

Recently, I acquired 2 cards off of ebay. One to add to my Phillies collection and the other cause I traded the auto so I decided to pick up another one!

Topps tribute relics are pretty cool and I've yet to buy any boxes or packs because of the price point, but I'm happy to pick them up for under 10 dollars. This is my 2nd Topps tribute relic, I'll have to see if I can get some autos on the cheap later!

This next card is a Tom Milone patch auto from Topps Finest numbered out of 99. I didn't buy any Finest this year cause I spent most of my purchasing power on Chrome. I traded away the Milone chrome auto I had so I decided to pick up an auto from a set that I had no chance of getting in a pack. These auto relics are pretty cool and its a nice addition to my collection.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of my Sepia Set (its still pretty!) and if you want to enter the contest please read the previous Post!

My Greatest Set Accomplishment Part 1

As most of you know I really like Topps Chrome. If you followed along my case break I was quite a big fan of the sepia refractors. With the help of my girlfriend finding we decided to attempt to complete the set. After very aggressively going after the cards we completed the set in about a month and half. If you don't know, every single card in this set is numbered out of 75, so it might be the only set in the world! (I've yet to see another one) The most expensive card was the Harper, the 2nd Most expensive wasn't Darvish or Trout, it was Wei-Yen Chen. I also acquired quite a few doubles so if you're interested in trading they are all listed on my trade bait page.

Check out the first half of the set:

What's your greatest set accomplishment? I definitely felt good when I received the last card for this set (Nick Swisher). If you read this far, mini contest just leave a comment answering the question and on Sunday night after the 2nd football game (eastern time) I will randomize a winner. The winner will get a Jose Valverde Sepia refractor and a Matt Dominiguez auto and some random cards from their favorite team.