An Oldie but a Goodie!

I showed off some 1951 Bowman Phillies in my last post. Let's go back a couple years to 1949. I have been searching for a decent looking copy of this card for a while that wouldn't break the bank and I did find it.

Check em out!

A solid SGC 2 Robin Roberts 1949 Bowman! The front and back are pretty clean, no paper loss or real obvious creases. I now have this one and the Ashburn, the 2 hardest cards to get in that team set, now to fill in the rest!

Thanks for reading!

Some oldies (1951 Bowman)

I have completed the Phillies Team sets for Topps from 1952 to 1970 or so. Slowly, chipping away at the 1970s and 80s. I believe I got most of the tough high numbers from the 70s may be missing 1 or 2. Some of the multi team cards were hard to find and a little expensive. The Grant Jackson card and the Willie Stargell rookie come to mind. Very happy to have them both in the collection. My Phillies team set binder is one of my favorites. I don't have 1952 Topps in there because they are all PSA graded.

I am backtracking and trying to get Bowman knocked out slowly but surely. I was able to get these at the last card show back when I was allowed to leave my house and have a social life.

Pretty nice looking bunch of cards. Knocked off a good chunk of the want list. I believe all I need left are commons so shouldn't be too difficult to complete!

Really looking forward to baseball. I am thankful though that the industry I am in is not laying off people currently. I do feel for the people with businesses that rely on customer traffic physically. It will be nice to get back to normal some day.

Happy positive thoughts! Thanks for reading!

2020 Topps Blaster Break

I opened one blaster of 2020 to see the cards. I really do miss borders on flagship, it really makes the color parallels pop up a bit more. I like full bleed photography but I figured that's why Stadium Club exists. Those cards are always nice to look at and full gloss pictures. The blaster was fun to open and got some decent cards.

 The Hank Aaron was the 1 per box rookie recollection subset they have. I do not own an original copy so this will have to do for now. It's definitely on the want list though! They are not cheap though so I'll be selective and eventually find one with proper eye appeal that isn't way over budget.

Some nice 1985 inserts. I always liked the design of that year. One of the big rookies in Bo Bichette who has a lot of potnetial. The Yankees card is the rainbow foil parallel which didn't scan all that great.

The one chrome card I received was the Mike Trout. I will never complain about that! Whenever baseball resumes and we have Fantasy Drafts, I already know I'm first pick in one of my leagues and I plan on taking Trout!

Thanks for reading!

A double dose of Vlad

One day the season will start. I have opening day Phillies tickets to go with a friend of mine. I'm sure they will honor them in May or June when baseball resumes again. I usually host a tailgate for my birthday in May and invite 20 some people (had 18 people come last year pretty solid turnout), but that's been post poned until further notice. I'm glad I didn't already purchase the tickets so I don't have to do anything except tell people to wait. I was out and about at the card show a few weeks ago and now am basically quarantined in the house because I work in an office and no one is allowed to go in. (I feel good and my wife does too, no one is currently sick in the household) (also the Guinea Pig is happy too eating carrots like no other)

Onto the good stuff. At the show I really wanted to pick up a nice not crazy expensive Vlad card. He was a member of my Fantasy Baseball Championship team so I wanted a nice rookie.

Ended up with 2 ..

I bought 2 Vlad No numbers from Series 2. Ended up paying 75 for both which was probably close to the going rate. I think hes due for a monster year. That Toronto lineup is interesting with him, Biggio and Bichette. Lots of potential and power.

Thanks for reading! One day we will get baseball!

Ryan Howard... Babe Ruth..!

What do Ryan Howard and Babe Ruth have in common? Not much but they have a dual relic card in 2011 Topps Legendary Lineage.

I happened to find one at the card show and made a deal!

This is my first relic of the Babe and one of my many relics of Howard but the first and only card that I am aware of that has them both on it. I remember these popping up on ebay after this set came out and I figured I'd get one there eventually. I did not at that time and then they stopped popping up on ebay. I was quite surprised and pleased to find one in person. Same person I bought the Cole Hamels rookie off of at the last show. Good guy I like dealing with him and he always has interesting inventory.

Side note, when I was buying this card my wife was sick of standing since we were several hours into the show at this point. So she grabbed a chair at the table next to his and sorted someones box of commons. How nice of her!

Thanks for reading! Go Phillies!

2020 Topps Heritage break (2 boxes!) (big hit!)

My wife and I picked up 2 boxes to open at the Philly show a couple weeks ago. Also, picked up a box of 1990 Topps that we haven't opened yet but I am sure a Frank Thomas NNOF is in it! (maybe one day we will pull one!) Back to the matter at hand, the Heritage break. I really do like the black borders, the card stock is good and the cards look sharp. It is hard to spot the autos but they made it a little easier on the variations this year because they write them on the back of the cards along with the really hard to read codes.

Definitely beat the odds in this break..

 These were the boxtoppers. The Acuna super boxtopper and Tony Oliva greatest moments. Pretty nice oddly shaped cards.

Chrome refractors were pretty tough to hit in the odds. 1 in 106 packs. Hit 1 in 2 boxes in the middle there is Yuli Gurriel. The 2 relics we hit were Rhys Hoskins (keeper!) and Jeff McNeil. Scanned some of the dual rookie cards.

These are the 2 action variations we hit. Very happy hitting the hot rookie who should hit pretty well this year and hitting a PC card in the Harper.

 

This is the french text variation. 1 in 243 packs. They made the backs on these very bright. 

Oh yeah, so we definitely hit 2 relics above and they were hit pretty early in the boxes so I didn't bother to look for autos. My mistake. We discovered 2 autos when the cards were being sorted. 

 

George Thomas blue auto.

 Washington Senators auto of Jeff Burroughs. There is no stated print run on these just less then 100 of each player. The odds are 1 in 6,684 packs! One of the rarer hits I've ever gotten in a pack! 

Very happy with this break overall. Even without the autos I wasn't upset getting the Harper and Lux actions. Just an added bonus to find the 2 autos after the fact! 

Also, got the requisite number of short prints (including 2 Trouts!)

The Big Piece's!

I recently was able to pick up another copy of a pretty cool card. When 2012 National Treasures came out people were skeptical because of the lack of logos and then they quickly realized the content of the boxes were quite good. Tons of old timey relics and cool looking cards and other fun things. I was able to snag a few singles.

One I picked up in 2012. The other arrived last week! They are both numbered to 25. Only 23 to go if I can find them!

Only a few more weeks until the season!

Thanks for reading!

2019 Topps Chrome Sapphire Phillies Team Set!

I finally completed the Sapphire Phillies Team set. I didn't really chase the parallels but the base cards look super nice. I am a little disappointed they aren't blue like the previous years.I have all the Phillies Sapphire team sets so far and I plan on keeping that up for a while. They look good together.

Here is the current iteration:

So shiny and pretty. Interesting to see that a few of these players are already off the Phillies. No chase rookie cards in the bunch but at least that made it pretty cheap to complete! Here's hoping for a big year for Kingery. Maybe he'll get to stick to one position in the field this year. I don't pay a lot of attention to spring training except for injury purposes. Have to prepare for my fantasy drafts coming up in 3 or so weeks. The season starts super early this year!

Thanks for reading!