A couple new Howard's!

I had a couple new Ryan Howard pickups recently. Nothing crazy expensive but nice additions to the PC.

This is the green parallel to 2016 Topps Chrome numbered out of 99. I now have all the non-numbered refractors, purple, green, orange and the super. 

I am missing Blue, Blue wave, Gold and Red. I am not actively going after the printing plates but if I see 1 sure why not. (I actually already have the Cyan plate which I picked up a few years ago) 

I do not have a lot of Topps Now cards but I did grab this one in a pre-sale from ebay. Had no issues getting it from the seller. I like the idea of Topps Now but I don't actively pursue most of them. I feel like pack pulled is higher on the 'card hierarchy' for me.

Have a special series coming up! I was debating how to post it but I think I'm going to do the cards separate and them bring them all together at the end. It will have a good visual affect. Super psyched for these cards.

Thanks for reading!

Boxtopper N43 Ryan Howard!

This card is a little smaller then I thought it would be considering it is a box topper. It is a nice on-card auto and hand numbered out of 15 which is typical for Ginter box toppers. I own a Javier Baez autographed Boxtopper from another year that I pulled myself. As I mentioned in my other post I had a ton of competition for this card. I went the nuclear option (at least I thought I did) and put a pretty high bid in the last 3 seconds and I won by exactly 1 dollar below my highest bid. Someone else was trying to snipe high just like me. The card is going to the PC of course just trying to figure out the best way to display it. It was sent in a card saver but I don't really love how those look for display purposes. I took it out but I don't have a toploader that quite fits it right so it's currently in a team bag for protection.

Don't know if I'll ever see another one again in the wild so glad I was able to add it to the collection.

I watched both games last night on TV. I was entertained with some real baseball. Not sure how I feel about the fake crowd noise. The announcers not being in the stadium made no difference to me. I could call the game from my couch if they asked me too. Excited for the Phillies to play tonight.

I don't mind the expansion of playoffs for this year, not sure if it will be a sticking point in the CBA negotiations though. The season is so short this year makes sense to almost do a tournament style for the playoffs.

Thanks for reading!

Orange Refractor!

Since I finally pulled the trigger on the 2016 Topps Chrome Superfractor I am going to make an attempt at the rainbow 4 years too late. I don't know if I'll ever find the reds out of 5. I need most of the numbered ones besides Purple. I have all the non numbered ones from previous pickups. I was able to knock a rarer one off the list. I'm not going to have the rest graded but either way it's a nice looking card.

The orange out of 25! "Pristine" I bought it off of ebay from blowoutcards. I got them to come down a few bucks from the buy it now so I can't complain.

I've had a lot of competition for Howard cards lately on auctions. I know prices are trending up in general but it's not like he's super popular outside of Philly. Yesterday I put in a bid of 100 dollars for a Heritage auto from 2010. Nice card for sure but I would've thought that super high bid would've been enough and I get sniped by someone with a higher bid. Them's the breaks of course but I wonder who I'm bidding against. I typically don't see the cards re-surface so these are being paid for and put into some sort of collection I'd presume.

Would love to find another Ryan Howard PCer out there and compare collections. I'm sure I have stuff other people don't see much and I would love to see some hard to find cards.

Thanks for reading!

Titanic!!

No, not the boat. I remember when that movie came out in the 90s and it was crazy popular. Teenage girls were going to see it 10+ times in the theater. I haven't paid too much attention to theater movies for the last 10 years or so has anything close to that happened with other movies? The marvel movies probably made more money overall but don't think people were seeing them that much in the theater. I could be wrong. I believe the last movie I saw in the theater was Avengers: End Game. I've since watched it at home a couple of times. I liked it, solid end to that long build up.

Back to the real issue here, TITANIC cards..

I recently picked up this guy from 2011 Topps Marquee. I know they are all plain swatches but I still like them. I had picked up his compatriot a while ago and realized I never had the base one.

I really like the auto one too even though its a sticker. It just works. I grabbed this one years ago for under 50 dollars if I remember correctly. I have not seen one go up for sale since. Gotta strike while the iron is hot!

Thanks for reading!

First Day Issue

I always liked these parallel cards. It's probably not rationale in anyway shape or form but as a collector I love that extra stamp that makes the card rare or slightly different looking. I don't pick all of them up because unfortunately I can't spend all of my money on baseball cards but if I see a good deal I'd be hard pressed to say no. I grabbed this card for a massive 5 dollars.

1994 Stadium Club Frank Thomas First Day Issue. Thomas has a few different base cards in the set but this is my first, first day issue of his.

Frank Thomas won the 2nd of his back to back MVP's in 1994. In 113 games (shortened due to the strike) he has 38 HR's, 101 RBI's and his OBP was .487. Crazy good stats as expected from an MVP.

Thanks for reading!

Original Sketch

I'm usually not big on sketch cards in general. I don't like to pay the premium associated with them and some of them don't look too good in my opinion. I don't collect artists on cards and I never got into the comic side of card collecting with the sketch cards of various things. I get why they are desired if you're a fan of that particular artist or character. That being said after saying all that I picked up this sketch card of Ryan Howard because I liked the look of it. I believe there was various 1 of 1's of different artists for each player in this Stadium Club set. Not sure how rare these are but it didn't run too expensive.

I like the pencil sketch look. I think the artist did a good job of making it look like Howard and it doesn't look cartoonish. This is a nice addition to the ever growing Ryan Howard collection.

Thanks for reading!

Triple Auto!!!

Always nice to stumble upon a rarer card that isn't very expensive. I was browsing through ebay and found this card amongst it.

Its from 2005 Donruss. A solid Phillies triple auto of Mike Lieberthal, Randy Wolf and Brett Myers. Never forget the Wolf Pack in the outfield for every start in the stadium.



Solid.

Thanks for reading!

Superfractor!!!!!!

I think I have a fairly diverse collection. I'm into vintage and modern. I have a couple player collections and a pretty solid team collection. I am not big into prospecting mainly because I'm really lazy about selling stuff so if I were to commit the capital I'm 100% sure I'd miss the window to sell. The few cards I have sold were mainly people reaching out to me cause they saw something they wanted and didn't want to trade. No big deal, there is a price for everything (you may not like it though because if its PC the price is going to be crazy). I view my collection as a loose investment. Some cards I know will never appreciate and I don't care one bit but some cards I've acquired through the years have gone up significantly in price. I'm priced out of my own cards in a way. It's weird to think to sell and then realize you won't ever be getting it back cause its way more then you'd want to spend, so I just keep it.

I went off on a bit of a tangent there but that's my 2 cents. Pun intended. I recently acquired this awesome card. It has literally been on ebay for 4 years at a price I was not willing to pay with no best offer. I've watched it go round and round my watch list too many times to count. I decided to send the seller a polite message and just ask if he had any wiggle room in price and if not no big deal. Pretty sure I wrote the message exactly like that. He didn't respond to the message but sent me a personal offer through ebay for 50% listed price. That was more in my range so I snagged it! Never hurts to ask. Worse he could've done is raised the price so no one would ever buy it or just say its staying there.

2016 Topps Chrome Superfractor!

Excuse the dust, the card is super clean. This was his last Chrome card. I know he has a insert superfractor in this years Topps Series 2 that someone already pulled (also listed for a ridiculous 400 dollars). Will probably watch that one for a while if it keeps getting put up on ebay.

I now may go after this rainbow. I basically need all the numbered parallels except the purple. Long ways to go (damn reds out of 5)

Thanks for reading!