A shiny Rhys!

 I've been slowing down overall with my Rhys Hoskins side PC but I do have a bunch of nice cards in it now. Notably the rookie year Heritage Red Ink is a highlight. I wasn't expecting to find this card at a good price so I jumped on it when I saw it. 

It's the foilboard of Rhys Hoskins. This subset only come in factory sealed sets and no guarantees as to which player you are getting. They are numbered out of 190 but who knows how many actually will surface. The scan doesn't do the card justice. The foilboardiness of it (made up word) looks really good in person. Pick up a common just to check them out. 

Spring Training supposedly starting soon!

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Superfractor!!!

I was able to add another superfractor to the collection recently. It came up as a good deal so I jumped on it. This is the only card of this series that I own but I hear/see on the internet that the base cards are pretty nice in person. Topps has gotten a big kick lately out of Chromeing basically everything. I like shiny so its fine with me but I hope it doesn't diminish the brand overall. We shall see! 

Either way here is the Didi Gregorious Super from Allen and Ginter chrome!

The swirlies look nice on the card. I was glad to see the Phillies sign him for 2 more years. He was solid for them last year and I think he's a good player. If the Phillies can get some luck on the bullpen who knows they might be competitive. Nola and Wheeler are legit and I don't think the batting order is that bad. They still have Harper, Didi, Hoskins, Realmuto, McCutchen and if some other bats wake up they could put up some runs. I was happy to get this one into the collection!

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A Double Dose of Vlad!

Vlad the original! I have started to go after the entire master set of 2000 Upper Deck Ionix. I have found a couple big cards. I think these 2 qualify. It's actually my first Vlad auto which fits into my Hall of Fame collection. 

I didn't realize the label slid out. That's ok. When I complete the auto set I may crack this one out anyway. I don't care that it's graded. If anyone has a line on the Griffey Jr for the auto set please let me know!

Also, I was able to grab this rare insert for cheap. It was on ebay and the seller auto accepted my offer. I was willing to go higher but I'll take it! I've made decent progress on this set, going to start having to get the word out for the ones I'm missing though! 

Thanks for reading! Any Warp Zones or Griffey ionix autos out there let me know!
 

Finest Flashbacks!

I had previously shown the team set for the Phillies that I picked up from this set. It seemed to be a very popular set out of the gate but the prices have settled a bit. If I remember correctly the Luis Robert base card was pushing 200 now I've seen it go for 50-60. (I have not bought it). I was able to pick up 1 Phillies base refractor. These were 1 per box. I know they had colored refractors too but the original 93 set only had base and I feel that's more of a true flashback.  

Pretty shiny. Let's see how the scan compares to the original. 

Pretty close. I've yet to complete the team set for the modern version. Maybe 1 day. I've been super focused on other baseball card endeavors at the moment. I completed the 93 Finest Refractor Phillies team set a while ago. It's nice to have them since they always seem to be going up in price. They are nice cards and have easily withstood the test of time (seeing as how many times Topps love to reprint them). 

This one above is from 2013 Topps Finest. This is the base version. I have the refractor version numbered out of 25 just can't locate the scan at the moment. 

Thanks for reading! I hope there is baseball soon!

Hall of Famer?

There is debate amongst the baseball people if this guy deserves a Hall of Fame nod. Either way he fits into my collection and personally as much as I'd like to see it I'd lean towards no. Defensively he was great before his shoulder got messed up but offensively I feel like he didn't do enough. 

 I promise the card has a bottom. I was glad to add a nice Rolen rookie to the collection. He did get a jump in votes this year to 40%.

Here are some career stats:

Rolen finished his career with a .281 batting average, 316 home runs (15th among third basemen), 1,287 RBI (14th), 1,211 runs scored (16th), 118 stolen bases, eight Gold Gloves (only Hall of Famers Brooks Robinson and Mike Schmidt won more at the position) and a 1997 NL Rookie of the Year award. 

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What a RIP!

I did not buy any boxes of Topps Rip this year. I don't know how popular the product has been on the secondary market either. I personally don't collect too many random mini's. Although, I was able to grab one unripped ripped card for the PC. It's nice that someone left this one intact and it wasn't expensive on ebay. 

 The black variation out of 50. I don't think that has any bearing of anything is good inside. I didn't scan the back but it says it could be an exclusive mini base card or exclusive mini image variation base card or an exclusive mini autograph card, Tear if you dare! I like the Ginter rip cards. I've only ripped one of the few that I have (Paul Molitor for those that are wondering) (Also, have 2 Howard's, and 2 double rips intact (Hosmer/Perez and Kershaw/Maeda)) I feel like a lot of the ripped cards in this set were ripped since that was the main point of buying it. 

Phillies made a real offer to Realmuto. We'll see if he takes it, don't think he has too many big bidders at the moment. I like the Archie Bradley signing. Reasonable price and not a long term deal. 

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Mini cards.. but big attitudes! (I was having a tough time on a title)

 I was able to procure 2 nice Ryan Howard cards for the collection recently. These are both from 2020 Ginter X. I technically don't have the rainbow cause I do not have the base mini. Not super worried about it but I've yet to see one. Go figure. 

Red mini out of 5 and Silver mini out of 1! They look nice together. I'm not a huge mini collector (see what I did there) but I now have these ones and 3 wood minis from A&G. Those would be the highlight of my collection. I have a couple EXT mini's but I don't know how many Phillies I'm missing. Probably most of them. 

I just started the process of sorting about 7K Phillies cards I had randomly in boxes. This may lead me to getting to a point of having a legit want list beyond the 80s. I may not put every set on the proverbial list because I don't want to type that much but I figure I can start with Topps Flagship and branch out from there. I may have a lot done, who knows?! (process will probably take several months, better yet lets make it a 2021 goal)

Thanks for reading!