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!