2019 Stadium Club Box Break

I like to try and open a box of Stadium club now and then. The photography is 2nd to none and sometimes get lucky and pull something cool. It's a fun box to open with every card being visually pleasing. This was a decent box the best card wasn't the auto!

 

The 2 autos were Tyler Skaggs and Chance Adams. Pretty sad with what happened to Skaggs this year.

  

The Jose Ramirez is the Chrome and the Johnny Bench is the gold minted variation.

 

The best card in the box was this Pete Alonso Photo Variation Rookie Card. Pretty nice to hit the eventual Rookie of the year variation. Didn't hit any Vlads but I'll take it!

Thanks for reading!

Back from vacation!

The blog has been a little quiet this month. I have some cards to show but I was away with the wife on vacation. We spent 3 days in Rome and 3 days in Spain. It was a lot of fun and we really enjoyed it. Also, don't gate check your bag in Rome if you are connecting to a flight in Spain. We missed the connection due to a mechanical issue and then got stuck in the Barcelona airport for 7 hours and they lost my bag. I got it back 2.5 days later but that wasn't the best experience. Glad I was still in Spain when they found it otherwise I'd probably still be waiting.

Anyway card stuff! The World Series is now tied 2-2. Solid series. Kind of cheering for the Astros cause I can't cheer for the Nationals being a Phillies fan. Eagles were terrible when I was away so now that I'm back I think they will beat Buffalo today. (I have the right to edit this later..)

Check this card out..

Pretty nice on-card auto of Hoskins. Still looking for last years Heritage blue auto at a decent price. Hoskins didn't have the best season as everyone knows but I hope he bounces back next year. If the Phillies can get some real starting pitching and between him Harper and Realmuto they could have something. Hopefully Girardi does well and gets the best out of everyone!

Thanks for reading!

1992 Fleer Ultra card!

Normally I would not get excited about a junk wax era card but there are some gems out there. I ran across this at the last card show and I had never seen one in person so I decided to buy it off the dealer. Maybe overpaid by a couple bucks compared to ebay (although with shipping not that far off) but it is my first Gwynn out and it is on-card and its pretty cool looking.

Has the Fleer stamp as you can see in the middle. Very legible and nice signature in black ink.

Gabe Kapler is still the Phillies manager. There is quite a few differing opinions now on whether he will stay or go. The Phillies are either really smart or really stupid.. can't figure out which.

Hope the playoffs are fun.

Thanks for reading!

A nice 'new' vintage card!

This was a big pickup for the Phillies PC. I've been looking for a nice looking copy of this card but they don't pop up too often in my price range.

A nice PSA 3 Mike Schmidt O-Pee-Chee Rookie card! I now have the regular version and the nice Canadian version. No creases or paper loss. A little beat up on the corners and edges but meh that's Vintage for ya. A nice card to add to the PC! I will display it proudly!

Thanks for reading! The Kapler getting fired countdown has begun (at least according to sports talk radio, we shall see)

In person trade, at the Philly Show!

I went to the Philly Show this past Saturday with my wife. I had texted with Brian from Collecting Cutch about meeting up at the show. He was there to get his awesome piece signed by Andrew McCutchen and this show isn't a bad drive for me so we always try to go to it. There is a lot of dealers and I always get to see some amazing cards in person. Maybe overpay for a thing or 2 here or there but find some good deals as well. The show has really revived over the past year or so. It was dead for a minute there and I was worried it was on its way out and the promoter has really done a good job bringing people back. It was crazy packed on Saturday. It rivaled being as crowded as it was when the Eagles won the super bowl and a lot of the Eagles players were signing in the March show. It was really cool to see so many people of all ages enjoying our great hobby.

I picked up some stuff as usual. Some old, some new.Other posts will be for that.

Brian and I exchanged some cards. Definitely new cards for me!

 

The top 6 cards were from National Baseball card day which I didn't have any of so much appreciated for those. The Hamels is a mini from a rip card so they are not particularly easy cards to find. I have a couple Phillies now from rip cards (actually literally 2). 

 

The Negative of McCutchen is a really good looking card. I like these parallels in Chrome

  

Oh yea he just threw in a Steve Carlton autograph. Ho-hum! 

Thanks for the cards, the show was a lot of fun! Glad I was able to video Cutch signing the item! 

Thanks for reading!

Fun cards

I haven't gotten too much new things in the past month. Unfortunately been spending money on life stuff but all good. I plan on hitting up the Philly show this month and hope to pick up some vintage and anything else that catches my eye there. Usually find some good stuff or random stuff.

These are the only 2 bat knob cards I own. Glad I picked them up when I did cause they do not come up often and of my PC player. He doesn't seem to be in the recent sets since he retired.

One vertical and one horizontal. One of them is Panini and one of them is Topps. Both are visually pleasing even without the logo. Two centerpieces of my Ryan Howard collection.

Go Phillies!

Thanks for reading!

Back to Back Championship!!

I have officially won my 2nd straight head to head Championship in Fantasy Baseball. I adopted a strategy early on the season that I wasn't sure was going to work. I ended up finishing 2nd in the regular season (out of 12) and getting a bye. I won both playoff rounds 6-5 and am officially the Champion. This league is tough because we limit moves. Only allowed 32 moves for the whole season so streaming pitchers would be difficult if any of your players get hurt. I ended up using 31 moves I held one at the end of the season just in case someone got hurt.

Original Roster based on draft pick round. I had first overall pick.

1. Mike Trout
2. Justin Verlander (traded)
3. Kris Bryant (traded)
4. Walker Buehler
5.  Jack Flaherty
6. James Paxton
7. Clayton Kershaw
8. David Dahl (dropped)
9. Michael Conforto
10. Yasmani Grandal
11. Jose Peraza (dropped)
12. Mallex Smith (dropped and picked back up before the playoffs for speed)
13. Luis Castillo
14. Julio Urias (dropped)
15. Greg Holland (traded)
16. Jonathan Schoop (dropped)
17. Hunter Strickland (dropped)
18. Pete Alonso
19. Garrett Hampson (dropped)
20. Jhouyls Chacin (dropped)

Draft wise I didn't do badly.  Trout was a no brainer #1 overall. Verlander was the right pitcher even though I traded him. The 4th-7th round I hit on all 4. Paxton being the worst but he was serviceable. Kershaw was great this year consistently pumping out quality starts. I took Grandal earlier then I wanted but catcher was so weak this  year. That worked out instead of having to scramble to put in a decent catcher. 

Here is the Championship roster.

C - Yasmani Grandal
1B - Pete Alonso
2B - Yuli Gurriel
3B - Vlad Guerrero Jr.
SS - Eduardo Escobar
OF - Michael Conforto
OF - Rhys Hoskins
OF - Joc Pederson
UTIL - Mike Trout
BN - Mallex Smith

I tended to rotate Pederson. For a lot of the year I also had Verdugo and would just rotate them in and out. Kind of like Dave Roberts did in real life before Verdugo went down. Escobar was a great pickup he had massive offensive numbers. Yuli I had in April dropped him and then picked him back up when he got hot after the All Star break. 

Pitchers --
Walker Beuhler
Marcus Stroman
Andrew Heaney
Jack Flaherty
Clayton Kershaw
Kyle Gibson
John Means
James Paxton
Luis Castillo
Marco Gonzalez

I rolled 10 starters most of the year. I did a poor job picking closers in the draft and one when went down I tried to salvage it early but wasn't successful so I traded Greg Holland and completely punted the category. Castillo was solid pretty much the whole year. He has a nasty changeup.

My big trade this year on paper I probably lost but it worked out.

I traded Kris Bryant, Justin Verlander, Greg Holland and Wade Miley for Max Muncy, Joc Pederson, Rhys Hoskins and Kyle Gibson. (trade done on May 4th)

Bryant was driving me crazy early in the year and I really wanted Rhys on the team so I probably overpaid. Joc would get hot now and then and Muncy when I had him was actually super solid. I ended up flipping Muncy for Vlad though. (trade done on June 6th)

Overall super happy to win back to back! Head to head leagues are tough!

Thanks for reading!