Boxes Of Cards

My blog has moved

2011-01-02T14:48:00.005-05:00

Over the last couple days I've migrated my blog from Blogger to Wordpress. Please visit (and bookmark) this URL from here on out >>>>>> www.boxesofcards.net <<<<<<

Thank you,
John

My 2011 Card Purchasing Priorities

2011-01-01T06:54:00.004-05:00

As you can see from reading my blog I mainly collect baseball prospects. I'm not much for cards from other sports, although I do dabble in hockey from time to time. I've thought about the cards that I want to purchase in the new year and I break them up into two categories, prospects and Hall of Famers.

I'm not much for vintage cards, but the thought of diversifying my collection is appealing. The problem I have with prospecting is the wait for return on investment. Granted, a player doesn't have to make the majors in order for you to turn a profit. I've sold plenty of prospect cards at a profit when a players moves from AA to AAA. The issue I have is that prospects are kind of like taking out a 2-year CD at the bank, the money is tied up and can't be touched. What if I come across a really great deal and need to come up with some cash quickly? I'd be selling off prospects at the expense of future earnings to purchase more prospect cards that are going to sit and wait for future earnings.

Vintage Cards

My 2011 collecting/investing goals now include vintage cards. I really think there are some deals to be had on vintage right now, especially with some of the bigger names. I'm doing this as an investment and a way to get that quick cash that I spoke of before if a great deal comes along.

1955 Topps Roberto Clemente - I had a chance to purchase one of these when I was a kid and didn't do it. For Pirates fans, this is the holy grail of baseball cards. A PSA 3.5 recently sold for $400.

1954 Topps Hank Aaron - The true home king. Did you know that you can pick up a PSA 3 of his rookie for around $400? Absolutely crazy.

1963 Topps Pete Rose - The hit king, another record that will probably never be broken. You can pick up a PSA 5 in the $400 range.

1980 Topps Rickey Henderson PSA 9 - The PSA 10 is a little to rich for me right now. The PSA 9 hangs out between $175-$200. That's a bargain in my eyes considering he owns a record that will never be broken.

Prospects

There are too many cards available to list individual cards. I'll go the route of just naming players, in no particular order, that I'll be prospecting in the next few months before prices really start to rise.

Jesus Montero
Dustin Ackley
Jarrod Parker
Grant Green
Aaron Hicks
Brett Jackson
Nick Castellanos
Tony Sanchez
Julio Teheran
Kyle Gibson
Mike Moustakas
Martin Perez

My 10 Favorite Card Purchases of 2010: Number 1

2010-12-31T10:38:00.003-05:00

Picking my #1 purchase of the year was the easiest card to select in this list. It really wasn't even close. Brett Anderson is by far the main player that I collect. My collection consists of mostly rookie cards from 2007, but I'm always looking for anything rare of his. Right now I'm working on his 2009 SP Authentic By the Name set. I currently have four of the eight letters. I'm always looking for low numbered inserts and parallels of his as well.

Anderson was drafted in the second round of the 2006 MLB Draft by the Arizona Diamondbacks. He was traded to the A's in 2007 as part of the Dan Haren trade. Anderson made his major league debut in 2009 and didn't disappoint. He went 11-11 with a 4.06 ERA and 150 strikeouts with only 45 walks. He struggled with elbow injuries last year and only made 19 starts. When he started, he was dominant. He went 7-6 with a 2.80 ERA and 75 strikeouts with only 22 walks. His slider is his top pitch. It's a beautiful thing to see him drop that slider on the back foot of a right handed batter for the third strike.

The card pictured is his 2007 Donruss Elite Extra Edition Gold Status Autograph graded BGS 9.5 gem mint. Only five of these cards exist. I purchased this raw on eBay taking a chance that the condition was as good as the seller said it was. It turned out to be an accurate description as it came back a gem from BGS. I was thrilled to just own the card, having it grade so high was icing on the cake.

I'm hopeful that Anderson can stay healthy in 2011 and show everyone that he is one of the elite left handed pitchers in the game.

My 10 Favorite Card Purchases of 2010: Number 2

2010-12-31T10:25:00.004-05:00

I know, here we go again with the Pirates. I told you when this all started that it would be obvious who my favorite team is by the end of this countdown. I can also reveal that Andrew McCutchen is my favorite Pirate. He plays the game hard and with a smile on his face. There's nothing to not like about this guy.

The Pirates selected McCutchen with the 11th pick in the first round of the 2005 MLB Draft. McCutchen finally joined the Bucs in 2009 and immediately made a huge impact. He finished fourth in the ROY voting, too low if you ask me. He's batted .286 each of his two seasons. Last year he eclipsed 30 stolen bases (33) and continued to be one of the best centerfielders in baseball.

The card pictured is his 2005 Bowman Sterling Autographed Jersey rookie graded BGS 9.5 gem mint. This card will the void in my McCutchen collection until I get one of his 2005 Topps Chrome Update Autographs.

The nice thing about collecting Pirates prospects is that their cards are always cheap. If McCutchen played for the Yankees or Red Sox you'd never be able to pick up his cards at their current levels. The bad thing about being a Pirates fan is that McCutchen could end up on the Yankees or Red Sox when he becomes a free agent. Such is life.

My 10 Favorite Card Purchases of 2010: Number 3

2010-12-30T17:01:00.002-05:00

This card may look familiar to those of you that read the blog regularly as I just picked this card up within the last two weeks. As I've already stated, I'm a Pittsburgh Pirates fan. I started my Jameson Taillon collection the minute the Pirates drafted him #2 overall in the 2010 MLB Draft. The Pirates haven't had a pitcher with this kind of talent in their system in a long time.

The card pictured is his 2009 Upper Deck USA Red Autograph numbered to 25. I try to pick one of these up for every prospect that I'm investing in. I know a lot of collectors/prospectors stop buying Upper Deck USA cards as soon as a Bowman card is produced of the player their collecting/prospecting. I continue to buy the USA because the prices on the base autographs drop significantly. Give me an autographed USA card over a chrome refractor any day of the week. The fact is, if the player becomes a star, the USA cards are going to rocket back up in value.

Baseball America doesn't release their Pirates Top 10 Prospects until January 12th. I'm guessing that Taillon will top the list. From all indications the sky is the limit for this kid and I can't wait to track his progress in 2011.

My 10 Favorite Card Purchases of 2010: Number 4

2010-12-30T16:12:00.002-05:00

Grant Green immediately became one of my prospect targets when he returned a TTM request I sent to him at USC. Any modern player that signs through the mail is alright in my book.

Baseball America recently rated Green the #1 prospect in the A's organization. That bodes well for my ever-growing collection of his cards. He'll start 2011 in AA and work his way up to AAA at some point. He's projected to be playing shortstop for the A's sometime in 2012. Green's bat is there and consistent, the concern is his fielding. His arm is on the fringe to play shortstop in the majors.

For every prospect I collect, I always try to land a Donruss Elite Extra Edition Status Autograph numbered to 5. They're obviously very hard to find, but I've been successful with a couple of the players I collect. This is another one of those cards that I saw on eBay and knew that I had to win, no matter what the price ended at. The price, if I recall, was somewhere in the $65 range, a bargain in my opinion.

My 10 Favorite Card Purchases of 2010: Number 5

2010-12-29T20:34:00.000-05:00

This is another card that I knew I had to own when it hit eBay. I'd been looking for the 2006 Christian Colon Aflac regular version for a long time. I'd already picked up the promo version a while back. I couldn't believe my luck when the first one I ever saw was graded a PSA 10 gem mint. I really couldn't believe my luck when another one showed up on eBay just weeks later. I obviously bought both of them.

Colon is one of the players that I've been collecting for almost a year. I've amassed a huge collection of his Upper Deck USA autographed and memorabilia cards. I also picked up a nice stash of his 2010 Bowman Chrome USA cards.

The Royals took Colon with the 4th overall pick in the 2010 MLB Draft out of Cal State Fullerton and quickly signed him for slot money. Colon got some good experience under his belt by signing quickly which should get him to AA this year, well ahead of his fellow first round picks. If all goes as planned, Colon could be the Royals stating shortstop in 2012. Their system is loaded with talent that will be arriving from 2011-2013. The Royals are poised to have a really good team for a 4-5 year span if they play their cards right.

I couldn't resist inserting a tiny rant about Topps before closing this post. Topps claims that only 250 of each Aflac regular version exist. This card absolutely proves that number isn't correct. Colon was part of the Debut Cuts set in 2010 Topps Pro Debut Baseball. That set used cut autographs from 2006 Aflac regular version cards and the Colon was numbered to 200. 2010 Bowman Draft also included Colon in the Aflac buyback autographs. Understandably, the Colon is low numbered (/49) because they used up a lot of them in the Pro Debut Cuts set. That adds up to 249 of these cards that Topps has released in their 2010 products. I obviously own two of these so that puts us up to 251. If you search eBay you'll find a couple more out there, putting us up to 253. How many were produced? Who knows. I know one thing, it's still a very rare card and I'm excited to have two gem mint copies in my collection.

My 10 Favorite Card Purchases of 2010: Number 6

2010-12-29T20:33:00.000-05:00

When I saw this card on eBay I just knew it had to be mine. This is where I'll give away the MLB team that I'm a fan of, that's right, the Pittsburgh Pirates. It's been a tough 18 years, but things are looking up because of recent draft picks like Stetson Allie.

The Pirates took Allie in the second round of the 2010 MLB Draft and Jameson Taillon in the first round. They were the two hardest throwing right handed pitchers available in the draft. The Bucs thought so much of Allie that they gave him a 2.25 million dollar signing bonus. Amounts like that are typically reserved for first round draft picks.

This card is Allie's 2010 Donruss Elite Extra Edition Status Autograph. Only 50 copies were made and this one is graded BGS 9.5 gem mint.

Investing in high school draft picks can take a long time to pan out, especially if it takes the player a long time to adjust to the rigors of a full minor league season. In this case, Allie plays for my favorite team so I'm not worried about this one sitting on the shelf for a few years.

My 10 Favorite Card Purchases of 2010: Number 7

2010-12-28T17:04:00.000-05:00

This is the only card on my list that I actually pulled from a pack of cards. Sadly, it was one of my better pulls of 2010. Not to bash the card, but I'd hope for something better than this card for my pull of the year.

Zack Wheeler was rated the #3 prospect in the Giants organization by Baseball America entering last season. The two players in front of him were Buster Posey and Madison Bumgarner, now with the Giants. This means that Wheeler could earn the #1 spot in the Giants organization when Baseball America releases its 2011 Giants top ten on January 26th.

What really makes this card special is the grade given to it by Beckett Grading. It earned the elusive BGS 10 Pristine grade, my first card to ever receive this grade. This is his autographed Xfractor from 2009 Bowman Chrome Draft, only 225 produced.

I never could figure out why the autograph received a 9 grade. I've had a couple come back that way with no explanation.

My 10 Favorite Card Purchases of 2010: Number 8

2010-12-28T17:03:00.000-05:00

Well how do you like that? Another Aflac card. Like I said yesterday, I love these cards because it's the very first card produced of every player in the set and the regular versions are limited to 250 copies. These cards are handed out at the Aflac All-American game so it can be challenging to find nice mint copies.

I picked up this Matt Purke BGS 9.5 on eBay early on in the 2010 college baseball season. I'm not quite sure what this card would go for today as you never see them. I just know that I was really excited to find this card, let alone graded BGS 9.5 gem mint.

TCU will enter the 2011 NCAA Baseball season ranked #1 in the country. Purke will look to build on his incredible 2010 freshman season where he went 16-0 with a 3.02 ERA and 142 strikeouts with just 34 walks. Two of those wins came in the College World Series where he went 2-0 with a 1.35 ERA.

Purke was drafted 14th overall by the Texas Rangers in the 2009 MLB Draft, but Texas failed to sign him. You can be sure that he'll go higher than 14th if he decides to enter the 2011 MLB Draft in June.

My 10 Favorite Card Purchases of 2010: Number 9

2010-12-27T18:42:00.006-05:00

It's funny, the first two cards I'm posting are of prospects in the Minnesota Twins organization, but that's not my favorite team.

This is a card that I searched almost two years for. Topps/Bowman puts out their Aflac All-American set every year, only producing 250 of each card. More common promotional versions were released in 2006 and 2007 and I already had one of those. Landing the regular version at a reasonable price always eluded me. It wasn't until Hicks had a slow start to his 2010 that I was able to pick one up.

I'm a big fan of the Aflac cards as they're always going to be the first card produced of any player featured in the set. Being that they're limited to 250 make them even more desirable in my mind. Also consider that many of them are given to the players and many are purchased back by Topps and released as buy-back autographs, or more recently cut autographs in 2010 Pro Debut Baseball. This makes the non-autographed versions one of the most rare cards you'll ever find for players featured in the sets.

Hicks is rated the #2 prospect in the Minnesota Twins organization by Baseball America, formerly #1. He's 21 years old and will begin his 2011 season in HiA at Fort Myers. He's projected to be a five tool center fielder with good power.

My 10 Favorite Card Purchases of 2010: Number 10

2010-12-27T18:19:00.006-05:00

Over the next five days I'm going to count down my ten favorite card purchases of 2010, two per day. As I was going through my cards tonight I realized that I'm partial to my favorite team and a particular type of card. You'll notice these trends over the next five days. I only have a couple players I collect and they both have a card represented in this list.

On New Years Day I'm going list a card, or list of cards that I'm most looking forward to purchasing in 2011. Hopefully I'll be able to show off those cards during the year as I obtain them.

Most of you are going to say who is Liam Hendriks? Well, as you can see from the card pictured, he pitched for Team Australia in the 2009 World Baseball Classic. He's 21 years old, from Perth Australia and had a fantastic 2010 season between LoA and HiA in the minors.

Hendriks is in the Minnesota Twins organization. He split 2010 between Beloit (LoA) and Fort Myers (HiA), posting a combined 1.74 ERA in 108.2 innings pitched He had an 8-4 record, 105 strikeouts, just 12 walks and a 0.84 WHIP. Baseball America ranks him the #6 prospect overall in the Twins organization. Among pitchers he ranks #2 just behind #1 overall Twins prospect Kyle Gibson.

The card pictured is his 2009 Bowman Sterling World Baseball Classic Game Jersey Black Refractor numbered 24/25. This was his only card until 2010 Bowman Chrome came out this year. I've purchased quite a few of 2010 Bowman Chrome autographs but I still prefer this card as it is very hard to find. I spent almost the entire year looking for this version after I'd already picked up the base, refractor, blue refractor and gold refractor versions. I was thrilled to finally add this one to my rainbow.

2011 Topps Baseball Packaging

2010-12-26T17:22:00.006-05:00

I hope everyone had a nice holiday. I spent time with family and ate a lot of good food. Santa didn't bring me any cards so I've had to get my fix reading card news online today.

The thing that got me most excited was the first look on the Beckett Blog at the 2011 Topps Series 1 Baseball packaging. This is obviously a blaster box, but still gives us a look at the design and a small peek at the odds.

The odds that we're given are for the Diamond Giveaway code cards, 1 per blaster box.
If my memory serves, the odds may have been better in retail last year. I seem to recall pulling two code cards per blaster in 2010. The odds for Diamond Giveaway in hobby (1:6) and jumbo (1:1) remain the same as they were this year.

We can also see on the packaging that the manufactured commemorative patches are back and fall one per blaster box. I find that the patches sell very well in the first few weeks of release. It's nice to know that you can pay for your whole blaster if you hit a desirable patch.

The other thing to remember with Topps Series 1 is that there are usually hidden short printed cards. Last year it was Abe Lincoln hidden in a handful of Cubs cards. I wouldn't go selling sets or base cards until these short printed cards have been discovered. On the flip side, it would be a good time to buy up commons and complete sets before everyone figures out what those cards are.

I always get excited for the flagship Topps release. This year should be a blast considering it's the 60th year of Topps baseball cards. It really fills the void for me between the end of the NFL season and the start of spring training baseball.

Awesome Upper Deck USA Mail Day!

2010-12-21T19:39:00.002-05:00

I'm John and I'm a Nick Castellanos addict. You may think this is a repeat post, but it's not. I've bought a bunch more 2009 Upper Deck USA Nick Castellanos autographs. I also got some other really nice cards with this lot.

I guess it's time for me to start buying some chrome cards of these guys. I only have base chromes of Machado, Taillon and Colon, nothing autographed. I have a few Castellanos 2010 Donruss Elite Extra Edition autographs.

Here's what I got in the mail today:

10 - 2009 UD USA Nick Castellanos Base Autograph
1 - 2009 UD USA Nick Castellanos Red Autograph /25
4 - 2009 UD USA Manny Machado Base Autograph
1 - 2009 UD USA Jameson Taillon Red Autograph /25
1 - 2009 UD USA Christian Colon Red Autograph /25

Bowman Chrome Wrappers!

2010-12-20T21:06:00.002-05:00

You guys have all seen the results of my Topps Chrome wrapper redemption packs. I redeemed enough wrappers for 24 packs. I was really happy with the results of those so I figured I should dive into the Bowman Chrome wrapper redemption program. I purchased a lot of 684 wrappers on eBay which will yield 38 redemption packs.

For the Topps wrappers I paid an average of $3.35 per box of wrappers. For the Bowman Chrome wrappers I paid an average of $6.75 per box of wrappers. I think the increase is price for the Bowman Chrome is very reasonable considering what these packs can yield.

Topps tweeted last week that the redemption packs will start shipping in January. I'll be sure to post the results of my packs as soon as they come. I can't wait!

Bowman Chrome Wrapper Redemption Program Details

For every 18 wrappers of the hobby version of 2010 Bowman Chrome Baseball set to the company, collectors will receive an exclusive 5-card pack of exclusive Black Bordered Parallels of 2010 Bowman Baseball cards. All 110 prospects from the Bowman checklist will be included.

In addition, Topps will randomly insert the following cards into 5-card redemption packs:

37-card USA Baseball Bowman Chrome Black Bordered Autographs numbered to 25 featuring the 2010 Collegiate National Team as well as the 2010 18 & Under National Team.

5-card Bowman Chrome Rookies & Prospects Autographs numbered to 100 featuring Buster Posey, Mike Stanton, Mike Moustakas, Miguel Sano and Dustin Ackley.

And due to a production error, the previously announced Autographed 2010 Bowman Chrome USA BUYBACK program will now be included as part of the wrapper redemption. Cards will be numbered to 100 and will include big names like Bryce Harper, Jameson Taillon, Yasmani Grandal, Drew Pomeranz, Michael Choice, Christian Colon, Manny Machado and Bryce Brentz.

Blowout 12 Days of Christmas Break - (2) 2005/06 Upper Deck Hockey Series 2 Retail Boxes

2010-12-19T06:37:00.000-05:00

Below are the results of my 2-box 2005-06 Upper Deck Hockey Series 2 retail break. I was looking for the same card everyone is looking for when they break this product, the Alexander Ovechkin Young Guns rookie card. I got an Ovechkin rookie, but it was from Upper Deck Victory Update which are inserted one card per pack.

This was a pretty disappointing break as I was really only interested in the Ovechkin Young Guns rookie card. It was nice to get his Victory Update rookie but it's not the same. You also have a chance to get Sidney Crosby's Victory Update rookie in these packs. His Young Guns rookie is in 2005-06 Upper Deck Series 1. Below are the highlights of the break:

Victory Update Rookies
Alexander Ovechkin
Henrik Lundqvist

Stars In The Making
Sidney Crosby

All-Time Greatest Finalist
Wayne Gretzky

Destined For The Hall
Mario Lemieux
Steve Yzerman

Rookie Threads Jersey Card
Ryan Suter
Cam Ward

Game Jersey
Nick Boynton
Tim Connolly

Young Guns
Adam Berkhoel
Brad Richardson
Gerald Coleman
Greg Jacina
Jakub Klepis
Dennis Wideman
Erik Christensen
Eric Nystrom
Dimitri Patzold
Tomas Fleischmann
Jeff Tambellini
Danny Richmond
Gilbert Brule
Matt Greene
Al Montoya

Blowout 12 Days of Christmas Break - 2008 Topps Chrome Football

2010-12-18T12:48:00.003-05:00

Blowout Cards has been running their 12 Days of Christmas promotion for 10 days. You should check it out as there have been some really great deals. The deals on Day #9 were too good for me to pass up. I purchased a box of 2008 Topps Chrome Football for $39.95 and two boxes of 2005-06 Upper Deck Series 2 Retail Hockey for $39.95 each.

Below are the results of my 2008 Topps Chrome Football break. This product is loaded with rookies that are having great seasons this year. Unfortunately, I didn't pull any great rookies from this box, but I still got some nice stuff. I'm a big fan of the box topper that comes with this product. It's a nice added bonus after you've torn through all of your packs. Here are the highlights:

Autographed Rookie
Eddie Royal

Box Topper
Tom Brady Gold Refractor /199

NFL Dynasties Refractor
Bill Bates /100

Regular Refractors
Chad Henne RC
Adrian Peterson Pro Bowl

Base Rookie
Darren McFadden

2010 Bowman Draft Retail Break

2010-12-16T20:45:00.000-05:00

I didn't find any of this while I was on vacation in Phoenix. When I saw some at my local Target this morning I couldn't resist picking some up. I picked up four rack packs and two blaster boxes. You'll see scans of the odds for each pack below. The rack packs have far better odds, just as 2010 Bowman did.

Blaster Pack Odds

Rack Pack Odds

I've included a scan of the base chrome, base chrome prospect, base chrome USA, blue refractor, purple refractor and USA jersey card below. The best card I got out of all the packs was a Manny Machado purple refractor. I really like the look of the USA jersey cards, even if they do use the same photo as the base card.

Vacation Mail

2010-12-15T12:25:00.003-05:00

I got quite the bundle of mail from Topps while I was on vacation. Most of it was Red Hot Rookie redemptions finally rolling in, the rest were autograph redemptions from 2010 Topps Chrome Baseball. Here's the funny thing, all of these cards came regular mail except one, the Stephen Strasburg RHR was sent certified mail. I guess Topps is making sure that they have proof of receipt for those. I think it would have been cheaper for them to send those first class with delivery confirmation than certified, but whatever.

The Red Hot Rookie redemptions look great and they're on chrome stock. I wasn't expecting them to be chrome stock, but I've never had any of these cards from previous years to know if they always are. Topps has sent me #'s 1-8, I'm just waiting on #9 Mike Minor and #10 Brett Wallace. I hope that I get at least one Brett Wallace autograph as I sent in three for redemption. I'll keep you posted on those.

The two autographs I received from Topps Chrome were Brian Matusz and Brandon Hicks.

Vacation Breaks

2010-12-15T11:53:00.005-05:00

I've been on vacation for the last five days in sunny Phoenix, AZ. That's the reason for the lack of updates to the blog. Reality punched me in the face last night when I returned to temperatures in the 20's in Washington DC.

While I was in Phoenix I couldn't resist the urge to check out a Target and Wal-Mart to see what they had. I ended up buying a blaster of 2010 Bowman Platinum Baseball and a 2010 Best of Chrome value pack.

Bowman Platinum Blaster These come with 8 packs for $19.99. I've been seeing some great breaks in the various forums and figured I would give one a try. I really don't like the base cards. They're not chrome stock, just regular cardboard. The cards are flat silver but come off cheap looking to me. The nice thing is that these packs are loaded with prospects and rookies. It gives you a good shot at getting a base rookie or prospect card of many different players. I did end of getting an autographed refractor in my blaster, like many others that I've seen. Mine was Justin Marks of the Oakland A's. You'll see the card design below. I included a base rookie, base USA and the autographed refractor. The scan made the base cards look really dark, sorry for that.

Best of Chrome Value Pack These come with a nice looking 5-card refractor set of Stephen Strasburg, Jason Heyward, Starlin Castro, Jackie Robinson and Mickey Mantle. You also get 2 Million Card Giveaway Redemption code cards, 5 packs of 2010 Bowman Chrome Baseball retail packs, 5 Topps Chrome Baseball retail packs and 1 2010 Bowman Platinum Baseball hobby pack. All of this will set you back $29.99. I like this assortment. Kudos to Topps for putting a great Christmas gift out there for a young collector at a reasonable price. I would much rather open one of these than a blaster.

I didn't fair so well from these packs. The hobby pack of Bowman Platinum yielded all base cards. The best card from Topps Chrome packs was a Roy Oswalt National Chicle refractor. The Bowman Chrome packs did yield an orange refractor but it was Ryan Dempster. Still pretty nice to hit a refractor that rare from retail.

Is Topps admitting their 2010 chrome baseball products are flawed?

2010-12-05T10:38:00.008-05:00

If you recall, I posted a picture a couple weeks ago of damaged cards from my 2010 Bowman Chrome Baseball retail box break. The front card on every pack was damaged with a vertical scratch. I opened over a case of these boxes and they were all the same. I mailed the key cards back to Topps for replacement. I was waiting to see how they came back before I sent the rest of the commons.

Well, the cards arrived yesterday and they were all in nice condition. Of course, they all had the chrome curl and centering issues that have plagued Topps chrome products this year. The positive is that they were free of surface scratching and bad edges. They replaced the exact cards that I sent back to them as I sent them in batches of 25 cards or less with an itemized list. If you send more than 25 cards they will replace them randomly.

The interesting thing about this was the letter that Topps sent with the cards, which you can read below. It's hard to tell from the scan but they highlighted "cards maintain the same errors." in the second paragraph. Essentially, Topps is admitting that the quality of their chrome cards this year is crap and sending in for a replacement doesn't necessarily mean you'll be getting a better condition card back. This is the first time I've received a letter like this with a replacement shipment. They usually include their form letter with the rules for the damaged card replacement program.

Do you interpret this the same way I do? I'm curious to see if anyone else has received the same letter from Topps and how their replacement experience went. Drop a comment below.

Topps Chrome Baseball Wrapper Redemption Mail Day!

2010-12-04T15:27:00.002-05:00

I sure was happy to see these arrive in the mail today. I kept seeing results of breaks on all the bulletin boards and was starting to get impatient. I sent two cases worth of wrappers, so I received 24 packs.

Topps sends them in a large manila envelope with a smaller padded envelope inside that contains the packs. They're definitely packaged to prevent damage. The cards overall are in great shape. There are some flaws, but nothing major. The really nice thing about these cards is that they're flat! The chrome curl doesn't exist on these. The centering is nice for the most part as well.

24 packs should yield 4 complete sets, 2 green refractor packs and two other random packs. Well, that's exactly what I received. The bonus for me was that the two random packs both were the packs that contain Buster Posey. As you can see from the picture, I also received Buster Posey as one of my green refractors. I'm really happy with the results.

4 - Babe Ruth
4 - Lou Gehrig
4 - Jackie Robinson
4 - Ty Cobb
1 - Ty Cobb Green Refractor
6 - Mickey Mantle
1 - Mickey Mantle Green Refractor
6 - Buster Posey
1 - Buster Posey Green Refractor
6 - Ike Davis
1 - Ike Davis Green Refractor
4 - Stephen Strasburg
4 - Mike Stanton
4 - Jason Heyward
4 - Carlos Santana
4 - Mike Leake
1 - Mike Leake Green Refractor
4 - Austin Jackson
1 - Austin Jackson Green Refractor
4 - Tyler Colvin
4 - Starlin Castro

2008 Donruss Elite Extra Edition Break - 3 Boxes

2010-12-04T09:38:00.003-05:00

I got these from the Blowout Cards Black Friday sale. This was the one product I was really hoping they would offer at a good price, and they didn't let me down. They put it on sale a couple times during the day for $40 per box.

The break was a lot of fun, yielding 14 total autographs from the three boxes. I was obviously chasing the big names - Buster Posey, Domonic Brown and Mike Stanton. Sadly, none of those appeared from the packs. I did pull a Gordon Beckham, but it's a couple years too late on that one.

I feel like I've sorted cards for days...

2010-11-27T10:17:00.003-05:00

I literally just finished putting together sets from my 2010 Topps Update jumbo case. Everyone said you'd 5-6 base sets and that was exactly right. I was 16 cards short of the sixth base set, I'll pick those up on sportlots.com. The master set was a different story, I was way short of that. I had to pick up somewhere between 40 and 50 insert cards to complete that. I was able to pick all of those up on sportlots.com for just under $30.

All in all, I'd say it took me between 6 and 7 hours to put these sets together. I think the next time I buy a case like this I'll put cards in order as I open them, as lame as that sounds. I just can't stand sitting down at a table for hours on end sorting cards. Anyway, the picture below shows the aftermath of the sorting.

Awesome Mail Day!

2010-11-24T17:09:00.002-05:00

I came home from work today and was greeted by a mailbox full of padded envelopes. I got a few orders from Sportlots.com filled with 2010 Topps Update inserts to complete my master set. The rest were full of prospects that I'm collecting. Here is the list followed by the pictures.

BGS 9.5 2010 Donruss Elite Extra Edition Status Signatures Stetson Allie 29/50
2009 Bowman Sterling WBC Game Jersey Gold Refractor Liam Hendriks 07/50
2010 Bowman Chrome Refractor Autographs Liam Hendriks 277/500
2009 Upper Deck USA 18U Autographs Nick Castellanos - Lot of 11

Interesting note about the Castellanos lot, you'll notice he added his number to two of his signatures. I'm not sure if that would command a premium or not down the road.

2010 Topps Baseball Update Jumbo Case Break

2010-11-21T11:39:00.000-05:00

You really get a lot of of cards out these cases. Wow! I mean that in a good way as it's a really fun break and prices are incredibly reasonable on these right now. I picked up my case last week for $355.

Topps did a great job this year with their core baseball product. The insert sets were all really cool and the Million Card Giveaway was the best hobby promotion ever created. These jumbo cases are loaded with inserts and the really cool bat barrel cards. You also have the chance at the always popular SP veteran base variations that seem to run 3 to 4 per jumbo case. Of course, the black and gold parallel cards are there as well. One last bonus is the Topps Chrome Rookie Box Toppers.

I beat the odds on this case. You're supposed to receive one autograph and two memorabilia cards per box. I ended up with seven autographs, one being a redemption, so you could argue that I got six autographs. I also ended up with seven bat barrel cards which are supposed to fall one per box. The seventh bat barrel replaced one of my All-Star jersey cards, which I only got five of. I also got two silk cards and two black parallels. The case only yielded four of the original back CYMTO cards.

I've read that you can make six base sets out of a jumbo case. I'm assuming that's true as I got six of the #661 Stephen Strasburg rookies. I'm not so sure about completing a master set. I got a lot of doubles in the Turkey Red and CYMTO sets. I'll report back after I've had time to sort all of these cards. I don't know how I'd manage breaking multiple cases of this stuff.

I picked up by BGS shipment this morning

2010-11-20T09:45:00.001-05:00

Here are the scans as promised. I'm really happy with the grades.

2010 Bowman Chrome Baseball Retail Box Break

2010-11-19T19:14:00.005-05:00

I know, you're already asking yourself before reading this, why did this guy get a retail box of 2010 Bowman Chrome Baseball? Well, I didn't just buy a box, I bought three cases. I pre-ordered these back in July for a really good price, well before Strasburg got hurt and the price plummeted. It was also long before I knew how bad the odds would be on the retail packs. I had faith that Topps would continue to release retail products with decent odds as they've been doing for a couple years. The odds are horrendous on retail this year. Pulling a prospect autograph, which are one per box in hobby, are 1:191 packs in retail. Even pulling a prospect or USA non-autographed refractor are 1:110 packs. Just insane!

I decided I'd open one box before I started selling these off a box a time. The first thing I noticed after opening a couple packs was that the top card in each pack was scratched. Scratched actually puts it mildly, more like gouged. They look like someone ran a nail down the front of each card. I have 24 like this, one for each pack in the box. I already sent them all back to Topps for replacement. The good news is that the other two cards in each pack were free of defects.

Enough of the bad news. As I started ripping packs I started getting good cards, defying the odds on the back of the packs. I first pulled Jason Heyward and Carlos Santana rookie refractors (1:6 packs). The next card that came was a Corban Joseph Autographed Prospect Blue Refractor (1:2,850 packs). I would have been happy at this point if nothing else came out of the box. Next came the A.J. Vanegas Team USA Autographed Refractor (1:1,620 packs) and an Andrew Cashner Gold Refractor rookie (1:837 packs). Amazing!

I figured this box was all a fluke but decided to open one more to be sure. I was right, nothing came out of the next box other than the four expected regular refractors and a couple purple refractors. The box did yield a Stephen Strasburg base rookie as well as a Jason Heyward and a Starlin Castro. I decided to stop at that point as I realized I had simply run into a hot retail box with that first one.

Hopefully this information is somewhat helpful to people reading. My advice - go with hobby boxes as they're down around $40 per box now and you're guaranteed an autograph per box. Don't count on being as lucky as I was with that first box of retail.

My Friend's Amazing Topps Chrome Football Value Rack Break

2010-11-16T20:39:00.002-05:00

I just got this picture in my email and couldn't believe it. My buddy Bill presumably stopped at Target or Wal-Mart tonight and bought a single value rack of 2010 Topps Chrome Football. We should all have this luck. Congrats Bill!

eBay Rant

2010-11-16T19:56:00.006-05:00

Why do people win auctions and not pay for them? I've never understood this and never will. Every time I win an auction I'm genuinely excited to add the card to my collection and pay for it immediately. The only exception is if I win something while I'm asleep or out of town. My payments may take up to 12 hours in those cases, never longer.

I got a message from a buyer tonight that made me laugh. The buyer paid today for an auction that ended on November 4th, that's twelve days from auction end to payment. The total including shipping was $12.16. The buyer had the audacity to leave me this message after they paid - "I am very, very Sorry for the delay. Thank you for the great card. Please lmk when you ship it, I need this by Sunday for a Birthday present. Thank you again"

You've got to be kidding me, right? You wait twelve days to pay and then ask for the item to be sent right away!? Of course, I'm going to send the card tomorrow because I also ship all items that I sell promptly. In cases like this I opt to not leave any feedback for the buyer. I won't leave a negative because they did end up paying, but I'm certainly not going to leave a positive either.

The Results Of My Latest BGS Submission

2010-11-16T19:50:00.000-05:00

I took advantage of the great 10-10-10 deal Beckett Grading had last month. It was 10 cards for $10 each on 10-day service. I had just opened some 2007-08 and 2008-09 Upper Deck Hockey and a case of 2010 Topps Chrome Baseball. I also had a couple cards from recent eBay purchases that looked good enough to send. You'll see below that did really well evaluating my cards. I was hoping for at least one pristine but that didn't happen. I guess you can't complain when 9 out of 10 come back gem mint.

Retro Break - 2000 Fleer E-X Baseball

2010-11-15T19:46:00.003-05:00

It feels funny to say "retro" when referring to a box from 2002, but that's really how it felt opening this box and pulling cards of players from that year. Aramis Ramirez was still on the Pirates!

I purchased this box on eBay for $37 shipped. The allure of pulling some really great low numbered inserts was too hard to resist for that price. The Fleer (Skybox) E-X brand always seems to be most popular with basketball collectors. Low numbered Michael Jordan cards from this brand always sell for big bucks. I decided to roll the dice and hope for something comparable in the baseball line.

I was guaranteed three game used cards out of this box. There aren't any autographed cards in the set. You can also pull a low numbered Essential Credentials Now or Essential Credentials Future card. The first hit I pulled was a Tom Glavine Essential Credentials Future numbered 015/110. The second hit I pulled was a Jose Video Hit & Run bat card. The third hit I pulled was a Behind The Numbers Ivan Rodriguez game worn jersey card. The fourth hit I pulled was a Essential Credentials Now Jason Giambi game used base card numbered 05/46. I also pulled two no-name nEXt Prospect cards numbered to 2499 and 2999 respectively.

The Glavine and Giambi cards would have been really nice hits back in 2002. I still have a feeling there are some player collectors out there that will pay some decent money for these cards. I think I'll mail both off to CheckOutMyCards.com and add them to my account.

All in all, this was a really fun break. The anticipation of pulling the low numbered inserts was great. I'd definitely buy another one of these for the same price to take another crack at some nice rare inserts.

Missing Hit Replacement Has Arrived From Topps

2010-11-13T12:53:00.003-05:00

I was happy to see an envelope in the mail from Topps today. It was too small to be my Red Hot Rookie Redemptions. It was way too small to be my Topps Chrome Redemption packs. The only thing left could be the replacement for my missing autograph hit in my 12th box from my 2010 Topps Chrome Baseball case.

I wasn't expecting much, even though a small part of me was holding out hope for a Strasburg. Well, as you can see, it ended up being Wilson Ramos. Ramos is a nice catching prospect that was blocked from making the bigs in Minnesota by Joe Mauer. The Twins traded Ramos to the Washington Nationals late last season. Ramos should get a chance to play in DC very soon.

I opened my missing autograph claim with Topps

2010-10-31T12:34:00.003-04:00

For those of you that watched my box break #12 video the other day you'll know why I'm opening this claim with Topps. I sent the email this morning and got a claim number back less than an hour later. The email stated that I would receive a response within 2 business days. I'll keep you guys posted on any progress.

For those that don't know, Topps has made it very easy to report missing hits. You no longer have to mail anything to them, you can just email all the necessary items. It's all explained in the video below.

2010 Topps Chrome Football Value Rack Break - 5 Racks

2010-10-31T09:54:00.006-04:00

I thought that the 2010 Topps Chrome Baseball case I broke last week would feed the beast until my 2010 Bowman Chrome Baseball cases arrive this week. Wrong, I went out to Wal-Mart this morning in search of 2010 Topps Chrome Football value racks. The first Wal-Mart I hit had plenty, but the orange refractors had obviously been searched. I went to a different Wal-Mart and they had five that showed no signs of searching.

Most of my nice pulls to date on this product have come from the orange refractors so I didn't want anyone breaking my streak. This break was different, the biggest hit came from the retail packs. There aren't any odds of the back of the pack for this pull but I can imagine it's pretty rare in retail. The pull was a Bowman Chrome Refractor of Jimmy Clausen numbered 08/99. There weren't any other great pulls this time. I did pull an orange refractor of Jahvid Best as well as a base rookie of him, Sam Bradford and Ryan Mathews. Pictures of the better cards below.

Scans from the 2010 Topps Chrome Baseball Case Break

2010-10-29T15:24:00.005-04:00

AUTOGRAPHS

RED, GOLD and BLUE NON-INSERT REFRACTORS

REGULAR REFRACTORS

REGULAR AND BLUE INSERT REFRACTORS

KEY BASE ROOKIES

2010 Topps Chrome Baseball Case Break

2010-10-28T23:38:00.002-04:00

I purchased this case from Blowout Cards. I'd like to thank them for the great deal and quick shipping.

I don't know if you can make it through all of these break videos, just make sure you watch Box 12, it's tragic! I'll post scans in the coming days so you don't have to watch all of these.

2010 Topps Chrome Baseball Value Pack Break

2010-10-24T09:35:00.005-04:00

I went to Wal-Mart this morning to pick up some random stuff. I had no intention of purchasing cards, I swear, but what kind of person would I be if I didn't just take a peek at the selection? To date, I've not been able to find any substantial amount of 2010 Topps Chrome Baseball value racks. I'd had no problem finding football but baseball had eluded me. There was a full hook this morning so I grabbed four of them.

The offering is exactly the same as the football version. Each rack comes with three retail packs of 2010 Topps Chrome Baseball (4 cards per pack) and one bonus pack of three orange refractors. The price is $8.95 per rack, just like football.

Every break that I've read online speaks of the poor quality of Topps Chrome Baseball this year. I can confirm these claims. The first thing I noticed was the curve of the retail packs. All the cards have the familiar chrome curve to them, but worse than usual. Football didn't seem to have this problem, at least not this bad. The surface defects of the cards I've reading about is there too. There are lines, scratches and dimples on the surface of at least half the cards. I can handle refractor lines, they've always been around. The scratches and dimples are just poor quality control by Topps. The centering on some of these cards is pretty bad too.

On to more important things, the cards. I think I did really well on the orange refractors. The highlights were Mickey Mantle, Carlos Santana, Starlin Castro, Ike Davis and Joe Mauer. In the retail packs I didn't fair as well, the highlight was a Stephen Strasburg. I also pulled four refractors and four x-fractors. Check out all of the pictures below as well as the pack odds.

Speaking of the pack odds, I did find my refractor pulls from the retail packs a bit strange. Odds for refractors and x-fractors are 1:3. I pulled four of each in twelve total packs, clearly beating the odds. Purple refractors are 1:12 but I did not receive one of those. I pretty much saw these same rates in the football value packs too.

07-08 UD Hockey Series 2 Box Break - Sometimes You're Lucky

2010-10-22T18:58:00.004-04:00

I got a really great deal on some 2007-2008 Upper Deck Series 2 Hockey retail boxes on eBay this week. The UPS man came through and delivered them so I have something to open over the weekend. I love when that happens.

2007-2008 Upper Deck Series 2 Hockey has one great Young Guns rookie card, Jonathan Toews. That card is the only reason I bought the boxes. Tuuka Rask has a rookie in here too, nice card, but not what I'm looking for. The Rookie Materials jersey cards are nice too, but again, not what I'm looking for.

I couldn't stop myself from opening a box right when I got home. I'm sure you know where this is going... I ended up pulling a Jonathan Toews Young Guns rookie in the first box. Awesome! Each pack comes with an Upper Deck Victory Update card inside, pulled a Toews rookie from those too. My jersey card (1:24) was a Rookie Materials of Andrew Cogliano. Cogliano isn't a great one but I'd rather get a Rookie Materials than a Game Jersey card. The other five Young Guns and the various inserts aren't worth mentioning.

Now, the question, should I open the other three boxes that I bought or store them away? I got the one card that I wanted.

2010 Topps Chrome Football Value Rack Pack Break

2010-10-15T20:57:00.004-04:00

I stopped by Target tonight in search of 2010 Topps Chrome Football value rack packs. I've been reading about the great breaks on the forums and it got me excited to go buy some. Luckily, there were three racks left and I snatched them up. There were no shortage of blaster boxes but that wasn't what I was in search of tonight.

Each value rack pack comes with three 4-card retail packs and one 3-card orange refractor pack. The special orange refractor pack is obviously the allure of these packs. The cost for one of the racks is $8.99. That's a bargain in my mind.

I'll list below how many of each type of card I received in the three racks combined. I've included scans of the best cards below, I think I did pretty well. I've also included a scan of the odds from the back of the rack pack.

Orange Refractors: 9
X-Fractors: 2
Refractors: 2
Bowman Chrome Rookie: 2
Legendary Lineage: 3
Rookie Base: 16
Veteran Base: 11

Demaryius Thomas Mail Day

2010-09-30T20:07:00.003-04:00

I'm a Broncos fan. It's been a tough go since Josh McDaniels became head coach. Jay Cutler, Brandon Marshall and Tony Scheffler all were traded away after having differences with McDaniels. For that reason, the offense was entering the season with only two skill players to be excited about, in my opinion, Eddie Royal and Knowshon Moreno. The rest of the skill players are cast-off's from other teams.

Well, this is what I thought before seeing Demaryius Thomas play. In his first game against Seattle he had 8 catches for 97 yards and a touchdown. Last week against Indianapolis he only caught two balls but made the most of them going for 43 yards. He's a big, strong kid that looks to have all the skills needed to excel in the NFL.

I knew that I had to pick up at least a couple cards of his as soon as I watched the Seattle game. I opted to go for his 2010 Topps Rookie Variation and his 2010 Topps Platinum Autograph. Both cards only set me back just over $20 combined. I'm pretty happy with both deals.

On a side note, I love Topps Platinum Football. It was fun product to break last year and it remains as fun this year. The card design on the autographs is fantastic and some of the patches I've seen on eBay are amazing. I'd highly recommend breaking a box or a blaster of this stuff if you're looking to open up some football.

2010 Topps Red Hot Rookie Redemption #10 is Brett Wallace

2010-09-28T20:16:00.003-04:00

Well, how's that for timing? Just last night I posted about this redemption and today it was announced. I swear that I didn't have any inside information. If I did, I wouldn't have purchased two additional #10 redemption cards the day before if I had known it was going to be Brett Wallace.

Don't get me wrong, I think Brett Wallace is going to to be a solid big league player. I lived in Phoenix, AZ for a couple years and saw Wallace play for Arizona State. I liked him then and I still do. He's had just over 100 at-bats with the Astros this year, hitting just .215 in that time.

The strange thing about Wallace is his path to the big leagues. He was drafted by the Cardinals 13th overall in the 2008 draft. He rose quickly through the ranks in the minors, by July 2009 he was already in AAA. This is just about the time the Cardinals decided they needed a bat for a playoff run and traded Wallace to the A's on July 24, 2009 as the key part of their package for Matt Holliday. He lasted just under five months in the A's organization before was traded to Toronto for prospect Michael Taylor. Strange enough yet? Wait, there's more. Just over one year after joining the Toronto organization, he was traded to Houston for prospect Anthony Gose. Wallace was assigned to AAA for one day and then was immediately called up to the Astros after Lance Berkman was traded to the Yankees.

Whew, back to the redemption cards. I have three #10 redemptions. Only 10% of the cards redeemed are going to be autographed. I'm hoping that at least one of my three will turn up autographed. I'm going to redeem a full set tonight so I'll report back with my results.

2010 Topps Red Hot Rookie Redemption #10

2010-09-27T20:15:00.004-04:00

I've never participated in the Red Hot Rookie Redemption in past years. I've always just sold any redemption card that I had before the player was announced. This year is different. The rookie crop this season is so strong that I couldn't resist putting together a set of these.

The assumption is that the 10th card will be the autographed card. Last year had Gordon Beckham (only 10% signed), 2008 had Jay Bruce and Evan Longoria.

I purchased #1-9 on eBay and sportlots.com. I got my #10 from a hobby box of 2010 Topps Series 2 that I purchased. I really don't have much money in my set. That being said, the excitement of the pending announcement got the best of me today and I purchased two more #10's for $15 each on eBay.

Are you anxiously awaiting the announcement like I am? If so, who are you hoping for?

2 Wal-Mart Topps Value Box Break

2010-09-25T12:24:00.003-04:00

I didn't specifically go to Wal-Mart for cards this morning but couldn't resist checking them out. I bought two of the $15 Topps Value Boxes. They had about six of them and none appeared searched. I've read on some of the forums that people will shake the boxes to expose the refractor card. You'll see from the picture below that this obviously hasn't happened at my Wal-Mart.

Each value box comes with one hobby pack of 2010 Allen & Ginter, six retail packs of Topps Series 2 Baseball, one Million Card Giveaway code card and a Topps Chrome Refractor of either Stephen Strasburg, Cal Ripken Jr. or Babe Ruth.

I did pretty well, the better cards pictured below. I got a lot of inserts from the Topps Series 2 packs but nothing really of note. I was surprised to get hits in both Ginter packs, as minor as they are. It was nice to get an extra code card from the 12 Topps packs as well.

Lenny Wilkens TTM Success

2009-12-07T22:28:00.001-05:00

Date Sent: 11/8/2009
Date received: 11/27/2009

This is the second TTM return I've received from Lenny Wilkens. He's a very generous TTM signer. I got a nice surprise this time with the addition of the "HOF 89,98" inscription on the card. This is not something I asked for, just a very nice addition by him.

Wilkens is one of only three people to go into the Hall of Fame as a player and a coach. John Wooden and Bill Sharman are the other two. I already have a Wooden autograph via TTM. I'll have to get a Sharman request out in the next couple weeks.

Wilkens also won a NBA Championship as a head coach and a gold medal as an assistant coach on the 2002 USA Mens Basketball Olympic team. He has quite an impressive list of accomplishments on his resume.

This return is one of the reasons that I encourage people to take up TTM autographs. All it takes is a couple stamps, some cards you won't miss if they don't come back and patience.

Replacement Cards From Topps

2009-12-06T17:29:00.006-05:00

If you all remember, a few weeks ago I opened a case of 2009 Bowman Chrome Football. Well, in the very first box I got 10 extremely off-centered cards. So off-centered that you could see the name from the other card it was cut from.

I've never sent anything back to a card company for replacement but I thought I'd take a shot with some cards that I don't care about. None of these were rookies, just semi stars or commons.

It only took three weeks for my replacements to arrive from Topps. Thanksgiving was right in the middle of that too. I had honestly forgotten about mailing them back when the envelope arrived. As you'll see from the scan, they're packaged in a little box and there was some foam on top of that protecting the cards.

I'm also including a scan of the letter they sent with the cards explaining their replacement policy. Hopefully someone will find this helpful. Click on the letter picture for a bigger version.

Has anyone noticed the centering problems with this product? Out of the whole case I think I only sent 12 cards to be graded. Most of the cards I chose not to send had centering issues. Some had surface lines.

2007 Playoff Absolute Memorabilia Football Box Break

2009-12-01T20:09:00.004-05:00

My insane amount of orders from the Blowout Cards Black Friday Sale came in today. I just recorded a box break of my 2007 Playoff Absolute Memorabilia Football box.

Thanks again to Blowout for the sale. I got a lot of really good deals and they still met their usual turnaround time for shipping. Amazing.

1986 Fleer Basketball Wax Box on eBay

2009-11-30T21:58:00.004-05:00

The greatest modern day wax box, 1986 Fleer Basketball, is up for sale on eBay. There can't be too many of these out there anymore, at least that are legit.

I took a look at the sellers feedback and sales history. The feedback is solid and the past sales are all for vintage wax and old sports programs. I'd say that the seller seems very reputable.

What would you do with a box like this? I know that I wouldn't be able to. There will never be another box from the modern era that will be as desired and highly valued as this. To me, it's just too rare to open. Can you imagine opening it and getting a wax stained Jordan?

View the auction here.

Mark Sanchez TTM Success?

2009-11-29T09:29:00.001-05:00

Date sent: 11/8/09
Date received: 11/27/09

I'm not really sure if this is a success or not. The signature shows some similarities to his certified autograph cards but it's not exact. I've compared mine to all the other ones with pictures on sportscollectors.net and it looks similar with one big difference, it's not stamped. All the other recent returns have been obvious stamps, as you'll see in the pictures below. They also all have the personalization in all caps, my name is lower case. I'm thinking since it matches the stamp so closely that it has a chance of being real. You certainly wouldn't have a stamp made of a fake autograph. What are the odds that Sanchez already has a ghost signer and he/she was out of ink for the stamp?

Let me know what you guys think. I'm curious to see some opinions on this one.

Stamped TTM Returns

My TTM return and a certifed autograph

Target Half Price Blaster Saturday - 2008 Bowman Football

2009-11-28T09:43:00.003-05:00

I know what you're thinking, how could I be buying blasters when I bought all that stuff at the Blowout Cards Black Friday Sale yesterday. Well, trust me, I thought the same thing. Although, the cards from Blowout won't arrive until Tuesday at the earliest. So this purchase is justified... right?

Anyway, I went to Target specifically looking for 50% off blasters. I wasn't going to buy anything that was full price today. I settled on two blasters of 2008 Bowman Football because the only other choices were 2008 Upper Deck Heroes Football and 2008 Upper Deck Series 2 Baseball. I've been on a football kick lately so I figured I'd stick with it. I also needed to see if the two 2008 Bowman Football Hobby boxes I got from Blowout are worth opening.

To my surprise, the "One Authentic Memorabilia Card" they mention on the front of the box is a 2008 Topps Rookie Premiere Jersey card. I just figured it would be a jersey card from the 2008 Bowman set. As you'll see below, I did very well on these. I got a Matt Ryan and a Joe Flacco. I can't complain about that at all.

As for the rest of the cards, nothing exciting. You basically get two Bowman rookies, one Bowman base, one Bowman Gold and one Bowman Chrome rookie per pack. I also ended with two Bowman Blue cards, each numbered to 500. The best card I got out of all of that was a Tim Hightower Bowman Chrome rookie. There really wasn't anything else exciting. I thought it was really funny that one of my Bowman Blue cards was Tony Sparano. I didn't know they made coach cards in this set.

The Bowman/Bowman Chrome design is boring to me. The Bowman singles have black borders and many of them have chipping straight out of the pack. I'd have been very disappointed with the condition if I'd paid full price. Bottom line, I'm not a fan of this product at all and won't be opening the boxes from Blowout. Those will be Christmas gifts or eBay items.

Blowout Cards Black Friday Purchases

2009-11-27T13:07:00.008-05:00

The Blowout Cards Black Friday sale is still going strong but I figured I'd post my purchases to this point.

2 - 2008 Upper Deck Goudey Baseball Retail Box @ $11.27 ea.
6 - 2008 Topps Football Fat Pack Box @ $9.99 ea.
3 - 2008 Leaf Rookies & Stars Football Retail Box @ $9.99 ea.
2 - 2003 Upper Deck Prospect Premieres Baseball Hobby Box @ $29.95 ea.
1 - 2007 Playoff Absolute Memorabilia Football Hobby Box @74.95 ea.
2 - 2008 Topps Series 1 Baseball Jumbo HTA Box @ $11.27 ea.
1 - 2007 Topps Triple Threads Football Hobby Box @ $119.95 ea.
1 - 2007 Bowman Chrome Football Hobby Box @ $11.27 ea.
2 - 2008 Bowman Football Hobby Box @ $11.27 ea.
2 - 2007 Leaf Limited Football hobby Box @ $59.95 ea.
2 - 2007 Upper USA Nationals Team Baseball Box Set @ $42.90 ea.

I love that they're putting a lot of 2007 Football products on sale. Adrian Peterson rookies are fun to go after.

Head on over to their site before the sale is over. They're doing an amazing job of posting a huge variety of products at amazing prices. Thank you Blowout!

Allen & Ginter George Washington DNA Relic Hits eBay

2009-11-24T22:27:00.004-05:00

One of a supposed three 2007 Allen & Ginter George Washington DNA Strand of Hair Relics has surfaced on eBay.

The seller claims that one of these sold for between $30,000 - $40,000 in a private auction. I never heard that and find it hard to believe. It will be very interesting to keep an eye on this and see what it gets up to. The seller has a reserve so my bet is that bidding never reaches that amount.

Either way, it's an amazing card and one that's rarely ever seen. I cannot imagine the rush of pulling something like this from a pack. It would certainly make up for a lifetime of bad box breaks.

Link to the auction here

Cameron Maybin TTM Success

2009-11-23T20:43:00.005-05:00

Date sent: 3/4/09
Date received: 10/30/09

This is another recent TTM return that I had pretty much written off. I sent it way back during spring training. On top of that, Maybin carries a 12% success rate for members of sportscollectors.net.

I'm not sure what made my request stand out but I got it back and I couldn't be happier.

I've followed Maybin ever since he was part of the trade that sent Miguel Cabrera and Dontrelle Willis to the Tigers. I'd heard that Maybin was the key to the deal for the Marlins. I wondered what made this kid so special so I kept an eye on him. He's yet to live up to his 5-tool can't miss potential but he's still only 22 years old.

Maybin made the team last year out of spring training but the Marlins sent him down to AAA in early May as he was batting .2o2. They brought him back up on September 1st and he remained on the team through the final game. In that time he raised his batting average to .250 and hit three home runs.

Hopefully Maybin will make the Marlins out of spring training again and stick around for the whole season.

Half Price Target Blaster Sunday

2009-11-22T11:43:00.002-05:00

You'd think with all the stuff that I've opened lately that I'd be content. Well, that's just not the case so I headed to a couple Target stores this morning. I picked up five blasters of 2008 Upper Deck Football. They're part of the 50% off boxes so they were only $9.99 each. That comes out to $1.00 per pack and you're guaranteed a jersey card. I'll take those odds.

You get two Star Rookies per pack so you end up with 20 rookies per box. It's a very large set of rookies. There are 100 in the base set and then 25 more in the SP set. You also have the chance to pull the Target exclusive Star Rookies. All in all, I got one SP rookie and three Target Star Rookies out of the five boxes. Luckily, the SP was Desean Jackson and on of the Target Star Rookies was Joe Flacco. From the base rookies the highlights were two Flacco, two Forte, two Mendenhall and one Chris Johnson. You get one Starquest card per pack as well. You end up with all sorts of color as there are five different colors in that set.

Here's how I did:

UD Rookie Jersey (4)
Ray Rice Gold /350
Limas Sweed Gold /350
Desean Jackson
Jordy Nelson

Team Colors Jersey (1)
Philip Rivers Gold /299

Target Exlusive Rookies (3)
Joe Flacco
Antoine Cason
Kenny Phillips

SP Rookie Card (1)
Desean Jackson

Masterpieces Preview (2)
Franco Harris

Starquest (50, one per pack)
Check the pics below for the highlights.

2009 Bowman Chrome Football Case Break - Boxes #7, 8, 9 and 10

2009-11-21T16:13:00.004-05:00

In a word, ugh. This case was definitely a disappointment. The biggest disappointment had to be getting doubles of autographed rookies twice. I ended up with two Nate Davis and two Andre Brown. Obviously had they been two Mark Sanchez and two Knowshon Moreno I wouldn't be complaining.

I gathered up the cards that were worth grading and sent them off to BGS today to take advantage of their half price grading special. I was surprised how many of the cards had scratches or lines on the surface. I had to hold a few back because of that, most notably the Mark Sanchez refractor.

I was able to put together two complete sets. I'll be putting those up on eBay unless someone reading is interested. They've been going in the $40 range on eBay so that's what I was hoping to get. Leave a comment if you want one.

I also got ten severely off-centered cards in one of my boxes. Luckily none of them were rookies or cards of any value. I mailed them back to Topps just to see if they'll replace them. I've never sent damaged cards for replacement so I figured I'd give it a shot.

Here are the last four boxes:

Box 7

Autographed Rookie: Brandon Tate

Box Topper: Donald Brown Silver

Gold Refractor: Jason Smith RC

Green Refractor: James Davis RC

Xfractor: Mike Thomas RC, Lamarr Woodley

Refractors: Johnny Knox RC, Joseph Addai, Matt Cassell, Felix Jones

Notable Rookies: Kenny Britt, LeSean McCoy, Matthew Stafford, Knowshon Moreno, Darrius Heyward-Bey

Box 8

Autographed Rookie: Brian Hartline Orange Refractor!

Box Topper: Louis Murphy Silver

Gold Refractor: Oshiomogho Atogwe

Xfractor: LeSean McCoy RC, Matt Ryan

Refractors: Brian Robiskie RC, Shonn Greene RC, Warrick Dunn, Braylon Edwards, Fred Taylor

Notable Rookies: Mark Sanchez, Percy Harvin, Jeremy Maclin, Hakeem Nicks, Donald Brown, Johnny Knox, Chris Wells

Box 9

Autographed Rookie: Johnny Knox

Box Topper: Mohamed Massaquoi Bronze

Green Refractor: Calvin Johnson

Blue Refractor: Brandon Tate RC

Xfractor: Laveranues Coles

Refractors: Tyson Jackson RC, Randy Moss, Jared Allen, Marshawn Lynch

Notable Rookies: Michael Crabtree

Box 10

Autographed Rookie: Andre Brown (case starts and ends with him)

Box Topper: Tom Brandstater Bronze

Blue Refractor: Frank Gore, Fred Taylor

Xfractor: Jared Allen

Refractors: Brandon Gibson RC, Trent Edwards, Marc Bulger, Jay Cutler

Notable Rookies: Mark Sanchez, Percy Harvin, Jeremy Maclin, Hakeem Nicks, Donald Brown, Johnny Knox, Chris Wells

2009 Bowman Chrome Football Case Break - Boxes #4, 5 and 6

2009-11-20T17:25:00.002-05:00

Well, things turned around a bit on these three boxes. The highlights were the Jeremy Maclin Blue Refractor Autograph the Brian Orakpo Orange Refractor and the Mark Sanchez Refractor. The low point was the second Nate Davis autograph in six boxes. We'll see how the last four boxes go tomorrow.

Box 4

Autographed Rookie: Jeremy Maclin Blue Refractor

Box Topper: Austin Collie Bronze

Gold Refractor: Bernard Berrian

Blue Refractor: Matt Ryan

Xfractor: James Davis RC, Jason Witten

Refractors: Derrick Williams RC, Mohamed Massaquoi RC, Willis McGahee, Maurice Jones-Drew, Derek Anderson

Notable Rookies: LeSean McCoy, Chris Wells, Darrius Heyward-Bey, Kenny Britt, Knowshon Moreno, Matthew Stafford

Box 5

Autographed Rookie: Nate Davis

Box Topper: Brian Robiskie Bronze

Gold Refractor: Dwayne Bowe

Blue Refractor: Reggie Bush

Xfractor: Steve Slaton

Refractors: Mark Sanchez RC, Carson Palmer, Chad Pennington, Greg Jennings

Notable Rookies: Michael Crabtree

Box 6

Autographed Rookie: Curtis Painter

Box Topper: Kenny Britt Silver

Orange Refractor: Brian Orakpo RC

Green Refractor: Darren McFadden

Xfractor: Malcolm Jenkins RC, Matt Cassell

Refractors: Brian Cushing RC, Rhett Bomar RC, Greg Camarillo, Terrell Owens, Michael Turner

Notable Rookies: Michael Crabtree

2009 Bowman Chrome Football Case Break - Boxes #2 and 3

2009-11-19T19:14:00.003-05:00

Here are boxes 2 and 3 from my 2009 Bowman Chrome Football case break. They got a bit better than the first box but still not great. It was nice to see some rookie refractors and some good base rookies in the third box. If the autographs continue to be like this then the case will be a bust.

BOX 2

Autographed Rookie: Nate Davis

Box Topper: Knowshon Moreno Bronze

Gold Refractor: Eddie Royal

Blue Refractor: Steven Jackson, Lee Evans

Xfractor: Shonn Greene RC

Refractors: Ramses Barden RC, Lamarr Woodley, Joey Porter, Tim Hightower

Notable Rookies: Michael Crabtree

BOX 3

Autographed Rookie: Austin Collie

Box Topper: Glen Coffee Bronze

Green Refractor: Tyson Jackson RC

Blue Refractor: Aaron Curry RC

Xfractor: Clinton Portis

Refractors: Jeremy Maclin RC, Derrick Mason, DeMarcus Ware

Notable Rookies: Mark Sanchez, Percy Harvin, Jeremy Maclin, Hakeem Nicks, Donald Brown, Johnny Knox

2009 Bowman Chrome Football Case Break - Box #1

2009-11-18T19:48:00.006-05:00

Over the next few days I'll be breaking a case of 2009 Bowman Chrome Football (purchased from Blowout Cards). I'll post the results of the boxes as I get to them. From what I've seen so far these are pretty hit and miss. There are so many rookies in this set that it would be really easy to miss on an entire case.

Unfortunately, I missed on the first box. I did get what seems like a lot of refractors. Too bad none of them were overly exciting. Here are the results:

Autographed Rookie: Andre Brown

Box Topper: B.J. Raji Bronze

Gold Refractor: DeMarcus Ware

Blue Refractor: Santana Moss

Xfractor: Kenny McKinley RC, Joey Porter, John Carlson, T.J. Houshmandzadeh

Refractors: Brandon Tate RC, Brandon Gibson RC

Notable Rookies: LeSean McCoy, Johnny Knox, Hakeem Nicks, Darrius Heyward-Bey

2008 Allen & Ginter Hobby Break - Red Autograph

2009-11-17T21:56:00.003-05:00

I've never opened a box of Allen & Ginter before. I've always liked the way they looked but never got around to buying a box. Well, last weekend I broke down and purchased a box of 2008 Allen & Ginter.

My first impression was the odd shape of the box. It looked more like a box of crackers than a box of baseball cards. Anyway, once I opened the first pack I loved the product. The cards look great and they're perfect for autographs. I'm a big TTM autograph collector so a lot of these will be going out in the mail.

Enough talk, here are the cards that I got:

Mini Baseball Icons (1)
Rogers Hornsby

Mini Black (3)
Marie Curie
Andrew "William Ocean" Litz
Greg Smith

Mini World Leaders (2)
Qaboos Bin Said Al-Said
Robert Fico

Regular Mini High # (1)
Bengie Molina

Mini A&G Back (17)
Mickey Mantle
16 others. Is it normal to get so many?

Relics
Matt Kemp
Carlos Marmol

World's Greatest Victories (1)
The American Revolution

Base SP's (12)

Notable Base Cards
Evan Longoria RC
Jay Bruce RC

I was thinking with a few packs left that I got some cool stuff but the box just didn't have enough bang for the buck. I really went into this hoping to get a Mini Bazooka Back. Much to my dismay, I did not end up with one. Instead, I got a Red Ink Autograph of Rampage Jackson numbered 6/10. I don't watch MMA but I've heard of Jackson. I know that this has to be a popular card but I really have no idea what the value is. One of the regular versions sold on eBay for $51 so this one has to be fairly valuable.

Bottom line: Topps has made a fan out of me. This is a really fun break. The relics looks great and I love the idea of all the mini parallels. I'll be purchasing another box in the future.

Awesome Josh Hamilton TTM Success

2009-11-17T18:36:00.000-05:00

Date sent: 2/28/09
Date received: 11/7/09

I wasn't sure that I'd get this item back or not. Josh Hamilton has a great track record for TTM request successes but I had my doubts as it had been 8 months since I sent it off.

I'm thrilled to get this back because this is a ticket stub from the game where Josh Hamilton got his first major league hit, a home run. I was at this game, I lived in Phoenix, AZ for two years and attended many Diamondbacks games while I lived there. This was just any other game, nothing special, but I knew going in that Josh Hamilton was playing.

If you collected cards in the late 90's, you know who Josh Hamilton is. His 1999 rookie cards were the hottest thing going back then as he was the #1 overall pick in the MLB Draft by the Tampa Bay Ray (Devil Rays then). You may have also heard of Hamilton's struggles with drug addiction that lead to him being out of baseball. He worked very hard to get clean and work his way back to the majors.

Anyway, I was completely aware when Hamilton came up in the 3rd inning that he didn't have a hit in the majors yet. He ripped a pitch to right field and his first major league hit was a 2-run home run. A few fans in the small crowd realized the moment and stood to applaud Hamilton, most didn't realize the significance.

Here we are three years later and Hamilton has been an All-Star and a Home Run Derby champion. He had an excellent 2008 season but was hampered by injuries last year that lead to him only playing 89 games. I've rooted for him ever since I heard of his struggles with drugs and his fight to get back to the majors. After receiving this ticket back from Hamilton I'll be more than a casual observer, I'm now a legit fan.

Link to mlb.com game article

Upper Deck Redemption Mail Day

2009-11-16T19:49:00.006-05:00

I ordered a tin of 2007 Sweet Spot Football from Blowout Cards about a month ago hoping, against hope to get an Adrian Peterson rookie. Instead, I got Laurent Robinson and a couple average jersey cards. I also got this Reggie Wayne Green Pigskin Sigs numbered to 99. It was a redemption and took about a month to arrive.

Sure, it's not an extremely valuable card and definitely not the hit I was hoping for. But its a cool looking autographed card of one of the top three receivers in the NFL and sure Hall of Famer when all is said and done.

It's a very timely arrival considering that Wayne caught the winning touchdown last night against the Patriots to seal the last second victory for the Colts. I think this one is going to end up in my private collection rather than go on eBay.

Fun Retail Box Break From Target

2009-11-15T09:41:00.004-05:00

It's been a very long time since I've posted. What compelled me to get back on the horse, you ask? It was a box of cards that I bought this morning at Target. Rarely is a retail purchase something to write about but this one inspired me.

Target has full retail boxes (24 packs/5 cards per pack) of 2008 Playoff Absolute Memorabilia Football for $24.99 each. That's right, this is a full box, not a blaster. As I was staring at the 2009 Topps Chrome Football blasters for $19.99 each, I just couldn't justify buying another with this Absolute Memorbilia box and its $24.99 price tag staring me in the face. The box claims to yield at least one jersey or autograph per box on average. Let's see how I did.

This was a really fun break, that's why I'm posting and recommending you go pick up a box. Overall, I got four jersey cards, 7 red spectrum parallels, 2 blue spectrum parallels, 1 Gridiron Force insert, 1 Star Gazing insert and the #101 Brett Favre card (short print?). Here are the jersey details:

Rookie Jersey Collection
Early Doucet
Matt Forte
Dustin Keller

Star Gazing Jersey /250
Limas Sweed

As you'll see from the scan below, I got Colt Brennan and Peyton Manning in the red spectum parallel cards. Could I get $24.99 for all this on eBay? Probably not. Could I squeeze $24.99 out of it on COMC? I bet I can.

All in all, this was a fun box to break and there's potential to get some really good cards. For just $5.00 more than a blaster box I think this is a great purchase. Target also has some new half price blasters on the shelf. I saw 2008 Goudey Baseball and 2008 Upper Deck Series 2 Baseball. There was probably some more stuff too that I didn't notice.

I'll be posting more frequently from here on out. I've got some good stuff coming in the mail soon to break, including a 2009 Bowman Chrome Football case. Check back soon for the results of that and some other breaks.

Tommy Hanson Mania

2009-06-07T15:22:00.005-04:00

Tommy Hanson has received a considerable amount of attention ever since his stellar performance in the Arizona Fall League. He continued that trend in AAA with the Gwinnett Braves going 3-3 with a 1.49 ERA in 11 starts. He added 90 strikeouts while walking only 17 batters.

Collectors have been anticipating his June call-up for some time. His 2007 Bowman Chrome has risen from the $5 range to the $8 range within the last couple weeks. The value of this card is also helped by the fact that he has no other 2007 releases, unless you count Just Minors.

Well, Hanson got the call and made his first major league start today against the Milwaukee Brewers. He started off very strong, going into the 4th inning before yielding his first hit. It all went downhill after that. He gave up three 2-run home runs, two of those to Ryan Braun. All told, he went 6 innings giving up 6 runs.

Prospectors will be keeping a close eye on his second start which should be June 12th at Baltimore.

Update - 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates TTM Project

2009-06-06T15:13:00.003-04:00

Date sent 5/22/09
Date received: 6/6/09

Dick Groat is my fifteenth TTM return from the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates. Groat played fourteen seasons in Major League Baseball for the Pittsburgh Pirates, St. Louis Cardinals, Philadelphia Phillies and San Francisco Giants. He also played one season in the NBA for the Fort Wayne Pistons. Groat was a two sport star at Duke University, playing basketball and baseball. He went straight to the Pirates out of college, never playing in the minor leagues.

Groat was a career .286 hitter, finishing with 2,138 hits. He was a five time All-Star and won the league MVP in 1960. Groat was also part of one of the best double play combinations of all time with Bill Mazeroski.

Well, this was really the last realistic request I had out there. I'm going to consider this project completed. The others that I'm missing will have to come from in-person signings or off of eBay. It seems like I've been doing this forever but the first request went out only 41 days ago on April 27th.

The autographs I received during that span are R.C. Stevens, Roman Mejias, Roy Face, Hal Smith, Gino Cimoli, Bennie Daniels, Dick Schofield, Bob Skinner, Danny Kravitz, Dick Groat, Bob Oldis, Bob Friend, Vern Law, Bill Virdon and Joe Gibbon. I also purchased a Rocky Nelson signed '60 Topps card on eBay.

I don't know what my next TTM project will be. I'm open to ideas if anyone wants to leave one in the comments. I'm ready for a new challenge.

Update - 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates TTM Project

2009-06-05T18:54:00.006-04:00

Date sent: 4/27/09
Date returned: 6/5/09

Roman Mejias is one of the requests I had out there that I was beginning to wonder if I'd get it back or not. I'm very happy to get this one back.

I've also had my George Witt and Don Gross requests out there for about the same amount of time. I don't really expect to get those back as the reported successes for those two are very low on sportscollectors.net. Hopefully I'll be able to pick those up in some other fashion.

Roman Mejias played six seasons for the Pirates, never getting more than 276 at-bats in any of those. He went to Houston in 1962 and finally got a chance to play full time. He batted a respectable .286 with 24 home runs and 76 RBI. He was the first Latin American player in Houston franchise history. In 1963 he left to play for Boston and retired after the 1964 season.

I found an incredible stat while researching Mejias' career. He's one of 336 major league players to hit 3 home runs in one game. No, that's not the incredible part. The incredible part is that he did it in 1958 when he only had 5 home runs the entire season. That has to be the lowest amount of home runs in a season for a player that had a 3 home run game.

The Ultimate 1981 Topps Football Cello Pack

2009-06-03T23:09:00.005-04:00

What could be better than Joe Montana on the front of a 1981 Topps cello pack? How about Joe Montana on the front and back of a 1981 Topps cello pack! It's times like this that you don't care about getting doubles in a pack.

I know that I've seen two of the same card on the front of a rack pack before but never a card of this caliber. The cello is on eBay and ends Sunday. It's currently up to $330.55. I can't wait to see what this goes for.

This is also the first time I've ever seen a PSA graded pack. I had no idea they were offering that service. I thought I only GAI was doing that. Does anyone have any idea how long they've been grading packs?

I've never had a pack or box of cards graded. Although, I've never had a pack valuable enough that would make sense to grade. I've had pricey boxes of vintage cards but I bought them to open them. I just don't know how I feel about getting a box of cards graded. I could see getting a pack graded, especially something like this. I really can't see myself ever getting a box graded, though. I'm not even sure that PSA grades boxes but I know GAI does.

Hopefully one day soon I'll have a pack or box valuable enough to consider grading. That's a problem I'd like to have.

Update - 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates TTM Success

2009-06-02T20:44:00.004-04:00

Date sent: 5/26/09
Date returned: 6/2/09

This is my thirteenth return from the 1960 Pirates. This is also another one that came back in one week or less. I actually just went back and checked the numbers, ten of the fourteen have been returned in one week or less. That's amazing.

This return is from Bob Oldis. He played in the majors from 1953-1955 and 1960-1963. He was a backup catcher that played for the Washington Senators, Pittsburgh Pirates and Philadelphia Phillies. He amassed only 236 at-bats over his career, batting .224. He still works as a scout for the Florida Marlins.

Well, There are only five more living members of the 1960 Pirates that I need. Four of those requests have been sent. The other one, Joe Christopher, is not worth sending as he doesn't sign TTM. There's going to be a 1960 Pirates reunion in Pittsburgh next year so I'll catch him then.

Upper Deck Baseball Series 2 Review

2009-06-01T20:02:00.006-04:00

I had to run some errands on the way home from work today. I had to go to the drop off some packages at the post office, buy a birthday card and buy some groceries. I could have bought the birthday card at the grocery store but they don't have baseball cards. I went to Target instead and bought four packs of 2009 Upper Deck Series 2 Baseball. Oh yeah, I got the birthday card too.

I'm going to start a new series in the next couple of days for new product reviews so this post will just be to show the "hits" that I got and a quick first impression of the product.

The packs were $2.99 each and come with 18 cards per pack. Target also had blasters for $19.99 each. Those have 10 packs with 8 cards per pack. They also had the fat packs of 36 cards for $4.99 each. The fat pack is the best deal in terms of price per card but I'm not sure if those include all the inserts available in the blasters and retail packs.

The cards are pretty much what I expected as they're not much different from series one. I actually got a few doubles in only four packs from the same box. That's not very impressive. On the flip side, I think I got some good "hits" for only purchasing four packs. I got a Michael Jordan Goodwin Champions preview card, a 20th Anniversary Retrospective Pedro Martinez and an Emerald StarQuest (Ultra Rare or something) Nick Markakis. These are all pictured below. I also four common StarQuest cards and a Team USA card that aren't pictured.

I don't know that I'll purchase more of this product. I have no interest in building the set and the insert cards aren't that interesting to me. Getting a StarQuest card in every pack is a bit much. The Goodwin Champions cards look nice but I'd rather buy that product when it comes out than to buy Upper Deck 2 to chase the preview cards.

Update - 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates TTM Project

2009-06-01T19:36:00.008-04:00

Vern Law
Date sent: 5/26/09
Date returned: 6/1/09

R.C. Stevens
Date sent: 5/22/09
Date returned: 6/1/09

This are my eleventh and twelfth TTM successes in my quest to get autographed 1960 Topps cards from all living members of the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates Team. My original plan was to complete this and give it to my Dad for his birthday but it's on Wednesday. This will have to be a gift for another occasion as it's not going to be completed in time.

These two returns are from Vern Law and R.C. Stevens. Vern Law came back in less than a week. I've been impressed throughout this whole project at the speed of some of the returns. Stevens took a bit longer but still came in under two weeks. You can't ask for more than that.

R.C. Stevens only played in the majors for four seasons. His career high in at-bats was only 90. That was in his rookie season of 1958 with the Pirates. He played for the Pirates through the 1960 season and was traded to the Senators after season. He played in Washington for one season which would be his final in baseball.

Vern Law played sixteen seasons with the Pittsburgh Pirates accumulating a 162-147 record. Law won the Cy Young award in 1960 going 20-9 with 18 complete games. He topped that off by going 2-0 in the World Series. Law is currently the head coach of the Provo High School varsity baseball team in Provo, UT. His son, Vance, also a former major leaguer, is head coach across the street at Brigham Young University. Law was credited with saying "Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards."

Hopefully I'll be reporting a few more returns in the near future.

Jamie Moyer TTM Success?

2009-05-29T20:26:00.008-04:00

Date sent: 3/10/09
Date returned: 5/29/09

I don't think that I'm ever going to send a jersey card in a TTM request again. If you've been reading my blog for a little while you'll recall what happened when I sent a TTM request to Mike Mussina with jersey cards included.

I sent a 2004 Topps All-Star Stitches card to Jamie Moyer back during Spring Training. The request came back today. The jersey card was there and it was signed. The only problem were the huge creases and tears down the middle of the card. I've included scans of the front and back for you to see.

I'm certainly not accusing Moyer of anything but when you grab the card with both of your hands and start to bend it around the creases the damage sure looks like it could be a result of that action.

The card was sent in a top loader and returned in a top loader. The envelope that the card came back in was not damaged and there wasn't any damage to the top loader.

All this being said, I'm very happy to get a return from Jamie Moyer. He is an ageless wonder and is a true rarity of today's game. Moyer has 249 wins for his career so he most likely won't stick around long enough to get to 300 wins as he'll turn 47 after the season.

I think I'll stick to sending rookie cards with my TTM requests. I think my experiment with sending jersey cards is over at two requests. I'll have to dig a Moyer rookie card out of my 1987 cards over the weekend and get another request out next week.

Update - 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates TTM Project

2009-05-28T20:50:00.005-04:00

Rocky Nelson was a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1959-1961, retiring after the 1961 season. He hit a two run home run in the seventh game of the 1960 World Series, later won on Bill Mazeroski's home run the bottom of the ninth.

The most amazing stat I could dig up on Nelson is that he won the Triple Crown twice (1955 and 1958) while playing in the International League. Yes, it's the minor leagues but winning the Triple Crown is quite an achievement at any level.

Rocky Nelson passed away in 2006 at the age of 81. I hadn't originally planned to try and add deceased members of the 1960 Pirates to my collection but couldn't pass up this card when I saw it on eBay.

I had a tough time when it came down to bidding on this auction. I had no idea what a card like this would be worth. It's not like you can obtain Nelson's autograph anymore. Plus, I'm only collecting these autographs on 1960 Topps cards. What are the odds that I would ever find another 1960 Topps card autographed by Rocky Nelson? How many could there possibly be?

The auction was only at $1.75 with 10 minutes left when I sat down to think about what I would pay for the card. With a couple minutes left I decided to bid $30.00 for the card. I just couldn't pass up the chance as I didn't see how another one of these would be popping up on eBay any time soon. I ended up getting the card for $6.01. I consider that a heck of a bargain for a 1960 Topps card in reasonable condition autographed by a deceased player.

I'll keep my eyes open on eBay now. Maybe I'll be able to add more cards to this collection that I didn't think I'd have the chance to.

Brett Wallace TTM Success

2009-05-26T20:44:00.004-04:00

Date sent: 4/11/09
Date returned: 5/26/09

I'm excited to get this request back. I haven't received too many requests back that have gone out to young prospects. I sent this one as soon as Brett Wallace was assigned to AA Springfield out of Spring Training. He just got called up to AAA in Memphis so maybe he cleared out his requests when he moved cities.

Wallace is the future for the Cardinals at third base and may get called up at some point this season. The Cardinals have started three different players at third base this season and are waiting for Troy Glaus to return to the lineup from shoulder surgery.

Wallace batted .281 with 5 home runs and 16 RBI in 32 games with AA Springfield. So far with AAA Memphis he's batting .342 with 1 home run and 4 RBI in 9 games. That's a nice start for him in AAA after getting off to a slow start in AA to start the season.

Padded Envelopes!

2009-05-25T13:49:00.002-04:00

I don't know about you but I go through a lot of padded envelopes because of eBay. I've always ordered in the past from uline.com but had the brilliant idea last week to look on eBay. It's funny, I'm always telling friends and family to look on eBay before they purchase anything but I never took my own advice for padded envelopes.

I got such a good deal last week that I wanted to pass along the info on my blog. Just in case there's anyone else out there paying too much like I was. I picked up a case of 250 #00 envelopes (5x10) for $15.50 shipped. That's only 6 cents per envelope! The seller that I purchased this from on eBay was justpoundsandounces. They have many fixed price auctions but I got my deal from an actual auction. It was in the middle of the afternoon when I won so that may have had something to do with the great price.

I want to make it clear that I'm in no way affiliated with this seller. I'm just hoping that this helps someone out there cut costs on their shipping supplies and then be able to pass those savings on to their bidders.

David Price Starts For The Rays Tonight

2009-05-25T13:33:00.005-04:00

This is a much anticipated moment tonight for the Tampa Bay Rays as David Price makes his first start of 2009. It's only his second start of his career. He made one start late last season and then pitched in relief during the ALCS and World Series. His fantastic performance in the playoffs last year had all fans waiting to see what he could do in '09.

The Rays are in Cleveland and the first pitch will be somewhere around 6:05PM EST. Fausto Carmona will take the mound for the Indians.

It will be interesting to see how Price performs tonight. He had to be disappointed to be sent back down to AAA to start the season. I think that's evident by his stats at Durham. He went 1-4 with a 3.93 ERA in eight starts. He did pitch well in his last two starts so there were signs of a turnaround.

You're lucky if you have any Price cards on eBay ending tonight. Collectors will scramble to pick some up if he has a strong start tonight.

Update - 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates TTM Project

2009-05-22T12:43:00.002-04:00

Date sent: 5/16/09
Date returned: 5/22/09

This is my tenth return in my quest to get 1960 Topps cards signed by all living members of the 1960 World Champion Pittsburgh Pirates.

I sent three more requests today. Those went to Dick Groat, R.C. Stevens and Joe Christopher. Stevens and Christopher do not have 1960 Topps cards. I got a 1959 Topps of R.C. Stevens and a 1961 Topps of Joe Christopher.

Cards that have already been sent but have not been returned are George Witt, Don Gross and Roman Mejias.

The requests that have not been sent yet are Vern Law and Bob Oldis. I purchased those cards off eBay and they should be here any day now.

The only living player that doesn't have a card is Dick Barone. He only played one season in the majors, that was 1960. I'm not quite sure what to do for his autograph. Maybe I'll just send an index card.

2009 Topps Heritage Blaster Break

2009-05-21T12:24:00.004-04:00

My post from yesterday inspired me to go buy another Topps Heritage blaster from Target. I think this is the fifth one I've opened. Here we go pack by pack...

Pack 1
Khalil Greene
Brandon Lyon
Jim Leyland
Luis Cruz
Alex Gordon
Chase Headley
Jeff Mathis
A.J. Burnett

Pack 2
Chad Tracy
Ramon Ramirez
Jesse Litsch
Washington Nationals
Coco Crisp
2008 World Series Game #2
Mark DeRosa
Troy Glaus

Pack 3
Scott Lewis
Nick Blackburn
Chris Perez
Cardinals Coaches SP (have it)
B.J. Ryan
Yuniesky Betancourt
Kurt Suzuki
Javier Vasquez

Pack 4
Jeremy Guthrie
Raul Ibanez
Rickie Weeks
Shaun Marcum
Ryan Doumit
Jake Peavy
Ichiro
Randy Wolf

Pack 5
Ross Gload
Vernon Wells
Carlos Pena
Kevin Kouzmanoff
Aramis
Mike Lowell
Phil Coke
John Maine

Pack 6
Gaby Sanchez
Yunel Escobar
Charlie Manuel
Joe Blanton
Mike Pelfrey
Gavin Floyd
Ryan Howard
Miguel Cabrera

Pack 7
Matt Harrison
Miguel Tejada
Jeremy Sowers
Grady Sizemore
John Smoltz SP (Braves logo. have it)
Brian McCann
Manny Acta
Matt Joyce

Pack 8
Juan Pierre
Cole Hamels
Evan Longoria
Adam Jones
Red Sox Coaches SP (have it)
2008 World Series Game #4
Adam Dunn
Kila Ka'aihue

Well, this was a bust for me. I already have the three SP cards. This is the third Smoltz Braves SP that I've pulled from blasters. This is also the second blaster I've opened in a row that didn't have any chrome cards. All the previous blasters I had opened had a regular chrome and a chrome refractor.

Hopefully any of you out there that became inspired like me had better luck than I did. I'll stick to filling my Chrome and SP sets through purchases of singles instead of blaster purchases.

Collector Hits Topps Heritage SP Jackpot

2009-05-20T18:10:00.005-04:00

Have you been wondering like I have how you could have opened so many 2009 Topps Heritage blasters and not pulled one SP variation card? Well, the Beckett Blog has a story about a guy that we can blame for that. Todd Neuman hit the jackpot by pulling 51 Heritage SP variations in a single blaster he purchased in Mayfield, KY.

This is one of those once in a lifetime boxes that every collector dreams of but few experience. I remember my brother and I combining to get around 20 Jose Mesa cards in 1989 when opened two or three boxes of cards one day. Sadly, that was not the collecting jackpot and we realized it at the time. My brother coined the phrase "a mess of Mesa's" that day.

I did however experience a true collectors jackpot years later by watching a friend of mine open a box of 1989 Pro Set Series 1 Football. I believe it was 1991 at the time the box was opened. He ended up with 27 William Perry cards. I could be wrong but I believe that card wasn't supposed to be released in the product and was replaced by another card. That's what made it so rare and valuable. At the time the card booked around $100 and he sold most of them for $50 each. It was crazy. A quick search of eBay just now showed that you can easily pick one up now for less than $5. The rareness of the card was most likely overstated.

I doubt that the rareness of the 2009 Heritage SP's is overstated. I think that Todd Neuman just had a really lucky day.

High Dollar Michael Jordan Insert Cards

2009-05-19T15:36:00.005-04:00

I've noticed while searching eBay over the past few weeks just how many high dollar Michael Jordan insert cards are out there. I'm talking about true insert cards, not autographed cards or memorabilia cards.

The card pictured is a 98-99 Skybox Thunder Noyz Boyz insert that sold for a whopping $330 on eBay. Don't believe me? Have a look at the auction here. They were inserted 1:288 packs so the card is legitimately rare.

Personally, I think it's crazy. There are endless examples of non-autographed, non-memorabilia Jordan inserts selling in the $200 - $400 range. Just search completed auctions on eBay and you'll find loads of them. Most of them look as hideous as this one too.

A quick search of eBay and a few wax sites like Dave and Adam's didn't yield any 98-99 Skybox Thunder boxes. I'm wondering if there are some really cheap basketball boxes out there with possible high dollar Jordan's. It could be a fun purchase if you're looking for something to break that could lead to a really rare Jordan insert.

If anyone knows of any boxes like this or has already had this idea leave your experiences in the comments section. Hopefully someone has and came up with a card like this already. It would be fun to hear about it.

Marketing Your Items On eBay

2009-05-17T18:52:00.004-04:00

I'm always curious to see what the new marketing and sales trends are on eBay. Sellers come up with all sorts of innovative ideas to sell items. eBay also does their share by improving functionality and offering great features like Buy It Now and Make An Offer.

One of the newer trends I've noticed in the trading cards area is the "You Choose" sales style. The seller will offer up a large list of cards, usually from the same set, and allows you to choose a pre-determined number of cards from the list. I've noticed these more and more as I've been working on my 2009 Topps Heritage SP set. The most common type of auction is for the seller to allow you to choose 10 SP cards from their list. Here is an example auction.

The great thing for the seller is that this style of auction tends to yield more money per card than selling them individually or even as a lot of 10. I've picked up SP singles for $1 and picked up a lot of 10 for just over $12. The auction that I linked to above is about to end and it's at just over $36. I've chosen not to go this route as a buyer as my cost per card would be more than I want to pay. But it got me thinking about the possibilities as a seller.

I posted yesterday about CheckOutMyCards.com. I think that's a great site to sell cards that that book for anything over $4 per card in Beckett. The reason I set the $4 minimum book value is because I'm figuring I can get at least $1 for it. It's really not cost effective to sell any cards for less than $1 because of the selling fees.

As we know, there are a lot of cards that book below $4 each. What do we do with all of those? Well, I figured since buyers are responding well to the "You Choose" format for cards from the same set, why not try auctions with cards from different sets?

I've had cards sorted by player and stored away for a while. I picked out all the cards with $4 and higher book value out of those boxes and sent them off to COMC some time ago. So, I started some player auctions today that list all of my cards from a certain player and allow the buyer to choose 10 cards from the list.

I started out with Derek Jeter, Ken Griffey Jr., Cal Ripken Jr. and Nolan Ryan. I set the Buy It Now price at $7.99 and the minimum bid at .99 cents. I'll keep you posted on the results. I put them up for a week so they'll end next Sunday. Hopefully the results will be good and I'll have a viable option for getting rid of a bunch of cards from my childhood that I'd rather not have in my closet. I'd then have more money to buy cards that I do want want to have in my closet.

I'm curious to see what any of you reading think of this format and whether you'd use the same idea. What about the Buy It Now price? Too high? Just right? Click here to view my Ripken auction.

1977 Topps Steve Largent PSA 10 on eBay

2009-05-16T06:51:00.004-04:00

I love seeing gem mint examples of older cards. I always wonder how they stayed in such great condition after all the years. I've opened some wax from the 70's in the last few years and not everything comes out in great condition.

Steve Largent was once the NFL's all-time leader in receptions (819), he's now 15th on that list. I can't believe so much time has passed that he's dropped that low on the list. I can still remember being at the Redskins vs. Broncos game in 1992 when Art Monk passed Steve Largent with his 820th catch.

When Largent retired he also held records for most receiving yards (13,089), touchdowns (100) and consecutive games with a catch (177). He was a seven time Pro Bowl selection and was elected to the NFL Hall of Fame in 1995. Largent truly was in a class of his own as a receiver in his early years.

You can view the auction here.

One day I hope to own a gem mint vintage card like this one. The trouble will be deciding which one to own.

CheckOutMyCards.com is worth a look

2009-05-15T21:07:00.007-04:00

Earlier this week, Mario over at Wax Heaven posted about purchasing some cards for his Canseco collection from CheckOutMyCards.com. I joined the site about three months ago and have been meaning to post about it. Mario's post inspired me to do that.

I've purchased and sold cards on CheckOutMyCards.com. I actually started out selling cards on the site before I ever made a purchase. I'd been thinking about it for a while and initially tested it out by sending 10 vintage baseball star cards that weren't in great shape. I was quite pleased when they all sold within a week of being posted on the site. I set the prices a bit higher than what I could get on eBay and had no trouble getting it.

Since then, I have sent over 1,000 cards to be added to my account. I've sold 45% of those cards to date. I price my cards anywhere from 50% - 95% off of Beckett book value.

The beauty of CheckOutMyCards.com is the process of adding your cards to the site. You package up your cards and send them off. That's it. They scan the front and back of your card, look up the book values, add credit to your account when they sell and ship them out. It's so easy. They charge anywhere from 15 cents to 50 cents per card to add them to the site, depending how fast you want them added. Once your cards sell, you can use your credit to purchase other cards or cash out. You can request a check or a Paypal payment. They take 20% off your payout if you choose to cash out. When you consider eBay fees + Paypal fees + your time, this is not a bad deal.

The great part about this site is that you can sell cards that don't traditionally sell on eBay. True collectors seem to be a large part of the purchasers. I've noticed that I'll sell multiples of the same player to the same buyer or multiple cards from the same set. The best part is that there's no rush to sell your cards, they can just sit there until they sell.

I'm thrilled with the site so far and will continue to use it for selling and purchasing cards. In fact, I'm sending off another shipment of 150 cards tomorrow morning. I've also made a couple purchases in the past two weeks. I found some 2009 Topps Heritage SP singles that I needed and I got some 1960 Topps Pittsburgh Pirates cards for my autograph project.

Shameless plug: my cards on checkoutmycards.com

The site has a "make an offer" feature, just like eBay. Feel free to make me offers on any of my cards. The prices are low but can always go lower.

Vin Scully TTM Success

2009-05-14T19:01:00.005-04:00

Date sent: 2/21/09
Date returned: 5/14/09

When I first started thinking about doing TTM autograph requests back in February, two people came to mind immediately that I wanted to send requests to. Those were John Wooden and Vin Scully.

I sent both requests in February and received back my signed card from Mr. Wooden less than a week after I had sent the request. I was so happy to get that back. A short time after I received it he came down with pneumonia and his family asked that the autograph requests stop.

I'm so thrilled to get this request back from Mr. Scully. I sent it way before the season started but was beginning to wonder if I'd ever get it back. He signed my 8x10 photo beautifully in blue sharpie.

Listening to Mr. Scully announce a Dodgers game is as close to perfection as you're going to get. He knows everything about every player that takes the field and always has a story to tell. His style was developed on radio where you have to paint a picture for the listener. He never changed that when he started doing games on TV. I have the MLB Extra Innings package and I always turn over to Dodgers games to listen to him do at least an inning. There's nothing quite like it.

Update - 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates TTM Project

2009-05-14T18:51:00.003-04:00

Date sent: 4/27/09
Date returned: 5/14/09

This is my ninth return out of twelve in my quest to get autographed 1960 Topps cards from all twenty surviving members of the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates team.

Gino Cimoli came over to the Pirates in 1960 from the St. Louis Cardinals. In fact, you can see he's in his Cardinals uniform on his 1960 Topps card. Gino is probably most famous for his lead-off single in the bottom of the 8th inning in game seven of the 1960 World Series. The Pirates trailed the Yankees 7-4 entering the bottom of the eight and lead 9-7 after the 8th. Cimoli's hit started the rally and he later scored on Dick Groat's single.

I just received a few more cards in the mail this week from eBay purchases so I'll be sending those out to be signed by the weekend.

Capitals vs. Penguins Game 7

2009-05-13T16:26:00.003-04:00

As I mentioned the other day, I am a Capitals fan and season ticket holder. I will be attending the game tonight so there won't be a traditional blog entry today.

If you have nothing to do tonight you should check out the game. This could be one of the all-time classics tonight. It's what the NHL wanted all along and it's what they got. There's nothing quite like a Game 7.

Go Caps!

Ichiro Appreciation

2009-05-12T21:28:00.005-04:00

Ichiro is the greatest hitter of all time. Yeah, you read that right. Not only did I say it but I truly believe it. He kind of flies under the radar a bit because he plays in Seattle and he doesn't hit home runs. I don't think most people have taken the time to soak in what he's accomplished in his first eight years in the majors.

Eight 200 hit seasons

.330 career batting average

Averages 40 stolen bases per season

Has played all but 16 games in his career

Eight Gold Gloves

2001 AL MVP

2001 AL ROY

Ichiro is 35 years old and on pace to have 3,000 hits by the time he's 40 years old in 2014. If you add in his 1,278 hits he amassed in Japan, that would put him ahead of Pete Rose in all-time hits. OK, I know that we're not going to count those hits but it's an interesting thing to think about.

The thing that amazes me about Ichiro is that his production hasn't slowed a bit. He played all 162 games last season and batted .310 with 42 stolen bases. That's a heck of a season for a 34 year old player in his 17th year of professional baseball. He's off to a good start this year as well with a .315 batting average.

I think the statistic that cannot be ignored are the 200 hit seasons. He has eight in eight seasons. This is an incredible accomplishment. Consider that Pete Rose is the all-time leader with ten in twenty four seasons.

Collectors may want to think about picking up a rookie card or two of this great hitter and putting them away.

Emmitt Smith Burger King Florida Gators Card on eBay

2009-05-11T18:52:00.005-04:00

Talk about a card that you rarely ever see, let alone graded gem mint. This is a 1988 Burger King Florida Gators Emmitt Smith card. This card predates his first NFL release by a two years. The card was distributed by Burger King as a regional promotion.

There is no doubt this card is rarer than his 1990 Score Traded, his most valuable rookie card. Does that mean that it's highly sought after by collectors? Not really. There's never been a huge secondary market for regional (police, school-issued, etc.) sets in the hobby. I personally like them. I don't think they're much different from the minor league sets of the 70's and 80's but those are far more popular in the hobby.

No matter where you stand, this is a great card. This is a highly counterfeited card so having an authentic one is great, gem mint even better. One lucky Emmitt Smith collector will add this to his or her collection tonight for a bargain. Maybe one day collectors will appreciate these releases more than they do now.

You can view the eBay auction here.

I'm Obsessed With 2009 Heritage

2009-05-10T07:17:00.002-04:00

The 1960 Topps design has always been one of my favorites. I starting building a set as a kid and slowly work on it to this day. I was so excited when Topps announced that they were using the 1960 design for 2009 Heritage.

I recently started building the 2009 Heritage set. I've purchased a few blasters here and there when I've been able to find them. I figured the easiest thing to start on would be the SP portion of the set. Although expensive, it's only 75 cards so I figured I'd try to knock that out first. I have 35 of the 75 cards so far. I have six doubles so I was wondering if any readers had extras to trade or sell.

Drop me a note in the comments if you have extras and maybe we can work something out. I'll get my wantlist up this week to make it easier. For now, here are my doubles:

426 Scott Rolen
428 Jermaine Dye
445 John Smoltz - 2
448 Kevin Millar
492 Kosuke Fukudome

HYPE! Simeon Varlamov

2009-05-09T12:12:00.004-04:00

I will start off this post by stating that I am a Washington Capitals fan. I'm a season ticket holder and I will be at Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals tonight in DC.

That said, I cannot believe the prices that Simeon Varlamov cards are commanding on eBay. The kid is off to a great start but came crashing back down to earth last night in Pittsburgh. I hope that it was just a bad night and he'll rebound with a victory tonight.

For those that know Capitals history, you know the misery that the Pittsburgh Penguins have caused this franchise in the past. You may also recall another Washington Capital phenom goalie named Jim "Ace" Carey. Long story short, he was a goalie for the Capitals in 1995 and 1996 that had two fantastic regular seasons, only to come crashing back down to earth in the playoffs twice against the Penguins. He was never the same again.

Am I saying this will be Varlamov's fate? Not at all. I really think this kid is the real deal. I think last night was hiccup and he'll rebound tonight with a victory.

I know one thing for sure, if he doesn't, you won't see cards of his like the one pictured above topping the $200 mark for much longer.

Stephen Strasburg No-Hitter

2009-05-09T08:09:00.004-04:00

You knew it was coming at some point. Stephen Strasburg already had a 10-0 record with a 1.38 ERA and a load of strikeouts coming into the game. He's cleary going to be the #1 pick in the 2009 MLB Draft by the Washington Nationals. He's received more press attention than any college baseball player that I can ever remember. What else could he do? Throw a no-hitter, of course.

Strasburg tossed a no-hitter against Air Force last night, walking only two. He racked up another 17 strikeouts in the game. This guy is putting together an amazing season.

Head on over to the Upper Deck Blog and check out their coverage of the game. They live blogged from the game last night and have some great video from the ninth inning.

Strasburg autographed Upper Deck USA cards are selling in the $100-$600 range on eBay, depending on the card and the amount produced.

Neftali Feliz TTM Success

2009-05-08T18:26:00.004-04:00

Date sent: 3/6/09
Date returned: 5/8/09

I started sending TTM autograph requests about three months ago. About a month after I started, in March, I started sending requests to veterans and prospects at their Spring Training sites. I think I sent just over twenty requests and I only got one return. That was from Matt Wieters of the Baltimore Orioles.

This return that came today really shocked me. It's from Neftali Feliz of the Texas Rangers. I sent this request back in March to Surpise, AZ, the Spring Training site of the Rangers. The request that I received today came from Oklahoma City, OK, the home of Feliz's current team, the Oklahoma City RedHawks. He must have taken his Spring Training requests with him when he left.

Feliz is ranked as the #10 prospect in all of baseball by Baseball America. He's off to a slow start in 2009 but remains a tremendous talent. Here is his player page on milb.com.

Update - 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates TTM Project

2009-05-08T18:16:00.003-04:00

Date sent: 5/2/09
Date returned: 5/8/09

This is my eighth return out of twelve in my quest to get autographed 1960 Topps cards from all twenty surviving members of the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates team.

This return made me think about some of the posts I've seen on the sportscollectors.net bulletin boards from members that send a sharpie with their request. You can see from the picture that Danny Kravitz signed the card in ballpoint pen. It would look much nicer if it were signed in sharpie. Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled to get another card back regardless of what it was signed with. It just made me think that I may want to send a sharpie with future requests to see how that works out.

Where Do I Start With This B.J. Raji Card?

2009-05-07T20:54:00.004-04:00

What you're looking at is a 2009 Press Pass Gold Inscription "Autograph" of B.J. Raji. First off, there is not autograph on this card, it's just an inscription. I wrote about this same issue last week when I posted about the 2009 SPX Rookie Exchange Colby Rasmus rookie card. I'm not a fan of this and I hope it's not a trend. I just don't see the value in a player writing a couple words on a card (or sticker). I'd much rather have the autograph of the player.

OK, in case it wasn't painfully obvious at first sight, look at the inscription on the card again. Raji wrote "Sore Eagles" instead of "Soar Eagles" on the card. All the guy had to do is write two words and he messed it up. I wonder what his Wonderlic score was? There are 99 of these cards out there. I wonder how many of them are misspelled? Will this become a collectors item because of the spelling mistake?

Here's the crazy part, the card is at $180.05 on eBay with just over an hour left. I would LOVE to talk to the person that purchases this card to see why they purchased it.

You can view the auction here.

Update - 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates TTM Project

2009-05-07T20:15:00.003-04:00

Well, today was another great mail day for my 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates TTM project. I got returns from Bob Friend, Hal Smith and Bennie Daniels. I sent the Friend and Smith requests on Saturday, May 2nd and got them back today. That's a total of five days. If you recall, my returns from Roy Face, Dick Schofield and Bob Skinner also came back in 5 days. The other return I received today was from Bennie Daniels. That request took a total of 10 days to come back.

This puts me up to seven of a possible twenty autographs from the 1960 Pirates team. I still have only sent a total of twelve cards out. I have a few more cards sitting on my desk that I still have to write letters for and mail out.

The cards that are still out there are George Witt, Gino Cimoli, Danny Kravitz, Don Gross and Roman Mejias.

I'm thrilled so far with the returns from the members of this team. You'd never see this from the modern players.

Contest! Free Autographed Card

2009-05-05T20:24:00.005-04:00

I'm going to run a contest for a free autographed Bill Virdon card. Mr. Virdon was nice enough to include an extra signed card of his with my TTM request. Since I'm only collecting signed 1960 Topps Pirates cards for this project, I figured it would be nice to send this card along to another collector that will appreciate it.

Just leave a comment below on this post to enter. The deadline will be noon tomorrow. I'll select the winner by using the random number generator at random.org and will announce the winner tomorrow night.

Good luck and thanks for reading!

Update - 1960 Pirates TTM Project

2009-05-05T20:13:00.002-04:00

Date sent: 4/27/2009
Date returned: 5/4/2009

This is my fourth return out of twelve sent in my quest to get a signed 1960 Topps card of every living member of the 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates.

Bill Virdon was a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1956-1965 and 1968. He was known as a premier defensive center fielder, winning a gold glove in 1962.

Virdon was also a manager in the major leagues from 1972-1984, amassing a 995-921 record. Virdon managed four different teams (Pirates, Yankees, Astros and Expos) in his managerial career. He managed those teams to the NLCS three times, losing all three times.

This was a very quick return and another key addition to my collection. I hope to report some more returns soon.

1952 Topps 5-Cent Pack on eBay

2009-05-03T10:21:00.003-04:00

You don't see these every day. It's a 1952 Topps 5-cent wax pack. The pack is currently at $2,650.75 on eBay with just over eleven hours to go.

I'm not sure how or if you can tell if it's a high number pack that might contain Mickey Mantle's rookie card. Whoever purchases this probably won't open it anyway. It's such a rare pack that it's better left unopened.

Vintage wax like this has to be one of the best long-term investments in the hobby. There's just not much of it left and it will only continue to appeciate in price over time.

The same seller also has a more common 1952 Topps penny pack on eBay right now too.

Update - 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates TTM Project

2009-05-03T09:33:00.005-04:00

Date sent: 4/27/2009
Date returned: 5/2/2009

Yesterday was an awesome mail day for my 1960 Pittsburgh Pirates Project. I got returns from Roy Face, Dick Schofield and Bob Skinner. I had just mailed them out on Monday of last week. How often do you send a TTM request and get in back in the same week? How often does that happen with three different players? The one that really amazed me was Bob Skinner. He lives in San Diego, CA and I'm in Alexandria, VA. He must have put the card back in the mail the same day he received it. I'm thrilled with these returns.

I mailed out seven requests on 4/27, so four of those are still out there. I sent out another five yesterday. There are twenty surviving players from the 1960 team. Sixteen of those players are highly reliable TTM signers, four of them are tough. I've sent a total of twelve cards out. I plan to get the next eight out within the next two weeks.

I still need to purchase cards of Joe Gibbon, Vern Law, Bill Mazeroski Bob Oldis and Dick Groat. There's a member on eBay that broke up a 1960 Topps set and the auctions are ending today. I plan on picking up a few of these from those auctions.

2009 SPX Rookie Exchange Cards

2009-05-02T07:55:00.006-04:00

Upper Deck announced the first two 2009 Upper Deck SPX Baseball rookie exchange cards a couple weeks ago and I've been meaning to write a post about them since. The two cards announced were Koji Uehara of the Baltimore Orioles and Colby Rasmus of the St. Louis Cardinals.

The player selection starts of well enough but that's not my problem. My problem is with the autographs. The regular Uehara comes autographed in English while the limited version, numbered to 25, comes autographed in Japanese. I like this idea. The Rasmus is a completely different story. His regular version comes autographed but the limited version comes with an inscription of "Go Redbirds #28". That's it! There's no autograph on the card.

Will collectors really pay a premium for limited version of this card without an autograph? If I were a Rasmus collector I'd actually be upset to receive the limited card. I'd much rather have the autographed version.

You can check out the pictures of the Uehara on Upper Deck's Facebook page.

Ozzie Newsome TTM Success

2009-05-01T21:15:00.004-04:00

Date sent: 3/13/09
Date returned: 4/2/09

Ozzie Newsome was one of the greatest tight ends of all time. He amassed 662 receptions, 7,980 yards and 47 touchdowns in thirteen years with the Cleveland Browns. The receptions and yards still stand as all-time records for the Browns. Newsome also caught a pass in 150 consecutive games, the second longest streak in the NFL when he retired.

Newsome became the first African-American general manager in the NFL when he filled that role for the Baltimore Ravens in 2002. He has done an outstanding job of rebuilding the Ravens through the draft and free agency. The Ravens have a team right now that should be successful for years to come and much of that credit goes to Newsome.

Newsome is known as an exremely fast and reliable TTM signer. I've sent two requests to him and both have come back in under three weeks. He has a great signature and has included a HOF '99 inscription on both requests without me asking.

The first card I sent to him was a 1987 Topps. The second card I sent was, of course, his 1979 Topps rookie card. I've mentioned in many previous posts that I like to get rookie cards signed and this request was no exception.

Mike Ditka TTM Success

2009-04-29T20:21:00.004-04:00

Date sent: 2/16/09
Date returned: 3/4/09

I'm too young to have seen Mike Ditka play but I remember him as the head coach of the Chicago Bears. He's also one of my favorite ESPN personalities as he always tells it like it is. Sports television is full of "analysts" that have no idea what they're talking about and they argue just to argue. Ditka knows the game from the perspective of a player and a head coach. There aren't many people on television that can say the same.

I mailed my request to ESPN Studios in Bristol, CT shortly after the end of the NFL season. It came in just over two weeks postmarked from Chicago, IL. I guess ESPN forwards his mail to him.

I was thrilled to get this one back. Ditka has a great signature as you can see from the photo. I think I'm going to purchase one of his vintage cards on eBay and send off another request to him once football starts again.