A Steelers Hodgepodge

I've written before that the addition of Penguins and Steelers cards to my collecting stable has made the hobby more interesting for me.  While Pirate cards will always be my primary collection, it has been fun to see the sets that come out in other sports.

One area where that really manifests itself is in a much more subtle area than card sets, or numbering of super shiny refractors.  One thing I have noticed is how much the photography changes when you get to hockey or football cards.

Sure some of that has to do with the manufacturers (and competition *gasp*) in other sports.  But theres something else.  Baseball is about repetition.  How well can a pitcher or batter repeat their delivery or swing?  Most ground balls or fly balls are going to look pretty much the same.  In short, there are only so many ways the game will "look" aside from the exceptional event.

But the other sports?  Well, when you have somebody actively trying to stop you from doing what you are doing (catching, tackling, passing, etc) it means the body will do some interesting things.

 
All these pickups came from a flea market trip a few weeks back.  At a dime a piece, I was able to score some nice cards that were well above and beyond you standard dime box fare.  Which of course was a welcome invitation to snag anything and everything that caught my eye.

Of course one of the other things that differentiates football is the celebrations.  While I don't disagree with the No Fun League title, it's hard to deny that most celebrations in football are more involved than most baseball ones.  Of course anything more than a fist pump after a homer will probably get you getting acquainted with a 94mph fastball your next time up.  In football, the celebrations come all to often, even on those most routine of plays.

But of course it's never allllll about photos.  Hell, perhaps the best part of 90's cards was all the other stuff going on with the card.  Is Kordell Stewart standing in the middle of some kind of metal plant explosion?

 But it wasn't all bad.  This Bowman parallel took customization to the next level, including Bettis' nickname on the back licenseplate.  Sure beats the current efforts, where manufacturers don't even designate parallels and refractors anymore.

 The adding legends to current sets fad has been doing on a decade plus now.  But it doesn't mean I'll get tired of seeing Rod Woodson back in black and gold.

 Speaking of which...this bumblebee card is just amazing.  The card is framed perfectly in the black parallel.  I may be one of the few, sick individuals who love these jerseys.

 And of course who doesn't love the boomerang players, who end up back with a team after a few years away.  Plaxico Burress may be done for good after an injury in training camp, but it was nice to see him back with the Steelers for a few games last year.  Even cooler to see that memorialized on cardboard.

 And of course you have the famous helmet seat.  It's not a pose I see too often, but I can think of at least 3 or 4 Rod Woodson cards in this exact same pose.  A Mirror Gold for a dime?  Gotta love flea markets.

Big City Lights

As anyone who has ever lived in a city can tell you, there's just something about the city's skyline that becomes instantly recognizable.  As card designs have stagnated, skyline shots have become few and far between on cards.  Why go to the extra effort to include the city's personality when you can use generic images like flags or maps as the card background?

But one of my recent flea market excursions yielded some great skyline shots from the early 90's.  The backs of these cards have more creativity and effort put into them than most modern releases.  But c'este la vie.

Leaf was never one of my favorite products, but they absolutely killed the design in 1993-94 hockey (as the baseball set - not sure about football from that year.  The card backs feature two different skyline shots pretty much capturing the same angle of the skyline, one at night and the other during daylight.

Both shots look great, and reflect the city before the giant healthcare signs that now cover the top floors of the largest skyscrapers took over the city skyline.

The cards feature fantastic photography, and features the great 90's Pens unis. To top it off, the club still included many of the players from the Cup teams a few years earlier. And let's be honest - star power always helps a well designed card.

But football was able to get in on the action too.  The early 90's Pro Line sets featured some insanely cheesy photos of players out of their pads and in the heavily promoted sideline gear.  The cards just scream 90's.  And I love it.

This card of former TE Eric Green catches the city from the south end.  Just out of view on the left is the Point where the rivers meet to form the Ohio.  The card features a nice skyline shot, if you can look away from those terrifying zebra print shorts.  Oh, the 90's.

Group Break Goodies

(completely free and clear of Miley Cyrus references)

With what I posted earlier today, I would have been perfectly content if I walked away with just those hits for the $30 I spent on the break.  After all, group breaks are often a losing proposition.  To come away with not one but two autos?  Not a bad day.

But the cardboard gods smiled favorably upon me.  Things were just getting started.

This was card actually hit in the last box, but it's by far my favorite from the break.  I've had a bit of a cardboard crush on the wood minis since they were introduced in 2006 A&G.  Thing is that I've never been willing to shell out what the 1/1 would cost.  The Wood minis in Gypsy Queen are /5, so not quite the same pizazz as a 1/1.  But I'll gladly take it.  Russell Martin was by far one of my favorite Pirates this past season, so I couldn't ask for much more.

I already had the plain mini and black, so I may need to track down the green mini /50 to complete the mini rainbow.

Oddly enough while the break was very top heavy for me, there wasn't much in the way of lower end hits.  

I only added about a dozen new base cards, since I already had complete team sets from Gypsy Queen and only needed one common from Archives.  And aside from the Martin above, I was totally shut out on minis.  

Archives has quite a few Pirate inserts I'm missing.  I hit a pair of cards I needed, but they weren't any of the tougher ones.  Still, they're welcomed additions.


Really Topps?  You guys couldn't spend an extra 5 minutes in the archives to find a second photo of Parker to use?  Just.  Stay.  Positive.

The two boxes of Bowman Chrome we broke were largely disappointing.  With the insane number of refractor levels they've added to the product, I would have expected more hits.  But our boxes held just a couple of base refractors, a rookie reprint card, and one or two Cream of the Crop minis.  No fun and exciting color, leading me to assume Topps has cranked up the presses yet again this year.

Oh, but there was sooooome color to the box.

Boom.

I've long professed my love of gold refractor Pirate cards on this blog.  But gold refractor autos always fall above what I'm willing to pay, with even some of the most flamed out ex-prospects selling in the $10-15 range.

But Glasnow is no flamed out prospect.  He won the Pirates Minor League Pitcher of the Year award this past year, dropping an astounding 2.18 era with a 13.1 k/9 ration in low A at the tender age of 19.

It's tempting to sell, with completed auctions in the $100+ range.  But this card is just so nice.  I've always shied away from prospects (until they hit the bargain bin, that is), but Gladnow looks like he may be the real deal.  A 5th round pick, his 6'7 frame has the makings of a power pitcher.  Obviously he's still a long way from ever pitching an inning in a non-airbrushed black and gold uni.  But that is one niiiiice piece of cardboard.

Maybe I should keep on this group break kick.  Or buy a lottery ticket.  Luck seems to have turned in my favor lately.

And We Can't Stop (The Group Breaks), And We Won't Stop

 The group break insanity continues at Battlin Bucs.  And in case you were wondering, yes, I'm aware the cards in this post are in fact not Pirates cards.

This latest group break came from a group of team collectors I'm involved with.  We used to have a collector for every team, but as time goes by it's been pretty tough to replace lost members with quality participants.  The end result?  We were only able to cover 15 slots in the break, meaning everybody got a second team.

The ever faithful random.org spit the Royals out my way.  Not my preferred choice, but I'm glad I didn't try to swap them for another team.

The break consisted almost entirely of 2013 products - Update, Chrome, Gypsy Queen - with a box of 2012 Opening Day thrown in for kicks.

The Royals slot was actually the lesser of the two teams, so I'll be back with the Pirates half later today.  Hint: there will be natural elements involved.  It's safe to say I absolutely killed the break - sorry guys!

The Mayberry auto is a keeper.  I think I sent a TTM request to him around 2004 or 2005 that was never heard from again, so I consider this some kind of karma.  I know the Archives product has been pretty weak since it came back, but I do want to add some of the autos on the secondary market one of these days.  The other auto out of the first box of Archives was Larry Bowa - a guy I have about a dozen TTM autos of.  Dodged a bullet there.

 The blogosphere goes nuts over update, and rightfully so.  It's always a safe bet for some fun or quirky cards of less than superstar names.  Miguel Tejada managed to resurrect his career for a brief time before a PED suspension.  I doubt many will remember the former A's MVP in another city the Athletics used to play in.

 Opening Day is far from an exciting product.  Or at least it was until 2013, when Topps really stepped it up and added some awesome inserts.  But these mascot cards take the cake as far as I'm concerned.  Who knew the Royals had a mascot?  More importantly...what the hell is that thing?

Insert, yes.  Celebration?  Debatable.  It looks more like a photo from a bench clearing brawl than a walkoff celebration.

 The photos in Gypsy Queen were among the highlights this year for me.  There are some absolutely amazing photos, only slightly ruined by the awkward photoshop effects.  I wonder if this one was initially an option to be in the Flagship Out of Bounds SP series?

 Bruce Chen is still a major league pitcher.  Anybody who followed baseball around the turn of the century should be absolutely amazed by that fact.  This one is binder hall of fame worthy.

 The Chasing History inserts are among my favorite in recent years.  But this was far from the best Saberhagen card of the break.  I also pulled a redemption for an Archives auto.  There are some live copies on ebay, so I'm pretty confident I'll be seeing the card in the near future.  Of the two boxes of Archives, I pulled two of the three autos (the second box was short an auto - thanks Topps!).  Oops.

Amazingly I didn't pull a single base mini of the Royals or Pirates.  But I did manage to hit two numbered minis.  This green James Shields is a cool card, but it'll probably be looking for a good home soon.

So there ya have it.  Some fun new cards for the Royals binder, and a couple of awesome new autos for the collection.  Pretty nice start, so the Bucs slot will have a tough act to follow.

I don't always do group breaks, but when I do...

I pull big hits!

It seems like group breaks are all the rage these days (group breaks are the new midnight blaster run?). I've been hesitant to jump in on most.  After all, I can just pick up singles for far less than the average buy in for a case break, and be guaranteed to get cards I want and don't have.  With a group break, the high end potential is there, but the chance of tossing money down the drain is pretty high as well.

But some deals are just too good to pass up.  As anyone who has read a single post here probably knows, I love the 90's.  So when a massive 30+ box 90's break was proposed on a forum, I was all ears.  I had done a similar break a few months back (which I still need to post...doh), and hit the motherload.  When the break was expanded to 70 boxes for a little more than the cost of blaster, I couldn't get that paypal screen up fast enough.

The break was a perfect fit for me.  I pretty much stopped collecting in 1998 and 1999. Even though I have filled some holes from those years, my commons needs alone made the break a worthwhile investment for me.  Anything beyond that was just icing on the cake.

And this cake ended up well iced.

The break had a pretty broad range of boxes, including a few top end boxes.  Nearly twenty years later, it's no small task to come across unopened wax from some of these products.  Some products that were widespread and had investor appeal, like Bowman, seem to be easy to come by.  But 1998 Leaf Fractal Foundations?  Not so much.  The product was pretty limited (for the time) to begin with.  And the cards are big holes in my collection these days.  Same goes for 1998 Donruss Collections, from which the Jose Guillen above hails, which were basically chrome and refractor versions of the primary Donruss sets released that year.  Donruss would be out of baseball later that year, but they put out some interesting products on the way out.

If you're not familiar with the products, I suggest a google search and preparing a flow chart.  They're some doozies.

But of course not all the products can be those upper tier boxes.  The price and rarity makes it tough enough, so many of the boxes were lower end product.  But that's fine by me, since the 90's were great for 1 per pack parallels that leave big, gaping holes in my binder pages.

Like these great '63 Throwback designs from the 1998 Fleer Tradition set.  Fleer would later use the design for their base Tradition set in 2003, but I'm preferential to the parallel version.

There was enough 1998 Bowman (I believe 7 boxes between Series 1, 2, and Chrome) that I hope I don't see any more in my lifetime - though I stilllll have some holes in the International parallel set.  But 2000 Bowman and Chrome were welcomed sights.  The Bucs slot largely struck out on the Bowman boxes, but I did come away with a beauty from 2000 BC's Retro/Future parallel.  It's still one of my favorite parallel sets.

One of my favorite aspects about a break this size is that there is something for everybody.  Some of the more expensive slots may have been disappointed.  But on the whole the break hit some bigtime cards.

But of course one of the biggest perks of participating in a group break is the break itself.  The break was streamed live across two nights, and was a great learning experience.  For example, I now know that telling Kate I'm too busy to do thing X because I'm watching a man open boxes of baseball cards on the computer is probably not a good choice.  It's also about as interesting as watching paint dry when the boxes are from the 90's, where a card numbered out of 3000 may be the hit of the box.

Speaking of hits, they come in all forms during a break.  Sure, there were some big hits.  And a few big dollar cards came out (though never in black and gold).  But as I said, it was the smaller joys, like half a dozen of 90's Pacific product that is nearly nonexistent in my collection, that made the break for me.

The flat rate box that came in yesterday had nearly 400 cards.  Sorting through all of them was a relatively painless process, since I knew which products in the break were my biggest needs and which I probably already had a good deal of the cards.  Some of the boxes were also repeats from the previous 90's break, so I knew those sets were probably already completed.  All told, I added about 160 new cards to the collection.  Not much more than a dime a card.  And considering that many of those were inserts or parallels, not bad at all.

The break yielded some fun cards that I just wouldn't be able to come by with ease otherwise.

It didn't scan well, but this 1999 Bowman Chrome International parallel of Jason Kendall features an awesome California seascape in the background.  And while not a super rare hit, it's also the kind of card that isn't quite rare or valuable enough to make it into a show box or ebay.  Yet hard enough to find that it's not just sitting on sportlots.

Oh, I had been promising hits, hadn't I?

Again the scan leave something to be desired, but this Paramount Platinum Blue parallel falls 1:67 packs.  Not a bad pull, if I do say so myself.

But the monsters of the break...

For the uninitiated, these beauties are 1998 Topps Tek Diffractors.  If that means nothing to you, these are basically the old school Atomic Refractor design on acetate cards.  But there's a catch.  Each player has 90 different patterns.  And the cards came in packs of 4 that carried an astonishingly high price tag of $4 or $5 a pack, which was insane for the time.

The Tek base set alone is an almost insurmountable task.  I think I have 3 or 4 patterns of each player.  But the Diffractors?  They fall about 2 per box on average.  Completing all 90 patterns for one player would be a jawdropping accomplishment.

These cards both came out of the box that was the highlight of the break.  A Diffractor hot box that yielded I believe 8 or 9 Diffractors in the box.  Talk about killing the odds.  If I wanted to sell them, these two would probably just about pay for my slot.  But I couldn't dare let such amazing cards leave my collection.

But the breakin' fun isn't over yet.  I went with the hot hand and bought into another, much smaller, break that just came in the mail today.  And the results were even better!

Homer (Not the Simpson)

As MLB tries to drag out the award season as long as humanly possible, the Pirates took home two Silver Slugger awards last night.  And as the internet is wont to do, the Pirate internet community has erupted into all out civil war over Pedro Alvarez's selection.

The issue?  Despite being really good at hitting baseballs a long way, and having fair luck making the good hitters in front of him move up to home plate, Pedro doesn't come close to grading out as the best hitting third baseman by any advanced metrics, and his piss poor batting average and on base percentage are far from best in the league.

It seems like the online debate falls on two sides - it's nice that a Pirate is getting recognized, but ideally these awards should go to the best, most deserving player.  And Pedro isn't.  The other side, sort of reminding my of ravenous zombies attacking without remorse, are the homers arguing that anyone who isn't happy for their team succeeding, regardless of circumstance, is a traitorous swine worthy of public shaming.

Alright, that may be a little loaded there.  But I think the debate is a sign of a larger fan zombie rearing its ugly head.

You see, most of the fans making the former argument are message board names and bloggers I've read for years.  They, like me, have been true fans of the team through the lean years.  And as I've written before, being a Pirate fan through The Streak gives you a little more perspective.  Seeing defensive wizards like Pokey Reese and Jack Wilson robbed of Gold Glove status because they played for a team nobody cared about gives you a little different perspective on what is fair in award voting (and admittedly nobody ever claimed that these post season awards are the most rational thing).

But the second group?  Their user name might as well be "BucwatchersinceJuly."  This seems to be the first real time the growing legion of Bucco homers who have magically spurted from the ground have something to rear their ugly, uninformed head over.

Don't get me wrong: I'm happy that a Pirate (multiple Pirates!) are getting recognition for the things this tam accomplished and individual accomplishments.  But I'm also a fan of baseball and baseball history.  And part of that fandom believes in records that reflect an honest reality.  But hey, at least there will probably be a cool bobblehead next year!

Your New Mariners Manager

In case you haven't heard the news, ex-Bucs skipper Lloyd McClendon is headed west to be the newest manager in Seattle.

This has been the most exciting news of the offseason for me, since I've always been a big fan of Mac, and the Mariners have long been my "AL team."  Kate lived in Seattle for a while a couple years ago, so we still have some friends out there, though I never got the chance to catch an M's game.

McClendon was maddening at times, but he is a good skipper for a young club.  He embraced various statistical metrics (albeit in the least productive way possible) in their infancy, so I think he could be a much better manager his second go-round.

Hopefully the fiery temper and base stealing antics that made him entertaining to watch follow him to Seattle, along with some success.  Far too many guys never get a shot at a second big league managerial job after their first go-round, so it's nice to see Mac back in the dugout.