Card Show Pickups

I was able to triple dip over the weekend, stopping home for my mom's birthday, visiting with some friends, and hitting a mall show nearby.  Overall it was a great weekend, even if the show was a little weaker than usual.

Pirate cards were pretty slim 'pickins.  I managed to find a whopping 5 new Pirate cards.  But the other areas of my collection benefitted, including more than doubling my Geno Smith collection.  When Geno was heading into the draft, I had every intention of starting a super collection of my former student.  When the pick was announced that he was going to the Jets, the only thing I could say was "shit."  Not only was he going to a team that would quickly throw him into a starting job that he frankly wasn't ready for, he also went to the biggest market, undoubtedly driving his card prices higher than I would want to pay.

Obviously the last couple years haven't been that kind.  I still believe he can be a solid NFL quarterback, but I certainly hope it comes elsewhere than the media circus.

But the silver lining is that the rough season has finally pushed his cards into some of the discount boxes and into my collection.

A copy of the Crusade card had been sitting in my COMC watch list for a good deal more than the $.33 I paid for it.  And I was thrilled to pay $1 for the Prizm card.  I'm sure some people aren't happy with them, but I love the crazy number of colored refractors Prizm has added this year to their football product.

 In addition to these awesome cards, I grabbed a stack of 10 or 15 base new base cards for ten or twenty cents each.

 Finally my Geno collection will look like a collection, rather than a few sad cards in a page.

 And of course I haven't forgotten about the other WVU alums either.  Me like shiny.

 Keeping with the college theme, I snagged this sweet Randy Moss Press Pass card.  If you haven't had the chance, check out the RandU documentary on Nextflix.  I've enjoyed the vast majority of the 30 for 30 documentaries, though I think at this point ESPN has produced way more than 30.

 And what fun would a card show be without some dimebox digging?  I've been wanting a copy of this Wizard of Oz card for a while.  I wish we would see some of the goofy 90's painted Fleer cards again.

 And keeping up the retro feel, I love the border on this Verlander.  Panini did really well with the inserts in 2014 Donruss.  Now if they could just stop screwing up base sets...

 I can never say no to an auto out of a dime box.

 The Fleer Retro products UD put out are probably some of my favorite from the past couple years.  It's a shame to see them losing the college license.  But money talks in today's card industry.

 I started a small Wil Myers collection a few months ago.  But I may be on strike from adding his 2015 cards until the Padres make some changes to their godawful uniforms.

 The Pirate pickups were uneventful at best.  For whatever reason, Pirate cards as about as plentiful now as they were in 2006 when the Pirates were losing 100 games.

 I was happy to snag this SP'd Marte Diamond Kings for $.33, which completes my Donruss base set.

 I'm still kind of lost as to why the Pirates get so little local love.  In the 20 years the Pirates were losing, I'm sure many collectors turned their attention to the Steelers and Pens.  They were championship caliber teams with superstar players to collect.  But I am kind of surprised how hard it has been to find cards now that the team has turned things around.

 But the real star of this show?  As I was hitting the last table of the show, one of two dealers on the upper floor of the mall who didn't seem to be getting much traffic, I almost turned and headed home.  It looked like the typical ebay+30% table, where common autographs were priced in the dreaded 5/$20 box.  Nothing craps on a show like seeing cards I know I can buy for $1 on COMC grossly overpriced.

 But I decided to look through the dealer's cheaper stuff.  And boy am I glad I did.

 His dollar box looked pretty much on par with the autographs - Jeter base cards in toploaders for $1.

 But when I hit the Geno green/yellow Prizm, I figured I'd keep looking in hopes of finding some other cool Prizm cards.  Instead, I found about half a dozen parallels from 2014 Topps Tek.

 I've been excited about the Tek set since it was initially announced.  I decided not to order any boxes since Topps waited until the release date to put out a checklist, and after the the trainwreck that was Stadium Club, I didn't want a $50 box of Chris Owings.

 I asked the dealer if he had any other Tek cards, and boy am I glad I did.  He said he had been waiting all day for somebody to ask about them, and pulled out a big stack.  He said he didn't bother with all the variations, so just pull out whatever I wanted at $3/1.  Most were the common patterns, but I did find a couple of the more rare patterns.

 All in all, I now have 3 glorious binder pages of Tek cards, mostly of the 90's players from the set.  Better yet, when all was said and paid for, I paid about $.20 a card for the commons.

Add in the 3 autos I purchased for a total of $20 on ebay a while back, and I basically have the equivalent of 3 boxes and some spare base cards of Tek for a grand total of less than $30.  Sure, I didn't hit a coveted Big Mac auto, but I think I would still be pretty darn pleased had I pulled all these cards from a box.

My COMC Haul, Black and Gold Edition

Round one of my COMC packages came in yesterday, with part two still not shipped.  I ended up with 201 new cards headed my way.  About half of those were purchased between Thanksgiving and the last free shipping special sometime last Spring.

And there was certainly no shortage of shiny cards in this order.  I was finally able to snag a few cards I have been after for quite some time.  In 2002, Topps colored refractors to Chrome.  The base refractors were gold bordered, to match the Flagship set that year.  The set also had a black refractor parallel, which I had absolutely no idea existed until years later.  In 2002 Topps Traded, the Black refractors were /100, and I actually pulled a couple from the boxes I opened back in the day.  But I had no idea the main Chrome set also included the black parallels, limited to 50 copies.

The Black Refractors look great for the Pirates cards, but seemed insanely tough to come across.  But after years of chasing even a single copy, I was able to snag two of the black ref's /50 off of COMC in recent months, both for around $3 each.  While Pat Meares doesn't exactly evoke warm and fuzzies among Pirate fans, I love the dugout shot that shows PNC park in the background.  

 I keep telling myself I'm going to stop buying Bowman prospect cards unless the player actually reaches the majors.  And then I see a card on the cheap, and the cycle begins anew.  Trae Arbet is just one of many shortstop prospects that will probably never hit enough to reach the majors.  But I paid $1.35 for a card numbered /35.  And it's shiny.  And I'm a weak willed collector.

 Remember how for a few years Topps insisted on inserting boxtoppers with those obnoxious Uncirculated cases?  Topps was pretty indecisive with the numbering of the gold refractors in the early 00's.  There were 99 copies in 2001, 50 in 2002, and 330 in 2003.  For whatever reason, 2003 has been the hardest to track down.  I blame the damn uncirculated cases.

 Remember how big of a deal people were making about the Holiday Mega Boxes with exclusive Update Chrome cards last year?  What you probably don't remember is how quick prices fell off a cliff.  The first copies on ebay for this Liriano were going for $10-15.  I think I paid $2-something for mine.  Jeff over at 2X3 Heroes was gracious enough to trade me the Black Refractor, so this makes for one shiny mini rainbow.

 And in case you needed a reminder of how fickle the baseball gods can be, HR Derby and home run crown one year, bench bat that can't throw the baseball to the nice man with a glove the next.  Hopefully Pedro can do more hitting and less throwing in 2015.

 This scan came out looking orange, but I swear it's a gold.  Jim Negrych played at Pitt before being drafted by the Bucs.  He moved up the system pretty quickly as a high average/on base guy who didn't really have a true position.  I know I wasn't the only Pirate fan hoping he could end up a multi-position bench bat ala Rob Mackowiak and Josh Harrison.  But he ultimately topped out at AAA, and played independent ball last season.

 Quinton Miller was one of those projectable bonus babies that the Pirates loved.  He signed for somewhere around $1M as a 20th round pick.  He made it up to AA as a reliever last year, but he's nothing more than organizational fodder at this point.  But for a mere $4, I couldn't pass up the chance to add a gold refractor auto.  This makes me a prospector, right?

Mail Call

It's nice to see Frankie Liriano making it into quite a few sets this year.  It seems like Pirate free agent signings rarely get any love.  Granted there haven't been many players worthy of inclusion on cardboard, but even some of the better signings like Kenny Lofton and Russ Martin haven't had many cards in a Pirate uniform.

Unfortunately it's probably a safe bet that Frankie is on his way out of town for richer pastures.  But at least I'll have some shiny cards from his time in the Burgh.