The Best of Friends

Just a quick reminder to enter my Opening Day contest if you haven't already.

Some of the most treasured parts of my collection are the cards I've received from other collectors.  Over the years, I've been lucky enough to meet some fantastic people through collecting, and have been the recipient of some extreme generosity.  No matter how big or small, the cards I've received as gifts mean a little extra to me.

After all, this hobby is a lot less enjoyable without someone to share it with.  And I don't think many people out there could appreciate the mind numbing monotony of the stack of dime cards or an autograph of a guy who played 3 games in the majors quite as well as the terrific online communities I'm a part of.

I received a box in the mail right as I was heading out the door Wednesday from one of my team collector buddies.  It was a heavy medium flat rate, and I figured it was worth running a couple minutes late to take a peek inside.

The box was stuffed with bags and bags of cards, and a beautiful Mitchell and Ness Clemente jersey.

As I started digging through the bags, I saw tons of cards I needed.  No small feat, as my want list seems to shrink with each weekend flea market trip.

But I must have opened the bags in the perfect order.  In the next to last bag, I came across the Freddy Sanchez Chrome press plate above, and this amazing Ralph Kiner bat card.  This is actually my first Kiner relic.  And better yet the photo features him in the awesome 1947 uniform, which I gush endlessly about.

 But the best was saved for last.  At the end of the final bag of cards I opened, there was a stack of about 25 autographs.  To most people, it just looks like a long list of nobodies.  But for a slightly obsessive team collector?  Pure gold.  Because of the sheer obscurity, a lot of the guys are tough autographs

 Better yet, there were quite a few signed and unsigned minor league team cards in the piles.  I love minor league sets, and have been trying to track down the teams sets for each level of Pirates affiliates whenever possible.  A lot of the late 90's and early 00's sets are tough to find.  The Pirates were lacking in big name prospects, so I'm guessing fewer sets sold than some of the clubs with top stars, and now even fewer surface today.

 But the big hitter is at the top of the post.  I had been hunting for Jose Bautista autographs for a while back around 2007 or 2008.  I was a big fan of Bautista's versatility on the diamond, and thought he deserved more of a shot on teams where playing time didn't always make a lot of sense.

 There was a time when the card could easily be had for $4 or $5.  But ever frugal Mark wanted to wait it out, and see if I could save a buck or two down the road.  I think you know how the Joey Bats story went from there.

 So until Wednesday, my lone Bautista auto was a blue refractor that is one of my favorite cards.  But I can't gush enough about how excited I am to have this card in my collection.

These cards will always have a special place in my collection for who they came from even more than what they are.  The relationships I've built in this hobby are what keep it fun for me.  Showing off scans of my latest (and lamest) purchases with people who can relate is a big part of why I have kept collecting for as long as I have.

Hope everyone has a great weekend and a happy Easter.  I'll be splitting the weekend between Kate's parents' on Saturday and mine on Sunday.  It spaces out the food coma, but also keeps me running around all weekend.  Hopefully I can get a couple posts scheduled before then.  The countdown to opening day begins!

Odds and Ends from the Show

The long weekend has gotten in the way of my posting schedule, but hopefully some odds and ends from last weeks card show will keep the crowds at bay (pun intended).  There's just so much stuff here, it's taken me the better part of my free time this week trying to get cards entered into their respective spreadsheets and hopefully find their way to a binder soon.

I like to think of myself as the kind of guy who goes into a card show without any expectations.  Hit the tables, see what their is to see, and work within your budget from there.  Sure, there are always specific pieces or cards that I want.  But more often than not I need to hit ebay or another online retailer if I'm looking for a *specific* item.

But once in a blue moon, the item comes to you.

Last week I wrote about Jim, my new best friend from Bahston.  He rolled into the show with a van full of small and oddball items, and I ended up scoring some really cool pieces from him.   Everything in this post (and then some) came from Jim's table.

As we were wrapping up our deal on Friday, he asked if I had seen his signed balls.  When he pulled out the ball cube, I had a tough time keeping my tongue in my mouth.  One of the items on my most wanted list has been an '06 All-Star ball.  A signed one?  Icing.

A dual signed ball?  Collector heaven.  When Jim quoted me a price at $20, no haggling needed.  That beauty was coming home with me.   The 06 ASG was a pretty special time for me, coming during the summer between graduating hs and starting college .  But those weren't the end to the all-star festivities.

Though the 1994 ASG doesn't hold such fond memories for me (or any memories, since I think I had just started t-ball that year), I've been coming across a lot of '94 memorabilia lately.  The chance to have an all-star ball from '94 was too good to pass up, even without any autographs on this one.  The ball has some slight yellowing, but the black and gold stitching really looks fantastic in my opinion.

For a couple bucks extra, Jim threw in a '94 all-star hat.  Did I need it?  No.  Will I wear it?  Doubtful.  Jim was quite the masterful salesman.

But some items just sold themselves.  These mini-figures have been on my want-list since childhood.  I still have the team sets for the Patriots, Packers, Cowboys, Chieft, and 49'ers at my parents house from when these came out around 1997.  But all those toy store trips never yielded a Steelers set.  I've seen a few locally, but the price was always more than I was willing to pay.  For a couple dollars, into the bundle!

But the odds and ends didn't stop there.  I picked up two Pirate patches with the old logo, which may eventually find their way into some kind of framing project.  On top of that, I came home with a full array of Pirates shot glasses (I rarely drink, but they always seem to come in handy) and other odds and ends.

Perhaps the coolest of which was this Pirates pin set.  Remember when Blockbuster video used to...exist?  The set is from late 91/early 92, and features the major stars of a post-Bonilla Bucs team, along with rising star Orlando Merced.  Not sure what I'll do with them, but I do really like these pins.  For the time being I'll probably leave them bagged though, for the vintage advertising nostalgia along.

I'll Never Rip You, But I Love You Anyway

I don't think I'm alone in saying that the products that I ripped most often are ones that continue to have a special place in my collecting heart.  The short list includes 2000 Topps, 2001 Donruss, 1995 Topps, and 2002 Fleer.  Any chance I get to add some of the tougher to find Pirate cards - or really any rarer cards - from those sets, I pounce.

During my wax ripping days, I opened many a pack hoping to hit a Pirate Stat Line card, or Clemente/Guerrero insert out of 2000 Topps.  But luck never shined in my favor.  So to snag those cards later at less than the price of a pack?  Sign me up.

And that's the thing.  The price of a pack.

See, my wax ripping days pretty much died out around 2005.  By 2007, I was wax free.  I'm not one of those self-righteous waxaholics anonymous.  I don't look down upon the wax rippers - after all, that's how I get my team collector fix.  But my collecting life is a lot more enjoyable with wax out of the picture.

Right about the time that I quit wax cold turkey, pack prices started to hit crazy places.  In our hit driven hobby landscape, the pack is a notion of days gone by for many products.  Now you get a box - with some hits.  Base cards?  Nah.  Foil wrapper?  Who needs it.  After all, guys buy by the case anyway. 

And that is where being a team collector is tricky.  See, I still want the cards coming out of these ultra high end products.  I need 'em.  But where to find them?  Ebay is great for the hits.  But what about the products that still have those outdated base card things?

That becomes a more difficult question.  High end pack busting types aren't usually the guys writing blogs or sending out trade packages full of much needed 1983 Donruss cards.  And I'm not about to shell out $3 for some numbered base card.  So I sit back.  And hope.

I can assuredly say that I will never rip a pack of Triple Threads.  Or Five Star.  Or anything else that is loaded with crazy hit cards, and $2 duds. I'm just not a gambler.  Never was, never will be.  Even when I was a wax ripper, I liked to play it safe...and cheap.  So those products with their base cards out of 1360 will never hold the special place in my heart that $2 packs of 2000 Topps do.  Or the pack within a pack of 2001 Donruss.  Or the incessant annoyance of 2002 Fleer, unable to complete a set of regular backs or gold backs no matter how many boxes I opened.  I'll never get a rush from tracking down a relatively common card from those sets simply because at some point in my collecting life it seemed like the coolest card on the planet.  So no, I'll never rip packs of you.  But I promise you a place in my collection just the same.

Trade Winds a Blowin'

The holiday layover is giving me a chance to breathe for the first time since starting my new job the other week.  Of course in the mean time the packages have been piling up around here.  Not that I'm complaining.  Hopefully the holiday break will let me catch up on some of the cardboard goodness.

And goodness it most certainly is.  This trade post comes courtesy of Jeff at 2x3 Heroes.  We were working on striking up a deal for the Liriano pictured here, which pretty quickly expanded.  I have a lot of Pirate cards.  Too many, according to Kate.  But Jeff managed to pull almost 70 new cards for the collection.  Quite an impressive accomplishment, and one that will not go unpunished.  Now I have another towering stack to sort!

The Liriano was certainly the highlight, but the shiny goodness wasn't done yet.  Matt Hague never turned into much of a player - no pop, mediocre defense at first.  But he managed to work his way into quite a few Topps sets before being relegated to AAA purgatory.

 Any team collector will tell you that 2008 Upper Deck Documentary gives them nightmares.  I'm still about 70 cards short of the team set.  The Gold parallel?  Don't even go there.

 These great Topp UK minis were a set I didn't even know existed a month ago.  Through some strange turn of coincidence, I managed to acquire the entire team set via two separate trade packages (in neither case had the minis been discussed) and a justcommons purchase.  Nothing beats the feeling of a completed team set, even if it is only three cards.

 Jack Wilson cards are always a welcome addition here at Battlin' Bucs.  All my Wilson cards have prime real estate in their own binder, so doubles are always appreciated to fill in the team set binders.

 Say what you will about the 2000's Pirates, but 2006 was a magical year.

But maybe this duo can top the memories of Freddy, Bay, and company.  I certainly wouldn't mind.

Thanks a ton, Jeff!  It was great to see so many base cards come off my needs list in one fell swoop, and this trade should full up quite a few holes in the binders.  And more importantly, I found another great Chicago trader to unload my Sox cards on.

Card Show on Black Friday? Bad Idea

Guess I kinda spoiled the big reveal on that one.  I just attended what was, hands down, the worst card show I have ever seen.

Since moving back to Pittsburgh in June, there hasn't been a single card show.  So a show on Black Friday weekend?  It has to be big, right?  Especially if they're charging $3 admission.

I was wrong.  Very, very wrong.

I pretty much arranged my shopping plans on BF around getting to this show as early as possible.  I figured the dealers would continue on the Black Friday spirit, and put out some steep discounts on lower end stuff.

Instead, I arrived to a sad looking setup inside of an abandoned Borders storefront.  I didn't see a lot of traffic, but hey...it is Black Friday.  Maybe that just means I beat people to the deals.

Had I known what awaited me inside, I would have turned around and headed home.  After trading in my $3 for a smiley face stamp on my hand to get into the show, my smiley face quickly turned upside down.

Old video games.  Wrestling figures from the 90's.  Former WWF and WCW wrestler Virgil (who is a high school teacher in the area and always trying to sell autographs whenever he can).  A company selling siding for houses.  Beanie Babies?
What's missing here?  Cards.

Out of the 20 or so vendors set up, there were 4 people selling cards.  One guy, who looked to have a ton of cards, was too busy talking on the phone to even bother putting the boxes out.  Another dealer was the typical "I bought these cards in 1996 and haven't looked at them since" type.  I pulled out a stack of Kordell Stewart commons I needed, just to get a sense of price.  His price?  $5 for 6 or 7 commons.  Onnnnn to the next table.

I shamefully picked out some commons out of a dime box from a dealer who mainly sells high end stuff to make myself feel a little better.  I wasn't walking away empty handed, dammit.

The results were unspectacular, but I did add some cool cards.

I've been building a mini collection of non-Pirate cards that feature photos shot in PNC Park.  The Clemente Wall makes an excellent backdrop for photos of left handed hitters, and it's a shot Topps takes full advantage of each year.

There's a very good chance I was at the game featured here, since I was at quite a few poorly attended Astros/Pirates games in 2006.  I may do some more digging to see what I can find on this one.  This mini collection is quickly becoming one of my favorite non-Pirate parts of my collection.

And from there I made a run on unfamiliar unis, which always amuse me.  There were quite a few guys who made brief appearances in strange places in the late 00's, none of which I appear to have cardboard of.

Problem solved!

I was thrilled to add this Braves of favored Bucco Craig Wilson.

The Braves have always been a far cry from my favorite team due to the early 90's...incidents.  Ironically, two of my favorite Buccos, Craig Wilson and Jack Wilson, both ended their careers in Atlanta.

For such a terrible show, the dime box did manage to yield additions for pretty much all of my mini collections.

Throwback uni?  Check.

Awesome 90's card?  Check.

And of course, the smattering of random cards that I just find cool.


But what ultimately saved the day (and I use saved loosely here) was a hockey collector who was selling off their collection.

It was almost all Pens stuff, with a small box of Steelers.  And then I noticed a small tab for Pirates stuffed in the back corner of one box.  I wasn't expecting much, since all the other cards were priced at or above ebay prices, and most commons were $1.  But I found a nice little stack of numbered Pirate cards, conveniently priced at a quarter each.  Yes please.

I managed to come up with $5 worth of quarter cards, which seemed like a miraculous idea for this show.

I walked in with a pocket full of cash, looking to spend.  I walked out with a pocket full of cash and a headache.  Total spent?  $10, including the $3 entrance fee.

To ease my pain, I drove home and drowned my sorrows in a COMC shopping spree.  So don't feel too bad for me.  

COMC Haul: Part 1

Last week I spend a few posts showing off the non-Pirate additions from my COMC's Spring Cleaning sale.  It took a little longer to get the larger, and frankly more important, parts of the shipment scanned.  In total I added 40 cards, all of which were of the shiny/signed/cloth variety.  I'm very happy with the prices I paid, and since I was able to spread the damage out over a few months, it made the financial blow feel a little less significant (though the grand haul didn't cost me much more than a trip to the card show would, or in blog-terms the price of a few blasters).

This Jason Bay patch card is probably my favorite addition of the entire order.  I've largely stayed away from relic cards unless they're dirt cheap in recent years.  But I'm a sucker for a nice patch card, and the black Pirate jersey with red trim is my second favorite Pirate jersey.  For $4.25, this card was a no brainer, even though it was the second most expensive of the bunch.

 So many things about this card feel so wrong: the excessively busy border, trapped horizontal mini card, sticker auto, tiny player photo.  But it's a card I've been wanting since the set came out, and though it seemed way cooler then than now, it's not something I come across very often.

 Matt Curry is probably in danger of losing his prospect status if he doesn't come up with a big 2013.  But just in case he does, I have a nice die cut rookie.  If he doesn't, I have a nice die cut rookie.

 This was the most expensive card of the order, and also the last purchased.  I've always thought the red ink autos were cool, but they're also a set that has attracted a few set builders.  It's the latter fact that largely caused this to come into my collection.  At $4.50, the card was a bit higher than what I consider it worth, but I had a few dollars left in my account, and I noticed that recent auctions for the Red Ink's were going for over $10 with shipping for common players.  With quite a few set collectors after this release, I figured this was probably my only shot to get this card at such a low price, so I bit.  It's actually the second '52 Red Ink Pirate auto I've picked up off COMC.

 Ugly sticker?  Check.  But for a little over a dollar,this one falls into the "well, I don't have it yet" category.

 I remember reading an article about the 98 Signature Series in an issue of Beckett from the late fall of that year that had an accompanying visual checklist of the released and unreleased cards in the set, and being in awe of the autographed awesomeness.  The idea of ever owning a certified autograph card was lightyears out of reach for me then.  This is a beautifully designed set, and Jose Guillen was nice enough to sign the card in the provided window in '98, unlike his '97 card that he signed along the side of the card.  For $2, this was a nostalgic no-brainer.

 A little less nostalgia on this one, but same idea.  These cards were going for around $10 at the time of release, and Walker is one of the more limited autos from Marquee.  For under $3, it felt great to cross this one off the want list.

 I had no idea these Sweet Spot wood parallels even existed.  The card looks amazing, and the wood grain is even more visible in person.  Way cooler than just a simple color change.

 Again, this is a card that had been on my want list for quite some time.  The 2006 All Star game was an amazing weekend, and I love the jersey/logo designs that were used for the game.  I've been wanting to build the set of these jersey cards for years, but this is actually the first of its kind I have acquired.

 Not much to see here, but for $.50 you can't go wrong with a numbered card of a HoF'er.

Topps apparently got confused what "gold" refractor meant for a few years.  These cards would have looked great if the Pirates were still wearing their early 70's mustard jerseys.  In a Spring Training jersey?  This card just looks hideous.