Oooo, Shiny

Quite a few things have found their way to the back burner for me in recent months.  Blogging.  Collecting.  Getting to the gym.  Definitely need to get back on that last one.  But I've come to accept that my collecting ebbs and flows.

 Late last year I decided to take on the monster undertaking of the 2000 Topps Chrome Refractor set.  It seemed like a big project to bite off, but I had nooooo idea.

 I've been trying to keep my pickups of commons under $1, which has made things even tougher.  It seems like so many of those late 90's/early 00's cards have dried up.  And at just two refractors per box, there probably wasn't a huge supply to begin with.

 But with my latest COMC shipment, I brought home some more of these beauties.

 Sure, they're all commons.  But I'm glad to knock out a decent amount of progress on the set, even if it is a super-duper longterm project.

 The 2000 refractors have quickly become some of my favorite non-Pirate cards in my collection, and they bring back all sorts of warm and fuzzies when it comes to collecting, since this was really my first exposure to a "high end" product upon coming back to collecting.

It's a little laughable that what was a higher end $3 pack is now pretty much par for the course.  Then again...times change.  Matt Clement was a young hurler with a live arm and promise.  Now he's a high school gym teacher less than a mile up the road from me.  And no, he does not refract in person.

Hidden Gold

After a painstaking wait over the holiday weekend, I finally got my greedy hands on my latest COMC haul.  Thanks to the latest free shipping promo, 200 glorious new cards are now at home in my collection.  There are some great cards that fit into my various PC's that I'll be showing off over the next few days.  But sometimes the odds and ends deserve a little love as well.

Technically speaking, none of the cards in this post really fit into any particular aspect of my collection.  Unless you could my "Oooo, pretty" collection to be...a thing.

 Quite possible the most exciting pickups was this pair of 2001 Topps Chrome refractor inserts.  2001 Chrome was a great set, and the refractor versions of the inserts were a tough pull.

 Maybe I'm in the minority, but I love the fact that I can buy copies of cards I could only dream of pulling as a kid for under a buck.

 Speaking of under a buck, for $.50, I couldn't pass up on this crazy Focus Pocus insert of Ripken.  The orange and black colors give it a little extra Halloween spin.  But most importantly, check out the Turn Ahead the Clock jersey!  Maybe Nick and I are the only collectors in the world who obsess over these things, but I can't thank the Artist Formerly Known as Fleer enough for using some of these photos on their inserts.

 And while it isn't quite 90's nostalgia, this Crime Dog Diffractor from 2014 Tek was close enough for me.

 And there may be no better 90's sweet spot than rare cards of failed prospects.  Nostalgia?  Check.  Guy that was technically once a huge hobby name?  Check.  Awesome card?  Check.  So considering I've never even come close to one of these Gold Label parallels of a Pirate, I'll gladly take it for a mere $.75.  Not too shabby for a card from one of my favorite sets of all time.

And *sigh* teal Marlins jerseys.  I swoon for you.

Now I just need to catalogue the other 190 cards in the box...

Catching Up

As summer kicks into full swing, I've realized I've become terribly out of touch with the world of cardboard.  Prizm and Stadium Club, two of my favorite products, went live and I was blissfully unaware.  It will probably be a while before I start to tackle the cards from either of those sets, but I did spend some time checking ebay to see what I missed.

And boy was I excited to see the Pirates in Archives this year.  Sid Bream and Kent Tekulve are two of the easier Pirates alumni to get autographs from, even if they don't have a ton of certified issues.  But I was downright giddy to see Jason Kendall in the autograph checklist.

I've soured on Kendall a lot over the years.  He was a fantastic player during some of the darkest years in team history.  But from a purely personal standpoint, Kendall was a jerk to just about everybody he encountered in Pittsburgh from fans to teammates.

Still...nostalgia and all that jazz.  I usually hesitate to pony up for Archives autos, since they often sell for more than similar products, and Kendall does have quite a few autographs from his playing days.  Still, I decided to pull the trigger when I was able to land this silver parallel for $7.  That's actually less than most of the base autographs are selling for, and I like the colored border.  So while I'm not exactly back into the swing of things, I'm getting there.  I have a COMC shipment from the Spring Cleaning promo the past week that is scheduled to be delivered today, so maybe that will get me back into a more regular posting routine.

Hope everyone has a great holiday weekend!

Signature Sunday

As as Pirate fan, it's been a big change the past couple years to be adding rather than subtracting at the end of the season.  And late season pickups like Marlon Byrd have been a big part to the success the team experienced heading into the fall months.  The down side if that most of those guys have missed out on having cards as a Pirate.

But with a little photoshop magic and some good signers, I've been able to fill in some gaps in my collection.  Kyle Farnsworth is a guy who it feels like has been around forever.  But he was a decent bullpen addition plucked off the scrap heap for the Pirates.  There aren't a ton of photos from his short Buc tenure out there, but I was pretty happy with how this card turned out.

Seeing Green

Reading through some of my posts over the last few months, I've realized I've become the "get off my lawn, you dang kids" kind of collector.  The hobby has changed over the last decade.  I don't like it, and it has led to a dramatic decrease in my overall interest in level in collecting cards and sports in general.  But the train has left the station and there's no going back.  So unless I want to start acting like one of those guys set up at card shows that still pine for the days when they could sell a Ripken base card for $3...guess I'll just have to change with the times.

But someeeeetimes the grass really is greener on the other side.  Or more accurately, emerald.

The rainbow madness has burned me out on collecting.  But it was actually the idea of chasing rainbows from sets that didn't include Jack Wilson that sucked me into team collecting.  And Leaf Certified Materials?  That was the cream of the crop.  The formula was pretty straightforward - white, red, blue, gold, emerald, black (no camo, pink, or any other wonky colors).  I have a pretty good collection of the more common colors from the various years.  But the Emerald /5 are just a tough find.  I have one Jack Wilson, but that's it.  I'm sure most sold around the time of release (for good money) and are tucked away in collections.

But as luck would have it, I saw one surface on ebay a few weeks back.  Not exactly a star player.  Or even...a player anyone has heard of.  Jeff Miller was a middle reliver who I had never heard of in 2005.  He entered the Pirates system as a college draftee in 2001, and moved pretty quickly through the minors with decent success at each level.  I assume in 2005 he was added to the 40 man roster, and in desperate hopes to include players that Topps hadn't already produced cards of Donruss included some real head scratchers in their 2004-2005 releases.

Miller actually had a pretty good season as a reliever in 2005, posting a 3.36 ERA.  And the Pirates, you may recall, more or less sucked.  Yet one way or another, not only did Miller never get MLB action, the Pirates jettisoned him from the organization.  He pitched for the Giants AAA team in 2006 with nearly identical numbers, but by 2007 played a couple games in the Independent League before retiring.  So...no, not a star player.

Still, the sheer excitement of landing a Mirror Emerald for $4 shipped more than makes up for the lackluster results Mr. Miller had in the years since this card hit the market.

The Long and Winding Road

The last couple weeks have been a whirlwind.  Quite honestly, my interest in cards has been in a tailspin for a while now.  And life hasn't helped.

While it was far from perfect (the pay wasn't great, the commute was killer), the teaching job I loved came to a pretty abrupt end when I learned a couple weeks ago that the alternative school I was at would be closing.  Better yet, we had one week's notice and weren't allowed to tell the kids.  So I spent a week as a lame duck, with our students blissfully unaware that the school that for some of them was very much a last chance was going to be locking the doors behind them.  It was emotionally rough to see some kids I had really grown to care about get thrown back into some real shitty situations.  The not having a job thing can be problematic too.

Quite honestly, it's been tough trying to work up the interest to post and keep the blog feeling fresh.  Prime example?  The photos for this post have been uploaded into this post for nearly 3 weeks.  I just haven't mustered up the energy to actually add words.  Sad, huh?

These were all flea market pickups.  Better yet, they were all a dime.  Normally I'd be pretty thrilled about some of these.  Hell, rookie cards of some of the best players in the NFL for a dime?  Puhleeze.

 But...meh.

Don't get me wrong.  I don't want to quite blogging.  I don't want to quit collecting (the slightly obscene COMC bill I ran up this weekend during the Spring Cleaning specials would testify to that).  But I just don't get the same warm and fuzzies about cards.

 
So don't mind me if I'm still a little sparse for the time being.  My batteries need recharged.  Or maybe just replaced.

But I'll be back with some insightful quips before too long, I'm sure.

Simply the Best

Simply put, there aren't many superstars today who are great TTM signers.  And then there's Dirk Nowitzki.  Not only is he a Hall of Fame bound player, but the guy will sign just about anything put in front of him.

I have a few TTM autographs from Dirk over the years, but when I found his RC in a dime box, I couldn't have been happier.  I sent the card at the beginning of the season, and it finally came back in the middle of the playoffs.

My basketball collection is tiny compared to football or baseball, but this instantly becomes one of my favorite basketball cards I own.  I can't gush enough about how much I respect a guy who makes that kind of time for fans in today's multi-billion dollar sports world, where more and more players won't even touch a pen unless there is a check attached.