first four packs of Updates.

After the first four packs or so, this is what I've pulled that I think is scan worthy. Not a lot of hits, but a few good base cards and inserts.


A Randy Johnson Turkey Red. My first of the UH. I'm trying to complete all 150 of the Turkey Reds.


A Nick Markakis Propaganda.



.. and a Teixiera Propaganda. I also pulled the base card that looks sort of like this card. Pretty cool action shot too on the base card. I'm too tired to upload it though. It's got the same expression, but a slightly different angle.



Here's the backs if anybody is interested.



I really love this Nelson Cruz card. Is it too dorky of me to notice the Mets fan with a Canon camera strap around his neck? The sunlight coming down with Nelson surrounded by fans looks cool.



Here are a couple of cool cards I guess.



Kind of lame for horizontal in game cards though.




At least they have checklists on the back.



This is a nice action shot. I love expression of Angel's face.


Alright! That's it for now, I'll try to show off some more stuff later. I have a feeling the rest of the box is going to be mainly base cards with few hits left. Hopefully I'm wrong.

Updates first hits

I'm going to show off the box topper and my first pack from Updates and Highlights.

I promised that I wouldn't post every pack, but these first two have some decent hits, so I thought it'd be appropriate.

My boxtopper package was miscut!


That's not a good sign.




I know little about the Rangers. I should. Our Oklahoma City Redhawks are the AAA affiliate of the Rangers, but I'm not sure who Neftali is really.



Here is my first big hit.


A Randy Johnson cyan printing plate.

Cool. My first printing plate and a player I recognize. I'm not a huge fan of Randy's, but he did hit that bird that one time with a pitch so that's cool.



I was a little angry when I saw this card in the pack. I thought the rounded corners were a damaged card.

cool. some nice cards so far. Later I'll post some of the cool base cards I like.

Topps Udates and Highlights-and Series Two

I just got my two new boxes in the mail. I've been waiting for about a week now for these to show up. I think I'm more excited than when I opened my Allen and Ginter hobby box. I think one of the reasons I'm so excited is because I know that unless something really astronomically bad happens at least I'll be able to finish the series two set. I'm only about 90 cards short right now. That's if I did all my spreadsheets correctly. I'm figuring about 315 base cards with 36 toppstown cards, 9 or so Turkey Reds and about 5-7 hits. This is just a random number I'm coming up with since I'm too tired to look at the actual breakdown right now. It would be pretty funny if I only pulled cards I already have and only filled a few of my needs for series two. Actually depressing would be the better word for it. No, I can't imagine having that bad luck.

I'll probably just randomly insert my findings on the Updates and Highlights box in between other blog posts about other stuff. I don't think I have it in me to post every card.

First pack of OBAK

This is another product I've been resisting the urge to buy. Mainly because it seems a little expensive at 3.00 per five cards. I've seen a few cards online and while they don't jump out at me, they still seem pretty decent. I really wanted to buy a few packs or maybe a blaster, but never did because of the price. I hate to sound like a cheapskate, but buying blasters or packs of this stuff might not be the best way to go about it. Maybe a hobby box or retail box down the road would be better for me.

I was really hoping to pull a minor league star from the Oklahoma City or Tulsa teams. I was lucky enough to pull one.


I'm going to show them one at a time.


Chadwich, father of baseball



Skowron, Kansas City Blues (and Yankees)




Tazawa,Portland Sea Dogs (Red Sox)


Schmutz, he's listed as Tacoma, N.W.L. I messed up the scan.


Here's the back. I thought it said "wrongfully good" at first. Like maybe a commentary on smoking or something.

And I saved the best card for last.


Al Rosen. From the Oklahoma City Indians. (Cleveland Indians)



I'm so stoked, I even scanned the back of this card too.


Pretty decent pack of cards. The mini is nice, but the Rosen card really makes the pack. After pulling him it makes me want to buy more. Funny how that works out, doesn't it? The cards seem a little thin, but otherwise pretty decent. I like the back design and the basic theme of the cards.

At least buying only one pack makes for a small blog post.

Blaster urges

Trying to fend off the urge to buy a blaster or a pack or two to bust is a hard thing for me some weekends. I have little free time these days to buy anything, much less to blog about it, but whenever I get the chance I try to go out and get something. I've been really happy with the few Heritage Chrome cards that I've come across and I'd like to try and do a Mets team set of just the chrome cards. Plus I really like to try to buy something new for a change and Heritage would be just about right.



I like that they have these desaturated backgrounds that highlights the players better.


I picked up two so far. One on ebay and one on a trade. They also have this "wood grain" sort of thing going on in the backgrounds as well as being de-saturated. Little slashes dug into the surface of the card. I'm not sure what to make of it, but the player and the border is all smooth and colorful unlike the rest of the card.

The sad thing is, I can't seem to find any blasters or packs around. I even searched out some online and couldn't find any hobby boxes. I'm not sure if that's the right way to go. I need to go by the real hobby shop in town and see if they have any available.

But anyway, I couldn't find Heritage so I picked up another blaster of Goodwin Champions.

This is another product that I sort of like a few of the cards, but I don't really like the set overall. Last blaster I pulled some really cool stuff so this time I'm hoping to get something nice again.




I pulled a surfer. Not so excited about that. I have no idea who this is, apparently he's married to Gabrielle Reece the famous volley ball player. Her, I know. It'd be nice to have a card of her instead,don't you think?

I also pulled a few martial arts and non-baseball cards.


Silva


Lewis.



Matt Ryan


.. and another Manning. Last time I pulled big brother.

These cards are okay I guess.


A Lincoln..


... and an Obama.



I pulled lot of hockey cards in this box.




Two Gretskys.



Gordie Howe.




A guy holding a hockey puck.



..and for good measure one of those 2oth anniversary cards featuring a hockey player.

I know nothing about hockey except Wayne Gretsky and a lot of highlights on ESPN seemed to show a lot of fighting. That's pretty cool in my book, but I'm not sure if I could sit through a whole game. or fight or whatever they call it.




So far I've gotten at least one relic or auto per box as well as one of the Gypsy Queen minis.

I like this a LOT better than the A-rod I pulled last time.


This was a pretty good box for Mets though. I didn't pull any last time so it was nice to get some in this box.



Sheffield. Okay, at least in a Met uniform.


Delgado. That guy always seems to have cool cards.




David Wright. Whoo Hoo!! I like this one a lot, especially the Mr. Met.



This Jose Reyes card is now one of my newest cards that sits on my desk in a top loader. The dirt stain is nice, and the Mets logo is really sharp looking. The expression in his face, everything makes this card so cool to me.



The Matt Holiday card was on my radar. I'm sort of trying to track down cards of guys from Oklahoma. He's one of the easier ones to collect, simply because he's currently playing. Matt Kemp would be another fave.



Love the retired player cards. The old school logos are nice. In this case it looks nice...


... in this Zambrano card not so nice. I have no idea what that is supposed to be on the upper right. They're the Cubs, right? That looks like some sort of cartoon gerbil or rat. I'm really trying to figure out what that reminds me of. I vaguely recall something like that on a Saturday Night Live cartoon or something. It's driving me nuts trying to think of where I've seen that before.



Another cool retired player.



This is a cool card of Utley.


I mentioned early about the Delgado cards I have all being pretty cool cards? Well, I only have like 3 of them, so theirs probably a lot more that aren't cool, but ignorance is bliss, right?

Anyway, I've got a new theory that all Jermaine Dye cards are pretty interesting looking. I'm basing that on an Upper Deck card from maybe 2008, Allen and Ginter base and relic cards and now this one.



This is my big hit from the blaster. Last blaster I pulled an auto. Gavin Floyd.
I guess White Sox hits are the only mojo I get out of Goodwin.


I think this is my first relic that has a stripe in it. I like that you can see his face clearly. They didn't spend much time photoshoping the stadium reflection out of his sunglasses though. Kind of an interesting contrast from the trees and stuff in the background.

I didn't mean to spend this much time posting, but it's hard to stop when you get started. Hope I didn't bore anybody too much with my ramblings. If anybody sees anything worth trading for let me know. At some point I'll get around to putting some of this stuff over to my other blog dedicated to my trade/want list.

Trade with Democratic Roadkill-and more topps cards!

For this blog post I'm going to run through a bit of my topps series one and twos that I picked up as well as a recap of the fastest trade ever! Since I've been pretty busy this week and will not even have a day off, I'll be blowing through this one pretty fast. Hopefully that won't reflect badly on the trade, because the cards were well appreciated.

Okay, on with the trade.

After a few e-mails me and Duane at Democratic Roadkill had come up with some Allen and Ginter cards that each one needed, so off the trade went. I had barely even had a chance to hit "Send" on the return email before my package had arrived in the mailbox! I was really excited to get these, because it means I'm that much closer to actually finishing one of these sets.

First off I want to show off some of the topps that he sent over.

I wonder if topps picked this card because they wanted to show off how long his name actually looks on the back of his jersey? It's a pretty cool card though. You can still see part of his face even though most of the card shows his back.



.. cool horizontal action shot.



A nice Ichiro card...



.. to go along with this allen and Ginter Ichiro card he sent over.


He sent a bunch of Allen and Ginter base and short print cards for me.

Another cool horizontal shot.




I believe this is the last Negro League star in the base set that I still needed.



Hip Hip Jorge!

This brings me to only needing 53 more cards for my base and short print set.

I picked up a few more topps cards. I was able to grab a couple of cool inserts.

Whenever I pull certain cards I immediately identify them with certain bloggers. I think their is someone out there who is a Jason Bartlett fan, he's probably already got this card, but maybe not the gold parallel version.



After seeing these all over the blogsphere, I've finally pulled one of my own. It's a redemption for from the Braves. I'm not sure if anybody has received their redemptions yet. It says on the website that it'll be a while before they're shipped out.
Might make a nice addition to the binder.



Another Pee Wee Reese card for my collection. I like the look of these cards, but after looking at the checklists I think it'd be too hard to do both the Target and Walmart versions of these. I'm sort of confused about this insert set. I think they are numbered differently depending on what store you bought them from. I can't remember, plus it's enough now for me to just try and get those Turkey Reds together.


And finally one of the few Toppstown cards I actually like. This one and the Johan card is nice. If theirs a Jose Reyes out there that might be cool too.

That's all for now, thanks again Duane. You guys should check out his blog!