contest winnings-Smallest Group Break Ever!!

A couple of weeks ago Dayf had a smallest group break ever and I picked the Yankees as well as a few other teams. There are a few older and current Yankees that I like and I was hoping to pick up the Mantle refractor thing.

I won't bore you with all of the cards as he's already
posted them up on his blog, so I'll just show off the main card that I was interested in:



The cool mantle card.

In his post he mentioned attacking my want lists and that's true, he sent over a bunch of different cards from a variety of my want lists. Let's start off with some more Mantle cards.


With these two checklist cards I'm officially done with the Mantle cards from that set.
Edit: as I was putting these two in the binder I realize that I still need checklist number 7. Crap!!

I've got a couple of 2008 sets I'm working on; Masterpieces and Stadium Club.


This is as good of an example of why I like Stadium Club: A nice horizontal shot. This time a candid shot of a player in front of a huge scoreboard. The most important part of why I like this card is the shadow on A-Rod's lower body. The photographer caught him at a moment when his upper torso is light by sunlight and for me that's pretty cool. I also like the huge Boston scoreboard in the background.


I can't show off an A-rod without showing off another card Dayf sent:


This nice Stadium Club David Wright. I wanted to post this mainly to cleanse the pallet for the next few cards.


Roy Oswalt always seems to have cool action shot cards. I guess most pitchers do.


... and lastly an Ichiro mini!

I'm not putting myself through the anguish of trying for the whole black border mini set this year, I'm only going for a few of the minis that I think are cool. This is one such mini that I was hoping to get. Pretty nice. I've been holding off on looking for these cards from 2010 as I'm still going after the cards from 2009 A&G.

Thanks for hosting the cool box break. Thanks also for knocking some cards off of my wantlist.

big step in my player collections courtesy of Shot not Taken

Since I got back into collecting I mostly have been interested in set collecting. I'm probably working on about 10 different sets and subsets right now and sometimes it feels like 100.

Because of that I've pretty much neglected doing the player collection thing until recently. I came across a post on A Shot Not Taken late last year and Ray is looking to complete the Propaganda subset from 2009 Update and Highlights.

Earlier in the year I had the pleasure of trading with Ray. He sent me a beautiful Adrian Peterson jersey card for some sketches and cards he needed.

Here's the card again. You can never have too much A.D.




Anyway, I wasn't expecting anything in return, but he sent over some really nice cards that all fit into my different player collections.

Since this hasn't been much of a focus until now I was really happy to get these cards.


First up is a card of a former OU and current NFL star, Adrian Peterson.


I've had my eye on this card for a while, but have never pulled it from a pack of cards. Looks like he's in mid-juke here.


A couple of Bowman reprints of Mickey Mantle.


A nice MMHR chrome card of the Mick!


And something new for me is a couple of nice Blake Griffin cards.


He was a standout at OU for a couple of seasons and was the top pick in the draft. He sat out last year with an injury.

He's back now and looks to be doing pretty good for an otherwise crappy team. Poor Clippers.
This is a Passing the Torch card detailing at that time how these guys were the past two (at the time) NCAA Player of the Year award winners.


This is nice posed dunk shot of Mr. Griffin. As of Jan 10th he's leading the NBA in dunks with 88. Up until this point I only had one Panini sticker and one EEE card of Blake. Now I've doubled my collection in only one trade.

Lastly was this gold bordered card of Koyie Hill. I was wondering why a Cub would be in the pack. I did not realize that he was an Oklahoma guy.


He was born in Tulsa and graduated from Lawton Ike. That's not the interesting part about this guy: apparently he got into an accident with a table saw and it cut into his thumb and apparently severed part or all of the remaining 4 fingers. He saved them long enough for the doctors to reattach them.

Reminds me of a Bill Brasky fact:


Watch Bill Brasky-Brasky Buddies in Entertainment  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com


Thank you very much for the cards Ray! They will be a significant part of my collection.

It's a Festivus Miracle!!

When I first started blogging about cards in the summer of 2009 once of the first things that I did was put up a want list. Blogging would give me a chance to practice my writing and I wanted to share my new hobby with all the blogospere, but mainly I wanted to partake in the cool trades that I saw happening amongst all the bloggers.

In making the wantlist I put down that I was interested in any cards of old teams especially the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers. Dodgers a little more than the Giants mainly because of Jackie Robinson. I was a Jackie Robinson fan when I was a kid.

I never dreamt that I would ever own any authentic cards from when the Giants and Dodgers were in New York. I assumed that the cards would be too scarce, too expensive or both.

So I wrote that I would be happy with any cool reprints that anybody wanted to send. After about a year and a half of blogging I have received many cool cards. I even get a few old reprints in the mail from bloggers like the three that I've shown above.

It also never occurred to me that another way to get cool cards is from bloggers holding giveaway contests on their blogs.

Matthew Glidden owner of the number 5 Type collection blog was having a 400th post Festivus contest and I happened to be one of the 5 chosen as a winner.

He showcases some really cool cards mainly of the vintage variety and it's a good read.


He sent some vintage cards in addition to the reprints above.

A couple of 1954 Topps cards.
This one has been cut down to a more modern card size and has been heavily taped. I'm not sure why. It's kind of got a full-bleed look to it now.

These two Giants along with a ....
...St. Louis Brown: Gordon Goldsberry. Pretty cool expression of Gordon's face. He seems pretty surprised to be on a baseball card.

I can now say that I own four different cards from the 1954 set. Pretty awesome! The other card came from the Topps Million Card website.

This is my first 1955 card.

As you can see from the cartoon Ramon hails from Venezuela! you'll notice that there's not one, but 3 cartoons on the back.
Pretty cool.

This is my first and only 1957 card.


I can't quite explain why I have a fascination for these New York teams. Part of it has to do with the fact that they don't exist anymore. I'm not sure if I really want to go into to much introspection figuring it out either.

The big card in the package was this 1955 card of Brooklyn Dodger 2nd baseman Jim Gilliam.
Perhaps the portrait photo must have been taken on a cold spring day. I've noticed on some of these horizontal sets with the portraits the guys are wearing turtle neck looking undershirts.

This must be one of Matthew's doubles as it's a number 5 card.


Cool back. I love the cartoons on the backs of these cards. All these old cartoons remind me of Christmas with the red and green backs.

Thanks very much for the cards Matthew. You may not be reading this, but it was an awesome contest and a very generous offering of cards.

Trade with the Conquistador from Miami-My Past Time ... I love it!

I finally got the chance to complete a trade with the one and only Conquistador of Miami, Wicked Ponce DeLeon of South Florida. You all might know him better as Alfredo from the blog My Past Time.. I Love It!!

If you're wondering why I call him Wicked Juan Ponce De leon, it's because of my goofy sketch card that I included with the trade.

I always picture Alfredo as a Spanish conquistador with his many golden refractors and autos at his feet so that's where the idea for the sketch came from.

We had a pretty decent trade set up earlier this year. Yikes! It's already 2011, so I guess it was last year. I can't believe that I'm still this far behind on my blog posts. I really need to work on that.


Anyway, enough with the self-loathing; lets get on with the cards.

First up a few nice Packers cards of some former players:


Brett Favre and..

a nice action shot of Robert Brooks. Pretty cool film grain look on this card.

A couple of nice cards of the late Reverend Reggie White. I can't believe that it's been a little over six years since he passed away. Time has been going fast this winter which is good for me as I hate the winter.

Let's go onto some happier thoughts in the form of two nice Met's cards:


Two Goudey Mets.

and two nice UD X cards.

and a insert card of David Wright.



A couple of nice Donruss Threads cards of up and coming shortstop Ruben Tejada.

Along with the specific cards he also sent over some random packs.

This card should have stayed in South Florida.

Don't get me wrong, it's a nice card I just think that Alfredo would have liked to keep this one as he's a Dolphins fan.

I also pulled this cool card of Barry Sanders: a former Oklahoma State and Detroit Lion. Pretty nice card.


I'm not certain, but I think Alfredo won 2009 Blogger of the Year last year and I can see why so many people like to trade with him. Thanks again for the cards dude! Hopefully we can trade again sometime.