With a little help from my friends....

Finally I have completed one of my many baseball card sets. Actually it's only a small part of the Topps flagship: 2009 baseball Updates and Highlights. I have to give it up to 3 people who made it happen: Daniel over at It's Like Having my Own Card Shop , Joe at Priceless Pursuit and a guy without a blog Larry Littman. All 3 contributed to me polishing off the 13 cards I needed for the set and they threw in other cool cards.

All three trades came pretty much together,so I hope I don't get who sent what mixed up but here goes:


First up is The Man Without a Blog, the Enigmatic Larry Littman.


He sent me a few U&H cards with ....


.... a couple of Turkey Reds for that set. Gettin' closer to finishing up the Turkey Reds!

Thanks again! You need to get a blog soon. I don't know anybody right off hand that is blogging about the Mariners so you could fill that void.


Now on to the cards that Priceless Pursuit sent over:

3 cool Packers for my binder.


Yes, I finally have gotten around to putting my personal collection into binders. It's nice to finally have some sort of coherency to my burgeoning collection.
That's one of many reasons why I haven't been able to blog as much as I would like to. And I've been really busy. Actually I mean that I'm pretty lazy. Like napping and cleaning my house, but mostly napping. and I got a new Wii for Christmas. So all those things especially the laziness has contributed to me not posting as much lately.

Anyway, on with the cards!!

Joe sent not one, but two cards for the OU/ Adrian Peterson binder.

I haven't bought or for that matter even seen any of the Football Heroes cards except online.



The base A.D. card goes nicely with...

... the serial numbered "Emerald" card. I guess that's supposed to be emerald. I don't know much about the parallels in this set, but any card of Adrian is welcomed in the Scott household.

He sent over a cool David Wright card that will go into the Updates/Propaganda/Turkey Red binder.


Of course I've got to include a cool base card from U&H.

Still love the base cards from the flagship!

Thanks again!


Next up is some cards that from It's Like Having my Own Card Shop.

He sent me a couple of cool base cards:


A nice Ibanez card. Raul!


Kind of funny that we both traded dueling Randy Johnsons to each other. I gave him the close up and he sent me the long shot.


3 more Propaganda cards!


Whoo Hoo!!

I think the horizontal Propaganda cards look cool, a little anachronistic. (I hope I'm using that word correctly) in that I don't think propaganda posters in the past were horizontal.


I'm not an expert in propaganda posters, but most of the ones I've seen have all been vertical. Even as I type this I realize we're talking about baseball cards, but this is important stuff here! Anyways, I still like them no matter the orientation.


.. and another Turkey! Cool.



And a David Wright sketch card to go into the Mets binder!

Sometimes I feel a little overwhelmed with all the different sets and subsets of cards that I'm trying to collect. I shouldn't feel that way, I should focus on the fun and excitement when you pull a really cool card from a pack or trade and eventually everything should fall into place.

Having a bunch of trade partners doesn't hurt either.

Thanks again guys! I'll keep you guys in mind when I pull random cards you might be interested in.

Updates and Highlights for trade

Yeah, that's right I'm still on Topps U&H. While everybody else is all over the T206 and other products I'm still buying boxes of the Update set. I'm on my second and last hobby box. I like to drag out my ripping to make the fun last longer.

The second box wasn't as exciting as the first.


I pulled an Andrew McCutchen Rookie Chrome for my bonus pack. This one scanned really weird.

I'm not quite sure of the odds, but I pulled about another 9 Turkey Reds which is about how they're advertised. 1:4 packs.

I pulled some doubles of the Turkey Reds. Numbers 52,69,75,86,87,94,118,141. Some of those are doubles from my series two packs that I've been ripping. If anybody is needing those they are for trade.

These Legends of the Game don't really do it for me. I still have doubles of all four of these cards.



I guess that second box was a pretty good Boggs box.



I pulled two of his cards in the same box. I already have this one, so I have two up for trade if anybody wants one.

I pulled another short print. This was is not nearly as nice as the Hornsby I pulled last time.


There's something off about this card. It looks colorized or something.


The Ring of Honor subset really is hit or miss with me.



The Garvey card is okay....


...but not nearly as cool as this Campanella card...


... and even the Babe Ruth card is nicer looking. I have a feeling this one was colorized too, but it looks a better job of colorization than other cards.

These cards look so much better than when it is of a current player or depicts something more current.


I pulled a few Propaganda cards.


This was my only (so far) horizontal propaganda card. I thought they all were vertical.

These three are my duplicates for the second box.


After two boxes I'm still shy of 13 base cards: 30,33,37,40,106,125,150,157,169,200,231,238,278


I have a ton of doubles though. Some of them I've set aside for bloggers that I think will like them, but the rest are all for grabs.


I'll put all these up at some point on my other blog for posterity, but for now here they are:

1,3,4,5,7,9,10,11,12,14,16,18,19,20,21,23,25,26,27,28,29,31,32,34,35,36,38,39,
41,42,43,44,45,46,49,51,52,54,56,57,59,60,61,62,64,65,66,67,68,
70,72,73,74,76,78,80,84,87,90,92,93,94,95,96,97,98,99,
102,104,109,112,114,116,117,119,120,126,127,128,129,
130,132,134,136,137,138,139,140,141,143,149,
151,154,155,156,159,161,163,165,166,167,168,
170,171,172,174,175,177,178,181,183,184,185,186,187,
190,192,193,194,195,196,197,199,
201,203,204,205,206,209,210,211,212,213,214,215,216,217,
221,223,225,226,228,229,230,232,233,234,236,239,
241,242,243,245,246,247,248,250,251,254,256,257,258,
260,263,264,265,270,271,273,275,276,279,280,281,283,285,286,288,289,
291,293,294,295,296,297,299,
300,301,302,303,306,310,312,313,314,316,317,320,322,324,330
These are just regular base cards. Again, at some point I'll post up the gold border cards I have available for trade too.

If anybody sees anything that grabs them, let me know and I'll set it aside for you.

Thanks for reading.

final packs of Highlights and Updates

I'm going to leave this post as short as possible. I have some more exciting stuff to show later, plus I've been crazy busy, so I'm going to leave most of the post to the cards and not muddy it up with boring words.





Some of these Ring of Honor cards look kind of neat. These two are ones I'd like to keep, the rest I've pulled are going on the trade block soon.


This is my first auto I've pulled from the Topps flagship.



I remember this guy from this card. Actually I'm only familiar with his brother. The card is kind of nice though. The sticker is a little off center, but still okay. Maybe I can finally find a Diamond Backs friend who might want this.






The Propoganda cards are great! I might have to finish this sub set.


Cool grainy night shot. I like how in these night shots the light hits the bottom of the stands brighter than at the top. A nice graduated background as a contrast to the player in his colorful uniform.


It funny that most of these ToppsTown cards are laughable, except when you pull a player that you actually like. I'm hoping that any kids that are collecting today have fun redeeming these online.


This is my first black border card.



These cards are all numbered to 58.


Wade Boggs in a Rays uniform. Cool. I pulled the SP of him in a Red Sox jersey.

Alright that's all for now, hopefully I can post the other cards I'm interested in trading away. Thanks for reading!

more updates highlights or highlights of updates however you want to look at it.

I've really fell in love with the cards in this years Topps baseball. I'm liking the cards in Updates and Highlights too. The base cards look like a continuation of the quality that was in series one and two. I haven't noticed any weird or awkwardly shot cards. Except this one...


..of course this awkwardness was done on purpose. "YEE HAW!! It's photo day!" At least it's a little different than an OPC half asleep player closeup.



My only SP so far in Updates. This is a "real" card. Quite beautiful. The scan sucks, but you can see the person in the background looking down at something like an autograph book or something. I think he even has a pen or cigar in his hand. The clarity of the figure and background is amazing. This is how a heritage set should look. Not with Faux-grain or blurred photoshoping to make it look "vintage". This card makes me want to get all the SP's in the set. I only pulled like two so far in the series one and two and they didn't look as good as this card.

Also, I'm not sure, but it looks like he's resting his foot on marble. Or some such material like granite or something. Definitely not cheaply made stuff. I'm guessing that baseball parks of the time were built a lot better then. Baseball was still the main sport to watch and keep track of. I guess college and pro football has taken away some of the interest from baseball.



Another Propaganda card. I'm not sure about these. I'd like to collect all of them, but theirs like 20 of 'em i think. Maybe I'll trade them out for the David Wright card.


Here's one of my new faves.

Pretty funny candid shot. We've all been there before, either as the one doing the talking or the one doing the feigned interest: "hmm, yeah. I see what you're saying." sort of comments to be polite to the other guy. I really hope I'm not the "other guy" too much, but I know I am.


Cool horizontal action shot.


Cool vertical action shot.


Another cool action shot. I love the framing that shows the VEGAS sign pointing directly at him.



I pulled quite a few of these gold parallels. They're okay I guess.







A couple of neat night shot cards.

Alright, until next time. I'm about halfway through my hobby box. If theirs anything cool later, I'll post 'em up.

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.