"O" No!!! Another Orioles Blog

2012 Topps: I Found the Gamechanger!!!

2012-02-03T19:49:00.001-05:00

I think I figured out the "Gamechanging" part of the set that Topps has been touting. I looked back at my set from last year and compared them to this years cards

They are actually changing the game of baseball by changing stats on the backs of cards.

Doubles will now be "3B" instead of "2B".
Triples will still be "3B" to add some confusion to the sport thusly creating a buzz on Twitter and Yahoo.
Walks will now be "W" instead of "BB". (Denard Span had 27 wins last year?)
Slugging Percentage is now "SP" instead of SLG%". (Brennan Boesch had .458 of a Starting Pitcher last year?)
Strikeouts will now be "SO" instead of "K". (Apparently Chris Sale had 79 shutouts last season?)
Shutouts will now be shown as "SHO" instead of "SO" so that they will now be confused with a late 80's Ford Taurus.

Who was the Genius that thought changing the way the stats are denoted on the back was a good idea?

Trade with Dennis of Too Many Verlanders

2012-02-01T20:06:00.000-05:00

A couple weeks back Dennis from the fantastically named Too Many Verlanders blog offered up some cards that he was trying to rid himself of for little or no return. I was able to send him some cards from his wantlists and he sent me a nice pile of Bowman Chromes for my sets (which I still need plenty people, help a brother out!) and a few Orioles cards, most of which I needed for my projects.

Here's Slamming Sammy in Yankee stadium probably flying out. He sucked so bad towards the end of the season, that he packed his bags and left the team early without permission.

There were a bunch of Adam Loewen cards in the package that I was able to fill several holes in my team sets. I find this to be a sort of ironic card since Loewen is definitely not a "Team Hero". He totally pooped all over the gentleman's agreement he had with the Orioles when he decided to become a hitter. Instead of resigning a minor league deal like he was supposed to do, he instead flew home to Canada straigh into the Blue Jays nest.

These 2 cards finish off team set for 2003 Leaf. Exciting for me, but probably not so much for you.

2008 Baseball Heroes was filled with colored parallels and the charcoal parallels are just one of the many. I might actually have the team set of these charcoals as well as a few other of the colored varieties. I'll check and get back to you, or not. We'll see!

Thanks Dennis for the help on my Orioles Binders and on my Bowman Chrome sets.

Ambush Trade with Scott of Smed's Baseball Card Blog

2012-01-31T17:44:00.000-05:00

Scott sent me an email about a week or two ago stating that he was going to be sending packages out and he had some cards that I might be interested in. Of course I accepted the trade and waited. Fast forward a bit and a package shows up at my doorstep. Here's a few that I liked:

Obviously, this is a Dylan Bundy card from this years Draft Picks set. Not so obviously, its a refractor. I'm very pleased to get a surprise trade package with the Orioles top prospect refractor card in it. I was looking at the back and it has his stats from his senior year in high school. He pitched 71 innings, went 11-0, struck out 158 batters and had an ERA of 0.30. Nintendo numbers. It also states he hasn't eaten a hamburger in over 2 years.

Switching gears from a really good pitcher to a slightly worse than awful pitcher. Readers of my blog know how much I despise kevin gregg. Regardless, I still needed this card for the team set. He was a no-show at FanFest because his house was flooded out. It's too bad he wasn't able to sign autographs for all of the O's fans that "hadn't developed a taste for his style of pitching". Ass Clown...

Scott also sent along some '74, '77, and '78 Topps cards for my long term collecting goal of completing all of the semi-vintage Topps sets. That's 1974 through 1980 for those of you not familiar with the semi-vintage that I just made up 15 seconds ago. Semi-vintage, hmmm... kind of has a nice ring to it. I see if I can get it to stick.

Thanks Scott for the nice package of cards!

"Had" to stop by Target on the way home

2012-01-30T17:25:00.000-05:00

I stopped by Target on my way home from work today and, lo and behold, brand spanking new 2012 Topps was sitting on the shelf. I looked Friday just in case they had snuck it on the shelves early but no luck. Today was a different story. I arrived in the card aisle at the same time as another collector also strolled up.

"You're looking for the same thing I am aren't you?" he said. "Yup!"

This is the first time since the Target opened (in 2008) that I actually saw somebody else perusing the card displays at the same time I was. We talked for a minute or two about cards and how we each did with the Diamond Giveaway. He got 2 Diecuts, the same as I did. I asked him what his thoughts were on packsearching and he made it clear he was definitely against it and he had never run across any at this Target. So after exchanging pleasantries and forgetting to pimp my blog, I grabbed a hanger box and hurried towards the register with 1 person in line buying 3 bottles of Hydrogen Peroxide.

You're not here for shopping stories or missed opportunities to grow my blog, you're here for the breakdown:

Adam Jones makes a cameo appearance on this card. This is a perfect opportunity to throw this idea out there. I think I'm going to start a binder of cards that Orioles make a cameo appearance on. O's in the background, breaking up double plays, sliding into bases, play at the plates. If you are flipping through cards and see an Orioles cameo, let me know because I want it.

This is just too cool of a card not to post up. I think its from Nolan's walk-off HR against the White Sox. Or, he just flied out and Buck is giving him "the business."

These look almost like the liquorfractors just a little more gold in coloring and smaller speckles

The 87 minis are kinda neat. I don't know if there are any Orioles in the set.

Bleh, done before, twice.

These look pretty cool but I think I've seen the design similar to it in a UD product.

These look great with the gold foil stamp, but the 3000 hits is too light.

Why didn't they gold stamp these like the card above. It looks cheap without it.

Too much empty space on this card.

My 2 Target Red Bordered Exclusives are 2 former Oriole 3rd basemen. Hopefully Bell will run with his next big league opportunity and he won't be "former" anymore and possibly more "future".

So my impressions of series 1. I think the base cards are pretty nice looking. Some of the inserts are just "OK". It really looks like some of them are clearly designed for relic pieces or sticker autographs (too much empty space). I can't wait to bust more when my hobby box comes on Wednesday.

AHHH... That New Card Smell

2012-01-30T16:14:00.001-05:00

In my grubby little hands as we speak.

Trade with Ryan of The Great Orioles Autograph Project

2012-01-29T17:48:00.000-05:00

I think this is my last Orioles FanFest related post, at least for this year. In the weeks leading up to the big day, I had been in contact with Ryan of the Great Orioles Autograph Project about meeting up and swapping some cards. He indicated that he didn't buy many 2011 cards and didn't have many Orioles from those products. I happened to have a fair amount of doubles I was able to pass along to him and he gave me around 1500 Orioles and Oriole related cards. I had great fun sorting through all of the minor league cards, oddball issues and cards of Orioles players in different uniforms. I was able to use a fair amount of them for my various O's related projects and binders. Here's just a few of my favorites that went into my PC binders from the lot:

I like this card for obvious reasons but it was Topps's first real insert card. I always liked the Black Gold cards but never was able to get a Brady.

I just recently started collecting Koji more closely since we both have Japanese heritage (him more than me!) The 1960 Topps design is one of my favorites of all time and when Topps Chromed them, I think they just look fantastic.

Here's a diecut Mike Mussina from Pacific's Crown Royale. I still haven't figured out why its called "Crown Royale. LOL. It really is a neat card though with the holographic foil in between the crown's "limbs".

Here is a card that I have been searching for for about 19 years now. This card used the be the shiznit and I dreamed about owning one when I was a 10 year old little chap. I think it used to book for about 100 dollars at that point so it was no way I could afford it. I remember getting the factory set of Collector's Choice for Christmas or my Birthday in 1994 and it came with 3 gold signature cards. I ripped off the factory seal and was quickly disappointed by 3 gold signatures of scrubs. So I guess I'm thrilled to end a 19 year search for one of my dream cards. Thanks Ryan for making a dream come true! Also, thanks for all of the other cards you gave to me.

Trade with William of foul bunt

2012-01-28T19:47:00.000-05:00

By now I'm sure most of you know William from the foul bunt blog and his son Chris stayed at my house on Friday night before FanFest last Saturday. I asked him to bring his box of Orioles cards for trade and that he could look through my traders too. After we had dinner and got Chris in bed, we started digging through the boxes and here's a few of note that I found that I needed:

I'm happy to hear that Alan Mills is back in the Orioles organization. He's going to be the pitching coach for the Aberdeen Ironbirds this season. They are the short season New York-Penn league affiliate of the Orioles. I always liked Mills and he had a bulldog attitude out of the 'pen. I always wondered why he wore #75 though. Barry Zito is the only other player I know of that has worn it. BTW, this Mills card completes my 1994 Donruss team set. '94 Donruss is probably my second favorite Donruss set behind the 1993 version.

It scares me to look at this card and seethe 4 players shown. More scary is that they were the team leaders.

Surprisingly this is my first Fleer Update card from 1988. Since it's from the "over-production" era, I would have thought I'd run across a few more of the Orioles. If anybody has any of these or 89 Fleer Updates, let me know!

I've noticed that the emotions from most of these 1995 Fleer Emotion cards aren't really emotions. I've never seen the "Reaching" emotion. What an odd set, but there were some pretty good photographs.

I'll close with this shot of Mike Mussina shagging fly balls during batting practice. It's just an interesting card to me since most of Mike's cards show him on the mound.

Thanks Again to William for the nice trade and for attending FanFest with me.

Trade with Brian of Play at the Plate

2012-01-27T19:35:00.000-05:00

I was contacted by Brain from PATP a few weeks ago asking for my address and saying that he had a nice stack of Orioles ready to send me. Of course I sent my address along and started to wonder what he might be sending. I had been saving a stack of Rangers for him so I dropped those in the mail as soon as I could. A few days went by and these awesome cards ended up at my house.

I can't complain with 2 Oriole HOFers, especially high-end parallels. Marquee is out of my price range but I have picked up a bunch of O's from trades and shows for bargain bin prices. I can honestly say I've never busted a pack that is more expensive than 5 bucks other than Jumbo packs of Topps flagship.

I think Brian mentioned he had the Orioles in a group break randomly assigned to him. I think that's where the Sepia Markakis and the Heritage Chrome Jones came from. Lucky pulls for ~~him~~ me!

The Orange parallel Britton and the Orange Jones above came out of the retail Chrome value packs. I almost pulled the trigger on buying both on COMC but I'm glad I didn't since I was able to trade for them. Now all I need is Derrek Lee and Nick Markakis to finish up the team set. I also scanned the regular Chrome version of Britton just cuz I think it's his best looking rookie card of the year. For some reason, the horizontal picture just does it for me!

Thanks Brian for the great cards! I've already started a new Rangers stack with your name on it for our next trade.

In Honor of 2012 Topps Imminent Release...

2012-01-26T13:51:00.000-05:00

I am just posting up my entire list of my 2011 Topps series 1, 2, and Update tradebait. Lots of nice stuff here. I really need to clear some of these out. Check out the rest of my trade list while you're at it and definitely check out my wantlists

Without further ado:

Series 1:

Platinum Diamond Parallel: 69 Gardner
Target Throwback: 86, 99, 248, 262, 271, 315, 329
Gold Bordered to 2011: 149 Aardsma, 197 Hill, 220 Helton, 232 Moyer
60 Years of Topps Reprints: 13, 40, 42, 49, 58
60 Years of Topps "The Lost Cards": 1, 2, 6(2)
Reproduction Cards: 1, 7, 14, 20
Topps 60: 8, 10, 11, 16, 29, 31, 35, 36, 45
Diamond Duos: BY, BW, TR, GT, HF, HH, HHO, HM, JC, KL, PG, RS, SC(2), VG, UR
History of Topps: 10
Kimball Champions Mini: 10, 13, 37, 41, 44, 46
Ticket to ToppsTown: 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, 10, 12, 16, 19(2), 20(3), 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 30, 31(2), 34, 35, 36(2), 39(3), 40, 42, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48

Series 2:
Topps Gold Bordered: 337 Walden, 407 Broxton, 527 Ka'aihue, 569 Maybin, 576 Lowrie, 651 Morales, 656 Ibanez

Diamond Anniversary Parallels: 354 Baker, 388 Jansen, 390 Valencia, 428 Myers, 451 Hernandez, 453 Saunders, 490 Holliday, 535 Harden, 567 Braden, 568 Royals, 583 Spilborghs (2), 588 Davis, 596 Sanchez, 608 McGehee, 656 Ibanez

60 Years of Topps Reprints: 62 Robinson, 67 Ashburn, 69 Musial, 70 Cepeda, 72 Yastremski, 74 Maris, 80 Ryan, 88 Guidry (2), 90 Garvey, 94 Mattingly, 97 Molitor, 99 Walker, 102 Ramirez, 104 Jeter (2), 106 Rivera, 107 Halladay(2), 109 Ortiz, 112 Jeter, 113 Butler

Before There Was Topps: BTT1 American Tobacco 1909, BTT3 American Tobacco 1911, 7 Bowman '48-55

Diamond Stars: DS-3 Mauer, 8 Wright, 9 Ramirez, 10 Pujols, 11 Halladay, 12 A-Roid, 14 Cabrera, 15 Lee, 23 Johnson(2), 24 Braun, 25 Gonzalez (2)

Toppstown: TT2-1 Lincecum, 2 Reynolds, 4 Morrison, 7 Gonzalez, 8 Ludwick, 11 Morales, 19 Martinez, 20 Kershaw, 30 Crawford, 31 Lester, 33 Jackson, 43 Carpenter, 50 Hughes (2)

Topps 60: T60 51 Johnson, 54 Zimmermam, 61 Seaver, 62 Stanton, 63, Longoria, 64 Posada, 68 Votto, 70 Carpenter, 71 Stargell (2), 77 Winfield(2), 80 Munson(2), 82 Victorino, 89 Weaver(2), 91 Ortiz, 95 Lester(2)

Diamond Duos: DD-2 Utley/Cano, 5 Uggla/ Heyward, 8 Greinke/Gallardo, 12 Tulowitzki/Ramirez (2), 15 Lincecum/Wilson, 16 Hamilton/Votto(2), 17 Posey/Feliz, 19 Cabrera/Martinez, 20 Kershaw/Bumgarner, 21 Price/Lester, 23 Lee/Sabathia, 24 McCutcheon/Alvarez, 25 Teixeira/Gonzalez(2), 26 A-Roid, Longoria, 27 Johnson/Verlander, 29 Aaron/Heyward

2011 Topps Update Series:

Hope Diamond Parallel: US11 Jason Pridie

Legends Shortprints US238 Darryl Strawberry

Cognac Legends: 516 Tom Seaver, 630 Joe Morgan

Cognac Parallels: 5 Votto, 16 Ramirez, 39 Kennedy, 40 J. Upton, 43 Ryan, 53 Diamondbacks, 72 Jurrjens, 74 Clippard, 90 Y. Molina, 119 Bay, 127 Volstad, 166 J. Johnson, 171 G Jones, 186 Pavano, 203 Gee, 220 Helton, 226 J. Guillen, 227 McLouth, 234 Montero, 245 Walker, 273 D. Lee, 277 Hoffman, 287 Cousins, 297 Jaramillo, 301 S. Smith, 304 Thome, 312 G Sanchez, 328 Price, 403 F. Hernandez, 445 Talbot, 455 Morrison, 477 Gutierrez, 612 Tigers, 651 K. Morales, US4 McCann, US6 Fielder, US31 Granderson, US58 Lincecum, US128 M. Rivera, US131 Keppinger, US146 Walden, US211 Moseley, US229 A.Cabrera, US238 C. Beltran, US302 Torres, US306 Phillips, US309 Konerko, US319 Patterson

Diamond Anniversary: US15 Heilman, US43 Quentin, US49 Weeks, US61 Masset, US72 Rasmus, US86 Furcal, US101 Downs, US146 Walden, 176 Nady, US230 M. Cabrera, 281 Melancon, US302 Torres

Gold Borders #d to 2011: US3 Beavan, US23 Ruffin, US59 Kemp, US88 O. Cabrera, US95 Overbay, US108 U. Jimenez, US114 Lynn, US130 Robertson, US134 Bourn, US143 Kimbrel, US145 Colon, US154 C. Lee, US183 Peguero, US195 Votto, US204 B. Wilson, US263 Qualls, US268 Y. Molina, US275 Cuddyer, US292 Adams, US294 Jackson, US297 d'Arnaud

Red Bordered: US39 Sanchez, US126 A. Gonzalez
Blue Bordered: US94 Vogelsong, US128 M. Rivera

Diamond Duos: DD1 Hernandez/Pineda, DD-6 Anderson/Cahill, DD-11 Dunn/Konerko, DD-20 Aaron/Bautista, DD-21 Price/Shields, DD-28 Phillips/Kendrick

Topps 60: 104 A-Rod, 105 Hornsby, 110 Fisk, 112 Jackson, 113 McCovey, 118 Morgan, 121 Reese, 122 Alomar, 124 Henderson, 125 Molitor, 127 Snider, 128 Thomas, 130 Gehrig, 136 Blyleven(2), 137 Garvey, 138 Maris, 139 Uggla, 150 Koufax

ToppsTown: TTU-16 Stubbs, 23 Rollins(2), 37 Scherzer, 46 Beltre, 49 Cain(2)

2012 Orioles Fanfest: Signed 8x10s

2012-01-25T19:28:00.000-05:00

Alright here's my last post about the autographs I got at FanFest this year. Both of these will proudly join my other 8x10s that I have hanging on the wall in my office/mancave. Without further ado:

Adam Jones in a nice classic batting stance ready to swing. I've gotten Adam's autograph TTM and even in one of the group breaks here on the blogs but never in person. My thinking is that I better get his autograph while I can since he's been linked in trade talks to any team looking for good young ballplayers. On a side note, I was reading an interview he did during the event that said he is open to a contract extension and staying in Baltimore for a long time. Apparently he loves playing in Baltimore and wants to be part of the future here. This is contrary to what has been "the popular opinion" in the media that he covets playing for a team closer to his home in California. I personally would like to see him stick around for a long time as long as he continues to produce on the field.

From the present center fielder to a past center fielder. BRADY ANDERSON! Obviously this is my favorite item of the show. I've been a Brady fan since him and Cal were fixtures in the Orioles lineup. It was a thrill to meet him and get his autograph in person. Until recently, he hadn't been around the team much since his retirement so getting his autograph has been a little tougher than usual. I'm very happy that he is back in the organization and is working out with the younger orioles players and teaching them about the game. Brady is still in great shape and it looks like he could still get out there and play at a high level. I don't think there is anybody better qualified to show these guys the ropes like Brady can!

So, that concludes my FanFest experience for this year. I'm already looking forward to next year when Mike Mussina makes an appearance! I can dream!

2012 Orioles Fanfest: The Signed Baseballs

2012-01-24T19:26:00.000-05:00

Let's continue with my new memorabilia that I got at FanFest. Up next are the baseballs I had signed.

I didn't originally plan on getting Oliver Drake to sign a ball for me. Heck, I didn't even have an autograph ticket for his station. William was good enough to trade me this ball for the Joe Mahoney one that I had signed at one of my 2 sessions. I already got Mahoney on a card last summer since they are a little more my thing. Back to Oliver though. He's one of the top pitching prospects in the O's system right now. He cruised through High-A Frederick last year and was promoted to Double-A Bowie where he had a couple bumps in the road. Hopefully he makes the adjustments and continues his ascension up the minor league chain.

This brings me to my second favorite item of the whole show. Nick was a pleasant bonus at the 4:40 station that I had a voucher for. Yeah, I know as big of a fan as I am of Nick, he was playing second fiddle to another player at the table! I'm happy to add Nick's signature on this ball though. Ir really looks great on a brand new pearl ROMLB. It will now sit proudly between my signed Mark Reynolds #136 HR ball and my signed Cal Ripken retirement logo ball.

Next Up: 8x10's

2012 Orioles Fanfest: Signed cards

2012-01-23T19:29:00.000-05:00

Another FanFest has come and gone. Everybody says that this one wasn't as good as last years but its probably all in who you ask. There weren't quite as many people there as the last 2 years, but at least it was a little easier to get around the convention center without bumping into somebody every step you took.

I had a blast and I'm pretty sure everybody there had a pretty good time. Willam from foul bunt drove up from North Carolina the night before and stayed in my spare bedroom. He brought along his 6 year old son Chris who seemed to have a good time there too. It's been my experience with my nephew and various other small kids I know that its hard to keep them entertained and focused on anything for more than 5 minutes. Chris was very well behaved and didn't complain one bit. He just has a bladder the size of a dime! I had a great time hanging around with William all day and it made the time go by faster since we both had some of the same autograph vouchers.

So, I'm going to start showing off my Fanfest acquisitions with the smaller items I got signed.

Here's my Brian Matusz 2011 Bowman Gold parallel with a nice blue signature on it. Unfortunately, the signature bubbled up a little bit because I didn't bother prepping it since I'm using Staedler markers. Apparently they dry instantly and arent supposed to smudge. I'm wondering if its just the closeness of the letters in Brian's autograph that caused the bubbling.

Mike Bordick was at the same station as Matusz. He was nice enough to sign two cards for me. If he hadn't signed both I wouldn't have been upset. I just had them mounted side by side in my notebook. I got him to use the same pen as Brian and neither of these signatures messed up. Mike's signature isn't as compact as Brian's either so there might be something to my theory. Obviously the 1998 Topps, 2000 Upper Deck, and 2011 Bowman cards have similar gloss on them so I might have to test my theory on some common cards.

Here's one of the newest Orioles, Dana Eveland. His career numbers leave a little to be desired but apparently Dan Duquette sees something in him that would make him send a minor leaguer to the Dodgers for him. I read an interview with him and he says that "he learned how to pitch" last summer and I guess it showed when los Doyers called him up for a look see in September. His numbers at the tail end of the season were pretty decent, so there's that. I'm a little apprehensive about him so I hope he makes a believer out of me this season. BTW, Chris got this one for me since he was allowed to go through the kids only line.

Here's another one that Chris was able to get for me. Pedro was basically shipped from Texas to Baltimore for Mike Gonzalez. During the last month of the year he was pitching lights out. He threw a lot of strikes and didn't look like he was afraid of any of the batters that he faced which is a breath of fresh air from some of the other pitchers I've become accustomed to watching. I'm looking forward to seeing how he does this coming season.

Next up: Some signed baseballs.

A Quick 4 Trade Wrap-up

2012-01-19T16:42:00.000-05:00

I don't have a whole lot of time today to scan and write a long post but there are a few traders that I would like to thank for their packages I have gotten recently.

First, I want to thank Sam from the Daily Dimwit for sending me a nice stack of '78 Topps for the set I will be building in the near future.

Second, Trey from Rants, Raves, and Fandom. He sent over a nice little pile of Bowman Chromes I needed for my sets I'm working on. Check out his blog, it's a good read!

Third, Jeff from Cardboard Catastrophes. He answered my call for help in one of my last few posts about needing some Chromes and O-Pee-Chees and saw the footnote about the semi-vintage sets I'm going to start working on this year. Thanks for the great cards

Fourth, Nickie from New Jersey. I don't think she has a blog and she is a new trader on the block. She contacted me out of the blue and offered up some cards I needed. She sent me a few Bowman Chromes and I gladly ridded my self of some Yankees cards I didn't need. Keep an eye on your email boxes gents, she could be popping up in there any day.

Thanks for the trades guys and gal. I appreciate the generosity.

Also, a quick note, I now have 100 followers to my quaint, little, slightly mediocre blog! I can't believe that so many good people want to read what I write. Thanks a bunch my followers.

And check out my wantlists above while you're here, I still need tons of cards for my collections. I look forward to hearing from you soon!

SOPA / PIPA

2012-01-18T12:47:00.003-05:00

Go here for all the information you can digest about this issue that affects all of us bloggers and the common internet user just as well:

http://americancensorship.org

As cliche as it sounds, together we can all make a difference.

Another Trade with Ted of Crinkly Wrappers

2012-01-15T10:28:00.000-05:00

Ted and I just recently pulled off another awesome trade. The two of us have been blogging for about the same amount of time. We've traded with each other a number of times that I have lost count. He always sends great stuff and if you have traded with him, you know I'm not kidding. Lets take a look at a few of my favorites from the package:

Here's a sparkly JJ Hardy from this years update. This is actually the only Hardy that I know of that shows him acutally in an O's uniform. His Heritage and Gypsy Queen cards are photoshopped from Brewers or Twins duds. This JJ's card is notable to me because he becomes my wife's favorite Oriole now that Luke Scott is now a Tampa Bay Ray.

Here's a pretty sweet card from 2007 Topps Finest. Obviously, by reading the card you can see that Nick hit 3 homeruns in a game during his rookie season. The date that he accomplished this feat was August 22nd 2006. It's notable to me because I remember what I was doing that evening. I was sitting in a bar celebrating a 21st birthday with a chick that I was totally infatuated with at the time. I even drove her drunk ass home that night and helped her stumble across the parking lot to her apartment. Nothing happened that night or ever with her just in case you were wondering (or care!). So yeah, Nick the Stick, 3 HRs, 21st Birthday, no Nookie!

Here's a card that took me by surprise when I was opening up the package. I was able to find most of the Orioles from this years TTT at a show back in October at bargain basement prices with one exception: Cal Ripken. Now thanks to Ted's goodwill, I have it for my Cal binder(s). I'm not in love with ~~this~~ last year's design, but it's still a really nice card.

Thanks again Ted, you always raise the bar when it comes to our trades. I try my best to return the favor!

Time Flies When You're Stuck in a Bathroom

2012-01-09T21:44:00.001-05:00

Wow, time flies. I haven't posted in about 2 weeks and I actually have a good excuse for the absence. I've been renovating my bathroom since the 27th of December and I'm still not done. This seemingly modest project has turned into roughly 10 to 12 trips to Lowes, late nights and many, many headaches. So, long story short, most of my free time has been spent painting, caulking, cutting, plumbing, wiring, and sanding and not on baseball cards.

Also, the reason for the renovations is trying to get the house ready to sell or rent in the near future. The wife and I have checked out a couple of new houses with the real estate agent and have a pending offer on one that we really like. Fingers crossed.

With the hoopla of the holidays and all of the other things going on, when I do have free time, I just don't feel like looking at cards or writing about them. There haven't been many card related things that I'm interested in to write about either. I'm just waiting for series 1 to drop in the beginning of February.

I don't really have any real collecting goals for this year like most bloggers have posted in the last couple of weeks. I might be the only one with no goals for the year! I'm just going to roll with the punches for right now but I do want to attend the National Convention in Baltimore this August.

Speaking of Baltimore, I will be going to Orioles FanFest on the 21st, so I'm really looking forward to that.

So since it's January, the quietest baseball card month of the year, who wants to trade? I'd really like to knock down some of my set needs like any Bowman Chromes from 2011 and 2010 and 2009 O-Pee-Chees that some of yall might be hanging onto. Of course I'm interested in trading for my Orioles needs too. Check out my wantlists! Check out my tradelist!

I've traded with a ton of bloggers in the past and I'm very thankful for that. I've met some very nice and generous people and I'd love to hear from some of yall again. I'd especially love to trade with some new people and increase my reach beyond the great traders I've swapped cards with in the past.

I want to hear from you!

What I Got For Christmas

2011-12-26T21:56:00.000-05:00

I hope that everyone had a Merry Little Christmas. I know I did. The last few days I've driven over the hills and through the woods to visit family members and friends and I used today as a little reflection time and to do what I love to do: stare at pictures of men! More specifically I'm staring at new pictures that I got as gifts. I think I had a pretty nice haul. I got a blaster to 2011 Bowman Chrome from a friend, a hobby box of 2010 Bowman Chrome from my wife, and a couple rack packs of 2011 Topps Update in my stocking. I didn't get much of note out of the Bowman Chrome blaster but the 2010 Bowman Chrome hobby box was loaded with some really nice hits and a bunch of cards towards the set:

Here's the "lesser" hit of the box. It's a pretty nice looking card of a team that I don't really care for. BTW, it's numbered 86/150 for those of you that are interested.

This card is actually a bonus hit out of the box. Team USA autographs are tough pulls at 1 in 207 packs so I'll venture to say that this is a case hit. This card is especially cool because he was drafted by the Orioles this past summer. I'll most definitely be hanging onto this card!

Here's my promised autograph of the box and it turns out that it is a refractor. Not bad! I think he's one of Minnesota's top prospects because I have heard of him. I did look up the price range of this card and it does book for 80 bucks!

Here's the most awesome card I pulled. SUPERFRACTOR! SUPERFRACTOR! SUPERFRACTOR! These are really tough pulls dropping at 1 in 5625 packs. That's one in every 26 cases. I have no idea whether I should hang onto this one or try to sell it. I've pulled a couple printing plates and 1 or 2 1/1's in my pack busting career, but this one is bar none my best 1/1 card. I can see why Superfractors are sought after because they look amazing!

Coming down from the excitement of a Superfractor, I got this Liquorfractor of Tom Terrific out of on one my Update rack packs. I did also get 2 Diamond Giveaway codes that I don't know what to do with. I've already cashed out my portfolio and hadn't planned on getting anymore. Heck, I even traded all 37 of my unique rings away and deleted the shortcut to the site from my favorites. I ended up with
10 Orioles rings, 12 Browns rings and 15 Cal Ripken rings.

So as you can see, there was some real Christmas magic in the packs I received this year. I hope everybody else's card gifts were as wonderful as mine!

Trade with Matt of DocHoloday.com

2011-12-22T17:10:00.000-05:00

There's a relatively new blog in town called DocHoloday.com. It's run by Matt who is a friend of Sam from the Daily Dimwit. Matt contacted me about 2 weeks ago about some Orioles cards that he had for trade. Matt said that Sam suggested that he try and trade with me since he has traded with me a couple times in the past. I'm sure glad he did. Matt sent me a really nice package of cards, so lets look at a few of the highlights:

Here's a nice looking Eddie Murray card from Lineage. I'm still a little bit confused about the actual name of this parallel. Are they just straight up "Refractors" or "Platinum Refractors"?

Well here's a card that I'm sure I know what it's called. This is undoubtedly the purple refractor from Topps Chrome. I'm a little puzzled why retail gets 3 different refractor parallels: purple, x-fractor, and orange. Why don't they just do x-fractors and call it a day?

And here's a nice shot of Mark Reynolds playing baseball in the dark. I remember as a kid playing t-ball in the backyard after it got dark and catching a batted ball with my face. Also I've probably touched on this before but does Topps know that the Orioles have never worn Orange socks? Do they know they can look up the official uniforms at Chris Creamer's Sports Logos page? Do they even care that their photoshopping jobs really blow sometimes?

Thanks Matt for the great cards you sent. Also thanks to Sam for sending Matt my way so I could get my hands on some new Orioles cardboard.

While proofreading this post, I noticed I asked a lot of questions that mostly only Topps could answer. If anybody has any hilarious answers to the questions posed, please feel free to comment!

Card Show Report: My 5 Favorite Things

2011-12-20T20:39:00.000-05:00

So I went to the card show in Raleigh this past weekend and was able to pick up a lot of great cards that fit the needs of my collection. I picked up a bunch of vintage Orioles cards to fill out my team sets, a bunch of Chrome cards from the last 2 years to fill the sets I'm working on, and I was able to visit with one of my fellow Orioles bloggers, William from foul bunt. I'm just going to post 5 of my favorite things from the show.

I was able to purchase this fine looking Brooks card for 20 bucks. The centering is pretty good, there are no creases or really beat up corners so I think I really got a great deal on this vintage beauty!

This card I actually purchased from William. Its an Oriole, its an autograph, and it's on card. In my collection, that's a win on all 3 fronts! Doyne didn't really work out in Baltimore but I like the card nonetheless!

Here's one of the other vintage cards that I picked up to finish my 1960 Topps Orioles team set. This is Steve's rookie card and I'm very glad to have it. He stuck with the birds for about 6 or 7 years and had his greatest success there. He was a local product hailing from Takoma Park Maryland. I think he is probably one of the most underrated Orioles players in their history since he won over 100 games for them.

This card actually came to me in trade. I brought about 20 cards with me and had them set out on William's table to see if I could sell or trade them. I got this Matty Ice card for the Brett Lawrie Blue Refractor and the redemption card for the team USA set that I had pulled recently. In my opinion I got a great deal but objectively it was probably a pretty even trade.

And that brings me to my favorite thing of the whole show. It's not something I bought, traded, or bargained for. William was nice enough to bring his batting gloves for me to see. These aren't just any batting gloves though. These are Nolan Reimold's batting gloves from the last game of the season. These batting gloves had a major role in crushing the Red Sox playoff hopes and sending them home for the winter. You can read he whole story about how William came into possession of the gloves right here. You can see in the picture that both of the gloves are autographed on the thumbs so these are true collectables and I'm glad I actually had a chance to put them on. I mean look at me, I'm grinning like a little kid!

I really had a blast at the show picking up some new cards for my collection and most of all just hanging out talking with William and his son. So I guess that really wraps up the show. Thanks for reading!

Fixing Bowman and Bowman Chrome

2011-12-16T20:15:00.000-05:00

Hopefully, Topps reads this post and steals all of my ideas and makes eleventy billion dollars off of it.

After my last post, I realized that there is hope for Bowman and Bowman Chrome. All it needs is a little re-imagining and retooling. The last 2 years of Bowman has been buoyed by Strasmas and Harpermania and that has helped collectors gloss over the fact that Bowman has some problems and has for a while now. I think the general consensus around the blogs is that Bowman is tired, bland, boring, and pointless. Personally, I think that none of those is necessarily true but I can agree that it does need some work. Here's some suggestions that I think would make Bowman and Bowman Chrome more appealing to collectors:

1. Change the name of Bowman Draft Picks to Bowman Series 2. It would create a little more continuity between the 2 sets and make the numbering system easier to understand.

2. Stop putting Bowman Chrome Prospects in with regular Bowman. Bowman can stand on its own and doesn't need Chrome to help prop it up.

3. Use 1997 Bowman and Bowman Chrome as a template for the revamped version. 1997 Bowman had 441 cards in the set. Bowman Chrome had 300. Every player does not need a Bowman Chrome version. Even the prospects don't all deserve Chrome versions.

4. Obviously with the new rookie card rules put into place in 2006 you cannot have minor league players yet to make their major league debut in the base set. So here is what I propose:

Bowman series 1: Released sometime between mid-May and mid-June.
200 card base set including 40 to 50 rookies with a 100 card prospects set.

Bowman series 2: Releases sometime between mid-October and mid-November
200 card base set including 40 to 50 rookies with a 100 card prospects set.

Bowman Chrome: Releases sometime in late November to mid-December
200 card base set including about 40 to 50 of the best rookies from the previous 2 regular Bowman series. There is a 100 card prospects set that chromes the 100 best prospect cards from the previous 2 Bowman Prospect sets.

So for the year:
Bowman series 1 and 2 totals 400 base cards with 200 prospects: 600 cards total
Bowman Chrome totals 200 base cards with 100 prospects: 300 cards total

5. The most radical thought would be to not photoshop any more jerseys on cards. Since Topps has a license to show Minor League logos, they should show them on the prospect cards. That way from year to year, if a prospect is still working his way up in the minors, he could be shown in a different affiliate's uniform.

Hypothetically Manny Machado could be shown in a Frederick Keys uniform in 2012 Bowman Prospects. In 2013 Bowman Prospects he could be shown in a Bowie Baysox or Norfolk Tides jersey. In 2014 when the takes the Majors by storm(!) he could make his Bowman Debut in an Orioles jersey.

I think that there could still be a Pro Debut set made by Topps, but they should use different pictures. The new draft rules should help Topps get photographers to the minor league parks to take pictures of the new draft picks before the minor league season ends.

6. Don't over do it with the insert sets. 2 or 3 is probably enough and don't make them 100 or 50 cards. Bring some sort off excitement back to insert cards by making them a little more rare and not 1 per pack.

7. Get rid of the Bowman gold parallel. It's kind of pointless. Keep the #'d Blue borders and make them #'d to 100. Also keep the Bowman International parallels and # them to 250.

8. The Bowman Chrome refractors could use a little tweaking. Don't change anything there other than limiting the regular refractors to like 500, blues to 250, gold to 100, orange to 50, reds to 25 and superfractor 1/1s.

9.. The Bowman Chrome Autographs also needs a few tweaks. Put one Rookie auto and one Prospect auto per box. Limit the print run on the regular autos to 1000, refractors to 500, blues to 250, gold to 100, orange to 50, red to 25, and superfractor 1/1's.

10. Bowman will have to add regular autographed rookies and regular prospect autographs. 1 of each per box. Regular autographs #'d to 1000, International to 250, Blues to 100, and Platinum 1/1's.

Anybody else have any other suggestions?

Hopefully, Topps reads this post and steals all of my ideas and makes eleventy billion dollars off of it.

2011 Bowman Draft Picks Errors, Omissions, and Just Plain Awful

2011-12-15T21:12:00.000-05:00

Here's the 3 Orioles Prospect cards that came out for 2011 Bowman Draft Picks this year:

Here's Dylan Bundy's mugshot. What an ugly ass card. It's so low quality that it looks like it was either taken with a cell phone or a TV still.

Yes, Mike Wright is an Orioles Prospect, NOT a Nationals player!

Obviously Nick was photoshopped into an O's uniform because of his hat. Bowman Draft Picks was released on November 17th, which is exactly 2 days after the Orioles unveiled their new look for next season. Out of the 3 cards though at least it isn't a crappy photo or the wrong photshopped uniform.

I'll go ahead and say that Topps really screwed up on Bowman Draft Picks this year. It's usually a crowd pleaser (at least those into prospecting and rookie cards) but they really delivered a clunker this year.

The black border on the base prospect cards looks terrible. Why did they tinker with what worked with the regular Bowman release in May? I thought the prospect cards looked fine then and I thought the general consensus was kind of in line with my opinion.

There are no Orange bordered parallel or International parallels like there were with the regular Bowman release. Even the gold bordered parallels are only found in retail packs. It just doesn't create continuity between the 2 releases. Maybe that's what Topps is shooting for? If that's the case, then change the design completely!

The numbering system is completely screwy this go around. The regular base set (all MLB Rookies) are numbered 1 through 110. There is no prefix this time around like BDP or BD or anything like that. Just plain 1 through 110. So concievably at some show, a person not knowing any better would look through some boxes and pick out both regular Bowman and regular Draft picks and make a set combining the 2. Makes no sense. But, the Prospect cards all carry the normal BDPP prefixes just like in past years.

The Kolten Wong numbering situation: Overall Kolten is supposed to be card #BDPP90 in the base Prospects set and base Chrome Prospects set. HAHA, not even close. F-up #1: In the base Prospects set, he is numbered BDPP91 so that makes 2 versions of #BDPP91: Kolten Wong and William Abreu. F-up #2: In the base Chrome set he has the right card #90 but the prefix is BDP, not BDPP like it should be.

A weird thing about the card backs that I noticed. On Dylan Bundy's base and chrome prospect card it says that he is the Orioles #1 pick from this years draft. On the back of all his autograph cards, he is the Orioles #4 pick. Apparently all the autograph cards show the actual draft position that he was taken by that team and the regular prospect cards show the number pick he was of his team. It's kind of stupid they would do this. To make matters worse, there are shady ebay sellers getting premium prices for these "error cards".

The picture quality of the cards is laughable especially on 2 of the top picks the aforementioned Dylan Bundy and Archie Bradley. Regular plain-jane mugshots work for Pannini and Leaf and unlicensed crap but not for a mainstream release like Bowman Draft Picks!

There are several cards that the photoshop job is just horrible like Taylor Jungmann (look at my autograph card a few posts back. The angle on his hat is just all wrong!) I'm willing to forgive that but there are not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 players photoshopped into the wrong uniform. John Hicks is shown as a Diamondback but is actually a Mariner. John is also shown as a pitcher when he really plays catcher. Levi Michael is pictured as a Ranger but is actually a Twin. Mike Wright (above) is pictured as a National but is an Oriole. Dan Gamache is shown as a twin but is actually a Pirates player. These errors are just plain lazy. I don't like the photoshopping of pictures in the first place so this brings out the glaring weakness of the whole process. Wrong position is one thing but the wrong team is just unforgivable. Do some damn research for the players you put on your cards!

Another gripe about the product is that the Aflac autograph cards aren't numbered and it supposedly makes them easy to fake. I've never gotten one so I don't know too much about this problem but it shows how rushed Topps was to get this product out the door.

Everybody has seen the box art either in the Target card aisle or on an online card retailers website. Mariners rookie Michael Pineda is shown in an action shot throwing a pitch. HE IS NOT ANYWHERE TO BE FOUND IN THE PRODUCT! Why not put Mike Trout or Mike Moustakas on the box art?

So to sum it all up in one sentance:

TOPPS REALLY PUT OUT A STEAMING PILE OF CRAP AND CALLED IT BOWMAN DRAFT PICKS!

Trade with Dustin of Coot Veal and the Vealtones

2011-12-14T20:54:00.000-05:00

Dustin, from the awesomely named Coot Veal and the Vealtones blog sent me an email a little while back about a Miguel Cabrera GU that he was interested in and offered to send me some cards in return. We have traded in the past so I was happy to make the trade. Lets look at some of the cards:

The Montanez and Ponson card finished up their respective team sets. I'm surprised that it took me so long to get my hands on he Bowman Ponson card. I'm still way far away from finishing up the Documentary Orioles though. If anybody has any let me know!

This is the Refractor version of Josh's Bowman Platinum from last year. I now have the trifecta (base, refractor, and gold refractor). Josh's stock seems to be dropping in the Orioles system because he can't seem to make the best of his opportunities when he gets them in the majors. Maybe he'll get his strikeouts under control and can reestablish himself as a prospect.

I'm real happy to have this black bordered Koji in my collection now. The cool part is that if you turn the card over, it is the blank back parallel. While it's not exceedingly rare, it's still cool in my book!

Here's the Zach Britton portion of the trade. Both cards are new to me so I'm happy to have them.

From one promising young lefty to a (once) promising young lefty. When I returned to the hobby in 1998 Matt Riley was the #1 Orioles prospect in the O's farm system. He had a great fastball and a good curveball and was destined for stardom. Sure he had attitude problems and a maybe was a bit lazy but he had potential. Then he got hurt. Pretty much after that, he was done in Baltimore after that. I guess I jumped on this autograph card because he was the first real prospect that I paid close attention to and fiended after his cards (as much as a 15 year-old kid could!). I guess this card just brings me back and that is why most of us collect card in the first place: nostalgia.

Thanks Dustin for taking me down memory lane and sending such an awesome package!

Box Breaks: 2011 Bowman Draft Picks and Prospects (with Chrome!)

2011-12-12T19:42:00.000-05:00

I'll admit that I've gone a little crazy with all of the box breaks lately but this should be my final one at least until Christmas. Bowman Draft Picks is a product that has for the most part been a hit with collectors over the last few years. Since I am a pretty big Bowman fan, I actually jumped feet first into the fray and bought 3 boxes on preorder way back in the summer. Lets see what I got:

I got just got one blue refractor and its of a Yankee. This one is numbered 2/199. Good luck Brandon cracking that lineup with A-rod blocking your progression to the majors.

I got one gold refractor of a Braves prospect that I don't know anything about. I still don't know anything about him because there is no patented Bowman scouting report on the back. BTW, Kyle is #'d 41/50.

Now this is a little more like it, I know who this guy is. I got a TTM back from him during Spring Training and have been following him a little bit here and there since. Not a bad looking border considering the team he plays for. Mike is #'d 339/499

My first Autograph is of the Giants 47th pick in this years draft? I was a little underwhelmed to say the least until I did a little online research. Topps screwed the pooch on this one, he was actually the 47th player taken overall!

This relic actually came out of a blaster box I picked up at Target. Not a bad player to get a relic of I guess. It's numbered 168/199

Here's my next autograph of Taylor Jungmann. I think its pronounced "Young-man". Anyways, it's a pretty nice looking card except for the terrible photoshop job on his hat. Enough with the awful photo manipulation Topps!

Here's my favorite card of the 3 boxes. Its the refractor version of the autograph and it really looks good. Brandon is an interesting story as he comes from Wyoming. There is no High School baseball in the state so he was drafted on the merits of his American Legion and Travel team play. Not only was he drafted, he was drafted in the 1st round. I read about him in my sports weekly and I'll be following his career to see how he turns out. Also of note, I'm glad that Brandon takes pride in his penmanship. His signature is legible and neat. I hope that it doesn't degrade into chicken scratch as he moves up the minor league ranks.

To say that I really enjoyed this year's Bowman Draft Picks product would be stretching the truth. I'm still a fan of all of the new players but there just seems to be something missing from the product this year. I was able to finish off the base set and base prospects set so that's a plus but I'm still far from completing the Chrome sets. I'll get a want list up eventually for those.

Here's a listing of the paralells that I have up for trade:

Gold Parallel: 42 Shaw, 72 Presley, 88 Vizcaino, BDPP52 Snell, BDPP95 Clifton, BDPP98 Farinaro, BDPP100 Meadows

Blue Parallel: 1 Moustakas, 31 Dirks, 59 Cozart, BDPP1 Hicks, BDPP24 Crick, BDPP103 Pabst

Refractor Parallels: 5 Beato, 13 Hamburger, 21 Sosa, 30 De La Rosa, 39 Godfrey, 60 Alburquerque, 65 Lynn, 73 Pestano, BDPP4 Armstrong, BDPP34 Gagnon, BDPP45 Hope, BDPP48 Anton, BDPP55 Martin, BDPP60 James, BDPP65 Reynolds, BDPP72 Gamache, BDPP94 Ciuffo

Blue Refractor: 26 Brandon Laird #'d 2/199

Gold Refractor: BDPP74 Kyle Kubitza #'d 41/50

Trade with Jason of Hobb's Knights

2011-12-10T17:48:00.000-05:00

Jason from the Hobb's Knights blog commented on a previous post of mine and said he had some of my set needs in exchange for some Lineage Orioles that I offered up. After a flurry of emails, we had ballooned the trade into a much larger swap. Here's the awesome cards he sent me:

Another new Ripken odd ball card that I didn't know existed! Since I've started actively collecting oddball Ripkens, my little binder has filled almost to capacity. There is no hope for expansion of this binder because it is one of those early 90s books that has like 12 pages in it.

Here's an interesting card for my Orioles team sets. This one hails from 2001 Topps Gallery. I can't seem to get enough of Topps Gallery because I'm starting to like the look of painted sets. Well, all except National Chicle. This painting of Brooksie actually looks like him!

Here's the pride and joy of the trade. I know, it's not an Orioles card! I liked 2010 Topps Chrome's design and the autographs look pretty sweet too. It's too bad this one didn't scan worth a crap! I figured I'd get in on the ground floor and have Starlin's plain jane autograph card before he really blows up big time in the next few years (as long as he learns to focus while in the field).

Thanks for the nice package of cards Jason!

Trade with Greg of Plaschke, Thy Sweater is Argyle

2011-12-09T17:40:00.000-05:00

I'm quickly finding out that trade bait posts are good ways to start up trade talks with other bloggers. I've had a few great trades by offering up some nice cards I don't collect and getting something I do collect in return. I've also read about other blogger's similar successes which brought me to my still forming conclusion.

Greg from the brilliantly named Plaschke, Thy Sweater is Argyle blog liked the Albert Pujols relic card that I posted a little while back and offered to make a trade.

I was happy to get this card and I think it is a pretty even swap. When I first scanned this card, I thought that I might need to clean the scanner bed before I really took a closer look at the card. It looked like there were dust particles all over the glass or all over the card. Upon closer examination, the speckles are actually part of the card design. Another neat thing I noticed about the card is around the swatch where it says "Authentic Game Jerseys" like there are 2 or 3 different pieces of fabric embedded in the card!

Thanks go to Greg for the nice and easy card swap!

Trade with the Night Owl

2011-12-08T21:12:00.000-05:00

Night Owl contacted me about the availability of a couple of the Topps Update Dodger Shinnies that I had pulled from my hobby box and retail packs. I was happy to make the trade since we have made several great swaps in the past 2 years. At first he said he didn't really know if I'd be interested in this card:

This is one of the Cloth Stickers from Lineage. The best one out of the set if you ask me! This is the first cloth sticker that I've actually gotten my hands on and they really do have a neat texture to them.

Here is the second card that the Owl wasn't sure if I'd be interested in. Moldy is one of my favorite current O's and I really hope he gets a chance to shine as an everyday player this season.

And here is one of the surprise cards of the package. A ~~Red~~ Orange Refractor of Mark Reynolds. Why must everyone's scanners make these retail exclusive refractors look like a super rare hobby only pull? Anyways, I really dig this card!

Thanks for the nice package you sent my way Greg and I hope you really like your shiny new Dodgers1

Trade with Robert of $30 a Week Habit

2011-12-07T17:29:00.000-05:00

This was a quick and easy trade between one of the newer guys in the blog-o-sphere, Robert from $30 a Week Habit. He contacted me and said he had some cards I needed for 2 of the sets I'm building right now, 2011 Topps Update and 2009 Upper Deck O-Pee-Chee. I'm always looking for help so I was happy to send Robert some cards for his trouble. Since there isn't too much I can say about set fillers, I picked 2 of the more interesting photos I could find.

I really like the panoramic shot on this card. It shows of Nationals Stadium which I have yet to visit. That's shameful because its the closest MLB stadium to me. But I guess I have good reason since I am an O's fan!

Here's a card of Luke Scott fielding. I just like this card because you don't see a ton of pictures anymore from this point of view on the field. A lot has been said about how bad he is playing defense but I haven't seen him embarrass himself out there yet. I would say he's just average out there.

Robert also "threw" in this Cal Ripken refractor from Lineage. The refractory finish really makes the card stand out instead of the blah white border base set equivalent. I owe you one for this card Robert!

Thanks a lot for the trade, Robert. Keep on blogging!

Topps Diamond Giveaway: The Shipment

2011-12-06T19:55:00.000-05:00

I've been pretty quiet this year about the Topps Diamond Giveaway. While I thought that the idea was cool last year, I wasn't sure what to think of it this year with the addition of the rings, diamond diecuts, and diamond embedded cards. I guess everything turned out ok for me last year as I got all my cards in decent shape except I had to wait longer for my 1972 Topps Jim Palmer.

Since I'm not planning on buying anymore 2011 Topps cards and I've entered all 37 of my code cards, I decided to get my cards shipped to me to avoid the last minute rush of collectors cashing out there portfolios. Out of the 37 codes entered, I ended up with 8 cards being shipped to me. This was by design because the shipping charges are a little high so quality over quantity wins in my book this time. I traded away a lot of crap cards I had no interest in for cards that I really wanted.

The following cards are brought to you by the number 2 and the Baltimore Orioles:

2 horizontal Orioles cards that fill needs in my binders. Topps didn't bother coloring Stone's A's uniform!

2 1967 Topps Orioles for the teams set. Lau is 40 years ahead of his time with the douchey non-curved hat bill.

2 1969 Topps Orioles that I surprisingly hadn't found in any bargain bin before now. Topps was lazy again with the photoshopping on Richert's jersey. You can see the pinstripes and the end of the Senator's logo in the bottom right of the photo.

2 positions were played by Mark Reynolds this season: ~~home run and strikeout.~~ 3rd base and 1st base. I have a soft spot for Reynolds since I own his 136th career homerun ball.

2 Diamond Diecuts that I was able to trade for: I was offered Jones for the Ethier I redeemed and got Reynolds for the offer of Youkilis. Do you think these were good trades or did I get fleeced?

Help, Blogger is acting up!

2011-12-06T08:06:00.001-05:00

Has anyone else noticed Blogger having a mind of its own lately?

Here's my issue. Night Owl recently announced his new 1985 Topps blog recently. I went to his new blog and became a follower of it and a few other "set" blogs. I think everything is fine. Fast forward a few days and I go looking on my reading list and neither of my new blogs are appearing on my reading list. The next day they show up on the reading list and the posts are showing up. This morning, I look at my reading list and the blogs are all gone again. I looked at a few of the blogs I originally followed and it still shows that I am following them in the Followers sidebar thingy. So what gives? Is anybody else having the same issue?

Birthday Breaks: 2011 Bowman Chrome and more

2011-12-05T18:31:00.000-05:00

After kind of a crappy day at work I was finally able to get out of there and make it home. When I got home my wife was waiting there with a birthday gift for me. She bought me a hobby box of 2011 Bowman Chrome! What a great gift since I'm working on the set. Since I have a hard time leaving cards in their packs, I ripped everything immediately! Here's the two highlight cards of the Chrome box:

This is not a gold refractor, its an Orange numbered 5/25. I'm not sure if that is his jersey number or not but its still a sweet card.

It's like Deja Vu because I already got this card out of my box of Chrome that I bought. But there is one difference! This card is the refractor version of the autograph. I really hope Jean turns out as a major league player because I now have 2 of his chrome autos.

Heres the insert cards I got out of the box:
Refractors: 86 S. Drew, 94 A Jackson, 197 Duda, 205 Espinosa, BCP191 Cain
2001 Throwbacks: 5 Taillon, 6 Myers, 7 Green
Diecuts: 5 Green, 12 Singleton,
Diecuts Refractors: 8 Allie
Bowman's Best Prospects: 56 Moore, 58 Colon

Also, when the mail finally came, there was a thick envelope from my in-laws among the other junk mail and birthday cards. I opened it up and 2 packs of cards popped out! 1 pack of 2011 Topps series 2 and 1 pack of 2011 Topps Update. Out of the Topps series 2 pack I pulled this card:

Apparently my wife's pack picking mojo came from her mama!

Trade with Napkin Doon

2011-12-04T13:37:00.000-05:00

I contacted the famous Napkin Doon about a trade a bit before Thanksgiving and we were able to hash out a nice little deal. I was able to fill some Gypsy Queen and Bowman Chrome needs for him and he sent me a pile of nice Ripken and Orioles cards. Have a look:

This a neat looking oddball Cal Ripken card. It comes from the collectable game MLB Showdown that was put out in 2000. The scan (like always) doesn't do the card justice. The orange background is actually foil so you know how I like shiny! I never got into these baseball card games. Baseball cards are for collecting not to be played with. That's what they make Strat-o-matic for (I have never played that either!).

Here's a motley crew of Diamond Kings from 2003. I think in the early 2000's Donruss really bastardized Diamond Kings into something they were not meant to be. As an Orioles fan, I know neither one of these guys deserved to be called a Diamond King. Maybe a diamond joker or 3 of Diamonds or something like that!

Speaking of Jokers, here's a clear card from 1999 EX Century. I think Fleer was innovative in their designs and I wish they were still around.

Speaking of innovative, I think that Fleer tried its hand at waxing poetic.

The back of this card back reads: Gray in his hair and a creak in his back, the boy in him still lives for the thrill of the game. The years fly by, and the teammates change, but this guy still smiles at the crack of the bat. Cal Ripken Jr. has become indelibly linked with the game he loves so much.

I'm sure the designer of this insert set should have just stuck to stats on the back instead of the corny little poem!

Thanks Napkin for the trade!

Box Break: 3 Boxes of 2011 Bowman Chrome

2011-12-02T22:46:00.000-05:00

I splurged on 3 boxes of Bowman Chrome when they went on presale earlier this summer. For some reason, I've become enamored with Bowman Chrome over the past year and I'm probably the only one in the entire blog-o-sphere that has any interest in building sets of this product. I think half of my decision is that I seem to have piles of Chromes sitting in my commons boxes as "leftovers" from building base Bowman sets and feeling guilty about it. Also, I think I need a set building challenge. Let's face it, building flagship Topps and Bowman sets isn't terribly difficult! These are going to be more of long term projects because buying cases of Bowman Chrome products is out of the ~~question~~ budget. Hopefully I can finds some lots left over on eBay that will help me towards my goal and then I can fill in some gaps with Sportslots and at shows. So without further ado, here's the highlights of my 3 boxes:

We'll start off with one of the more rare cards from the break. USA autographs are pretty rare in this years product so you know that a blue refractor is even more rare. It is numbered but it's not that it really matters anyway. Al seems to have a nice autograph at this point in his career (I think he is a high school senior and is eligible for the MLB draft this coming spring) but it will probably devolve into some scribble like most players autographs these days.

Speaking of scribbles, it leads me to my next mojo hit of a Canadian fella that will be tormenting the O's for the foreseeable future. Does the facsimile autograph in anyway resemble "Brett" or "Lawrie" to you?

I don't have much to say about this Gold refractor of Youkilis other than it might fetch me a few bucks in trade value or COMC store credit.

This little sucker popped out of the last pack I opened Wow, Orioles cards look great on the regular Orange and even better as Orange refractors! If they weren't numbered so dang low, I'd probably have a couple more of them! This one is #d 24/25. I saw Ronnie play this past summer and he seemed like he doesn't like to sign autographs. He just sat up on the railing while the other guys on the Baysox happily signed for me. Maybe he just having a bad day or I went to the wrong game.

Here are 2 of my autograph cards that I was promised. From the scouting report on the back, Swagerty seems like he is projected as a back end bullpen guy for the Cards though looking at his Baseball Reference page, he started and relieved this year. Segura just got added to the Angels 40 man roster and his a highly regarded Top 100 prospect. I will compliment each of these players on their penmanship. It even appears Jean ran out of space and just meandered the pen back towards the start his signature!

And last but certainly not least, my redemption cards. I'm not a fan of Topps' new bland design of these redemption cards. It reminds me of some crap that Pannini would do. Regardless, the refractor set of USA baseball card excites me a little bit and the Orange Refractor autograph of Jacob Turner is pretty exciting. This is my second Orange refractor autograph of the year as I pulled a Sean Coyle from regular Bowman this past spring. If there was another team that looks great as Orange refractors it would have to be the Tigers. I haven't decided what to do with the Turner yet. I might try to sell it on Ebay and see if I can turn it into a 1967 Brooks Robinson.

Overall I have no real complaints about Bowman Chrome this year. The cards don't warp up nor are they off-center. They look great as always and the particular cards I invested my hard earned money in could not have been much better.

If I had one complaint though, it would be the amount of cards per pack. Across all of Topps' Chrome lines, I think packs should have 5 cards per hobby pack. 4 cards just isn't enough to make the casual collector willing to plop down the cash. Don't get me started on retail as there are 3 cards per pack. That's a buck per card.

In particular, I noticed in my 3 boxes that whenever there was an insert, refractor, or autograph, it took place of a base set card. Why couldn't the "hit" take the place of a prospect card. The prospect set only consists of 110 cards with the base set consists of 220. If Topps can't add another card to the pack, don't short me a base set card to put in a hit!

Here's the rest of the inserts and refractors that I will have up for trade:

Refractors: 17 Granderson, 58 Hudson, 69 Hanson, 74 Hill, 90 Weeks, 106 Bruce, 110 Gutierrez, 121 C.Young, 140 Weaver, 168 Garza, 217 Cobb

Prospect Refractors: BCP121 Gast, 186 Brantly

Green X Fractors: BCP182 Sampson, 193 von Rosenberg, 218 Riordan

Purple Refractors: BCP136 Magnuson, 160 Cole

Blue Refractors: BCP121 Higashioka, 175 Lawrie

Gold Refractor: 166 Youkilis

2001 Throwbacks: Chipper Jones, Ichiro (english), Ichiro (Japanese)

2001 Throwbacks Prospects: BCT13 Mesoraco, 14 S Miller, 15 Deshields Jr, 18 Chisenhall, 19 A Vizciano

2021 Diecuts: 4 Deshields Jr., 7 Ranaudo, 8 Allie, 12 Singleton, 17 Dominguez, 24 Turner, 25 Myers

2021 Diecuts Refractors: 3 Taillon, 11 Banuelos, 16 Tago, 18 Sano

Bowman's Best Prospects: BBP54 Singleton, 59 Archer, 60 M Perez, 64 Myers(2), 65 Turner

Blaster Break: 2011 Bowman Chrome

2011-11-30T22:10:00.000-05:00

I know a lot of people don't really care for Bowman or Bowman Chrome but I actually do like them. I picked up this blaster a few weeks ago and I'm just now getting around to posting the breaks. Here we go:

These futuristic "Bowman 2021" throwforwards(?) are pretty neat I think. I was very pleased to get Machado out of the box. I'm not as thrilled to get a Yankee card but at least its a refractor.

I think this box was supposed to be sent to a Braves area. I go the 2001 Throwback Chipper in the same pack as I got the regular base issue. The Will Myers card is interesting because I thought I heard somewhere that the Braves were interested in trading for him. It seems the Braves and Royals have been pretty frequent traders the last few years much like the Orioles and Rangers.

I told you that this was a Braves box. Huddy is a refractor though its very difficult to see in the scan.

This post does it for this blaster but it is only the tip of the Chrome iceberg so stay tuned.

Post Season TTM's!

2011-11-26T09:32:00.000-05:00

I sent these 2 TTMs out later in the season and got them back after I got back from the honeymoon. I guess these guys opened all of their fan mail after they had gone home for the winter.

Unfortunately for me I tried a new way to send out TTM's and it didn't turn out as well as I had hoped. You can't really tell from the scan but the autograph smudged in the middle of his last name. You can see it rubbed off in the envelope and reapplied to the card on the white portion near the bottom. This is what I get for sending Chrome cards through the mail expecting that every player has a Staedler pen to autograph cards. Lesson learned. Nonetheless, I am very pleased to get Zach's autograph for my collection

I had the opportunity to get Nolan's autograph at Fanfest last winter and decided to get him on an 8x10. I ultimately wanted to get a regular card signed sooner or later at the ballpark or TTM. I wasn't able to get him while I was in Atlanta because he either rode the team bus or snuck in through the Braves team entrance with Nick the Stick. I thought I would try my luck through the mail and perseverance pays. Both of these cards look great signed. If I had to pick a favorite of the 2 it would have to be the Topps Heritage because of the All-Star rookie logo.

In case Nolan or Zach reads this, Thanks for signing my cards and sending them back to me!

Topps Redemption Fail

2011-11-24T09:29:00.000-05:00

For Thanksgiving this year, I present you with my turkey of a redemption. Sorry but a Jed Lowrie autograph isn't equal to a Alexei Ramirez autograph.

Trade with Chris of Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz

2011-11-23T21:25:00.000-05:00

Here comes another trade that landed in my mailbox during my hiatus. Chris from Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz and I had been talking about a trade for a while and finally hammered out the deal. I got some great looking cards in exchange for what I sent him:

Imagine the smile on my face when I pulled this card out of the package! I now have the trifecta (base, GU, and Auto) of Nick now. I'm really happy to have added this on-card autograph of my favorite active player to my collection.

Topps Chrome came out during a hectic time in my life this year. I did get a hobby box and a few rack packs but didn't really jump onto ebay looking for singles. This blue on the border reminds me of the coming winter months where all we have to wish for is some warm weather.

Here's a nice card that I didn't have. I think this gold parallel came into my possession at the right time because of Nick winning his first gold glove. I think Nick winning it was long overdue. I'm really happy that the voting is done by outfield position and not just lumping all the outfielders into one pool.

I'll close with a couple of cards of the future of the Orioles rotation, Zach Britton. Zach had a pretty good rookie season. I look forward to seeing him improve this year and not fall on his face like Matusz did.

Thanks Chris for the nice package of cards. I look forward to doing another trade with you soon.

Group Break Goodies from The Daily Dimwit

2011-11-21T21:23:00.000-05:00

While I was away on my Honeymoon, I participated in a Group Break run by Sam of the the Daily Dimwit. I was able to buy in before I left and the cards were busted while I had no internet access. When I got home there was a package of cards that I didn't have the chance to see come out of the packs. Usually when I am in Group Breaks, I obsessively smash the F5 button on my computer to get Blogger to refresh to see what cards might be coming my way. Lets take a look at the goods:

Sam sent a note that said the this card was a wedding gift. Thanks Sam for the gift. It was the only baseball related wedding gift I (we!) got!

I was randomed the White Sox for my second consecutive break. I think I did pretty well. The bottom Peavy is a refractor. I have a bunch of White Sox cards I don't need from this and Cards on Cards' Free Fleer Break so Pale Hose fans, step right up and make an offer.

Here's the meat of the break for me. Two '75 minis, a refractor Ripken, and a popup Brooksie! I couldn't be happier with these pulls. I also have a few base Lineage O's extras left over from building my team set. Any O's fans want them?

I was also lucky enough to get one of the Lineage Box toppers... I'd love to get this autographed by Vlad one day, but it might be while he's with another team. It's already a forgone conclusion that he isn't coming back to play in the Charm City next year.

Thanks for another awesome group break Sam!

Box Break: 2011 Topps Update

2011-11-19T18:04:00.000-05:00

Alright, there's no need to bore you to death with a review of this years Topps Update. Everybody's seen the design since last fall and we're all familiar with the inserts. I just want to show the cards I got in case anybody is interested in trading for them. Here's what I got out of my Hobby box, Hanger box, and Jumbo Rack Packs:

A couple of Cognac shiny legends. Note the Morgan, I actually pulled the regular, non-liquor shortprint from my series 2 box bust.

The rightful home run king got pulled from a later retail purchase after I scanned the other 2.

My vintage legend shortprint. I'm not a Strawberry fan.

My vintage legend shiny shortprint. Not a bad looking card I suppose.

The Hope Diamond shiny. I'm not really a fan of adding a parallel from past releases into packs. What if Topps came out with a new parallel for 2009 Topps that was inserted into 2012 Topps Tribute. Where does the madness end?

Here's my promised big jersey hit. Clifton Pfifer Lee. Woo!

I was pleasantly surprised to pull a silk card. These are more rare than the Black or Hope Diamond parallel.

Also, here's the list of the regular subset insert cards that were not worthy of pictorial representation:

Cognac Parallels: 5 Votto, 16 Ramirez, 39 Kennedy, 40 J. Upton, 43 Ryan, 72 Jurrjens, 74 Clippard, 90 Y. Molina, 119 Bay, 127 Volstad, 166 J. Johnson, 171 G Jones, 174 Oswalt, 186 Pavano, 203 Gee, 220 Helton, 226 J. Guillen, 227 McLouth, 232 Moyer, 234 Montero, 245 Walker, 273 D. Lee, 277 Hoffman, 287 Cousins, 297 Jaramillo, 301 S. Smith, 304 Thome, 305 Loney, 312 G Sanchez, 328 Price, 403 F. Hernandez, 445 Talbot, 455 Morrison, 612 Tigers, 651 K. Morales, US4 McCann, US6 Fielder, US31 Granderson, US58 Lincecum, US128 M. Rivera, US131 Keppinger, US146 Walden, US211 Moseley, US229 A.Cabrera, US238 C. Beltran, US242 Holliday, US302 Torres, US306 Phillips, US309 Konerko, US319 Patterson

Diamond Anniversary: US15 Heilman, US43 Quentin, US49 Weeks, US61 Masset, US72 Rasmus, US85 Halladay, US86 Furcal, US101 Downs, US140 Kershaw, US146 Walden, 176 Nady, US230 M. Cabrera, 281 Melancon, US302 Torres

Gold Borders #d to 2011: US3 Beavan, US23 Ruffin, US59 Kemp, US88 O. Cabrera, US95 Overbay, US108 U. Jimenez, US130 Robertson, US134 Bourn, US143 Kimbrel, US145 Colon, US154 C. Lee, US195 Votto, US204 B. Wilson, US268 Y. Molina, US275 Cuddyer, US292 Adams, US294 Jackson, US297 d'Arnaud

Red Bordered: US39 Sanchez, US126 A. Gonzalez

Blue Bordered: US128 M. Rivera, US242 Holliday

Kimball Champions: 106 G. Carter, 107 Uggla, 116 Mize, 120 F. Robinson, 124 F. Thomas, 129 Sisler, 130 A. Gonzalez, 137 J. Morgan, 138 Hornsby141 Dawson(2), 142 R. Howard, 143 Drabek, 145 Hosmer, 149 Cy Young

Diamond Duos: DD1 Hernandez/Pineda, DD-6 Anderson/Cahill, DD-11 Dunn/Konerko, DD-20 Aaron/Bautista, DD-21 Price/Shields, DD-28 Phillips/Kendrick

Topps 60: 104 A-Rod, 105 Hornsby, 110 Fisk, 113 McCovey, 118 Morgan, 121 Reese, 122 Alomar, 124 Henderson, 127 Snider, 128 Thomas, 130 Gehrig, 136 Blyleven(2), 137 Garvey, 138 Maris, 139 Uggla

ToppsTown: TTU-23 Rollins(2), 37 Scherzer, 46 Beltre, 49 Cain(2)

Card Show Pickups: Trade Bait

2011-11-18T19:54:00.000-05:00

While at card shows, instead of just buying cards for myself, I tend to keep my eye out for cards that my trading partners might like too. I stumbled upon one table where I picked up all of these cards. Either the guy was out of his mind or was just selling to get out of the hobby.

I didn't think I could go wrong with either of these 3 rookie cards. Not at 50 cents a piece!

There was a section on the table with pick 4 for 6 dollars. The first two are probably the "worst" out of the bunch. I think Cabrera is way underated. He can fall out of bed and hit. He can probably fall out of bed drunk and hit better than most players. Maybe one day the hobby will wake up and take notice of his cards. I guess being an alcoholic turns people against your collectability these days. (Though it never seems/seemed to matter because people/Topps love Mantle!!!)

Here's the other 2 cards from the 4 for 6 deal. Surely somebody is interested in a Gwynn numbered 37/99 and a Pujols numbered 98/100. Right?

If any of these strike your fancy, just hit me up with a trade offer!

Card Show Pickups: Discount Shopper

2011-11-17T19:44:00.000-05:00

I am not what you consider a cheap person when I go to a card show but I will try to get the most for my money. I didn't go dime box diving like last time but I was able to get the following cards at steep discounts:

I got this nice looking Ripken insert for a mere dollar. It looks better in person as it has a rainbowy, refractorish, sheen to it.

All of the cards above were in the 50 cent box. 50 CENTS for Triple Threads, Marquee, and Tribute singles. Ichiro is a favorite player of mine and I think that Pineda has a bright future.

I know its just a plain jane white swatch but I still like it. This was one of the early GUs as it came out in 2001, right when GU cards were getting popular in the hobby.

Here's one prospecting card of the show. When I first saw it I thought that the "S" was the only piece of fabric in the card. Upon closer inspection, I was surprised to see 3 swatches and even a bit of a dirt stain on the "S". I love to find jersey cards with dirt or grass stains in them. I can't wait to see what Nick does in his first year in the minors for the O's this season.

I close out with another trio of Triple Threads O's greats that I picked up out of a quarter box. I was hoping I'd find a Ripken but somebody probably already pilfered that before I dug through the box.

So, as you can see, there are always deals to be had in the bargain bins. Next up: Trade Bait!

Card Show Pickups: Vintage

2011-11-16T19:33:00.000-05:00

During the weekend between my wedding and honeymoon, I was able to go to the CSA show at the Dulles Expo Center in Chantilly Virginia. I usually make it to each show that they have 3 times a year. I always pick up some awesome cards and this time is no different. Here's the vintage cards I picked up:

I spent a bulk of my time sifting through the vintage bargain boxes. One dealer in particular had 3 or 4 3200 count boxes of vintage cards for a buck a piece. This card above of Mike Cuellar is my favorite of his in an Oroioles uniform.

No the writing is not on the card. It is actually left this card in the penny sleeve to show you the great deals I was able to pull at the show. The expression on Harvey's face looks like the flash of the camera took him by surprise.

As I was working my way back from the 70's to 60's to 50's I noticed a good size chunk of 55 Bowmans in the boxes. I double checked with the vendor and he confirmed they were a buck. This cards are not it mint condition by any means but they are acceptable to me.

There were even a few 54 Bowmans in the box too! I really lucked out that these cards were in the box. The owner said he had just transferred them from the 2 dollar box earlier that morning.

I put a pretty sizable dent in my vintage wantlists at this show. I'm glad I was able to do it at such an affordable price too!

The "New" Orioles jerseys and hats

2011-11-15T10:53:00.000-05:00

Earlier today, the Orioles finally revealed their new look for 2012 and beyond. Take a look:

Here's a picture of the new cartoon bird:

And a comparison of Cartoon Orioles past with the new one:

I know a lot of people around the Orioles blogs, forums, and websites were really excited in anticipation of a new Cartoon Bird being unveiled. It will sell a lot of new merchandise but I hope fans don't get the wrong idea and think it makes the team any better.

The new logo is a good mix of both of the old ones but wearing the "O's" hat. The updated feel is nice but I actually hate the "O's" hat and the black alternate jerseys that they only wear on Fridays. I actually hope this doesn't become the "Official" logo and is only worn on the hats.

I personally don't care for the new Home hats with the white panel. I think it looks too much like a trucker hat. Leave that crap in the 80's! I prefer the new Road hats with the all black crown but am still not completely sold.

There is one thing I do like is the official return of the orange jersey. I'd rather see them wear these on Fridays instead of the goth/emo/hipster black jersey.

I think I don't like the idea of wearing an Orioles hat with an cartoon wearing a hat that I detest. I'm not in a hurry to upgrade my wardrobe anytime soon.

Trade with Kyle of Just a Bit Outside

2011-11-14T20:20:00.000-05:00

When I was still a single man way back when (September), Kyle from the relatively new Just a Bit Outside blog contacted me about a trade. He was interested in the Aaron Crow autograph I pulled from my Topps Chrome box. I also threw together some other random Royals cards that I hope he'd enjoy. Here's just a few notable cards that I got in return:

I'm having some trouble making a decision about which binder to place this card. Should it go in with my Markakis binder or in with my 2004 Orioles Team Set binder. Decisions, Decisions, Decisions.

I'm really digging this card of Jake. I believe this is his first rookie card that came out in Topps Chrome last year. I hope Jake has a speedy recovery from elbow surgery and continues his growth as a pitcher. I think if he can reduce his walk rate, he could become a franchise cornerstone.

I'm going to close with these 2 Paninni stickers from 1988. I think the stickers speak for themselves!

Thanks goes to Kyle for the nice package that he sent me.

Trade with Steve of White Sox Cards

2011-11-12T17:14:00.000-05:00

Long before I left to go on our honeymoon, Steve from White Sox Cards and I agreed on a nice trade. I sent him a bunch of White Sox cards and he sent me a nice package of Orioles I had on my wantlists in return. Here's a few that I especially liked:

I like the intense look that Nick has on his face. It's hard to believe that I didn't have this card in my Markakis binder.

Bowman Chrome really seems to stiff the Orioles when it comes to the prospects set. Rayner here was never a hot prospect for the O's nor was he highly touted.

A few weeks ago I was watching Orioles Classics on MASN and they were showing the final game played at Memorial Stadium. I had almost forgotten that Dwight Evans played for the O's in 1991 until he came up to bat. It must have been strange for him to play his entire career for the Red Sox and then switch teams for one year.

Thanks Steve for the nice package of cards you sent along!

Trade with Oscar of All Trade Bait, All the Time

2011-11-11T20:10:00.000-05:00

Oscar of All Trade Bait, All the Time contacted me before my sabbatical from blogging and said he had some Orioles card up on his blog that I might be interested in. I found more than what is pictured here but I'm just going to hit the highlights:

This Tribute card comes from 1994 Pinnacle. I like the classic mid swing a pitch "pose" on this card. You can really see the concentration and might in Cal's eyes. Notice on the bottom of the card where it says Steady Run Production. I've heard rumblings that Cal wasn't as great as everybody though he was. Well he wouldn't have played all those games in a row if he wasn't a good run producer!

I believe this card is from 2001's Topps Archives set. I initially missed out on the set but I'm proud to have this reprint of Boog Powell's rookie card from 1962 Topps now.

Here's another great card of Cal that I can add to my binders. For what it's worth, it looks like the picture was taken in Comiskey Park. I think the concrete dugout top gives it away. I think the Pinnacle Tribute card above is also from Comiskey.

Thanks Oscar for the trade!

Trade with Michael of Nomo's Sushi Platter

2011-11-09T19:07:00.000-05:00

This trade really takes me back! No, Really, I think we completed this trade in September! Michael from Nomo's Sushi Platter and I have a pretty good trade agreement. I look for and set aside cards he collects and he does the same for me. Then, when either of us has enough to make shipping worth it, we send. I'm really pleased how this works out. Not many people (night owl notwithstanding) on this side of the country collect Dodgers, and not many people on the west coast are interested in Orioles cards. This turn out great for the both of us.

I was able to bundle a couple of nice Dodger GUs to trade for this great looking Cal GU card from 07 Ultimate Collection. The more I look at the card I just appreciate it more and more!

Michael also was kind enough to throw in a few parallels from various sets. This Melvin Mora hails from 06 ~~Upper Deck~~ Flair Showcase. I haven't heard much from Mora since he left Baltimore so I don't even know if he's still playing or not.

This is another parallel from 2000 Pacific. The red foil makes it a fitting Will Clark card. When you think red, you think intense. When you think intense, you think Will "the Thrill" Clark!

Thank You Michael for the awesome cards. I already have another trade pile in the works for you!

Trade with Mark of Stats on the Back

2011-11-07T16:59:00.000-05:00

I'm going to start back with a nice and easy trade. Mark from the "mostly defunct" Stats on the Back blog sent me an email a while back wanting my address so he could send me some cards. I obliged and here is what ended up in my mailbox:

This Cal Ripken is actually a mini card from the 80s. It's functionally equivalent to the regular 87 Fleer release but only smaller and with a different picture on the front. Another great addition to my quickly growing oddball Cal collection!

With these 2 '89 Upper Deck cards, I have successfully completed the Orioles team set from "the set that changed modern baseball cards." It took me longer than I thought but perseverance pays!

Here is a card of new HOFer Roberto Alomar. I'm just now realizing that the card has the Puerto Rican flag on it. Puerto Rico is where my wife and I just visited on our honeymoon cruise. I didn't see Robby anywhere but I did get to tour Old San Juan and the fort that guarded the city in colonial times. I wish I had gotten to see Hiram Bithorn Stadium but we were only on the island for about 8 hours.

Thanks Mark for the cards!

Back in the Saddle

2011-11-06T13:15:00.000-05:00

For those of you that read my blog on a regular basis (all 3 of ya!), you might have noticed that I have been absent from my own blog for a little more than a month. Well, sorry to be the bearer of bad news but you all will now be subjected to my writing again!

As I said in my last post, I was rooting for the Rangers in the playoffs. Man, they were really close to winning it all. I did see limited amounts of the World Series. The bits and pieces I saw were pretty exciting.

More importantly while I was taking a break from blogging, I got married and went on our honeymoon. The ride has been great so far and I'm looking forward to many, many, great life experiences to come!

While I was away, I was still reading blogs and commenting where I saw fit. I was still active with my collection but have had limited interaction with other collectors. I seem to have caught up on all my trades and updated my wantlist/tradelist page fully. I'm ready to jump back into the blog-o-sphere and get some trades going!

First, things first. I have about a dozen or so posts that I have lined up in draft that I intend to push out over the next few weeks. All the cards have been scanned, they just need words to go with them! Everybody that I traded with deserves recognition and I intend to do so. I appreciate your patience.

Have a great day everybody, and I'll see you around the blogs!

Obligatory State of the Blog

2011-09-30T17:56:00.002-04:00

As I'm sitting here watching the Rays and Rangers play in game 1 of the ALDS, I'm having trouble focusing on the game with all of the my life events that are coming up. I'm getting married next Saturday October the 8th and will be leaving on my honeymoon for 10 days starting October 20th. I'm really looking forward to both of these events (obviously!) Starting this weekend, I will be doing all of the last minute preparations (haircuts, dentist visits, etc) so I'll be away from my collection quite a bit. I've got a few trades that I'm going to ship out on Monday and then after that, it will probably be November when I get back to normal blogging and trading. I'll still be reading and commenting but just not actively trading. I will be going to Chantilly for the card show on the 15th so maybe I'll see some of you bloggers there (let me know if you are going). Luckily the show fell on the weekend between the wedding and honeymoon and my soon-to-be wife is letting me go (haha). Yall will have to wait until after Halloween to see the great buys I always find there!

One of the reasons other than lack of material that I have been absent from my blog is that I've been playing a lot of Gears of War 3. Video Games is another one of my expensive hobbies that have followed me since childhood. Gears 3 is a great game in my opinion and I'm having a ton of fun playing it. If any of you other bloggers are on Xbox Live, feel free to add me as a friend. My gamertag is HAHAyurDEAD . Just let me know who you are because I tend to get a lot of random friend requests.

I'll be back soon enough. See you all soon!

Trade with Kirk of Eutaw Street Cardboard

2011-09-17T13:49:00.000-04:00

I'll start off this trade post saying that it was pretty epic between two Oriole collectors. Kirk made a post a little while back wanting to bolster his vintage Orioles collection. I was happy to oblige since I had some doubles that I got from ebay purchases and other trading ventures. He sent me a nice little package of in person autos and certified Orioles from past releases. Here's part of my haul:

I'm very happy to have my first certified Brian Roberts autograph card. Technically you could say my 8x10 from fanfest this past January could be certified by me but that's no good on the open market. There seems to be a lot of empty space on this card. Donruss/Leaf/Playoff/Pinnacle/Score/Pannini or whoever could have made the team logo or player picture a little bigger.

Dennis Martinez was a favorite of my dad's to watch. Plus he kinda looks like my uncle.

This is my second Brady Anderson relic card. This one from 2001 Fleer E-X features a swatch of jersey and his number is diecut.

Chris Hoiles is one of my all-time favorite Orioles players and I'm happy to have an autograph of his in my collection. Fleer Ultra 1991 is underrated in my humble opinion and looks great autographed!

This is the only non-auto, non-relic card of the package but a good one. I believe this is the only card featuring these 2 O's players from overlapping eras. Cal's last season was '01 and Roberts got the call when Mike Bordick went down with an injury. Brian didn't have his breakout season until 2003 but is the last link to Cal still with the team today.

Thanks Kirk for the great package of cards you sent over. I hope that we can trade again in the future!

Two 2011 Topps Chrome Value Packs

2011-09-14T18:26:00.000-04:00

The Fiancee and I stopped into Target to pick up some birthday cards and also add a few things to our wedding registry. We're less than a month from our big day and starting to feel our stress and anxiety levels rise. What better way to relieve some stress by busting a few value packs of 2011. I let her pick the two out that I purchased and I'm glad I did. She always picks packs with the best cards!

I can't go wrong with an Orange of the best player in baseball.

I got a regular Jeter in the same pack...

I was happy to get this rookie refractor of Teheran. I think he's capable of some big things and we'll be hearing his name for years to come.

This was the reason I let her pick the packs when she's with me. My goal for the packs was to get and Orioles Orange refractor or and X-fractor in them so I'm especially happy I got one for my growing Markakis PC. Pulling this out of a pack makes one less card I have to scour COMC for. The X-fractors look much better this year BTW.

Here's the other highlights of the packs in non-picture form:

Refractor: Brett Anderson

Orange Refractors: Lance Berkman, Matt Cain, Dan Uggla, Hanley Ramirez, Carl Crawford

X-Fractor: Chris Pettit

Purple Refractor: Chris Young

Everything listed is up for trade except for the Markakis X-Fractor.

Kevin Gregg is bad at pitching

2011-09-10T16:20:00.003-04:00

Orioles leading Blue Jays 4-3, 2 outs, bottom of 9th.

Keving Gregg walks Kelly Johnson, allows a single to Jose Molina, loads the bases by hitting Adam Loewen (yes that Adam Loewen), throws a wild pitch to allow the tying run to score and then gives up the game winning hit to JP Arencibia.

I really feel bad for all of the other Orioles on the team who have to watch Captain Chaos blow games over and over and over.

Box Break: 2011 Topps Chrome Hobby

2011-09-09T19:57:00.000-04:00

I preordered this box a little while back and had almost forgotten about it until I got the shipping notification. I started to get cautiously excited knowing the debacle that 2010 Topps Chrome was. It had been nearly 2 weeks since I opened any packs (which is a long time for me!) so it was good to smell that new card smell again. So I ripped a few packs and was pleasantly surprised to see that the cards were of a pretty high quality. No pringle warping, no surface gouges, no dinged corners, no off-center or miscut cards and hardly any roller marks that plagued last year's edition. I am happy to see that Topps fixed these issues for this years release. Even the non-card collectors that work there know that those cards were of totally crappy quality!

I'm going to list the "lesser" inserts here:

Topps Heritage Chrome: Nelson Cruz, Carlos Quentin, Neil Walker, Brandon Beachy

Nothing to really write home about here...

Topps Chrome Throwbacks: Aroldis Chapman, Freddie Freeman, Felix Hernandez, Brian McCann

I know the back of the package says Vintage Chrome, but I hardly consider 1996 Topps Chrome to be "vintage". I'll just call them throwbacks since Pepsi can call their 1990's designs throwbacks!

Refractors: Brandon Beachy, Carlos Pena, Dustin Pedroia, Andrew Cashner, Ichiro, Vernon Wells, Jonathan Sanchez, Jorge Posada

The Refractors from this box produced the exact amount of cards allotted for the box. The odds were 1:3 packs. I really cleaned up on Brandon Beachy and overall Braves in this break. The Jorge Posada card is kinda funny because it says he is a Designated Hitter but the picture is of him in catchers gear chasing a foul pop up

My Astros lucky streak continues with this Sepia Refactor. I particularly pull a bunch of Parallels of JA Happ. I think I got an Orange parallel from 2010 Bowman, a Blue from 2011 Bowman and now this Sepia Refractor. I could take or leave this version of refractor.

I think the Atomic refractors are kind of neat but to me they just look like a zoomed in version of the flagship Diamond Anniversary parallels.

Blue Refractors make their return.

This gold I was happy to get since they are numbered out of 50. I'm not really thrilled about the player because he hasn't played in nearly a season and a half. Oh well, you can't win them all.

My first promised autograph is actually the refractor version. Somehow the scanner didn't pick up the rainbow coloring. I thought that Crow was once a hot Starting Pitcher prospect and it wasn't that long ago. KC fans help me out here, I'm interested to know why he is pitching out of the bullpen. Did he totally tank as a starter?

Here's my second promised autograph of the box. This was probably the second best autograph (in my opinion) I could have pulled next to Zach Britton. Earlier in the season, Pineda was lighting it up and a shoo-in for Rookie of the Year. The league caught up to him but he is still a very solid pitcher and seems he will form a tough 1-2 punch with King Felix for years to come.

I'd give this box a 4.5 out of 5.0 score only because I pulled 2 Orioles from the entire box (Markakis and Derek Lee base cards). Otherwise I was very pleased with the results and I think the cards look great in Chrome. The flagship was only so-so in my book but be chromed, they look a little more dignified. I'm still scratching my head about the double team names around the baseball and logo though.

All cards are for trade except the Pineda. I want to hang onto that card for a while, unless I get an offer I can't refuse.

Trade with AJ of The Lost Collector

2011-09-08T18:35:00.000-04:00

There is not much to say about this trade that AJ hasnt already said at his blog. But, when I saw this card from the blaster he busted a week or so I knew I had to have it! I love when Orioles GUs have Orange swatches in them.

Thanks for the quick and easy trade AJ, its a pleasure to trade with you!

Trade with JayBee of bdj610's Topps Baseball Card Blog

2011-09-07T17:45:00.000-04:00

I don't usually get that many trade offers because I am more proactive in that sense. I'm usually looking over wantlists and offering up cards for trade. Not this time though! Jaybee from bdj610's Topps Baseball Card Blog hit me up with a couple of cards I need for my collection. I was happy to oblige and sent him a single card he needed. Here are a few of the cool cards he sent:

This card is a fairly obscure one but it was the last I needed to finish up my 2004 Topps/Topps Traded Team set. It was on my Top 10 Wanted list on the sidebar that will now need to be replaced. Mike never made it to the big leagues but at the time this card was produced he was a rising prospect in the Orioles system. I checked out his Baseball Reference page and he never made it past double-A ball. It seemed he just couldn't hit more advanced pitching.

I had seen these cards before but never in person. It appears to be some kind of goofy card game that Topps came up with to sell cards. I got several more of these in the trade package and they really are interesting. They are made of plastic and you can see through them.

I'll close out this quick trade post with another card I had never seen in person. I didn't even realize that Topps Opening Day existed in 1998. All I am missing from the team set now is Jeffrey Hammonds. That particular card will be placed on my Top 10 Wanted list.

Thanks Jaybee for the quick and easy trade!

Trade with Sean of Condition:Poor

2011-09-01T18:32:00.000-04:00

Between the 2 natural disasters (earthquake, hurricane) in my area and untimely passing of Orioles great Mike Flanagan, I was able to complete a trade with Sean of the Condition:Poor blog. Sean is a Mets fan so I sent him some extras I had sitting around. He sent me some great cards to add to my collection. Take a look:

Sean seems to center his collection around vintage cards and specifically Mets vintage. I'm very glad that he had this prospects card of Ed Barnowski and Eddie Watt. A lot of people really like the dual/triple/quad prospect and rookie cards. I don't really care for them. I like my rookie cards to be of just 1 player.

Here is a new Cal Card for my collection. This one is from 2007 Upper Deck, AKA the year UD went nuts with Cal themed inserts. I really like the Ultra Iron Man set they did for "Fleer Ultra" because the pictures are all different. From the few of these featuring the Iron Man and Iron Horse that I have, they all have the same pictures. Maybe it's just a coincidence

I've recently taken a liking to on card Orioles Autographs. Its just something about the cards actually being touched by the player that make them much cooler than the band-aid silver foil autograph stickers. This is a first time autograph for me. I don't know much about Eddie Watt but I like his signature because it's legible! Most players these days don't take pride in penmanship.

Thanks Sean for the great cards you sent my way. I hope you like your part of the trade!

Trade with Matt of Cardboard Anathema

2011-08-27T13:49:00.000-04:00

I recently contacted Matt of the relatively new Cardboard Anathema blog. Matt has just recently jump back into the hobby and started up his own blog. I found Matt's blog through My Cardboard Mistress' trade post. I've found so many great blogs by looking at other's trade posts. Trading is a great way to get your blog recognized in our community.

Here are just a few of the awesome cards that Matt sent to me:

Matt is building the 1971 Topps set. I commend his efforts because it is not an easy set to complete. I assume that this is one of the doubles he has acquired during his trek towards completion. I really like the 1971 set. "Game Changer" is a word that comes to mind when I think of '71 Topps.

Here's a quirky card from Collector's Choice 1998. While it looks like a cypher card from Allen and Ginter from the scrambled letters on the left, it actually just says "StarQuest". This is only a "Single" so I wonder if the double, triple, or homerun versions of this card have different pictures. I'll make an educated guess and say no because of the Starquest inserts in 08 and 09 Upper Deck.

The Final Card I'm going to show off is this Brooks Robinson from 2002 Upper Deck World Series Heroes. I'm not fond of the Yankee pinstripes in the background of the card front but the rest of the card is nice. It really seems classy with the dual American flags, logo, and year foil stamping and the stars surrounding the frame of the actual photo.

Thanks Matt for the fantastic trade package you sent and I look forward to seeing more great posts from your blog.

An appropriate card from Topps

2011-08-23T18:00:00.000-04:00

After all of the earthquake hullaballoo at work today I get home and got a bubble mailer from Topps. You know most everybody has seen one of these in their mailbox:

Not everybody is as lucky to get boxes from Topps with unopened semi-vintage packs and diamond rings like you-know-who!

I thought this might be my Alexei Ramirez autograph from last year's Allen & Ginter or maybe my Manny Machado autograph from this years Bowman.

No such luck. Just a Rockie with a blown out elbow:

It's a shortprint from this year's Heritage set. This is what I got for my 44 cent stamp in the NPN's. With all the Rockie-ing and rolling that the earth's crust did today, fate sent me this Jorge De La Rosa card. I was about 50 miles away from the epicenter of the quake, there was a good amount of shaking going on but there was no damage to the building I was in. It was evacuated as a precaution and the all clear was given about a half hour later. It was definitely an interesting experience that I won't soon forget!

Back on track here though, I always do these since I got a pretty nice return from the 2004 Bowman Product. Check it out:

Grady Sizemore Autographed game base relic card. Sorry the scan is blurry but apparently Screwdowns scan worse than chrome cards! The funny thing about this is that I had already pulled one of these out of the packs that I got the NPN address off of. I don't remember the odds of getting the card out of the packs but the odds of getting the same card as an NPN have got to be astronomical!

Craigslist Ads

2011-08-23T08:20:00.000-04:00

I keep scouring the local Craigslist ads hoping to find that one big haul like some other bloggers and collectors have been able to get for a reasonable price or even free. Maybe the stars will align one day but today wasn't it. Check out these:

http://richmond.craigslist.org/clt/2560723166.html
http://richmond.craigslist.org/clt/2550676996.html
http://richmond.craigslist.org/clt/2557429595.html
http://richmond.craigslist.org/clt/2531485559.html

Wow some great deals to be had, I don't know if I can pass these up!

8-17-11: Bowie Baysox @ Richmond Flying Squirrels

2011-08-21T17:36:00.013-04:00

I usually try to make it down to the Diamond whenever the Bowie Baysox are in town playing the hometown Flying Squirrels. It was Irish Heritage night so the Squirrels were wearing green uniforms and there was a lot of Irish music being played. There was even a group of Irish Dancers. my fiancee was working last Wednesday, I decided to fly solo and see if I could catch some good autographs before the game by arriving early. I got nearly everybody I wanted! Here's the one I wanted most:

LJ could be the heir apparent to Brian Roberts in Baltimore in a year or two. I also got his 2008 Bowman Chrome Draft Picks card signed!

Joe Mahoney was responsible for most of the Baysox offense this night. He had a 3 run triple in the first inning. His signature looks so much better on this card than the one I got back from spring training this year.

I was also able to get the Baysox starter Bobby Bundy to sign my custom. He hasn't fared as well in Double-A as he did in Frederick.

If the game had ended after the first five batters of the game, Bowie would have won 4 to 0. There isn't that much to say about the game after that because Bobby Bundy had a tough night. I was excited to see him pitch and he did show some bright spots but it just wasn't enough. He was staked to a 4-0 lead and the Flying Skunks knocked the ball around the yard on him. The final score ended up 8-5 with Richmond prevailing. An interesting moment during the game was when Bowie's hitting coach Denny Hocking blew a gasket over a controversial home run and was subsequently ejected. I'd never seen him so angry but I never saw him play much with the Twins either!

Overall it was a great night to catch a ballgame even though Bowie didn't win. They are in the playoff hunt so if they make it in, I might try to make it to Bowie to catch a game if my schedule permits.

Trade with Ben of Baseball Cards Rule

2011-08-20T17:21:00.000-04:00

This trade can be summed up in basically one word: Shiny! I contacted Ben over at Baseball Cards Rule about a trade a little while back and we finally hammered out an awesome trade. He had several Orioles cards I needed and I sent him several cards he needed for his player collections. Here's a few of the shiny cards he sent me:

I would guess that Ben is a big Rafael Palmiero fan because there were a bunch of nice cards of him in the package. This shiny comes from Leaf Certified Materials, a set that I never really paid much attention to. I never paid much attention to any Leaf cards really. Their checklists always were confusing to me with so many different tiers and variations to collect. It really was off putting when they were around.

I really like this card of Mike because it looks like it has texture but it doesn't. Even though the card looks faded, Topps was just getting the hang of Chromium technology back in 1994. The Bowman's Best sets aren't ones I really paid much attention to before now.

And the Coup de Grace of the package was this card from 1993 Finest. I've been on the hunt for one of these since it came out and 18 years later I finally get one to fill the hole in my Ripken PC binder. What a great card!

Thanks Ben for the cool cards!

Cal Ripken Cardboard Appreciation #17

2011-08-19T18:16:00.000-04:00

1986 True Value Superstars #22

This card is a true oddball through and through. It is an odd shape so it doesn't fit into 9-pocket pages or regular sized toploaders. The thing that strikes me most about this card is that Cal's position is listed as just plainly "infield". I wonder if True-Value considered Cal's move to shortstop as only temporary and tried to cover themselves in the future in case he moved back to the hot corner or first base?

My Contest Obsession

2011-08-18T19:59:00.000-04:00

I might have stolen somebody else's clever post title but for this contest it fits. Jeff over at My Sports Obsession is having a contest that ends tomorrow at 5pm EST. Get over there and sign yourself up! Here is the link the CONTEST.

A Couple 2011 Topps Lineage rack packs

2011-08-17T19:24:00.002-04:00

On my way home from work I decided to pick up some of the newly released Topps Lineage. I had fully intended to pick up a blaster box of this product but saw the rack packs hanging there. I will say that I am no pack searcher but I was able to see that Cal Ripken was on the front of the first pack and Markakis was on the front of the next one! How could I resist my 2 favorite players basically put on a silver platter for me? Why does Topps make these wrappers sooo easy to see through?

Anyways, I did get other cards out of the pack including this Zach Britton Rookies insert and his regular base card! I did have some major Orioles-jo in these packs (at least in my opinion!).

I got 2 mini '75s which are pretty cool. These 2 sluggers surprisingly haven't battered Orioles pitchers as the rest of the league has this year.

I got 2 Platinum Diamond parallels that I don't have much to say about either player:

And I was able to pull a Mini 1975 relic card:

Carlos Lee! My lucky Astros mojo pack breaking streak continues! It's not like these relics are too hard to pull since they are 1:10 rack packs. I'm happy with it though.

I did enjoy this break and I could see a blaster in my near future. The design of the cards might be a rejected Topps flagship design or leftover from Topps Total but the player selection is pretty solid. It was refreshing to see Albert Belle on a card again and to see a new pose of George Sisler. The card backs are a little disappointing but I don't think it would be appropriate to see just lines of stats on the back since it looks so close to regular Topps cards. Overall, I like the set for what it is: a smaller Topps set with some new ideas and NO SHORTPRINTS! I might build this one but we'll see.

Trade with Robert of $30 a Week Habit

2011-08-16T16:34:00.000-04:00

I contacted Robert at the new $30 a Week Habit blog about some of his wantlists he has posted. He is just jumping back into the hobby and is on the process of building 2010 and 2011 Topps sets. I'm sure all of us around the blogging community have some spare cards from those sets laying around so help him out!

Anyways, here's a couple of the cards he sent me in exchange for the Topps flagship commons I sent him:

First off, he sent me one regular Topps base card. That brings my set need down to one stinking card and it couldn't be of a stinkier player either: #573 Nyjer Morgan. I really can't stand the guy. He has a severe case of little man's syndrome and he is a dirty player. If anybody has an extra #573 to help me finish off my set, I would much appreciate the help.

I really get into the horizontal cards. 1956 Topps, and 1960 Topps are favorites of mine and now I can add 2001 Fleer Tradition to the list. I had limited exposure to this set until this trade and I do like it a lot. The thing I don't like about this card is the text above the name banner. What a sad day for Orioles fans.

Earl Weaver has been in the news lately. Well, at least Orioles news! He had his 81st birthday this past weekend so happy belated birthday Earl! Another news clipping was that he is selling off a bunch of his memorabilia including his World Series ring, and some special jerseys given to him by Eddie Murray and Cal Jr. Also another interesting thing I learned yesterday was that Earl was ejected in both games of a doubleheader. That takes some real talent!

Finally, I have my first in-hand 2011 Allen and Ginter card. I'm not a big fan of A&G other than collecting the Orioles team sets. I haven't bought a single pack this year and don't plan on it either. It seems like a good year to skip this set because Topps really screwed the pooch with its cash cow. From what I seeon blogs and forums, there are really crappy relic cards, near impossible autograph cards and collation issues with the product.
Back to Derrek Lee above, I'm not really sad he's gone from the Orioles. I was initally excited when he signed here in the offseason but that wore off quickly when he failed at nearly every turn to drive runs in. Even though we got the best of the three 1st basemen we were chasing this past winter. Adam LaRoche is out for the season and Adam Dunn can't hardly hit is shoesize against lefties! Lee was cold towards fans and wasn't what we thought he was going to be offensively. At least the minor leaguer we got in exchange for him is mashing the ball down on the farm!

Thanks Robert for the trade. I look forward to seeing some great posts coming from your new blog!

Cal Ripken Cardboard Appreciation #16

2011-08-14T18:13:00.000-04:00

1985 Topps Super #48

I know this looks like the regular base card with one BIG difference. It measures in at nearly 7 inches high by 5 inches wide. 1985 Topps really has grown on me in the past few years. Actually a lot of different sets have as I have begun to "appreciate" cards more instead of just "collect" them.

Moldy, FTW!

2011-08-10T22:44:00.000-04:00

Nolan Reimold hit a walk-off home run! Way to go Moldy!

Another Contest!

2011-08-10T16:10:00.000-04:00

I just stumbled upon another contest at a blog I didn't know existed until today. This contest is over at the Cheap Card Collecting blog.

Here's the link to sign up right here.

Good Luck!

The Daily Dimwit's Contest!

2011-08-10T16:08:00.000-04:00

Sam of the Daily Dimwit is running a contest with a nice lot of cards as the grand prize. Here is a link so you too can get in on the drawing:

The Daily Dimwit's Contest

Time is running out for you to enter. Good luck to all the contestants!

My Bridal(?) Shower haul

2011-08-07T10:44:00.000-04:00

My Fiancee had her Bridal shower last weekend and I was lucky enough to get some baseball loot along with all of the kitchen hand towels, mixing bowls, and silverware sets. I wasn't in attendance but several of her friends were nice enough to think about me while shopping for gifts that are (mostly) for her. To say the least, I was surprised to see that I actually got some gifts of my own.

First off I got this book "Orioles Essential" by Thom Loverro. Its got Cal Ripken on the cover so I'm pretty sure its a good book. I'm still learning about the Orioles history so this book will come in handy when I get around to reading it.

Another one of her close friends bought me a pack of this year's Topps series 1. While I got nothing of real interest in the pack, it was still nice of her to think of me.

And last but not least, one of her former co-workers and still close friend gave me a small gift bag filled with VINTAGE CARDS. This is the same friend that had me look up some values last summer for a '66 Pete Rose and couple of vintage Yankees for her. Apparently, she had been cleaning out her mother-in-law's house and came across these old cards. I'm sure glad she did. Look at some of the nice cards that I now have:

'58 Ernie Banks!

'66 Lou Brock!

'68 Ron Santo!

A couple '68 Topps Game cards

A few '65 Topps Embossed inserts

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There was probably over 100 cards in the gift bag so I'm very grateful to have them. My vintage collection is lacking good quality cards (condition wise) so I couldn't be happier with these.

If my haul was this good, I wonder what I might get as wedding gifts when the big day comes?

TTM Success: Gus Triandos

2011-08-06T18:30:00.001-04:00

Since receiving the Orioles Encyclopedia for Christmas last year I have been reading bits and pieces of it off and on this year. I had always known Gus Triandos was a good player for the Orioles back in the day yet he doesn't get the credit he deserves. Most of the Oriole teams he played on from 1955 thru 1962 were fairly forgettable but Gus stands out as the only superstar on the team during that period (other than Brooks Robinson when he started to come into his own). He was the Orioles All-Star Representative for 3 years (57,58,59) and was a solid backstop from what I can tell.

I began to become intrigued with his career and decided to send him an autograph request. Ryan from The Great Orioles Autograph Project hooked me up with his home address and now after about a 3 week turnaround, I have these to add to my collection:

These are definitely my favorite TTMs that I have received so far this year. Thanks Gus for taking time out to sign these cards for me.

OH NO!!!'s Poor Vintage Collection #5

2011-08-03T23:08:00.004-04:00

The cards that are featured in this recurring theme were found by my father strewn about the floor of an abandoned farm building near my childhood home. There were approximately 1000 cards that laid undisturbed from the late 60's to early 90's when he discovered them. Most are in poor condition because exposure to the elements. He recently gave them to me and I will feature them here on my blog.

1953 Bowman Color #18 Nellie Fox

This card I've been wanting to post for a while now, watermarks and all. This poor card seems like it could fall apart at any moment and I was scared to take it out of the penny sleeve and toploader to put it on the scanner. Nevertheless, it is being shown here in all its vintage-y goodness.

I never gave Nellie much of a thought before but he was one hell of a ballplayer. I knew that he was in the HOF but I never really looked at his stats as closely as I did for this post. While he was not much of a base stealer, he wasn't a big power guy either. The stat that really jumps off the page at me is that he only struck out 216 times in his 19 year career! Mark Reynolds has surpassed 200 strikeouts in each of the last 3 seasons. Nellie Fox seems like the kind of ballplayer who was just solid all around and did all the little things to help his team win. I guess that's how you stick around so long and end up in the Hall of Fame. Unfortunately for him, he was posthumously honored in Cooperstown 22 years after his death.

He was born on Christmas Day 1927 and passed away December 1 1975 at the age of only 47 in Baltimore, MD.

2011 Bowman Platinum pack break

2011-08-01T19:09:00.028-04:00

Since I haven't opened a lot of packs of cards lately, I decided to stop at Target on the way home and see if they had some new Bowman Platinum. I decided on 2 of the value packs. 3 regular packs and a value pack exclusive 3 purple prospect cards.

From what I've seen from my small sample size break, I like what I see so far. Last year's product wasn't terrible but this year's is really nice looking. All of the base cards are refractors so thats something I haven't seen before.

Heres some of the highlights of the break:

A bunch of base cards, most notably Aroldis Chapman, Jason Heyward, Tim Lincecum and Albert Pujols.
A few prospects: Manny Banuelos and Tyler Skaggs
3 Prospect x-Fractors (these look great!): Jonathan Singleton, Eduardo Escobar and Kyle Russell
6 Purple Prospects (I'm not crazy about the color of these): Brad Brach, Brad Holt, Matt Lipka, Dustin Ackley, Jared Mitchell and Ronnie Welty

I got one gold parallel: Aroldis Chapman

and I was lucky enough to pull an autograph card:

Hayden Simpson. According to Baseball Reference, he hasn't had a great first pro season but he still has plenty of time to turn it around.

I guess I did pretty well for just a few packs. I'll probably pick up another pack or two in the near future and see if I can get lucky again.

Farewell Koji-san!

2011-07-31T10:06:00.000-04:00

For the past few weeks the trade talk had been heating up around the Orioles best pitcher, Koji Uehara. I have been watching the talk closely hoping that he would not be traded but now he is headed to the Texas Rangers. His stay in Baltimore was frustrating when he was on the DL, but most of the time when he was on the mound it was lights out. His presence in the O's bullpen will be sorely missed. Poor Jim Johnson, his arm will fall off now.

I was very excited when the Orioles signed him from Japan because of my Japanese heritage. My Grandmother on my mother's side of the family was from Japan.

Here's a few of my favorite Koji cards. I kind of have a PC of him, meaning when I see cards of him I pick them up but don't go out of my way looking for them. (LMK if you have any you may have for trade) Topps seemed to recycle the living crap out of the same few photos of Koji so there aren't that many "different" cards of him:

This is bar none his best regular Topps card. The Diamond Anniversary parallel really makes the card shine! (literally and figuratively!)

This is one of the multi-recycle images. This particular card is #'d 49/99 (blue parallel, notice the blue foil)

The chromed up version of his 2009 Heritage card. Man, I love 1960 Topps!

These 2 came through the mail during spring training this year. He was an awesome TTM'er while in Baltimore.

As far as I can tell, he signs his full name on all of the certified autographs and only his first name on IP and TTM's.

Rangers fans, I know you are going to enjoy watching Koji pitch.

Best of Luck to you in Texas, Koji!

思い出をありがとうございます

My Topps Prime 9 Redemptions

2011-07-30T13:47:00.006-04:00

While I was breaking my hobby box of 2011 Topps Series 2, I pulled 2 of the Prime 9 redemption cards. I got redemption cards #1 and #2. The idea is that you take them to your local card shop during the specified week on each given card and you get a limited edition card of the player of the week. Basically Topps is trying to drive foot traffic into the hobby shops.

My fiancee was nice enough to drop by the "local" card shop during the first week and pick up this Johnny Bench:

I got to go back the second week and pick up this Albert Pujols (along with some 800ct boxes):

I'm not particularly attached to either one of them so they are both for trade.

Curiosity Killed the Cat

2011-07-25T20:02:00.000-04:00

I should have known better. I saw some 2011 Bowman Platinum cards hitting eBay so I thought I'd hit Target on the way home and maybe by chance they'd have some packs and blasters. No luck today. Somebody really straightened up the card section and there was nothing even remotely interesting on the shelves... Piles of series 1 and series 2 though. Even the Power Packs reduced price box was gone. But I did something stupid though. I bought one of those 3 packs plus a GU card 9.99 deals. You know, for science. Here's the resulting carnage:

1 pack of 2007 "Fleer" Ultra 5 card pack (haven't seen one of these in a while!!!):

Conor Jackson, Lance Berkman, Carl Crawfish, Freddy Sanchez and

Jesus Flores Rookie Shortprint!

1 pack of 2007 Upper Deck (only 5 cards, like the Dollar Tree version packs!):

Jose Valverde, Moises Alou, Jason Bay, Ryan Franklin and Jeff Baker Ticket to Stardom Insert

1 pack of 2003 Upper Deck Victory. I was initially a little happy to see this pack since it was something different. Then I opened it and realized that it was the year they made a "card game" and was let down again:

Mike Sweeney, Ben Sheets, Barry Zito, Sammy Sosa, Junior Spivey green border (don't get excited, 1:1 packs) and a

Jim Thome Clutch Players insert (1:5 packs)

And the moment we've been waiting for, the GU card:

2006 Topps Update Jermaine Dye Workout Jersey Card.

It has 4 dinged corners and obviously has been well loved. I don't love it though.

Hide your kids, Hide your wife, and Hide your husbands too.

Stay far away people, I open this crap so you don't have to.

Card Show Wrap Up: Part 2

2011-07-17T19:59:00.001-04:00

Here's part 2 of my card show wrap-up (if you couldn't tell from the title!)

5. 2010 Bowman Chrome Draft Picks Buster Posey Refractor. I think this card was mistakenly in the wrong box. It was nestled deep in the 7 for 5 dollar box so I couldn't refuse to pick this card up. It looks awesome in person and its in great condition. My Scanner refused to pick up the refractory shine this time.

4. 2009 Upper Deck Signature Stars USA Star Prospects 18U National Team UD Game Jersey Manny Machado. What a mouthful to say! I got this card on the cheap from a guy who had a ton of Team USA cards. Most of the higher end Manny stuff was out of my price range but I did drool a little bit on the glass!
3. 2001 Pacific Private Stock Brady Anderson bat card. I've been looking for a Brady Anderson relic card for some time now and I finally got one! He doesn't have many but this one looks awesome! There is even a short bio on the back along with stats. When was the last time you saw a relic card with those on the back?
2. 2007 Upper Deck SP Legendary Cuts Legendary Materials Brooks Robinson. These last two cards I got for a combined 20 bucks a triple relic card #d to 99 of a Hall of Famer and.... you'll see. This is a great looking card. Maybe one of these days I'll feel bold enough to open a box of Legendary Cuts.
1. 2009 Topps Chrome Blue Refractor Autograph Nolan Reimold. I'm sorry if you feel a little let down by the top card on the countdown. I really have a soft spot for Nolan for some unknown reason. Maybe its because he is one of the few legit prospects the O's have in the Upper Minor leagues right now. Regardless this is my favorite card of the show. It doesn't look like it but the autograph is actually on card!
I hope everyone enjoyed seeing my favorite cards from the show!

Card Show Wrap Up: Part 1

2011-07-16T19:29:00.001-04:00

I went to the Chantilly card show last weekend and I am just getting around to posting up the results of what I was able to pick up. I'm going to show my top 10 favorite cards over 2 posts (the second post will be tomorrow). Without further ado:

10. 2008 Bowman Sterling Prospects Zach Britton. I've been looking for this card for a while now and I found it in none other than a bargain bin for a quarter. That's right Bowman Sterling for a quarter. It makes me wonder why "collectors" will pay so much for a "box" of cards and end up selling the base cards for peanuts. I personally will never pay more than 5 dollars for a pack of cards no matter what.

I feel bad for Zach though. He was demoted to double-A which he was none too happy about. I was expecting this sort of move by the Oriole front office at some point during the year to stave off his free agency another year (like the Rays did with Longoria and Royals with Hosmer and Moustakas this year.) The Orioles officially say that it was performance related (he has been getting knocked around the park lately) but O's fans are smarter than that. The O's front office wasn't going to bring him to the big leagues until late April/ early May just for the reason of keeping him under team control for another season. I think McPhail was just waiting for Zach to have a bad outing and use that as an excuse for a demotion. The mid-summer circus has truly arrived in Baltimore and won't be pulling out until the end of September.

9. 1967 Topps #1: THE CHAMPS. I did pay a little more for this card but it is totally worth it. This card really is a classic combo card. Not like the garbage of Jose Reyes and Hanley Ramirez standing around in the outfield with their hands down the front of their All-Star warm up jerseys.
8. 1954 Bowman Dick Kryhoski. I like 1954 Bowman better than the 55 version. Period. It just seems more classy than the woodgrain TVs.

7. 2010 Bowman Chrome 18-U USA National Team Manny Machado. This is one of my Top 10 Most Wanted Orioles cards. I haven't figured out a replacement for this one on the list yet.

I'm trying to get in on the ground floor with this guy before he really turns into the mega-prospect all the scouts think he'll be. I picked up a few other of his cards at the show and you might see him later on in this countdown.

6. 2001 Upper Deck SPX Brian Roberts Rookie Card. I have other Rookie cards of Brian but not as nice as this one. It has a low serial # which is cool but not like it matters. It was a little pricier but I'm happy with the purchase.

There are 2 schools of thought on Brian right now. There are a lot of people saying he is done and others say he still has some fuel in the tank. I'd like to say that I think he still has some good years left in him. Injuries have totally messed up his last 2 seasons but when he gets fully healthy(and stops sliding head first into 1st base) he will be fine.

Stay tuned tomorrow for the conclusion of my card show report.

Trade with John of The Pursuit of 80's(ness)

2011-07-13T20:41:00.000-04:00

This is my first international trade that I have completed. I had the pleasure of dealing with John from The Pursuit of 80s(ness). He had some feelers out for a bunch of different team collectors and I bit on the Orioles. I think he is still looking for a couple of other team traders so you might want to check him out. Anyways, here's my take:

Here's a sweet looking Jim Palmer Mini from 2008 Goudey. It's undeniably 2008 because of Derek Jeter's mug taking up most of the bottom of the card.
Another version of Orioles Obscure Cards of Obscure Players. Omar Daal, wow, he was terrible while donning the black and orange.
Damian Moss wasn't much better as an Oriole. Both had ERA's in the 6's. Geez!

Aubrey Huff was a decent player for the O's for a couple of years. As I continue to obtain more cards for the base set, the Black Bordered Orioles continue to trickle in! Maybe one day soon I'll have the entire set.

And I'll close out this trade post with a neat card from 1994 Upper Deck Fun Pack. This card folds out (obviously!) to show an action shot on the inside. Pretty ground breaking stuff for the mid 90's!

Thanks for the trade John, your return package is in the mail. I hope you like what I found for you!

June Group Break Cards from Cards from the Quarry

2011-07-12T17:58:00.000-04:00

I know these aren't great scans of the cards I got from Johnny's June Group Break but I'm getting lazy from the summer heat. I'm really enjoying these cheaper breaks because it helps me fill out my team collection at a cheaper price than going to a card show.

All three of these Cal cards bolstered my PC as I didn't have any of these three. I'm really loving the stained glass insert on the right. I was very lucky in regards to Johnny actually pulling it from the box. It actually is a diecut card that is see through. I took it and pointed it towards the sun and it really is a neat concept for an insert set. I wish we could see that creativity in todays card market.

Trade with David the Rhubarb Runner

2011-07-11T19:23:00.000-04:00

David (AKA Rhubarb Runner) of the famed "e rayhahn, rayhahn" blog and I just recently completed a trade. I sent him a bunch of Twins he needed and he sent along some really nice Orioles in return. Lets get right into the goods:

By the way that Vladimir Guererro is swinging these days, its only appropriate that I get a card of another creaky kneed DH in Harold Baines. The only thing is that Harold actually could still hit for some decent power in his 3 stints with the Orioles. Meanwhile Vlad Guerrero seems to be done with his career on life support.
The runner of rhubarb found several cards from my set want lists. I am slowly buy surely knocking out cards from the Goudey sets and O-Pee-Chee. I thought this card of Jake Peavy is an interesting card showing him getting ready to round 3rd Base. Also I like the Santana card with the cityscape in the back. I really hope he can bounce back from injuries because I enjoyed watching him pitch.
Apparently either David has a great amount of Vintage cards laying around or he did some shopping for me at his LCS. I was able to add the Orioles Team card from 1973 Topps to my collection. I only need Dave McNally to finish out the team set.
I didn't used to like 1966 Topps that much but it has grown on me over time as much as any set has from yesteryear. I'm happy to add these two semi stars to my team set. I'm really getting close to completing some vintage team sets so I'm getting pretty excited about that.
And this wouldn't be a true post if I didn't show an obscure card of an obscure player for the O's. Looking over Juan's stats as an Oriole, they look pretty crappy. At least when we traded him to Cincinnati, we got BJ Ryan in return and he was good for us for a few years.

Thanks David for the nice trade. I look forward to trading with you again in the future.

Cal Ripken Cardboard Appreciation #15

2011-07-10T22:32:00.001-04:00

2000 Upper Deck UD IONIX Atomic

As always, the scanner doesn't do this card any favors, it looks great in person.

Trade with Bob of '59 Topps Blog

2011-07-09T17:40:00.000-04:00

Bob of the '59 Topps blog and I just completed an awesome trade. Awesome as in I don't think I have ever recieved such a great amount of collectables in one package. He really outdid himself when he sent my package. Lets get right into the good stuff.

Everybody has seen Starting Lineups before. I even have some myself but they are not in their original packaging anymore. I think I have the first year Cal Ripken at my father's house somewhere but I know for sure that his glove arm is broken off! I am very proud to have this one from 1990. I am thinking about starting a collection of just Cal SLUs. We'll see!

I have never seen one of these before. Heck I didn't even know they existed and was puzzled when pulling it out the box. Obviously its a stand up plaque with the Iron Man on it but it really is a cool collectable.

Here's the extent of my Cal Ripken sticker card collection. I didn't realize the one on the right was upside down until I had already binderized the trio. So laziness prevails and they will remain this way in this post. I hadn't really paid much attention to Odd ball Cal stuff in the past, but now I know that kind of stuff just doesn't exist anymore. It just makes them so much cooler.
I distinctly remember seeing this card at the show I went to a few weeks ago. I wanted to buy it but ran out of cash and couldn't get it. Two days later it shows up in my mailbox! Everything happens for a reason.
I believe this is my first Ron Hansen card. He was a good player for the Birds but had mixed success after he was traded from the Charm City.

And this is probably the favorite card of the trade. Im a big fan of 1960 Topps and I might build the set one day. For now this Brooksie with have to just fill a gaping hole in my O's team set.

I want to take this opportunity to than Bob for the awesome cards and collectables that he sent. Also, go check out his blog, its very well written and you'll be able to learn alot about 1959 Topps and the players in the set.

Trade with Ted of Crinkly Wrappers

2011-07-08T17:32:00.000-04:00

Ted from Crinkly Wrappers and I just completed another trade. We've been pretty good trading partners even before he got his blog up and running. He contacted me about the Joe Morgan Legends shortprint that I pulled out of my series 2 hobby box and a new trade was born.

I already had this card but it is an upgrade of the rough conditioned one I had in my team set binder. I like the early action shot of Boog here calling for the pop up. I like these mid 70s action shots because you just don't see action shots like this nowadays.

Speaking of Team sets, Ted also sent me a full team set of 2005 Upper Deck Past Time Pennants. All 4 of these cards has great shots of the greats from the Orioles past. This was an interesting set that you could even get a real felt pennant out of your hobby box. Apparently the gimmick wasn't enough of a pull to warrant Upper Deck making a followup set in 2006.

Ted also offered up a near team set of this year's Pro Debut. I seem to dabble in prospecting so Pro Debut is right up my alley. I am a little confused as to why Topps is only putting out one series this year. I really like this shot of Manny Machado. It looks like it was taken a nanosecond before the picture on his '10 Bowman Draft Picks Prospect card.

Thanks to Ted for sending these nice cards my way. Good luck on your Vintage Legends personal Collection. I can't wait to see the finished results!

7-3-11: Baltimore Orioles at Atlanta Braves

2011-07-07T19:20:00.000-04:00

Sunday July 3rd was the final day of the Braves series and the final day of my roadtrip down Interstate 85 to Hotlanta. I woke up around 7:30 and got all my stuff packed up and ready to go. My Friend and I went down for breakfast early and soon found ourselves at our respective players entrances.

I was determined not to miss Baseball Jesus (Matt Wieters) today. He was the first to show up that day as his wife dropped him off. He was dressed to the nines and was in a good mood. (Maybe he knew that he was going to be named an All-Star later in the day!) He signed my 8x10! I wish I would have gone with a medium tip pen but the autograph still looks great!
Matt would turn out to be the only autograph I got all day but it didn't matter because I was still on cloud nine. I had a couple of opportunities to get more 'graphs but since I had gotten most of them in the last 2 days I didn't want to be a pain and seem greedy. One player I didn't have and wanted was Derrek Lee. He was very "elusive" to say the least. It didn't seem like he really wanted to sign the autographs that he did give. He did one on Saturday and 2 on Sunday morning. I was not lucky enough to get one. Oh well, maybe TTM will lead to better results. I also was unable to get JJ Hardy who was a target of mine going into the weekend. He didn't sign either day but at least he was nice about it, politely declining.

I was excited to see Zach Britton get the start for the Orioles this day and he cruised through the Braves order for the first couple of innings. He even hit a homerun to help himself out but it would not hold up. He ran into some trouble in the 5th or 6th inning and in came the bullpen. Being down by one run Mark Reynolds stepped up to the plate with a man on and hit a bomb deep into the seats in left field. It was his 3rd in 2 days! The bullpen came in and shut the door on the Braves and the Orioles salvaged one game of the 3 game set.

I would say my time in Atlanta was a positive experience. There wasn't a single negative thing to put a negative spin on the weekend other than having to leave to come home.

7-2-11: Baltimore Orioles at Atlanta Braves

2011-07-06T20:16:00.001-04:00

Saturday was a long day that had me and my friend about 12 hours at and around the ballpark. We got ready and went over to Turner Field for the tour. It was relatively educational and getting to see all the different areas of the ballpark was pretty nice. I even got picked on by the tour guide because I was more or less dressed from head to toe in Orioles gear. After the tour was over we looked around the Braves Hall of Fame and then walked across the street to a Restaurant call "The Bullpen". The food was good and it had air conditioning. It was stifling in Atlanta all weekend.

Luckily for me, the Orioles player's entrance was basically right across the street from The Bullpen. When I showed up, I was informed that I missed Matt Wieters. Dang it! I had an 8x10 that I really wanted signed. Next up Chris Jakubauskas and Blake Davis arrived via cab. Chris told us it was our lucky day and he was feeling "saucy"... whatever that means.. I used a Blank from 09 OPC on Chris and a blank 10 Upper Deck shot of Camden Yards on these guys. I was the only one that had anything for Davis to sign. He seemed shocked that nobody else wanted his signature.

Next to show up at the park was the Orioles starter for that day, Jake Arrieta. He seemed to be in a good mood and signed for everybody that wanted one. I got his rookie card from 2010 Topps Chrome signed. Its my favorite CARD I got signed all weekend. The blue ink just pops right off the card and his name is fairly legible. See for yourself:

While I was 'graphing all 3 days I met a nice lady who had season tickets for the Braves. Mike Gonzalez is her favorite player I learned after inadvertently bashing him when striking up a conversation. Mike has pitched much better lately and I hope he keeps it up. I think a switch back to his old mechanics has something to do with it. Anyways, he showed up at the players entrance after the team bus and couldn't have been nicer. He took pictures and willingly signed for everybody. Here's mine:

Around this time, about 4:30, we decided to head inside the park. I really like that the Braves allow fans into the stadium 2 and a half hours before first pitch. It seems like a good business model because hot and hungry fans standing are liable to buy concessions and souvenirs when they don't have much to be interested in.

I wasn't interested in eating or buying any souvenirs. I was interested in batting practice and autograph opportunities. We found our seats in right field RIGHT NEXT to the Braves bullpen and watched the Braves take batting practice until we couldn't stand the little ankle biters yelling "HEY""HEY" at the players on the field for a ball. I politely told them to call the players by their names and you might have better luck. They didn't listen, so, annoyed I headed for the Orioles dugout.

Luckily, Mark Reynolds came out and took some ground balls and before heading to take some hacks came over and signed some autographs. Blue ink on the Gypsy Queen cards looks awesome. Check it out:

No other players signed while I was standing there until minutes BEFORE first pitch. Adam Jones signed only minutes AFTER I had left the O's dugout. I happened to glance back and much to my chagrin he was signing away for some of the kids gathered where I was standing.

Fast Forward to the top of the 4th inning. Mark Reynolds at the plate, he crushes a long fly ball to center that clears the fence for his 16th homer of the season.

Here's a link to the video: http://baltimore.orioles.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=16518661

Now, this may not seem that significant to you but to me it is. Yeah it gave the O's the early lead (which Luke Scott helped relinquish), but is was more significant. I have that very ball. Yes THE homerun ball. I am not in the video but watch where it lands. I'll wait....

The security guard from the Braves bullpen walked all the way over to centerfield and picked up the ball. Apparently, security is not allowed to toss baseballs into the stands because he had it in his hand until he got back into the dugout and tossed it to the bullpen catcher, Eddie Perez. He looks at it and sees 2 scars from hitting the railing and looks around. He sees me, the only Orioles fan in the area, dressed head to toe in my O's garb and tosses it to ME! I couldn't beleive it! I've gotten balls at AA and AAA games but never at a major league game. Not to mention a homerun ball!

So the Orioles ended up losing the game so I decided to stake out the players entrance again. Upon reaching the gate, I told a few people about my good fortune and showed them the ball. About this time, Robert Andino comes out of the door. One of the ladies who I showed the ball to calls out his name. (I find out later that she got to know him really well at Spring Training). He smiles and motions for her to come over. He gets her in the gate and direct access to the players as they board the team bus. It's nice to have connections like that! About 10 minutes later, I hear "Hey Oriole Guy, come over here!" from the lady behind the gate. I hurry over and she asks me for the ball and my ticket and tells me he (Mark Reynolds) is going to sign both of them for me! BADASS! He signs it and hands it back to her and she brings it to me. Check it out:

I'm sorry for the blurry picture, but my camera is old and I don't have any good batteries for it at the moment. You can make out the scars from where it hit the railing or whatever in center field on the right and top of the ball. The signature looks great and Mark even took the time to put the date on it. So I have Mark Reynolds' 136th career home run ball, Autographed. A True 1/1 collectible!

Overall it was a great day! I got plenty of autographs including 3 from Mark Reynolds! Anything that happened on Sunday was just gravy!

7-1-11: Baltimore Orioles at Atlanta Braves

2011-07-05T19:15:00.001-04:00

A good friend and co worker of mine have been planning a trip down to Atlanta since the Braves played in Baltimore 2 years ago. He's a big Braves guy mostly because of his grandfather, and the triple-A Braves playing in Richmond.

From an Orioles fan's standpoint, it was a terrible game as Adam Jones produced the only O's hit. Jair Jurrjens held the Orioles offense in check for the entire game. We had great seats as we were sitting in the seats right beside the ball boy on the right field line. That lucky kid got to warm up Jason Heyward every inning! As luck would have it though, he didn't get one single foul ball the entire night!

So the game ended and I was going to try my luck at getting some autographs at the players entrance. This was the first time I had ever staked out the players entrance so I wasn't really sure what was going to happen.

I was able to get the tough-luck Orioles starter from that night Jeremy Guthrie on this 2009 Upper Deck card.

I also got Craig Tatum as he exited the stadium as well as Robert Andino and Jason Berken. Berken has been in the majors for 3 years and Topps hasn't produced a card other that this When They Were Young card. They could have taken one of Buster Posey's 3 regular Topps cards (ROY, Rookie Cup, or regular card) out of the set and given Jason a proper rookie card. That is why we need Topps Total!

I was also able to get Buck Showalter as he drove out in his rented Chevy SUV. He was nice and didn't seem to mind signing for an Orioles fan.

After the team bus left, I decided to head back to the hotel to get some sleep and get ready for day 2. Upon meeting up back at the hotel my friend actually got some Braves Autographs on some cards that I gave him. The most notable card he got that night was Jair Jurrjens on his 2008 Topps card. He was stoked!

Saturday was a big day so I can't wait to write about it... Stay Tuned!

Context Clues

2011-07-04T14:07:00.003-04:00

Can anybody figure out where I was this weekend? I've got a lot of great things to blog about so keep and eye out this week! Happy 4th of July everyone!

Cal Ripken Cardboard Appreciation #14

2011-07-03T13:32:00.000-04:00

2001 Stadium Club Diamond Pearls #DP8

The pink you see on this card actually has a pearlescent shine to it. It obviously brings the theme of Diamond Pearls together! This card does look better in person... I had never seen the pearl finish on a card before now.

Cal Ripken Cardboard Appreciation #13

2011-07-02T13:29:00.000-04:00

2000 Bowman Chrome Metoric Rise #MR7

This is one of the my favorite cards that I got at the card show last weekend. As with most Chrome cards, the scan doesn't do it justice.

BTW, Cal did have a quick rise through the minor leagues. He made it in a little bit over 3 years. by today's standards, that is lightning quick for a player drafted out of high school.

Card Show Pickups: Dime Box Diver Edition

2011-07-01T22:22:00.000-04:00

I'll admit that I am a sucker for dime boxes at a card show. I think everybody loves a great deal. One particular dealer at the card show had 2 tables on the end of a square of tables that was full of monster boxes of cards. He probably bought a large collection and just put them all out there for team set builders (like me!) and player collectors to pick out what they wanted. Here we go:

I pulled this card out because I remember seeing somebody's havelist of their Rey Ordonez player collection. I don't remember who it was/is so anybody who knows, please let me know. This is a certified on-card autograph as the back says so I hope the person who needs it may come forward.

These were the dime boxes so I picked up the regular and gold signature Bowman rookie card of CJ Wilson. Since he is the best starting pitcher on Texas' roster right now, I though why the heck not.

I always liked the Spirit of the Game inserts that Donruss had in the mid 90's. I remember pulling the Roberto Alomar one from a pack that I bought at the drug store in town. Man, when was the last time I saw baseball cards at a drug store?
This Robby Cano rookie card was in an unopened opened pack shoved in one of the monster boxes. I guess everybody else who searched through the boxes before me were too lazy to open the wrapper of an already opened pack! Their loss is my gain! I've learned you must be proactive at a card show to get the good deals!

These last two hail from the 1996 Donruss set. Both of these cards are numbered out of 10,000. Ahhh, the 90's! Regardless, they were both decent players so they might be good trade bait!

That's it for the card show. I can't wait until the next one!

Card Show Pickups: Future Orioles Edition

2011-06-30T22:02:00.000-04:00

While scouring some of the tables I picked up a few "future" Oriole investment cards. While I'm not a full blown prospector, I do keep up with who's hot in the minors and try to keep their cards around. I mostly just stick to Orioles Prospects though.

My first card I picked up was this year's 6th round pick, Nick Delmonico. He has 2 brothers (one in the Dodgers system, and one at University of Georgia) and is committed to going to join his older brother as a Bulldog at UGA. He is going to be a tough sign probably commanding late first round - early second round money. He was considered by many GMs as unsignable because of his strong commitment to Georgia and was regarded in the top 40 prospects of this draft. I hope a deal can get done with Nick and he starts tearing up the Minors on his way to Camden Yards.

Nick had 2 cards released last year in his USA uniform... I'm hopeful I can find the one that was release in regular Bowman.

I picked this autograph of 2009's O's first rounder Matt Hobgood on the cheap. He has struggled so far in his minor league career. He just returned from a shoulder injury so I hope he can get going in the right direction now.

Speaking of tearing up the minor leagues, Jonathan Schoop (pronounced Scope), has been on a tear all season long. Starting at low-A Delmarva, he has been promoted to High-A Frederick. He has also been selected to play in the Futures game that takes place along with the All-Star Break Festivities.

Card Show Pickups: Vintage Edition

2011-06-29T21:53:00.000-04:00

I went to the card show with a clear goal of putting a dent into my Vintage Orioles list. A lot of what I saw at the show were too nice for my collection and they were a little bit more that I was willing to pay. I found one vendor that had 2 monster boxes of "1 dollar" deals". I think I accomplished my goal by adding 26 cards for 20 bucks! They all ranged in the 1959 to 1964. I got (4) 1959's, (14) 1960's, (1) 1962, (6) 1964's and (1) 1967. Here's my favorites of coup de grace:

Hank Bauer was the first Orioles Manager to deliver a World Series win in Baltimore. I think he is more known for playing in all those years with the Yankees.
This card is a semi-hi number shortprint of a player I know little about. The back of the card shows he had some pop in 1963. He hit 31 home runs for Toronto when they were in the International League.
While searching through the 1964's I stumbled upon a beat up version of this card. Luckily I was able to dig this one out a little bit later down the row. None of my vintage cards are in great shape but probably average in the VG range.
Bob Boyd was the Orioles first baseman for a few seasons. The trivia on the back says that Bob had never hit below .300 in any complete season (to that point, obviously).
I've seen this card several times before but it was either in such crappy condition, or was badly off-center. This one is a good mix of condition, centering and price. I love the stands of Memorial Stadium in the background.

Card Show Pickups: GU Edition

2011-06-27T21:08:00.001-04:00

As I mentioned in my last post, I attended the Inside Pitch show in Raleigh, NC this past weekend. I got many, many great cards but I'm only going to show the Game Used cards in this post. I lucked out and found a vendor who was doing his last show before retiring to Hawaii. I was able to scoop up all 4 of the following cards from him for a great price:

This one is from 2005 Upper Deck Trilogy. Notice that it is serial numbered 20/99.
I really like this one because of the orange swatch. I haven't seen a lot of Ripken GU's that have an orange jersey piece.
Here's my first Eddie Murray Game Used card. This is a really nicely done card by Upper Deck in 2004 SP Legendary Cuts. I'm really digging the Gold Stamped cartoon bird logo.
This one is perfectly round, but I think it is too skinny to be the handle of the bat. This card reminds me of a dollar bill because of the green motif of the card.
I also picked up this one from William. I added the random piece of dust that you can see on the jersey piece. I might keep this one or trade it for the right offer.