Does Anyone Remember?

Does anyone remember in the movie Twister (one of my all-time favorites by the way) where Bill went back out to the country to get his divorce papers signed by Jo and all of the other storm chasers were saying "Welcome back Bill!" "Great to see ya Bill!""Nice to have you back Bill!"?

Do you remember when he would adamantly reply "I'm not back!"?

That's kind of what this post is.  I'm not "Back" just yet. I need to clear some cards off my desk so I've got to write about some of the awesomeness I've acquired over the summer. I've been a busy little bee over the last few months with moving, going on vacation, playing on my adult league team, taping and painting the new house, and keeping the grass cut at both the old house and new house.  Trust me, anything that could have gone wrong at the old house.  Air conditioning, electricity, water service, fallen trees/limbs and just the difficulty of getting it rented are just a few of the issues I've been dealing with.  The new house is another story altogether.  I could write a whole post on those issues but I'm not going to do it right now, maybe later.

I'm writing this post from work since we still haven't been able to get internet hooked up in the new house.  Mostly because we are trying to keep our bills under control until the old house is rented.  Secondly, we just haven't had a whole lot of time to watch TV or surf the internet.

I have had some time at work to read other blogs and even swing a few trades.  It's kind of tough printing out emails and wantlists and taking them back and forth working out deals but I'm hardcore like that.

So, this first card comes from Colbey at Cardboard Collections.  A sweet on card autograph of the O's best player Adam Jones.  I'm glad to see that he's going to be sticking around for quite a while with his new contract.

Next up is a trio of Nick Markakis cards that I won off of eBay.  Either the auctions ended during work hours or I put in a bid and prayer and hoped that I would win while during my off time.  Talk about really looking forward to going to work the next day!  I didn't break the bank on any of these.  I paid less than 8 bucks shipped for each of these.  The Red Ice is #'d 6/25, the Gold Refractor 23/50, and the Mosaic Refractor 5/10.

Here's a Gypsy Queen Relic that AJ from the Lost Collector sent me as a thank you for the Becketts I sent him.  Thanks AJ.

On one of my grass cutting expeditions to the old house, I checked the mailbox and one solitary envelope was sitting in the back.  It contained this card that I sent to Orioles Spring Training.  Alan Mills is the pitching coach for the Aberdeen Ironbirds and was a total badass when he was pitching. This brings my Spring Training TTM's up to 3/25 that I sent out. That's right the 3rd out of like 25 I sent out!

Here's 2 mini cards that I got of Nick Markakis recently.  The 2011 is a No Number back that I won on eBay and the 2012 Black Border was sent to me in trade from Sam over at the Daily Dimwit. He also sent over the Wada and Jones minis pictured here. Thanks for the trade Sam!

Another trade I made was with Tom at the new-ish Waiting til Next Year blog.  He was cleaning out his trade boxes of cards he didn't need so I jumped in for the Orioles.  These are just a few of the nice lot of cards he sent, I just showed them because they're Cal Ripken and BJ Surhoff.  CAL RIPKEN AND BJ SURHOFF.  Head on over to his blog, he might still have a pile of cards from your favorite team with your name on it.

Last and certainly not least we have my favorite ebay buy of the summer.  A mint condition 1958 Topps Brooks Robinson.  We'll its mint to me, dammit, because my blog, my rules!  What a great card!
I'm not the biggest fan of 1958 Topps but it BROOKS FREAKING ROBINSON and he's about to sneeze.

That's all I've got for now. Plus it's time for my lunch break!

5-1-12: Bowie Baysox @ Richmond Flying Squirrels

The big move is getting closer but I still had enough time to sneak out to a Flying Squirrels game this past week. I usually only go when there are free tickets involved or the Bowie Baysox are in town.  I had this date marked on the calender since the schedule came out because I really wanted the travel coffee mugs that they were giving away that night........ NOT!  Well the coffee mugs are nice I really went because I wanted this:

And I GOT IT!  Say what you will about Pro Debut, but this autograph turned out awesome!  And not to mention it's Manny freakin' Machado!  He comes as advertised.  He made some great defensive plays in the field and had a decent night at the plate going 1-3 with a walk.  I can't wait to see him play on MASN on a regular basis.

I also got Ronnie Welty on 2 cards which turned out great.  Ronnie's played pretty good so far this year so Triple-A might not be too far down the road for him.

I also got Jonathan Schoop on both of these cards from last year.  He's struggled a bit so far in Double-A but I'm sure he'll figure it out and start mashing again soon.

And the mystery autograph for the night.  Anybody that guesses who this is gets the satisfaction of knowing who it is.  He's been mentioned on the blog before (that really narrows it down).  He's a player that did a really nice thing for me at a Squirrels game last year.

The Baysox won the game 2-0 with a great pitching performance from Zach Clark and some timely hitting by the offense.  I had a good time talking to some of the other fans at the game and just being able to spend sometime not thinking about packing and moving.

Trade with Jack the Baseball Dad

A quick post of thanks to Jack the Baseball Dad for sending over a few Orioles cards.  I'm running around packing up the house and working extra shifts at work so there isn't much free time lately.

Jack seems to have a penchant for pulling purple bordered parallels from Toys R Us.  He sent me an Adam Jones earlier this spring.  So far this season, Chris Davis has been playing great and showing the power and on-base ability that he had in the minor leagues.  Hopefully he's got it figured out and will be a fixture at first for the O's for years to come.

Another Topps parallel from 2009 Topps Update.  I think this is the exact swing that Adam Jones made to break the tie in the All-Star game that year and ended up being the game winner.

I stashed this card down at the bottom since everybody's seen enough Gypsy Queen to make their eyes bleed.  If you're a loyal reader and made it this far, thanks for reading!  This is the initial card that started Jack and I's trade.  It's too bad that the scanner cut of the right side though, it really is a sweet mini!

Thanks again Jack, I really enjoyed the cards!

Trade with Michael of Sports Syzygy

I recently completed a trade with Michael of the Boston-centric Sports Syzygy blog.  Michael hooked me up with a nice pile of Orioles cards that fit well into my collections and it's a shame I can't show them all here.  

Mike Figga played a bulk of his MLB career as an Oriole (41 of 46 games).  He spent all of his minor league career as a Yankee and had a few (bathroom cup sized) cups of coffee with them in the majors.  He was selected off of waivers halfway thru the 1999 season by the Orioles and played out the rest of the season with them hitting his only ML homer.

This is definitely my favorite Iron Man card from the package because it's Gypsy Queen and it's a framed paper card.

There was a good selection of Roberto Alomar cards in the package too and this is the most unique of them all.  Apparently the picture taken on this card was done during Carlos Baerga's celebrity softball game.  I can honestly say this is the only card that I have of MLB players playing softball.

There were also another big chunk of cards of Dwight Evans in the package.  I could figure out why unitl I remembered that he played all of his career except for his last in Boston.  He had a decent season for the birds and retired after the season.

Another favorite from the package is a Platinum Team paralell of Arthur Rhodes from Score.  I don't know if Arthur will get another shot to play MLB again but he definitely had a great career.  It would be cool to see him pitch in Baltimore to finish out his career though.

Last but not least, a Zach Britton insert from Series 1.  It seems like a million years ago when series 1 came out!  I've been hearing encouraging news about Zach that he's finally throwing again without pain in his shoulder.  Not that the Orioles need starting pitching right now but inevitably they will towards the end of the year.  I hope Britton's rehab goes well and ends up back in Baltimore before the season is done.

So, thanks Michael for the awesome package of cards and I hope we can trade again some time.

Trade with Nick of Dime Boxes

I've been picking up a bunch of Gypsy Queen lately for my Orioles team sets recently and when I saw that Nick from Dime Boxes -- The Low-End Baseball Card Collector's Journey pulled a Ripken mini, I had to have it.  We turned this into a full blown trade.  Here's a couple of the cards he sent.

Here's the aforementioned Ripken mini.  It's just a regular back mini but that's fine by me.  It will fit nicely into the mini team set that I have going.  The only other that I've gotten is JJ Hardy, so if anybody has any other regular back minis of Orioles, you know who to contact.
Being a team collector and a Ripken collector, I will need another one of these regular minis along with any of the parallels.

I know I haven't said much about my One Card of Every Oriole collection but Nick was able to help me out with a few I needed.  Some Orioles players didn't have any cards featuring them in O's duds but luckily for me Mike Kinkade was featured on a couple that I know of.  He didn't spend long in Charm City but apparently was there when BJ Surhoff took a few year sabbatical playing for the Braves.  I only know this because Mike is wearing #17, BJ's number.

This Josh Towers card also goes into the binder with Kinkade.  I chose this specific card just because its orange.  Fleer Maximum did a great job of making the borders of each player's card the same as the team's primary color.    It's an underrated set for sure.
In making my list of wants for my One Card for Every Oriole collection I looked up each player that ever played for the Orioles on COMC, Ebay, Beckett Marketplace, and Google images and picked my favorite card of each player considering if it was an Oriole card overall, followed by the design, photo, other team (not many Yanks or Red Sox), cost effectiveness, and availability among other factors.  So every card that goes into this binder was painstakingly handpicked by me as a favorite. Yeah, I probably have too much time on my hands during the winter months.

So thanks Nick for the great cards.  I hope we can trade again soon!

Trade with Adam of Arpsmith's Sportscard Obsession

I just completed a trade with Adam of the relatively new blog ARPSmith's Sportscard Obsession.  Adam has been around the blogosphere for a while but just recently took the plunge and started writing his own.  He's a Giants fan so I sent him a bunch of cards from his wantlists and the 3 Willie Mays inserts I pulled from my Gypsy Queen packs.

This is the card that started the whole trade.  A mini of JJ Hardy.  James Jerry had a great year last year coming over from the Twins and it earned him a 3 year contract to stick around in Charm City and hand off SS duties to super prospect Manny Machado when he's ready.  Both have had slow starts to the season but I'm sure as the weather warms, so will their bats.  If anybody else has any mini Orioles from Gypsy Queen (especially the regular back minis) let me know, I'd love to trade with you.

Adam was also able to send a few Cal Ripkens that I didn't have before.  I chose this one card to show because he's wearing sunglasses while batting.  I think this is the only card that I own that shows him donning the shades while batting.

I still have a soft spot for Larry Bigbie.  Thanks a lot David Segui for ruining his career.  I really like this shot of Larry taking a secondary lead from 1st base.  You just don't see this odd camera angle that often.

Here's the first of two firsts that was sent to me.  This is my first Roberto Alomar relic card.  Though it is just a plain grey swatch, I still like the card.  Donruss Champions was a pretty neat set when it came to the relic and autograph cards but the base set was a little bit of a mess design wise.  There was just too much empty space for my liking.

And here's the second of my firsts.  A Lou Aparicio Bat card.  I think my buddy William also got one of these in a trade recently.  It's a really classy looking card in my opinion of a great player.  Everybody says that Frank Robinson was the missing piece that was added to the 1966 WS Champion squad before the season started.  That's true but Lou was an integral part who was aquired 3 years before the 66 season.  In my humble opinion, Little Louie was just as big a part of the team as the Robinsons were and I think a lot of people inadvertently forget that.

Thanks for the awesome trade Adam, I can't wait to trade with you again!

My Gypsy Queen Breaks

I couldn't resist the urge to rip some packs so I picked up 4 rack packs of 2012 Gypsy Queen over the past 2 days.  I think the cards look nice but the huge Gypsy Queen logo is a little distracting.  The player selections seems to be spot on with current players and retired ones too.  These packs are a lot of fun to open ( I guess that's why I made 2 separate trips to Wal-Mart and Target to buy some!).  Soooo you're probably interested to see what I got huh?  Here we go:

 These aren't the hobby exclusive mini inserts, just 3 Willie Mays cards out of 12 packs!  Too bad I don't collect the Say Hey Kid.

 The Blue Framed paper cards look pretty awesome.  I don't think that I could have gotten a better team since the Dodger blue matches the border so well.  I'm pretty sure this card won't last in my for trade list very long.

 Here's the 4 Photo Variation shortprints.  Another Kemp, Ryan Howard, Nelson Cruz and Joey Votto.  Who's the best player in the group?

And here come the mini's.  A Dan Haren Green, and Black Bordered Prince Fielder and Dee Gordon.  I like the Black borders but the Greenie doesn't do anything for me.  It's just another parallel for me to chase of Nick Markakis.

Alright, Here's the rest of what I pulled and what's for trade:

Photo Variation SP's: 83 Howard, 220 Votto

Retail Exclusive Gold Borders: 6 Moore, 10 Halladay, 50 M. Cabrera, 197 Freese, 231 Dawson(2),  249 Musial, 294 R. Jackson

Minis: 155 Yovani Gallardo, 271 Weaver, 295 Gooden

Red Back Mini: 261 Smoltz, 277 Worley

Black Border Mini: 124 Dee Gordon

Green Border Mini: 148 Haren

Straight Cut Mini: 19 S. Smith

Glove Stories: GS-TR Trayvon Robinson

Moonshots: MS-RH Ryan Howard

Future Stars: FS-JH Jeremy Hellickson, FS-JU Justin Upton

Good News Comes in Bunches

Well at least in 2's.  Adam aka Spankee, the genius behind "My Cardboard Mistress" announced his good news earlier today so I'm going to make another life changing announcement of my own.

Last week, the wifey and I got some good news.  We bought our first house!  We put in an offer on a house in mid-March and had it accepted by the homeowner and bank.  The real thing that makes the whole process incredible is that the house was a short sale.  Anybody who has dealt with a short sale before knows that they can take a long time to get approved.  Friends of ours had to wait 6 months for approval!  Ours went through in a little over 2 weeks.

We're both really stoked about moving into OUR house.  I actually own the house we live in but we have simply outgrown it.  We are only 2 people and a very energetic boxer named Heidi.  For the 3 living beings in the 980 sq.ft house, we have a lot of things.  I will now get my own mancave where I can have all of my baseball cards, collectables, and video games in its own dedicated room!