Monday, November 28, 2016

2001 Topps Stadium Club Play at the Plate Dirt Relic set Completed!

It's been a long time coming that this Jeff Bagwell card is finally in my hands. Years ago when I was looking for something new, something different to collect I stumbled across the dirt relic cards from 2001 Stadium Club. I thought it was a pretty cool idea and surprisingly, one that has been reused before...at least to my knowledge.

The cards themselves were only seeded 1:10 packs, however they were exclusive to Home Team Advantage stores. This in itself limited the audience of collectors that would even have a chance of  pulling on of these cards. Seeking out the cards several years later I found that some of the cards weren't that that hard to find. Most of the "common" cards could be had on eBay, while others I had to look a little harder for, a little longer for. Turns out that several of the cards in the 10 card set were packed in as exchange cards and I'm guessing many of the cards went unexchanged.


Jeff Bagwell, #PP06 was one of those exchange cards. Makes sense now of why it took me so long to find this one last card I needed to complete the set. Also turns out that Chipper Jones' card was mislabeled as #PP06, but his card too was an exchange card.

I find these cards to be a good conversation piece with non-baseball card collectors. I've had several friends and family members who've seen these cards in my collection ask me about the cards, why putting dirt inside a baseball card makes it so collectible and so on. I know these cards (and their brethren, Kings of the Hill) don't "book" for much...but I stopped collecting cards for their value and looking through Beckett a long time ago.

Now that this set is complete, I can shift my focus to picking up the Greg Maddux and Pedro Martinez Kings of the Hill dirt relics to finish off that set. I also can't wait to actually find the rest of these dirt relic cards so I can put Bagwell amongest his peers.

Tuesday, November 8, 2016

2016 Topps Now: Ender Inciarte #489 (273 print run)

The Braves will have trouble this off season trying to figure out who will be roaming the outfield in 2017. Thanks to a killer trade with the Diamondbacks that brought Dansy Swanson over, one of other players that some may tend to overlook is center fielder, Ender Inciarte.


On September 21st, Ender scaled the outfield wall to rob a certain home run from the Mets' Yoenis Cespedes. Too bad Topps didn't capture the moment of him actually making the awesome catch, but none the less the moment represents yet another Braves card in the Topps Now set that I was more than happy to pick up.


Tuesday, November 1, 2016

2016 Panini Instant: Jacoby Brissett #51 (1 of 85)

The 2016 NFL season rolls on and Panini Instant is there to capture the moments with their newest made to order series of cards. During Tom Brady's 4 week vacation at the beginning of the season, the back up QBs got a chance to show the league what they were capable of. Jacoby Brissett, the Patriots 3rd round pick in this year's draft got the call after Jimmy Grappalo went down with an injury. The product of NC State, the QB led the team to a 27-0 win over the Texans.


His Instant card captures his first NFL touchdown on September 22, 2016 where he scrambled for 27 yards and dove into the end zone for the score. The base version of the card ended up with only 85 total copies sold, kind of surprising since the card carries the rookie card (RC) designation. Maybe people aren't prospecting with this kid?