Surprise Christmas Package...That I'm Just Now Getting to Posting About

Right around Christmas I came home from work and was greeted at the door by my lovely wife...although she didn't have that lovely look on her face. Nope, I walked in the door to her stink eye. She was standing there, holding a rather large USPS Priority box.

You see, I have a lot of hobbies and tend to spend too much money at times. Whenever a package shows up she wants the 411 on it and this was one time that I couldn't tell her what was inside...because even I didn't know! I thought the return address looked familiar, but I wasn't sure so I proceeded to open up the package.

To my surprise I found new, sealed Kenner Starting Lineups of Braves players David Justice and Kevin Millwood. There was an empty Pinnacle Inside can featuring Chipper Jones, a Topps Screen Plan tin again featuring Chipper (and the card inside too!), a large tin of Donruss Preferred featuring Carolina Panthers QB Kerry Collins (and some guy named Aikman) and a 100 count box of cards. Inside the box was a slew of Braves and Panthers players, including some nice older cards of Phil Neikro. Inside the Preferred tin were a few more cards. An autographed card of Bruce Chen (of who I share the same exact birthdate), a Stefan Lefors football/jersey card and a very cool Keary Colbert card featuring cut pieces of his helmet mask. Yeah, those players never really lived up to their expectations and did much in the pros, but the cards none the less are very cool.

So, who sent me all of this loot? It was none other than Dennis from Too Many Verlanders. I'm really embarrased that here it is the 10th of February and I'm just now typing up my thank you post. Dennis' gift absolutely came out of left field and I really, really appreciate it. I know I haven't been as active with my blog, reading and commenting on other blogs or trading as I would like. I'm sure there are plenty of other Braves fans that blog so I'm humbled to receive this loot. Looks like it's time for me to Pay It Forward. Thanks again Dennis!

My new kicks

Game-used cards are so plentiful now that for a lot of collectors they just don't have that wow factor that they did 10+ years ago.  That said every now and then I run across a set of game-used cards that impress me and the 1999 Skybox EX Century Authen-Kicks is one of those.

I love cards that feature game-used base and hats, but until now I've never had a shoe card...at least not with a large piece of shoe like this.  I particularly like the red leather piece of J.D. Drew.  I don't know what the odds were of pulling these cards in 1999, but I scored both for a song over at COMC some time ago.  Oh yeah, not only are limited but they are hand numbered too!

So what is your favorite kind of game-used / game-worn / relic type of cards?

The Week in Review

I'm back...if only for a day. The family and I are headed up to New England tomorrow to visit some family so I wanted to get in one post before I left. I haven't posted because I had lost my cardboard mojo. Last week was just one of those weeks where you couldn't wait for it to end.

I manage several self-storage facilities and I started last week off by coming into work only to realize someone broke into 19 units earlier that morning. These thugs didn't just cut locks to access the units, they someone peeled the doors back at the corners causing over $1,000 damage to the property. After dealing with irate tenants, my district manager, the not so helpful police and crime lab and viewing several hours of surveillance video I was ready to fast forward the rest of my week. Throw this on top of my daily responsibilities & work and at home and it equals not a lot of time for my hobbies and such.

However, I'm back and I wanted to update the blog with several things I've recently picked up and some luck I had recently w/ packs of 2008 Topps Stadium Club.

While I've been waiting for some new card releases I stumbled across some '08 Stadium Club packs @ Target in those discounted boxes. The packs ran $1.59 each with 5 cards per pack. I bought one for the heck of it and after viewing some of the quality photos I was hooked. I looked up the set in Beckett and noticed it was a rather small set with the base being only 100 cards and the rookies adding another 50. Sure there were another 35 rookies that were autographed, but I don't consider them part of the core set. I figured why not try and piece the set together so I went back to Target and bought the rest of the packs that I could find. A few days later I stopped at another Target and bought all the packs I could find there as well. I believe I ended up with 26 packs total. I was pleased with the selection of players. The full bleed photos are great and the action shots even better. Design is rather clean and simple. I was able to piece together a good amount of the 150 cards and I even got 2 rare hits. I never pull anything nice from packs...never. I never expect to pull anything good so I almost passed over these 2 cards:

Autographed RC version of Gregor Blanco of the Braves and a redemption of Jed Lowrie of the
Red Sox. What are the odds that I'd get a hit in these packs much less multiple hits? What are the odds that the hits I'd pull would both be from teams I collect? Needless to say I was very pleased. My family just saw Blanco a week earlier when the Richmond Braves were in town playing the local Charlotte Knights AAA team. When I saw the redemption card however my first reaction wasn't of joy. I just knew the card had to be expired, but once flipped over I noticed I had until October of this year to redeem the card! A quick redemption code later and Topps says I should have this card by August of 2010. Why so long? This is a 2008 product! Do they have to chase Jed down to get his autograph since these are on card autos? Eh, who cares...I actually pulled these!

Having this luck got me to browsing the checklist to see what other Braves were in the set and I noticed another autographed rookie and a autographed Beam Team card. With a little luck I found both cards on eBay for about $10 for the pair. Behold...

Having this luck got me to browsing the checklist to see what other Braves were in the set and I noticed another autographed rookie and a autographed Beam Team card. With a little luck I found both cards on eBay for about $10 for the pair. Behold...

Brent Lillibridge #157

Jair Jurrjens Beam Team Autograph #BTA-JJ

I was a little puzzled at first at why the Beam Team cards have the sticker autographs while the rookie cards are on card autographs until the Beam Team card arrived in the mail. It was hard to tell from the small thumb nail photo on line of the card's translucent stained glass window design. I love this card. I don't recall seeing a similar design in any other card set. I also like that this is an autograph from Jair shortly after joining the Braves club. The back of the card offers the info that Jair beat all other first year pitchers in his rookie campaign on '08 to the nine win mark before the All-Star game. Nice.

While reading some of the other fantastic card blogs I follow I realized that the National Chicle release had snuck up on me. My hobby fund is a little depleted at the moment, but I was able to snag this bat relic of a Braves slugger:

Dale Murphy Diamond Stars #NCR-DM

I believe this is the first National Chicle card in my collection period. I didn't buy any of the football release last year so these are completely new to me. First impression is good. I like the artist's rendition of Murphy and the design has that artsy feel that regular baseball card sets lack. I'll have to pick up a Braves team set eventually.

The last thing I wanted to mention is a bit of a puzzle to me. If anyone out that in blog land can shed some light on this for me I would greatly appreciate it. A few weeks ago while browsing eBay I noticed this seller selling various "hot packs" of cards that guaranteed some sort of hit. t may be a autograph, a patch or a some type of relic. I was skeptical at first, but the guys feedback was rather flawless. I had a little money left sitting in the old PayPal account so I thought why not. I placed 4 small bids - 2008 Upper Deck Artifacts, 2010 Topps, 2010 Topps Heritage and 2008 Marvel Masterpieces set 2. Well I'm happy to report that the seller did deliver on his promises and here are the hits I pulled from each respective pack:

Jimmy Rollins Franchise History jersey #FM-40



Kevin Youkilis Peak Performance jersey relic #PPR-KY2



Kevin Millwood Clubhouse Collection jersey relic #CCR-KM1



Dr. Doom Fantastic Four movie memorabilia costume #FF5

Not bad hits. Outside the Youkilis jersey and maybe the Dr. Doom I don't plan on keeping the others. Those will be listed on my trade page so if you're interested in those let me know.

So that is about it. Time to wrap this up so I can get ready for some much needed vacation. See you guys/gals in a week or so. Perhaps I'll get lucky and stumble across a card or comic shop while jumping back and forth between states up north.