Cards with Cheese Sauce On Them

I got an envelope in the mail the other day from Chris over at Nachos Grande. I had claimed a random Astros card a while back and I think he grew tired of it sitting there on his desk, so he graciously packaged it up and threw in a few extras for the hell of it. I've got a return PWE on my desk for the next mail box run with his name inked on it, so get ready Chris! Here's my side of the loot!

How about that Custom A&G likeness? Awesome /10 custom auto from the man himself. I'll never argue with a Nolan Ryan being sent my way. And in the top left is the card I coveted, the John Hudek silver signature from UD Collector's Choice! Back in the day before fancy numbering and limited edition refractor craziness, these silver and gold signature parallels were some of the best inserts there were! Thanks Chris!

Speaking of PWE's waiting on my desk, I've got A BUNCH! Here are the zip codes or areas of the country that'll be going out this weekend (provided one or two of you confirm addresses or card wants with me in time!)

77546
78620
19426
13601
02445
16933
Netherlands (we all know who this is!)
North Dakota (Matt, I need an updated address for you!)
N2H 5M5

If you feel I owe you something or you've been waiting for something from me and you don't see your zip code there, let me know! I want to make one big run to clear out all the stuff I owe to my friends out there, and I know I've been negligent lately with getting things out timely. I'm trying to get better about it, I promise!!!!

2014 Topps Heritage - Wants and Duplicates

Ok, here's the official "Wants" and "For Trade" lists for 2014 Topps Heritage:

WANTS

Short Prints
426, 427, 429, 431, 432, 434, 435, 436, 437, 439, 441, 445, 447, 450, 452, 456, 464, 466, 467, 473, 476, 477, 480, 483, 484, 487, 491, 494, 499, 500

Inserts:
New Age Performers
Myers, Bogaerts, Darvish, Puig


And now for the stuff I have available for trade:


FOR TRADE

BASE
TONS OF BASE CARDS!!!! Send me a want list on 1-425 and I'll help you out as best I can.

SP's
433, 446, 446, 453, 459, 459, 479, 479, 481, 481, 485, 485, 485, 493, 493

SSP's
Action Shot Variations - Chris Davis - 475; Clayton Kershaw - 300; Hyun-Jin Ryu - 84; Mike Trout - 250; Hanley Ramirez - 437; Max Scherzer - 493; Justin Verlander - 430

Inserts:

New Age Performers:
Stanton, Harper, Strasburg, Alvarez, Davis

Then & Now:
Koufax/Kershaw, Mays/Davis, McCovey/Votto, McCovey/Votto, Gibson/Wainwright, Willis/Ellsbury, Willis/Ellsbury

Baseball Flashbacks:
Astrodome, Bob Gibson, Ernie Banks

News Flashbacks:
Aleksei Leonov, Bill Cosby, Muhammed Ali

1st Draft:
Nettles, Nettles, Nettles, Bench, Ryan, Ryan, Ryan

Buybacks:
Wade Blasingame - Braves - #44 - 1965 Topps

Box Toppers - Advertising Panels:
World Series - "PAPI" POPS TWO Hs ; Joe Kelly ; Stephen Drew
AL Batting Leaders - Cabrera, Mauer, Trout; Dayan Viciedo; Luke Hochevar
J.J. Hardy; Trevor Rosenthal; Miguel Gonzalez

Anything highlighted is already on the way in trade, or claimed by a trader. Thanks!

2014 Topps Heritage

I went a little crazy at the card shop yesterday.... needless to say I have a complete base set 1-425. There are about 40 SP's that I still need. I've got duplicates of SP's and base cards galore!

If you have a needs list, email it to me and we can see if we can work out a deal. There are a few inserts I need and then of course the SP's. Anyways, let me know what you got! I have some of the Action Shot SP's, one Logo Variation SP and an Andrew McCutchen "Error Card" variation.

I'll get some scans up, and a needs list, soon.

Thanks for stopping by everyone!

Another one bites the dust...

As many of you know, I've been putting together the complete autograph set of 2011 Topps Gypsy Queen for some time. I'm down to just a handful, and the other day a pretty rare one popped up on eBay and my wonderful wife told me to GET IT! This card was originally a redemption in the live product, and at this point the redemptions expire next month so any that are left unredeemed only create more scarcity of this card. Even in the live product, this was a GROUP E level auto and thus the odds were in the range of 1:1422 hobby packs or 1:3200 retail packs. Needless to say, there are not a lot of these floating around:

Sweet looking Roy Halladay auto! It's not as off centered as it looks (I blame the scanner for not getting the full edges).

This leaves me with just (4) autographs from this set: Hank Aaron (Group E), Sandy Koufax (Group E), Ryan Howard (Group E - and the only sticker auto in the set) and Mike Stanton (Group D). The original autograph checklist is much longer than the actual checklist that made it to pack-out. There are quite a few names on that list that never got made (Brett Wallace for instance, who I was able to confirm as a non-pack-out auto via Topps "customer service"). I can absolutely foresee being able to pick up the Stanton and Howard some day, however I just don't know if the Koufax or Aaron will make it into my collection. Both are so rare and so expensive. There are a couple of Aaron's floating around eBay right now but it's literally been years since I've seen a Koufax and even with the product came out I only saw a few.  But I'll keep plugging along and hopefully someday maybe I'll find a blaster or two on a discount rack and hit it big!

Sorry for the long stretch between posts, life once again finds a way to keep me away from the hobby, although you wouldn't guess it based on the way my desk looks right now!

Mixed up in JayBarkerFan's Randomizer?

Apparently, I was the lucky one to get thrown into Wes at JayBarkerFan's Junk random box of fun randomizer this month... I got an unexpected package from Wes and it held a treasure trove of Astros stuff! Wes, thanks again for an oh so generous stack of Astros. I've hand picked out some of my favorites to scan in!

Some great cards here! A Singleton auto! SWEET! Carlos Lee manu-patch? Not too shaby! The highlight to me though is the Moises Alou PATCH relic! There is a small blue piece there, I'm not sure what jersey this came from, who knows, it may not even be an Astros jersey, but it's a great card from a player that I don't have a whole lot of in my collection! Thanks Wes!

Mail Updates

Bet you all thought I stopped bloggin' again eh?

Stuff has been busy lately. I spent last weekend in Amarillo looking for a new home. Working those details out now, should be moving in the next month or two. Part of this means a cut back in the card budget... booooo!!!! But hopefully once we get up there and start settling in, the budget will get upped again.

Anyways, stopped by the LCS they had up there in the area and boy was I disappointed. Currently, you can go on DACardWorld.com and get a hobby box of 2013 Topps Triple Threads for $135.95. The LCS in that locale had them at $280 for a hobby box, but he'd "do me a deal" at $260. I politely declined. I have a feeling I will be doing a lot of online ordering... not happy about it, but I'm not going to get ripped off just to "support a local business". Sorry, just can't justifying double cost purchases...

On to a more pleasant topic... mail!!!!! A couple of redemptions, a prize winning and a cheap eBay pick up!

Here is a die-cut Kemp I won in a twitter contest! I'm pretty sure most of my Dodgers guys already have this, but if not it's definitely available!

Here is the cheap eBay pick-up... as pretty much any J.D. Martinez card is going to be cheap these days... I need some help people! I have two rainbows I'm completing (or trying to!!!)

UAJR-JM1 - Missing 1/1, /10 and /75
UAJR-JM2 - Missing /99    ---- Seriously, the highest printrun, I can't find it anywhere!!!!

Here's the first of two redemptions! Lance McCullers is a hot prospect that should shoot up through the minors. He had a great year last year and I hope he can get to AA or maybe even AAA this year. Great autograph too!

Finally, a holy grail type redemption card for me... a sweeeeeeeeet Triple Auto Triple Relic numbered /27!

Bask in the glory folks.... beautiful card! Three GREAT second basemen. Although I challenge Phillips and Pedroia to go spend a few years of their career at Catcher and CF...

Sorry it's been so long everyone! Thanks for stopping by!

More New Stuff!

Here are some recent pick ups... random cards from trades, purchases, trade night at the LCS and eBay... I realized after I packed up all the cards that I scanned the wrong JD Martinez auto relic /50, they were sitting together on the desk and I should have scanned the one with him in the red Astros jersey batting rather than the white fielding... oh well, you get the point!

How about that Biggio!!! From the "s" on the jersey and numbered /9! Got that from my LCS, who used my store credit from trade bait sales... The Nolan!!! How about /10 from Tribute?!?!?! Sweeet looking card! That's a book on the bottom with Roger and Randy. Panini listed them both as "Houston Baseball Club" players but then used an Arizona swatch for Randy. Nice idea though Panini. It's a sweet looking book, just got to find a way to store it now!

Anyways, thanks for stoping by everyone!

Random Pick-ups Mail Day

Yesterday was an oddly busy mail day, I guess stuff stacked up over the weekend... here's what came in from Uncle Sam's delivery service yesterday!

So, the two J.D. Martinez cards leave me with just the /99 of card UAJR-JM2 to complete the rainbow!  How awesome is that? I promise, once I hunt down the LEAST RARE card from this rainbow, there'll be a full post showing off the awesome full rainbow.

Why a Jedd Gyorko? I'm sure that's a question that has haunted many. Well, because it came in a lot with the Cosart /125! So, any of you Padres fan want to swap an Astro for this Gyorko? *Crickets* Bueller? Bueller?

On the Biggio, it's /9 and you can see just the hint of a patch on the right hand side! Finally, the Bagwell redemption. Hopefully Jeff signs these and I get to add a rare Bagwell to my collection. He doesn't sign a whole lot, so a lot of his autos that are on eBay don't come cheap. This one did though, I'm guessing because it was a redemption.

Mail Day!

We didn't get any mail Wednesday or Thursday due to the weather conditions, apparently USPS doesn't live up to their motto any more. Jerks. So I had a very full mailbox Friday when I got home from work. Here's the cardboard highlights:

How about some Jarred Cosart Finest action? I hadn't picked up anything of Mr. Cosart so far, mainly because most of his stuff was Phillies related. So, I saw some cheap auctions pop up lately and snagged these. The top two came in a lot, but with different swatches, I'm happy. Apparently they are from the same style shirt he's wearing in the photo, so that yellow swatch is right about his arm pit. There you go folks, I own an armpit swatch! The orange is #/ed out of 99, and a considerably thicker card than the other two. While it isn't a patch, the piece of jersey is considerably thicker. I'm thinking it may be from around the bottom of the jersey or part of the thick sections near the button holes. Best guess...

Finally, another silk to add to the collection, and a parallel of Biggio from America's Pastime numbered to just /25!!!!

Thanks for stopping by!

No 2014 Series 1

We went by Target and Walmart Thursday and still no Series 1 in either location... awwww shucks... Can you tell I'm not really all that disappointed? From what I'm seeing in the blog world and on eBay I think I'll be better off snagging what I want in about 3-4 weeks once the prices have leveled out, although I can get a 13-card team set for $0.99 right now anyways of my Astros...

So, Walmart had a couple of blasters I hadn't seen in a while, 2012 Panini Heroes and Legends. Here's my loot:

Man, I love those Astronauts inserts! Great design, patch logo in the background, just a sweet insert set. Also really like the Tuskeegee Airmen cards, what a great way to honor some really brave men. I'm not a huge fan of the way they tried to shoehorn the women's soccer subsets into this set, think they deserve their own set rather than be relegated to inserts. Really feels forced. I do like the Olympics subset though. Brings back memories of watching the games.

Speaking of Olympics and Astronauts, I did get two hits from the two blasters:

Scott Hamilton relic, not too shabby, and they found a picture from when he actually had some hair! Haha! As far as Vance Brand goes, I can't say that I remember the name, but a quick read of the back of the card tells me that his first flight was the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in 1973, the man had a key role in the eventual peace between the US and USSR.

If anyone has any of these Astronauts relics or inserts laying around, let me know! Or any Space/NASA related cardboard you're looking to move!