A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Trade Night

Well kids... before I get started with the story that is alluded to in the title, I have a couple trades...

First, is well, not a trade... but a "just because" from Derek over at Tomahawk Chopping (who's redesigned blog is THE BOMB)... He shot over some GQ and a nice Caminiti/Bagwell card:

Thanks Derek!

Next up is an actual trade. I pulled a BUNCH of Gypsy Queen for Adam over at ARPSmith's Sportscard Obsession... which are still sitting on my desk because I'm a horrible blogger... I promise Adam, your cards are going to the PO tomorrow, I swear it upon all that's good and holy in this world...

But here's the SWEEEEET swag he sent my way:

The Biggio and Caminiti are from Fleer Brilliants with the Caminiti being a /99 parallel. I'm telling you know, expect to see this set in a group break in the future, it's AWESOME. Some great game used cards in there, I really like the Berkman dual jersey from UD Essential Elements. Sweet lookin' card! Thanks Adam...

Ok, so the card shop had their trade night last night.... on the wave of my Cal Ripken Jr. auto relic 1/5 having sold at auction for $408 dollars (SWEEEEEEEEEEEET!!!!!) I went a little bit Gypsy Queen mad... I am well on my way to the mini set I'm looking for at this point, and have plenty of base to trade. Including what I think is a complete set 1-300 of non-variants and all 3 hobby insert sets. Anyone want to make an offer on it? I'll need to go through and verify but I'm pretty sure I've got all of it.

Anyways, out of the 2+ boxes I busted last night, here are the goods:

So I now have a duplicate auto of Moreland, and a duplicate Rivera (w/ stitch patterns) relic. The Zimmerman auto is very nice, as is the Cueto. The guy next to me got Peacock and Benson so I consider myself pretty darn lucky. I seem to have a penchant for pulling Braves relics from this set as well, as I now have McCann, Hanson, Heyward and Hudson... yo Braves fans, I need you to start makin' some offers! Haha!

Have a great day everyone!

Group Break 2nd Team Randomization

Hey everyone! The break is full after I bought the last slot myself (Kansas City) and the boxes have been purchased... hopefully Monday or Tuesday I'll be busting packs o' wax!

For now, I'll do the second team randomization.... the claimed teams and their owners:

1. Atlanta - Chris Mays
2. Baltimore - jaybarkerfan
3. Boston - Matt Perry
4. Chicago (NL) - Tom
5. Detroit - Jeffrey W
6. Kansas City - The Dimwit
7. Los Angeles - Johnson
8. New York (AL) - The Dutch Card Guy
9. New York (NL) - The Dutch Card Guy
10. Philadelphia - Team Phungo
11. San Fransisco - Johnson
12. Seattle - Derek Hill
13. St. Louis - jamicfan
14. Tampa - Hairylemon
15. Texas - The Dimwit

The remaining teams:
Arizona
Chicago (AL)
Cincinnati
Cleveland
Colorado
Florida
Houston
Los Angeles (AL)
Milwaukee
Minnesota
Oakland
Pittsburgh
San Diego
Toronto
Washington

The number next to your team above will correspond to the numbers below:

Thus:
1. Atlanta & Chicago (AL) - Chris Mays
2. Baltimore & Minnesota - jaybarkerfan
3. Boston & Miami/Florida - Matt Perry
4. Chicago (NL) & Washington - Tom
5. Detroit & Houston- Jeffrey W
6. Kansas City & Toronto - The Dimwit
7. Los Angeles & Cleveland - Johnson
8. New York (AL) & San Diego - The Dutch Card Guy
9. New York (NL) & Los Angeles (AL) - The Dutch Card Guy
10. Philadelphia & Pittsburgh- Team Phungo
11. San Fransisco & Arizona - Johnson
12. Seattle & Cincinnati - Derek Hill
13. St. Louis & Oakland - jamicfan
14. Tampa & Colorado - Hairylemon
15. Texas & Milwaukee - The Dimwit


Alright... feel free to trade around however you like between now and the ship-out date! Just make sure that both participants agree via comments or e-mail to me.


***I'd be interested in trading for the Astros and/or the Twins (Jeffrey and jaybarkerfan). If anyone else would like my randomized teams, I'm pretty open to trades for them, just let me know...

Card of The Day - For Trade Edition

I picked up this card a while back thinking it'd make good trade bait. So far, I've received no interest... anyways, it's a solid HOFer and hopefully future HOFer.

Hope everyone has a great day!

I have 3 slots left in my group break... head on over and claim them... lots of great teams left! $15 for two team slot...

May Group Break Sign-Ups Are LIVE!!!! 3 Boxes of 2012 Product!

Hey everyone, it's that time of the month... well, not THAT time, but it's Group Break time!!!!

I've got three great products from Topps for this break... all hobby boxes... and a big thanks to Atlanta Sports Cards for their sponsorship of this break!

1) 2012 Topps Opening Day - Hobby Box - 36 packs; 7 cards per pack. Lots of fun cards in this product, I threw this one in just for the fun of it! A very remote chance at an auto, but nothing guaranteed.

2) 2012 Topps Heritage - Hobby Box - 24 Packs; 7 cards per pack; box loader - One auto or relic guaranteed per box. A popular set with lots of variations, SP's and great hits.

3) 2012 Topps Gypsy Queen - Hobby Box - 24 packs; 10 cards per pack (1 mini) - 10 card mini box - Of course I couldn't do a break without GQ being involved. You've seen great cards from this set on this blog! In my opinion this is another "home run" by Topps (although I would say the autograph and relic checklist is a bit too long compared to last year) but there are great cards available. 4 hits guaranteed and a good chance at bonus hits with lots of printing plates and new this year are autographs available in the mini's boxes which are exclusive to the hobby boxes.

Alright, I'm not going to take the Astros this time around, as I already have most of their cards from these sets and will probably trade with whoever gets them as their second randomized team if no one buys them outright. I have decided to take the Rangers, as I really want a chance at the Darvish base variation. Sign-ups are first come, first serve... $15 per 2-team slot, as usual one team is your selection, the second team is randomized to you. If you want two slots, that'll be $28. If you want more than 2 slots, e-mail me for a quote. As always, please make payments to my paypal account: samuelpair AT yahoo.com as a GIFT.

Sign up via the comments below. As usual, all multi-team cards will be randomly assigned, if it's one of the "hits" this will be done via video, if it's involving one of the teams I've claimed, it will be done by an independent 3rd party via video and posted to their blog. All cards from "moved teams" such as Montreal will go to the current version of the team (Washington-Montreal), you know how it goes...

Alright, here are the teams... sign up via the comments.

Arizona -
Atlanta -Chris Mays - PAID
Baltimore - jaybarkerfan - PAID
Boston - Matt Perry - PAID
Chicago (NL) - Tom - PAID
Chicago (AL) -
Cincinnati -
Cleveland -
Colorado -
Detroit - Jeffrey W  - PAID
Florida -
Houston -
Kansas City - The Dimwit - PAID
Los Angeles (NL) -Johnson - PAID
Los Angeles (AL) -
Milwaukee -
Minnesota -
New York (NL) - The Dutch Card Guy - PAID
New York (AL) - The Dutch Card Guy - PAID
Oakland -
Philadelphia - Team Phungo - PAID
Pittsburgh -
San Diego -
San Francisco - Johnson - PAID
Seattle -Derek Hill - PAID
St. Louis -jamicfan - PAID
Tampa - Hairylemon - PAID
Texas - The Dimwit - PAID
Toronto -
Washington -

If this fills up within 24 hours, I'll throw in one blaster of 2012 Gypsy Queen as well. You all have until 8:35pm tomorrow, May 1st to get this break filled!

Ripken Auction Posted

The Ripken has gone onto eBay for anyone who wants to watch... or bid... or just buy it now...

Yes, I realize that I went kind of on the high side for the opening bid and the BIN price... but we'll see how it goes... Fingers are crossed that some rich Orioles collector (or 2) feel they just HAVE to have this card... :-D

Gypsy Queen... with MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR MOJO!!!!!!!!!

Well, I'm a sucker for Gypsy Queen and after making a couple of sales on eBay... I had the bread to pick up a couple more boxes of my drug... errr... favorite product... well worth my time and money. Still shaking...

First box... highlights shown here, as I'm sure you all are tired of seeing scan after scan of GQ cards...

 Not too shabby... the Mo Rivera mini relic is pretty nice, stitch marks and all... Castro is a nice auto but I have no clue who this Peacock fellow is; he better start throwin no-hitters though for sure...

Brett Anderson? Ok Topps, stop with the crappy A's pitchers... geez... Heyward is a nice relic, and didn't Avila make an All-Star team????

Alright, I'm sure you noticed that I'm missing an auto from the second scan! I'll tell you... this card I pulled has a pack pull odds of 1:11,300.... it's numbered #1 out of 5!!!!! It's a HOF'er....





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keep scrolling... this is fun...




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drum roll...




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OMG!!!!!!!

I could not believe it... I opened these in the store, and when I pulled this out there were fist bumps and hand shakes all around!!!! FREAKIN' SWEET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Diamond King Strikes Again... and the conclusion of a forgotten contest...

The other day, Kevin over at The Diamond King (belongs in the HOF of blog names, for sure)... posted some discount hits he got at a local card show for about a $1 each... included were a Bagwell and Biggio that I thought were pretty darn cool... he sent them without really requesting anything in return, claiming he owed me cards in a trade (of course I don't remember this debt) but anyways... as you can see from him cryptic message at the bottom, he threw in a few extras...

Great cards... the Wagner and Lane are both serial numbered /99 and /25 respectively. Kevin, you're awesome... expect a return package of thank you cards soon...

Finally tonight... I realized I never made good on my contest that I was running in the side bar for the Gypsy Queen Bronze bordered /999 cards. I completed the set (with about the last 15 cards bought on my own... but who's counting.. hehe)... and now I need to give away the promised prizes to the participants who either traded or freely gave me their cards! So... I entered everyone's name into random.org (one entry for each card, a total of 39 entries)... and randomized it three times... remember, 1st place gets the Brooks Robinson, 2nd place gets the Justin Smoak and 3rd place gets a "hit" from my collection from your favorite team... no duplicate winners, one prize per person... here's randomization #1:

 And the second randomization...

 And finally the third!

Congratulations to Brian over at Play At The Plate... Charles over at Lifetime Topps Project... and Matt H. over at Ten Yards (which I think is his family blog...)

Winners, please send me an e-mail with your address... even if I may already have it... this will serve as a reminder to get these out in the mail later this week! Matt Hickes, please let me know what team you are a fan of and I'll pick out a card or grab one for your from my LCS

Thanks to all who helped put my set together! It kills me to watch this Brooks Robinson go out the door, but it's well worth it considering I was able to put the gold border set together complete... I know I have 1 of only 999 possible sets!!!

I secretly wished BA Benny would have won one of the prizes... I miss his blog and maybe this would have spurred his glorious return to the blog-o-sphere... I haven't heard from him in a while... Mike, if you're out there, let us know you're alright.

I have a problem... her name is Gypsy Queen...

Ok, so let me preface this by saying that what you see in the picture below, I did NOT buy all of this...

Ok, so here's the story... the wife and I went to the card shop yesterday over in Spanish Fort... she told me to go ahead get a box and just put it on credit and be done with it, and so I did... then another... and while I was standing there, a guy I'm familiar with named Kevin started busting a box. Kevin is a case buster and high dollar guy, he busted a CASE of National Treasures football at the last trade night, and for those of you who don't know what that is, the boxes are $500 each and contain one pack. Anyways, he's a great guy as well... as he opened these boxes he pull the hits out to one stack, the base in another and the mini's in a third stack. Well, after two boxes he was rather frustrated and said that if I wanted all the base and mini's I could have them since he know I was a set builder. Of course I jumped at the offer. I also saw the open box on the shelf with about 10 packs left in it and snagged those also... unfortunately those 10 produced no more hits but I got some good mini's and the like from them!

Let me go ahead and give a recap here of what I got overall...

• 298/300 base cards towards the complete set.
• 26/50 SP Variations - No Yu Darvish unfortunately...
• Complete sets of 2 of the 3 hobby inserts (except for Moonshots, I'm one card short!)
• 1 Gypsy King insert (lame cards in my opinion, Kevin pulled a Gypsy King Manu-Relic /25 but then was pissed to see they were only selling for about $20 on the bay of E.)
• Mini's GALORE... I have no idea what all the parallels are and don't understand at all why some of them are numbered higher than 300 and then the various backs associated with those... it's a confusing world of mini's this year for sure. But, I'm wanting your REGULAR BACK 1-350 mini's if you are willing to part with them. Regular back only, not really chasing the variation pictures, but will take whatever I can get to make the set 1 through 350.
• 255/300 towards a second complete base set, probably won't complete this just because I don't see myself buying many more packs of this product.
• Hundreds of triplicates and more... LOTS of cards if people are looking to complete their sets... PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU NEED!!!! I have WAYYYYYY more base cards than I'll ever need!
• 5 Blue Borders.... I collected the /999 bronze border set last year, but since they made them a smaller run and seeded them even shorter in the packs, there's no way I can collect all of them this year... dang it... But the 5 I got, pretty good names 
• 8 hits... only two of which I'm really excited about... Looking at the checklist online, I realize Topps screwed us all over by expanding the relic checklists astronomically. No way this collector is going after them all... 

Alright, so you want pictures??? You're about to get a bunch!

Here are the blue borders I pulled:

Can't really argue with Young, Fielder, Clemente, Mays and Berra... solid...

Next up, the mini's I thought I should highlight:

From top to bottom, those are the /99 sepia, the unnumbered green border and the unnumbered "black" bordered. 

Insert mini's from the "mini-box":

These are all for trade as long as regular back mini's are coming in return.... :)

I could go on forever posting mini's... I really could... but I won't... here are the SP Variations I managed to get...

You would not believe how "not fun" it is to find these among stacks of cards totaling 4.5 boxes of base cards... I spent all night last night collating and sorting... ok, I lie, it was fun... I'm a baseball card nerd...

Here are the Mini Photo Variations I got from the mini boxes:

I'm going to count these among the mini's for my main set... I'm not going to go out of my way to get the original and then the variation... maybe some day if my OCD is really getting to me, but I doubt it... haha!

GYPSY KING!

I have nothing to say... you want it? Make me an offer...

Ok, I lied again... more mini's!!!!! These are the "Straight Cut" back variation...

I got exactly 20 of these and exactly 20 of the "Gypys Queen Red Back" below...

Again, these mini's are for trade, as long as I get some regular back mini's in return! On these variations, I'd say for the most part I'd be hoping for 2 regular backs in return for a variation back... there may be some where I may want a bit more (like Ripkin) and of course the subject of the mini's in return would factor in as well...

Alright, so what you've all been waiting for... my hits... here's box #1:

Alright, the first box was very "meh"... Moreland and Walker autos weren't my favorite names on that checklist... Hudson is decent I guess, but no one is really going to be confusing him as a HOF'er... and Sandoval is still young enough that he could put a solid career together... Box 2 was much nicer to me...

Mariano Rivera! I believe this is the first relic of his I've ever pulled! The Freese is nice and if you look closely, there is a bit of dirt in the lower right hand corner of that swatch! Escobar = meh... Belt = Heck ya! 

So, my Gypsy Queen adventure begins this year... thanks to basically 2 free boxes of base, mini's and inserts... 

I will have a Need List posted soon! 

Any Oswalt Super Collectors Out There????

My posting has been a bit sporadic lately. I'm having to leave for work earlier so that has severely cut down my blogging time unfortunately! But I'm still here and will be trying to catch up soon on trade proposals and the like!

As for now, I am hoping to pare down the collection a bit... I was hoping that there is a reader who is a big Roy Oswalt fan/collector! Please, if anyone is interested, make me an offer on the following collection that I'm trying to move at a reasonable price...

That's 28 game used, auto, patch, manu-relics. I'm not trying to break the bank on these... there are a couple I know are worth a bit more, but something around an average of $3-4 each for these would help me out. Let me know if you have any interest... samuelpair@yahoo.com

My apologies... I'm a bad blogger...

Things have been hectic for me this week and I need to apologize...

1) Group break participants... packages still haven't been mailed, I'm working on getting those out tomorrow.
2) Tom - your Napoli hasn't mailed, it'll go out with the group break stuff tomorrow... sorry...
3) TheBrooklynMet - still working on finding a replacement prize for the Tri City Sports PL disaster/contest. I've got 5 cards from your GQ 2011 Want list (4, 18, 46, 247 and SF10) but am trying to think of something else to send. Apparently I'm going to be just as slow as TCSPL on this, but hopefully your reward will be much better from me than them.

Hopefully things will settle down a bit after today and I can also get back to regular baseball card posts as well... oh and how about my Houston Texans???? 4 prime time games and Thanksgiving against the Lions... going to be a great year!