What kind of Christmas is it going to be?

I'm not going crazy, but I'm starting to prepare for the upcoming baseball cards extravanza known as Christmas!
It's been in the last couple years the excuse to order very big loads of boxed cards from DACARDWORLD, ensuring a 25th of December spent busting packs...

I know it's not intended in such way, but when you grow up you leave the magic behind and start focusing more on the material aspects, and after a certain age, it can be used as an excuse to buy very nice stuff to yourself... please let me know if I'm a bad person!

This year, it seems that the average price of boxes on the above mentioned website are slightly higher than last year...
I compared today prices to those I paid last year when I bought my Christmas presents, and please consider this as a rough estimate, since a couple products are no longer available, but I'm pretty sure that the exact same lot of boxes would cost about 50 to 100 dollars more...

So I'm still deciding what to do for this year...

But, just for the sake of completeness (this is what the blog is about), let's list what I got last year with a vote to the quality of cards I got..

- 1 box of Topps Tribute WBC, as usual a great product (and very expensive as well). I got a cool Cespedes auto and also a double card (Jason Grilli auto if the memory works still)...
- 12 Jumbo Packs of 2014 Topps, this had a double purpose. On one hand it is always fun to bust a huge amount of packs, and also it was very useful to find some subsets and parallel cards for my sets.. Amoung others, I found a camo Jeter card and an acetate Jorge De la Rosa numbered to 10.
-1 Box of 2014 Topps, same as above... (the purpose, not the hits!)
-1 Box of 2012 Heritage, I remember this costed less than 10 bucks, and considering it is a very cool product, I couldn't pass this up...
-1 Box of 2011 Donruss Elite Extra Edition, a product not particularly appealing, since the absence of licenses (and the limited checklist as well), but I pulled a cool Jurickson Profar auto so it's fine...
-1 Box of 2009 Upper Deck signature series, this was he second most expensive box of the order.. but was filled with cool cards. For example a triple auto with Dustin Pedroia, JD Drew and Jonathan Papelbon, a US set auto jersey of Sonny Gray, and 3/4 more autos and jerseys so definitely a great product!
-1 Box of 2007 Upper Deck series 2, this was more for checklist completion than other reasons...
-1 Box of 2012 Bowman, I don't remember pulling anything cool from this box, exept some cards useful for the completion of the set
-1 Box of 2005 Donruss studio, because I really like the brand, and I also found a couple Portraits cards (those numbered depending on the coloring of the border on the front of the card), so overall a cool box
-1 Box of 2006 Upper Deck future stars: the box guaranteed 5 autos on a acetate colored card, and I got 5 autos to be honest...but the players were more than unknown, so pretty disappointed with it...

Five more boxes bought only for completion purposes, since were from sets I had very few cards, are the following:
- 2009 Topps T206 (nothing very cool to report);
- 1994 Upper Deck series 2 (nothing very cool to report);
- 1996 Upper Deck series 2 (nothing very cool to report);
- 1995 Topps (sticky cards, which resulted in several cards scratched or chipped/tear when the packs were opened) (second worst box of the lot);
- Upper Deck the american epic, an 80 card set (if I remember correctly), with the greatest that ever plaied the game in the past. The set is connected to a very cool set of documentaries by Ken Burns.


Maybe this Christmas will be focused on Justcommons pickups, maybe I'll blindly buy some appealing lots on ebay....

Speaking of which, on July, due to my birthday (again, excuses),  I picked up 5 lots on ebay, purely basing the decision on the acution picture and the quantity price ratio of each lot... I almnost finished my checks and soon I will post a detailed statistic on the content of such lots...

Merry Christmas and Keep Collecting!!

CIAO

Some more random and unexpensive pickups!

Continuing from the previous post, where I showed some cards picked up during the first part of October, this time I'm going to show some more cards won on ebay in the second part of the month...

As you will notice, there's no common thread in the cards, also because the cards connected to the sets I'm trying to complete are posted directly in the specific pages... but nonetheless I think these are nice cards, from players I have no other autos or relics, and from very cool sets...

First, a nice red chuck of jersey from 2013 Topps Triple Threads, numbered to 27 and featuring Josh Hamilton from when he was an Angels player

 

 

Then a cool auto of a player that I really like, but of whom I had no relics or autos before, from 2013 Topps Supreme and numbered to 50, he's Johnny Cueto!

 

 

The next card is from a set of which I already have a couple of cards (Reggie Jackson and Alex Rodriguez). I'm talking about 2001 Upper Deck Legends, legendary lumber, and the next card is from a Legend that recenly passed away, the great Tony Gwynn.

 

 



The next is a sick patch (at least compared to other products), from 2004 Fleer Platinum Name Plates Team, but depicting a player that hasn't left many memories in the record books (as far as I know), I'm talking about Hee Seop Choi, depicted as a Cubs player.

 

The next player gets both Auto and Jersey cards, and I'm talking about Johnny Podres, and the cards are from 2004 SP Legendary Cuts Historic Swatches and from 2014 Topps Supreme Autographs. The first is not numbered while the second is numbered to 20.

 

 

I offered on the next card for two reasons, the first is that I had no relics from this player, and the second is that the fabric chunk insert in the card is pretty huge, and of a color not very common.

It's an Andy Pettitte jersey card from 2006 Sweet Spot Super Sweet Swatch, numbered to an astronomical 299.

 

 

The last card for this post is from 2005 Upper Deck Past Time Pennants. The cards are very well designed, especially the golden logo and I really like the fact that the signature is made inside a pennant (like the set name suggests). I already have Pedro Guerrero from this set, and I'm happy I have added another player to the roster, here comes Ray Knight!

Since at this point the post wasn't published yet, and in the meantime I have a couple more scans in the COMC mailbox, why not show some more nice cardboard?

First is a 3 color patch card from 2008 Upper Deck Premier, featuring Takashi Saito on it, and numbered to 65.

And the last card for this post is an autographed card from 2005 Donruss Diamond Kings, numbered to 100, and the featured player is Dave Parker!

 

Do you like the cards in this post and in the blog so far?

 

I'm very proud of my growing collection...and very satisfied of the completion level reached in the main sets I'm chasing...

 

Keep collecting and...

Ciao!

October brings cards!

After a three-month ebay craze that affected me, I forced myself not to buy at least during the month of September...needless to say that it's been very hard, especially if I think of all those auctions ended at a dollar that I could easily win during the whole month...

But September is now in the memories and October started pretty well for me, and I picked up from where I left in August, great cards for ridicoluosly low prices...

Here's a little taste of what I got, and already reached COMC facility (I also won some 2015 Tier One relics that I'm not showing since they're already available in the dedicated page (that is not available at the moment !)(but soon will))..

The very first card I got in this new auctioning adventure is a nice 2015 Panini Immaculate, that features both a jersey piece and a sticker auto, plus is numbered to 49, and it's been also a pretty steal, since it costed 0.99 $.

 



It's a Rymer Liriano card! The first I own of this player.

Another card I got from this year's Panini set is the next one, from a subset called "Immaculate pitchers", numbered to 99 comes my first Archie Bradley game used jersey!

I haven't decided yet if I like this year's product, but at least for now it is pretty affordable!

Back to 2014 Panini Immaculate. here's a nice (despite tiny) jersey chunk of Dustin Pedroia. The card is from the "Immaculate swatches" subset and it's numbered to 99.





 

The next card is a clean, beautiful on card autograph of Kevin Maas,from 2004 Upper Deck Yankees Classic Clipping set. It's the second card I own from that set, since in August 2014 I picked up a Mickey Rivers auto during my visit at the White Plains card show.

 

 

 

This next card comes from 2015 Topps Triple Threads, a very expensive product that usually provides extremely cool and valuable cards. But according to my policy, so far I've only been able to pick up the following "Unity Single Jumbo Relics Emerald" (sounds very complex but in the end is a big chunk of fabric)... here's Michael Taylor numbered to 18!

 

 

Since I usually try to adhere to the motto "save the best for last", I'm about to show the card that in my opinion is (by far) the best of the lot.

 

BOOM!

 

It's a beautiful 3 color patch card of Mark Teixeira from that glorious set which is 2007 Ultimate Collection Team Materials Patch! It's the third card with this numbering I own (the other two are Garrett Atkins and Delmon Young), and it tempts me to try to complete the whole set...

 

So I think I can say that October started the right way (can't really say the same about the Yankees), and I'll post new pictures as soon as the other pickups (obviously there are other pickups) reach the mailbox.

 

CIAO!