Trick or Treat!

So last week it was Halloween, not the most traditional Holiday here in Italy, but I decided nevertheless to "treat" myself a little with some ebay pickups...

Since there were no interesting 2013 Tribute Wbc ending during the festivities, I focused on other cards that were either from cool sets or that depict players I like.

And here below are some of the latest additions to the collection!

First, I'd like to proudly show a pickup that I made just a handful of hours before game 7 started (and we all know how it ended). It's the first card I ever bought from one of the highest-end products out there...I am talking about Topps Dynasty! And the player on this card turned out to be one of the leaders in the Cubs winning game 7...here's Jason Heyward

2015 Topps Dynasty - AP JH2

Please forgive the quality of the picture, but it's taken directly from the auction I won... but I can say that the card is absolutely gorgeous! It comes from a beautiful set, it is limited to ten, it features a sick piece of camo patch, and the player on it is one of the team leaders of the 2016 World Series Champions!

Btw the price on this card was also pretty reasonable, considering all the attributes listed above, so that's why I offered until the very last minute for it.

And since I broke the Dynasty taboo, why not try to win a second card from this product?

The next card has a less sick patch, and most importantly the player depicted is not very beloved after the PED scandal he was involved in. Probably PED is now a synonim for this player's name, so without further adue, here's the second Dynasty I recently picked up.

2014 Topps Dynasty - Ryan Braun

The price on this one ended up to be fair as well, and lower than the Heyward, so now I proudly own not one but two Topps Dynasty cards!

Another thing that I've been wanting from quite a long time was a Playoff Prime Cuts card.

So I decided to offer on a bunch of cards from the set, all of them were Hall Of Famers or very big names in the history of the game, and I ended up winning three cards!

2004 Playoff Prime Cuts - MLB22 Jim Palmer #'ed to 25

2004 Playoff Prime Cuts - MLB22 Jim Palmer #'ed to 50

2004 Playoff Prime Cuts - MLB49 Steve Carlton #'ed to 50

First of all, I love these cards!

Second, the old time patches are super cool!

Third I've been wanting a Jim Palmer auto for a long time and at the end of my Halloween spree I own two (at least two I should say)!

Fourth I don't understand why an autographed card should have a lower print run than a card that is both signed and comes with a cool patch!

I am extremely happy of these cards, and considering the very low price they cost me, I am even more happy!

So far I showed only encased cards, so to end this post I will show three more cards that I won during the "Holiday"...

2015 Panini Cooperstown HOF Induction - Jim Palmer

2012 Playoff Prime Cuts Century Gold - Josh Hamilton #ed to 25

2015 Topps Museum Auto Relic - Evan Gattis

Now this is a complete post! It has autos, patches, Hall Of Famers, High-end products (and three autographs of Jim Palmer)!

This Halloween feels like a Christmas to me, so it's definitely a treat for me!

I hope you like this last post, and the cards in it, and that you had a great Halloween!

Keep collecting and CIAO!

The wait is over!

Today is a great day for every baseball fan, maybe some fans are happier than other, but it is always a great feeling when a team is crowned World Series Champion am I right?
The title of this post refers both to the long time the Cubs fans had to wait before having the opportunity to celebrate their team on the top of the baseball world, as well as to the long time that passed (again) since my last post...

I know, I just published a new post Set fails pt1 , but that's something I worked on over several weeks, so it doesn't feel like something recently produced, but rather something that I kept aside until I had the chance to scan the last card and post the whole thing.

I feel like this post is the first in a pretty long time, and what better chance to post a new post than take advantage of the great assist (in the soccer meaning of the word) provided by the recently ended 2016 World Series?

This post could be the first of new series of posts (I know I keep starting new series that apparently are abandoned immediately after they are posted, but it's hard to put hands on new "material" to feature), because I will try to show all the relics/autos cards I have from the players that won the World Series less than 24 hours ago.
There will be obviously several players (probably the majority of them) without a card in this post, but maybe someday I will own a card of every player that ever played the game (wow that would be a dream). Also, please be kind if some of the players are featured in a uniform different from the cubs'blue, but that's the best I can do!

First, the pitcher that won the final game of the series, one of my favorite pitchers, and honestly I don't regret the fact that he left the Yankees to join the team that won the championship, so here we start with the Cuban Missle....Aroldis Chapman!

2015 Topps Triple Threads

2011 Bowman Chrome Auto

2016 Topps Museum Primary Pieces

2014 Topps Tribute Forever Young Relic

2015 Topps Tribute Relic

2015 Diamond Kings Mini relic

2012 Topps Triple Threads Relic Auto

It's nice to notice that 5 cards from the above selection have the exact same pose/picture...come on Topps! Some variety in the pictures selection could be much more appreciated than ultra sick one of one patch auto printing plates (or not?).

The second player featured in this post is a "paisan" of mine, and I'm very proud that an Italian player will wear the ring of the World Series Champion.... I'm obviously talking about Anthony Rizzo!

2014 Topps Triple Threads Unity Jumbo relics

2013 Topps Tribute WBC Auto

2013 Topps Tribute WBC Auto

I wish I had more cards of this young (and Italian) player, and hopefully after all the hype following yesterday's game I will be able to pick some more up!

The next player has been named MVP of the World Series, so he definitely deserves a spot in this post...here's Ben Zobrist

2014 Topps Tribute to the Pastime Auto

Well, that's all for the MVP...I know he is not even wearing the Cubs uniform, but what can I do?

From now on, I will list all the cards I have of other players of the World Series winning Chicago Cubs!

Jason Hammel

2005 Donruss Elite

Chris Coghlan

2011 Topps Triple Threads Relic Auto

Chris Coghlan

2012 Topps Golden Moments Auto

Dexter Fowler

2012 Topps Triple Threads Relic Auto

Jason Heyward

2015 Topps Tier One relic

Jason Heyward

2015 Topps Tier One New Guard Autographs Bronze

Tommy La Stella

2014 Topps Supreme Simply Supreme

Miguel Montero

2013 Topps Tribute WBC Autograph

Miguel Montero

2013 Topps Tribute WBC Prime Patches Green

Miguel Montero

2013 Topps Tribute WBC Prime Patches Blue

Miguel Montero

2013 Topps Tribute WBC Prime Patches Base

....and that's all I have! I wish I had cards of Kris Bryant, Addison Russel and Kyle Schwarber, but unfortunately so far they were out of reach, and probably it will be even tougher in the coming months...

I hope you liked this long and very crowded post, I am pretty sad because there won't be any more baseball games until April, but I will do my best to use the coming baseball-less months to improve my collection, so stay tuned, keep collecting, and congrats to the 2016 Chicago Cubs!!!

CIAO

Set fails pt.1

What's set fails?

Basically a review of some of the sets that I consider to have failed in the collectors market or community.
The concept of failure in this case is basically derived from the lack of reference to these sets in the blogs I read, the scarcity of cards posted on Instagram (where I'm a very active member) and even the difficulties a collector will face in tracking down the cards comprised in these sets.

The best part of it, is that I will show the cards I own from these sets (like I do in the show and tell series of posts), to prove that at least I gave these sets a try....

For the first episode of this new section, I picked up a product issued by Topps in 2011, and that had no further issues, apparently because the market didn't received it very positively, or maybe because it was replaced by a similar product, that proved to be more successful (in my opinion it's been replaced by Museum Collection).

The set I'm about to present is 2011 Topps Marquee!

This product was sold in boxes containing 4 mini boxes, each one with a single pack inside (first resemblance with Museum collection), and every pack offered 5 cards.
So far nothing strange.
As far as I know, this was the first Topps product to feature metal framed cards (second aspect recycled in Museum).
The set offered a wide range of signed and relic cards, the most notable probably being the "Titanic Threads Patch relic".

But don't worry, I won't show cards from this sick subset, instead I'll show 5 cards, that's all I have... I think this might be useful to have a flavor of what the subsets were like...

2011 Topps Marquee Monumental Markings Autographs

MM-BWA Brett Wallace #ed to 570

MM-DS Drew Stubbs #ed to 570

MM-JT Jose Tabata #ed to 570

2011 Topps Marquee Gametime Mementos

GMQR-46 Nelson Cruz #ed to 199

GMQR-5 Mark Teixeira #ed to 199

That's everything I have from this sometimes forgotten and sometimes obscure set.

I am very well aware that is not a ton of cards, but probably even if I showed more the fate of this product wouldn't change.

Maybe in the future I'll try to find some more cards from Topps Marquee, but now it's time to end this short but at the same time veeeery long post (it took me several weeks to complete it due to a long list of reasons), and focus on what could be the next set to feature in this new series... Set fails!

Keep collecting and see you soon!

Big Papoy hits a Homerun!

Last week I was informed by my parents that two packages arrived at their home.
I was waiting for a small package from Amazon, but I wasn't able to figure out what the second package could be.

Then I realized that Kevin aka The Card Papoy sent me a package the week before and I was immediately hooked by curiosity train and couln't wait to see the content.

First I apologize if it took me a whole week to post about this lot, but work is back in my life and today is the first day so far that I can invest on cards and blogging.

Then, I'd like to thank Kevin for the generous package, filled with more than 60 cards from a wide variety of sets, many of them totally new to me.

So here are some of the cards he sent to the other side of the Alps...

2015 Topps Gypsy Queen Christian Yelich

A Yelich Relic! I really like cards like this, and I mean thick relics featured in mini cards displayed in bigger frame-like cards...I think that Gypsy Queen and A&G are the best in this type of cards. Recently also Panini tried to imitate them in the Diamond Kings sets, but I prefer Topps better.

1986 Topps Quacker Chewy Don Mattingly

Let's admit it, it's not the best shot of Donnie Baseball around, first of all no iconic moustches, then the look on his face could be perfect for a Tori Amos album cover, but hey I love baseball cards, and this odd ball set is something totally new to me, so I am very happy to add this card to my collection.

1994 Collector's choice Michael Jordan

This card is self-explaining in my opinion. A basketball player will keep playing his game even when he should be playing baseball. But it's an iconic card from one of the biggest names in sports, so thank you very much Kevin for providing this piece of history.

2011 Topps Lineage Mickey Mantle

This is in my opinion a very nice product, a set that features both players from the past and stars from (then) today, without the old timers being extremely rare or shortprinted cards. This was a cool set, that obviously Topps decided to stop producing after one year. I might even consider to buy a box of this product to see if I can complete the base set. Together with this nice Mick card were also Hammerin' Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth. 

2013 Topps Chrome Close Connection Jose Reyes

2014 Bowman Chrome Fire Die Cut Jonathan Gray

These last two cards are new to me, I mean I saw pulling some of the Bowman die cuts in youtube videos, but these two are actually the first specimens of their kind I hold in my hands.... and I must say that they are very cool!

I had some troubles in putting the Reyes into the penny sleeve but apart from that, I want to thank Kevin so very much for his act of colecting kindness. Obviously I will continue my Saturday morning by searching cards to send his way.

One last info for European collectors that were afraid that team bags and toploaders were nowhere to be found in our continent, I am very happy to inform them that I recently picked up both the products from Amazon! So no more buying them from US ebay sellers and wait weeks to receive them, without speaking about the insanely high costs!

Thank you very much Kevin for the cards, you made my return from holidays much sweeter!

Have a nice weekend everybody and Keep Collecting!

CIAO!

Just Zistling around

Here's the question:

What does a card collector when he/she has no new cards to organize or catalog?
He/she organizes/catalogues old cards!

This is why I'm planning to spend some time in the coming days/weeks in adding new cards to my collection on Zistle.
I hope this will make easy to find and setup new trades with members of the website, even if I already have a detailed wantlist in form of checklists available on this blog.

I decided to embark in this epic quest today, after a collector on Zistle said that a trade would have been very hard to arrange if he had no visibility of what are the cards I am looking for.
This is as obvious as it can be, except for me apparently.

Having all these checklist here isn't much useful for possible new trading partners that do not use Blogspot, but instead are very active on Zistle... and in order to ease the activity of verifying what could help me fill in some gaps, I decided to replicate on Zistle the wantlists.

When I first joined Zistle I decided to use it mainly to virtually replicate my collection, and to make it more easy and keep track of everything the rule was to add cards to the virtual collection only for the completed sets.

I broke my own rule today as I started to massively load all my Allen & Ginter cards (the non auto and non relic ones at least) and generating the corresponding wantlists by exception, so even faster than I thought.

If anybody reading this blog is interested in a different sight at my wantlists, and a partial look at my collection, can have a look at my profile on Zistle, Italiancomplestist.
Also feel free to add me to your contacts and message me!

But wait, what kind of Baseball Cards blog has a post without pictures of Baseball Cards?
Not this one fur sure, so here are some more cards patiently waiting in my mailbox at COMC.





2009 Topps Unique Jumbo Jersey Relic of CC Sabathia #'d to 40

Thankfully this card, despite the set name, isn't just plain jersey, but rather has a nice chunk of patch from his days as a Brewer.

2012 Playoff Prime Cuts Century Gold Justin Upton #'d to 25

Another nice patch featured on this card, unfortunately it's pretty hard come by cards from this set on ebay (at least for a reasonable price), so this came from a deal I got on Instagram.

2016 Topps Museum Meaningful Material Prime Relics Ian Kinsler #'d to 50

The super long name of this set essentially stands for "nice patches", this came together with the Chapman I showed in my previous post, and again was an Instagram deal.

I am very happy of this second post in two days, it looks like I'm getting back to normal activity on this humble little blog.

Keep collecting, CIAO!

Breaking the silence

It's official, the summer is over!

Well, not the summer that ends on September 21st, but the summer that equals Holidays!
I've been back at work since Tuesday, and since I'm the only person in the office (sigh), what better way to spend the lunch break than posting something on this blog, after almost three months of complete silence?

I spent my Holidays in Paris, and despite there were (obviously) no card shops to visit, I had a great time there.

I've also picked up some cards from ebay, not as much as I did in the same period of last year, but still a lot of cool new additions to the collection.

On one hand I picked up several new cards for my 2013 Tribute WBC sets, and all the scans are already available in the dedicated sections, and on the other hand I picked up some nice things from other sets, some vintage cards and other that will soon have a dedicated page, and that I'm not going to show here.

So if you had enough of all this bla bla bla, here are some nice scans of cards that I hope to receive soon from my mailbox at COMC.

First let's show some vintage cardboard....

1950 Bowman Gus Niarhos

1952 Bowman Joe Collins

Maybe the second card is a little creased, but hey these cards are more than 60 years old!

And also consider that I paid 2 cents (yes you read right, not dollars, but cents) for the pair, so unless someone is willing to give cards like these away for free, I don't think I could possibly get a better deal!

Then I'm showing off a couple of cards depicting pitchers, one of them unfortunately left the Yankees for a chance to the postseason, while the other is having a great season with 13 wins already...

2015 Topps Tribute Jose Fernandez #' to 189

2016 Topps Museum Aroldis Chapman #'d to 99

I really love the encased cards in Tribute products, almost as much as I love sick patches from great players, so this pair of cards deserves a spot in my post.

Both these cards came from deals I got from Instagram users, that proved to be a very interesting alternative to ebay.

I jump back to the vintage section of this post just because I was able to snag the following two cards from ebay for the insane (in my opinion) price of a dollar each...so here they are!

1949 Bowman Earl Torgeson

1949 Gene Hermanski

I really love the way these old cards look, they usually have a clean back and great front pictures, and they prove that cards can be totally cool even without autographs or 4 color patches!

The last cards for this posts came in a bundle from an Instagram user that gave me a sweet deal on these cards, and two of them are autographed by players that I included in a list that I recently prepared with (almost) all the autographs that I'd like to add to the collection.

2010 Topps Tribute Cliff Lee #'d to 50

2010 Topps Tribute Matt Kemp #'d to 75

2015 Topps Museum Max Scherzer #'d to 99

The two autographs that I was looking for are Kemp and Scherzer, not that I don't like Cliff Lee, but the first two are something I decided to actively chase.

That's it for today, I promise that I will recover from these three months of silence by going back to the old rate of posts on my blog.

I hope your summer was great, and possibly still going!

Keep collecting and CIAO!