Progressions.

Firstly, I need to apologize for my sparse posting of late. The HP scanner was sentences to death a few weeks ago, and a replacement has yet to be acquired.

If I'm honest, I just don't care for use either my Droid Bionic or Fujifilm mini SLR for taking photographs of baseball cards, yet in order to keep any sort of regular posts happening here, I have to. All of the following, as well as the Liriano splash above, are from the Droid, which I will admit takes great landscapes in well-lit situations as well as getting some extra refractory glow from cards.

But it's not the same. So, I apologize for that, but also, it doesn't much matter, and there is not much I can do about it anyway.

On to some new arrivals.

The above Rymer Liriano is yet another 2012 Bowman Sterling autograph. These can be had for cheap, especially when the prospect in question is going to miss the entire season with Tommy John surgery - which is surprising for an outfield prospect, but also less career-threatening than it would be for a pitcher.

I picked it up for $.99 is addition to a pile of six 2013 Topps Tribute base cards contributing to my reverse box-break of said product.

As you can see, I picker up Giancarlo Stanton ($.86), Andrew McCutchen ($.86), Jose Bautista ($.86), Yu Darvish ($1.85), Reggie Jackson (&.85) and Harmon Killebrew ($.85). Those prices include the outrageous shippinh that the ebay seller charged - but I can't blame him, really, and all but the Liriano auto and the Darvish had starting bids of $.01. I received no competition to land them.

So where does it put me in the 2013 Tribute Box Challenge?

Goal	275
Total	21.64
Remaining Budget	253.36

That in American Dollars. No rupies or dongs or rubels about it. Eight of thirty-five cards down, and only $21 in. I may try to do this in less than fifty dollars, but then I may be getting kind of greedy.

Something else I've been slowly chipping away at is my 2012 Pro Debut and Heritage Minors logo patch collection.

After a few months waiting on Topps to fill some redemptions, I now have these:

Out of desperation, I drafted Jean Segura in the later rounds of my own, personal fantasy league, and damn, he's good. I also roll him out there with Starling Marte, and the two have been carrying me of late. Oswaldo Arcia hasn't been to bad, either.

It's hard to even call Segura a prospect at this point. He's shown very few weaknesses.

Mason Williams, on the other hand, is another case. He recently got a DUI after failing a field sobriety test - yet legally, he was below the .08 blood/alcohol content for Florida. Light weight.

Seriously, though. Not something that should be joked about. Stop drinking and driving you entitled assholes.
_

The next is probably my favourite of my recent additions.

This Javier Baez, a very highly-touted Chicago Cubs prospect, is totally baller. I was very close to winning a combo deal with this and the Wilmer Flores (Port St. Lucie Mets), but was somehow outbid on the Flores.

Initially, I wasn't really psyched for this one. But I got a pretty good deal, and after I removed the cookie crumbs or whatever the shit the seller dribbled all over it, the green and red and orange looks pretty badass.

The Boise Hawks definitely picked a strange color combination, but it does look pretty awesome.

In case you're wondering, I now have:

Javier Baez - Boise Hawks (Chicago Cubs)
Heath Hembree - Richmond Flying Squirrels (San Francisco Giants)
Mike Olt - Myrtle Beach Pelicans (Texas Rangers)
Anthony Gose - New Hampshire Fisher Cats (Toronto Blue Jays)
Taijuan Walker - Clinton Lumberjacks (Seattle Mariners)
Jonathan Griffin - Missoula Osprey (Los Angeles Angels)
Will Middlebrooks - Pawtucket Red Sox (Boston Red Sox)

..and they're all pretty baller.

While all of the previous cards fit into my personal challenges, protests versus the industry, or insert set collections, I most recently won this shiny beacon of awesome for one of my player collections, Francisco Lindor:

Preeeeeetttttyyyyyyyyy.

This is my second Lindor relic, both of which contain this nice blue swatch which I am pretty sure means they're both from the World Futures Game jersey you see in the photo. On the other, he's pictured with the Lake County Captains, another blue team.

Lindor is featured as a prospect/set filler in 2013 Bowman with a once-again regurgitated Topps photo. le sigh.

Stay patient, readers. Looks like it will be until June for me to purchase another scanner. But it'll come, and it'll be awesome.

2012 Topps Pro Debut 2-Box Break

Phew. It's been a busy night. But since I posted a teaser of these two beautiful babies, I thought it would just be the right thing to pose them up. I busted these way back around 5:30, collated them by 6:30, scanned them, made a grocery run and whipped up a batch of white trash for tomorrow's office Christmas party, scanned a few more images and now I sit, watching, conincidentally, a baseball-themed episode of Psych, and have finally got around to writing them up.

Breath.

On to some baseball cards!

Ahh, prospects. Except, these prospect aren't so much anymore. Manny Machado came on in August and killed it for Baltimore. Harper was up by May (two weeks before I moved back to Syracuse - way to get hurt, Zimmerman). Billy Hamilton was a September call-up and was pretty much just a blur - possibly the fastest man in baseball right now.

Xander Bogaerts, Jurickson Profar and Starling Marte. Xander easily wins the Greatest Name in the Baseball award, while also being one of the best prospects in baseball. Jurickson Profar made a name for himself during the Futures Game this year in Kansas City when he smoked one out to right field - and again when he homered in his first major league game a couple months later - in his first at-bat. 

The MiLB All-Stars fall 1:3. They're pretty nice for a six-per-box insert, with a solid design and all-star player selection. I was quite happy to pull both Marte and my man AJ Jimenez, a baby Jay catcher who'll probably be fast-tracked to the MLB with the outsourcing of Toronto's catchers of late.

The gold-border parallels fall one-per-box and are numbered to 50 copies. Coincidentally, mine were both of Mets farmhands.

 Of course, I had to sneak in some more blue-chip prospects before the hits come. Deal with it.

...and some more. I was a bit disappointed Hak-Ju Lee wasn't pictured in a Montgomery Biscuits uniform, but the Charleston Rock Crabs aren't too bad, either.

Here, you jackals. Here are the autographs from box one. As you can see, nothing spectacular. Yet. I am going to do a  bit of digging on these guys eventually.

Soooo, this is my second Hutchison autograph from this set. Why second? After I purchased the boxes on 12/10, I figured there was no way, even though I would be pulling in four autographs from these boxes - that one would be my main man Drew Hutchison. So of course, towards the end of box two. That guy fell out. Also, the Sean Buckey is a gold variation, inserted something like 1:196. No big deal.

There are also relics inserted 2:box, and I was lucky enough to land ANOTHER gold parallel (/50), this time of an Xavier Avery bat. Junior Lake was the second bat card, both of these coming from the first box. I also pulled a Mike Adams jersey from box two, but in the haste to scan and post the next card, it must have been lost on the cutting/blogging room floor.

Boom! A Will Middlebrooks manufactured cap patch from the Pawtucket Red Sox. What a beaut. This is a very thick card, thick enough as to replace six cards in a pack. Awesomely enough, it was sandwiched between Bryce Harper and Noah Syndergaard base cards. What a pack that was. There is some mystery as to the insertion ratios of the cap patches, but I watched in the neighborhood of seven box-break viedoes of this product, and along with my two boxes, I saw three of these pulled. So my best guess is one in every three boxes, so it's a solid hit, but not nearly as rare as the gold relics or autos that I also pulled. Yes, this is me rubbing it in.

Blue Jays! I mean, Fisher Cats! I managed to piece together the entire base set, which means I was able to see all of the Jays cards. Drew and AJ are some of my favorites, but I haven't heard much of anything about Deck since he was drafted...so I am not expecting much more than a bullpen arm out of him.

By piecing the base set together, I also got a pile of no-longer-Blue Jays. I was sad to see Sundergaard go, not nearly as much as d'Arnaud however. I am hoping d'Arnaud is going to kill it in Queens, he's got the skill set and the work ethic, I just hope his knee is all healed up. I was never super-high on Nicolino, who for some reason isn't pictured as one of the Lansing Three. I suppose Topps just wanted to throw a Vancouver Canadiens card in. Fine by me.

So that's it. I am so happy that I bought & busted these boxes. I have a lot of base card doubles, so if you're interested in acquiring some of your future collection needs, let me know, and I will be happy to share.

Goodnight everyone.

Oh, hell yes.

Stay tuned, comrades. Going to be a fun night.