january nue jays (and a...cub?)

I went a little overboard in January.

Overboard might be a bit of an overstatement. But I did manage to rough up some of my current Blue Jays collections, and even managed to add one (pictured above) of a Blue Jay that use to be a Chicago Cubs. And an Oakland Athletic Elephant.

In case you haven't figured out who it is yet:

It's Josh Donaldson! Donaldson was originally drafted by the Cubs in 2007, and was traded to Oakland in that blockbuster Matt Murton/Rich Harden deal. He was then traded to the Blue Jays on Black Friday, 2014.

Oh, and then he won an MVP award.

Donaldson was also part of a rather large purchase I made from The Dimwit, who's doing some fun box breaks over at the Iron Lion. Join in on the fun.

In the lot there was this woody Dosh:

Without logos, Panini can really waste some space on a card. I didn't really aim to add these Donaldsons this month, they just happened to cross my path. Further down, you'll see what brought me to the lot.

I did, however, intend to add some new Marcus Stroman, but was limited in what I found that really interested me. And the first wasn't a Blue Jays card at all.

I'm coming around to Topps Now, but have little interest in using the website to acquire them. This is the only one I have so far, but there's one commemorating Stroman's first MLB HR this summer in Atlanta that I'd love to find at a reasonable price.

But this one was, and it came with his friend Josh. I won a decent relic lot, mostly as trade bait, that happened to have both of these and about four more. Any Eric Hosmer and Jose Abreu collectors out there?

Back to the Dimwit lot, and my apologies for bouncing around so much in this one.

My second Bautista auto and first multi/jersey relic. Someone (a saint, probably) sent me a Bowman's Best bat card of him wayyy back in the day, while he was still a Pirate. While never a stronghold of my collection, my Jose Bautista cards are actually pretty solid.

Anyways, on to what brought me to the Dimwit lot, before I wrap up the Blue Jays vets.

Roberto Alomar:

Diamond Kings was solid this year, but again, plenty of wasted space.

For being on some gaudy foil board, these are actually quite nice and my first foray into the Panini HOF cards. With the zoomed in photos, there's at least some salvaging of the excess space, though.

There, you go! Bringing back Donruss Elite was a big win for me. I just wish it was serial numbered to a super-low /999 copies, though.

Anyways. On to the big one:

That, amigos, is my first Roberto Alomar autograph. On-card and everything. It's not the best version of his auto and there's no Blue Jays logo to be found, but this is surely a star in my collection right now.

From old to new, Toronto's current second baseman also made an appearance as well:

This one is from 2015 Onyx Platinum (that doesn't make any sense.) Onyx made some nice-looking cards, without MLB or MLBPA licenses it seems, but the stock is flimsy and they seem to have disappeared.

Baby Jays

Kevin Smith was Toronto's 4th rounder (5th pick) in 2017 and had a really great start with rookie-level Bluefield, hitting 13 HR, batting .268 with a .874 OPS in 54 games.

Smith was the second SS Toronto drafted this season, just after this guy:

I'm going hard after Logan Warmoth cards, and this Panini Elite Extra Edition came pretty cheaply considering it's limited to /75.  It's die-cut, but...hardly. EEE shows you what Panini can do with licensing, and the verdict is that it's quite good.

This one came deceptively cheap as well, around $5. In comparison, his Bowman Draft green refractor often goes $40+ for a card that's also limited to /99.

I also managed to spend $5 in one shot on these Lourdes Gurriel, Jr cards:

Two from 2016 Bowman...

And an orange refractor from 2017 Platinum, which is rather ghastly to be honest.

And this autograph from 2017 Bowman's Best only set me back about $3-4.

The true steal came in the form of Nate Pearson, though, with this 2017 Leaf Valiant Black limited to just /5.

That is, unless your into SIC MOSH MOJO HITZ though:

You've been here long enough, so here's a patch from Panini Elite Extra Edition that could choke a horse. This one is also limited to five copies, and features a Blue Jay face. Apparently you can't print the logos on the card but you can smash part of one into a small window. Sure, why not?

november nue jays (pre-comc binge)

The weather is cooling, and the singles from ebay keep trickling in. I've been more busy and avoiding retail strores as much as possible, so there hasn't been any ripping to speak of since the Topps Fire hate rip and the Heritage Minors, but there's always something interesting worth discussing, as long as I can find some images to keep the attention.

First up is the Stroman above, which, I didn't think I could hate a Marcus Stroman card...but there it is. I am yet to find a redeeming quality to 2017 Topps. I truly believe it's the worst flagship they've ever put out.

While I don't like Gypsy Queen so much either, the Glassworks box toppers from 2017 caught my attention, and Marcus was the lone Blue Jay from the checklist.

This monster is a 3x5" on a refractor board. It's a great-looking card, but on the back there is the token Topps "Congratulations" spiel. Stop congratulating me for buying your product, you pompous assbutts.

Keeping with Blue Jays pitchers, I've started working on a PC of TJ Zeuch, their first rounder from the 2016 draft.

This insert from Bowman Chrome basically just features where the player was originally drafted and where they were drafted and signed. In 2013 Zeuch went 924th overall, but in 2016, he was a first-rounder at 21st. It's a fair enough concept for a card and fits the Bowman brand. The colors in this insert are also unique, so it was an easy purchase.

He also wrote his name on it for some reason.

From Z to A.

I think this came out of 2017 Topps, possibly making it the only redeeming quality of this year's "effort." For the record, 1987 Topps was seven years old by the time Anthony Alford was born in Columbia, Mississippi in 1994, and Major League Baseball went on stike less than thirty days later.

To another A, Rick Ankiel. I have a low-key Ankiel collection, along with other players that were huge prospects at the time but along the way something went wrong, and their cardboard is now virtually worthless.

That's pretty much how I came into finally owning a Pacific Cramer's Choice card. This one is from 2000 or 2001 though, so it's not one of the originals with a gem-like appearance.

Still big, though:

I used a 2017 Bowman's Best of Anthony Alford, also autographed, to show off the size. The seller was kind enough to include a top loader, but I don't think soft sleeves exist for cards this big. Man, it's loud.

I've also been going though a bit of a 2017 Bowman High Tek binge now that the price has plummeted. High Tek offers awful reward for your money for breakers, and I'm taking advantage of that through ebay, pumping up my Lourdes Gurriel, Jr. collection.

Here's the base (left) and the autograph (right.)

Upon closer inspection, the autographed one is a diffractor, but since it's unnumbered, it fell through the cracks as a base auto for around the price of a pack of Gypsy Queen. Add another parallel to the pile.

Not to be confused, of course, with this Tidal Diffractor, which is numbered out of /199:

Right. So all of those look pretty much the same, but the final one has the "Tidal" pattern, which looks more like a simplified hurricane or whirlpool. I may further expunge upon this in the future, using photographs instead of scans.

Tek autos are reasonably priced on the secondary, as long as you don't go too hard into the parallels. Somehow, I managed to pick up the Bo Bichette (base) in a lot for an extremely reasonable price along with Sean Newcomb, Anderson Espinoza and Jorge Mateo (Tidal Diffractor.)

As November churned on, I finished out the Black Friday-Cyber Monday weekend with a few more additions. It only resulted in one auction that put cards in my hand before the end of the month, though, and that was these:

So, Topps Gallery is a thing again, but it doesn't' have to be. Especially when you're just putting shitty instagram filters on Getty Images. Want to resurrect a great Topps set? Bring back the original Topps Stars.

With that being said, I'm done with 2017 Topps Gallery.

But let's not end on that negative (though I do like the Alfords.)

You may have noticed the scans of the Bowman High Tek are...bad. I experimented with a couple methods, such as directly on the glass (above) and on top of a small snapcase. The answer to a good-looking Tek scan? Put it right in the snapcase and put it on the glass:

And there you have it, a 2017 Bowman High Tek Bo Bichette diffractor (/199) in all of it's holographic glory.

Stay hard, friends.

2014 Stadium Club Blue Jays Team Set

2014 Stadium Club was too expensive. Topps, in general, is too expensive. 

There. I got that out of the way.

Yet when it comes to base cards, we can always wait a few months and take advantage of disappointed case breakers and prey upon junk, worthless, common cards. The nerve Topps has putting base cards to fill up these packs and waste time getting to these ultra mojo hits. The nerve, indeed.

For a couple weeks I perused ebay, waiting for a reasonably priced (read: offensively cheap) Blue Jays team set.

$3.49 later, I was rewarded. Sort of.

You see, the cards look great. Every thing that made Stadium Club great: great photos, nice color, a good sheen and no borders.

Except Topps decided to put all their energy into the mojo, and in turn printed these cards on fortune cookie paper.

So it goes.

I'll start with Robert Allen Dickey, the knuckleballer. Dickey is a cool dude, but I'll be supremely disappointed if he starts Opening Day again in 2015. He's league average now. But well above replacement in terms of style with that baller Canada Day jersey and high socks. I'm pretty sure he got smoked that day, too.

Rule #45 of card blogging" always show the backs. Someone out there cares. Edwin is a good player for this chore - if nothing else you can appreciate those numbers that so few non-Blue Jays folks see day in day out. The backs look good, too, but you'd better be careful you don't stick your finger tips through the cheap card stock. 

Any post on this page is incomplete without my boy Marcus Stroman, who should be the Blue Jays ace. In a way he already is, but we don't need to place that label on him already. This is a pretty generic pose, though, and a weak effort from Topps. That said, I'll still be chasing his autograph in this set - pretty much the only Blue Jays insert to be found.

Gone, but never forgotten. I'll miss Brett, but Josh D. is an overwhelmingly better baseball player. This is a great shot - one I'd like to cal a pitcher shot - as its zoomed in close enough to give you the feeling of being on the mound while Brett makes a routine throw across the diamond which inevitably sails into the sets behind first base. 

Quite possibly the greatest Blue Jays card of all time. At least 2014. Jose Reyes. DIRT. I love dirt. I miss dirt. I miss Jose. I miss baseball.

But it's just...it's not the best baseball card of 2014. It may be number two, but number one is so far ahead.

So far ahead, so far away. There was never a competition. 

Its this.

Doc. 

Dad jeans and all. 

Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the background. 

Struggle face. 

The faintest glimpse of a smile.

The very heart and soul of every one of the Blue Jays faithful. In one baseball card. 

A Blue Jay for one last day. One last pitch. 

Thank you for everything, Roy. 

Love, Roy. 

will there ever be a rainbow

Yeah, I'm still here. I still have baseball cards, still like baseball cards and especially baseball itself, and am still collecting. So, no worries there.

But things change. Priorities move around, budgets are crunched, hobbies are malleable. So while not posting with anything resembling regularity, I'm still here. Just quiet.

And kind of angry. Mostly angry because Stadium Club is back, and Topps absolutely whiffed on their own concept for a set. But that's a post for another time. This post is about young baseballers and chasing rainbows. 

Other bloggers are rather sore about the rookie card, and even base cards for that matter, rainbows. And that's fine. They all like Allen & Ginter's, which is a totally bullshit gimmick set. So to each their own. 

I like the rainbows. They indeed are something to chase, and I've got some in the works.

These have been easier to come by than I originally thought. You're looking at the refractor and the base chrome of Aaron Sanchez.

Aaron Sanchez is very good at throwing baseballs.

So is this guy, and they just so happen to be very good friends:

Stroman cards have blown up in pricing of late. It's pretty disappointing. His cards were super cheap until he debuted and smoked the competition. Marcus has plenty of enjoyable facial expressions, and this card captures that quite well.

Roberto Osuna has sort of been lost in the Blue Jays' young pitching armada, and that's fine. He had Tommy John surgery in 2013, so he's fallen a bit behind. Pretty sure he's only about 20 years old, too. Also - 2014 Bowman Inception is a beauty.

2014 Sterling, however, was some hot garbage. Knee deep in rapidly dissolving refraction. Mondesi is even younger than Osuna. Look it up. 

So that's where I am. I needed to start somewhere. So I did.

See you soon.

Less Talk, More Rock Shoulders: Three Boxes of 2013 Heritage Minors

Alternate title: Friday, Served Blackened

Black Friday rolled around after a tiring few days of Thanksgiving preparation and nearly drowning myself in delicious craft brews. After two Thanksgivings and a rather beautiful, yet tiring Christmas Tree search, I returned home to the great shithole of Syracuse, New York to browse some post-Black Friday deals.

Lo an behold, Dave & Adam's Card World (from the beautiful Buffalo, New York) had a hell of one:

Boxes of 2013 Topps Heritage Minors for $33/each and free shipping over $100. Sold, sold and sold. 

Here's the results:

Base

The base cards are the exact same style and stock of your MLB-released Heritage. But they're better, because they don't have dicknoses like Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Braun on them.

Here's some fresh-faced lads you may be hearing about very soon. I'm a big fan of the vertically-challenged Marcus Stroman (#hdmh) Greg Z at The Plaschke is already an admirer of Corey Seager and Byron Buxton - last year's #2 overall pick but likely tenfold more valuable than Mark Appel has the heart of prospectors throughout the hobby.

DJ Davis is very, very fast. And Rock Shoulders is, well, ROCK FUCKING SHOULDERS.

Parallels

In all, I came away with 8 black parallels /96. That's pretty awesome considering /99 parallels in Topps Mothership tend to fall at a case break ratio. Also cloaked in jet blackness: Miles Head (TB), Jonathan Schoop (BAL), Trevor May (MIN), Jonathan Singleton (HOU), Gorman Erickson (LAD) and Stefan Romero (SEA). 

Venezuelans fall 1:box. The odds are slightly better than than, but I made out with three of them. I believe they're relatively more rare than the black, so I was pretty excited to get a stellar prospect in Javier Baez. Also pulled Ryan O'Sullivan and Cesar Hernandez, both in the Philadelphia Phillies puke pile of an organization.

Inserts

I love the Road to the Show insert set. Aside from the checklist highlighting the tops players in the system, the set features short-season players (for the most part) and the logos of their system on the way up, starting with High A (upper left), AA (lower left) and AAA (lower right.)

I chose two Blue Jays here - DJ Davis again and Aaron Sanchez. I also added Alen Hanson - because who doesn't love a toolsy second baseman? (Looks in mirror admiringly.) These are three players I see myself collecting in the coming years. 

Hell, I need someone after the departure of JP Arencibia (RIP) and the implosion of the Blue Jays after 2014.

Here's some Francisco (<3) Lindor in '13 Heritage form. I'm glad he was depicted as a Mudcat - but the didn't spend much time there in 2013. By mid-summer he was an Akron Aeros, which are now the Akron Rubber Ducks, which is wayyyy cooler than it sounds. 

ZOMG MOJO!!!1

 Obligatory autographs of middling prospects! Wee! The prospect auto checklist for this was weak, so I didn't expect much. Typical Topps trolling me with Yankees prospects, a KC Royals prospect auto because KC pitching prospect multiply when they get wet, and creepy-ass Chad Bettis, or should I say, creepy-ass Lenny van Dohlen.

Brett Bochy showing 8-grade pitcherface, Mike Freeman looking like my master's adviser and Anthony Garcia, who I have no comment for whatsoever.

So, I guess this is a "hit." Relics fall 1:box. This is the only "relic" I received. Colorado Springs Sky Sox are the AAA Pacific Coast League affiliate of the Colorado Rockies. Excellent travel accommodations, I assume. 

Blech. A redemption for a basic relic? Just don't put the card in the set. At least Davidson is a prospect that has "made it." He played 31 games with Arizona in 2013, and based on the depth chart and departure of Fan Favorite (TM) Willie Bloomquist, should have a nice hold on the position going into 2014. That is, if he shows enough #grit. 

I mentioned there were three boxes, but we see only tro (or one?) relics above. This is why:

 

MOAR ROCK FUCKING SHOULDERS

Keep your worthless codpiece relics of light-hitting middle infilders, Topps. Give me more of this.

I've been trying to land this card for under $15 since the release of the set. All it took was to get it for good was three $33 boxes! HAHA SUCK IT TOPPS.

Wait.

Dammit.

Anyways.

The Rock Fucking Shoulders (TM) wasn't the last hit. This was pretty cool, too:

Yep. That's my first printing plate. And I like it. I like the player (light hitting middle infielders for the win!) In case you cannot tell, this is World Series Hero (bahahahaha) Kolten Wong. A much-less irritating Hawaiian than Shane Victorino, for what it's worth. This is definitely less creepy than most yellow printing plates that I see.

Here's the back, since old folks like the Night Owl like that sort of thing:

Just kidding, Greg. I like card backs, too.

While you likely won't find any boxes of this for the $33 price tag that I did, I highly recommend this one. Topps didn't muff it up with pictured of dead presidents and walking dead Yankees, so it's a pretty fun open. Hits, though underwhelming, fall at a solid rate and the player selection in the base set is very well balanced. Go get some. Treat yo'self.