Not always baseball, not always "Blue" Jays

I don't expect too many pageviews today. It's one of those family holidays, you know.

You should all go outside and enjoy the what-seems-like-Spring weather out there. I mean it. I won't be offended.

A couple years ago I started a fantasy baseball league at the University at Buffalo, where I completed my master's in - can you guess what? in May of last year. We were always away from our families, mine being across New York, two from New Hampshire, one not close with his family, Maine by way of Orono, and I added some high school and undergrad friends - one with the NAVY in Mississippi displaced from his family in Connecticut, and others from my hometown uprooted in Pennsylvania, Texas, New York City and other far away dreamlands. Last season, one of our league strongmen moved all the way to Singapore for a post-doc at a Volcano Observatory. Sweet gig, amiright?

We always drafted the evening before the season started, watching the Opening Night game projected in the Climatology office/grade student office, grilling hot dogs on a George Foreman-esque grill and drinking Budweiser out of flag cans. To me, the Easter season became less about hiding eggs and eating ham (which I eat almost every week anyways) and a lot about missing my buddies from the past decade-and-a-half.

Needless to say, I scheduled our draft during all three of my localish families festivities for today. I felt like I owed it to my old friends to be present. My Easter family, if you will.

__

Sorry about that. I had been guilt tripped a bit by some extended family, and I wanted to get that off my chest a little.

Now, on to some cardboard.

I've wanted to add something different to this blog, and aside from my other less-conventional antics, one of those things was adding a bit more of a hockey presence to the local community.

Hopefully, 85% of you haven't tuned out at this point.

This is a Zach Parise dual relic, in wonderful Devil's red, supplied to me by mostly Hockey-oriented blog Cardboard Conundrum. If you like hockey or have Cubs or Texans cards to unload, He can take them. He also rips a ton of product that I couldnt afford with my old budget allocations, so maybe we can spark up another trade, soon.

I am a sucker for anything Parise after I drafted him LAST overall as a sophomore in college in one of my first hockey leagues, and he and Evgeni Malkin carried me to a Championship over my die-hard Sabres fan roommate.

Also included was this premium UD Ice - probably one of the best-looking sets ever - Rookie /999 of Jason Zucker. I mean that thing is sexy. 

Always a Maple Leafs fan, I have taken a liking to the Minnesota Wild with their signing of Zach Parise last summer. It took a long time to click, but they're been on a hot streak of late - until the last couple of awful games.

If the name Jason Zucker sounds familiar, this is probably why: Not cool, Corey Perry. 

Zucks has since been sent to AHL Houston (kind of like the Blue Jays getting sent to Las Vegas) to get more ice team. It worked with Nazem Kadri.

I sent Matt a hockey Hall of Fame relic, a baseball Hall of Fame relic, and a Sidney Crosby, dual-color  Artifacts (just like the Parise) jersey, and thus I was rewarded with quite the haul.

I mentioned this one briefly in trade talks before, and said it was optional to throw it in.

He threw it in anyways, and I am glad to see it. This is my only soccer relic after selling off a Landon Donovan jersey ($!) a few years back, and it's a good one.

Might also be one of my first ever orange jersey swatches.

Very cool.

But of course, there was baseball. First, some more orange:

I've decided that I must have all of these Bowman's Best cards, prospects and pros. The 2011 effort was much, much better than the 2012. 

I've also started building up a nice cache of Manny Machado cards. No big deal.

We finished my adding one more rookie, but this one much more significant to me, but also a third baseman with an elite ceiling, defensive flair, and a solid line-drive bat. I am babbling at this point to maintain the integrity of the formatting of this post. It's getting kind of difficult. Oh well, another bite of my coconut cake donut and a sip of my Caribou Blend coffee.

That's a damn fine cup of coffee you have here made of Caribou. And damn fine cherry pie.

Oh right, baseball cards:

Hey! Brett Lawrie! He's kind of awesome, eh?

Has anyone else notcied that pretty much every serviceable third baseman is injured right now? I have. In my drafts I've been grabbing Freese, Headley and Lawrie on the cheap because people are passing them up.

The season is won at the end of the year, dingus, not April.

Matt also included a quite-awesome autograph of a unique Blue Jays prospect in Justin Jackson.

I say unique because Justin is currently undertaking the Sergio Santos experiment. Sergio struggled in the minors as a hitter, but his arm was always an impressive tool. Seeing what they possibly had in him, the White Sox sent him to A-ball in hopes of converting him to a pitcher. The Blue Jays waited for the White Sox to sign him to a team-friendly deal, and made a trade of mega-bust Zach Stewart for him.

Jackson seems to like his conversion to the mound so far. I wish him the best, both from a Blue Jays fan's sake and buying up a bunch of his cards for cheap as he toils in the very low minors.

I've grown quite a liking to the TriStar ProspectsPlus autographs from whatever season this is. I currently have Justin Jackson, Brett Cecil and JP Arencibia. I just love black cards with autographs.

Anyways - Matt, thanks for the huge trade. I think more jersey material moved from here to North Dakota than cardboard. 

Cannot wait for the next one.

Cheers.

Catching up on some Puma Box additions.

If you're curious as to what goes in the Puma Box, look approximate right here^.

I've been busy on ebay lately. While some good Blue Jays and Puma Box players cards have been popping up, and aside for Drew Hutchisons' recent in demand cards (what the hell?) - most have been easily attained.* However, my concentration lately has been mostly on prospecting and exploiting market inefficiencies. More on the second one, later.

First, in the parlance of our times, some bloody hockey:

Don't ever leave me again, hockey. Also, sorry, Puckheads, this is the last hocker card you'll be seeing in this post. Total cardstock tease, eh?

Sepia refractors are just great. This one came with a heaping wad of scotch tape stuck to the back. FUN!

Someone will be receiving that top loader in a trade as protection to USPS' shipping calamities.

Keeping with the refractor them,e, here's DJ Davis, the Jays' #1 from the 2012 Domestic Draft. There's a lot to like about Davis, especially this solid pose. And he's really, really fast.

From the (not same) Bowman Chrome set is a bangin' John-Paul Arencibia gold refractor. If you do not possess a goldie yet, go angrily type in your favourite player's name into ebay with "gold refractor" added on. You'll be glad you did. PS, they're numbered to /50, and are usually a steal as everyone else is blinded by the eyesore superfractorz.

"Hey everone, I found JP again, and he brought his BRO, Brett Lawrie."

If someone says this to you at a party, leave. If you don't you run the risk of winding up in a life-and-death match of drunken badmitton or fleeing across the Arizona-Mexico border while JP and Brett are doing whippets and pounding Red Bull in the back of a stolen Scirocco.

And some prospectin'. Francisco Lindor is one of my targets right now, and also a non-Blue Jay cornerstone to my Puma Box. I enjoy 2012 Bowman Sterling quite a bit, and Lindor's penmanship is excellent. Oh, and he's projected to be a hell of a shortstop in coming years in Cleveland, too.

More mail coming soon. Should have been coming today, but apparently delivery confirmation just...doesn't work anymore.

*I apologize for the dreadful punctuation in this sentence. But you're not Mrs. Edkin, my 9th grade English teacher, so kindly piss off if it bothers you. By the way - my high school English (and history) teachers practically begged me to go to college for journalism. I should have listened to them.

Last Second Additions:

1. I just added a new banner. I love Brett Lawrie ('s life).
2. Something else.

2012-2013 Upper Deck Artifacts Hockey

So I was feeling classy the other night and decided I wanted to rip some packs. I knew '12 Bowman Chrome (baseball) and '12-'13 UD Artifacts (my favourite annual hockey release) had come out recently, and I was curious. So I went to Target (classy, right? The lack of "local cards stores" around here is insufferable) and luckily (?) found blasters of Artifacts and Bowman Chrome (which also had $1/card loose packs, fffthat). Like a dumbass, I grabbed one of each and a stack of eight 2010 Topps Chrome marked down to $1.59per, hopefully curing my itch to rip for a few weeks (so far it has.)

I ripped through the Artifacts blaster quickly, even with the impossible-to-open packs snagging on the corner of every card. Usually I put the cards right back into the pack, but they posed a serious threat to the condition of the cards pretty much immediately and ripped to shreds incapable of holding cards in the future - so all forty cards went into a nice, clean, inky-smelling stack. 

Initially I wasn't impressed. $Twenty, 40 cards, all base and one parallel. I knew what I was in for when reading the insertion ratios on the box - plus, it's retail. I've just had so much luck with Artifacts in the past, that this was kind of a gut-punch to end up with 40 base cards in my first one of this year.

Since then, I have sifted through the 39 going to complete my set many times.

They're beautiful. That's all there really is to say.

#29 - George Parros' Cookie Duster

The cards scanned very brightly - but that's because there is a brilliant white background, with Artifact's trademarked skate-grooves-in-ice background. The background pattern is the same on every base card - and it would be nice to see this changed up a bit, but it is no deal-breaker.

The hatched foil is perfect. The team logo has a good deal of detail for being the size that it is, but the foil-name-on-foil-border makes it only readable from a certain angle. The checklist makes up for this, though - as you'll know most of the 100 players (both legends and active players by their picture. If you're a hockey fan, you'll recognize everyone in the set. The only name I had to look at out of the 39 bases was Cam Fowler.

#14 - Dale Hawerchuk (Back)

The backs are quite nice. Brilliant white behind six or less seasons and a subtle gray team logo in the background. Artifacts stays with the cool-blue feeling on all of the backs, and it works.

#99 - Zach Parise

It's fitting that the first card I saw was Zach Parise...but I have serious issues with this card. First, it is damaged - look to the bottom left of the foil.

Second, Artifacts - according to Upper Deck's website - was released on September 24th. Zach Parise signed with the Minnesota Wild on July 4th (AMERICA!).

Yet, he is labeled as a Devil, still. I'm fine with him being pictured as one - but come on. Switch up that foil logo for me. I'm dying to see him on my Wild and the lockout isn't helping me out at all.

                                     

#8 - Brett Hull

With the silver foil and gray-and-brilliant white background, the colours in the jerseys really pop in this set, as evidenced by this Brett Hull in the '90 Saint Louis Blues primary colour extravaganza. 

But don't worry. In our colourful day-and-age, we haven't forgotten the archaic times:

#37 - Jean Beliveau

...a beauty from the sixties. Something odd about the legends cards - some are pictured in All-Star jerseys (Jagr, Sakic) and some feature the players on their teams (Hull and Twist are wearing Blues sweaters, Coffey is pictured as a Penguin). This goes for active players, too - as I look through the set: Naslund and Selanne are all-stars, others are not. UD couldn't seem to make up their mind, or I've been short-printed and I don't know it.

#35 - Jaromir Jagr Sapphire Parallel 06/85

Well, it's close to a hit. These are relatively rare, and the blue looks great. Maybe because it's a Ranger card. I'm not a huge fan, or a fan at all, of Jagr. So it goes...I'll be looking for a  nice home for this one.

There are a lot fo pros to this set: great use of colours and lack of colours, a simple and classy design, well-executed foil, and a checklist full of household names. Okay, maybe a southern Ontario household.

However, there are some issues: the foil is easily damaged by the inflated-yet-suffocating foil packs, the emerald parallels look ghastly on all teams except the Stars and Wild and while the checklist is full of stars, at only 100 players it is difficult to inserts everyone's favourites - but you're saved from cards of blokes like Blake Geoffrion and Chris Butler.

Overall, I really enjoy this set. I'd like to purchase I nice hobby box and grab some of the hits, but I'm more interested in a nice binder set with these. There are some issues, but it's definitely worth it's retail price.