06 July 2014

What eBay Hath Wrought 89: One Piece at a Time


One cool thing about NASCAR memorabilia cards is that there is so much stuff to put in relic cards. In addition to all the gear the drivers wear, there are a lot of parts that go into a race car that can be cut up and embedded in a card. This is a card I had been tracking pretty much since the checklist was released, a 2014 Press Pass Total Memorabilia Clear Cuts Danica Patrick race-used windshield card. As far as I know, windshields hadn't been used in relic cards until this product hit the shelves.

The first thing I noticed upon opening the mailer was that this card is thick! I'm thinking that it's about as thick as one of those manufactured ring relics that Topps puts in their baseball products. I know I've got one of those ring manu-relics around here somewhere, but I don't know where it is. Anyway, the card is thick. Update: While sorting cards into boxes I found a manu-ring relic from 2014 Topps Baseball and measured it next to the windshield card. The windshield card was at least double the thickness of the manu-ring relic card. The next thing I noticed was that the corners are pretty dinged up, something which unfortunately seems to be pretty common with these thick, heavily-foiled inserts. My copy is # 082 / 175.

As usual, there is a more limited version of the card numbered out of # / 25, which I has actually been chasing because those cards contain parts of the windshield where the clear plastic transitions to shaded plastic so there is a two-color windshield relic, kind of like getting a multicolored patch or pinstripe on your baseball relic card.

I've gotten behind on my card sorting and storing, as I ran out of empty 5000-count boxes. I finally unloaded another of the unsorted ones and expanded the sorted cards into it, so I could at least get caught up on my new 2014 stuff. I've had a few trade offers on Zistle and I don't want to accept any of them for fear that the cards I am trading for are sitting in an unsorted pile on my desk. I found what appeared to be a blaster box worth of Bowman off among my comic book statues that I had completely forgotten about, and it cut my want list from the Bowman Chrome Prospects set almost in half. It was just sitting over there and I had no clue.

To help pass the time while sorting I have been trying to catch some baseball on MLB.TV. Tonight I watched the Blue Jays vs. the A's and the tail end of the Astros vs. the Angels. I have had a hard time choosing whether I want the A's or the Blue Jays to win in this series as both have many of my favorite players on their rosters. The A's have won the last three games, and so I've been kind of pulling for the Blue Jays as the seeming underdogs in this match-up. I've been listening to the A's feed, though, and watched the press conference introducing Jeff Samardzija to the team. The A's announcers seemed to really rag on Munenori Kawasaki during the game, and expressed that the Blue Jays really need to replace him at 2nd base. It's all pretty true, but I felt a bit offended and angry at them for saying it. Samardzija is pitching tomorrow for the A's, so I think the Blue Jays may get swept in the four-game series. I need Samardzija to do well anyway, since I have him on a couple of my fantasy baseball rosters.

The Astros were up 5-1 at one point on the Angels, and Scott Feldman left with a 5-2 lead after six innings. After 55 minutes, 74 pitches, 14 batters, and 3 home runs, the Astros bullpen finally closed out the 7th inning down 5-10. The Angels would put up another run in the 8th to make up the final score, 5-11. It wound up not being the greatest baseball watching night for me, but when you're an Astros fan that kind of comes with the territory.

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