At the Trade Deadline 43: I Got Zippy-Zapped

A few days ago I got an unexpected bubble mailer in my mailbox. That's not entirely unheard of, but I am always suspicious that maybe I ordered something and forgot about it. I opened it up and found a familiar phrase on a card taped to one in a stack of several (re)packs of cards. I'd been Zippy Zapped!

Zippy Zapping is the calling card of the aptly-named Zippy Zappy from the blog Cervin' Torren' Up Cards. He's been pretty active on the Zippy Zapping front lately, as there have been quite a few reported Zippy Zappings around the blogs over the last week or so.

There are a few things you can almost always find in a typical Zippy Zapping. One of the main things is prospects. He is a fan of the Long Staten Island Yankees, but he carries a vast knowledge of the farm systems of most teams in baseball. I spend a lot of my time after receiving a package from him doing research, as I don't know nearly enough about even my favorite teams' prospects, let alone the prospects in any other system. I didn't scan all of the cards he sent, but I looked at a few lists of the Astros' top prospects and made sure to scan some guys from the Top 10. A.J. Reed is the up and comer who is rumored to be waiting in the wings if Jon Singleton can't get his bat together pretty quickly. Singleton is one of the guys I collect, so I am hoping he can hit well enough to keep Reed in the minors for a while still. 

Carlos Correa was last year's darling, playing his way to the AL Rookie of the Year award. Zippy Zappy included some nice cardboard of the young shortstop, including some prospect cards, a nice Diamond Kings card I hadn't seen yet, and his Heritage card from the 2015 High Numbers set. I haven't started a Correa PC yet, but I probably should. I guess I prefer to collect prospects like Singleton who haven't lived up to the hype. Their prices are lower.

These 2014 Bowman Draft Picks and Prospects Black parallels were all in sleeves with tags priced in Japanese Yen. I am pretty sure these parallels are from the Asia-exclusive version of the product, which includes several color variations not available in your standard Bowman product.

These brightly-colored parallels are all serially-numbered, with that Vincent Velasquez Prizm Draft card being an eBay 1 / 1, numbered # 001 / 100. It's the first one in the print run, yo! The other guys feature more pedestrian serial numbers. Velasquez is the only name I really recognize in this group, although Joshua Magee seems like I remember him in some back part of my brain.

Probably to keep my head from exploding at the sight of so many prospects, Zippy Zappy also included a number of cards featuring old guys from the Astros franchise, like Bagwell, Berkman, Qualls, and Tejada. There were others, but I have become a lazy scanner in my old age. My main memory from this group is drafting Tejada in fantasy baseball for a couple years after he was useful. I do a lot of dumb things in fantasy baseball, but luckily other players also are irrationally attached to players who have outlasted their usefulness or are prone to chasing prospects too early. Everyone has a weakness.

And here are some guys who contributed to the Astros' big run last year. I especially like seeing the progression of Keuchel's beard. I think Evan Gattis is still my favorite Astro, even though I don't really collect his cards like I should. It's hard to divert myself from my Singleton collection even to chase my favorite player on the team. I've gone too far down the rabbit hole.

Another Zippy Zappy signature is SEGA Card-Gen cards from Japan. The video game associated with these cards was discontinued, though, so these have all but disappeared from the usual acquisition channels. Zippy Zappy himself has announced that his supply is drying up. These are some of my favorite cards, so I am extremely grateful that he sent me three of them from his diminishing inventory. The 2010 and 2011 sets are not well-represented in my collection, so I was very happy to get two cards from 2011 in Wilton Lopez and Carlos Lee and a card of star pitcher Roy Oswalt from the 2010 set.

I didn't scan everything that Zippy Zappy sent, but I did scan a little of everything he sent. I am super grateful for the packages I receive from other bloggers and I do my best to pay it forward in the packages I send out. Zippy Zappy is one of the bloggers I am indebted to, as he has dropped some really nice cardboard bombs on me. Thank you!

A Six-Pack of SEGA Card-Gen Rare Foils

I picked up a few nice SEGA Card-Gen cards recently from an eBay seller. They are from different years, but all hail from the Rare subset, which have a foil background on the front and better game stats on the back than they do on the base cards. The Joe Mauer card comes from the 2013 set and the Ryan Zimmerman card is from the 2012 issue.

These first couple feature Joe Mauer and Ryan Zimmerman. I don't necessarily collect either of these guys but I couldn't pass these up, especially when taking combined shipping into consideration. Joe Mauer is a pretty popular dude, and Ryan Zimmerman has had a pretty good career although it seems like he's been derailed a bit by injury.

I was pretty excited that this pair of guys were among the listings available for purchase. Mark Buehrle now plays for the Blue Jays, and seems to just keep trucking along. He was an All-Star last season and is 3-0 this year in spite of some rather pedestrian numbers. He won a ring with the White Sox in 2005, and he has been pitching in the majors since 2000.

Paul Konerko spent many years with the White Sox, and retired last season. He hit 439 home runs in his career and is scheduled to have his number retired by the White Sox next month. He also was on the Championship team of 2005. He was the face of the White Sox for many years.

Buehrle's card is from the 2011 SEGA Card-Gen set while Konerko's card comes from the 2013 set. I always like the descriptions on the back of the cards next to the player's total score. Buehrle is tagged as a '60 Feet Magician' due to his reliance on control and efficiency more than velocity, and Konerko is labeled as 'Dr. Batting Essential,' maybe because his bat was a bit more valuable than his glove.

These are the real gems of the lot for me. I was able to snag copies of Jose Bautista's 2011 and 2012 cards. He really came into his own in 2010 and 2011, blasting about 10 million home runs over those two seasons and ensuring that he would get a spot in this set.

His ratings increased over the two seasons, showing that the Card-Gen set changed from year to year based on player performance. Bautista is dealing with a bit of an injury right now, as he got into a rather heated exchange with the Orioles a couple of days ago and subsequently put a little too much emotion into a throw from the outfield, injuring himself in the process. But he did manage to knock a ball over the wall in response to being thrown behind, helping his team to win the game. The Orioles, Adam Jones in particular, had some words to say about Bautista watching the ball and flipping his bat after the home run, and the exchanges that went on got Bautista riled up enough to make the ill-advised throw that hurt him. I personally kind of like the celebrating and bat-flipping, especially if the batter has just gotten revenge for being thrown at, but the baseball establishment says that is a big no-no. I like Bautista and I like Adam Jones, so I'm not going to pick sides on this one. In the end Bautista and the Blue Jays won the game, and that's what really matters.