I Got it at Sportlots 7: The Stars Come Out on 2013 Opening Day

I've been trying to put a few 2013 sets to bed as the 2014 release schedule starts ramping up. One of my favorite sets of last year was the Blue parallel to 2013 Topps Opening Day. A little while ago I found a good-sized bunch of the remaining cards I need for the set on Sportlots. Much of what I had left to get were the cards of top players and big names. There were still a couple cards that I couldn't bring myself to pay the asking price for, so for now my binder pages have four open pockets waiting to be filled. You may recognize the names Mike Trout, Anthony Rizzo, Derek Jeter, and Manny Machado. I guess Rizzo is kind of the short man on that particular list, but the rest of those guys tend to draw some pretty big prices on all of their cards. Anyway, here are the cards that I did bring home (from the mailbox).

I like that McCutchen card quite a bit. The David Ortiz is a pretty nice one, too. I guess Josh Hamilton is still a big name, although my perception is that he hasn't lived up to the hype for the last little bit. The other three dudes aren't exactly household names, but they aren't scrubs, either.

The horizontal cards I picked up include a nice Evan Longoria and a sliding Miguel Cabrera, who appears to be out. I like that the ball is visible on the Longoria card. And if I'm not mistaken (which I may be), the catcher is the same dude on both cards. If I were running a blog like The 2014 Topps Blog I would do some research and find out for sure by locating the image in the archives and matching it to a box score from the game. But I am lazy and I need to go to bed, so I will just sit here and believe that the catcher is the same dude. You should really go and check out The 2014 Topps Blog, though, because there is some good stuff there. Once a Cub does some good work and really fleshes out the information behind the scenes of each card in the set.

Pack of the Day 64: 48 Dadgum Packs of 2013 Topps Opening Day

I got a good price on a gravity-feed box of 2013 Topps Opening Day, with 48 packs of the stuff. I was hoping to get some of the higher-priced Blue parallels out of the way and maybe some other exciting card, maybe an autograph or SP photo variation. Well, I really struck out on the Blue parallels. Out of the 10 parallels I pulled from the box, I only got one that I needed for my set, the infamous and easy-to-dislike Alex Roid-riguez.

I did also pull one of the photo variations, a James Shields press conference photo. The card I really want from this set is the R.A. Dickey press conference photo variation. They don't seem to pop up very often at all, and the single copy on eBay at the moment has been there forever because the seller wants about 3.5x the maximum price I would want to spend on it.

So it was a pretty disappointing box of cards to open. I knew the odds weren't great that I would pull a lot of stuff I needed, but I thought I'd pull a few more Blue parallels from my list than I did. Oh well. This just kind of reinforces my need to not open packs of products whose base sets I have already completed. More on this topic later.

I Got it at Sportlots 5: Many Additions to the 2013 Opening Day Blue Parallel Set

I was so happy to find that Sportlots sellers were asking relatively reasonable prices for the blue parallels from 2013 Topps Opening Day that I ordered a whole pile of them and now just need four more to finish the set. Here are a whole bunch of pictures of some of the cards I ordered.

I still think that this is a great-looking parallel. The blue color is really attractive, and I like that Topps kept the blue coloring to the border instead of coloring the whole background like they did for the Emerald cards in 2013 and the Red Hot cards in 2014.

The cards do curl a little bit over time. It's not as bad as Topps Chrome, but it is noticeable. It doesn't bother me much at all, but it makes for a good comment to fill the spaces between scans.

Given the price I paid for Dylan Bundy's card, he probably deserves his own scan. I'm not going to do that, though. When it comes to set completion, some guy you've never heard of is just as important as the hot rookie star.

Todd Frazier puffed up his lips and blew himself right out of alignment with the Cards (and Dodgers and Marlins) around him. I think he needs a few more logos and badges around him. Too bad he can't get an RC Shield to go along with his Rookie Cup, Foil Date, Topps logo, and Opening Day badge.

I don't even know. The puffed cheeks thing must be taught in the Reds clubhouse. I'm pretty sure Kyle Seager spent some time eating up games on at least one of my fantasy baseball teams last year. I don't know. It might have been Michael Brantley. Maybe both of them did. I do know that I want to play some Fantasy Baseball. I wonder if there would be interest in a blogger league of some kind?

Hanley Ramirez and Mariano Rivera get some pretty good shots in this set. I like photos featuring scuffed-up batting helmets.

Darwin Barney might get the 'Simon Says' award, because just about everybody in the background is copying his pose. Joey Votto needs to work on his cheek-puffing. He's trying, but maybe the manly muscles in his jaw are resisting his efforts. Just let it go, man. Those bloggers who make fun of your funny faces are just jealous.

And here's another Reds player. He's kind of poofing his cheeks out. I had a couple more scans, but I saved over them and didn't want to dig the cards out of the binder to run them back through. You'll just have to imagine an assortment of 2013 Topps cards with blue borders.

Check Out My Cards 3: Set Fillers and Player Collections

I got a few things from COMC as I put together an order to fill out my set of 2013 Press Pass Total Memorabilia. First up I decided to grab the last Opening Days Stars 3D card I needed from 2013 Topps Opening Day, Derek Jeter. I also grabbed the three cheapest Blue parallels they had in stock from my need list. I am now 79.09% done with the Blue set, with 174 / 220 cards in my binder. The last 46 cards feature a lot of big names, though, so the first 80% of the set is probably going to be easier than the last 20%. Opening Day isn't the kind of product that stays fresh for a long time, either, so there aren't as many big lots of this stuff up on eBay at $0.50/card as there were even a few months ago. There probably aren't a lot of case busters breaking Opening Day so they can sell those big hits out of it.

While I was there I did a quick search for R.A. Dickey to see what I didn't have already that could be purchased for a dollar or less. There's some decent stuff here, like a Museum Collection parallel numbered # 196 / 424, a Bowman Platinum Gold parallel, a Refractor and an Xfractor from Topps Finest, a Factory Set parallel from 2011 Topps, and a Dealing Aces insert that I may have a few copies of already from Gypsy Queen.

I also did the same thing for Josh Reddick. In the lower right corner you can see the other Dickey card I got, a Black Mini parallel from Allen & Ginter's. For Reddick I got a Gypsy Queen base card that I believe is a short print, a base card from Panini Triple Play, and a Day-Glo parallel from Archives.

Finally, I grabbed a few of the cards I needed from 2013 Press Pass Total Memorabilia. I got five base cards and two Memory Lane inserts.

Check Out My Cards 1: First Order from COMC

I made an order with COMC after going back and forth on it for a couple of months. The flat-rate shipping is nice, but it seems like the commission and fee structure of the site inflates prices. There are still deals to be had, though, and there is plenty of selection. The first block of cards in my order were some of the cards I need to finish my 2013 Archives Gold parallel set. I am down to needing just 9 cards to complete the 200-card set, but the ones that are left can be pretty pricey on the secondary market.

Joe Morgan is one of my favorite card out of this bunch, probably because he looks happy in his picture. The cards came well-packed with penny sleeves, some toploaders (you have to pay 20 cents per toploader and you can select whether or not to use a toploader for each individual card), and neatly placed in team bags. 

I don't know if there was a glitch or if I ordered while half asleep, but a couple of cards I was certain I had ordered weren't on the final invoice and a couple of cards I am pretty sure I didn't order wound up on my order. One of the ones I am sure I didn't order because I already had a copy was Brian McCann. Boo!

Paul Molitor is another favorite from this batch. He was one of the first TTM autographs I got when I was a kid, signing his 1990 Topps card for me. I also like that Brewers cap he's wearing.

It's strange which cards from a set seem impossible to find. The only card I haven't seen up for sale anywhere so far is Ryan Zimmerman. Why would that be the one card that is impossible to find? There are other cards in the set that I haven't picked up because of the ludicrous asking prices, but Ryan Zimmerman seems to be hiding out.

I also picked up some inserts that I needed from the 2013 Archives set. I got a couple of Yankee All-Stars, a 4-in-1 sticker featuring famous catchers, and a 1972 Basketball of Reggie Jackson that is nice and colorful.

I also picked up a couple of White Sox Triumvirate cards that fit together and some of the final Mini Tall Boys I didn't have yet. I love the colored backgrounds on those things.

I've been working on a couple of rainbow projects, and these Josh Reddick cards are going toward that goal. I don't know that I will heavily pursue some of the rarer cards in the rainbows, like Superfractors, but anything I can get for a couple of dollars will definitely fit in. I've been making some good progress and the projects should be ready to post at some point in the relatively near future.

And finally I picked up a few more of the Opening Day parallels for that set. There are still plenty more to go in this set, but I picked up whatever was on my want list that was listed on COMC for under a dollar. There isn't much else to say about them. They are sparkly and blue, and they look pretty good in a binder.

In all I think I did all right with this order. The prices tend to be higher on COMC than on other sites, but if you shop around and have some patience you can get some decent deals. They do a good job of packaging their cards. I keep a spreadsheet of some of the key cards I need, and I go to the different sites (eBay, Sportlots, COMC, Just Commons) and compare prices every so often because things fluctuate so much that it can be useful to recognize when a card goes up on a site at a reduced price relative to other sites.

What eBay Hath Wrought 4: A Big Helping of Blue Sparkle

This doesn't have anything to do with the following post, but I watched the Crackin Wax Allen & Ginter's case break last night, and they pulled some pretty nice cards, one of which was the Babe Ruth 1/1 hidden in the box lid. They also pulled a rip card and a silk card that was #/10. I didn't buy into the break, but I like watching people bust packs online, just to live vicariously through their hits. Crackin Wax is offering a raffle on Wednesday for a chance to win a box of Allen & Ginter's or a mystery package with an uncut sheet of cards, some other stuff, and mystery items from a current major league player, perhaps a signed jockstrap or a water bottle full of sunflower seed shells. Proceeds go to charity.

My foray into the depths of Target's $0.50 sale on packs of 2013 Topps Opening Day netted me close to 40 of the 220 blue sparkle parallels. Since the packs in this part of the world were all bought up by some crazed card-hungry lunatic, I have to look abroad for the rest of the set. I've been watching eBay for bulk lots to fill out my needs, but they have to be cheap enough per card to meet my personal threshold and/or contain some of the higher-demand rookies and stars. I came across one of those 'You Pick Four' for a set price listings and pretty much cleared the place out along with a couple of 4-6 card lots that came in under a couple of bucks. In all I got 51 new blue sparkly cards, for a total of 91 / 220, assuming I don't find any surprise doubles in the lot. In honor of the hefty lot of cards received, I am showing off the cards of the biggest boys in the stack. There's probably about 6 5 Jean Segura equivalents on those three cards.