I Got it at Sportlots 11: Some Old Junk Inspired by the Reds Card Collector

I was digging through the blogs a few days ago when I came upon the Reds Card Collector's Album of Amazing, a collection he describes as: 

The cards shown below are part of my "Album of Amazing" collection. These 90 cards are not your "standard" baseball cards. They're cards that show the flip side of the sport. Cards that just don't show your standard pitching and batting poses. These are more centered around jaw dropping fun.

The card I keyed in on was that 1989 ProCards Keith Comstock, where Keith seems to have had a bit of trouble tracking the ball into his glove. The consensus on the internet seems to be that the photo is staged, but how can you resist adding such a gem to your collection? I went out and found the card in a seller's inventory on Sportlots.

I saw that the seller offered his flat shipping cost on up to four cards, so I searched a few of my favorite players and grabbed a few other cards to add to the order. I may already have a copy of that 2005 Fleer Tradition R.A. Dickey card, but I added it just in case. The other two cards feature my favorite football player, Shannon Sharpe. One is a 2000 Topps Chrome card that unfortunately highlights Sharpe's move to the disgusting Baltimore Ravens. For some reason that helmet he's wearing seems unnaturally small. It bothers me a little bit, like, "Where's the rest of his head?" The other card is one of those sports-themed phone cards that were popular in the 90's. This one was listed as a 1996 Sportscall issue and features an airbrushed image of Sharpe in action.

Here are the backs of the cards. I haven't used that code on the phone card, so good luck if you can find a pay phone, get the code to work, and deliver a message to someone in whatever airtime $2 will get you. There's not much else to say about these cards, so let's revisit the most important package in this package.

If this photo is staged, maybe Keith Comstock was in line for a successful second career as an actor, as that grimace is pure comedy gold.

I Got it at Sportlots 10: Daniel Norris Player Collection

Around the time the ESPN article about Daniel Norris came out I considered starting a player collection of his cards. This was the worst possible time to do so, as a lot of other people read that article and decided either that they wanted to collect his cards or that they could make money prospecting on his cards. I did wind up with a handful of Daniel Norris cards, including this group I purchased from sellers on Sportlots. I guess the big card in the lot was this 2012 Bowman Platinum Prospects Autograph card, featuring an on-card signature and a lot of shiny.

These are all mini cards from the Bowman line. The first two are Cream of the Crop Mini Refractors from 2013 Bowman Chrome. The one on the left is the base model and the one in the middle is the Blue parallel. On the far right is a 2014 Bowman Chrome Mini Purple Refractor.

The backs of the cards show the top 5 prospects in the organization as determined by the Bowman scouts, which probably means that the card designer does a web search for [Team Name] top prospects and copy/pastes the first list they find that seems legit. The main difference between 2013 and 2014 is that Sean Nolin came off the list and got replaced by Roberto Osuna. The Blue Jays traded away a number of prospects this year, so it will be interesting to see what the 2016 Bowman list looks like.

I grabbed a couple of 2015 Topps cards, too. On the left is the purple Toys "R" Us parallel and on the left is Norris' standard base card.

I picked up his 2012 Bowman and 2012 Bowman Chrome issues as well. The card on the right is a Blue Wave Refractor parallel from 2012 Bowman Chrome. It doesn't show up in the Sportlots order history, so I must have picked it up on eBay or something.

Closing things out are a couple of 2011 Donruss Elite Extra Edition cards. One is a solo card and the other is a Building Blocks card that Norris shares with Joseph Musgrove and Kevin Comer. And that is most of my Daniel Norris collection. I think I picked up a couple of his other cards on eBay over the last few months, but in the end I couldn't hang with the prospectors and their crazy prices.

I Got it at Sportlots 9: Revisiting the Mendoza Line

I grabbed a few more cards for my Mario Mendoza collection from the sellers on Sportlots. There's some pretty good stuff here. First up is a card from the 1975 SSPC set. I don't know a lot about these cards, but I do think that minimalist design looks pretty good. Of course, the lack of any information at all on the front of the card could be an issue for some folks.

Next up is a small stack of O-Pee-Chee cards, headed up by a copy from 1975. Then there is a run of cards from 1980-1982. I don't know if this is a common thing, but the edges of most of these were cut very rough. Maybe the saw blade was a bit dull at the O=Pee-Chee factory.

I also got Mendoza's three cards from the 2003 Topps All-Time Fan Favorites set. The first one is his base card, and I also grabbed a copy of the Refractor version. I didn't know it when I ordered it, but when it arrived I discovered that it was numbered out of # / 299. So only about 300 Mario Mendoza super-collectors will have a chance to snag all of his cards. Upon looking at my order invoice, it looks like I may have grabbed the third card at COMC and not Sportlots. Anyway, it is the autographed version. It's a pretty decent autograph, too, in blue Sharpie across the center of the photo.

In addition to cards from his playing career, I got a couple of cards from his coaching days. I guess it's kind of piling on the guy, but I wonder how that interview for the Hitting Coach job went. And those sunglasses in that picture on the right are super fabulous.

Finally, it's hard to tell from the scan but this is the 1975 Topps Mini. It's some pretty good stuff. There are still a fair number of Mendoza cards that I don't have yet, but I've built up a decent representative sample from his career.

I Got it at Sportlots 8: What eBay Hath Wrought 56: A Bunch of Power Players

I have added a lot of Power Players code cards to my collection over the last couple of months. The set is made up of 110 different cards, with different numbering but using the same pictures as the 2014 Topps Base Set. To further complicate things, the set is split in half, with 55 of the cards being available only in Hobby packs and 55 being available only in retail. Most of these recent acquisitions are of the Retail variety, as I got almost all of the Hobby set from a case breaker shortly after Series 1 released.

The Retail cards have proven more difficult to track down. People don't bust cases of Retail product like they do Hobby, so I've had to pick them up in ones and twos from across the internet, mostly from eBay and Sportlots. As of right now I am only missing one card from the Series 1 set, Clay Buchholz. He isn't popping up too often lately, but I should be able to complete the set soon. Then I just have to wait until Series 2 hits to start chasing that set. I will probably follow a similar plan of grabbing a Hobby set from a bulk breaker and then trying to piece together the retail cards over the next couple of months.

When you enter the codes on the Power Players website, that player's card is added to your 'Locker,' a fancy name for a list of the cards you've unlocked. You can then choose to activate cards individually to be eligible for drawings during the season. So far Topps hasn't held any of those drawings, but they are supposed to choose a player or more per week, randomize the list of all of the users who have activated that player's card, and select people to win special parallels or autographs. You can activate multiple copies of a particular player's card, but there is an upper limit on the maximum number of cards you can activate. I kept things simple by activating each different player once.

There is also a small chance that you could win a prize upon entering a card's code. This has happened for me once. After putting the card number in, I got a little pop-up telling me that I had won a special Parallel card. I guess people who get 30 cards from each Series will also get a prize, either parallel cards or coin cards.

But the big hook is that people who collect all 220 Power Players codes will be entered in a drawing to win one of 5 sets of 40 autographed cards. I don't know what the autographed set looks like or whether there are any big names in it, but it would be a cool thing to win regardless. Honestly, Topps probably doesn't even know what it looks like at this point.

I also don't have a reliable way of knowing how many people will be competing for the 5 prizes. The leaderboards only show a small number of people, and so I know there are at least 20 people with the full Series 1 set. I would imagine there are quite a few more than are shown on the list. One of those five winners will also get their picture on a trading card, which the contest rules warn may not actually be placed in a card product.

I spent much of the weekend trying to sort out just how I am going to handle sorting my cards and entering them into the Zistle database. I started sorting them out by year, but I could see that I would lose steam quickly and give up on the project if I tried to sort everything out before putting it into the system. So I took all of my 2014 Topps and 2014 Heritage, collated those sets only, and put them into Zistle. Now those cards are quarantined from the rest of my collection, so anything I add to those sets can be put into Zistle at the time of purchase without me losing track. I will continue in that fashion, sorting cards in blocks and moving them into a quarantined area, so that I can sort and upload at my leisure without having to do the whole thing all at once.

One thing I have enjoyed doing is putting images up for cards I own if the Zistle entry lacks one. For the most part the front images are taken care of, but I was able to add quite a few card backs to 2014 Heritage and even a couple of front images to the Heritage SPs. It makes me feel like I'm giving something back to that community for making such a database available. I will probably wind up buying a membership to gain access to all of the features they offer. At $29 annually it seems like a pretty good deal, especially if I wind up using it a lot. I am interested to see how well the trade suggestion feature works.

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.

I Got it at Sportlots 6: 1985 TCMA Ft. Myers Royals Office Staff

The 1985 Ft. Myers Royals set is kind of an interesting set. The Jim Moore card is probably the most 'blog-famous' card in the set, despite the fact that he was not an actual player or coach on the team. On the front of the card he is listed as the team's Travelling Secretary, and the back of the card adds the title of Seasoned Veteran to his job description.

But the 30-card set also features some other front-office staff, namely the MVP General Manager and two Assistant General Managers. I think I've shown most of these cards off online here a time or two, but my confession is that I took those images from the internet. This time I have actually purchased two lots of four Front Office employees from the 1985 TCMA Ft. Myers Royals card set.

What am I going to do with them? I don't know. It was just something I felt I had to do. Kind of like growing a mustache. It serves no real purpose, but sometimes I just have to grow one. The problem is that every time I see myself in the mirror or think about the mustache on my face I can no longer take myself seriously. Sometimes the ridiculousness of it incapacitates me with fits of laughter. Then I have to shave it off. These cards serve a similar purpose. Whenever I see them I laugh for a little bit at how silly they are, and then I put them away for a while until I am going through my card stacks again and happen to notice them one more time. The fact that I have two sets of them (plus one or two extra copies of Jim Moore) just makes it a little more silly.

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 4: I Got it at Sportlots 4: What eBay Hath Wrought 41: Making My Own Box of 2013 Topps Archives

I wanted to make some progress on my 2013 Topps Archives set, but I am so close to being finished with it that buying packs was a sure way to get a bunch of duplicates. So I decided that instead of buying a box of cards, I would take the cost of a box and see what I could get from the set with that money.

My first step was to get the last few short-printed base cards that I needed. These things are a pain in the butt, and now I don't have to worry about collecting them anymore. I think these might have come from Sportlots, but I don't remember anymore.

I also grabbed a couple of these colored acetate stained-glass Gallery of Heroes inserts. Yogi Berra and Willie Mays were pretty affordable at the time, so I added them to my cart. I sure like this insert set.

Three of the 1972 Basketball design insert set got knocked off of my Want List. I got Yu Darvish, Tom Seaver, and Willie McCovey. Kind of like the Mini Tall-Boy inserts, these are very minimalist in design and I think they're great. I think most of these and the Gallery of Heroes cards above were found on COMC.

Stadium Club Triumvirate was the most costly set from this purchase, mostly because of Machado and Trout. I got these guys on eBay because they were a little cheaper there than on COMC or Sportlots.

Rounding out my custom box of cards are Cole Hamels, Adam Jones, and Alex Roid-riguez. When I put them all together, the team name spelled out behind them is Priolers, which is probably what I will name my next child.

With this approach I was able to whittle 14 cards off of my want list, which is far better than I would have done buying a Hobby Box. Most of these inserts fall one or two per box, if that, so chances are good that a box of cards would only yield one or two of my needs, although there is also the chance that it could contain a nice big-money type card. I am pretty happy with this approach, though. I only need 18 more cards until I declare this set completed.

I Got it at Sportlots 3: 2013 Topps Chrome Update Set Completed

I filled out the rest of my 2013 Topps Update Chrome set through Sportlots, but the cards in this particular envelope are the only ones I scanned before I put them all in the set binder. You can see a bright spot in the upper right corner of the Kershaw card, which illuminates the severe bend the card had upon arrival. I don't know if I want to bother replacing the card. I am halfway hoping the bend will flatten itself out over time. The seller credited me back some money for the card, but it is in the form of store credit, so I can't use it without spending money.

I think the Puig there was the biggest card from my need list for this set. I don't think I got hosed too badly on it, but I am glad that I don't have to worry about that set anymore. I need to collect a significantly smaller number of sets in 2014. I got back into the hobby this year and it was all so exciting and new again that I went a bit overboard. To keep with the nautical theme, I need to right the ship and plan ahead so I don't steer right into an iceberg.

These Chrome cards are extremely unforgiving when it comes to fingerprints.

I Got it at Sportlots 2: Ozzie Smith

I got this Ozzie Smith 2013 Topps Archives Gold parallel in the mail the other day, which was a card ordered from Sportlots. It is numbered #96/199. The card brings me up to 164/200 cards in-hand and 182/200 counting cards that are on their way to me. I am up over 90% done with the set, but all of the easy cards are out of the way and I've got some pretty expensive and hard-to-find cards left to get. The main offenders are Manny Machado, Ryne Sandberg, Shelby Miller, Ken Griffey Jr., Giancarlo Stanton, and Tony Gwynn. I was able to get Mike Trout for a relatively good price and Cal Ripken Jr. for about 15% of the going rate, but those are other posts for another time.

I like Sportlots fairly well, but it suffers from having to pay a lot of different sellers for shipping costs whenever you want to order a number of cards. And there isn't a really easy or intuitive way to track who you are paying shipping to and what your fianl cost will be without adding stuff to your cart and looking at what each seller is charging. Many of the prices seem to beat out COMC, though, which seems to have the highest prices in general when compared to Justcommons, Sportlots, and eBay. It does help to shop around, as prices can vary widely between the sites, even from day to day.

I Got it at Sportlots 1: Freddie Got Fingered

So I finally visited Sportlots and made an order for a few of the 2013 Archives Gold cards they had listed for less than eBay and COMC did. I have a spreadsheet that I use to track prices on the remaining cards I need, so I can get a feel for what the different cards market at. I ordered several cards. A few of them got lumped in with a recent eBay post, a couple are still outstanding, and these three came in the mail the other day.

It's too bad that the Braves and Dodgers couldn't meet in the playoffs this year. I wonder how Freeman and Brian McCann would have reacted to Yasiel Puig's celebration of his big triple the other day? Maybe I am not OG enough, but I happen to like a little bit of celebration in my sports. I am not a fan of mocking or trash talk all that much, but a TD or sack celebration aimed at the crowd, arms raised or a little flip of the bat after a big hit, or a swipe across the neck after a dagger three or a nasty dunk are all things that I like to see in my sports entertainment. It's a game. Thanks to Tenets of Wilson I know that the Dodgers are not extremely likely to get into and win the World Series, but that's who I am pulling for this year since all of my favorite teams are long gone. Thanks to the internet I know that the Dodgers got blown out in Game 6 and will not be advancing. If Boston and St. Louis make the World Series I will die from a bad case of meh.

But enough of that. My first experience with Sportlots was pretty good, so I will probably return there whenever the price is right.