What eBay Hath Wrought 59: An Unimpressive Autograph

One of the people who gained the most internet fame from the 2012 Summer Olympics was McKayla Maroney, a gymnast from the USA who was heavily favored to win a Gold medal in vaulting, but slipped on her run and wound up with the Silver. During the medal ceremony she made the disappointed face shown above, and the internet meme known as 'McKayla is Not Impressed' was born. The concept of the gag is to cut out McKayla's silhouette from the photo and place it in situations that would normally be impressive or elicit some response other than disappointment and boredom. Like if alien beings were invading the earth through a portal in the sky:

But enough about that. Here is the card of the day:

I thought it was pretty cool that Maroney was included in the checklist for 2013 Allen & Ginter's. Way back in August I got the relic version, but it took a long time and a lot of auctions for the autograph version to fall to a price I was willing to pay. But it happened, and there it is. I think she manages to get every letter in the signature, and much of it is actually legible, which is more than you can say for most ballplayers. It would have been really cool if there were a 'not impressed' photo variation, but you can't have everything.

I don't have much to say about the back of the card. There it is!

It'll take more than great art to impress McKayla. Try to put a little emotion into your work next time, van Gogh.

365 letters? Sounds like a lot of wasted time to me. Maybe with all that thinking you were doing you could've thought to bring an umbrella. Also:

It's a pretty cool card, and it's one that took quite a while to track down. I am not sure what my next quest outside the world of the major sports will be, but deciding what to collect is half the fun of this hobby.

What eBay Hath Wrought 9: Swatch Out!

I picked up a few different memorabilia cards from various sources. First up is this R.A. Dickey from Topps Tribute, commemorating his back-to-back one-hitters last year. I guess this is a parallel of the regular Commemorative Cuts insert, with the blue color and slightly lower numbering setting it apart. I would really like to pick up an R.A. Dickey memorabilia card with some color on the fabric, but anything more than gray or white tends to command a premium.

I also tossed in a bid on this 2012 Allen & Ginter Mike Morse Framed Mini Relic. I kind of like the black border, and for $0.99 the price was right.

Then we've got a McKayla Maroney Framed Mini Relic from this year's Allen & Ginter set. It would be a better card if Topps had played up the internet meme angle and featured her 'not impressed' face. Either way, this has proven to be one of the more popular cards in A & G.

And finally I have another one of those cards that I tossed in a bid on and it stuck. I guess serially-numbered cards aren't what they used to be. I may be wrong, but I thought Hamilton was somewhat popular, and a card with less than 10 copies out there might be a more popular item. It might make decent trade bait, I suppose.

Gint-A-Cuffs V: Pack 3

Scoring Cards:

Samurai Martial Mastery: +3

Yogi Berra (SP, Yankee): +2 -1: +1

Pack 3: 4 points

Running Total: 24 points

Per Pack Average: 8 points