Cards from A Cracked Bat and Some Other Stuff

If I am going to maintain my 2 posts per month pace this year, I need to get a second post published before March ends. I'll start off by offering my belated thanks to Julie from A Cracked Bat for sending me a large batch of cards featuring famous Astros, notably Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio.

There are a lot of cards in the pile, most from a time when I was either collecting basketball cards or not collecting cards at all. In addition to Bagwell and Biggio, other star Astros players made appearances.

Julie was quite persistent in tracking me down to mail these out after I won her Dupe, Dump, or Dwindle contest in October. I haven't been feeling all that sociable lately, but I do appreciate that she took the time to send these my way.

Although I haven't felt like blogging much over the last year or so, my collection keeps growing. I sometimes post my maildays on Twitter, and sometimes I just let cards pile up on my desk. I've got a sorting project that goes in fits and starts, and I am slowly getting the sorted cards entered into my Trading Card Database profile.

For the most part I am just trying to stay afloat. I am burnt out and tired most of the time. I've been trying to do a better job at work. I don't think I am in imminent danger of getting fired or disciplined or anything, but I know I could do better and I can feel that I've been pushed to the fringes of my work group.

On Friday I get to go to the doctor to see how much surgery a hernia that popped up recently will need. Or I will see the doctor, who will order some imaging, which will eventually lead to an analysis of how much surgery I need to get my insides back where they go. It hurts when I do things like move or stay still or cough. This is all complicated by the fact that I have a big trip scheduled this summer that will require some amount of exertion. I also need a clean bill of health to maintain my part-time job, because if I can hold on for three more years I will be able to retire and access a very good healthcare program.

School is going moderately well. I am pursuing my M.B.A. at a local university, and I am doing enough to stay in the program. My first couple of classes were pretty rough, but I have dropped down to taking one course at a time and it is at least manageable. I don't know what I will do with the degree, but I figure the time is going to pass whether I get more education or not and my job is paying for it, so I might as well get the fancy piece of paper.

All things considered, life is pretty good, even though I don't feel good. I try to maintain some kind of positivity, though, because I want to be a good example for my kids. Odds are that they will struggle with mental illness since it runs in both sides of our family, but I want them to see that you can still have an okay life even if you are miserable.

All of the cards after the pictures of Julie's cards are eBay pickups from the last couple of months. I especially like the Dikembe Mutombo shoe card, the Ember Moon autograph, the Jake Butt autograph, the Jeff Bagwell AuthenTix relic, and the dual bat relic of Jeff Kent and Roberto Alomar.

A Delayed Post About a Mail Day

I am pretty sure this package has been sitting by my desk for nearly a month, but for various reasons I never scanned the cards. I wouldn't feel too bad if it were an eBay purchase, but I try to be better about getting to packages from other bloggers. Things have felt a little hectic lately.

Jon from the blog A Penny Sleeve for your Thoughts sent me a mailer full of cards in early January. I scanned some of my favorites from the bunch for this post. I may not have as much commentary as I'd like, because my kids have had a hard time getting to sleep the last few nights and by the time they get to sleep it is usually time for me to get into bed and my patience is worn pretty thin.

That die-cut Damaryius Thomas Hands Team insert from 2014 Panini Prizm football is really cool. I don't think I'd seen one of those before. It hearkens back to the days of Flair's Hot Gloves inserts. I could never afford to buy Flair when I was a kid, but I remember seeing the Hot Gloves inserts in Beckett. That Jeff Bagwell Studio Stars insert from 2004 Donruss Studio comes from a time when I was out of collecting, so it was new to me. It also comes from a time when the Astros were an NL team.

There were a bunch of serially-numbered cards in this package, including the Evan Gattis from 2016 Donruss and the Brett Oberholtzer from 2015 Topps. Chris Holt feels a little left out because he doesn't have a serial number on his card, but he is a Refractor. Goose Gossage thinks that Refractors and serial numbers are ruining the game, because he played in the days when all you got was some thin papar and a little adhesive, and you were just grateful to have your picture on that sticker. Oh, how he pines for 1981-1983.

Back then, men were men, and Uncle Rico could throw a football over them mountains.

That 1999 Pacific Prism card of Shannon Sharpe is one of my favorite cards in the package, and it even has a serial number (# 101 / 480). I guess serial numbering was getting to be more common at the time, but if I'd pulled a card with a print run that small in 1999 it would have been like winning the lottery. Those Horace Grant cards are pretty sweet, too. The Upper Deck Black Diamond is also serially-numbered on the back, but with a much more era-appropriate number (# 0730 / 1500). I always like Horace Grant's goggles, and his reputation as a guy who was willing to go after rebounds.

Jon also plussed-up my Clyde Drexler collection with a few cards from The Glide's time in a Houston Rockets uniform. I especially like the Topps Finest card. That was another product I couldn't justify paying for at the time these were released. Backtracking a little in the scans, Randy Couture was a little before my time as an MMA fan, but I can respect what he did to help build the sport. I also can respect a die-cut insert from Goodwin Champions.

I skipped scanning a couple of cards from the package, but I made sure to get this graded Bob Abreu card, which had a note attached: "P.S. Hopefully you like this novelty item as well." I do like it, and not just because it will fund college for one of my children. I also like the gold foil. There's no mistaking that this is a 1996 ROOKIE. I think it's a little funny that those words are in a larger font than Abreu's name. I guess rookie cards were a big deal then. It didn't really matter who the player was, as long as the card was his rookie card.

Thanks for the package, Jon! I had a lot of fun sorting through the cards, even if it did take me nearly a month to get them onto the scanner.

Combined Shipping Leads to Buying Stuff 10: Combined Shipping is a Powerful Drug

The first card in this post is the only card I meant to purchase, but things got a little out of hand when I saw that the seller offered free shipping with the purchase of  items. I am usually able to pass up on these offers because sellers often don't have enough cards I want. This time I did track down 10 items from the seller's inventory to purchase.

Here is the card that started me down this path. It popped up in my feed at a very low price for a low-numbered UFC card. It is the Gold parallel of Jessica Penne's 2015 Topps UFC Champions card, and it is numbered # 16 / 25. As a bonus, it features a cameo by one of my PC fighters, Randa Markos. Penne would win that fight by decision. I will pick up nearly any UFC parallel card that is # / 25 or less if the price is right.

The problem with my Randa Markos collection is that, to my knowledge, she doesn't have any relics or autographs out there. I am lucky if she gets into lower-tier products with a base card and some parallels or maybe an insert. She is absent from the checklists of most hit-driven products, so I have expanded my player collections to officially include Julianna Pena. As part of the combined shipping lot, I picked up this Fight Mat Relic Card from 2016 Topps UFC Knockout. It is numbered # 076 / 188, and you can see in tiny print under the disclaimer that this relic piece comes from the TUF 18 Finale, a tournament that Pena won.

Randa Markos' next opponent is Carla Esparza. They will fight at UFC Fight Night: Browne vs. Lewis in February. This card is Esparza's Gold parallel from 2016 Topps UFC Knockout, numbered # 44 / 99.

I also picked up this Green parallel of Leslie Smith from 2015 Topps UFC Chronicles. It is numbered # 088 / 288. Smith has had an up-and-down career in the UFC so far, last defeating Irene Aldana in December.

The last UFC card in this lot is this Silver parallel of Tecia Torres from 2016 Topps UFC Knockout. It is numbered # 022 / 227. Torres lost a fight to Rose Namajunas in April 2016, and has an upcoming fight against Bec Rawlings in February.

I closed out the order with a couple of Hakeem Olajuwon and Shannon Sharpe cards for those particular player collections. I think the top left Olajuwon is from 1999-00 Skybox E-X, and the top right Olajuwon is from 1997-98 Flair Showcase. On the bottom are a 1999 Topps Gold Label and a 1998 Flair Showcase card for Sharpe.

There are apparently only nine cards in this post. There is a 1997 Pinnacle Shannon Sharpe card that should be here, but I don't see the scan for it, and the Leslie Smith Green parallel was from another order and ought to be replaced by a Cat Zingano card that also isn't in the scans for this post. I was twisting my brain around trying to match the cards in that order to the cards in this post. That's what happens when you let cards pile up before you scan them. Either way, I originally went to buy the card at the top of the post and wound up ordering 9 more to go with it, including some of the cards pictured here.

A Real eBay 1/1, Part 2 (of 2)

Last week I wrote about my purchase of a 1/1 2014 Topps High Tek Black Press Proof from an eBay seller, who then contacted me and asked if I was the writer of The Raz Card Blog, because he had some PC cards to send me. In that post I showed off a few awesome Astros cards he included in the package, but that wasn't the crazy part of the package. In his message he said that he recognized me as a fellow Shannon Sharpe collector, and that he had a few rare Sharpe cards that he's like to pass along. Well, he definitely delivered some rare Sharpe cards. My football collection is pretty neglected, so this package made my Sharpe player collection about 3000x cooler than it was before. I still haven't researched all of these cards, so I don't know all of the set names and what to call the parallels, so this will mostly be a pictures post. But pictures are really what we're here to look at anyway. Just look at these crazy cards! It's going to take me a while to research all of them, but I wanted to get this post out there and thank the seller for a crazy bunch of cards. They make my day every time I look at them. 

I may wind up researching all of these tonight anyway. I believe this is a 1998 Playoff Prestige Hobby Gold parallel, serially-numbered # 5 / 25. I can't even imagine pulling a # / 25 card from a product in 1998. This one card alone is probably worth as much as (or more than) the one card I actually bought from this seller. I like the #84 emblem that Sharpe is wearing around his neck on the back of this one.

This is a 1999 Collector's Edge Advantage Gold Ingot parallel. In 1999 I was still pretty into basketball card collecting, but I was on the eve of my long hiatus from the hobby, so this is a set that I don't remember from that time. The Collector's Edge brand name seems familiar to me, though.

This is another Gold Ingot parallel, this time from 1999 Collector's Edge Fury. Again, I am not very familiar with this set.

Next up are 6 different Topps Stadium Club Members Only parallels. They come from the 1993-1995 sets. I am not sure exactly how these were distributed, but it looks like they might have been factory sets that could be purchased by people who joined Topps' Members Only club. I could be wrong on that, though. Those high-end shenanigans were well out of my middle- and high-school purchasing ability.

It's kind of fun to see the brightly-colored Xtreme design on the back of this card. I think Fleer probably stole some of those fonts and colors for their 1995 releases. 

I love those orange jerseys and that old-school helmet logo. I guess the Broncos can't use that helmet/logo for any throwback uniforms because of a rule that requires teams to use the same base color on their helmets for every game. If that's true, it's a dumb rule. I love those colors and that logo.

This jersey with the NFL 75 patch is one of the Sharpe replicas I own, although after thinking on it for a couple of years I am pretty convinced that I wound up with a bootleg Mitchell & Ness jersey. Every so often I look it up online and go back and forth as to whether mine is authentic or not. I still like it, though, and I almost always get compliments any time I am out and about in one of my Sharpe jerseys. He's apparently got a lot of fans in Boise and the surrounding area.

I'm not sure on the story behind this card. It looks like maybe Topps commissioned an artist to put their own spin on the photo. I just went and looked at the Barry Sanders Chalk Talk card, and the illustration on the back doesn't match the photo, so I guess it's just happenstance that these two are so close.

This card rightly recognizes Sharpe's talent as a receiving Tight End. I didn't realize that there are only 8 Tight Ends in the NFL Hall of Fame. That's a pretty exclusive list, although I would imagine there are a few more on their way there pretty soon, like Tony Gonzalez, Antonio Gates, and maybe Jason Witten. People talk about Rob Gronkowski like he might get there some day, too, but he is injury-prone and probably needs to put together a pretty long career before that talk gets really serious.

Getting back to rare numbered cards, here is a 2004 Score Scorecard parallel. This one is numbered # 390 / 625. This is also a sunset card, mentioning his retirement and featuring his full career stats on the back. I was completely out of card collecting at this point in time, so this is probably the first time I've seen a card from this product.

This crazy die-cut card is a 1999 Playoff Absolute SSD Absolute Honors Gold insert. Wow! It's numbered # 06 / 25, and it's just a really cool-looking card. Again, this batch of cards just blows me away every time I look at them.

Although I don't like the Baltimore Ravens at all, I am glad that Sharpe's time there helped him win another Super Bowl ring and solidify his resume for the Hall of Fame. This is a 2001 Pacific Prism Atomic Red parallel, numbered # 067 / 310.

Pacific was a company well-known for crazy die-cut cards, and even this die-cut design is a little understated compared to some of their other products. This is another parallel from the 2001 Pacific Prism Atomic set, the Premiere Date parallel, numbered on the front # 69 / 86.

This is a card I am having some trouble identifying. I have it narrowed down to 1994 Playoff Contenders football, but it is a blank-back and doesn't show up in the couple of sites I've checked so far. I found pictures of similar cards for Jerome Bettis and Barry Sanders, but they didn't have images of the card backs.

This card mentions Sharpe's return to the Broncos, but shows him in his Baltimore uniform. This is a 2002 Upper Deck MVP Silver parallel, numbered # 089 / 100. That's a pretty busy card design, but I kind of like it.

The rare parallels from 15-25 years ago just keep coming in this package. This is a Star Ruby parallel from 2001 Fleer Premium. It is numbered # 124 / 125. It also features Sharpe in his Ravens uniform.

This is a 1995 Pro Line Printers Proof Silver parallel. This was pretty early in the days of numbered print runs, when cards didn't usually get individual serial numbers. They just got a stamp indicating that they were 1 of ### cards. Actually, back then it seemed like most things were 1 of ##,### cards, so I think a print run of only 175 was pretty special at the time. Nowadays it seems like we turn our noses up at anything with a print run over 50. It's nice to see that classic Broncos helmet pop back up here.

This shiny card is a 1999 Collector's Edge Masters HoloSilver parallel, numbered # 2713 / 3500. There was also a HoloGold parallel in this product with a miniscule print run of only 25. I can't even imagine the pack odds on one of those.

Apparently 1999 was the year of Holofoil, as this 1999 Pacific Paramount card is a Holo-Silver parallel, which I guess is distinguished from the Collector's Edge version by that hyphen. These ones are not quite as shiny as the Collector's Edge cards, but they are much more rare, with this being copy # 92 / 99.

And that does it for this package, but what a package it was! I had no idea what to expect when the seller said he would be including a few Shannon Sharpe and Astros cards in with the Jon Singleton card I bought, and I certainly didn't expect that he would pump up my Shannon Sharpe collection by this much! I am extremely grateful for these awesome additions to my collection.