What eBay Hath Wrought 52: Dutch Oven Delight

After looking at the overpriced Derek Holland autographs at the shop in Arlington during my trip to Texas, I still wanted to add one to my player collection. I got this one for $5.24 shipped from eBay.

It's from some sort of set, allegedly called 2014 Topps Tribute to the National Pastime. I haven't been keeping up with the high-end sets very much, but that is sure a long name for a set.

The only real downside of this autograph for me is that it features Holland without his mustache, although most of his cards are that way and I'll just have to get used to it. The card is appropriately shiny, it is numbered # 72 / 99, and the autograph is on-card and makes good use of the space allotted (although the 'penmanship' could use a little work).

I'll probably look to add more signed cards to the Holland collection, but this was a pretty good place to start.

What eBay Hath Wrought 51: A Danica Patrick 'Signature' Hit

I've added quite a few cards to my Danica Patrick player driver collection. One thing I really wanted to get was a relic/autograph card. I just had to wait on the right one, as some of them are better than others. This is the card I finally ended up with, a 2014 Press Pass Five Star Signature Souvenirs card, numbered # 20 / 25. 

The patch piece is nice and big, really filling out the bottom half of the card. The only thing that would make it better would be if Press Pass could have included some of the green fabric in the window. If you look into the patch pocket at an angle, you can see a bit of the green down in the lower right corner. I just wish it were visible straight-on.

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.

What eBay Hath Wrought 50: The Real Cardboard Equivalent of Kate Upton

Judson over at My Cardboard Habit recently posted about some flashy Nelson Cruz Topps Triple Threads card that he acquired after winning it on eBay twice. In that post he referred to the card as 'the cardboard equivalent of Kate Upton.' I like the guy, but in this case he was wrong. This is the cardboard equivalent of Kate Upton:

There she is, right on the front. This particular card even has a piece of an old t-shirt from her closet embedded in it. Pretty good stuff. There is an autographed version out there, but the going rate for that thing goes well into the triple digits and boxes of 2012 Allen & Ginter's go for $100 and up with presumably a snowball's chance in hell of pulling the Upton auto from any given box. I like pop culture on my trading cards, but even I have limits.

So there you go, everyone. That's what the real cardboard equivalent of Kate Upton looks like. It even gets most of its fame in the same way the real Kate Upton does, being ogled by sports fans while wearing an itty-bitty swatch of fabric.

Yes, I put Kate Upton's name in the post title and in the body of the post a couple of times to drive search engine traffic to my blog and give me a little ego boost when my hit counter spikes. This blog is nothing if not self-serving. I also take a little bit of glee in the fact that many of those folks out there searching for Kate Upton will be angry and feel a little bit slighted when their searches bring them to a blog about baseball cards.

What eBay Hath Wrought 49: Manute Bol 2010-11 Panini Elite Black Box Signatures

Here is a card I have been chasing for quite a while. Earlier this year I got a Manute Bol relic card, but his signature has been somewhat elusive. This is a sticker autograph, but Panini layered the card in such a way that the sticker forms the middle layer and isn't just a big ugly spot slapped on the front of the card. I don't really mind sticker autos as long as they are integrated well into the design of the card. The ones I take issue with are the stickers just slapped willy-nilly on the card, with no regard for alignment or aesthetics. Bol died in 2010 and given that this is a 2010-11 product, he may have already been gone when this card came to market. That is another reason I don't mind the sticker. 

The back of this card features the serial number, which in this case is # 05 / 49. It came to me all the way from Australia by way of eBay. I guess if I want to build the Manute Bol trifecta, all I am missing is his 1986-87 Fleer Rookie Card. I am rather partial to that set anyway as it contains the Rookie Card of my favorite player of all time, Hakeem Olajuwon (and some guy named Michael Jordan). I may try to track down a copy of Bol's card.

Pack of the Day 66: 20 Cards from 10 Packs

My wife and I were at the store the other day and I thought I would check out the card aisle, since it was a store I hadn't ever been to before. There was a lot of stuff there, but I finally settled on a repack containing 10 packs of cards. I figured it might yield something more interesting than the 2014 Topps Series 1 doubles I would pull from another rack pack of that product, so I gave it a go. I'll be posting the 2 most interesting cards (to me) from each pack I opened.

The first pack I opened was 1989 Donruss. Dave Stewart was the default 2nd-most interesting card, but what I really liked was getting a pack-fresh minty Bo Jackson card. I just realized that I was wearing a pair of my Bo Jackson throwback Nikes on the day I bought this repack. It must have been destiny. And that's really the high point of the repack, so I could just stop here. But I won't.

I also got a pack of 1989 Fleer. I had to include the Astro in the pack in this post, especially with the cameo by the rainbow uniform. And I thought it was fun to pull a Jamie Moyer card, as there probably aren't a lot of 1989 cards featuring guys who were still pitching in the major leagues in 2012.

I think these next two cards came from a rack pack of 2006 Upper Deck, which was a combo pack from Series I and Series II. I liked the big Pirate head on the wall there behind Ian Snell and the shot of Hideki Matsui stretching out.

The next pack was 2011 Heritage. I haven't really been caught up in the Topps Heritage wave, but there are a lot of folks around here who set their calendar by it. Mark Reynolds is one of those guys who you used to pick up on a Fantasy Team because he would hit home runs in bunches, but he would also lead the league in strikeouts. It seems like I would always pick him up on the day after a home run binge, then drop him after he went 0 - for - 4 six games in a row and single-handedly dropped my batting average by a few points. As soon as he was off my roster he would go out and hit five home runs in six games. Sometimes I still think about picking him up and seeing if things will be different this time. B.J. Upton killed my whole Fantasy Baseball season last year. Somehow I got him in every league, and he just stunk.

The 2011 Topps Chrome pack only had four cards in it, so there wasn't a lot of choice. I went with the Joe/y's in the pack. The Votto is some kind of throwback-themed insert, while the Mauer is a base card.

The 2007 Upper Deck Future Stars pack also only had four cards in it. Felix Hernandez was an automatic inclusion, and Matt Cain beat out Johnny Damon and Jon Garland for reasons that I don't fully understand.

For 2007 Topps Series 2 I went with Mark Teixeira and a Jason Michaels/Travis Hafner combo card because chicks dig the long ball. Also, most of the other guys in the pack were guys I'd never heard of or role players who weren't known as power hitters.

The final Upper Deck product in the repack was a pack of 2008 Upper Deck First Edition. I chose the Miguel Montero because it's a bit of a play at the plate and the Prince Fielder because it was the best other horizontal card and would allow me to scan both cards without a bunch of shenanigans.

2012 Topps Opening Day didn't yield a whole lot, but I did get a Mascot card for the Toronto Blue Jays and a decent card of David Ortiz. Ortiz actually made a couple of appearances in the repack, but I tried to limit scans to one per player.

The 2011 Topps Update Series pack didn't have much going on either, but Paul Konerko had a decent card and I felt like he warranted inclusion in this post. Philip Humber got put in here because of his extreme case of 'pitcher face.'

Well, this repack wasn't the greatest ever, not by a long shot. I'd say that the Bo Jackson and Jamie Moyer cards were my favorites, and I guess that tells you everything you need to know about this bunch of cards.

What eBay Hath Wrought 48: 2014 Topps Josh Reddick SP Photo Variation

I am slowly attacking the large pile of mail I had waiting for me after a month away from home. In all the stack yielded 19 posts worth of scans, so I will be spacing them out over at least the next month or so. I don't want to run them all consecutively as that will cause my blog to be perpetually months behind real-time, so I will jump back and forth between February's piled-up mail and whatever new comes to me during the month of March.

There was a card show yesterday that I considered going to, but by the time I got up and got going I just didn't feel like making the trek over to Boise. I didn't really want to go in there without a plan of action, and I wanted to get caught up on scanning all of the stuff I had backed up on my table.

I hadn't planned on doing much with 2014 Topps Series 1, as the two player collections I've been focusing on the most, R.A. Dickey and Josh Reddick, weren't on the initial checklist and didn't have any inserts either. I still won't be doing much with the set aside from building the base set and probably collecting the '89 Minis, but Josh Reddick got one of the short-printed variations and I had to get that. The number on the card is # 416, which is not encompassed by the numbering of the regular Series 1 checklist. He will probably get a base card in Series 2, and it will probably be # 416 on that checklist.

This card has quite a bit going on in the picture. There is plenty of advertising in the background, in the form of stadium signage. Reddick is sporting a beard, swim goggles, a tattoo, a postseason t-shirt, and a football helmet in one hand. He also appears to have spilled that beverage tucked under his arm all over his shirt and hair. There is also a nice cameo by a photographer sitting in the grass taking pictures. My only complaint about this card is that the football helmet is mostly covered up buy the A's logo and the card border, and that Josh's presumably pointing finger is cropped out at the top of the frame.