What eBay Hath Wrought 105: R.A. Dickey 2014 Heritage Relic

I'd put in a few bids on R.A. Dickey's 2014 Heritage Clubhouse Collection card when the product first came out, but they always went for like $3.50 + $2.75 shipping and that felt like a little too much to pay for this card. The other day I saw one pop up on my feed with no bids at $0.99 + $2.50 shipping, and I thought that if I could get it for that price it would be okay. So I bid on it and because Heritage was like 5 product releases ago and Dickey isn't in contention for any sort of Cy Young award, no one else bid on it and I won it for the starting bid.

And that's really all there is to this one. It's a nice little relic sandwiched inside a card made of an approximation of old-timey cardboard and a design that might be close to what you'd see if relic cards existed in 1965. I wonder how those folks back then would feel if you told them we were cutting up pieces of history and putting them in baseball cards. Babe Ruth's bat? Saw it up!

A Couple of Generous Stacks of Custom Allen & Ginter Minis

Shortly after buying the custom Allen & Ginter minis in my previous post, I won another auction from the same seller for a C.C. Sabathia mini. He included a few other minis in the package. I am pretty sure my favorite one of the bunch is that Kevin James card, but Jose Fernandez and Hunter Pence aren't bad cards either. It turns out that this eBay seller is actually the guy who designed and made the minis, although there are other people out there with auctions featuring a handful of his custom cards.

To add to the fun, after my post about the first group of custom Allen & Ginter cards I purchased, a mystery envelope arrived in the mail. It included a pile of minis from the set, including players from the PC list on my blog. It also included a nice note thanking me for featuring the minis on my blog. Pretty cool stuff. I've got an extra Spider-Man card now, so I will probably be running my first contest on the blog pretty soon centered around that theme.

The note also mentioned that there would be some new designs coming out soon, including Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson in a Texas Rangers uniform. I've been watching his eBay listings for the new designs, as well as a couple of cards that I missed out on the first time through. Sorry for the poor quality of the scans. The cards are much better in person, but these scans were part of the batch that I did before fixing my scanner settings. 

In addition to players taken from my favorite players list, I also got a rare on-card autograph of the custom designer himself. No sticker autos or redemptions in this product! I do not think he has a blog, but I could be wrong about that.

Thank you for the cards, Ryan! They are definitely appreciated. I'll be watching the auction listings for those new releases you mentioned, and if you happen to post another Upton card I'll be bidding on that, too. I planned on taking you up on your 2nd-chance offer, but I got busy and by the time I got back to it the offer had expired.

What eBay Hath Wrought 104: '98-'99 Stadium Club Triumvirate Hakeem Olajuwon

I just have a quick post this time about a card I grabbed off of eBay for a couple of dollars, a '98-'99 Stadium Club Triumvirate card of Hakeem Olajuwon. I like these crazy designs from the 90's, as 1) they are pretty awesome, and 2) they take me back to the heyday of my basketball card collecting. This card is definitely more sizzle than steak, as it is die-cut along the left edge, and also has lines and dots cut out of it in the body of the card. The player photo is silhouetted on the back, and it looks like this card makes up the third in a trio that also included Shaquille O'Neal and David Robinson. When all three cards are assembled, the die-cut edges interlock to form a single puzzle card.

Someone on the blogosphere posted a timeline of the Triumvirate designs in baseball recently, but I can't remember who. I saw one that looked similar to this design, so it appears there was some design continuity between the baseball and basketball designs.

The scan I've got of this card is a bit fuzzy, but I am not going to redo it. I have four or five scans that were low-quality before I got everything set up between my computer and scanner. There will be a few posts over the next couple of weeks with bad scans, but maybe I will be the only one who notices or cares.

The Die is Cast 5: Dale Earnhardt Jr. 2014 Daytona 500 Raced-Win Elite

After Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the Dayton 500 early this year, Lionel Racing announced that they would be making a Raced-Win version of the car, which is different from your standard die-cast featuring the livery of a race car. When making the Raced-Win versions, Lionel takes photos of the car as it appears in Victory Lane and then does up the bodywork to resemble it, confetti, race damage, and all. In races where a winner has shredded the tires doing the usual doughnuts on the track, the tires of the die-cast are flat. Earnhardt didn't do a lot of rubbing or wrecking in this race, so there isn't a lot of damage shown on the car, just a little scraping on the front of the wheel arches. The biggest feature on this particular car is the big piece of black tape that was stuck to Earnhardt's grill.

Soon after Lionel put the car up for pre-order on their website, the car was on track to become the best-selling die-cast in Lionel's history, beating out the car from Junior's previous win in 2012. With a large print run, this might not wind up being the most valuable collectible in the world, but I am pretty happy with it. I ordered the Elite Version, which has better components and more features than a standard car. This one is serial-numbered, being # 1873 / 2388 pieces made.

On this car the hood opens to show the engine, the flaps on the roof open up, and the trunk opens to reveal the fuel system. The net in the driver's window can be opened and re-secured, and if your finger is small enough you can reach in there and move the steering wheel, which turns the front wheels from side to side.

There were a few other things in the box with the car. The first thing is a Certificate of Authenticity with the car's serial number written in. The Raced-Win versions of cars always get a Winner sticker and often a bag of confetti collected from Victory Lane after the race. This car also includes a little card with a picture of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and some of his stats from the race. It's a pretty cool car and the first Raced-Win car in my collection.

Seeking Redemption 8: 2014 Topps Power Players Gold Parallel Prizes

With the Power Players code set complete I figured I wasn't going to be entering any more codes on the Power Players website, so I went ahead and ordered the three random Gold parallels I won while entering codes in on the website. Topps uses FedEx's slowest service for redemption fulfillment and prizes, so about two weeks after I made the order they shipped it, and about two weeks after that I got the package in my mailbox.

The Gold parallel cards have a shiny rainbow finish that looks about the same as the Gold parallels in this year's Archives set. They are numbered out of # / 75, which is pretty decent for a 'free' (postage was a couple of dollars) prize. My first card was a C.J. Wilson, numbered # 02 / 75. It's decent enough I suppose. Not a PC guy or a team I really follow, and he's got a case of UPF (Ugly Pitching Face) going on.

Jon Lester's UPF is a little more understated, with just a bit of lip-chewing going on. He is numbered # 39 / 75. Again, he is not really a guy I collect, although he is now a member of the A's, which are a team I follow a little bit. I own him in one fantasy baseball league, a card blogging league I joined this year. He has put up a pretty good stat line for them so far.

Finally, I got a Michael Brantley card, numbered # 33 / 75. I haven't heard many people talking about fielders making faces on baseball cards, but Brantley is certainly focused on catching that ball. I nominate this card as a case of UFF (Ugly Fielding Face). He's another guy on that same fantasy baseball roster, where he has been tearing it up. Through this point in the season he is the 3rd-ranked outfielder in the game, and the 7th-ranked player overall. This is mostly due to his dual-threat nature (18 HR, 15 SB), good counting stats (78 R, 80 RBI) and a .316 batting average.

I logged in to my account on the Power Players site and saw that they had awarded me another Gold parallel for some reason, so I will have to order that at some point. Maybe I will wait until later in the season to make sure I don't get dinged for shipping again on some other prize.

At the Trade Deadline 25: Cards from Nachos Grande

After failing to win several auctions for various custom Allen & Ginter minis on eBay, I reached out to Chris from the Nachos Grande blog to see if he had any copies available for trade. I offered some of my spare 2014 Allen & Ginter cards in exchange, as he is trying to put the set together. He sent one of my coveted cards, Spider-Man, as well as a few other baseball-types. He also included a card from my 2012 Topps Archives want list, a Willie Stargell cloth sticker. I need those cloth stickers in order to have a complete Archives set, but I can't stand to actually touch them. I have a weird thing about textures, and those cards set it off something fierce. I can't reach into a bag of cotton balls, and I can't handle 2012 Archives Cloth Stickers. I was well into adulthood before I could wear fleece jackets or cover up with a fleece blanket. Anyway, enough about my hangups.

Spider-Man was up near the top of my wish list. I got a laptop recently and hadn't set up my scanner software properly, so some of my recent posts feature subpar images due to the low-quality default settings on the scanner. At least that's my excuse. Wil Myers looks a little sleepy in his card. Tulowitzki is rocking a pretty sweet mullet on his emotion-packed card, and Cliff Lee looks a little derpy (Ugly Pitching Face strikes again!) and actually reminds me a bit of one of my former Company Commanders. Manny Machado gets a pretty good photo, although it feels like that pose has already been overused on his cards. I was trying to figure out where I'd seen it recently and then I looked at the pile of cards next to my keyboard and saw his 2014 Archives card sitting there, with Machado wearing an orange jersey but striking the same pose.

This was a nice pile of cards to get in the mail. There are relatively few sources for those custom A & G cards, so it is good to lay hands on them any way I can get them. Thanks, Chris!

What eBay Hath Wrought 103a: A Rip Card Deconstructed

P-town Tom mentioned in a comment on my previous post that he hadn't seen a Rip Card post-rip, and I got to thinking that all I was showing in that post was the really sanitized, watered-down version of the Rip Card. So I pulled it out of the top loader and opened it back up to show what it really looks like. On the left there you can see the two pieces of paper that are used to block people from cheating and looking at what's inside using a light. The other sides of those papers (the sides that touch the mini card) are glossy and white. On a side note, I saw an auction today for a Rip Card that had a picture of the card with a magnet sticking to it, showing that the mini inside was a 1 / 1 Metal Mini Parallel. The Buy It Now price seemed relatively low on the card, but chances are the mini inside is that Texting Champion guy or something, and not even worth the price tag. Then again, it could be some Hall of Famer and be worth many times the seller's asking price. Who knows?

Anyway, after that little tangent, back to the Rip Card autopsy. You can see the pull strip arching off toward the bottom of the photo, and the flap I cut to the right side. I did a little cutting on the left side, but just enough that I could maneuver the mini card out. And that's really all there is to it. To put it back together I just put the two bits of paper back inside, fold the flap back down, hold the pull strip in place, and slide the assembly into a card sleeve and a top loader to keep everything in place.