What eBay Hath Wrought 119: More Munnatawket Ginter Minis!

Soon after the Nachos Grande blog posted about their existence, the creator of the Munnatawket Allen & Ginter mini set posted a group of the What Could've Been limited insert set on eBay. The set features various sports stars as if they had continued down different career paths, and it is limited to 25 sets overall. I placed bids on all of them, but when the dust settled I had only won one of the auctions, the Russell Wilson card featuring him as a member of the Texas Rangers, the baseball team that drafted him. The other card I really wanted from the set was Vladimir Guerrero, but either the auction went higher than my high price or I got distracted around the time it ended and forgot to check up on it. I am pretty happy with the Russell Wilson card, even though my Denver Broncos haven't yet found a way to crack that Seattle code. This particular example is # 22 / 25. The Munnatawket minis have been pretty quiet on eBay as of late, so I am not sure how many chances there will be to complete even the base set. Card # 0 has been especially elusive. I am still kicking myself for not taking that second chance offer a few months ago when I had the chance.

Then there is the matter of the base set. I am not sure how many cards are in the base set, although I thought I saw the number mentioned in a blog post somewhere (it happens to be the blog post I linked above, and there are 80 total cards in the set). Three additions to my collection were included in the package along with the card I won. I got a Tom Brady, although on this card he is featured in his more recognizable uniform. Also included were Roberto Clemente and Ryan Zimmerman, the other Washington Zimmerman(n).

And here are the backs. I always like getting cards from this set, as Ryan is very generous with the freebies and anticipating what will drop out of the envelope is almost as fun as getting the cards I've won at auction. I don't know that I will ever be able to assemble the full set, but I am going to get as close as I can. I tracked down the cards I do have, and it looks like I've got 15 out of the 80 cards purported to be on the checklist. So I'm nearly a fifth of the way there!

What eBay Hath Wrought 118: Rubbing is Racing

I had a relatively eventful commute home on Friday afternoon, with an 18-wheeler deciding that it was entitled to the lane space my car was occupying. I had been looking to move up or to the right in order to get out of the lane, specifically because I try to be careful around trucks and their blind spots. But no openings came available in the slow construction-congested traffic and I saw the truck's fender moving toward me from the left. He ground his wheel along the side of my car for a while, and the person in the lane to the right of me decided to let me change lanes at that point. The truck finished pushing me over and I looked to get over to the shoulder to talk about it. Once there, I realized the truck wasn't stopping, so I tried to get as much of a visual description as I could of it. Traffic was pretty slow, so the truck was in my field of vision for a little while.

Then I called the State Police to see what they could do for me. A couple of people pulled over to see if I needed help, but I was pretty distracted by the phone call and wasn't able to give them much attention. I hope they get some good karma in their lives for going out of their way to check on me, even though I wasn't very interactive. An incident response truck and a motorcycle officer showed up within 5 or 10 minutes, and I was able to write my report while the officer worked with police down the road on finding the truck. He took some pictures of my car, asked me some questions, and talked a lot on his phone.

After about 40 minutes he said that the police in the next state had found the truck and pulled it over. The truck driver denied everything, but placed himself at the spot of the accident at the right time and I believe the other officer must have found some of my paint on the guy's lugnuts. I guess in this case it helps that my car is bright yellow.

I was on my way home from work, so I was wearing my Army uniform and every so often people would drive by and shout, "Thank you for your service!" Who does that? I guess you can't knock them for expressing their feelings, but who drives by what is either a traffic stop or an accident scene and yells that at the person interacting with the officer?

Once all that happened I called my insurance company to start my claim and see about a tow home. The damage is really probably all cosmetic, but I didn't want to take any chances and I really didn't feel like driving myself home. We were moving pretty slowly when it happened, so I don't think I am injured at all, but I was starting to ache from being tensed up with anger and stress. The officer gave me the preliminary report, told me that he was sending a citation off to the truck driver, and rode off on his motorcycle. I was expecting a 30 or 40 minute wait for the tow truck, but it showed up after about 15 minutes and took me and my car home.

Now I get to work with my insurance company to see if I can get the truck driver's insurance company to fix my car. Since the other guy was issued a citation and my car isn't exactly a luxury automobile, I am hoping it will be a pretty quick process.

I picked up this Danica Patrick relic card from 2013 Topps Showcase from eBay with my October eBay Bucks certificate. It's got a little piece of sheet metal embedded in it and is numbered # 12 / 20. Danica was running pretty well in tonight's Bank of America 500 race until Joey Logano put her into the wall and she fell back in the pack, finishing 26th. Her green and pink car looked pretty sharp out on the track. I hope I can pick up the die-cast of it at some point in the future.

Breaking it Down 17: The Immaculate Toronto Blue Jays

I thought it was about time to do a baseball post, as my readership numbers have dwindled into the single digits after posts featuring NASCAR, comic books, and the NFL. Some nice Blue Jays hits should get the page views back up in the dozen or more mark. Page views aren't everything, but getting a few people to read the blog provides some motivation to keep writing.

I picked up the Toronto Blue Jays slot in a group break of 2014 Panini Immaculate Baseball. The spot was cheap, and the Blue Jays had a larger chance than most other low-priced teams to get something really cool like a bat knob or one of the shoe relic cards that have been getting a lot of buzz. I didn't get any of those things, but I got a couple of nice cards.

First up is these two Jose Bautista base cards. Every card on the checklist is serially-numbered, with the base cards being limited to a print run of 99 cards each. I got # 30 / 99 and # 32 / 99.

The card-backs are all right, but nothing spectacular.

I got this Ryan Goins relic card, with a nice little piece of blue cloth in the window. It is numbered # 65 / 99. Goins had a bad year and got sent down to AAA for a while. I honestly don't know all that much about him. I read that his glove is pretty good, but he has so far been unable to catch up with his bat.

And this is the number one card in the lot. It's an Immaculate Swatches relic card of Edwin Encarnacion featuring a pretty nice two-color relic that appears to be some blue fabric with a bit of white patch sewn on. It's also a Christmas card, being numbered # 12 / 25. It's not a bat knob or a piece of shoe, but it's not a bad hit for one of the cheapest slots in an Immaculate break. I don't miss the logos too much on these cards for some reason. Maybe it's because on all of these cards Panini went ahead and showed the players from the front, avoiding the plague of man-butt that has been apparent in other sets as Panini tries to avoid highlighting the lack of licensing to use MLB team names and logos. Obviously I would prefer to see Panini get the MLB license and give Topps some competition, but it seems like the major sports leagues are moving in the opposite direction, shrinking the number of companies that have licensing rights to make official cards.

What eBay Hath Wrought 117: Groot and Rocket Raccoon Sketch by Jason Crosby

After picking up a Red Sonja sketch card by Jason Crosby, I kept my eye out for other sketch cards created by him. I found this sketch of Rocket Raccoon and Groot from Upper Deck's Guardians of the Galaxy set, based on the Marvel film. I can't say I've been a follower of the GotG comic books or anything, but my wife and I did go and see the movie in the theater a couple of weeks ago. Going to the movies or really any type of outing is a rare thing for us. I typically don't have the time or attention span to devote to watching a movie, and we have a hard time justifying getting a babysitter for our kids. I thought the movie was pretty good. Most of the Marvel movies I've seen have been pretty good, but I haven't seen all of the recent ones. I don't know if I've seen any of the recent DC films, either. The Marvel cosmic universe has a lot of interesting stuff, but I think I was turned off of it in my youth because a lot of it was pretty wordy and navel-gazey. The movie did a good job of making most of the main characters interesting on an individual level. In looking at pictures for this post, I came across this fan art by Justin Ponsor of Rocket and Groot done up to look like Han Solo and Chewbacca, which is actually a pretty good parallel as far as mercenary space-farers go.

Pretty good stuff all around. I was glad to add another Jason Crosby sketch to my collection, and it will serve as a nice memento for our great date of 2014. Perhaps in 2015 my wife and I will be able to go out twice or something.

It is nice when the artists go out of their way to sign the back of the card or otherwise make it obvious who actually created the art. I hate trying to identify and credit the artist of a sketch based on a hieroglyph on the front of the card or a couple of hastily-scrawled initials. From what I hear, the artists don't get paid much to do these sketches for the card companies, so the value of doing them really comes from the exposure they get and the commissions and jobs that might come from the sketch cards being seen. All of that is hard to get when no one can figure out exactly who made the art. 

What eBay Hath Wrought 116: 2010 Wheels Main Event Head to Head Dale Earnhardt Jr. / Danica Patrick Holofoil

Here is a nice card that I snagged on the cheap because the auction listing was vague and uninformative. Way back in June I grabbed the Silver version of this card, which was numbered out of # / 150. In that post I complained that the scarcer versions of this card were well outside my price range.

I have a number of very vague eBay searches saved that basically cast a net for anything featuring a person on my player collection list. This means there is a lot of junk to sort through and I can ignore 99% of it, but it ensures that I am looking at pictures and can jump on things that I've been searching for even if the seller doesn't do a good job of creating the listing. I wasn't even going to open this auction because chances were huge that it would just be another of the common parallels. Lo and behold, it was the 2010 Wheels Main Event Head to Head Holofoil parallel, numbered # 04 / 10. I don't even think the listing mentioned the full name of the set. This meant that anyone searching for this specific insert might miss out completely. Bad for the seller, but good for me. I placed a small bid and moved on with my life. The end of the auction came and went with just one other person putting in a token bid, and I was the victor. I don't remember exactly what I paid for the first card, but I can guarantee it was more than I paid for this one.

This card is set apart from the more common variants by including relics with seams and stitching across the middle. It looks like whoever placed the swatches in the card made sure to slant the seams in an artistic manner. It's a pretty cool card.

Seeing the drivers standing around on the backs of these cards makes me think of Ricky Bobby from Talladega Nights, when he wasn't sure what to do with his hands during an interview. Athletes from the traditional sports have equipment to hold and poses they can strike to make a card visually interesting. Race drivers are kind of stuck with choosing between arms crossed and arms hanging down to the sides.

What eBay Hath Wrought 115: Manti Te'o Prime Something or Other

I got this card on eBay around the same time I bought a discounted Chargers slot in a group break of 2014 Topps Prime that netted me 0 cards. This particular group break operation does usually send you a Hobby pack of something when you strike out though, so I've still got that coming to me. (The package arrived in the time since I wrote this, and there was nothing in the pack, so as my three year-old would say, "I have nuffing!")

Anyway, I don't think Te'o was included in 2014 Prime. Defensive players can be superstars, but it is pretty rare. And Te'o isn't really made up of superstar stuff. He was in all the 2013 products because he was a highly-publicized rookie and card companies need a buttload of rookies to sign things and wear shirts so they have cheap relics and autos to stuff high-end boxes with.

But I like him for a few reasons. One is his pop culture cred. His big claim to fame is having an online girlfriend who turned out to be a male acquaintance running an elaborate prank on him. After the guy ended the hoax by pretending that the girlfriend had died, Te'o used that as motivation in his college football career, a story that was picked up and run hard by the media. At some point Te'o found out that he had been hoodwinked, but he had so much attention and investment in the story that he kept the charade going until Deadspin uncovered the truth and exposed the truth on their site. Te'o had to come clean and admit that he was embarrassed and had lied to cover it all up. This event combined with his team's poor play in the championship game against Alabama led to his fall from a pretty certain first-round pick to a second-rounder.

I spent a couple of years living in San Diego as a missionary, so I have a very small affinity for the Chargers as long as they don't do well against the Broncos. Omaha! *four Chargers jump offsides* Te'o is a member of the same church as I am, so having a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to root for is a pretty cool thing. On to the card!

This is from 2013 Topps Prime, and features four swatches of memorabilia as well as a sticker autograph. I am assuming that the Level V designation has something to do with that 4+1 configuration. It is serially-numbered # 14 / 50. The swatches are cool, but I do kind of wonder how a player wears a football. Is it like a football purse that unzips along the lacing? Do they string the footballs together and wear them around their necks? I would think that Player-Used Memorabilia would be a better phrase to use when there are football pieces embedded in the card.

The scan of the back of this card was lost in the same error that ate the scan of the back of Josh Reddick's card from my last post. It has a little more information than the Reddick card did. In addition to the Congratulations! message, it has Te'o's height, weight, college, and draft information.

What eBay Hath Wrought 114: Who Names These Sets, Anyway?

I guess this isn't the greatest time to post an A's card, seeing as how they lost a Wild Card game to the Royals last night. Reddick did his part, though, going 2 for 4 with 2 Runs and 2 Walks. I didn't watch the game, though, as I had committed to attending a study group for the evening. I kind of wish now that I'd watched the game, as the score was back and forth all over the place. I was kind of pulling for the A's to advance, but I like the Royals too, so I'm glad to see them move on and try their hand at being a Cinderella story. I think that if the A's had advanced they would probably be the more competitive team overall.

This card is a 2013 Topps Museum Collection Momentous Materials Blue Rainbow? parallel of some kind, or TMCMMBR for short. The checklists I've dug up online don't mention a parallel numbered out of / 5, so I am not sure exactly what to call this thing. Blue Holofoil? The listed parallels are called things like Silver Rainbow and Gold Rainbow, so maybe this would be the Blue Rainbow parallel? I really don't know. This example is # 2 / 5, and I got it for a song on eBay.

After taking the card out of the screw-down holder I saw that there is a pretty massive corner ding in the upper left, some minor corner dings elsewhere, and surface damage throughout the card. For the price I got this thing for I am not going to complain about it, but if I had paid a few dollars more for this card I'd probably open a dispute, as the seller graded it well above actual condition.

On a card numbered this low it would be nice to get a bit of patch or something on the relic swatch, but again it's not often that I can get a decent low-numbered Josh Reddick card for a couple of dollars, let alone one with a piece of laundry glued into it.

So that's about it for this card. I don't have a scan of the back because I scanned it once and when I went downstairs afterward I saw that the scan had errored out and not saved to the computer. Instead of going back upstairs to scan it again I just left it alone. There's nothing back there anyway as far as stats or facts. Just a big banner congratulating me on acquiring a piece of memorabilia.