Working on a Jon Singleton High Tek Rainbow

I've been working on picking up as many variations as I can of Jon Singleton's 2014 Topps High Tek card. Although I don't think I've posted any of them yet, I have pretty much everything now except for the cards numbered # / 15 or less. A couple of them have surfaced on eBay, but I am not willing to pay the asking prices for them. I got the two cards in this post from the same seller for a couple of dollars apiece. Shown above is the Clouds Diffractor, which is numbered # 11 / 25.

I also got the Disco Diffractor, which is numbered # 27 / 50. I like the High Tek set quite a bit, but I do have a couple of issues with it. I wish the team logos on the front were a little bit bigger. That's not a huge deal, though. The thing that really bothers me is that the stat lines on the back are completely unreadable. The font is tiny and a little out of focus. I guess buying High Tek for the stats on the back is kind of like buying Maxim for the articles, but why even put the stats there if no one can read them? There are many things I don't like about this release, but it was at least something different from Topps and the cards do look really cool. I hope they can release some more stuff in 2015 like High Tek and Stadium Club, two of the better Topps releases from this year.

My Favorite Christmas Card of 2014

Quite a few bloggers got baseball cards in their Christmas cards this year, and I was happy to be included in that number. I received a Christmas card from Ryan, the creator of the famed Munnatawket custom Allen & Ginter set and in addition to the season's greetings and a thoughtful note thanking me for my blog posts featuring his handiwork, he included some highly-desired cards from his set. The highlight was this Vladimir Guerrero card from the What Could've Been insert set, serially-numbered # 13 / 25. This insert set features athletes in uniforms they could have worn if things had turned out a little differently. This card features Vlad as a Blue Jay. He signed with the team in 2012 and played a few games in their minor league system, but left the organization after they refused to promote him to the major league team. This is a pretty cool idea for an insert set, and it is well-executed.

The base set was recently expanded by 12 cards, and an Astro made the list by way of George Springer in a nice rainbow-hued uniform. This set is very cool and well-executed, and I am always excited to acquire new pieces from it for my collection. It definitely made for a memorable Christmas card. Thank you, Ryan!

Danica Patrick in My Textbook

At the start of December I mentioned that I'd bought a bunch of Danica Patrick cards, mostly parallels, from eBay sellers who were offloading some big collections. I didn't have a lot of luck in getting any big hits or parallels featuring her actual picture on the card fronts, but I was able to grab quite a few cards featuring her car and her hauler and her pit crew. These two cards are parallels from the 2012 Press Pass set, a gold foil one numbered # 27 / 35 and a blue holofoil numbered # 30 / 35.

My blog has kind of been on NASCAR overload lately, but these cards I bought in mid-November are the only pictures I have cropped and uploaded into my Drafts folder. I've probably got a couple hundred other cards scanned, but I haven't chopped the scans all up into individual pictures and uploaded them yet. There's a lot going on right now, and I have difficulty making time for blog posts.

Here are the card backs. We get a photo of the driver herself and a little rundown of a Nationwide race where Danica finished higher than any other female racer ever had. And going back to the title of the post, Danica had a quote featured in my Business Ethics textbook reading assignment this week. It was something to the effect that part of a successful racing strategy is staying one step ahead of the rules committee by finding loopholes for car setup faster than the committee can get them closed.

Jon Singleton Supreme Autograph # 05 / 25

I wanted a Topps Supreme autograph of Jon Singleton, and now I have one. It didn't cost me a whole lot, and it's a nice-looking card. I imagine that purple background means that this is some kind of parallel, but who even knows? This one is numbered # 05 / 25, so it's a pretty low-numbered card. There's one out there on eBay right now with the serial number # 04 / 20 that I want because Singleton got busted for smoking weed and my juvenile sense of humor thinks that 4/20 jokes are funny. I don't know yet if that joke is worth the seller's asking price to me.

School started up this week, which seems to actually increase my posting rate. I think it's because I need excuses for procrastinating on my homework, and writing blog posts is a great way to put off an assignment. My wife is starting school again this semester as well, so that is going to be an adventure as we try to fit it all in. This should be the last semester before I graduate, though, so that is a bonus.

The Denver Broncos lost their game with the Indianapolis Colts this week and got themselves an early exit from the playoffs. Now their head coach is gone and people are saying that Peyton Manning might not come back for another try. I was at work when the game started, and by the time I got home the score was so lopsided that I didn't even bother turning the TV on. I guess that makes me a bad fan. I hope that Manning comes back next year, but I would understand if he doesn't. He's probably got enough money in the bank, so now it is all about trying to add on the the legacy and put another Super Bowl ring on his finger. Maybe that stuff isn't worth the grind of another season to him. I just don't want the Broncos to go back to being a team with quarterback questions. I thought for sure that they'd get one ring with Manning under center.

Pack of the Day 82: 2014 Topps High Tek

A couple of posts ago I said something about not buying the recent Topps High Tek release as it is a pretty expensive product with only eight cards per box. RAZ from a month ago is a liar. Dave & Adam's Card World had it on sale along with a couple of other things I wanted, and I ordered a box of my own to see what I would get. The cards are printed on clear acetate and have various background patterns of varying rarity. There's a guide to the patterns on the Cardboard Connection site. AL players and NL players have their own different sets of patterns.

These three cards are from the most common background variations. Jose Abreu is a pretty good pull recently, although it seems like his card prices are down a bit now that we're in the winter lull. Prince Fielder isn't the greatest pull at the moment, but I like his cards well enough. Julio Teheran is the Braves' top pitcher, but I don't follow most of the NL all that closely and don't know much else about him.

Sandy Koufax and Edgar Martinez are from the 2nd tier of background patterns, referred to as Grid and Spirals on the Cardboard Connection guide. Koufax is a legendary Hall of Famer and Martinez is arguably a Hall of Famer, although he gets dinged by the voters for spending a large part of his career as a Designated Hitter.

This Julio Teheran card falls into the 3rd tier of patterns, which on NL cards is called Shatter. I said about all I had to say (not much) about Teheran up above. I didn't get any cards from the 4th, 5th, or 6th tiers of rarity in this box, so all that's left now is the hits. Each box promises a serially-numbered card and an autograph. Lets see what I got.

The numbered parallel for the box was this Clouds Diffractor of Omar Vizquel, numbered # 01 / 25. There are apparently a handful of Vizquel super collectors with deep pockets out there who fight over his really limited cards, making his 1 / 1 cards from this set some of the biggest hits in the product. Unfortunately, there are plenty of this particular version to go around, so it will not make me instantly wealthy. Maybe because this is the first card in the print run it would sell for a slight premium, but that is hit or miss at best. It's a pretty cool card, but it's not a guy I collect. Let's look at the autograph.

Oh, this guy looks familiar. Both of my hit cards feature Omar Vizquel. This is the base version of the autograph card, so again it is not rare enough to command a huge premium on the secondary market. If I went to the effort of selling the cards from this box I think I would probably get back half to two-thirds of what I paid for the box. I didn't pull any cards from any players or teams I focus on in my collection, so resale value is my only real benchmark for this box's success. There are definitely worse possible boxes out there, so this one probably falls just north of average because the parallel was a low-numbered card and Omar Vizquel's autograph sells fairly well compared to a lot of others in the set.

Would I buy another box? I don't think I would unless the prices came down quite a bit. It's a fun set and I like the acetate cards and on-card autographs, but opening one box is enough. Unless you PC some really high-end player you're probably better off buying singles from people who break this stuff. Even if you do collect a high-end player you might be better off just buying singles, because there's no guarantee you'll pull the card you want in a given case or group of cases.

At the Trade Deadline 27: Player Collection Cards from the Prowling Cat

I sent some cards off to the Prowling Cat a while back, and he sent some cards back. The cards hit on many of my player collections. First up is a couple of elusive Hakeem Olajuwon cards from the 90's. The Skybox card features a cameo of Patrick Ewing, one of the villains of that era's NBA, at least from my perspective. He always looked so grouchy, and he had a rivalry with Hakeem that went all the way back to college ball. Beam Team was always a cool insert set, but I never could afford Stadium Club cards as a kid, let alone Stadium Club inserts.

This is a cool Danica Patrick card from Press Pass Premium. This might be my favorite card in the package. It's from the Studio Insider subset, which features zoomed-out photos of the drivers during the photo shoot. I'm pretty sure I didn't have this one already.

I liked the artsy look of the 2011 Press Pass Eclipse cards. I think these cards would make good prints or posters to hang on the wall. Both of these cards feature Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s # 88 car. I especially like that one on the top.

Wrapping things up is a couple cards of Seattle Mariners ace Felix Hernandez. It's kind of a shame that such a good pitcher has been stuck on some less-than-stellar teams throughout his career. Maybe this will be the year that they get over the playoff hump?

Thanks for the card, Zenus!

Wallet Card 2015

The minds over at Baseball Card Breakdown have created a game, and that game has taken over the baseball card blogosphere. The game is called Wallet Card, and the idea behind it is to find a card that you like seeing and keep it in your wallet. Throughout the year you can take it out and take pictures of it in the places you visit. The camera on my phone is terrible and I don't take many pictures anyway, but I guess I can carry a card around in my wallet and see how it looks at the end of the year. I got a little preview of what it might look like after a year when my dogs and/or kids knocked some cards off of the sorting table yesterday and did a little accelerated wear test on them. At some point after the cards were dislodged, someone decided to rub them on something abrasive and then fold them neatly into halves and quarters. So Jon Singleton's 2014 Bowman Chrome Refractor # 418 / 500 is no longer with us, along with a couple of other shiny Bowman Singleton cards.

The card I chose as my wallet card came in the mail just a day or so ago, and it is R.A. Dickey's issue from 2014 Topps Mini Baseball. My wallet doesn't fold, as I have a slim wallet that fits in my front pocket because my old thick folding wallet hurt my back when I sat on it all day every day. And when you put a thick wallet in your front pocket people tend to get the wrong idea about how much you like them. A mini-sized card fits just right inside the ID pocket where I keep my various forms of identification. The card came from the Cards on Cards group break that was held recently. I owe Kerry a return package and a blog post detailing the stuff he sent me, but I am waiting on some stuff to arrive in the mail before I can ship the package and I am waiting on my lazy streak to end before I write the blog post. I am afraid that there are a rather large number of bloggers and friends who are waiting on packages and/or blog posts from me.

The wallet came from Saddleback Leather, an outfit that makes some seriously high-quality leather products. They use extremely thick leather and the most durable fasteners they can find, and their products are guaranteed to outlast their owners. I would love to get one of their larger bags, like a briefcase or a backpack, but that kind of quality doesn't come cheap. I tend to tear up my backpacks and bags pretty good, though, so the lifetime guarantee is pretty appealing. And nothing really matches the smell of leather or the look of a well-worn piece of cowhide. I really like my wallet, and I hope that some day I can order a bigger piece from them.