Contested Shots 8: 2015 Allen & Ginter Contest at Bubba's Bangin' Batch of Baseball Bits

Bubba's Bangin' Batch of Baseball Bits is holding a contest with a whole pile of 2015 Allen & Ginter prizes. I am not sharing it with my readers out of selflessness; sharing is the first requirement for my own entry into the contest.

Gray Whale Harpooned: 2013 Topps Supreme Munenori Kawasaki

I recently was able to land a Gray Whale of mine (h/t Cervin' Torren' Up Cards), a card that I wanted but could never really justify at the prevailing asking price. The card in question is any version of the 2013 Topps Supreme Munenori Kawasaki autograph. They are up on eBay all the time, it seems like, but either the bidding always $10-15 more than I feel like spending on one or it just comes around at a bad time for me financially.

Well, events converged for me and one of the Sepia # / 35 copies popped up with a Buy It Now price a little less than the # / 50 ones usually go. I hit the button after a couple hours of thinking about it and worrying that someone else might purchase it before I made the decision to do so. I was also able to use my eBay Bucks certificate from last quarter to bring the price down quite a bit more. It's a very nice card, and I am pretty happy with it. It is a sticker autograph, but the signature is all on the sticker and the sticker is framed fairly well and applied pretty evenly. Last year I was able to add a Munenori Kawasaki relic card to my collection (make sure to read the funny anecdote shared by Zippy Zappy in the comments section), and now I've got an autograph to go with it. This one is numbered # 18 / 35.

He has seen some action this year for the Blue Jays, coming into games mostly in the 7th or 8th innings and getting 17 plate attempts over the course of 12 games during May and June. The rest of the season has been spent in AAA. He's a pretty popular player in spite of his pedestrian numbers, and I would imagine that is why he gets as much run and attention as he does. Pretty much every video clip you see of the guy is entertaining, and you can tell he enjoys life. I hope he is able to hang on for a couple more years and get a few more cards out there with his picture on them.

John Soukup Hits Me With One of the Coolest Surprise Packages Ever!

Early last week I showed off a Princess Leia sketch card by John Soukup that I had purchased from the artist himself on eBay. In addition to posting about the card here, I sent him a message to say thanks and let him know that I am a fan of his work. I try to do that when I get convention sketches done or when I acquire sketch cards that I enjoy, so the artist knows I appreciate the work they put into what they do. He responded to my message and thanked me for my support. Then a few days later a box showed up on my doorstep with his return address on it, full of fun stuff. First is the non-card stuff.

In Soviet Russia, arts patronize you!

That plush Yoda over there on the left says a few phrases from the Star Wars films. I tried to hold on to the A-Team Van Hot Wheels car for myself, but my kids whined and cried so much that I finally gave in and gave them all three cars. Maybe when they get tired of them I will steal it back. The book on the bottom is a music magazine featuring his art on the cover and an interview with more art inside.

He does seem to have an interest in sports and sports cards, so he included a variety of things to hit my player collections, as well as a couple of notable cards that I am saving for the end of the post. First up are three Gheorghe Muresan cards for my 2nd-largest basketball player collection. That '95-'96 Fleer Metal set is something else, especially in-hand. I could look at cards from that set all day. Across the bottom are some cards from Seattle-based teams. I really don't know how to feel about Russell Wilson, Marshawn Lynch, and the rest of the Seahawks. I want to like them and cheer for them, but there is something going on with them that makes me uncomfortable. I haven't thought really hard about it though, so I can't be any more specific than that.

For the prospecting side of things he added a Bowman Chrome autograph of Tyler Pike, who is still pretty young and seems to be a popular mention whenever someone writes an article about the Mariners' next group of rising stars. I guess we'll see how he turns out.

And here is where the package really takes off. These are a couple of vintage cards with a bit of notoriety to their names. On the left is Pedro Borbon's 1970 Topps Rookie Card, and on the right is Billy Martin's 1972 Topps card. Since Borbon is more famous for what's on the back of his card, we'll start with Billy Martin. You'll notice that Martin is slyly extending the middle finger on his left hand, flipping the bird to the photographer or maybe someone in the background. Usually there is a joker on the team that is prone to this kind of stuff, but Martin was the team's Manager! Anyway, his gesture ensures that this card pops up on many of the internet's Top 10 lists for vulgar or silly trading cards. 

Pedro Borbon's card is famous because the back features a cartoon explaining that his hobby is cock fighting, which is legal in his country of origin, the Dominican Republic. It's not so legal here in the United States, though, which probably makes talking about it in the open like that kind of taboo. I guess it would be akin to printing a football card for Michael Vick announcing that his hobby is dog fighting. Borbon isn't someone I'd read up on until now, and his story is a pretty colorful tale. It seems that he had quite a penchant for getting into trouble and biting people and things.

There was some other cool stuff in the package, but those were the highlights. I could really tell that he went out of his way to select just the right mix of stuff for my collections and interests, and that personal touch to me is probably even more neat than physically getting all of this awesome swag. Make sure to check out his art page and also go look at these awesome Star Wars figure sets he's made (make sure to scroll down and see the Hoth set!). I know that he goes by the name Kettle sometimes, too, but I am not cool enough to know how street names/art names work. Maybe he uses 'John Soukup' for his commercial stuff and 'Kettle' for his more personal art. Either way, I am super excited by this surprise package and I will be seeking out more of his stuff soon!

Seeking Redemption 14: My Other 2015 Topps Babe Ruth Call Your Shot Prize

I pulled a couple of winning code cards from 2015 Topps Baseball's Babe Ruth Call Your Shot game. One of them was a Tier C autograph and I showed it earlier this month. The other was a Tier B autograph, and it arrived today in the form of this 2013 Bowman Platinum Autograph Prospect card of Danny Salazar. Salazar is having a pretty good year so far for the Indians, but I don't think it's really moved the needle on his card prices. I spent $4.95 on shipping to get this prize from Topps, and this card sells for $1-3 regularly on eBay. Yuck. Well, I think I know an Indians fan who might like it. I think the signature looks a little lonely out there in that big expanse of fingerprint-attracting Chrome (or is this particular type of shiny referred to as Platinum?). And that 'S' looks kind of lonely off on the side of that squiggle that allegedly says 'Danny.'

Salazar has plenty of time still to put up more good numbers and maybe in a few years this card will be highly sought on the secondary market. I am happy that this card featured a genuine major leaguer whose name I recognized, unlike the Tier C card I got last time.

Pull Tab Awareness Week: How I Package Single Cards for Protection and Buyer / Trader Convenience!

The Baseball Card Breakdown blog just reminded me that it is Pull Tab Awareness Week, which calls for people shipping cards back and forth to quit damaging cards and ruining top loaders with inferior packaging methods. In light of that, I am going to re-post my method for shipping cards in a way that protects the card and prevents those nasty patches of Scotch tape (or worse, packing tape!) and adhesive that basically ruin a top loader forever. I posted this tutorial before, but it was buried under a post about a Josh Reddick card, and I don't know if anyone actually got down far enough to read it.

First you need your card, a penny sleeve, a top loader, a strip of painter's tape with the ends folded over to make pull tabs (convenient!), a rectangle of paper that is wider than the tape, and a team bag (optional).

This part is the easy part. Put the card in the penny sleeve, then slide that assembly into the top loader. You can tap the bottom of the top loader gently on a table surface or something to get the card to settle all the way down. Don't overdo it. We're trying to prevent damage here.

There are a couple of ways to do this. You can stick the paper rectangle to the tape first and then apply the tape to the top loader, or you can hold the paper folded over the top of the top loader as shown and then apply the tape. Either method will eventually result in something that looks like the next photo.

The tape and paper are folded over the top of the card, holding it inside the top loader during shipping. Painter's tape is not extremely prone to damaging the edge of cards, but I think the paper adds a little extra security to keep the adhesive from causing chipping along the top edge of the card. Scotch (transparent) tape and packing tape are both evil and should not be used. I've seen a lot of cards damaged by transparent tape, and even more top loaders ruined by the presence of a bunch of tape residue stuck all over them. Painter's tape doesn't stay stuck all over the top loader and a roll of it can get you through quite a few shipments.

Finally, you can add a team bag to the package. I tend to use these mostly when the weather is bad or when I am shipping multiple cards in a stack. I also will use one any time I am sending an 'expensive' card that I have sold on eBay, as I think presentation counts for something when you are a seller. I put the word in quotes because that is a relative term that really depends on my mood at the time. I've got plenty of team bags, top leaders, and penny sleeves hanging around, though, so I don't usually have to outlay any additional cash to buy bunches of those for shipping cards. I just recycle the ones that come in with my card purchases.

And that's it. That is my usual method for shipping single cards in top loaders. I feel like the extra step or two is worth the decrease in potential damage when sending cards out into the world. And if it looks like you at least tried to mitigate damage, people are going to give you the benefit of the doubt when things do go wrong.

Rainbow in the Dark 30: Jon Singleton 2014 Topps High Tek Circuit Board

I had planned on processing some more cards and getting some additional scans into my Draft queue, but I didn't ever really get around to it. Part of it was laziness, and part of it was venturing into the deep recesses of my crawlspace to troubleshoot our air conditioner. Turns out there was an earwig...

...stuck in the condensate overflow shut-off switch, and after I removed the earwig the unit kicked back on and it's been working ever since. I am glad that with the help of Youtube I was able to check the problem myself and save the cost of a service call / potential oversell of part I don't actually need. I did also manage to catch part of the Home Run Derby. I was hoping for Josh Donaldson to win, but the next-best thing happened with Todd Frazier winning in front of the home crowd.

This is the last of the cards in the Draft queue that I built up during my break between the Fall and Spring semesters a few months ago. I had been working on a Jon Singleton rainbow from 2014 Topps High Tek, and this is one of the background variations in the set. Each player had 6 different background variations of differing rarity, and this is the 4th of 6 patterns for AL players. Cardboard Connection calls it the Circuit Board pattern.

In addition to the six different background variations, there are a number of colored parallels of the most common background variation. I have six of the variations, thanks in part to a huge addition sent to me by Commishbob, but I lack the rarest ones which are numbered either # / 5 or # 1 / 1. I've seen a couple of the # 1 / 1 's pop up over the last few months, but I wasn't able to land any of them. I don't recall seeing any of the Blue Cloud Diffractors, which are the # / 5 variation, at any point. It is entirely possible that I missed out on one or more of them, though. Anyway, for all practical purposes the rainbow is complete to me unless one of those really rare ones pop up. I wonder how much of the print run is already busted? It seems like it was a pretty good seller, so there might not be whole lot of cards left that aren't tucked away in a collection somewhere.

2014 Donruss Rated Rookie Stat Line Jon Singleton

I'm running pretty low on my stockpile of already-scanned cards saved in the Draft queue, so I am sort of scraping the bottom of the barrel. These are things that I scanned a long time ago and just never had much interest in writing posts about. In some cases I actually wait until I can scan more cards just so I don't have to try to think of something to say about the cards that are already scanned. But I have to post about them sometime. I wouldn't want to waste a scan.

This is a Stat Line parallel card from 2014 Donruss Baseball that commemorates Singleton's 61 career (minor league) home runs to that point. He certainly doesn't have 61 major league home runs yet, but he is slowly approaching 61 major league hits, only needing 6 more to reach that mark. The card is numbered # 24 / 61 and is printed on shiny foil card stock.

The back of the card looks the same as the base version. The Astros are driving me a little bit nuts right now. They swept the Royals, then lost series to the Red Sox and Indians before being swept by the Rays, who were just swept themselves by the Royals. And just like that, the Angels lead the division.