Cryptozoic The Guild Seasons 1-3 Felicia Day Autograph

Often when I order something from Dave & Adam's Card World I will throw in a box of Cryptozoic's The Guild Seasons 1-3 trading cards. They are perpetually on clearance and priced at about $15 each. In doing so I am mainly chasing cards featuring autographs or relics of Felicia Day and Wil Wheaton, the other big name in the set. I guess I could try to chase a master set of relics and autos, but I haven't been motivated to do so yet. Unfortunately I have never actually pulled a hit card featuring those two folks, so I have had to turn to eBay to get my Felicia Day cards. I posted about my Felicia Day relic card a couple of months ago and here is the autograph I picked up to go with it.

I got a pretty good deal on it, although I wouldn't say it was cheap. You don't see these things pop up too often, so when I saw a reasonable price on it a couple of months back I jumped on it. There is a short-printed variation that shows her in her Codex costume, and that goes for quite a bit more than this one when a copy surfaces. I would like to add it to the collection some day, but that will probably have to wait a while unless I can get a super deal on it.

Oops, I Already Had This Card: 2014 Press Pass Total Memorabilia Danica Patrick Gold Parallel

I picked up this card as part of a lot of three cards purchased from an eBay seller. After getting the cards in the mail, I thought, "That one card looks familiar." Sure enough, I had already pulled a copy of this one from a box I won as part of the Press Pass Fantasy NASCAR league last year. This is a Gold parallel from the 2014 Press Pass Total Memorabilia set, and this one is numbered # 044 / 175. It's a nice enough card, but I (sometimes) hate to spend money on a card I already have when I could be getting something totally new.

The Chase for the Cup is going on right now, but Danica doesn't figure into the Championship race at all. She will close out the season just trying to improve. She didn't make a lot of progress this week in the myAFibRisk.com 400 at Chicagoland Speedway, starting in 25th and finishing in 26th. She bounced around between 18th and 29th throughout the race, so was never much of a threat to gather a top 10 finish or anything like that. The final result did move her up one spot in the season standings, going from 24th to 23rd in the points.

It was nice to see that Josh Wise made a start and went the full distance, starting in 40th and working his way up to 33rd by the end.

Jon Singleton, Postseason Hero?

Even if the Astros make the postseason, Jon Singleton won't be there to help out as he's not on the eligibility list for MLB postseason play. But he did provide some heroics last night for the AAA Fresno Grizzlies in their series against the Round Rock Express for the PCL championship. With his team facing elimination, Singleton hit the tying RBI single in the 3rd inning and hit a 6th-inning home run to bring the score to 2-1, which was the final tally. The win extended the series for a deciding game 5 today, which the Grizzlies won 7-3 to clinch the 2015 PCL Championship.

Today's card is another single I picked up from eBay for a couple bucks. It is Singleton's Gold Refractor from 2015 Topps Chrome. Much to the consternation of collectors and case breakers, Topps changed up some of the colors and print runs for Chrome parallels this year, but the Gold Refractors stayed the same with 50 copies printed of each. My copy of the Singleton card is numbered # 38 / 50.

2014 Panini Classics Classic Combos George Springer / Jon Singleton

It's a little painful to write about the Astros right now, as they have lost 5 in a row and are now 2.5 games back in their division and only 1.5 games ahead in the race for the final wild card spot. Tonight they are facing Oakland ace Sonny Gray, so they are really going to have to get after him if they want to avoid falling even more in the playoff race. Even a couple of weeks ago they had around a 95% chance of making the postseason according to MLB.com's prediction tool. That number has now dropped to 70%.

One of the players on this card will have a big impact on whether or not the Astros make the playoffs. In 13 games since returning from an injury, George Springer hasn't done a whole lot. He and the other cornerstones of the Astros need to pick things back up or they are going to get overtaken by the Twins or the Angels and miss the playoffs entirely after leading the AL West for most of the year. Jon Singleton is still down at AAA trying to sort things out while his team, the Fresno Grizzlies, tries to avoid elimination in the PCL Championship series. The card itself is a Classic Combos dual relic from 2014 Panini Classics Baseball. This is the base version and it is numbered # 10 / 99. I believe there is a Prime version out as well with a very small print run. I didn't necessarily seek this card out specifically, but it pooped up in my eBay feed and I thought it was cool enough to bid on.

Thursday Night Football Celebration and a Random Baseball Card

I was pretty happy to see the Denver Broncos pull out a win over the hated Kansas City Chiefs this evening. I almost turned off the game when they were down 14 - 0 in the first half, but they roared back in the 2nd quarter to tie the game and hung with the Chiefs until the final minutes of the game. At the very end of the game the Broncos were down by 7 again and drove back to tie it, then in the final seconds Kansas City running back Jamaal Charles fumbled the ball and the Denver defense ran it back for the touchdown that would give them the final lead. I unfortunately don't have any new Broncos cards to show off, so I will have to change gears entirely for the card portion of the post.

This is one of the more subtle parallels in recent history. It's a gum-stain parallel from 2015 Topps Heritage. This card features R.A. Dickey and is distinguished from the base card by some vague pink splotches on the back of the card, calling to mind the stains left on the last card in the pack by real gum in the card sets of yesteryear. Some people even claim that these cards smell like chewing gum, but I never was able to confirm that. I picked this one up on eBay.

Combined Shipping Leads to Buying Stuff 3: NASCAR Parallels

After adding the NASCAR quad relic, the R.A. Dickey auto/relic, and the George Springer Panini card I still needed two items to qualify for free shipping. I eventually settled on a couple of parallels from the 2014 Press Pass Total Memorabilia NASCAR set. One is a Gold parallel of Dale Earnhardt Jr. and it is numbered # 019 / 175. The other is a Black & White parallel of Josh Wise and it is # 91 / 99. I tend to focus mostly on my Danica Patrick player collection when it comes to NASCAR, but it is nice to pick up a card or two featuring the other drivers I follow. 

Earnhardt Jr. is 6th in the driver standings right now and has made the Chase for the Cup playoffs for this season. I don't know what his chances are, though. I haven't been paying a huge amount of attention to NASCAR for the last few months, but my impression is that he did better at the start of the season than he has in the last little while. Looking at the race by race results tells me that he's been pretty consistent all year.

Josh Wise changed teams in July and has a couple of races with his new team. It seems like his new car is pretty similar in quality to his old car, and he is qualifying and finishing in about the same spots as usual, spending a lot of time in the 30's. He does have a 10th-place finish this year, but is currently in 37th place in the points, far out of the Chase for the Cup.

That does it for my current batch of cards that I bought just for free/combined shipping. I usually try to limit my additional purchases to cards that I want anyway, but a good deal on shipping will often give me that extra little push I need to make a purchase. I have another big batch of cards on the way that I bought from one seller after noticing that anything after the first item shipped for free. I searched their inventory and came up with some good gems for my collection.

Combined Shipping Leads to Buying Stuff 2: George Springer 2014 Panini Black Friday

This is another card I picked up in the lot I talked about in my previous post. The seller offered free shipping if I bought five items, so I went through their inventory to see what I could pick up. This George Springer card from the 2014 Panini Black Friday set isn't as exciting as an R.A. Dickey auto/relic or a NASCAR quad relic, but it was a nice enough card and it was cheap. I'd rather spend a dollar on this card than $3 on postage.

The Astros let the Rangers take over the division lead today, losing again to Derek Holland and company. It looked like the Astros might pull it out after they came from behind to take a 5-4 lead, but the Rangers pushed a run across to tie the game and then apparently won the game on a sacrifice fly in the later innings. My kids were annoying the heck out of me, so I didn't actually watch all the way through to the end. Hopefully the Astros can win a game in this series. George Springer is back from being injured, although I couldn't tell you how he's done since he returned. I haven't been paying attention to his stats. Looking at the back of this card I see that I missed an opportunity to turn this into a birthday post, as his birthday is in just a few days.