Whale Hunting: 2013 Topps Opening Day R.A. Dickey Photo Variation

This is a card I've wanted ever since it was released in 2013. In the Opening Day set that year Topps featured players who changed teams in photo variations from the press conferences where they were introduced as members of the new organization. R.A. Dickey got a photo variation for his switch from the Mets to the Blue Jays. These were seeded 1:617 packs, so they were a pretty tough pull from a product that people probably didn't break a whole lot of.

This copy of the Dickey variation has been up on eBay for most of the last couple of years, always on my Watch List but priced well outside my comfort zone. Recently the seller put a discount on the card. It was still priced a fair bit higher than I wanted to pay for it but for a long time this has been the only copy readily available on the market, so I bought it. I'm happy that I finally pulled this whale (not sure whether to classify it as a white whale or a grey whale) into my collection, even with the price tag. Spending an extra couple of dollars now is probably better than watching that auction for another two years before giving in and buying the card.

Also, I just realized this is Post # 700 for me on this blog. Woohoo!

2015 Topps Series 2 First Pitch Set

A month or two ago I picked up the final ten cards in the First Pitch insert set from 2015 Topps Baseball. These cards were released in Series 2, adding to the fifteen cards released with Series 1. I believe I also picked up the Series 1 set at some point, but I never blogged about it. The premise behind the set is that it features various people, usually celebrities, who have thrown the ceremonial first pitch at MLB games. The card fronts carry a decent amount of information, like the date and location of the appearance along with the person's name and a photo from the event. The card backs have a little write-up about the pitch, sometimes sugar-coating the more wayward tosses. There weren't really any subjects in the Series 2 set that I absolutely had to have, but they are a pretty solid group.

I should like Stan Lee more than I do, but he always has struck me as a bit full of himself. His work has undoubtedly been a big part of my life, though, to the point that I named two of my sons after comic book characters he co-created. Maybe without his personality and endless ability to self-promote we wouldn't have access to the library of Marvel characters. There are a lot of Giants, Cubs, and Dodgers in this set, but I guess that's to be expected. Although the Series 1 group had more cards that I was interested in, I think this is a pretty good insert that does something a little different from the usual cookie-cutter insert fare. It would be kind of cool to keep this going as an annual insert set as there are always new people throwing out first pitches. 

Crisp and Reddick in Red

After I showed off the oversized Jon Singleton 5x7 Topps Red card I picked up from an eBay seller I went back and noticed that the guy had a bunch more cards listed from the set he was breaking. I put in a couple of minimum bids on some Oakland players I like, Coco Crisp and Josh Reddick. There weren't any competing bids on the cards, so I won them both. It looks like most of that seller's auctions have ended now, but there is another seller offering up team sets for $200-800 apiece, depending on the team. Both of these cards are numbered # 04 / 10. When they arrived the top loader had a ding in the top of it, and the cards were nicked up in that spot as well. You can see the divot in the Reddick card on the left side of the top edge there. That was a little irritating, but I guess I'll live with it. That's about all I've got for tonight. The Holiday Blahs seem to be settling in on me a little early this year. I need to find a way to combat the Grinchiness that pops up in my personality during the months of November and December.

Some Sweet Sketch Commissions from Emily Riggsby

A little while back the artist Emily Riggsby posted on a Facebook sketch card group I follow that she was taking commissions for Chibi-style sketch cards at a very good rate. I'd been watching eBay and other venues for the right Emily Riggsby card for a while, but here was an opportunity to get the character I wanted direct from the source! I sent her a message and got on her commission list for a sketch of Princess Leia. She worked up the amazing sketch you see above, with Leia wielding a blaster rifle and sporting her iconic hairstyle. I really like this sketch. It's got great colors, shading, and even a nice background. The artist really went above and beyond on this one and it is a wonderful addition to my growing Princess Leia sketch collection.

I didn't want to be super greedy, but I sent a follow-up message shortly after my request for a Princess Leia sketch to see if there was any room on the commission list to add a Power Girl sketch to my order. Again she came through with an awesome piece of art. There is a lot of detail and shading and detail work that really went above and beyond what I was expecting. I've got a few different Power Girl sketches now, and this is one of my favorites.

I am not sure how frequently Emily is on her social media pages or whether she is taking commissions currently, but she usually responded to my Facebook messages pretty quickly and it can't hurt to ask what her queue looks like if you're looking for some artwork. I need to come up with a good project idea so that I can commission a full-price piece from her. It was nice to get these sketches at her discounted rate, but after seeing the quality of the work I feel a bit guilty about it.

Princess Leia Sketch by Dan Nokes

I picked up another Princess Leia sketch card from the Topps Star Wars Chrome Perspectives: Jedi vs. Sith set. This one was done by artist Dan Nokes, who has put out some self-published comics and seems to be quite active on the convention circuit. I thought it was a nice different take on Leia, capturing her character in a style that reminds me of Underground Comix. I don't know a lot about that genre so I could be way off, but that's what I thought of when I saw this sketch. I was pretty happy when the auction ended and I came away as the winner. In digging around on his website I saw a notice that he is transitioning out of doing fanart of the big corporate-owned characters (Star Wars, Marvel, DC, Disney, TMNT, etc.) in favor of doing his own work with his own characters as well as ideas that are in the public domain. It seems like a pretty courageous move, as self-publishing seems to me like an incredibly grueling and difficult task. It's hard to put yourself out there in a creative way. I don't know if I would be able to do something like that.

A lot happened over the weekend. My wife and I attended a marriage workshop put on by the National Guard. We had a pretty good time. The big world news was the terrorist attacks in Paris that left many people dead. There were attacks in Beirut as well, although they didn't get as much press until after the Paris attacks when the press wrote articles asking why the Beirut attacks didn't get any press. I have some thoughts on the attacks and the press about the attacks, but I don't like to get too political online.

It was also an interesting weekend in sports. The biggest sports news is probably Ronda Rousey losing by knockout to Holly Holm in UFC 193. That was somewhat unexpected. I have yet to watch the full fight, but I did watch a clip of the end of the fight. For teams that I follow, the Houston Rockets have managed to lose their way to a 4-6 record so far on the season. And their losses have been pretty ugly. In football the Denver Broncos followed up a loss to the Colts with a horrible loss to the Chiefs. Peyton Manning completed 5 passes for 35 yards to break the all-time record for passing yards, but he threw four! interceptions and got benched in favor of Brock Osweiler, who played reasonably well and led a couple of scoring drives to make the score a little less embarrassing. Denver is 7-2 on the year, but based on game quality it seems like they should be 4-5 or 5-4. New England looms in two weeks, and they also have games against Pittsburgh and Cincinnati as well as divisional games against Oakland and San Diego. The Broncos will probably make the playoffs, but I can't see them moving past the first round unless they find some offense somewhere.

A Couple of Orange Dreams

I picked up a couple of orange cards featuring my favorite basketball player, Hakeem Olajuwon. The first is a shiny die-cut Crusade insert from 2014-15 Panini Excalibur Basketball. I don't even know what's going on with the Crusade line. I guess the design is pretty popular, so it shows up in multiple sets with various color combinations and designs. The second card here is an Orange parallel from the 2008-09 Topps Basketball set. I don't add to my Olajuwon collection nearly as often as I'd like, so there is always something new out there for me to pick up.

It's hard to read in the scan here, but I believe the Crusade insert is numbered # 48 / 60, while the Topps card barely qualifies as a limited edition, being numbered # 0272 / 1199. I kind of like these cards with the huge serially-numbered print runs, as it is generally pretty silly to think that there are 1200 people out there seeking a random card from 2008. Maybe Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant have large enough followings to make a fierce competition for these, but there is probably a very short list of players in any sport who have a dedicated collector base that reaches past the hundreds.

A Small Stack of Singletons

I decided to put a few of my recent Jon Singleton pickups into one post, as usually my one-card / one-player posts aren't very popular. This one has been sitting in my Draft queue in one form or another for a couple of months now, waiting for the right time to write words to go with the pictures. This seemed like as good a time as any, since this is a fairly easy post and my wife and I are headed out for a weekend away to attend a workshop put on by the National Guard Chaplains. I was in Arkansas on our 11th anniversary last week, so this trip will serve as a belated celebration of our mutual toleration of each other over an extended period of time.

This first card comes from 2015 Panini Elite Baseball, and is a Members Only memorabilia card, not to be confused with the Members Only parallel from Topps Stadium Club. It features a nice colorful swatch of fabric and is numbered # 16 / 25. I haven't heard much about Singleton lately. Most of the press surrounding the Astros over the last day has been about Colby Rasmus becoming the first player ever to accept a Qualifying Offer, and how that puts the Astros in the difficult place of having to actually pay that offer. Colby is a gnarly-looking dude, but his last name is made up of the first part of my last name and he certainly seemed to be an integral part of the positive chemistry the Astros had going on this year. It will be interesting to see how the offseason plays out after Rasmus' big bombshell.

I already had one of these Stripe parallels from 2014 Topps High Tek, but when this one popped up at a reasonable price I decided to get it, too. There are rumored to be only 5-10 copies of each Striped parallel, so I've now got 20-40% of the print run on this Singleton card.

This card is a little more common, with an announced print run of 201 copies. It's the Black Foil parallel from 2015 Topps Stadium Club. The photo isn't exactly exciting compared to what you find on many other Stadium Club cards, as Singleton appears to be watching another pop-out coming off his bat. I still really want to pick up a full base set of Stadium Club from this year, but that just hasn't materialized yet. There aren't as many of them listed as there were when the product was fresh. I might have missed the best price window.

I'll close things up with this die-cut Status autograph from 2014 Panini Elite. I believe this is the Gold parallel. It's a pretty typical sticker auto. I am not sure why, but Singleton always seems to sign with a really thick marker. Maybe the markers start out pointy, but he applies so much pressure when he writes that the tip of the marker gets blunted. I don't know. Anyway, this one is numbered # 30 / 49.

That does it for this batch of cards. There's not a lot else to say about them. If Singleton doesn't pick things up a bit next year I can't see him getting a lot of love from the card companies like he has the last few years. The Astros have plenty of other young talent to take his spot in checklists. Hopefully he will at least have a few base cards and their associated parallels so I'll have something Singleton-centered to chase in 2016.