Sunday, February 28, 2010

Big D Baseball Spring Training Edition

Here are some more customs. Topps always puts out their Opening Day product to kick off the season, but the weird thing is, it comes out after the Base Topps set. I don't get that. The other thing is, it's pretty much the same set with just a little Opening Day logo added. I'd like to see them put out something like this instead. Do a Spring Training set. Make it smallish, focusing on established veterans and get them all pictured in their new locales. Then, about a month or two AFTER the season starts, bring on the base set, that way we can get everyone (including rookies and others who actually MAKE opening day rosters) in the right uniforms. The baseball season lasts forever, I don't see why the base set comes out so early and has so many people in the wrong or photoshopped uniform. Just an idea.


Like always, let me know if they suck or not. Later.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Wow, That's A Lot Of Hair Color!

It's been mentioned many, many times on various sites just how generous the card collecting blogging community is. (Yes, I didn't use blogosphere!) One such generous person is the Troll, who I think I read somewhere loves Bacon or smells like Bacon or likes people to call him Bacon or something like that. Anyway, he found out that I, unlike most people I assume, actually like and collect Dennis Rodman. So he sent me a few...

in pages and everything...

from different years...

on different teams...

with various amounts of ink and hair colloring...

but he didn't stop there. He included Pippens...


and Jordans...

and a few other favorites from baseball and football for good measure. All I can say is, Troll is either a very generous person or he finally found a sucker he could unload some of his crap on. Either way, it was a great package and I am very glad to have it. Thanks a ton, Troll! Later.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Kurt. Kurt. Kurt. Kurt.

That's right, 4 new Kurts added to the collection.

2009 Topps Unique Red Parallel

2010 Topps Gold Border

2010 Upper Deck Supreme - I actually now have 2 of these. I got the first one on ebay, since I had pretty much decided after 4 packs or so, not to get any more UD this year. I would just get the team sets or singles I wanted online. The other day, however, I grabbed a pack just for kicks, and what do you know. I got another one of these. Mojo, check your mail. It'll be on it's way to you soon.

Here we have the crown jewel of the bunch. I got this as soon as I saw them pop up on ebay for a very nice price. Now, there are literally thousands of them available, or so it seems. I guess Topps must have had a ton of unused auto stickers from Kurt laying around. My quest to get every Kurt card is now 4 cards closer to completion. Trouble is, I don't really have any idea how many cards of him there are. Guess I should find out, huh? Later.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Cardboard Heaven Delivers.

Once again, I'm behind on trade posts so this will be short and sweet. Cameron from Cardboard Heaven contacted me and we set up a little trade. I honestly can't remember exactly what I sent him, but I know it included some Trailblazers, I think. Oh yeah, I believe he is also now the proud owner of Sene. So here's what we got in return.

Rangers, heavy on the Salty. I sure hope Salty is over his "dead arm" or whatever it was that ailed him last season. If he should go down again, there is no Pudge this time to call to the rescue. Josh Hamilton hurt his shoulder again the other day. Hopefully its nothing serious. I would hate for his work this year to consist of him gathering balls from batting practice or whatever it is that he is doing on that card.

Nobie got some Cubs as well, though I guess I should have put the Byrd card with these. I hope the Rangers don't end up regretting letting him get away.

Goose scored a few of his favorite football stars. I love it when the Broncos wear the orange jerseys. They need to switch back to those full time. Bring back the Orange Crush!

Lastly, Cam sent a nice group of Cowboys including one of Mike Jenkins running with the Bulls. The chrome Pro Bowl Witten is one I didn't have already and the Future Franchise Tashard Choice is a pretty cool insert from a low level set. I'm not sure Mr. Choice is the Future of the Franchise, but he's a good back to have in the rotation for sure. I want to thank Cameron for the nice cards and apologize for the Sene. I'm sure you'll figure out something to do with him. Later.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

LOOK OUT! MAVALANCHE!

We've had way more snow than usual here in Dallas this year and since I've been here over 20 years now, I hate the cold. I don't dislike winter, however, because it's basketball season and if there's one thing I love, it's Dallas Mavericks basketball. I worked out a deal with Madding from Cards on Cards to do a little swap, some Blazers & Cardinals for him and what to turned out to be an avalanche of Mavs for me! Madding tried to warn me that most of the cards were junk wax stuff, but I said "Bring it on!" There's no such thing as junk when it comes to the Mavs.

Here we've got the early years of the Hoops brand. The first year of Hoops was the last year I actually collected prior to getting back into it a year ago. This was after the Mavs had traded away Aguirre and Tarpley was up to his usual nonsense. Ro & Harper were still around, but the glory days were over and things were about to get real bad real quick.

I also got a nice mix of Topps & Upper Deck. Around this time is when the Mavs changed their green away jerseys to blue. That's exactly how I felt a lot back then. What a sad state of affairs. Guys like Doug Smith, Randy White, Sean Rooks and many others rolled through here, each supposedly the next Superstar. Whatever. Randy White was even gonna be the next Mailman having also attended Louisiana Tech. Wow, who overestimated that guy?

Aw, yeah. Skybox kookiness! These were just weird back in the day, though I kinda liked them since they were so different. Over the years I thought Skybox had a lot of nice designs, though they also had a lot of not so nice ones. I wish Fleer/Skybox would make a comeback. They should at least hire all of their designers at Panini. They need the help!

Speaking of Fleer, here is some early '90s Fleer. The blue & red set from '91 was one of the last sets I tried to put together. I think I completed it, but I'm not sure. They are all out of order now. I guess I should see what I still need and get it done. Needless to say the cards Madding sent me have almost no value except for a diehard Mavs fan like me. That's okay though, I'm glad to take them off his hands.
The Mavericks are much better off these days and with the recent acquisition of Butler & Haywood, things are looking great right now. Speaking of the trade with Washington, man they got a raw deal. Josh Howard is now out for the season with a torn ACL. I hope he comes back and has a nice rest of his career. I always liked him while he was here though he did have his share of boneheaded moments. He was a lot like Mark Aguirre back in the day, everyone around here was just fed up with him and ready to see him go. It's a shame really, we all thought he was gonna be a superstar a few years ago. Just like Randy White, Doug Smith, Sean Rooks, etc. etc. etc. Thanks for the trade Madding. Later.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Ebay Shopping

I picked up a few cards on ebay the other day for literally, just a few bucks. 3 relics and an insert, all basketball.

These two came from the same seller, but I didn't get exactly what I thought I was getting. The Nash card has red fabric, not orange, so I guess it's from an all star jersey or something. The Dirk card also has red fabric, but that's not what I thought it was. In the photo on ebay the circles appeared more brown and I thought it was basketball leather. Leather would have been neater, since I don't have any cards with leather on them, but oh well. I do wish the card companies would match the photo with the swatches though. It's a big pet peeve of mine.

I also got these two Dirk cards which makes somewhere around 160 or so in my collection. I think I've become addicted to Dirk cards, I can't get enough of them. I don't know how many he has exactly, but I've got a long way to go, that's for sure. I really like the design & colors of the Hot Prospects card, though it looks a little like Dirk just popped out of a jack-in-the-box. I don't have a lot to say about the Elite card. Typical Panini stuff, though it is shiny and Dirky so that's why I got it. Anyone got any homeless Mavs out there, you know where to send them. Later.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Basketball Box Break

Since this is the last year for everyone but Panini to make NBA cards, I decided to build all the final sets. I hadn't bought a whole lot of Topps yet, so I picked up a hobby box. I got a total of 300 of the 33o base cards which equals 90% of the set. After I mixed in what I had previously bought I'm left with just 16 cards needed to complete the set. Please check out the Sets We're Building section on the sidebar to see if you can help us out.

Initially the Topps set was my least favorite, but it has grown on me the more I've seen of it and now I like it best. The variety of the photos mixed with both vertical and horizontal cards make it much more unique than the offerings of UD or Panini. We got 1 gold card per pack so I won't show all of those or the base, but I will show a few of my favorites and all the other inserts. Here we go!

Zaza and the Hawks in a pregame dance off. Not sure if his teammates actually like Zaza's dancin' or if they're all making fun of the crazy white boy dance. Either way, it looks like they're all having a good time, whether Zaza is in on the joke or not.

Wow, what a mess of hair! When did Carrot Top join the NBA anyway?

Nothing like a little game of Dog Pile to keep things interesting.


Dwight Howard says "Get that $#!+ outta here!" When he pulls his left hand down, there will be a little smiling sticker of himself on the backboard. Trust me. I've seen him do it before!

Ahhh. That's it, right there. I'm good to go in just a few.

My favorite card in the set. This was a great moment from the Dunk contest the previous year and without characters like this in the competition, it isn't a whole lot of fun. Just look at this year's contest last week. Blah! Poor Nate didn't have anyone to play off of and the whole thing left a lot to be desired.

We got 6 of these Draft Snapshots. A pretty boring insert in my opinion.

Here's our 1 black bordered card numbered out of 50. Nice shot, though I'm not particularly a Noah fan.

3 regular chrome cards showed up in the box. As usual they don't scan real well. Kevin Love looks like he's being defended by a ghost.

We also got 3 chrome refractors, one of which was a gold border. Pretty nice players too, which brings us to the hits. I think the norm is 3 per box, we got 4.

2 Roundball Remnants, both named Al. I dig the look of the cards, especially the way the jersey is made a part of the basketball. Not real excited about the players pulled though.

Ah ha! Now that's a lot better. Brandon Roy game used jersey/auto and a Magic "supposed" game used card. I say "supposed" because of the color of the swatch. Yeah, it's white. Problem is, unless I'm mistaken, the Lakers never wore white jerseys until long after Magic quit playing. I guess it could be an All Star jersey, but I'm skeptical. Oh well, it's still a cool card. All in all it was a fun box to break. I'm definitely sad to see Topps being taken out of the basketball picture. Panini really needs to get their rears in gear and come up with some better product next year. If anyone has any of the cards I need to complete this set, please let me know. I'm so close. Later.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Since Pitchers and Catchers are reporting, here's some Big D Custom baseball.

Here is my first attempt at custom baseball cards. Hopefully, Major League Baseball has their hands full enough already with Upper Deck and won't mind my use of logos.



As always, let me know what you think of them. Later.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

2010 Topps Baseball Box Break

So Nobie and I decided we would build Topps' 2010 Baseball set. This is the first Topps base set we have ever attempted to build so we're looking forward to it. We had bought quite a few packs from various Walmarts and Targets already, but decided to go for a hobby box. The box itself gave us 251 of the 330 base cards for 76% completion with no doubles. I won't bother with showing base cards but here are the inserts we got.

We pulled 5 When They Were Young cards including a Lil' Big Papi calling his shot.

I don't recall the odds of each insert and I'm too lazy to try and read the tiny print off the chrome wrapper backs, they need to work on the legibility of their fine print. Anyway, we got 9 Turkey Reds including a Kung Fu Panda for my PC.
7 Tales of the game. Love any card of the Wizard doin' a flip and I like the Prince card as well, though I wish the claim of him hitting a BP homerun when he was 12 could be backed up with some video or some such. I'd like to see that.


The Cards My Mom Didn't Throw Out Because I Never Had Them, Except For The Originals of Ozzie, Ichiro & Soriano Which I Still Have. Whew! What an insert set title. Some nice cards since several of these are binder players for us, but we have 3 of the originals already. The older the better in this case.

Woo Hoo!! Million Card Giveaway cards. We haven't redeemed any of these yet. Kind of odd to me that they are numbered on the back. Not really very collectible once you use up the codes, at least to me.

We got 9 Legendary Lineage cards, some of these work, some don't. Not really sure of the connection on some of them, but not a bad design.

Nolan as a Ranger on a History of the Game card, of which we got 5. Some pretty interesting factoids if you take the time to actually read these.

I didn't bother scanning the regular Toppstown cards, since we got 1 per pack, but we ended up with 3 of the First Class ones. Question to all. How many Toppstown cards are there actually? I've seen checklists claiming 30 including TTT26 Kurt Suzuki, TTT27 Derrek Lee, TTT28 Joey Votto, TTT29 Alexei Ramirez and TTT30 Grady Sizemore. We've have tons of these things and have searched on ebay and haven't come across one numbered higher than 25. I'd love to get a Kurt and Alexei of these if they really do exist, but I'm beginning to wonder.

We got 7 Gold cards including Carl Crawford sliding under a spawning salmon swimming upstream...

and one black bordered card. These are pretty rare, numbered to 50 and although it's a team card of a team I don't care about, it does have Ichiro as the focal point, so I'll add it to my Ichiro collection.

Lastly, we have the Peak Performance cards. We got 10 including our 1 hit of the box, a Dennis Eckersley Jersey card. Would have been neater if it was a green or yellow swatch, but oh well. I guess that just about wraps up this break. After putting all the base cards from this box with the others we already had, we are just 32 cards short of the Series 1 base set. Please check out our Sets We're Building page listed over to the right and let us know if you can help us out. We have a bunch of doubles to trade. Later.