2010 Heritage Blaster Break (and a little rant)

Since we're all but 2 cards shy of completing Topps' base set, it's time to pick up something new and since Topps is the only "official" supplier now, there aren't alot of options. Opening Day and Heritage are it. So, we picked up a blaster of Heritage. Overall, I like the set though it is quite plain compared to last year. It does a good job of mimicking the '61 set in colors and photography, but there isn't a lot of action. There is too much of something else, though which I will get to a little later in my mini rant. First up let's check out the packs.

Pack 1. We aren't gonna build this set, so most of the cards are available for trade unless otherwise noted. No one we collect in this pack, though I kinda like Rajai Davis for some reason so I think I'll keep it. Ozzie looks so peaceful, doesn't he?

Pack 2. Nobie wants the Zambrano and Han-Ram/Longo, not to be confused with Ham the Chimp.

Pack 3. That's more like it. 4 of the 8 are players we collect - CC, Russ, Prince and Matsui. I don't like photos with no caps though. Zach wants you to see that's his ball, not yours!

Pack 4. We'll keep Miguel and the Diamond Corners. Topps added a Pirates jersey to Aki, they should have given him a cap as well.

Pack 5. Nothin' for us here.

Pack 6. Alexei is one of my guys but not much else. Arroyo is a short print, don't forget, rant coming soon.

Pack 7. Hit of the box is a Volquez gray jersey. I like the card design but not a guy we careabout. Anyone want to trade for someone we do?

Pack 8. That's it, the end of the box. Sanchez is another short print and that is the topic of my mini rant.

Why does there have to be short prints at all? Isn't that what insert sets are for? One of the cards I want from this set is Kurt Suzuki. I collect all his cards I can and while he is a good player, he is far from a superstar. But guess what, short print. Since we aren't building this set we won't buy much of it which means I'll have to go some other route for Kurt. If I'm not able to trade for him, I'll have to buy which currently means between $4 - 6 including shipping from most online retailers. I can get a Pujols and many other SUPERSTARS for a quarter. How does that make any sense? Base sets should be just that. BASE. All cards printed in the same quantity, equally easy to obtain. What random formula does Topps use to decide who is gonna be a short print? I don't get it. Oh well, like I said, mini rant. Later.

Hoopin' It Up With TJ!

Fellow hoops fan TJ sent me a package a little while ago that got me a little closer to completing the last (for now) Topps basketball set. I hate to see Topps left out of the basketball market becaue their photography blows anything Panini has done out of the water.

The 4 cards TJ sent leaves me with 11 left to finish the set. I really like the occasional usage of non-game shots like the one here of Richard Hamilton autographing a shoe.

TJ also sent a smattering of Mavs, most of which are no longer Mavs, but that's okay. Glad to have them anyway and it's always nice to add a new Schrempf to the collection.

While Paninis base set could you some help in the area of its photography, the inserts often are much better. This Block Party card of Dwight Howard for example, has a really nice shot of Superman pinning one against the glass. They obviously have some nice shots available, hopefully, we'll begin to see more of them in their products.

Rounding out the package were a few Rangers. I am anxiously awaiting opening day, though I'm bummed I wasn't able to get tickets. The kids had their hearts set on being pulled from school to attend the game, but I guess it wasn't meant to be. Nobie said, "It's okay though Dad, you can just take us to the Thursday day game instead! It doesn't have to be the opener, I just want to skip school to go to a baseball game!" Alrighty then, sounds like a plan to me. Thanks, TJ, for the great cards and putting me ever so close to getting this set done. Later.

2010 Topps Series 1 Almost Complete

Thanks to reader Randy, who I don't think has a blog to hype up here, we are only a couple cards shy of completing this years Series 1. We sent him some cards he needed for his set and he sent us 8 base cards and a couple inserts from our list.

Besides the base cards we are only collecting the 2 complete Toppstown insert sets. Everything else we are just picking the players we like best. Randy sent us a Hanley and Vlad from the Peak Performance set and Howard from the gold Toppstown. If you've got a minute check out our Sets We're Building button on the right and let us know if you can help us out. Thanks again Randy and if you do have a blog let me know so I can give you some pub. Later.

John Gets Us Closer

One of our former trading partners, John, sent us an email saying he had some cards for us from our 2010 Topps list. He also said he had a nice Mavs card and wanted to know if I was interested. Yes, of course, I said. All we had to do was sent some 2010 Topps that he needed in return. Nice and easy. This is what we got.

John hooked us up with 4 base cards and 5 gold Toppstowns. The 2 Toppstown sets are the only complete inserts we are worrying about. Nobie and I decided we would just pick our favorites from the other sets. Then there is the matter of the Mavs card John thought I might want.

Check it out! A nice triple relic of 3 of my all-time favorite Mavs. Dirk, Fin and Nash. I still can't believe we didn't win a title with these three guys against the damn Heat. We had them down practically 3 games to none! Major meltdown. Oh well, what are you gonna do? Can't bitch about it forever. I like the card anyway and I'm glad all three letters are the same color. It really bugs me when the letters are different. Just a weird pet peeve of mine. Anyway, thanks for the trade John, we're almost there. Later.

Hot Off The Buffet!

I got a message from Mike at BA Benny's Baseball Card Buffet asking if he might be able to get a hold of one of my custom cards. He's a Mets fan for some reason, so I told him I'd be glad to make one of the Santana Spring Training cards into a hard copy for him. Before I had a chance to send it off to him, I got a nice little package in the mail from him. A pre-payment of sorts, I guess.

In the package were some Cowboys and former Broncos...

some Cubs for Nobie...

and some Rangers for all of us. Goose and Mrs. Big D score 2 points each for cards of their favorite Rangers, Cruz and Kinsler, respectively. Baby Peas get 1 point for adding a new Murphy to her collection. We all get a -1 for adding a Mark Doucheira to the mix. Thanks for the cards Mike, hope you enjoy the Big D custom! Later.

St. Patrick's Big D Card (A Day Late!)

I meant to post this yesterday. One of my favorite players, Michael Finley, was recently released by the Spurs (good, I hate them) and then signed by the Celtics (crap, I hate them too!) Oh, well. I've been wanting to get some of my Finley cards signed, so I figured this would be the perfect time to send them. I mean, how much fan mail can he be getting in Boston, right? Since I obviously don't have any cards of him on the Celtics yet, I decided to make one and here it is.

I'm also gonna try and get some Aguirres signed and wanted one of him in college to go along with the NBA ones I had. Of course, I didn't have one of those either, so guess what? That's right, I made one of Mark as well. Man was it hard to find even a halfway decent picture to use of his Blue Demon days. This was the best I could come up with. Now I just gotta figure out where to send the cards.

By the way, I have created several custom cards that I plan to send out in the mail soon to fellow bloggers. I'm not gonna give any clues as to who they may be, so keep your eyes on your mailbox. Later.

More COMC goodness.

Along with the cheese & bling I posted about yesterday, I picked up several other basketball and football favorites. First up is this 09 Prestige Old School Mark Aguirre. Besides Dirk, Mark is my other all-time favorite Mav, but he doesn't have a lot of cards available. I've got the majority of his cards from his playing days, so I was really excited to see him included in this set.

I also picked up 3 more EX2000 cards of Reggie, Hakeem and the Mailman. I really like this set and will continue to pick up more players here and there.

The last bball card I got was a Orange Refractor of Michael Finley. I really hated it when Dallas let him go and then he ended up on the Spurs of all teams. Yuck. Now of course, he's on the Celtics which isn't much better, but oh well. I think I'm gonna make a custom card of him in a Celtic uni and send it off with some others from his Suns/Mavs/Spurs days and see if I can get them signed.

I got some more football, too. Two new Sweetness cards including one of him diving over a pile of creamsicles and one of him carrying the football "loaf of bread" style. I just know he's about to break out into some high-steppin' down the sideline.

The last two cards are of Kellen Winslow and commemorate one of the greatest games I've ever seen. He battled dehydration and exhaustion to help the Chargers defeat the Dolphins in the 1982 playoffs. Man, I loved the Chargers in those days.

Well, that's it for this installment of What I Got from COMC. Check them out yourself, if you haven't already. Later.

Cheese & Bling from CheckOutMyCards.com

I love COMC. I could literally spend hours looking through their inventory and recently I did and came across 2 Elways that I wanted to add to my collection. The first is one of the cheesiest cards I own. It's a Fleer Metal which is not only ridiculously gold and foily (?) on the front but also contains a really silly write up on the back. The combination of those two features plus the fact that John is rockin' my favorite Bronco throwbacks, made this card a must have.

The second card is a Pacific Revolution and has to be the blingiest card in my collection. It's much shinier in person and has little faux diamonds all over it. It doesn't have a silly write up on the back, but if you look very closely in the sky at the top you can see a tiny little blimp. What a crazy little detail to add.

It's a shame that Pacific and Fleer don't exist anymore. Not only did they provide more competition than we have today, but they came up with some really wacky stuff at time, and I miss some of it. Elway's got so many cards, I'll never come close to getting them all, but it'll be a lot of fun to see what other kinds of zany 90's goodness I can dig up. Later.

New BigD Customs

Well, here's my newest batch of BigD custom cards. If you look carefully (or really, not that carefully, it's pretty obvious) you will see they are in top loaders. That's right folks, BigD cards are not just virtual anymore. I've recently been experimenting with producing actual tangible cards and these are few of my first ones. They aren't perfect by any means, but I think they turned out pretty well.


These cards were designed with a specific reader in mind as part of a trade, so they will be headed off to their new home soon. Like always, let me know what you think. Later.

Streaking

The Mavericks are on a kick-ass win streak lately despite a rash of injuries leaving them with possibly only 8 players tomorrow night against the Nets. Ever since the trade with Washington, the Mavs have steadily been gaining ground on the Lakers, whose lead is now down to 3 1/2 games. In honor of their 12 game winning streak, here are ... 4 Dirk cards I've recently picked up. I know, I know, but I was to lazy to scan in another eight.

This is a sweet Bowman Sterling Black Refractor jersey card I picked up for a couple a bucks on ebay. This is the kind of thing I'd never pull myself, way to high dollar to pick up packs or boxes.

Here's a nice Fleer Ultra jersey card showing Dirk in his patented fall away jumper mode...

and a SP Authentic jersey card of the big German showing off his mad ball handling skills. This type of display will get you back to back Western Conference Player of the Week recognition. Awesome, huh?

The last card in this bunch is a wayback Topps Gold Label card of Dirk as a rookie. I don't think most people thought he would live up to the Great Expectation that were thrust upon him, but I think he has more than lived up to them. Can't wait to see how the rest of this season goes. Bring on the Playoffs! Later.

I Still Can't Believe It!

Before I know it this blog will hit the 1 year mark (sometime this summer) and I still marvel at the generosity of total strangers. Peterson from Sign Here... and Here sent me an email saying he had some cards to send to all of us, were we interested. I said, of course, though I don't know what I can offer in return. I guess he didn't care, cause he sent them anyway. He even scored brownie point with my wife since he sent a separate package for each of the kids and me, each labeled with our name on a little slip of yellow paper. The wife said it was "cute". Not sure if that's what you were shooting for Peterson, but yeah, you're cute.

Each of us received at least 1 "hit", an auto or relic. Baby Peas got an on card auto of Johnny Whittleman(?) who I don't remember, but it is on card so that's cool. She also scored two new relics of Marlon Byrd, a jersey and a bat along with a gold David Murphy.

Nobie received several Cubs and other favorites, including 3 relics: 2 Sorianos ( 1 bat, 1 jersey) and a Lance Berkman jersey.

Goose's relic was a dual swatch of Bronco Tatum Bell. He also got several LT's that he didn't already have and a Peyton Manning.

For me Peterson send a bunch of Rangers and some other favorites. I even got an O-Pee-Chee Kurt that I didn't have. I really like the Juando hologram and Kinsler SPx. I got a Ranger auto as well and a Hammerin' Hank Blalock game used bat card that was I guess branded with a Rangers logo. Kinda cool. Anyway, I just want to thank Peterson for the great cards even though he had no promise of what was coming in return. Like I said, just a ton of generosity out there. I'll do my best to repay it soon. Later.

Cards Where Other Things Are Going On

I had this card all scanned and ready to go for a future post, but after seeing this at Dinged Corners, I figured I might as well post it now. My choice for favorite card where other things are going on is this 1977 Dan Fouts.

I know the card say Chargers, but I'm not so sure this photo isn't from Dan's high school days. Someone's mom has clearly just dropped by in the wood panel station wagon to pick up their child and a few bandmates, at least it looks like marching band outfits to me. That's also got to be the shabbiest looking NFL field ever, not sure if that's an end zone or a long jump pit. I hope the mom's honking didn't throw off Dan's delivery! Later.

Big D Customs NFL Special

In honor of the NFL combine taking place this week, here are some offseason football goodies.

Are you ready for some football? Later.

Okay, Call Us Crazy!

Nobie and I have a new set to chase. You may or may not have seen these around yet, but they are Panini's new basketball card game Adrenalyn XL. I'm not totally sure why, but we've become a little obsessed with these, I guess because they are fairly cheap and we both like the design. In fact, I dare say, this is Panini's best looking set of the year. Its quite colorful and there are 4 variations of the base card and that is all.

The only problem is, we are not quite sure which of the variations is which. They are all very similar and there is nothing on the card that tells you.

The cards aren't even numbered. The numbers on the front are used to play the game and the backs are all they same. They look like this.

Just a code to use online. It would have been nice if they put some stats in the empty space above the Panini logo. There are 450 cards in the set and we were wondering how we were going to keep track until we ran across this handy item.

For a mere $6 we picked up this binder which holds all 450 cards. It came with the game board, 4 packs of cards and, check it out...

inside the front and back cover is a checklist, so now we're in business. I still wish the cards were numbered, it would be a lot easier to make a want list, that's for sure. At the bottom is a little key that tells you which players have variation cards, but it doesn't really clarify which is which. We'll have to figure it out due to process of elimination as we collect the set. So there you go, we are off on a possibly futile and silly quest, but hopefully a fun one. If you happened to have picked some of these up and now regret it, you know where to send them. Later.