Happy New Year to you all!

I'll keep this short since I dont have much time before I go out and celebrate the New Year.
Its been a great 2010 collecting wise. I have made contact with a bunch of UK collectors.
John, who has been very generous with his trades and hobby knowledge.
Simon, who makes me jealous every time I see the cards he picks up!
Martyn, new to the collecting game but a great and well informed baseball fan.
I have also made some friends on the other side of the Atlantic through some of the great trading sites out there and through the blogosphere.
Mark, or Fuji if you prefer, writes one of the best blogs out there. And his customary question at the end of each post is a lot of fun!
Matt, I met this guy on Sports Card Radio and have traded with him a couple of times. I actually have a package to send you way.
Finally I want to mention the good guys at Sports Card Radio, Colin and Ryan.
Colin puts out a great show about coming releases and general hobby advice.
Ryan is the guy that usually busts the boxes (did I mention they do free breaks on the fan forum?!). So thanks to you guys too.

And of course Happy New Year to everyone that reads this drivel!

Here's to another great collecting year in 2011 and of course another Giants world series!!

Mail from COMC

****First of all, can the guy that was interested in trading for the Bowman Jason Heyward please send me an email, I have managed to wipe most of my emails and have lost your contact details. Thanks.****

These arrived yesterday from every card collectors best friend, COMC. I have decided to try my hand at prospecting although I will admit that I don't know a great deal about it and I'm by no means an expert. I have probably just picked up a bunch of scrubs (with one definite exception).

I did do a little research with the players below. I read the various threads on FCB, Blowout and also used a website called Top Prospect Alert. Once I had learnt who were in the Giants organisation I searched for them on COMC and managed to pick up a few autos and chrome cards for fairly cheap.

Anyway enough with me waffling on, lets take a look at who I picked up.

Jorge bucardo, RHP. This is a 2008 DEEE auto numbered out of 819.

Do you think his auto looks like it took him a little while to write? It certainly looks slow and laboured to me.

Hes 21 years old and currently playing in A+ ball. Probably wont amount to much.



Seth Rosin, RHP. 2009 DEEE auto /710.

Now that's a much better auto than Jorges. This guy has got some potential from what I have read. Hes a huge bloke standing 6 foot 7 and weighing in at 230lbs. He has been described as a 'good old fashioned plow horse', which I guess is a good thing. He could be one to watch.

Yet another pitcher. Craig Clark LHP. 2010 Bowman Chrome auto.

At 26 hes a little old to be considered a prospect but hes actually not to bad. This is another wait and see player.

Ehire Adrianza, SS. 2009 Bowman Sterling gold /50.
This guy has great potential in the Giants organisation and has had a few good years in the minors. I'll be keeping an eye on him.

Thomas Neal, OF. 2010 Bowman Chrome auto and purple refractor /777.

He is the number four prospect for the Giants at the moment and seems to be a fairly good all rounder. With him, Adrianza, Bumgarner and Posey, the Giants have a great set of youngsters.

And now the only Giants prospect that I didn't pick up.

Yu Darvish, SP for the Hokkaido Nippon - Ham Fighters. The cards above are a 2009 Bowman Chrome purple refractor and a Bowman draft blue.

He is considered one of the best pitchers in Japan and is highly sought after by many Major League clubs. Darvish has said himself that he plans to play in the MLB in 2012, with the Mets being named the current favourites.

Mail from the Sewingmachine Guy

Finally the postman has resumed his normal duty after almost a week! The last time I had mail it was the day before Christmas eve. Thanks to Christmas, then the weekend and two bank holidays there has been no nice little deliveries for me to open... until today!


Today there was a mountain of post on my mat as I came through the door. Most of it was late Christmas cards and the usual bills. Hidden amongst the crap were two bubble mailers, one from COMC and the other from Larry, the Sewing Machine guy.


I had no idea what was in the package from Larry and I was pleasantly surprised to see some A&G minis inside. I have neglected all my sets since becoming a player collector and thats something I hope to rectify. I have made a decision though, once I have finished the Ginter set I will probably never (notice the probably) chase down another set. I have given up on 2010 Heritage, so i have a whole bunch of SPs to trade if anyone is interested.


Anyway onto the goodies!

Jorge Cantu of the Marlins, A&G back

Juan Pierre of the White Sox, black border


Thanatos, a Greek demon. According to legend he lost in hand to hand combat to Hercules.

An Elk, the national animal of Sweden. The second largest species of deer apparently.

Nomingia. A bird like dinosaur that was six feet long and ate both plants and animals.

Larry also sent a regular back Todd Helton to assist with my set. Cheers for the additions Larry!

I will share my mail from COMC tomorrow. There wont be a single Adam Lind card featured!!

How was everyones Christmas?

Here's a belated Merry Christmas to you all out there! Hope you all had a good time with your families and friends.

So how did everyone do cardboard wise? Did anyone get any nice little treats sitting at the bottom of your tree? Any big pulls?

I had no cardboard to open this Christmas because none of my family or friends have a clue on what I like and I would have probably ended up with a few packs of 1989 Topps or a nice big stack of 88 Donruss. Oh the horror.

But on Christmas eve my wife and my stepson both said they wanted me get myself something nice and they would consider it my main Christmas present. They both gave me a budget and told me to see what I could find.

I had my eyes set on pre-ordering a jumbo of Topps 2011 and very nearly pulled the trigger. I then set my sights on a box of Bowman Chrome and a box Bowman draft, again I let them go. Instead I picked up a couple of singles, including my first 1/1! I'm not showing off the 1/1 until I get it in hand, just incase it gets lost in the mail but I will let you take a look at some of my other cards.

First up with have this Manufactured bat barrel from Topps update 2010. This was from my stepson. The card has a print ran of 25, the card I have is 25/25, so that makes it an eBay 1/1! Awesome! I now have both the brown bat and the black bat versions of this card. I will probably never have the pink. It was on eBay about a month ago but went alot higher than I anticipated.


This is one of the cards that was from my wife. It came up on eBay as BIN with a price 5 times lower than the other BINs of this card, it was even cheaper than the one on COMC so I thought, why not? The seller also had another cheap Lind auto. I'll save that one for my next post.

This is another card from my wife that came by way of The Bench. It does have quite a large print run of 175 but its been tricky tracking down a non graded copy. Its a dual auto featuring Ryan Klosterman. I had no idea who this guy is and had to be a bit of digging. It appears hes been slugging it out in the minors, hovering between AA and AAA. Hes currently in the Marlins organisation. Who knows if he'll make it.

Theres plenty more to show although I will save them for my next post.

A bunch of Poseys from the 80's

I should have posted this last week but I have been way to lazy!

John from Pursuit of 80'sness sent me a package last week, which was completely unexpected! Inside the pack were a stack of Giants from various brands and years, including players like JT Snow, Barry Bonds and Kurt Manwaring.

Also included was a nice Topps Heritage Adam Lind RC, which is one of my favourite Heritage designs.

But the best thing about the package is that John sent not one, not two but three Buster Posey rookie cards!

He sent over two of the above Upper Deck rookies. I had not seen this card yet and judging by a few of the forums I have visited its a pretty tough pull. So thank you very much for those cards John!

The third Posey rookie he sent was a 2010 Topps Heritage.

All in all some great additions to my collection. I now need to track down some Red Sox players to send his way!

Topps Gypsy Queen 2011

These images just appeared on the Topps Facebook page. This is the first time I had heard of this set but by going by these images this is going to be one sweet looking set!

How cool does this triple auto relic look? Longo, Wright and Robinson auto/relics on one card. But they look like stickers, although they may be clear.

Here's what the single autos should look like and its on card!

I guess this is what the base cards will look like.

This will probably be a one per pack, much like the T206 Bronze borders.

This I have no idea about. I know they are including Diamonds in their flagship series. Now it looks like they are branching out with other Gems to include in other sets. No idea what the odds on these cards are or who the chick in the picture is.

MINIS!!! I love minis! Much like the Ichiro above I'm guessing this will be a one per pack job.

The art work on these cards is amazing and much better than the Chicle set where all the players were replaced with artist impressions of how the players evil twin would look like.

Now this is clearly a vintage set. Does this mean that Topps will be bumping off one of their vintage sets next year? We know that Heritage is coming back (with Koufax!) and I'm fairly confident that Ginter will return so what product will be bumped?

2009 Cliff Lee Ginter pass around.

Over the past few months a 2009 Allen and Ginter Cliff Lee card has been passed between different bloggers. Upon receiving said card the blogger was encouraged to initial it and note their location. This card has been missing for a while and the blogs have gone quiet. Who has it? Where did it go? Do we care?

Well....


Here it is!!!!

As you can see from the card it is well traveled so far. I'm not sure where it started, the first time I heard of it was when I caught it on http://http//babennysbaseballcardbuffet.blogspot.com/. From there it traveled across the Atlantic ocean to a small English town called Westgate on Sea, which is the home of blogger John of http://http//pursuitof80s.blogspot.com/. He sent it my way about 8 months ago before I even started a blog and now I have sent it on its way back across the Atlantic to Larry of Sewing machine guy on cards.


So far the card has been in the following locations (I'm not sure where it started or what order the card traveled) -

MJ of Dublin, California (This is the initial and location at the top of the card so maybe this is where it started)

MA of Seymour, Tennessee

JDH of New London, Ohio

Somewhere in Canada I think. This is the red ink on the card and I'm having trouble reading it.

JA of Westgate, UK

and me

TMCD of Newport, Wales.

If you are one of the initials in the above list then please leave a comment so we can track this thing properly.

I love group breaks!

Sports Card Radio recently ran another free box break, this time it was for a box of 2010 Bowman Chrome.
Each member of the forum had a chance to win a pack from the box and I believe there were over 40 entries. I was lucky enough to draw pack number 10 which contained the above beauty!
The card above is 2010 Bowman Chrome Jason Heyward RC blue Refractor numbered 149/150. These cards are selling on ebay for around $30, so not a bad card to get for free!
I'm thinking about getting it graded although I'm open to trading it if someone out there is interested.
Getting a card graded is pretty expensive for me since I have to pay extra costs for living in the UK but Ryan, from SCR is going to a card show in January where they will have graders onsite and has offered to take the card along should I want to do it. So if I dont get any takers for the card then it will go in for grading and then off to the bay.
I want to say a huge thanks to SCR for hosting the break and also to FSFUK.co.uk for sponsoring and supplying the box.

Even more Adam Lind pick ups!

Back again with some Lind cards that I have recently picked up.


Its been like Christmas this week with an average of three bubble mailers dropping through my letter box everyday! Its been fun, especially since I have been off the last few days trying to crack Black Ops, thats a tough game!


Anyway onto the goodies! (WARNING BLURRY PICTURES AHEAD!)

First up with have this 2007 Upper Deck Spectrum Die Cut Gold Rookie numbered 04/50. I'm not familiar with this product at all, in-fact I had never heard of it until someone on the The Bench responded to a thread I had started.

Its not a particulier nice looking set. The card is not your traditional rectangular ship. As you can see in the picture, the edges kinda slope off on both the top right and bottom left. I dont think that looks good at all. When I see a card thats shaped in a strange way I just think that its more prone to damage. Why cant cards just be the same shape? Whats wrong with that?

Next is a new Exquisite I can add to my collection. I love Exquisite! The cards just scream quality.

This card is numbered 20/40 and features Lind with Blue Jays pitcher Jesse Litsch. I'm not to sure who Litsch is so I had to do a little research about him. It looks as if he has been up and down to the minors since coming up with Jays in 2007. He has 21-24 win/loss record and 194 strikeouts. Not to bad. Hes still a young guy so who knows, he may find his form one day, since he most definitely has the skills.

The final card I'll show is this 2007 Moments and Milestones Rookie. I think this came from the same guy as the Exquisite. I thought I already had this card but it turns out I didnt. Its not a bad looking card. My only criticism is that the sticker auto is inserted into a cut out in the card, I dont think that was necessary and does not make the card look any better.

That's it for now, I have a few more to show off in the coming days.

Who wants to trade?

While I take a quick break from playing COD Black Ops, I thought I would see if any of you out there would like to trade for any of the following:

/1960

/1960

/1961

/1961

mini black

mini black

/1961

/1961

Mini cycles /99

Johnny Bench

/49

I'm looking for Adam Lind cards I dont have, 2010 A&G minis, 2010 Topps Heritage or whatever I like the look of.