Some new pick ups

Hi Folks.

This post is a little premature since I don't actually have the following cards in hand but I don't care, I just want to show them! I mostly set out get some cards to trade so I hit the forums, Ebay, COMC and other blogs to see if there was anything out there that I would consider a good deal. I wont bore you with the trade bait that I picked up, well not until a later post when I have them in hand. I just want to show two cards that I picked up from COMC. I stole the scans.




1949 Bowman Bobby Thomson. Who doesn't like vintage? Not quite his RC but only a year removed. Sure it looks a little rough around the edges and a little faded but it will be the oldest card in my collection and will look great next to the other Thomsons. I have a few other Thomsons from the 50's but they don't feature him in a Giants uniform and in my opinion don't look as good so I doubt I'll ever post them.

Secondly a JT Snow 1994 Signature Rookies Draft Picks Signatures numbered to ONLY 7750! This card in my opinion was an absolute steal at only $2! JT snow was the Giants first baseman when I first got into baseball and at the time my favourite player. He is also the first player auto that I ever owned. An auto that I picked up from the Giants store in San Francisco. Its on an official NL MLB ball and I loved it! In fact I still have the ball and its actually displayed in my house much to the dismay of my wife. I was thinking of putting this card with the ball but my cat goes for the cards so it will have to stay in a box.
Thats it for now although I still have credit on COMC so I might pick something else up.

Mail from the Hairylemon

Got this gem in the mail today from Simon AKA the Hairylemon. He emailed me last week saying he picked up a Lind for me but I had nothing to trade for it, as usual! Simon was nice enough to send it on to me anyway for a card to be named later. So cheers for that Simon, much appreciated!

I thought I'd do things a little different this time. I'm going to list the pros, cons and my thoughts about this card.

Pros -

1. Its Adam Lind!
2. Clean design. I like that there's only one border.
3. Good picture. Sure hes not doing anything but if you look at a few of his other auto cards out there, it was always the same batting pose or mid swing action shot. It was getting old.
4. Great auto. Yeah its a sticker (see cons) but its a sticker that works. Its not loud or poorly placed, it generally fits into the design of the rest of the card.

Cons -

1. Its a sticker auto. Sure I just said it fits in with the design but its not on card.
2. No stats on the back. This is the case with the majority of autos that I get. Cant they just include a line of stats? It would be better than the usual 'Congratulations'.
3. No jersey number on the front. They have his position, DH, although I would have preferred his jersey number or both position and number. I'm sure they could have squeezed a 26 on there somewhere.

Final thoughts: Does this card look like it could have been made by Fleer? Its hard to explain what I mean it just reminds me of a Fleer design from some product of theirs. Yes that's vague, I just cant remember the exact product. Does that make the card bad? Of course not! Its still a cool looking card and the pros outweigh the cons. There weren't really any cons to speak of. The ones that I listed above would be the same as I would list for most autos that I possess or have possessed in the past.

I would give the card 4/5 and that's because its a sticker auto.

Amazing generosity from a fellow blogger!

I got an email from John at pursuit of 80'sness the other day saying he had a Bobby Thomson on card auto that he was going to send my way. It arrived this morning!

This is my first auto of Thomson and also my first Goudey card. I nicked this picture off of Johns blog, hope you don't mind! I tried to take a picture with my own camera but it never came out right.

What I like about this card is on the back there's actually some information about the player and not just the usual 'congratulations you have received an autograph of ...'. Also the auto being on card is awesome!

This card can go with my Thomson GU card, my 1953 Red man tobacco card and the other Thomsons that I have. I really want to display the GU,auto and Red man but due to one of my cats love for cardboard it wouldn't be a good idea. The last thing I'd want to find is a half chewed up card that has been ripped from its case, next to a grinning cat. So at the moment they will all live in a box with my Lind collection.

Massive thank you to John again! I hope to repay you soon.

Ginter auto has arrived! and another dilemma

Finally my Adam Lind ginter auto arrived!

Well its here! It arrived today at 3pm, very late for the post. I remember when the post would be there before 7am! And then at around 1pm you would get a second post...those days are long gone!

Anyway the card is here and that the main thing! It looks a lot better than I thought it would. The red border is really nice and actually feels like plastic. The card its self is really nice and is only the 2nd on card auto that I have of Lind. Its not very secure though and it actually moves about inside the frame. That's not a huge problem because its not slipping out of view or anything and its not as if I'm going to be shaking it like a magic 8 ball!

I now need to pick up the Lind Ginter relic to go with it. That can wait since it looks like every single box that was opened had one in it and its getting cheaper by the day. I have other cards that I want first.

Now there was a problem attached to the Lind auto and that was the amount of time it took to reach me. I know what your all thinking 'you live in the UK so of course it will take longer to get there' and yes your right it does take longer to reach me here but not by much. Let me give you a brief recap of what has happened.

• Won and paid for auction on the 1st of July
• Item marked as shipped on the 10th July
• Contacted seller on the 22nd of July to inform them that it still had not arrived and that it had been nearly two weeks
• Seller replied on the 23rd of July to confirm card had been shipped and I should have had it by now
• Card received today on the 28th of July (insert happy dance of your choice)
• Postage said it was shipped on the 20th of July

So it was shipped TEN days after the seller had told me it was shipped and a full 19 days after I paid for it. 19 freaking days! What's that all about?! Why didnt the seller just tell me he couldn't get it out to me in a reasonable amount of time? I would have been ok with that or could have asked for refund and picked up a different one.

Now what do I do? On one hand I'm very happy it got here, I was beginning to think it would never arrive. On the other hand I'm very annoyed that the seller lied and it took him so long to ship.

I see five choices that I can make:

1. Contact the seller and confront them about what has happened, maybe even get a little bit of money back.
2. Leave negative feedback without speaking to the seller (seems a bit unfair).
3. Ignore it and leave positive.
4. Ignore and don't leave any feedback.
5. Claim the card never arrived and get a refund (I would NEVER do this but it is an option).

I'm going to give it a day or so before I take action. I would appreciate your feedback on this. What would you do? One of my five options or something completely different?

Ebay problems

Picked up a card on the 1st of July, an Allen and Ginter Lind auto. I knew the card probably wouldn't be shipped straight away because it was just before the 4th July weekend and I accepted this. So anyway a week went by and nothing arrived, this is normal though because sometimes cards can take up to two weeks or so to arrive. On the 10th of July the card was marked as shipped, a full 9 days after payment. OK people lead busy lives and this may have been the first opportunity to get the card in the mail, so that's fair enough. Its now the 23rd of July and still no card. I didnt pay a great deal for the card, actually I paid more than I should have since I jumped on the card when Ginter had only just been released a few days before. There are Lind autos from Ginter on the bay now for about half of what I paid for it, I'm so impatient when it comes to cards!
Anyway I'm not sure where to go from here. I'm going to wait until tomorrow as that will be exactly two weeks since it was marked as shipped but then what? Should I contact the buyer and explain whats up? I don't want the seller to think that I'm ripping him off. There are many threads on FCB and Blowout about overseas buyers claiming they have never received the cards they bought. Or should I just go ahead and start a dispute and do a chargeback? Or I could just let it go and chalk it up as a loss. Don't think that's a good idea though.
In the time since I bought this card I have received three or four other packages so I know there's no issues with the mail. Do you think I've been ripped off? The seller has 99.9% feedback and about 4000 separate feedbacks left so I think he can be trusted.
What would you do?
Now on to something completely different!
I have read on various forums that sometimes when people buy cards online they stink of cigarette smoke. I smoke (and I like it so don't tell me its bad, I know it is!) I don't smoke when I'm handling cards or near my cards. Do any of you fine folks out there get cards that smell of smoke? and is the smell really that bad? I don't want to send out 'smelly' cards to anyone. Let me know your feelings on this.

Favorite cards part 5

Back to my favorite cards for this post! What we have this time is a 2010 National Chicle artist proof.

This has been signed by the artist of the card, Brett Farr, and is numbered 5/10.

I remember when this product first came out and there were a few disgruntled collectors out there who were not happy pulling an autograph that was not actually signed by the player. I on the other hand think its a great idea. I can understand why someone may get upset when they pull their favorite player or HOFer and see that is signed only to find on closer inspection that its signed by some guy they more than likely never heard of. That can be a major let down.

I picked this card up from some guy on SCF who was selling it, I forget what I paid but it wasn't much.

There were a few issues with this product when it came out. We all remember the Chipper Ruth card don't we? And I believe there were a few other cards that actually looked nothing like the player it was said to depict or the card looked like it was drawn by a 5 year old. The Lind card actually looks Lind and the artist has done a great job. I have to honest, I had never heard of Brett Farr before I got this card but after a quick look on his website I was impressed at his talent. This doesn't mean I'm going to rush out and pick up more art by Mr Farr because I would probably not appreciate it as much as I should. The one saving grace for collectors was the fact that the cards were all low numbered and so could be sold on fairly easily and for more than the average GU card.

There are a few reasons that I like this card. Firstly it looks great! The picture is nice and well detailed. The background fits in with the picture, the artist kept it simple and didn't attempt to fill it up with pointless things. Secondly there are only ten of them out there! I like having low numbered cards but don't have that many, well not as many as I would like. I don't have any 1/1's yet apart from my Ebay 1/1's! ( Here and here).

I have a few trades and Ebay purchases inbound over the next few days so you can look forward to a non Lind post then... maybe.

Favorite cards part 3

Here's another one of my favorite cards and again it features Adam Lind.



The card in question is a 2007 Exquisite endorsements. The card is serial numbered 50/50 and was the first high end card I ever bought. This was also one of the first cards I picked up from COMC. It cost $9 and I picked it up along with a number of other Adam Lind cards from the site, which was a big mistake, more about that in a later post.
Cards that are either the first or last of the print one tend to be the most sought after and as I said in an earlier post this would be considered another Ebay 1/1. I don't see it as a 1/1 because its not! Its 1 card out of 50 cards.
I was impressed with the card the second I got it. Its a very thick card, about the same thickness of about 4 or 5 cards and luckily it came in the right size toploader. You would not believe how difficult it is to find some of the bigger toploaders over here in the UK! The card features an auto of Lind on a clear sticker and looks outstanding! I was never a fan of Upper Deck when I first got into to collecting in the 90's and it was something I carried over until earlier this year until I picked up a few Masterpieces and a few more exquisite cards. I didn't think I would miss UD when they lost their license but I do. Don't get me wrong, Topps are doing a great job and have released some nice cards this year but with no 'official' competition things will go down hill.
This is not my favorite card in my collection, that will be coming up in about 10 posts or so. That's right you have to sit through more posts of Adam Lind! HA!
I have been asked on more than one occasion why I collect Adam Lind, since I'm a Giants fan and Lind is a Jay. Well the answer is all down to fantasy baseball. I got back into the game last year, right at the beginning of the season and thought I'd have a go at fantasy. Since I hadn't followed the game since 2000/01 I had no idea who most of the players were! Gone were the familiar names of Bonds, McGwire, Clemens and Sosa. In were new names Lincecum, Pujols and Longoria. I quickly learned who these guys were and added a few of them to my team. I filled my team up blind, just picked guys who I thought sounded good and how much they were worth. I needed one more player and choose Lind because he was cheap. He ended up scoring the most points for my team, behind Lincecum. I didn't win anything, infact I think I came around 600th out of 2000 other teams but still I thought that was pretty good for my first go.
So basically I collect Lind because he did well for my fantasy team. Unfortunately he is having a terrible year so far but it is picking up for him. He wont end the season with the numbers he produced last year but you never know...

Next up will either be Lind or another Thomson.

Mystery card.

This is a 1989 Topps Gary Sheffield rookie card and its a mystery to me.
As you can see from the picture, the card has been signed and hand numbered out of 1989 but the mystery is where did it come from? I don't mean where did I get it from because I remember when I got the card but at the time didn't notice that it was signed. I probably just saw it was a 1989 Topps and since I already had the full set didn't give it a second look. The card was pulled out of a pack I picked up at Walmart back in 98 or 99. It came in a pack of about 100 or so cards from mixed brands and years, I think it was about $2 and it the time I was going for quantity rather than quality. Back last year when I got back into collecting I came across this card sat in my common box and was about to throw it away because I thought someone had written over it. But then I thought why would it be hand numbered? and the auto looks pretty good to me too, a bit faded but still looks good.
The question I want answering is what product could this have come from? As I have said I picked this up in the late 90's around the time when autos were not commonly inserted into packs. I have done all the usual Internet searches for information but have come up with nothing. I did post the same question months back at SCF and got some good responses but nothing concrete. The general consensus was that it was either a fake ( probably, but until I know for sure I will consider it genuine), a buyback and inserted into a Topps product ( No evidence to support this as there would be information in Beckett) or possibly it came from a shopping channel ( This is probably the most realistic of the answers I was given, but still there would/should be information on this).
What do you guys think? Have any of you come across a similar card? If this is genuine then there are another 1988 of these cards out there. Any information on this card would be greatly appreciated and if anyone comes up with a definite answer they shall be rewarded.