2011 Allen and Ginter needs

I didnt want to try and complete a set this year. I've sat out of Heritage, Gypsy Queen and up until now Ginter.

I picked up the remnants of four hobby boxes from eBay about a month ago with the intention of selling on a few of the key cards and using the rest for trade. However I only sold two cards (I got like $9 for a mini David DeJesus A&G back, which I thought was crazy high) and have traded about the same amount. So I thought I'd put the cards to good use and finish up the very nearly completed set.

I'm going for the complete base and SP set.
Baseball Sketches.
Hometown Heroes.
Floating Fortresses.
Minds that made the Future.
The Ascent of Man.

Here are my needs, as you can see I'm pretty close.

Base & SPs:
24, 26, 29, 71, 81, 100, 167, 177, 186, 189, 193, 228, 240, 262, 274, 330, 342.

Baseball Sketches:
1, 2, 10, 12, 13, 19, 20, 22, 25.

Hometown Heroes
4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 19, 22, 28, 35, 41, 43, 49, 61, 64, 66, 68, 69, 71, 72, 75, 76, 81, 82, 86, 91, 92.

Floating Fortresses
1, 5, 7, 10, 13, 16, 20.

Minds that made the future
1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 12, 15, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 33, 36, 37, 38, 39.

Ascent of man
3, 4, 10, 13, 21, 25, 26.

I have a ton of cards available for trade from various years and sets so please leave a comment if you can help me out and we can get the ball rolling.

My biggest pull ever (sort of)

Today I participated in my third break with fellow Brit and blogger Martyn, over at Arbitrary Crap.

The box was 2010 Bowman Chrome hobby box and we got fairly cheap online. It did take a long time to arrive but it was definitely worth the wait!


I'm only showcasing one card here, if you want to see the rest of the break then click the link to Martyns blog (and why not follow him when you get there? He puts out some good stuff!)




A Shelby Miller Orange Refractor auto numbered 1 of 25!!
Miller is an up and coming prospect in the Cardinal farm system. Hes currently playing for the Springfield Cardinals and seems to be doing quite well.
Hes being rested at the moment due to throwing a hell of lot of pitches so far this season.

When we ordered the box a few weeks back we both agreed that if we pulled anything good ( we were hoping for Strasburg!) then we would list on eBay and use whatever funds we get to pick up another box.

Dont really like to plug my own auction on my blog but I'm going to do it anyway.

Shelby Miller Auto 1/25

Its set at a pretty high price but we're hoping for offers.

Cards from Martyn

A few weeks ago I participated in a break with Martyn from Arbitrary Crap. In Fact there's been two breaks in the last few weeks with another one planned very shortly.


I've already shown what I got in the breaks of Topps Opening Day and Topps Series 2 but I haven't shown what else Martyn sent my way.


Firstly is this Topps Pristine Bobby Thomson numbered out of 549. This is probably the first card to hit my Thompson PC this year. I've been very neglectful picking up his cards since all the focus has been on Adam Lind. The only card that I actively search of Thompson is his Bowman RC from the forties. I haven't found one yet at a price that I like but the search will continue.


This is a card that I was very excited to see. This is my first and only Sterling card in my collection. As you can see from the front of the card its numbered 24/50. The scan does not do this card justice, it really is beautiful and you can just tell this is from a 'premium' product.

Huge thanks Martyn, I do have a few cards to send your way but I'm sure you've known me long enough to know that I can take a little while to get cards in the post!!

If your going to steal a scan...

I'll let the auction listing do the talking, especially the scan. Seriously if you must use someone else's scan DON'T use a scan of the most famous graded and expensive card of ALL TIME.

Honus Wagner.

Swag from Topps jumbo series 2 break with Arbitrary Crap

This is the second break that I've done with Martyn over at Arbitrary Crap . It was a great break and the first Jumbo that I've ever participated in. There were a few other people involved in the break such as Simon from 7 hours from Tampa and Colin from everyone favourite forum Sports Card Radio. There were others but I'm not sure if they have blogs/sites.


All teams were randomised, as were the Diamond anniversary giveaways and the Prime 9s.


As this was Jumbo there were 50 cards per pack and 3 hits per box. We did very well with this box!!


I'll just show of the highlights from my share, I'll let Martyn show off the others on his blog.


At the top of the page is one of the Golds I received. I did get about 4, maybe 5 including a few Giants players but the Longo is my favourite out of the bunch. Like all Topps Golds this card is numbered out of the year of release. In this case out of 2011.

Next I got this filthy Dodger, Don Sutton. This is a 60 years of Topps Original backed card and it is for trade. Any Dodgers fans out there want it?

My favourite basecard that I got was this Brandon Belt RC. Belt started out the season strongly before quickly losing steam. He was sent back down the minors to improve his skills. Still Belt will be become a key member of the Giants organisation in the next couple of years.

This is my absolute best card that I got in the break. Its the Giants team card Diamond Paralell version. It features the closer Brian Wilson and catcher Buster Posey celebrating the last out against Texas in the 2010 World Series.

There we have it, my highlights from the break. I know that some of the other guys got some better cards than me. including an auto, GU and two legends variation cards (Mantle and Aaron)

So a huge thanks to Martyn for hosting yet another break. I cant wait for the next one to happen!!

My first printing plate

I picked up this plate about a month ago from a guy at Blowout. It was a little higher than I wanted to pay but since the majority of the Lind plates I've seen lately have been going for around $50 I actually got a pretty good deal on it.

This is the Cyan International plate, not to be confused with the regular printing plates. Not sure why Topps/Bowman felt the need to include another 4 plates on top of the normal 4 that they normally put out. I guess its just a way to make more money.

Anyway this is my first ever printing plate and I think its pretty cool looking. I had read about them on other blogs/forum but other peoples opinions on cards don't usually match my own.

You can see that the plate has been well used as there are red and blue ink stains on it and also finger prints.

I wouldn't have been able to get hold of this plate if it wasn't for Randy over at Way Off Base. The seller wouldn't ship to the UK so Randy thankfully agreed to have the card sent to him before sending it my way. So huge thanks to him!

Reaching for 200

It was about a year ago that I decided to broaden my collecting habits and pick a player or two to 'supercollect'.

At that time I had quite a large amount of cards that I was trying to chase down, such as Heritage or A&G minis which are both tough sets to attempt. Anyone who has collected either Heritage or A&G knows how competitive bidding on eBay can be for certain cards in the sets and also how difficult it can be to trade for the rarer cards, so it took up a lot of my time and felt like I was missing out on other cards because my collecting habits were so streamlined.

The players I thought I would go for were, in this order :

Will Clark
Bobby Thomson
JT Snow
Jeff Kent
Bill Mueller
Adam Lind

I started strong with Clark and traded for around 40 different cards on my first day of collecting him and that was it. I think I've added 2 more cards since then that have come to me as free extras via trades.

Bobby Thomson is still active in my collecting goals but is very slow going. I have picked up a nice couple of cards such as vintage, GU and auto. I only add to this collection when I see something cheap on COMC.

JT snow lasted 2 cards before I lost interest. One auto and one GU.

Jeff Kent lasted 1 card. One GU.

Bill Mueller... Well this collection didn't even start.

Adam Lind, my last choice and as you can see the only non Giant player on my list. The only reason he was on the list was because he did really well on my fantasy team the year before.

This was the first card I picked up. Cant remember what I traded for it but I know that it came with the lot of Will Clark cards that I mentioned above.

Its a 2007 Fleer mini Die-cut and once I received it I just threw into one of my boxes and didn't look at it again until a few months later.

As you can see from the card it is slightly smaller than a regular sized card but not as small as a normal ginter mini. I also picked up the normal sized version a few months after that.

So that was the first card that I got for Lind. Lets take a look at my most recent pick up. Well when I say its my most recent its not, its just the only one that sticks in my mind.

This is a 2010 Topps 206 mini Gold Piedmont back numbered out of 50. This card has been on my main hitlist for a while now and this is only the second one that I've seen since the product was released, which is very strange since there are 50 copies.

This card also brought to my attention other Lind collectors. Nearly every Lind card that I've been bidding on or watching are ending much higher than what they would have a year ago. I guess this is due to his improvement on the field, which is great for him but bad for me!

The Gold T206 represents my 193rd different Lind card in my collection, so I only need 7 more to reach 200! Is there anyone out there can help me? Do you have any you want to trade? Please check my Lind page for all the cards that I HAVE. I you have something that's not on that list then please get in contact with me.