Switching Teams

Last week, I picked up this Chad Johnson dual jersey complete with bengal stripe numbered outta 15 on Ebay. When I purchased it, Chad was a Bengal. Now that it has arrived, Chad is a Patriot. I mentioned when I first started this blog that a big part of the very little football collecting I do is Chad Johnson. (Can we get a count on how many times I’ve said Chad in the first paragraph?) Along with Lebron “taking his talents to South Beach”, I have lost my favorite player on two of my favorite sports teams.

In a collector’s state of mind, this isn’t that big of a problem. I will continue to collect cards of Chad in a Bengals uniform.

But in a sports fan’s state of mind, it sucks seeing one of the last positive thing about the Bengals organization with another team. Putting my Bengals fandom out of the picture, (which is dwindling the way it is) it is nice to see him on a team that is actually a contender. He’s more passionate about the game than a whole lot of the players on the Bengals roster combined, and I hope he’s successful in New England. He deserves some success after spending the first 10 years of his career with the Bungles.

Dang..

The random picture of the box is there because I got a huge mini package from Duane over at Democratic Roadkill yesterday and I don’t have a picture of the actual box of cards he sent, so you get the random googe pulled image. And yes, I said huge mini package. Duane sent me a box full of Allen & Ginter minis. I pulled them all out of the box, stacked them up.. And the stack was a couple inches tall. The leaning tower of minis! Well, minus the leaning part. That’ll get a review in a few days,

The dang is because I have to leave town until Monday morning. In other words, posts are going to slow down for the next couple days. I feel like every time I get on a roll with posts, and start to retain a steady viewing base, something happens to diminish that and I have to work to build it back up. Oh well, we’ll get there someday.

Am I Crazy?

Let me start off by saying that I am not a Bowman guy. I never have been. I’ve never seen the appeal in a prospecting set. I thought it was almost getting a little over the edge by collecting these guys, some that are just out of high school. This year was different. I got pulled in by Harper. I busted some packs, and was disappointed by the lack of a Harper lottery ticket.

I let the cards sit there for a while, and when I started to look through them.. The Bowman chrome cards started to grow on me. They have a nice clean look, with the chrome really making them pop. I get crazy ideas of going after the whole set. Then I take a look over my want lists and remind myself I don’t need an entire other insert set added to it. I remind myself I am not a Bowman guy and move on.. The chrome cards will just have to wait. At least for the time being.

Video of the (Last?) Week

I mentioned in my last post how I was kinda in a bad stage with posting, I got out of that funk.. But apparently my internet thought otherwise. I tried to get onto wordpress to post on Saturday and nothing was loading. I couldn’t get anything. Then I tried again later and could actually get the page to load, but not fully so still no posts. Oh, and just to clarify, this was the same deal with every other site I tried too. Not just wordpress.

It had been doing that for the last three days. It was still doing that this morning. I had given up. I was just going to call up the company and hope they could fix it. Then I tried one last time (20 minutes ago) and everything was working just fine. The electronics in this house seem to have a mind of their own.

Anywho, I posted a video of the week last Sunday hoping to start a weekly series and I wasn’t able to do that this Sunday that just passed due to the internet problems. So let’s just all pretend it’s Sunday, and here is your video of the week.

I figured I would make up for my lateness with a dandy of a video. We’re pulling out all the stops this week, folks. Get a dream collection in your mind and then watch this. This guy has all the big name cards. HOF rookies, high value modern cards.. He has it all. So sit back & enjoy one of the most impressive collections I have ever seen.

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And on a side note, while my internet wasn’t cooperating, my blog passed 1,000 views. WOOOOOOO! We’re getting there. Little milestones like these are rewarding in the long haul of blogging.

Show & Tell: Numero Tres

I have a large part of my collection that has never been “showed off” and thought that a show & tell series would help fix that problem.

I promise I’ll have a normal post up sooner or later, posting this week has been a little blah for me. We’ll get things back on track sooner or later.

The Nolan Ryan Sweet Spot shown above has been displayed on my blog before if you have been around long enough to see one of my first couple posts where I explained what I collect. If not, you’re catching a glimpse of this beauty for the first time. I opened a couple boxes of Sweet Spot back in ’09, this being the third. In my first, I pulled a Kevin Youkilis autograph identical to this one numbered out of 20 that was traded away a while back.

I pulled the Ryan out of the sixth pack in a six pack box. I was starting to get a little concerned when I made my way to the last pack without pulling the sweet spot autograph, ecspecially since I was shorted the sweet spot auto in my 2nd box. Everything was better when I cracked open the pack and saw the side of an insanely thick card, well.. I guess everything wasn’t better, at this point I didn’t know if I had an auto of Nolan Ryan or Eric Chavez.. I really like the way the silver auto pops on the black baseball. And to this day, it is probably the most valuable card in the baseball part of my collection.

Is It Just Me?

Is it just me? Or does Josh Harris (off of Deadliest Catch)

look like Jose Bautista in disguise?

Very possible if you ask me.

Show & Tell: Numero Dos

I have a large part of my collection that has never been “showed off” and thought that a show & tell series would help fix that problem.

Back in 2009, I attempted to build the entire ’09 Upper Deck base set solely off of busting packs. All 1,007 cards. That was a terrrible idea, but we don’t speak about that anymore. In the series 2 hobby boxes, there was a one card “buy back” pack commemorating Upper Deck’s 20th anniversary. These things weren’t that bad of a deal.. I heard of some pretty cool cards coming out of these. Actual letterman from the back of jerseys, not that manufactured crap.

I bought two hobby boxes of series 2. The first box’s buy back pack contained the Rickie Weeks rookie autograph I gave away in my contest a couple weeks ago. The second box contained the sweet Griffey Jr./Sosa dual at the top of the page. I was pretty excited about this, being the Reds fan that I am. Pieces of bat from two members of the 600 home run club? I’ll take that any day.

 

Video of the Week

There’s plenty of card videos out there.. There’s bound to be some good ones, ehh?

Part 1:

Part 2:

 I don’t have a whole lot to say about these, they are pretty self-explanatory. It is this guy, KCcollectibles on youtube, showing off his childhood collection. These guys used to always post box breaks & such, but there hasn’t been a card video from them in over a year. It takes a while to get through both videos, but if you have the time.. It’s well worth it to take a look.

Baseball Card Organization 101 (Before & After Pictures!)

One of the gals over at A Cardboard Problem used to refer to themself as “Covered in Wrappers”, well I’m covered in doubles. Well was covered in doubles. I have all these cards that I have no use for, becuase I have another (or 5 other copies) copy of the exact card squared away somewhere in a binder with the rest of that set. They’re just waiting to be traded. I wasn’t just going to throw them away, surely I could find someone that needed these. With this lack of organization, you end up with stacks of cards here.. some there.. and it began to get overwhelming.  You couldn’t get away from them.

Then 5,000 count boxes came into my life.

Here is what we’re looking at before I pick up these 5,000 count boxes.

And you have to realize that this is an organized before picture.. I got all the cards together on this shelf to show how many cards were going into these things. Before getting them all moved to the shelf, there were stacks sitting on the desk, stacks on dressers, stacks on night stands.. you get the point. To put things into perspective, the taller stacks on top have 400-ish cards in them.

Most of these stacks were collated and ready to be packed away, so that made for a pretty easy transition from shelf to box..

This is just the baseball box, the football & basketball box has around three of the five rows occupied. All nicely packed away, and I get a clean shelf!

As you can see by this picutre, I have the cards separated by set with a notecard stuck in between sets to identify the different grouping of cards. Now all of the different stacks are stowed away in this single box. This makes me feel a whole lot better about the entire collection, having it under control.

After the success with these, I might even attempt to move my junk wax era cards into one of these. I do have one of these boxes just sitting there with nothing in it.. Hmmm..

Moral of the story: 5,000 count boxes are your friend.

This project has got me motivated to trade these cards away, as this is just temporary storage before I can find someone that actually has a need for these. If you need help completing a set from the past couple years, please check out my trade list. I’ll be updating it this weekend with what it didn’t already include.

Really, ESPN? Really?!

I flip to ESPN to catch some of the ESPY’s coutdown for some sports and what is the first thing I see? Justin Bieber handing out tickets.

 

Freaking wow.