Player Collections from the 15/$1 Box

These player stacks are from the 15/$1 box at the card show this past weekend. These are all players I collect, but at this point I pretty much just add then to my collection when I find them for a dime, or less.

Most of the Goldschmidt cards I find at these prices are of him with St. Louis. I've got most of his Diamondbacks cards that I come across in the dime boxes. For Harper I will probably have at least a couple of the cards already, but at a dime or less, it's not a big deal. When it comes to Piazza and Griffey, I will grab them if it doesn't look familiar, but I typically end up having at least half of the cards of these two.

A "FREAKING BEAUTIFUL" card!

P-Town Tom sent me a one card package out of the blue the other day and the one card is absolutely stunning!

These 2018 Gypsy Queen box toppers are amazing! When I first saw them online I thought they might have actually been glass, Even though they are cardboard and not in fact glass, they are "freaking beautiful"!

Here's the back.

Here's the note that Tom sent, which I love almost as much as the card itself.

Written on the of a Chicago Cubs page-a-day calendar, Tom mimicked the Most Interesting Man in the World, which even though I don't drink, I love those commercials. The card is "FREAKING BEAUTIFUL" as Tom so elegantly put it and I am extremely grateful to Tom for adding it to my Goldy PC, because I NEEDED it! I mentioned in a recent post that I'm not going to try to accumulate every Goldschmidt card out there, but will only go after cards that I find appealing and this is one of those cards. Thank you so much Tom!

Twitter Trade

Have you ever had someone ask you if you're interested in a card and in your mind you're like "Sweet! That's awesome! I would do anything to have that card." but you try to play it cool and are like, "Yeah, I'll see if I can find something to trade."?

Marcus, of the blog All the way to the backstop, reached out to me on Twitter and asked if I'd be interested in this card. Marcus isn't as active on his blog as he has been in the past, but he's active on Twitter.

Marcus pulled it from 2018 Heritage and luckily I was able to find something that he wanted in return.

Marcus sent some other great D-Backs cards as well including three 2018 Heritage base cards one of which is this JD Martinez card that completes the base set that I got from Julie in the mail the same day.

Here are a couple of Inception cards including a numbered Yasmany Tomas and a green parallel of A.J. Pollock.

Speaking of A.J. Pollock. 

In addition to the 2018 Topps Pollock, Marcus also included a couple others D-Backs cards. Thanks Marcus!

Why Topps? Why?

I picked up this 2018 Topps Postseason Performance Autograph Relic of Paul Goldschmidt on eBay recently. I bought it knowing that the "game-used memorabilia item is not from the 2017 postseason". I also bought it knowing that the autograph is on a sticker.

Just because I bought it knowing its flaws, doesn't mean that I like it. I've seen multiple Postseason Performance Relic cards and Postseason Performance Autograph Relic cards of Paul Goldschmidt and almost all of them have a purple pinstripe through the jersey, so I picked this one specifically because it didn't have a pinstripe and so I can pretend that the jersey matches the jersey in the picture.

But why should I have to pretend? I get that postseason jerseys are probably hard to come by, by why make the set if you can't get them. How about using baseballs or a base, something that they could actually get and it would be from the postseason?

I paid decent money for this card, but had it featured a ball or base from the postseason I would certainly have paid double. If it contained a piece of jersey or bat that was used in the postseason I would have paid triple or more. I know some people might not think that Topps cares much about the after market price I'm willing to pay, but I think they have to care about that because it would help determine the price they could charge for boxes.

What are your thoughts on cards like this?

2018 Topps Paul Goldschmidt Inserts

I picked up a nice lot of 2018 Topps Paul Goldschmidt inserts off eBay recently. $4 shipped for 7 cards; all new to me.

Online Exclusives or just Over-Sized

I picked these up a while back off ebay, and by "a while back" I mean probably over a year ago*. They are the the online exclusive over-sized versions that Topps sells online. They're 5 x 7. I think I paid a couple of bucks each*, again I can't be sure because it was so long ago. Each is numbered to 49.

Because they aren't the standard size, I put them in a pile of stuff rather than in my Goldschmidt box and they got forgotten.

How do you feel about the online exclusives? How do you store your over-sized cards or do you just stay away from it altogether?

*My curiosity got the best of my and I had to check. I bought them on March 26, 2017 for $1.50 each from the same seller. Since I was looking I checked out what the seller currently has for sale and he still has one of the All-Star Goldschmidt cards for sale, but they want $9.99 now.

49/50

Here's a recent eBay pickup. It's a 2016 Topps Bunt gold parallel of Paul Goldschmidt numbered 49/50.

It's my 15th card in my quest to collect a Paul Goldschmidt card numbered 01/50 - 50/50.

2013 Finest Gold 05/50

2016 Archives Red 06/50

2015 Museum Collection Red Jumbo Relic 13/50

2015 Topps Chrome Gallery of Greats Gold 15/50

2014 Bowman Gold 16/50

2014 Museum Collection Red Jumbo Relic 19/50

2016 Topps Gold Label Red 21/50

2017 Bowman Gold 22/50

2013 Topps Chrome Gold 24/50

2017 Bowman's Best Best Cuts Gold 25/50

2016 Gypsy Queen Red Mini Relic 02/50

2015 Museum Collection Red Jumbo Relic 28/50

2016 Tier One Dual Relic 33/50

2014 Supreme Simply Supreme Auto 33/50

2016 Topps Bunt Gold 49/50

Instead of 2018 Topps...

2018 Topps debuted a couple of weeks ago and I've enjoyed it vicariously through all of your posts. I'm on a strict budget at the moment so I won't be picking up any cards any time soon.

Luckily for me I already have plenty of cards to keep the posts coming and fellow bloggers like P-Town Tom keep sending me cards. Thanks Tom!

I found a small lot of Topps Tek Dan Vogelbach cards in a Facebook group and so I made payment and arranged to have them shipped directly to the biggest Vogelbach fan I know. I wasn't expecting anything in return, but that's not how Tom plays.

Because of the foil the scan does not do this card any justice. It's a 2003 Playoff Absolute Memorabilia Team Tandems card of Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling.

In 2002 Johnson and Schilling were a combined 47-12. The became the first teammates in the history of the game to each record more than 300 strikeouts in the same season and the finished 1 and 2 in Cy Young voting for the second straight season, with Johnson winning it.

Between 1992 and 2004, either Randy Johnson or Curt Schilling led their league in strikeouts 11 times.

Johnson and Schilling in 2002 were the last pitchers to record 300+ strikeouts in a season until Clayton Kershaw finished 2015 with 301 k's and Chris Sale accomplished the feat last season with 308 k's.

Check out some of the other cards that Tom sent!

Great card of David Peralta, but I wish his eyes were open.

Three Goldschmidt cards. Two I needed and the Marketside card is great because I'm also trying to complete that set. 

Jake Lamb had a great 2017. Hopefully he will repeat in 2018.

Only 33 MLB players have been born in England and 31 MLB players have been born in Australia. Pretty small numbers. Phil Stockman was born in England and grew up in Australia.  

Thanks again Tom!

Strata

Someone on one of the baseball card Facebook groups that I'm in posted this 2015 Strata Paul Goldschmidt auto for a decent price and I jumped on it. Turns out the guy lives about 15 miles away and we frequent the same LCS, so we arranged to meet there instead of him shipping the card.

I love the fact that these cards have the MLB authentication sticker on them and you can tell which game the jersey was from. I wish they would do this with all of their relic cards. I know it won't happen, but a guy can dream.

This was my first Strata Paul Goldschmidt card and so after scanning the card I had to file it away and create a divider titled "Strata". It got me thinking, what does Strata mean?

So I looked it up.

So strata is the plural of stratum. So I looked up stratum.

Okay. So "a layer of material....often one of a number of parallel layers one upon another". That makes sense based on how these cards are constructed. 

D-Backs from a Giants Fan

Adam of the blog ARPSmith's Sportscard Obsession recently purchased a massive collection and needs all the room he can get to do some sorting so he offered up some cards he already had sorted out by team. I asked for the D-Backs and a few days later a nice package arrived at my door. Thank you Adam!

I can't be certain, but I'm almost positive that this card features Luis Gonzales with his son Jacob who was recently drafted by the Giants. Adam is a Giants fan, so he may have sent me the "rookie" card of a current Giant.

This red parallel of a 2004 Bazooka is awesome and I needed it for my Brandon Webb collection. It's my 307th  different Webb card. 

Next up is a blue framed Gypsy Queen parallel of Zack Greinke.

These original Gold Label cards are fantastic. So much better than Topps recent reboot. 

Adam sent some Chipz.

These next two are the National League All-Star cards of Greinke and Goldschmidt.

Thanks again Adam for the D-Backs! Good luck sorting!

New Project Courtesy of eBay

I got an eBay gift card as part of a Christmas gift exchange at work and so I've been putting it to good use.

Here's the first card I picked up with the gift card.

It's a 2017 Bowman Gold Parallel of Paul Goldschmidt. It's numbered to 50 and I got it for $4 shipped. I had a some eBay bucks so it didn't even use $4 off the gift card.

I've mentioned before that I have a thing for the gold parallels of Goldschmidt and when I scanned this card for this post I got to thinking that it would be cool to get 50 different gold parallels of Goldschmidt numbered to 50 in order, so have a card 01/50, 02/50, 03/50, etc. I've got 12 different numbered to 50 cards so far. Only 38 more to go!

What do you think? Anyone ever done something like that before?

Five on Friday

I've still got a bunch of cards from my most recent comc order to post and then put away. Here are 5 Paul Goldschmidt cards.

This 2016 Topps Archives Red Parallel is numbered on the back to 50. I paid $2.13 for it. Super excited to add it to my collection at a great price.

In 2015 his WAR of 8.8 was #5 in all of baseball.

We'll finish off with 3 out of the 87 parallels from 2016 Topps Chrome.

 

Baseball Cards from the Great White North

Yesterday I shared some cards I'd gotten the Empire State. For this post, I have to go even further north, in fact to the Great White North.

The Saturday before Christmas I had the opportunity to meet up with fellow blogger Angus, from Dawg Day Cards at a card shop called AZ Sports Cards. We spent about an hour or so sorting through 15/$1 boxes and the showcases and talking about sports and cards.

As I departed, Angus gave me some D-Backs cards including this 2017 Topps New Era Paul Goldschmidt card. This is a fantastic looking card that I actually hadn't seen in person before.

Angus also gave me a pack of 2017 Topps National Baseball Card Day which included another Goldschmidt. I have one complete D-Backs team set already. I need to see if this will help with a second set.

Awesome hanging out with you Angus and thank you so much for the cards!