Bargain at Double the Price #1

I was digging through a $1 box the other day at a card shop and I found this card.

It's a 2006 Upper Deck Ovation gold parallel of Ichiro. I really miss Ovation and the Upper Deck brand in general. If you aren't familiar with Ovation the cards are embossed and have a great texture to them. The stitches of the ball as well as the player photo all stand out.

The regular base cards feature silver foil, so for the gold parallels all the silver foil is replaced with gold foil and it's serial numbered on the right side to 499.

These gold parallels were inserted at a rate 1:18 packs. There were only 18 packs per box, so that makes these parallels one per box. The set contains 126 cards, but the last 42 are a rookie subset and the gold parallels of these are autographed and numbered to 99, so there are 84 cards that have a gold parallel numbered to 499. This means if you bought 84 boxes you might get one of these gold parallels of Ichiro.

Ichiro called it quits earlier this year and put an end to an amazing career that included 9 seasons in the Nippon Professional Baseball league in Japan and 18 years in Major League Baseball. He's a first ballot Hall of Famer in my opinion and I'm happy to add this card to my collection.

2011 Topps All-Star Set

It's been almost a month since my last post and we're still not completly settled into the new house, but I wanted to try and catch up on some posts. I was able to attend the Home Run Derby and All-Star game that was here in Phoenix recently. I also attended FanFest on Saturday and Tuesday. I had an amazing time and loved every second of it!

Topps had a booth at FanFest and had a promotion going where if you bought 3 pack of any of their 2011 products at one of the other participating vendors and brought them back to their booth to open then you got to pick a card from a special 7-card 2011 MLB All-Star set. Because of the promotion, the packs were overpriced. Three packs of 2011 Topps Series 2 for $12. I bought three packs on Saturday and got the Justin upton card. On Tuesday I decided to buy three more Series 2 packs and three packs of Opening Day (3/$5) and get Ichiro and Jeter. When I got to the booth I opened my first pack of Series 2 and pulled out a couple of damaged cards. I asked the guy at the booth if he could do anything about the damaged cards and he took them and looked at them for a little bit and then asked me, "What do you want?  Do you want the whole set?" I agreed and he gave me all 7 cards in the set. I guess every once in a while factory damaged cards are a good thing!

I know there was a lot of discussion about Jeter opting out of the All-Star game and I don't know exactly how I feel about it. I think that some of the frustration though came from the fact that there just was not a lot of star power at the game in the first place and so to have him opt out just added more fuel to the fire. Look at the seven card set below which feature some of the games biggest names. Ichiro - not at the All-Star game, Pujols - not at the All-Star game, Tim Lincecum - there, but did not pitch, Jeter - not at the All-Star game, Ryan Howard - not at the All-Star game, and then you have Justin Upton and Jose Bautista who were at the All-Star game, but let's be honest, they are stars, not super stars.

Baseball Cards from a Secret Santa

The day before Christmas, our door bell rang and when we opened it we saw a pile of presents. Their was one for my wife and both of my boys, as well as one for me. Mine was two blasters. A 2009 Topps Ticket to Stardom and a 2008 Upper Deck Series 2 blaster. We have a pretty good idea of who our Secret Santa is, but know one will confess. So...thanks to whoever it was! Now onto the highlights.

3 Diamondbacks - Jon Garland, Max Scherzer, and Chris Young

Big Ticket insert of Ryan Braun - I seem to pull a lot of Braun cards, no big hits, but lots of inserts.

Ticket to Stardom inserts of Jacoby Ellsbury and Kenshini Kawakami

Seasoned Veteran insert of Alex Rodriguez

USA Baseball Junior Team card of Jordan Wagerty

Here are 4 of the common Starquest cards I got. Randy Johnson, Jeff Francoeur, Cole Hamels amd Russell Martin. I also got Jimmy Rolins, Vladimir Guerero, Carlos Beltran, and Felix Hernandez.

An Uncommon Ichiro Starquest

A Rare Vernon Wells Starquest

McCain vs. Clinton Presidential Predictors

Yankee Stadium Legacy - Tommy John

Yankee Stadium Legacy - Dave Winfield

UD Jersey card of Jered Weaver

Talk about getting your money's worth!

I was going through an 800 count box of cards the other day and found a couple of cards that I'd forgotten about. These are 2003 Topps Gallery Currency Collection cards which feature a player and a coin from that players native country. I think they were probably one per box. Guess that means I bought two boxes. Gallery was one of my favorite brands. I always thought these cards were pretty creative.

Francisco Rodriguez - Venezuelan 25 Centimo

Ichiro - Japanese Yen