Wait....what's that? That's the Maildays music.....

If you get the reference in the title, you probably have watched wrestling at some point in time from 1988 to now. Ol' JR and his ability to hype up any incoming wrestler into the ring.

The difference between me and him? I am hyping up my 2nd mail day post out of the last 3 posts I have had, but, seriously, the last two times I have hit up the post office, I have had a combined TWENTY bubble mailers/packages waiting for me.

Yeah, I went a little crazy on eBay and COMC, but still, I have been happy with EVERYTHING I have picked up, and that's what it is all about, right?

On to the mail:

Some Hidalgo stuff (including only my 2nd game used card of his):




The game used.



  
Elite gold Status #ed /100


Two cards I bought while drunk tweeting and caught "off guard" by a fellow blogger (i'm sure you guys can figure out who she is):






Two new hobby staples:



Don Mattingly Topps Rookie



   Ken Griffey Jr. Sweet spot auto


My first foray into prospecting since about 2005:

He was a supplemental pick for the Red Sox and has ALREADY signed and I think will be playing short season ball.




The last card of the day, deserves to be bigger than the rest:

2009 Topps Chrome Javier Vazquez Superfractor






Looks even better here, next to one of his Bowman Chrome Cousins:





I have plenty more (by plenty more, I mean 9 more) packages on the way from eBay, plus about 8 things I am currently watching and plan on attempting to win.

Sorry about having two mail day posts so close together, but they were both phenomenal to me, so they deserved the posts.

Small highlights in a rather poor day.....

So, I missed going to the post office Friday, which resulted in me having TEN, yes, TEN, total envelopes/packages waiting for me, all eBay purchases.

The poor part of the day? My wife and son flew back to the states earlier today (about 8 hours ago) and I won't be seeing them in person again until around the end of January/beginning of February. I knew this day would come, but still, it is tough being in what is now a basically empty full house, ya know?

I guess I could post some of the highlights of the mail day (ok, some of these are from last week, but I didn't scan them in until today):

Some pretty awesome Javier Vazquez personal collection stuff:

2007 Topps Series 1 Yellow Printing Plate

2001 Donruss Class of 2001 Diamond Aces 3 Color Logo Patch #ed 3/3

2002 Donruss Best of Fan Club League Leaders Auto #ed 85/300

2004 Playball "Green" Parallel #ed 07/15

2009 Bowman Chrome Red Refractor #ed 1/5


A few Richard Hidalgo things (thanks to some good deals from Syndicate Sports Cards on eBay and COMC):

2004 Sweet Spot Sweet Gloves Auto #ed 10/15

1996 Fleer Ultra Golden Prospect Gold Medallion - This looks really awesome in person, as it is a see-through "gold". Pretty sweet.

2003 Donruss ReCollection Collection Auto "2001 Donruss" #ed 2/9

2003 Playoff Absolute Memorabilia Auto Plaque #ed 66/135

1998 Pacific Revolution Rookies & Hardball Heroes "Gold" #ed 14/50

2004 Leaf Limited Threads "Russell Laundry Patch" 1/1

1997 Bowman's Best Mirror Image "Atomic Refractor", "Refractor" and Inverted


I also picked up an 82 Topps Ripken RC, a 2001 Topps Ichiro RC and a few Bryce Brentz USA autos.

A great mail day to kind of sweep away the clouds from a rather dreary day (quite true also, as it did/is raining as well).

I did get to watch some soccer though (saw the Japan upset and part of the Italy tie). Now I am just burning time until I have to go up to work and issue out M4's to all the soldiers headed out to Afghanistan soon (I will be there in a few weeks as well).

Newest Autos to the PC Collection

Well, over the past few months I have been able to pick up auto cards of my two main PC guys (Richard Hidalgo & Javier Vazquez) at pretty considerable amounts, so I felt like showing them off.

Javier Vazquez

First up, I will start with one of the newer auto sets, from 2010 Chicle.

 This is an Artist's Autograph, numbered 6/10. I really like two things about the Chicle set: on card autos and, well, I really like the art work on his cards.

Next up is a hard to find Leaf Certified Material Mirror Gold auto.

 Now, onto the three recent Richard Hidalgo auto pick ups, starting off with something from far south of the border.

 This is a 94-95 Line Up Venezuelan auto, shipped from, well, Venezuela. The seller has two other autos up for sale, but for more than I paid for this one, so I am holding back on buying them. Please note, this isn't a bad scan, just what is on the "top loader", which seems to just be a crazy piece of plastic all around the card.

 2003 Donruss Team Heroes auto, 74/100. I've seen a few here and there, but usually for BINs much higher than I would be willing to hit on, even for a PC card. I hate sticker autos, but it doesn't look TERRIBLE on this card, in my opinion.

 1997 Scoreboard Visions Signings auto. These are generally easy to find, but some of the bigger names in the Scoreboard sets have a tendency to be faked, so a lot of people ignore this set. A great early, on card auto of Hidalgo.

Well, those are all the auto'ed cards I have gotten in recently. I have a few more big mailday packages coming in soon, including 2 from Check Out My Cards, one from sportlots (just a large handful of base, but more to knock off of the ol' checklist) and a decent sized lot from Syndicate Sports Cards, in an off eBay deal, where they were willing to take an offer of less than the total combined price for all of the cards. And, yes, the 3 larger lots include more autos.

Thanks to the sell of all of my game used and auto cards that were not PC, I have been able to work very diligently at my 2010 Collecting goals and should be able to knock out a lot by the end of the year.

Thanks for looking guys.

Sweet Spot Autos

And the way they fade.

This card has been in my collection a few years:

As you can tell, the auto has faded TERRIBLY. Now, I don't mind too much, since I got the card for a solid price and it is 25/25, but I bring this up because I recently won my second Sweet Spot auto glove:

As you can see with this one, more fading, but not as much. One would think that the fading would happen throughout the product, on all types of cards, but it seems the actual baseball autos have held up pretty well:

Now, I could attribute this to the types of pen used. It seems as if a regular, blue pen was used to sign the above card, whereas the two glove cards seem to be signed by what looks like bleeding felt tip pens, hence the thicker lines.

I am no expert on ink life, light exposure and how to keep these autographs from fading over time, but has anyone else experienced this much fading on any surface other than the brown glove Sweet spot autos? From the ones I have seen, I think I can confirm there are no fading problems with the black leather autos.

Also, anyone have any ideas on how to display these cards WITHOUT the fading becoming worse?

Thanks for any ideas guys.

The Unknown One of One

I like to think of myself as someone with some pretty decent knowledge of baseball cards from about the turn of the new century up until now.

Even with this knowledge, though, some things still tend to slip through the cracks. Usually these things are super low numbered parallels or SP'ed autograph cards. More often than not, they are usually 1/1's from sets I paid little attention to.

One of those sets, was 2004 Upper Deck Play Ball. Up until the past few months, all I knew about the set was a) it was produced by Upper Deck and b) they had produced it for two years and not since.

What I have learned since then is that the base "rainbow" consists of the base card and 4 parallels: Blue, "Parallel" numbered to 175, Green numbered to 15 and Purple, a 1/1.

Lucky for me, I had the funds available when the Purple 1/1 of Richard Hidalgo popped up, which made it the first 1/1 in my Hidalgo PC.

Anyone else have any of the parallels of their player or teams? Has any else seen another purple? To date and to the best of my very fragile memory, this is the only Purple 1/1 I have seen from the set. Maybe due to it's lack of popularity, terrible design or overall cheapness, I don't really know.

The Parallel Chronicles

You ever have a day start out terrible, just because you woke up too early?

Then, slowly but surely, as the day gets going and things get moving, it starts to get better?

That was my day today.

Hunter woke me up before 9 and I let mama sleep in. Then, I had a brave battle with the sleep monster, while sitting on the couch, and won, while my son played and watched Sesame Street around me. I then got out of the house, stopped by Burger King for breakfast and then headed to the insurance office to find out what can be done about the rental and the wrecked Jeep.

Good thing #1: Rental will be paid for for a total of 7 days, so no worrying about transportation until next weekend.
Neutral thing #1: Car may be totaled, meaning a new vehicle is probably in my future.

We then proceed to go back home where mama has decided to arise from her slumber. I have already forgotten what was eaten for lunch, but I know it was something pretty good.

Then, it was off to the post office, where I had two packages waiting for me.

The first package had these two cards in it:

I needed both of these and they ended up in one little auction. How nice.

The second package contained the last and final piece to this little autograph rainbow (it's the blue one, the Century Marks):

Sexy, I know. I got all 4 of those for less than what Burbank Sportscards wants for the Century Marks and Preview combined. Including shipping.

Believe me when I say that this REALLY put a smile on my face.

And, hey, look at that, I got some scanning done today as well ;)

Printing Plates: Do you collect them?

I recently bough a 15 year old printing plate for my personal collection, bringing the total number of plates I own to 5:

Probably one of the more rare printing plates I will ever own, as the Scoreboard company wasn't around for too long and most people don't attempt to sell what they have of lesser known players.

But it brings me to the question at hand: to all of your team and player collectors out there, do you collect printing plates? If you collect like I do, the answer is obviously yes. I collect any and all cards of the players I collect, plus I collect inserts, base and one auto per in my team collection. That brings us to, do you even consider a printing plate a card? Obviously, it is card shaped, since it was used to produce the card, but not all printing plates have always been available to the public.

Do you count it like all other 1/1's and add it to the ever growing list of tough to find cards? Or is it more of an anomaly and you only pick them up if they are a good price?

Why am I asking so many questions, like I am 4 years old?

Completing a rainbow.....

You know, it really feels great when you finally complete something.

Well, last night, I felt great, because I completed something: the 1998 Donruss Signature Series Richard Hidalgo autograph rainbow.

I had the red (base), green (millenium) and yellow (preview). The Blue "Century Marks" autograph has been setting in Burbanks store for well over a year now, but i couldn't imagine spending $40+ delivered for the auto, especially when I got all three of the others COMBINED for less than $25 shipped.

Anyways, the blue popped up this week and ended yesterday. so, for $27.95 delivered, I present to you the final piece in my second ever rainbow, the 1998 Donruss Signature Blue "Century Marks" Richard Hidalgo autographed card:

(photo taken from eBay)

To say I was excited to win this is an understatement. After winning the LCM Gold autograph of Javier Vazquez earlier in the week and now this, it has been quite a week for my player collections.

Anyone else complete a rainbow? What player and what set?

When work gets in the way of fun......

Who would have thought it would be so tough to find just a little bit of time to knock out a well thought out, thought provoking, interesting, knowledgeable post, while also being a part of the Army?

One person I know: This Guy.

I eventually knew it was going to get crazy around the Balk Four Headquarters and it did. For the last two to three weeks, work has been starting early and ending late. I rarely have internet time and have even less time to blog.....which sucks.

Today, I just caught a break. Wet, cold weather coupled with going to a German firing range (and earning an award, but more on that later) meant a short day at work today, which means I have time to blog :) (that, plus the wife and boy are talking to Grammy and the wife is watching America's Next Top Model).

Anyways, since my lat post about the volcanic activity and the disruption in my life it has caused, the one card pictured, hasn't arrived (I mean, seriously, two plus weeks eBay seller, really? I bought something LAST week and received it yesterday, get it together). What has arrived, though, was many, MANY packages, including a few 1/1's.

Without further ado (well, some ado after the photos) my mailweeks, in pictures:

 Ok, obviously that is only 7 pictures, probably a lot less then you expected. Well, that's less than I expected too. I haven't had a chance to scan anything yet, so eBay pictures had to do and many of my ended auctions had the pictures already pulled. My bad.

I also won a 52 card lot of Jeff Bagwell, had a 200 card order from Sportlots and FINALLY received my Nike+ Running Device, so I can finally track my workouts better.

On a sad note, I am slowly but surely, selling off everything in my Hunter Pence collection besides the Blue Refractor auto and the base and inserts. All of the autos have been sold and all but like 3 game used are gone as well. It has become terribly tough to collect four players and a team, so I decided to focus on the team and three other players. It was a tough decision to make and even tougher to list the auctions (especially since almost all sold for way too little), but it was a decision that had to be made.

On the positive side: My family and I headed down to a resort in the Alps of Germany last weekend for a marriage retreat, which is really a "free trip to the alps with three hours of suggestions on how to further enrich your marriage". This is the second time we have gone and it was more expensive this time than last. Why, you ask? Well, my 25th birthday was last weekend, so we went out for drinks that weekend. For my wife, that was the first time in THREE years she has been able to go out and drink over night, without being A) Pregnant or B) home by 11. I went out the night before (Friday) with a couple of buddies and had a great time as well. Got pretty drunk (hey, it's been awhile and I am still young), had a German band sing Happy Birthday to me in English and woke up without a hang over. As for Saturday, my wife and I went out with the supply sergeant of my troop and his wife and hit up a few Irish pubs. We started out the night with Black Irish Russians and ended the night drinking Irish Whiskey (Paddy's Irish Whiskey to be correct, can't find it in the states, but you can get a few companies in England to mail it to you.....it's worth the extra money, believe it).

Other than that, we have been packing for deployment, going to ranges (all kinds of cool shit, M4, M249 SAW, MK19, M2 .50 Cal Machine Gun, a new gun the M320) and today I went to a German post (our sister company in Germany) and had the chance to fire three of their weapons in the schutesenschneres and earn a Bronze badge, which is awesome. What makes it better is, in the two plus years I have been in Germany, my troop has only sent FOURTEEN people, so I was extremely happy to have been chosen to go.

Ok, wow, that was a TON of words. Anyways, i'm hoping to be back in the blogging game (and active on Twitter, because I have block leave soon, plus things are finally starting to slowdown at work, so I should have plenty of more time to get back into the swing.

Thanks for reading guys, sorry for so many words.

When a Volcano explodes.....

Now, I understand hundreds of thousands of people were/are stranded and over a billion dollars was lost in the air line and produce industry, but this fucking volcano is costing me my damn mail days.

I'm not just talking cards, either. DVD's, books, my Nike+ running tracker...a whole boat load of stuff.

But the reason you are all here: baseball cards.

I have around TWENTY auctions I won before the volcanic auction that are lost somewhere between New Jersey, New York and the German side of the Atlantic.

What does this create? One pissed off blogger. Now, none of these cards are super rare or crazy expensive (I hardly collect anything expensive anyways), but they are cards I wanted to add to my collection. It's tough going an entire week with NOTHING in my mailbox.

Hell, i'd give my left thumb for a bill, spam mail, fuck, someone ELSE's mail.

Is that really asking too much? I mean, Air France for god's sake got a plane up in the air, through the smoke and onto the other side -- with no damage. So why can't British Airways, American Airlines or someone get a damn bird in the sky and give me my damn mail?

Alright, ok, i've got that out of my system.

Maybe I should end this on a good note, no? I won this last night, my third 1/1 in the past two months of Hidalgo:

A return from the vast beyond.....

Ok, maybe it wasn't "the vast beyond", but it definitely has been quite the break between posts. I'm not gonna lie, there have been various reasons for my absence (I was without internet for three weeks during a training exercise in the field, lack of passion for writing, not much to talk about during Spring Training and, well, I just wasn't really feeling the hobby for awhile there), but I plan on coming back to my usual, irregular postings about all things baseball.

I have had quite a few mail days in between the last time I was here and now, so just enjoy the scans:

Javier Vazquez PC

2009 Bowman Chrome Gold Refractor 4/50

22

2009 Bowman Chrome Orange Refractor 20/25

2003 Donruss Elite Aspirations 11/24

2003 Donruss Elite Aspirations 69/77

 

2003 Topps Black /52

2006 UD Special F/X RED 13/50

Richard Hidalgo

1997 Visions Signings Autograph

2004 Honors Credits Gold 11/25

 

1997 Venezuelan Line-Up Autograph

2000 Pacific Premiere Date 4/27

 

1997 Donruss Crusades Red Non-Serial Numbered

Bob Gibson

1994 Nabisco Auto

1967 Topps #210

On top of these great cards for my PC, I also picked up two random autos (99 SI Joe Niekro, 99 UD INKredible Fred Lynn) and received and busted my box of 2010 Topps from FCB. I also received a few packages from bloggers (one loaded with 2008 Topps...i'm talkin' like over 200 I needed for set, mostly series 2, but I need series 2 the most) and one from GSNHOF (containing a ton of Astros cards). Thanks to both of you (sadly, I have forgotten who sent the Topps cards...but I will figure it out).

On the Astros: I was going to stay up late last night and watch the season opener but, well, I just couldn't make it. As predicted, they lost to the Tim Lincecum led Giants, one of many.......many.....MANY losses they will most likely pile up this season. Outside of their core group of players (Pence, Bourn, Oswalt, WayRod, Berkman and Lee), there just isn't much to get excited about with the team (at least until Jason Castro FINALLY gets the call). I will never lose my passion for the team, but I truly hope they take FULL advantage of their early picks and focus on top players, instead of guys they know will sign (I mean, Jio Mier looks great, but he wasn't the best player on the board at that point). Here's to hoping they at least finish higher than the Pirates.

I plan on posting about my fantasy baseball teams in my next post, with the primary focus on my team in the Blogger's League.