100th Post Contest......

.....over at BA Benny's Baseball Card Buffet.

What, you thought it was for this blog?

Well, not yet. I need to formulate a contest first. Look for it in my next post ;)

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.

Favorite player of yore...

Well, my mother-in-law couldn't think of anything to buy me for my birthday, so she just sent birthday cash instead, which, is never a bad idea for a card collector.

So I spent some time diving around eBay, looking for something nice to pick up and settled on an autograph of one of my favorite players of all time (oh, and it has a jersey piece too):

Tony Gwynn

 I received it in the mail yesterday and was terribly pleased with the quick shipping from the seller (not to mention the free shipping). This card of Gwynn will be one of the few non-Hidalgo or Vazquez cards that will be in my PC. And, to make things even better, my mother-in-law happened to be a huge Gwynn fan growing up as well and even did a little card collecting of him when she was younger. Small world, huh?

I know she still doesn't collect cards, but I have a decent amount of Gwynn base cards laying around, so I may go ahead and get those together and give them to her as part of a gift (maybe for like Christmas or something), to help bring back the memories from her youth and the enjoyment she had collecting his cards.

You may be asking yourself, "Now, how come you never mentioned Gwynn being one of your favorites and why did you wait so long to pick up an auto of him?". Well, this isn't the first auto of Gwynn's I have owned (nor is it the best). The previous auto I once had in my possession was foolishly sold with the rest of my earlier collection to purchase random boxes and an XBOX (yeah, I know, gambling and video games, who would have thought, huh?). I had my reasons though: I was having a string of good luck with pulls from boxes and someone had recently stolen my XBOX (the original, not the 360, it was quite some time ago) and some of my games, so I needed entertainment at the apartment (no cable, no internet, so it was kind of the dark ages there).

Why have a waited so long since then? Outside of a few choice cards (a Beltran Super I won for a guy who couldn't afford it, the Hidalgo Red Crusade and the Hidalgo 98 Donruss Signature Series Century auto being the three), I had never spent more than about $15 on any one card. Maybe i'm cheap, maybe i'm selective, I don't know.

The good thing is, it is one more thing knocked off of my 2010 Goals list, meaning I can now aim for slightly more expensive autos (Mike Piazza and Nolan Ryan, as a matter of fact).

Ubaldo F@$%ing Jimenez.....

Gonna try a little something new on the blog here: random daily recaps of games I choose from the day before.

• Ubaldo Jimenez, the Coors Field Wizard, was at it again last night. Though he allowed what is now an uncharacteristic 6 hits, he also struck out 3 and once again allowed no runs, lowering his league leading ERA to 0.88. He also won his league leading 9th game of the season. NL All Star starter and Cy Young candidate anyone?
• In his first start since making it apparent he wanted to be traded, Roy Oswalt had his 10th consecutive quality start since the beginning of the season, continuing his team record. With only 4 hits allowed and 9 strikeouts over 8 shutout innings, he is making a tough case to be traded (and making other teams realize how expensive he is going to cost).
• The always erratic Bronson Arroyo held it together for 7 2/3 innings of shutout ball against the Pirates. He allowed only 5 hits, while lowering his ERA to 4.12. A bright spot for the upstart Reds, they need continued production from their SP to keep themselves at the top of the NL Central.
• New York Mets off-season import Hisanori Takahashi helped the Mets blank the Phillies for the 2nd consecutive night. It was Takahashi's 2nd big league start and the 2nd time he allowed no runs over 6 innings in those starts. Takahashi may have found himself a spot in the Mets rotation with his pitching in these two starts.

• AJ Burnett flashed his inner brilliance, holding the Twins to no runs on 3 hits over 5 innings, with the Yankess relief core handing the ball over to Mariano Rivera in the 9th to close it out (which would be his first of two saves on the night).

This was an all pitcher update because, well,the pitchers were quite fantastic yesterday. With so many great pitching lines, it was tough to really pay attention to any hitting.

The Parallel Set That Started It All

While I was busy doing a random eBay search, just browsing through the auctions, trying to find things to convince myself to purchase, I stumbled upon what is, in my opinion, the greatest insert set ever, up for sale, all in PSA 9's and 10's.

1993 Topps Finest Refractor Set; All PSA 9's and 10's

Now, this may be the ONLY 93 Finest refractor set where all of the cards are graded a PSA 9 or higher, so this is the standard bearer for all of the PSA set collector's out there, for the Finest refractor set.

As I type, the auction is at just under $10,000 and by the time this post hits, will probably exceed $10,000....but maybe not the reserve (why people still use reserves, I will never know).

Anyways, I just thought it was awesome to see this set up for sale and to see so many of them in PSA 10 grades.