Site for betting news

I hit the monthly card show this past Saturday, something I hadn’t done in 3 months (yikes) and it certainly felt like I was overdue.  I don’t know if it’s good or bad when your wife actually reminds you that the show is approaching.While I spent just over 2 weeks worth of my card budget (don’t worry, I’m still playing catch up), the haul wasn’t quite as big quantity wise.   Quality wise?  Well I’ll leave you to be the judge.I’ve been in a hockey buying mood for the past few weeks, and I was able to pick up a few more additions to my hockey card collection.Here and there I’ll pick up a card or two from the 83-84 OPC set.   I’ve got about 1/3 of it complete, and this Jari Kurri card for 1/2 book was an easy purchase.There was a dealer there that I hadn’t seen before, and he had boxes of cards at 3/$5.  I bought $20 worth from him, including this Shayne Corson relic from 2002-03 Pacific Adrenaline.  I don’t have a whole lot of Leaf jersey or auto cards in my collection, so this was another easy purchase.In contrast, I do have quite a few Blue Jays relics, and this Carlos Delgado r-class jersey card from 2004 Upper Deck will allow me to add one more card to the Just the Hits page, which I haven’t done in just over 3 months. A couple of more rare Blue Jays cards were also found at the 3/$5 table.  The Jason Frasor is actually my first copper parallel from the 2010 Topps set.  I was surprised to find that out.  The Goins is the 4th yellow parallel that I own from the ’14 set, leaving me with 10 remaining to complete the Jays team set.Maybe when I sit down to go through my entire Jays collection, I’ll find a couple more…Thrilling, yes??  My vintage dealer was in his usual spot, in the back corner of the room (or the front corner depending on which door you come in).  This Billy Pierce card was just one of 13 ’59 Topps cards I picked up.I finally bought the John Blanchard card, which is one of the few rookie stars cards that I needed to finish off that subset.  I think I may have found the best name ever for a baseball player, Vito Valentinetti.  How many people do you know that have the initials VV? Most of these were commons of the 1 and 2 dollar variety, so by the time I carried these 13 cards to the dealer, I had spent $27.  So for another $18, I decided to knock another couple of cards off of the ’64 set.The dealer had a couple of other ’64s on my want list, but they were poorly centered and priced a little too high for their condition. The ’64 list is now down to 18 cards, and with 15 weeks left to go in the year, I’ll have to see if I can find the rest of the cards I need before the calendar turns over to 2017.  You can better believe that there will be a post showing off every card if I manage that feat.In the meantime, I’m just happy enough to be posting on here a little bit more often.  I’ll try to keep it going..thanks for reading, Robert

Powered by WPeMatico

I was determined to knock out the one baseball insert set that I’ve had on the go for a few months now.  I actually purchased the last of these a few weeks ago on the COMC site, but waited until I had a decent enough sized order before pulling the trigger and having them shipped. So let’s look at the last bakers dozen of the 2015 A&G Starting Points set, shall we?It feels like we’ve been hearing about Bryce Harper for a decade, but he’s only been in the majors for just 5 seasons.  I remember Jason Heyward’s name coming up a lot on blogs when I first started blogging back in 2011, so he’s been around awhile.  On the back of Yadier Molina’s card it documents that on the day that Yadi began his MLB career, Julio Franco became the oldest player to ever hit a grand slam at the age of 45!  Final question.  How well do you think Madison Bumgarner will fare in the World Series this year?  Remember, it is an even #’d year…Brandon Belt’s card back notes that the day he started his career, Jeff Mathis became the 3rd major leaguer to hit an opening day HR on his birthday.  Showing up ARod:  John Valentin turned the 10th unassisted triple play in MLB history on the day that Rodriguez started his career.  Josh Reddick started his career on July 31st, and his card mentions players that were traded that day, including Jake Peavy and Scott Rolen. The only player of these five that I was interested in looking at the card back was of course Mike Trout.  Blah…  the one big inning that happened on 7/8/2011 was Boston scoring 8 runs in the first on the Orioles.Now that the Starting Points set is out of the way, let’s look at some hockey!These 3 cards from the 88-89 OPC set drop that want list down to just 2 cards.  Needless to say that those 2 are the most expensive RCs in the set, Brett Hull and Brendan Shanahan.  I will have to do some hunting for those to see if I can get them on the cheap.Finally, I’m going to show off 3 serial #’d cards that I found and absolutely had to have.I don’t know what it is about Mike Liut, but that mask, as plain as it is, is something that I’m drawn to each time I see it.  The common theme it seems for most serial #’d hockey cards these days is that the numerals are on the front.  I bought a couple of different Trilogy cards, which have different standards for how many cards are published, such as the career games played for Liut.  Different…Hideous, ugly, abysmal.  I’ve heard many words to describe the Canucks jerseys in the early 80’s, but personally I loved them.  Many many years ago I had the yellow home jersey, but time (and weight) forced me to give it up.  When I saw this Richard Brodeur card, the memories came flooding back and I had to pick it up.I was always a Lanny McDonald fan, and seeing him win the Cup with the Flames was as good as if the Leafs had won it.  This was another card that was a very easy pickup when I saw it on COMC. I’m going to save the other serial #’d cards for another post, but overall this purchase filled a lot of holes for me, along with knocking down some want lists.  I don’t know how much more vintage I’ll purchase off of COMC, but so far, so good…thanks for reading, Robert

Powered by WPeMatico

Since dipping my toe into the COMC waters a few months ago, I’ve pretty much used the site as a way to find cards for my player collections and more modern set building endeavors. After not spending a cent on cards for several weeks while I was moving, I decided to throw a few dollars into the COMC account and see what happened.For some reason, I decided to try and find some reasonably priced vintage to knock down some long neglected want lists.  I don’t think I fared too badly with this order.Picking up this Dave Concepcion brings the 1973 set build want list down to just 5 cards, one of those being the very high priced Ron Cey RC.  The red on Dave’s helmet and sleeves really stands out when holding the card in hand.  I didn’t think the $3.75 price tag on this card was that bad.These 6 cards combined were cheaper than the Concepcion card.  I didn’t pay more than 44 cents for any of these cards, and I now have 1/3 of the ’68 set in hand.  Not bad for a set that really is an afterthought when I’m at shows or browsing online.For just under $4 combined, these 4 ’59 commons arrived as part of the order.  These were priced much the same as I’ve been paying at shows for commons, so I wasn’t too upset at all.  The ’59 set is coming along nicely, with these 4 cards raising the completion rate to just over 54%.  Still a long way to go and a lot of big names to pick up, but it’s getting there.Finally, the nearly completed ’64 Topps set gets a little love with these 3 cards making their way here.  A little more pricey than the others, these 3 set me back just over $12 total.  Not picking any of these up over the past 2-3 months have made me fall behind in my “one per week” pace.   With about 15 weeks left in 2016, my ’64 want list is down to 20 cards.  I still have to find reasonably priced copies of the AL Bombers and Tops in NL cards along with some other big names such as Whitey Ford and Orlando Cepeda. Now that I have my first vintage purchase from COMC under my belt, I’m happy enough with it that I’ll definitely try again in the future. Tomorrow I’ll show off A&G inserts and some hockey for a little variety.Thanks for reading, Robert

Powered by WPeMatico

Going through the early part of the SNI set I’ve noticed that there are many different sets that appear.  This makes sense because there are a lot of releases from both the Topps and Bowman sets over the years that have print runs of 500 or less.  This leads to a lot of different colors other than the standard gold you’ll see as the numbers climb above 1000 later on.There’s also X-fractors, low numbered rookies that nobody has ever heard of, and so on.  If that kind of variety doesn’t help, the fact that I’ve obtained these cards from several different sources such as purchases or trades with fellow collectors should be spicy enough for you.Enjoy the wondrous variety of colors and sets as page 13 of the SNI set is here for your viewing pleasure.Card #109:  Hector Noesi, 2011 Topps Finest #109/199.  Picked up at a card show in western PA.  New York Yankees  card #3Card #110:  Michael Cuddyer 2012 Bowman Orange #110/250.  Picked up at the 2014 NSCC in Cleveland.  Colorado card #4Card #111:  Fred Lewis, 2010 Topps Gold #111/2010.  Courtesy of Max from the Starting Nine blog.  Toronto card #4Card #112:  Jim Edmonds, 2006 Topps Co-Signers #112/150.   Courtesy of Tim Byrd (sorry Tim, not sure if you have a blog or not).  St. Louis card #9Card #113:  Shairon Martis, 2009 Topps Chrome blue refractor #113/199.  Courtesy of Mark from the Stats on the Back blog.  Washington card #4Card #114:  Myron Leslie, 2007 Bowman blue #114/500.  Courtesy of Eric from the Manupatches & Chrome Scratches blog (retired).  Oakland Card #6Card #115:  Carlos Beltran, 2010 Topps copper #115/399.  Courtesy of Ted from the Crinkly Wrappers blog (retired).  New York Mets card #3Card #116:  Burke Badenhop, 2008 Bowman Chrome refractor #116/199.  Picked up at the 2012 NSCC in Baltimore.  Miami card #4.Card #117:  Preston Wilson, 2005 Topps Finest blue refractor #117/299.  Picked up at the 2012 NSCC in Baltimore.  Colorado card #5Not enough variety?  How about some of the names, Burke Badenhop being the best of the bunch.  Preston Wilson doing a good job on some of the Miami Marlins telecasts here in South Florida. A copper parallel from 2010 Topps?  You don’t see them using copper on their parallels anymore.Not enough still?  OK, I’ll throw in card #4 for the hockey version just to add a little more to this post.Did you know that there have been 56 players with a last name that starts with the letter Z to play in the NHL?  More than I would have imagined.  Zednik had a 13 year NHL career, scoring a total of 200 goals with 4 different clubs.  I pulled this card out of a pack back when the 00-01 BAP Memorabilia set came out.Enjoy the rest of your labor (or labour for my fellow bloggers north of the 49th parallel) day!!Thanks for reading, Robert

Powered by WPeMatico

I hadn’t busted open a pack of cards in a few weeks (at least), and yesterday I got the itch to hit Target and buy something to open.  It was just a matter of what I wanted when I got there.Since I really had no desire to collect anything else that was baseball related from 2016 (A&G may come later, we’ll see), I wanted to grab some hockey cards to rip open.2016-17 MVP started calling my name when I saw it on the shelf.  I bought myself the only blaster that was there, along with one fat pack to get me going.The design hasn’t changed much over the past few years, I don’t mind however because MVP has always been one of my favorite brands.I always enjoy sets that mix in some of the legends in with today’s players.  I enjoy it even more when companies add great players that don’t get a lot of publicity.  Yes, there will always be Gretzky, Lemieux, Sakic, and a lot of the other greats, but there are a lot of solid players that have been somewhat forgotten.  Borje Salming, in my opinion, is one.  I was very excited to see this card come out of one of the packs that I busted, because Borje will always be one of my favorite Leafs players.  He persevered in an era where fighting was king, and the Leafs did nothing but tear the team apart and send it into mediocrity for the better part of the 80’s.  Thank you Upper Deck for adding Borje to this set!The silver signature parallels have always been a weakness of mine (I have a complete set from the 90’s to prove it), and this year is no different.  I do have one complaint about this year’s version, in that they signature is very “weak” and hard to see.Pulling the Connor McDavid #300 silver sig checklist card was a great hit for me, and was one of the highlights of the blaster.They are very difficult to see because of the scan, but these are the NHL territory inserts.   I pulled 2 as you can see, including another McDavid card.  I’m not an Oilers fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m looking forward to seeing what Connor can do this year with a full season under his belt.Again, the foil is difficult to see, but this is a Dylan Larkin leading lights insert.  For those of you unaware, Larkin was elected to last years All Star game as a rookie, and is one of the fastest skaters in the league right now.  45 points and a +11 as a rookie earned him 5th place in the voting for the Calder Trophy, and the Red Wings have high hopes for this speedster.Speaking of high hopes, the Leafs are hoping that William Nylander can blossom into a 30 goal score from the wing over the next few seasons.  It was fun watching William and the other young players play on the big club over the last 6 weeks of the season, and it will be interesting to see who makes the team this year out of training camp.  I was elated to pull this card out of the blaster, and will be hunting for one more to add to my Leafs collection. Finally, my good luck with MVP and serial #’d gold signature cards continues.   I pulled this Joe Pavelski, #70/165 out of the blaster.  This will be added to the serial numbered insanity set and is the first San Jose numbered card that I own. I think that this will be the year that I start getting back into collecting hockey sets again, since there is nothing appealing right now from the modern baseball sets for me.  I’ll be adding some hockey want lists to this blog over the next few weeks, including the ’16-’17 MVP set, which I hope to complete in short order.Thanks for reading, Robert

Powered by WPeMatico