2014 eBay purchase #10 and 11: showing off my O ('Neill) face

Continuing on with my eBay pickups from (mostly) April, today I have a pair of cards of 2013 Yankees third-rounder Michael O'Neill.  You may recall that I introduced him as a member of my baseball PCs a few weeks ago.  That post included a trio of cards, including a pair of autographs.  Today I have two more of those to show off:

Michael O'Neill 2013 Bowman Sterling Prospect Autographs Gold Refractor auto (#05/50)

For a little more than $6.50 delivered I landed this Gold Refractor parallel of Mike's Bowman Sterling auto from the other post.  The price wasn't bad at all considering it's numbered to 50, and while I wasn't surprised at the overall lack of bidding competitors, I was pleasantly surprised that I paid less than some of the more common versions are drawing.  The gold Refractoryness looks great, but it's upstaged by O'Neill's excellent signature, and I'm really going to enjoy piling up more of them as I pursue his collection.

Michael O'Neill 2013 Elite Extra Edition auto (#064/349)

Nothing against the pretty good Bowman Sterling set above, but I've admired Panini's EEE sets for years.  While I haven't chased the sets since 2010--the last time Wolverines made an appearance--I've generally liked the looks of them, and that continues to be the case this year thanks to this "base" auto design.  By the way, although I didn't see enough to label this a Michigan uniform card, O'Neill did wear #10 in Ann Arbor; the lack of any kind of logo doesn't help, though.  Anyway, I look forward to adding all of the variations of this card as I work on his collection.  The fact that this one only cost me $3.75 is encouraging!

Michael headed to the Staten Island Yankees, New York's Low-A team, out of the draft, and performed reasonably well for a 21-year-old, but has shown some progress this season after moving up to the Sally League's Charleston RiverDogs, the Bombers' A-ball squad.  He's already eclipsed most of last year's production in fewer than half his games, and while the speed was there before, he's improved his base-stealing skills, getting caught just twice in 14 attempts so far.  Additionally, O'Neill has shown a bit of power, compiling five homers and two triples compared to zero and one last year.  That's actually not a huge surprise since he was the Wolverines' best hitter in 2013.

These two put me up to five of Michael's 40 issues to-date, four of which are autographed.  Stay tuned as I add more of Yankee stalwart Paul's nephew, especially going after that beautiful signature!