2014 COMC purchases: baseball fall classics

On a day where Michigan Football is celebrating the program's best news, probably, since Jabrill Peppers signed his Letter of Intent, with a buyout of athletic dipshit Dave Brandon (hey, maybe we won't suck anymore AND the students/fans won't be pissed!), I'm showing off more pickups from COMC that center on...baseball.  Well that's just what I felt like doing today, so that's what I'm gonna do.  Plus, as the title hints at, it's time to celebrate the 2014 season with the conclusion of the World Series, even if many of us are sad to be seeing it end.

Anyway, here's eight new baseball PC cards!:

Steve Boros 1984 Topps Tiffany

Up first thanks to the magic of sorting alphabetically by last name is the card I'm actually the most excited about today.  This '84 Tiffany of Boros completes yet another player collection for me!  That's 16 up and 16 down for the former Tiger/Cub/Red player and A's/Padres manager.  It's kind of funny to me that the final two cards of his I needed were 80s Tiffany parallels, not any of his vintage stuff that spanned '58-'65.  Check out that album for the full run or have another gander at the checklist here.  Up next, I suppose, will be a less-than-half-assed attempted at his three 1/1s or his Topps buybacks.  By the way, he's my seventh completed PC.

Jake Fox 2010 Upper Deck Gold (#02/99)

In many ways this 2010 UD Jake Fox parallel is the next most exciting addition for me because I have so few cards of his to chase at this point.  After I added a bit more credit trying to score some trade pieces, I had enough left to take a stab at this card whose price had previously kept me away.  I was able to make a solid offer and get it accepted, which I'm thrilled about because as with most of Fox's non-base cards, I don't think I'd ever seen more than maybe one other available anywhere!  Now that I'm at 17/19 of his run I don't expect to find the other two (#d /25 and /15) anytime soon, but maybe someday I'll get to 100$! 

Charlie Gehringer 2004 Sweet Spot Classic Patch 300 manupatch (#216/300)

And Charlie is on the board!  This is the first hit of the Mechanical Man to appear in my Michigan Baseball PC.  Sure it's just a manupatch, but it's still a fun start--Sweet Spot resulted in some very cool patches featuring logos and other designs.  Best of all, I didn't have to throw down very much credit to nab one of the nicer cards in my Gehringer collection.  And of course it's always fun to add to the Tiger/Wolverine collection.  I do hope to add a "real" hit before the end of the year, though, ideally something along the lines of a cut signature.

Charlie Gehringer 2012 Panini Cooperstown Blue Crystal (#292/499)

Speaking of Gehringer, here's another great card I picked up.  I already had his base and Red Crystal versions from 2012 Cooperstown, but now I have what's obviously my favorite of the bunch:  blue!  The parallels look nice enough that I might try to track down the rainbow over time if it doesn't prove too costly.  Meanwhile, Gehringer bumps past the 20-card mark to a new total of 21.

Barry Larkin 1997 Studio Hard Hats (#3817/5000)

Right after Gehringer we have another HOFer, and a much more recent one in Larkin.  This acetate insert is one great example of how much we're missing the gold old days of Donruss and some of the inserts they came up with.  Hard Hats has kind of been brought back in a couple sports, but they're nothing like the original, which hailed from one of Donruss' finest products:  Studio.  Numbered to "just" 5000 copies, this is easily one of my favorite inserts of Larkin in his collection.

Barry Larkin 2010 Topps Commemorative Patch manupatch

I have one more Larkin to show off, and like his HOF peer Gehringer, it's a manurelic, my third such card of the SS legend (2011 Reds logo, 2012 World Series pin), two of which honor Cincy's most recent championship back when I was just seven.  Not bad for just a few bucks.  As always I bow down to the amazing collection of Chris at Nachos Grande (he posted a new one today!), but for my part I'm happy with the 224 Larkins I now own.

J.J. Putz 2014 Topps Red Hot Foil

Putz, who hasn't been the D-Backs' full-time closer since 2012, got into 18 games this year and wasn't terrible effective before being released back in June.  That didn't stop Topps from including him in Series II this year, though, so I'm glad to get to chase more of his cards while I wait to see if he makes it back to a Major League club next year.  Oddly enough this is my first 2014 Topps issue of Putz, and I grabbed it because the price was right.  I may go after the base and cheaper parallels elsewhere, maybe with Justcommons, but I'm happy to take my time tracking down the other 17 cards in the flagship/Mini rainbow.  This is my 180th card out of J.J.'s current total of 326, so as usual I still have a long way to go! 

Bobby Scales 2009 Topps Chrome Blue Refractor (#040/199)

Last but not least on this evening of shiny pickups is a beautiful Blue Refractor (a.k.a. Best Refractor) of former Cub Bobby Scales.  Like Fox (also a former Cub!), he doesn't have a ton of cards for me to chase so it's not terribly often that I find a new one.  In this case, the card above had been available on COMC for a very long time, but always at a price that made no sense.  Then patience proved to be a virtue when a different seller was asking for less than $1 for his copy.  Take THAT, other guy.  Also, hooray again for Blue Refractors.  This is my 21st of his 31 cards, with more work to be done on this set's rainbow, among others.

All in all, not a bad day for the baseball PCs, not to mention Michigan's athletic department!  Stay tuned for a final post covering the football stuff, maybe this weekend.

2013 COMC pickups #23: celebrating the Notre Dame win with football...and baseball

Surprisingly I didn't pick up very many PC cards for myself on COMC last month, mostly because I needed to devote a decent amount of money towards cards for pending trades (which worked out great!).  Well, that and I'm starting to get to a point on the site where either there's less stuff that I need or the prices don't make sense right now.  Still, I did manage to score six cards total for my football and baseball PCs:

Chris Perry 2004 Playoff Prime Signatures auto manupatch RC (#80/99)

I threw this one on my watch list not too long ago when I did quick searches for a bunch of my football PC guys.  A perfect example of something from the manu-everything era, I thought it was a fun card to have for my Perry PC.  I don't really care about relics that much at this point, so it's not like I mind that the swatch thing is manufactured.  What's cool is that what's used makes for a more interesting signature area than the sticker that would have otherwise been used for this non-hard-signed card.  Add to that the fact that Perry was one of Michigan's greatest RBs and you've got a winner, especially for the few bucks I paid to snag it.  This becomes Perry's 31st hit (and football's 746th overall) and he remains 10th in his sport's collection.

Bobby Korecky 2009 Upper Deck Inkredible auto

Yeah, that was my only football card.  Weird, right?  Anyway, up next is this Inkredible (get it?  GET IT?)  auto of a player I recently decided to PC, Bobby Korecky.  As a guy who's only appeared in 22 Major League games (with a 2-0 record, perfection baby!), he never got a lot of hobby love, which makes plenty of sense other than the fact that lots of scrubs get tons of cards for whatever reason.  Bobby did make the most of it, though, as six of his seven issues are autographed, which is just crazy.  I now have four of those seven in his PC, and three of them are of the signature variety, so I just have three cards to go!

Rick Leach 1989 Bowman Tiffany

Leach is a guy whose PC has grown by leaps and bounds recently, as I detailed in this post.  This very polished junk wax issue is actually my 54th of Leach's 60 cards, and better yet, I have more on the way!  '89 was Rick's lone campaign with Texas, and he hit for a sorta ok .272/.358/.351 slash to go with a homer and 23 RBI in 110 games as a DH/1B/OF for the Rangers.  I now need just one 1989 card, also a Tiffany, this time from Topps Traded.

Clayton Richard 2010 Topps Black (#29/59)

Clayton Richard 2012 Panini Prizm auto

I continue my slow march to 100 in Clayton's PC with my 85th and 86th cards of him.  Considering what Topps' Black parallels generally go for, I nabbed Richard's 2010 version for a below-average price.  Similarly, sellers were asking not-quite-reasonable prices for his Prizm auto, but on COMC where offering is often easier, I was able to come in a bit under eBay prices to nab my third auto and seventh hit overall of the Padres hurler.  The two give me a new PC total of 86/131, and I wouldn't be shocked if I was near the century mark by the end of the year.  By the way, I can understand why people are down on Panini's sets like Prizm, not so much for the lack of license and logos as the meh-to-blah design, but it's still a nice way to grab cheap signatures of guys that don't always make it onto hits anymore.

Bobby Scales 2009 Bowman Sterling Gold Refractor (#14/50)

As with Korecky, Scales is another guy I've mentioned that doesn't have a lot of cardboard, but given his brief MLB career that's fine, plus it makes him a bit easier to collect!  And despite his lack of hits, he does do a good job of making up for it in color thanks to rainbows in 2009 Bowman Chrome and Topps Chrome and several parallels in Bowman Sterling, from whence this purdy Gold Refractor hails.  I'd seen a few of them around, on the 'Bay among other places, but with COMC I got this for less than half the going rate, which always makes me a happy collector.  For some reason, gold and Refractors just go together like peanut butter and jelly.  So this card is very welcome to Bobby's PC as the 20th card so far out of his run of 31!

Ok, that's it for this brief COMC pickup post this time, but who knows, maybe I'll be back with more next month.  For THIS month I've had a nice steady stream of eBay pickups with a few other things mixed in, and those posts will combine with some other baseball PC showoff posts comprised of cards from my completed sets that I've been tirelessly scanning for your viewing pleasure.

2013 SportLots pickups #5: Zach, Clayton, and Bobby

Today's is the penultimate post of this series covering my SportLots Michigan PC pickups from my last few purchases.  Here's eight new cards on this beautiful Ann Arbor Sunday evening:

Zach Putnam 2010 Upper Deck World of Sports

A Zach Putnam card in his Michigan Baseball uni is awesome enough, but this one even clearly shows him pitching at Michigan's Ray Fisher Stadium, so as far as that goes it's over 9000.  I actually already had the autographed version, but it took me a while to find a seller whose price for the base version I could stand.  Welcome to the PC, Putnam #39/52, good for 75% exactly!

Clayton Richard 2008 Bowman Draft Prospects Gold

Clayton Richard 2013 Topps Emerald

Clayton Richard 2013 Topps Gold (#0193/2013)

Clayton Richard 2013 Topps Stickers

Clayton Richard 2013 Topps Target Red Border

Clayton Richard 2013 Topps Wal Mart Blue Border

As with previously-featured J.J. Putz, I had a good amount of luck finding new stuff of fellow pitcher Clayton Richard.  The Bowman Gold is the usually crappy Bowman throw-in, enough said.  Meanwhile, the sticker pairs up with Putz's and should mean I'm done with those for 2013.  But the real highlight here is the quartet of 2013 Topps parallels.  Well, sort of--I mean, you all know my feelings on the retail exclusives, but the Emeralds look great (just not nearly as beautiful as the Opening Day Blues), and the Gold is a familiar standby that I wouldn't want to be without.  Today's haul brings Richard's IHAS total to 84/131, with a couple more from COMC you'll be seeing soon.

Bobby Scales 2010 Upper Deck Gold (#18/99)

If you've ever had to chase any of these down, you probably already know that prices for these can be all over the map, though mostly they tend to stray from the reality I think most of us inhabit.  Not so with this one, which I nabbed for $2.50, which had me wondering if it was actually the version I thought it was!  As I already own the base version, that closes the (two-card) book on Scales' 2010 issues, and gives me a new IHAS total of 19/31, with a 20th arriving shortly from COMC.  And since I'm not insane like Greg Z., I won't be trying to acquire all 99 copies of this one....

All right, just eight cards left from SportLots, then you get to see a small handful of COMC scores!

2013 eBay purchases #37-42 and Blowout purchase #4: a very productive June!

Thanks to laziness, business and sickiness, I haven't posted in a while, so consider this a catch-up.  Because I have a nice amount of stuff to cover, mainly from COMC and SportLots, I thought I'd just round up the rest of my eBay (plus one Blowout) purchases from the last month or so.

But first, since I went by it due to the UM Athletic Department's garage sale (which wasn't all that great this year) on Friday, here's a shot of Ray Fisher stadium, home of Michigan Baseball.  Specifically I had a nice shot of the team's retired numbers on the left-centerfield wall:

You might recognize the names of players two through four, especially since I collect them!

Ok, so back to business.  I had a fairly productive June and July, as my computer desk piled with cards to scan would attest.  Today I have for you the fruits of seven purchases--six from eBay and one from Blowout.  Here they are:

Mike Komisarek 2012-13 Panini Rookie Anthology Prizm auto

This card and the next one came as a package deal for $5 delivered on the Blowout forums.  I had scanned several RA breaks with special interest due to the appearance of the next player in this set, and when a guy pulled that player AND this Komisarek auto, I knew I had to grab both.  Surprisingly this is actually my first auto of him, and I only have one other hit of this hockey Mike, a dual jersey.  Prizm's a pretty cool looking set, especially with a Refractor-kinda thing going on.  That makes this card less of a throw-in, and more of one half of a win-win!

Shawn Hunwick 2012-13 Panini Rookie Anthology Elite Rookies (#001/999)

Shawn Hunwick 2012-13 Panini Rookie Anthology Prizm Father's Day Pulsar

Shawn Hunwick 2012-13 Panini Rookie Anthology Rookie Treasures Level 2 dual jersey auto (#043/699)

I might've said a bit about Hunwick around here, but just in case--he was Michigan's former walk-on who David Ecksteined his way to a storied hockey career that included a narrow OT loss in the NCAA final a couple years ago.  He then joined Columbus as a free agent, bringing along his awesome UM mask and pads, one or both of which are featured on all of his cards I've seen.  I grabbed the dual jersey/auto first in a small last-minute bidding war (but still a reasonable price) and from there knew I wanted to pursue his roughly 50-card PC.  How can you pass up seeing college pads in the pros?!

The Elite card was part two of the Komisarek purchase, and that got me a bit of momentum to add more.  Soon after, I found Shawn's Prizm Father's Day insert, which I believe is called a Pulsar, though it's not numbered and difficult to tell how those work; I haven't seen them listed on Beckett's checklists yet.  Still, like Topps' Silver Slate cards I wanted to make sure I didn't miss out.

So Hunwick becomes my first hockey supercollection.  You can find his Picasa album here, and his Google Drive checklist here, and of course those can also be found on my Player Collections page.  I'm excited to pile up more of his stuff, so if you see it, please let me know!

All right, now onto baseball:

Bobby Scales 2009 Bowman Chrome Orange Refractor (#21/25)

My 18th Scales card puts me just the Red Refractor (/5) short of his seven-card rainbow in this set.  I won this on eBay recently for the opening bid and paid $3.49 delivered for my rarest Scales card to-date.  I'm happy to see the orange came out nicely on the scan, and I can't wait to show off a purdy rainbow someday.

Jim Abbott 2012 Topps Archives Fan Favorites auto

This is my fifth Abbott hit, all of which are autographs.  While I don't love everything Topps does, I do enjoy the Retired Signature/Archives/Fan Favorites autos, so I did my best to grab a copy of this one, which reprints his 1992 Topps card.  I'm starting to amass a decent collection of his and would be happy to continue adding to it soon.

Clayton Richard 2011 Topps Printing Plates Cyan (1/1)

Clayton Richard 2011 Topps Printing Plates Magenta (1/1)

Clayton Richard 2011 Topps Printing Plates Yellow (1/1)

Why yes, those ARE three plates from the same set all at once.  An eBay seller had listed these for months and months at unappealing BIN prices.  When he finally gave in and lowered the price, enabling Best Offer as well, I nabbed these for $30, the price I was willing to pay all along.  It's fun to have another shot at a four-plate set, so of course I'm keeping my eyes out for the Black, but I'm just happy to have my first one-of-one cards of Clayton, who unfortunately had to undergo surgery recently.  These will happily reside in Clayton's PC, as well as my plate/1-1 collection along with...

Rich Hill 2007 Ultra Printing Plates Cyan (1/1)

Woohoo, another Rich Hill plate!  I now have 11 one-of-ones of my favorite PC player, and this one only set me back $6.50, half of which was shipping.  If I hadn't been so sick earlier this week I was going to post this card to celebrate Rich earning his first win (in relief) since May 26 of last year.  Hey, middle relievers don't get too much press, so I'll take what I can get.

This is my 89th Hill hit and 204th PC card overall, not to mention my 25th plate/1-1 thanks to the Richard trio above.  I had never seen plates from this set until now, so I don't know if/when I'll ever see the others, but I'm cool with whatever I find since 1/1s are just gravy for the collection as far as I'm concerned.

Not a bad few weeks, eh?  I promise to be back soon with the aforementioned SportLots and COMC scores soon.

2013 COMC pickups #9: tipping the Scales with Bobby

A bit more than a month ago I showed off the first chunk of COMC pickups of a new PC player:  Bobby Scales.  Today I'm back with the last eight Scales cards I nabbed from my three packages so far this year:

Bobby Scales 2009 Bowman Sterling RC

Bobby Scales 2009 Bowman Sterling Refractor (#018/199)

Sterling had kind of a cool look four years ago.  I still think the set is overkill what with Topps' many other chrome-ized offerings, but if you take it for what it is, it looks kinda nice.  And for once the "Rookie Card" logo is actually accurate!  I think most of us would agree, though, that the real winner here, is the Refractor.  It was a bit hard to scan but you can still tell the difference.  And of course I like the fact that it's numbered, which sets it apart nicely from the other versions.  Speaking of those, I'll need to pick up the Gold (/50) and Black (/25) Refractors at some point.

Bobby Scales 2009 Topps 206 Mini Old Mill

I showed off four Topps 206 cards last time, including a pair of minis, but I picked up this Old Mill version more recently.  Here's a Wikipedia article that talks a bit about the history of the T206 set (Jefferson Burdick would approve!), including the many brands that produced cards for the set, some of which Topps honored with their own minis.  And while I'm mentioning those, I now need just the Cycle (/99) Mini to complete Bobby's run from that set.

Bobby Scales 2009 Topps Chrome RC

Bobby Scales 2009 Topps Chrome Refractor

2009's Topps set ended up looking pretty in Chrome too (and once again the "Rookie Card" logo is apt).  So far I've only managed to pick up this pair of Scales cards, meaning I still need the X-Fractor, plus the Blue, Gold, and Red Refractors, but when I do that'll make for a nice looking rainbow!

Bobby Scales 2009 Topps Heritage RC

The '09 Heritage set produced some spiffy looking RCs thanks to the throwback to the 1960 Topps design. As with several other cards in this group, the back of this one lauds Scales' perseverance (he finally made his debut at age 31) and notes his "other" job as a substitute teacher.  Now THAT's a Michigan Man!

Bobby Scales 2009 Topps Ticket to Stardom Perforated

This is where we get into overkill territory with Topps.  The ticket stub design looks kind of cool, including this Perforated version, but it's just one of many sets and doesn't do enough to distinguish itself as a product that's actually worth collecting.  By the way, though the scan doesn't do a good job of showing it, this one's perforated on the bottom AND the top.

Bobby Scales 2010 Upper Deck

All but two of Scales' cards hail from 2009; the exceptions are this one, plus its Gold parallel (/99), which I still need to find.  As usual, the base card features a pleasant, colorful photo with a (mostly) borderless design.  The second tiny black-and-white photo on the bottom is replicated on the back, but in color.  The main downside to this card is the back (which I didn't scan), which crams a blurb about the player into an area about 1/5 of the area of the horizontal layout, then leaves a TON of white, dead space due to Bobby's lack of stats.  Oh well, they can't all be perfect.

Those of you counting at home can now credit Bobby with 17 IHAS cards, which is significant since he flies past the 50% mark (out of 31 non-1/1s).  Of the remaining 14, all but one (a relatively rare Heritage Ad Panel) are numbered, but only one is numbered as low as five, so I'm in relatively good shape.  If you happen to have anything new for me, though, please let me know!

I'll be back tomorrow with another surprising and awesome eBay pickup.  In the meantime, don't forget to

Right, Spankee?

2013 COMC pickups #4: new PC member Bobby Scales balances things out

Today's post introduces another new member into my Michigan Baseball supercollection PC:  Bobby Scales.  Scales is a 2B from Southfield, MI, who played for Michigan in the late 90s, then was drafted by the Padres in the 14th round back in 1999.  He bounced around with a few teams before sticking with the Cubs and playing a total of 61 Major League games between 2009 and 2010.  Scales then played a few seasons in Japan before starting a new baseball career as the Angels' director of player development.

Bobby may not have lasted in the Majors for very long, but he still managed to make it into seven different sets from 2009-2010, giving him a grand total of 31 different issues (plus 29 1/1s).  His awesome name and relatively attainable collection make him an ideal new member of my Michigan player collections.  Feel free to keep up with my progress on the checklist here, as well as his Picasa album here.

I managed to grab a total of 16 of Scales' 31 cards, so I'm already halfway there!  Today you'll see the first nine cards, five of which hail from 2009 Bowman Chrome and four from 2009 Topps 206:

Bobby Scales 2009 Bowman Chrome Blue Refractor (#096/150)

Bobby Scales 2009 Bowman Chrome Gold Refractor (#42/50)

Bobby Scales 2009 Bowman Chrome RC

Bobby Scales 2009 Bowman Chrome Refractor

Bobby Scales 2009 Bowman Chrome X-Fractor (#063/250)

Bobby Scales 2009 Topps 206 RC

Bobby Scales 2009 Topps 206 Bronze

Bobby Scales 2009 Topps 206 Mini Piedmont

Bobby Scales 2009 Topps 206 Mini Polar Bear

Those of you who know me probably won't be too surprised that I very much favor the Bowman Chromes over the 206s.  I just don't go for all the derivative throwback sets Topps craps out year after year and would be thrilled if they could limit it to Heritage and Archives, really.  Anyway, as usual, the Chrome Refractors look fantastic, especially the Blue!  From that set I'm short just the Red and Orange Refractors, though due to their scarcity, "just" is pushing it a bit.  On the 206 side I'm down to just a couple Minis, neither of which looks extremely scarce, which is great.

Stay tuned for a future post where I show off the other seven Scales cards I grabbed.  In the meantime, if you're ever flipping through your unwanted cards and manage to dig up anything of him, please consider sending it my way!