2012 Topps Opening Day Inserts - Who Needs 'Em???

I ripped a blaster of 2012 Opening Day and seriously might get another... 10 bucks for 11 packs?

Awesome! And I pulled a blue parallel of Evan Longoria! Ha! My best pull this year!

I am going to try and build this set and will try and get a list together, but I have the Raymond mascot card - thanks Brian! and that was my most wanted insert... I would like the Rays Superstar Celebration card and any other Rays inserts, but I won't be chasing any insert sets, even though the 3D Opening Day Stars are pretty cool, every thing I pulled is up for grabs.
Here is what I got:

BLUE Parallels: #153 Aramis Ramirez and 160 Carlos Ruiz.

MASCOTS: M4 Arizona Diamondbacks unnamed kitty kat, M5 Fred Bird and M25 Junction Jack.

FANTASY SQUAD: FS1 Albert Pujols, FS14 Brian McCann, FS15 Joe Mauer and FS16 David Ortiz.

ELITE SKILLS: ES2 Alex Gordon, ES3 Prince Fielder and ES22 Jacoby Ellsbury.

OPENING DAY STARS: ODS7 Justin Verlander,  ODS14 Hanley Ramirez and ODS17 David Wright.

SUPERSTAR CELEBRATIONS: SC13 David Wright, Mets, SC17 Adam Jones, Orioles (2 copies of this one) and SC18 Brett Lawrie, Blue Jays-TAKEN
If you want ANYTHING posted here, claim it in the comments please, first to comment gets 'em. Then, shoot me an e-mail with your mailing address and if we have never traded before, let me know what you are giving me in return...
Thanks for reading! Hope somebody can use a few of these... I also posted my dupes from 2012 Heritage, find them here.
Oh, before I sign off, congrats to one of my favorite bloggers on hitting the 200 followers and 100,000 hits plateaus... Keep up the great work! Hit up Skate at the Plate and congratulate him yourself.
Go Rays! troll out.

All Things 2012 Heritage

I bought myself a blaster of 2012 Heritage… Probably doesn’t seem like a big deal to most of you, but my budget has been jammed up at nothing for a while now, getting a blaster was pretty exciting… I have been so lucky getting so many cards towards this set without buying any wax myself… Before I ripped my first pack I had 312 out of 500 cards in the set.  

The box promised 72 cards and after ripping the 8 packs inside I was in fact left with 72 new Heritage cards. The problem was that of the 188 cards that I need to complete the set I only pulled 6 cards I needed, the rest were dupes and inserts. Now I didn’t think I was going to scratch 72 cards off my list, but I had really thought I might do better than 6 cards.

I pulled 2 short prints out of the box. At this point I had 5 short prints in my binder, now I have 6 as one of them was a dupe. What are the odds? The SP I pulled that I did need was pretty sweet though, card #495 of Big Game James Shields – Ace of the Tampa Bay Rays staff and owner of a perfect 5-0 record.

Beyond that SP there wasn’t much to be excited about. I bought the box at Wal Mart and I pulled 1 blue parallel (Yadier Molina), I landed 1 chrome card, 2 News Flashbacks, 2 Stick Ons, 1 Baseball Flashback, 1 New Age Performer and 56 base card duplicates including multiple copies of cards #73 Fredi Gonzalez, 160 Mark Buerhle and 187 Shelly Duncan. Not cool Topps!

Anyway, I still had fun ripping a little bit of wax even if the results weren’t ideal. I am still in love with this set and love flipping through the binder and reading the card backs. I despise Topps collation and hate how difficult it is to pull short prints… I mean based on my results with 2 SPS in 8 packs, I would have to open 200 packs to pull 50 short prints. At $3.29 a pack that is $658 to pull 50 SPs and the chances of them being unique are very slim… Basically unless you have a card blog, trading partners in good standing, a lot of money, a lot of luck and a lot of patience, you are screwed if you want to complete this set to 500.

That said, I am not giving up, I want to finish this set and I intend on it. This afternoon I got a bubble mailer at the PO Box from Ryan of the Ryan’s Pitch blog. He had posted that he had 3 SP dupes on his blog and I jumped on them. He sent those 3 along with some Rays cards and a few other base cards from my needs list.

The 3 short prints included card #449 Geraddo Parra, 458 Adron Chambers and card #468 of Nelson Cruz and his 8 postseason homers in 2011.

He also sent a trio of sluggers from the LA Angels. These 3 combine for 12 All Star appearances, a slew of Silver Sluggers and a bunch of Gold Gloves. The card in the center celebrates Albert Pujols blasting 3 homers in 1 game for the Cards in the 2011 postseason. I had a little bit of time on my hands and combined 2012 stats for these 3 Angels. They are batting a cumulative .207 (61  for 294) with 4 homers (all by Wells), 19 RBI and 2 steals. Sad really.

Thanks to all for reading! Please check out my freshly revamped 2012 Topps Heritage page. Aside from the 180 or so cards I need, this page now shows ALL of my dupes, plus all of my inserts and parallels for trade. A huge thank you to Ryan from Ryan’s Pitch for all the Heritage help, he is another blogger on the short list of Troll-endorsed traders. Aside from chasing the standard modern sets, Ryan has taken on the task of chasing 1960 Topps. Wow. Go check him out and check out the Rays tonight, Jeremy Hellickson will be on the hill and they can’t lose at the Trop, so if that holds true he will be 4-0 at the end of the night.

Oh, as an endnote I did get a 90 on my Statistics final exam and got a B as my final grade. Due to schedule change at work I missed 2 weeks of school, so pulling off a B is pretty huge. My GPA dropped to 3.37, but I ain’t worried. Once again, PLEASE check out my well organized haves and haves not 2012 Heritage page...

My next ventures will be posting up the rest of the 2012 Gypsy Queens from the JABO break and I have a blaster of 2012 Opening Day to rip... I wanna chase the base now, but all the inserts will be up for trade, so stay tuned in if you need any...

Go Rays! Troll out.

Rays Win ***yawn***

Not really news, the Tampa Bay Rays are 13-1 at home.

Wow.

David Price struck out 12 and won his 5th game. Damn.

Just 2 more games on this homestand... Hellickson is on the hill manana... The leather nameplate came from Texas many moons ago, from the Skate at the Plate blog. Thanks Brian!

Go Rays! troll out.

Rambling On - Oh Yeah and Another Set is Done!

Life is good in Trollville!

I just got an e-mail from my Statistics professor. I got a 90 on my final exam – I could have done better, but I was worried that I had done a lot worse. I came down with the flu earlier this week and felt horrible during the exam, so I am thrilled that I pulled off an A on an exam that took me three hours to complete…

Other great things: after finishing this semester of school I celebrated by buying a blaster of 2012 Heritage AND a blaster of 2012 Opening Day (I am really liking this set!). I also picked up another binder and a few packs of 9-up Ultra Pro Pages and a few packs of penny sleeves, too. I have also got to spend a little bit of time filling up those new pages and updating my want lists again. Later today I will do posts on either the Heritage or Opening Day. I have a lot of dupes, plus extra inserts and parallels from each series. I will post them as “trade bait” on a first come, first claim basis, so stay tuned!

There are a lot of other reasons for a Troll to smile – my favorite team; the Tampa Bay Rays have the best record in baseball. Our best player, Evan Longoria, is on the disabled list, but the team continues to win, win, and win. Without their top offensive threat in the lineup, they are more reliant on their pitching staff than ever and boy are they delivering!  James Shields is 5-0. Jeremy Hellickson is 3-0 with a 2.51 ERA. The starting 5 is a combined 15-5 with 132 strikeouts against 60 walks in 160 innings. They have one of the best rotations in baseball and their whole staff is homegrown. Freaking awesome! The one free agent acquisition they made for the mound this off season was the signing of Angels cast-off Fernando Rodney.

Rodney (who really needs a nickname) has been ridiculous this season. He leads the league in appearances, saves and games finished. He has a 1-0 record with a 0.73 ERA. He has 12 K’s and just 2 walks (1 intentional) in 12 innings of work over 14 games. He has 9 saves. I don’t expect him to be 50 for 50 this season, but he is holding the fort quite nicely. When I look at the contracts that guys like Heath Bell and Jonathan Papplebon got, it really makes me ill – and Rodney is doing way better than each of them at a fraction of the cost…

I have lost a little focus here… Although I have to work this weekend through and have another 13 days or so before I get a day off, I am making the most of my free time. School is done for now and the wife and I are going to Gainesville, Florida (about 3 hours away) to see one of our favorite bands (Tragedy) this weekend and have a dinner date planned for Thursday…

One last good thing to note is that people keep on sending me awesomely generous packages in the mail and they are totally whittling my want lists down to nothing.

One such awesome and generous blogger is Clark from the Fantastic Catch blog. Clark had sent me a note a few weeks back offering to help me out with my 2011 Topps needs. I had pretty much forgotten about our “conversation” when the mailer appeared today in my box today. In fact even after I tore it open I couldn’t place who the sender was. I had to scour old messages to figure it out. I was glad I did cuz I wanted to give him credit for finishing off 2011Topps for me!

I had mentioned last week that this had been a busy week for getting Topps base from 2009-2012. I am CLOSE on so many series’. Now, for 2011 Topps, I am beyond close. I put (what I thought was) the final card into Series 2 this Saturday. As happens to me far too often, I made a mistake and actually need 4 more cards to finish Series 2 - #s 388, 523, 574 and 653.


Today, card #35 of Shin-Soo Coho completed Series 1 FOR REAL.

I do still need 3 more cards to polish off Updates and Highlights – cards numbered US54 Jerry Sands, US78 David Ortiz and US109 of Jair Jurrjens. I wouldn’t mind getting them, too, and closing the book on this set – all 3 series.

Anyway, for now I am psyched to have the top 2 series done. Clark didn’t stop there, though. He also included some Kimball Champions minis – card #KC55 Stan Musial and KC79 of Barry Larkin.

He also included a cool Diamond Duos card featuring two very good young third basemen who are both on the disabled list…

Clark sent along some random Rays and a couple more Longos for the PC – my favorite card in the package was this gold version of David Price, card #328.

My 2011 list is current and up-to-date. I now have 115 Kimballs out of 150! I am gonna add in a list of some of my insert dupes for trading.

My work schedule is going to remain hectic for a long, long time, but with school done for now I should have a little bit more time to blog and trade and to watch the Rays remain the best in the League.

Thanks again to Clark! Check out his blog, Fantastic Catch. He is officially a Troll-endorsed trader and a solid new blogger, so give him a shot!

Many, many great packages these past few weeks… So much to post. Gonna do my best to stay current, but we will see…

I am on a roll with trading right now, wanna get in on that roll? Drop me a line...

Go Rays! Troll out.

The Tampa Bay Rays!!! On Cardboard Via 2012 Topps Gypsy Queen, Courtesy of Kyle from the JABO Blog!!!

Greetings Trollites!!! Tomorrow I take my final FINAL EXAM. This means my hiatus from blogging will be over soon. Actually, Monday I will be shipping out a bunch of cards, getting caught up with everyone that I owe - I will be buying some more pages for the binder and doing more organizing and keeping my want lists up to date...
Though I haven't been posting, I have been watching the Rays every night. The comeback on Monday night, capped off by Elliot Johnson's walk off single was awesome! Aside from the first inning, Big Game James Shields has looked great tonight. My guy Sean Rodriguez hit a homerun and the score is tied. The Rays are without Evan Longoria for at least 2 weeks, maybe a month or more... They don't really have a back-up third baseman anymore, but they have a ton of second baseman who can play anywhere... Former Tigers 2nd baseman Will Rhynes was called up from AAA to play third base tonight and just turned a double play... Between him, Jeff Keppinger, Elliot Johnson and Sean Rodriguez - I think they can handle things for a little while...

Anyhoo, I participated in a really awesome group break with the King of the Group Break - Kyle from the Juuuust A Bit Outside blog... I think he has done about 20 breaks this year alone and has a lot of happy collectors... I wanted some 2012 Gypsy Queen and for just 9 bucks I got 2 boxes worth of Gypsy Queen Rays shipped to me... I had planned on posting all of them, but I am exhausted and need to study, so I will just quickly post a scan of the 4 minis that I received from the break...

Thanks again Kyle! Juuust a Bit Outside is for real one of the best new blogs out there and a great spot for group breaks. He has the Troll seal of approval!
I have everything scanned up and will post in a few days, gotta get to work, get to bed.... Its the botttom of the sixth inning, the Rays are up 5-4 after Luke Scott just hit a solo homerun... Centerfielder Michael Saunders knocked the ball over the wall with his glove, but it counts as a homer, so I will take it!
Oh, couldn't resist posting 1 full sized card... Go Big Game James Shields!!! Go Rays! troll out.

Updates to All Things in Trollville...

So I get my first day off in 19 days - what do I do? Naturally I spend the morning going through all the AWESOME packages I have received over the past 3 weeks and aggressively update ALL of my wantlists...

Several sets are COMPLETE and many are VERY CLOSE...

My Cardboard Mistress, Stale Gum, Nachos Grande, Dime Boxes, Two By Three Heroes, Crinkly Wrappers, Play at the Plate, Thoughts and Sox, The Hopeful Chase, my AWESOME readers and so many others all got into the action... Its actually amazingly overwhelming...

I have been sooooooooooo busy I barely had the chance to scan the packages and after 3 weeks time I averaged 1.3 packages a day!!!

I owe a lot of folks return packages and this WILL happen, I promise...

I will be updating my lists for the next few hours, but every list that says update 4-28 is already done... I have actually learned my lesson and have gone through EACH and EVERY page in each and every binder to make sure everything is accurate... Some sets weren't as close as I thought - surprise, surprise...

Anyhoo, a huge thanks to everyone who has sent me cards of late, y'all rule!!!!

If we have a trade pending and you haven't heard from me in a while, PLEASE e-mail me a friendly reminder...

As I sort and finish sets, I will want to dump my dupes. I am committed to sending another 5,000 cards to Commons 4 Kids, SO IF YOU STILL NEED CARDS FROM 2009, 2010, 2011 OR 2012 TOPPS - PLEASE send me a message with your needs and I take care of you BEFORE I make my donation.

You can reach me HERE. Thanks sOoOoOoOo! much for reading and helping me reach my collecting goals!!!

Oh, before I sign off - did anyone see the Rays / Rangers game last night??? The Rangers are THE BEST team in the AL (in my opinion) and beating them is a HUGE accomplishment for sure. What a game and what a finish. I don't when I have been this excited about baseball this early in the season. There have been some AMAZING games thus far this season and there are some teams - the A's, Royals, Dodgers, Nats, etc. that have not been too interesting to me in the past, but suddenly are super fun to watch... I REALLY love this game, I love this hobby!!!

So to recap - Rays rule! This hobby rocks! Sets are getting done and I need help finishing more. Wantlists are being updated and I want to trade some more! If I owe you cards - send me a reminder. If you need base cards or inserts or stuff for your PCs from 2009 -2012 Topps - get in touch!

Also, if you are wondering my plans for tonight? (and I know no one is) I will be rolling in the Desoto Parade in Bradenton, Florida with the Bradentucky Bombers. The route is miles long and last year the parade drew over 150,000 people. Should be a good time. The Bombers next home game is May 20th. I will be there!

Una cosa mas - I bought and ripped some wax for the first time in over a month. What did I get? 2012 Topps Opening Day - just 1 jumbo pack, but it felt good and I think I am gonna buy a couple more... Expect a want list to go up very soon.

Go Rays! troll out.

Sweepin' the Angels!

Your welcome Rangers... The sweep is complete. Great team play, an amazing pitching performance by David Price, some big hits, but none bigger than the walk off from the newest Rays player, Brandon Allen... What a series! I love this team! Go Rays! troll out.

Congrats Carlos!!!

The Rays are up 4-0 against the Angels in the 6th inning... Desmond Jennings led the game off with one, BJ Upton is back and he hit one, Luke Scott added one, too... Longo hasn't hit one out yet, but he just stole a base!!! What a game!

David Price has a shut out and looks fantastic, but the true excitement is Carlos Pena hitting a LONG homerun to collect career hit #1000. Congrats.

Go Rays! troll out.

Its Gotta Be the CHOPS!!!

3 homers, 12 RBI and a .333 batting average, plus a late inning grand slam last night... Not what I expected from Luke Scott, but I am not complaining...

Where did all this offense come from? Its gotta be the CHOPS! Go Rays! troll out.

Rays are Rad in Red and Winning in Toronto!

Greetings Trollites!!! I am not quite halfway through a miserable stretch at work – we are working twelve days straight for 12 hours a day, then we are “rewarded” with 2 days off before starting all over again… Anyway, I still have a long way to go before getting a day off and I am pretty freaking tired already…

I have been spending my nights “chillaxing” more than usual. Tonight the Rays are on TV, so I am getting my chill-ax on in front of the TV and presently the Rays are up 3-1 in the second. Sweet!

They have been on a miserable slide of late. After starting the season in spectacular fashion – sweeping the Yankees at home, they been horrible, dropping 6 of their last 8 games including being swept in Boston and dropping their first game in Toronto last night. They NEED to get back on track…

Their awesome starting pitchers need to start pitching like the awesome starters that they are and the offense needs to wake up!!! I know BJ is out, but if your 1 and 2 hitters don’t get on base, you won’t be scoring many runs.

That is the truth, but also a smooth segue into this post… I have been looking for an excuse to post these 2 rad in red cards from 2011 Topps. Desmond Jennings was awesome in the season opener against NY, but has not been a good leadoff hitter since – his OBP is barely over .300 – he just hasn’t been setting the table like he needs to… Tonight he led the game off with a base hit and good things happened…

The good thing being his scoring when Ben Zobrist, also mired in a slump, hit a long drive over the right field wall… It was just his second homer in 38 at bats – Zorilla was hitting just .216 coming into this game. Hopefully his first inning homer is the end of his slump.

Either way, batting first and second and both getting hits is the perfect excuse to post these 2 gems. I think these were bonus cards, exclusive to factory sets and numbered to 245. I have been on a mission to collect up EVERY parallel version of these 2 cards. I still need a bunch more to have the whole rainbow, but I am thrilled to ad these 2 cards into the mix…

I put the computer down for a couple of innings – we are into the 6th inning, the Rays are up 6-2 and David Price is leaving the game. I don’t know if Price was pie in the face great tonight, but he pitched well enough to earn the W if the bullpen can maintain his lead.

With another perfect excuse to show off another new parallel of a favorite player – here is Rays reliever Wade Davis in sparkly puke-fractor form.

Going into the seventh inning, the Rays are still in the lead – will the winning streak start tonight?

Oh... If you have parallels of Zobrist, Jennings or Davis, PLEASE get in touch, I NEED Them!!!

Go Rays! Troll out.

2012 Topps Heritage... I'm Still Tryin'

Thanks to Potch Wheeler and the Cardboard Heroes and reader Marcus (a Padres fan who lives in Texas), I got 56 more cards from 2012 Heritage in the mail today... That gives me 223 out of 500... Thanks guys! I updated the needs list - check it out if ya have cards to spare...

Oh, if yer wondering "why Ian Desmond?" (card pictured below). There are a few, well 6 different reasons...

First, it is one of the few cards I have a dupe of.

Second, he is one of my favorite non-Rays.

Third, he is from (nearby) Sarasota, Florida.

Fourth, he is off to a GREAT start - only Matt Kemp has more hits than Desmond.

Fifth - cuz the Nats are getting a ton of attention this year because of a lot of big names, big signings and big money and this dude has one of the smallest paychecks of anyone in Washington and he is shining the brightest...

The sixth and final reason is that he shares the same first name with Ian MacKaye (which is cool) and today is Iam MacKaye's 50th BIRTHDAY!!!!

50 years old and still out of step with the world and if you get that reference, you are very cool and should comment on this post...

Yeah, Ian Desmond rocks! Rock on Ian(s)...And check out the super rad blog known as Potch Wheeler and the Cardboard Heroes AND check out my 2012 Heritage want list...

Thanks for reading... Go Rays!!!! It's time to start winning again! I got a lil stack of Rays Topps parallels in the mail the last two weeks from a number of different folks... I really like colorful and sparkley parallels - these will be posted up really soon...

Oh, and if you have been wondering where I have been... At work the new schedule is 12 days of 12 hour shifts (consecutively) and two days off and repeat... I had this weekend off, but caught up on sleep, watched the Rays get beat by the Sox and hung with the wife... I will try and squeeze a few posts in between naps... Thanks for being patient! I will be around when I can, I promise I am not gonna vanish again...

Go Rays!!! troll out.