Nice to Meet You Mister Scott, a Two in One Post...

I like to constantly reaffirm that the hobby is in the midst of a renaissance, that it is in great shape and new people are joining and returning on a daily basis. I can back this up by all of the new card blogs that pop up on a seemingly daily basis. The cool thing is that a lot of them are really good and new blogs mean new traders…I will get to that in a minute though… This is gonna be a 2 in 1 trade post, I wish I had more time cuz I would make in Goudey style and go 4 in 1…I am gonna start with a surprise package from Dan of Saints of the Cheap Seats. Dan hooked me up majorly in my quest to finish off my 1978 Topps set and he has been steadily hooking me up with Rays cards on a constant monthly basis… December was no exception and like clockwork I received a package full of Rays of Hope (I borrowed that phrase from Bud @ First Day Issue). Here is a sample of what I got. I will start with this wide angle view of Miguel Cairo sliding into 3rd on a 2000 Stadium Club card. I scanned this one because it is the first card I have received from 2000 SC but also because it looks like Miguel started his slide just a little early… I would love to see the next few frames and see if he beat the throw and if he made it to the bag. Next up is a another original Devil Ray, but this one is a new-to-me card of my favorite original D-Ray, Quinton McCracken from 1999 SPx with a gold embossed cut-out logo and some oddly placed dots framing the card. Fast forward to 2009 for the next one, a chrome version of David Price numbered to 1960. This card put to within one card (Carl Crawford) of finishing off the team set, but then they came out with high numbers and I am miles away again. The best for last card that I will post up here comes from the 2007 Bowman Heritage set. After a pretty awesome year as the Devil Rays second baseman and occasional third baseman in 2005 Cantu found himself in all of the fancy insert sets. He followed that year up with a less impressive 2006 and 25 games into the 2007 the D-Rays dealt him to the Reds in a really stupid trade for 2 minor leaguers (a bag of balls) who never played an inning for Tampa Bay. Of course he found a new home in South Florida and drove in 100 runs for the Fish last year. I have tried him twice in Miami with TTM requests and was ignored both times so I was super psyched to add this autograph to my collection. Thanks so much Dan! I’ve said it before, but I will say it again, you rock! Once my happy dance was completed I headed on over to look at the Saints of the Cheap Seats want list page to see what I could send him in return and I saw this tradepost he had put up after getting cards from a new-to-me blog called Mr. Scotts Baseball Cards. I sent Mr. Scott an email to introduce myself and see if he was into trading, he replied to request my address and a few days later I receive a 500-ct box FULL of sweet Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays cards from 1998 all the way up to 2009 with at least a few cards from every year. WOW! Yeah, it was pretty impressive and I am still working on sorting it all out… Right now the box is sitting with the giant box of Tampa Bay goodness that Joe L from Cobb and Halladay sent me last month. I did take out the Topps cards and update my Ray team set lists; I am getting a whole lot closer. I even have a few dupes now if there anyone else trying to do the same foolish thing. Mr. Scott sent some cool 2002 Topps cards, like #609 of Russ Johnson shown here. Funny thing is on the very same day the infamous Rhubarb Runner sent me a complete (traded not included) team set from 2002 Topps. Russ was a pretty decent third baseman for the D-Rays but he was traded after the ’02 season to the Mets for Rey Ordonez. If you’re yawning now it does get better… Apparently Mr. Scott had ripped some of the new 2009 Topps Unique and sent along a 4-card sampler platter of Rays for me. I have read mixed reviews of this product, but I personally like the base cards. What I wouldn’t like is paying 6 bucks a pack for this-I know the inserts are pretty fancy and that is what people are chasing, but come on… Anyway, I kinda felt like Topps was rubbing it in to Rays fans by releasing this card of Aki AFTER the trade. A flip of the card has a “Unique Moment” on the back-kinda like a finest moment I guess. The back of the card isn’t too different from Topps Ticket To Stardom (and Finest) , but thank goodness they didn’t recycle the same “moment”. There were literally hundreds of cards in the box and they were all pretty awesome, but I won’t bore you with everything, but I may post more at a later date… He did knock a card or 2 (actually 6) of my Carl Crawford list, I am now up to 240 cards! Thanks Mr. Scott! He hit up nearly every list I had as a matter of fact… One team set that I never had on the list because I didn’t think it was possible was he sent the 6th and final card I needed to finish off the 2007 Upper Deck Series 1 and 2 Game Materials set. He sent card #UD-RB of one of my favorite x-Rays Rocco Baldelli. I can’t believe the Rays had 6 relics in a set back in ’07, but I really can’t believe that I have all 6 of them. Thanks Mr. Scott!!! I am only going to post 2 more cards from this amazing box, but they are a couple of gems so I will likely repeat that last sentence again. First up we have a card from the 2008 Moments and Milestones set of Justin Ruggiano, card #RA-JR. I actually like the Moments and Milestones series and I am still hoping to get my hands on a Carlos Pena 1/1 from that set, but anyway… I had arranged a trade with a reader a while back for a Stadium Club auto a while back, but I got burned on that. That is why I only trade with my established traders or traders who get referenced my established traders. I have been burned too many times this year. Okay, I didn’t get burned on this one, so I will shut up. This card is far nicer than the Stadium Club one anyway and I was shocked when I found it in the box, thanks Mr. Scott! The back of the card references JR going 20-20 in Durham in 2007. I thought he would get a chance with the Rays this past year, but they went out and traded for Matt Joyce and then left both of them in Durham. The last card I am going to show is my favorite. It is from the 2003 Donruss The Rookies set and features former Rays prospect Brian Stokes with a sweet blue sharpie sticker auto on the front. I wasn’t a big Stokes fan, but since he went to New York he doesn’t sign TTM (not for me at least) so like the Cantu up top this is my first Stokes autograph and the goal is to get one of every Rays player ever. I have some non-licensed Donruss autographs, so I was pretty “stoked” to see Stokes with a Rays logo on his cap. You can view my Rays autograph collection here, fan fest is coming soon so hopefully I can add a few to the list then. Thanks for reading a huge thanks to Saints of the Cheap Seats, you rock as always! Please check out Mr. Scott’s blog, follow it, trade with him and welcome him to the blog-o-sphere. He has good taste in cards and likes to rip wax, so chance are he has your team. Oh, and he’s a Yankees fan, so he is one more person you can unload your unwanted pinstripes on! Thanks again guys, I will try and get together some good stuff for both of you to return the favor, thank you ! Troll out.

My Take On (From) the 2007 Upper Deck Ultimate Collection Group Case Break or THANKS DAN!!!

With only 3 cards to scan/upload this should be a quick and easy, not too much time away from unfinished essays, post. Last month I got in on my first ever group break. I have long been intrigued with the idea of the group break. I am Joe Collector runs group breaks pretty often, but he already has a regular participant who has the Rays slot covered. Basically, I had/have no idea how these things work nor did I know what to expect from this break. I wasn’t the least bit familiar with the product either, I only knew it was premium stuff, it was called 2007 Upper Deck Ultimate Collection. The only point of familiarity for me was the person putting it all together-a frequent trading partner, Dan from Saints of the Cheap Seats. He had hooked me up hugely in every trade we had done before, plus he was willing to wait for me to send a check, I WAS IN! It was 20 something bucks to buy a slot and there were 20-something collectors in on the rip, which was to be an entire case of Ultimate Collection. Everyone was given a number and those numbers were randomized and drawn prior to the break-I got number one. Well, let me tell you that I celebrated that I had just won the lottery! I thought for some reason (optimistic greed?) that having the number 1 would mean that I had first choice of which cards I wanted. What it actually meant was that I got the first “hit” that was pulled. As it turns out, the first card in the first pack was also the first hit, it was a game used jersey piece from Randy Johnson, serial numbered 02/75. It’s a great card, classy and regal looking, a low serial number, a dark jersey swatch and it features one of the most dominant pitchers of All Time, I could have done a whole lot worse… Each pack followed the same order for hits, so halfway through the numbers were re-randomized. I lost my number 1, don’t remember what I did end up getting, but it worked out even better for me on my next pull. Now that I know which current players were available in this set, I have to say that I am pretty happy with this one. This guy isn’t on my player collection list or anything, I don’t go out of my way to trade for him, but when I pull cards of him myself, I keep them. He plays for an exciting team to watch, even though they suck, and he plays the hot corner with the flair of Brooks Robinson (and I wouldn’t mind if he was traded to the Orioles either). He is kind of the NL version of Evan Longoria, a great fielding third baseman with a ton of raw power who produces runs. Oh yeah, I am talking about Ryan Zimmerman of the Washington Nationals. I have quietly given Zimm a couple of pages at the very end of my binder, there is a relic, a refractor and 14 of his base cards. Now I have a certified autograph to go along with everything else. Now I just need a bat card and I will be all set. Okay, so here it is. Classy, classy, classy. Deep blue and dark red surround a picture of Zimm in the center and the signature is framed in gold with an America’s Pastime shield above it. I had thought it was an on card signature, it really looks like it could be, but alas, it is a sticker. The sticker is placed so neatly with the frame that you can barely tell. There is no overlap and even the sticker looks somewhat classy, I had to touch it to tell for sure that it was a sticker.
Okay, the third and final card I scored from the group break is a base card, serial numbered 363/450 and it is of my favorite player Carl Crawford. As it turns out, this is CC card #189 in my collection-you can view it here.
This apparently is just a base card so I guess that even the base cards are thick and fancy. It is cut out on the side to show the brand name written vertically in silver. I had acquired a Scott Kazmir card from this issue a few months ago, but I didn’t realize that until I had the CC card at home with me. Okay, that is it for my haul. Now I am gonna share my take on the break…
The work that goes into a group break is pretty freaking intense. Aside from buying the product, trying to track down everyone’s payment, dealing with unhappy participants…and that is just the beginning. I can say with certainty that I would never host a group break. I don’t have a video camera so I couldn’t, but I won’t be running out to get one either. That said Dan and his Son did an amazing job of organizing and executing the whole thing. Ripping all of those packs looks like fun, but all of the other stuff-the sleeving, sorting and shipping-that is too much like work for me. So I think now is a good time to extend a HUGE thank you to the Krill family for doing a super job and making this break a well organized success. If and when they do another break, I will be in as long as its baseball and as long as it is not more Ultimate Collection. Maybe next time I will research the product a little bit, too, and I won’t be surprised when the break ends with everyone getting between 2 and 3 cards each. I don’t know anything about high-end brands-when I think of a case break, I imagine cracking open a bunch of boxes of Topps cards and having 1,000s of base cards stacked to the ceiling. I think that this case yielded about 75 cards-in my mind that is a boxes worth. That part of the break disappointed me. Spending 20 bucks and coming away with 3 cards isn’t really my norm of collecting, but that is the yield of a premium product and I would have known that had I done any research on it, so I can’t complain. I would definitely not rip any of this on my own, even though they are really classy looking cards and there were a couple of really nice pulls. The investment and return didn’t really add up for me, but it was fun to be a part of. I love the blog-o-sphere and events like this seem to bring us all closer as a community. I hope that Dan and son (sorry, I can’t remember your name) will run another group break very soon because they did one hell of a great job and it was very exciting. Honestly, if I won the lottery and bought a box of this on my own, I probably would have a whole team set of Rockies relics and sticker autos from Jack Cust and Eric Chavez, so I have to say that I am happy with who I ended up with. I don’t remember who the lucky collector was, but there was a SWEET Tony Gwynn patch card and a Rollie Fingers autographed relic that were pulled that were freaking awesome! I am pleased with my take. A future Hall of Famer and two legitimate All Stars isn’t too much. Aside from the Crawford, both of these cards are on the block if the deal is right. Thanks again Dan! You are awesome!!! Go Rays! Troll out.