Drumroll Please Cuz Someone Gets To Say "Neener Neener Neener!"...

Okay, it started with me trying to build suspense, but it has since turned to me just having zero time... I had hoped to slowly pull each winning card and THEN announce the winner, BUT I think I have made y'all wait long enough... I had shown off the Al Kaline card already. Joining Mr. Tiger are 2 Hall of Fame hurlers. I wish I had scanned each card individually, but alas the time issue... Plus, since I no longer own these, it wouldn't be right for me to post them - that is the WINNER'S job!

The total prize package ended up containing, from 1956 Topps Baseball, card #20 Albert William Kaline (white back), card #180 of Robin Evan Roberts (white back) and finally card #255 of Robert Granville Lemon (gray back). 3 cards, all Hall of Famers. One of the finest hitters of All Time, coupled with arguably the BEST pitcher of the 1950s in the American League AND the top hurler of the '50s in the National League. I won't post their bios or stats, again, winner's responsibility...
Oh, now that the prize is set, y'all probably wanna know who won, right? There is the topic of certain awesome bloggers saying neener neener neener to other amazing bloggers. Read on, I WILL get to it. If you really read this blog, you know you have to READ!

Let's rewind for a moment... In case y'all don't remember what the contest was; here is a quick rundown... My son was expecting a child, my FIRST GRANDBABY and I set a contest for the blog-o-sphere to guess exactly what time the baby would be born. On December 22, 2010, Atlas Ray came into this world at 11:35 PM. Over 130 of you guessed and about 10 of you got within a half hour of the correct time.

Three of you were within 6 minutes, but the GRAND PRIZE WINNER guessed 11:31, just 4 minutes from the time. This Troll has already awarded two Honorable Mention Prizes, but this is the GRAND PRIZE. Well, the blogger with the neener neener rights is none other than my second favorite Padres fan (can't beat Padrographs Rod!)

The GRAND PRIZE WINNER OF THE FIRST EVER COLLECTIVE TROLL'S GRANDBABY CONTEST IS: (pause and drum roll please...) The granddaddy grand prize winner is the blogger we all know as Doc.who writes nearly as many blogs as I do, including, but not limited to Baseball Card Recollections, which, coincidentally is holding a contest RIGHT NOW!

Always quick to kill 2 birds with one stone (who doesn't love killing birds economically?) this is me pimping Doc's Contest RIGHT NOW! Another GREAT blog that Doc runs is the super cool 1,000,000,000,000,000 (or some large number) Cards For Kids... I LOVE making the trip to All Children's Hospital in St. Pete, Florida with bags of Rays cards for the awesome kids there. One day I will actually get some pictures and contribute to that blog. One day. Anyway, I managed to draw this out long enough...

The Cliff Notes version is this. Contest over. We have a grand prize winner. It is Doc of Baseball Card Recollections. He wins 3 cards. They are all 1956 Topps. They feature Al Kaline, Robin Roberts and Bob Lemon. It is now Doc's responsibility to acknowledge his win here. Then deliver the appropriate neener neeners throughout the blog-o-sphere and then email me his mailing address within 3 days of this post. THEN I will say goodbye to these 3 beautiful slabs of cardboard. Then I will attempt to return to "normal" blogging.

Personally I had a ton of fun with this contest. I loved sharing my amazing news and super new grand baby with all of my collector friends. The well wishes and comments made me feel great and I want to say thanks to ALL OF YOU who played along. There were over 130 entries and even more people who didn't enter, but showed me some love and support anyway. I love this forum we all exist in. Y'all rock!!!

Doc, congratulations to you sir. I hope you are pleased with your winnings. I am glad that I didn't pick the Jackie Robinson envelope cuz I REALLY love that card, but I hope you aren't disappointed with what you ended up with. Thanks again to all of you! Thanks for reading, commenting, following, trading, chatting and collecting with me!!!! I don't always have time for this blog, but I LOVE this hobby and always will!!!

On a collecting note - all of my want lists are current and up to date. I REALLY wanna finish off 2010 Topps before 2011 comes out. I sorted out ALL of my dupes and I am working on making a list today, so check that out when it happens... 1965 Topps Baseball shall be priority #1 until its done (which may take forever) so keep me in mind if you bump into any...

While I have your attention I must kill a third bird (not an orange one!) and pimp another SUPER contest at one of my favorite blogs.. . Want a chance to win a certified autograph of a Hall of Famer??? Just click here and leave him a comment. Its that easy...

Speaking of easy... I am killing a 4th bird right now... My buddy and fellow Floridian Chris from the Vintage Sportscards Blog is giving away some Hall of Famer cards himself... Check it out RIGHT HERE!!!

One more note... Does anyone remember last year when I worked as an outdoor security guard and braved the cold to blog like crazy? Well, I will be covering shift the next 3 Saturday nights so look forward to some actual card blogging from your friend the troll.

That's all for now... Seriously... No more birds shall be harmed today... Go vintage! troll out.

The Dead Letter Office Delivers

I check my Post Office box every single day on the way to work. Some days the box is empty, but others it is overflowing with goodies. Last Tuesday was one of these days. I had 5 fat envelopes crammed into my small PO Box. The interesting thing was several of these packages had been stuck in the postal system for a REALLY long time.

There was a package from my buddy in South Florida, Wicked Ortega from the My Past Time…I Love It! Blog with a post mark from early August.

I generally don’t look at postmarks, but what triggered me was a package from an unknown sender that wasn’t addressed to Troll. I hadn’t bought anything online or traded with anyone new, so all the envelopes were from familiar senders except this one. I tore it open first and found this 2010 Topps Chrome autograph of my favorite Rays rookie Wade Davis.

I had bought this card from an eBay seller in late September when the product first dropped. I was searching around for the card late one night after work and found a BIN or Best Offer card. I made an offer, a really low offer, just for fun and the next morning I had an invoice for the card in my inbox. I didn’t really want to buy the card – actually I did, but I really couldn’t afford it, I couldn’t afford to be buying anything that week, but I did make an offer, it was accepted and I was on the hook to pay for it. Anyway, I “wrote” an e-check to pay for it and checked my PO Box in anticipation of the new card for the next 2 weeks with no success.

Finally I wrote a “hey WTF” letter to the seller. The seller actually turned out to be really nice and cool about the situation. He said he sent the card out the day I paid for it and he had a tracking code for the package. That was pretty cool of him considering I had only paid 5 bucks for the card including shipping and the asking price was $9.99 plus shipping. Anyway, he tracked the package down-it got stuck in his home post office and he couldn’t get an answer as to why. He offered to refund my money and said if the card arrived I could keep it as bonus. Sweet! I was happier to get my money back; I left him good feedback and forgot about the card. I tried using the 5 bucks to buy a different Wade Davis auto, but got outbid every time.
Anyway, 2 months after I dropped 5 bucks I didn’t have on this on-card autograph of Lake Wales native Wade Davis, it showed up in the mail.

What made it even cooler was that the seller had included a couple of 2010 Topps cards of Davis as freebies along with the card I “bought” which ended up being a freebie too. Yeah, getting an on-card auto of my favorite Rays pitcher for free is freaking awesome! On the negative side, looking at the card it ain’t that great and the autograph looked nowhere near as good as the photo in the auction. Same card yes, but a far weaker looking autograph.

So, that was the reason that I started looking at postmarks and that one took 2 months to make it to Bradentucky. The package from my homie Wicked Ortega was lost in transit even longer. It spent 3 and a half months hovering in postal purgatory. This package was a total surprise to me. Wicked never mentioned sending it to me, so I had no idea it was lost. Either way I am psyched that it showed up. He sent a 2007 Topps Tampa Bay Devil Rays retail team set along with 2 autographs.

Before I show the sweet autographs I have to send out a LONG overdue and HUGE thank you to my buddy Wicked! I am going to show the 2 autographs that were in this surprise package now, but I still owe you my readers a Wicked Week of posting to show off all of the unposted autographs and cards that I have got from Wicked this past year, there are a LOT of sweet autos he has shared with me and SOMEDAY I will actually post them.

Okay, here are the two autographs liberated from the Dead Letter Office.

He sent a Select Rookies and Stars autograph of Brent Abernathy. BA was the Devil Rays starting second baseman for the 2002 season, had a decent year, but was taken off the waiver wire by the Royals in April of 2003 and he never found a regular job in the Majors again.
Next is a 2003 Donruss The Rookies autograph of prospect Brian Stokes. In 2003 the D-Rays were awful and Stokes was coming off a 10-7 season in A ball and represented hope for the pitching staff. Stokes wouldn’t see Tampa Bay until 2006 when he came up as a rookie starter, he moved to the pen in ’07 and moved to New York after that. He was since moved to the Los Angeles Angels and hopefully will have a shot to stay in the Big Leagues in 2011. He is one of those players that I am surprised doesn’t sign TTM. Relief pitchers are generally pretty good about keeping up with their mail. Thanks to Wicked, I don’t need to waste ANOTHER stamp on him…

Okay, now I mentioned that I had received 5 packages that day. Funny thing (awesome thing) is all 5 packages included autographs in them. One came from The Great Orioles Autograph Project which will get its own post because he sent a bunch of autographed cards - the 5th package will remain a mystery for now, but I will show off a one card surprise treat from Zack of the Autographed Cards blog. He included a note saying that I needed to get my Rays autograph list online again because it made it a lot easier to surprise me with an auto that I needed. I am working on getting the list together again and will hopefully have one online again soon.

The card that Zack sent WAS in fact one that I needed. He sent along an in-person autograph from former Rays pitcher Mitch Talbot which looks great! Talbot was a 13 game winner in AAA with the Durham Bulls in both 2007 and '08 and earned himself a call up with the Rays in 2008. He spent all of 2009 in the minors before being traded to Cleveland as part of the Kelly Shoppach deal. Talbot won 10 games for the Tribe and I think they got the better end of the deal. Either way I am glad that Talbot is in the big leagues and I am thrilled to scratch him off of my autographs need list.

A HUGE thank you to everyone who made my day and my week with their generosity! Thanks Wicked, thanks Zack! Thanks Ryan! Thanks everyone! Go Rays! Troll out.

Killing 3 Birds With One Stone...

In my last post I pimped three contests that everyone should enter. In this post, I am going to do the same thing with a one-card post that celebrates all 3 blogs... This is card #219 from 1956 Topps showing Braves pitcher Lew Burdette. Why am I showing it? 3 reasons... First, it is a Play at the Plate card from 1956. That seems to be one of the most enjoyed things by readers of the Play at the Plate blog. I don't know if he owns this card, but I hope he gets it someday because this one of my favorite '56s of all time. It is a play at the plate featuring a pitcher which is awesome. I have owned this card for longer than most of my (3) readers have been alive. In fact, Hackenbush is one of the few bloggers who has been collecting longer than me... Why do I love this card? Just look at it. It shows Burdette before he became a household name and starting making records. It illustrates the non-typical image of a pitcher trying to score. I hope that PatP gets this one because of his impeccable researching skills. I have always wondered who the opposing team was and whether Lew scored or not... He has scored some pretty big runs over his career. In 1960 he no-hit the Phillies, beating them 1-0. The only player to safely cross the plate was Burdette himself. The card also shows a golden time in baseball and in America. I wasn't alive then. My Dad was just a boy in '56, but he went to the World Series in 1957. Not as a player, just a fan-he was 12. He saw one of the most remarkable performances by a pitcher ever. The Braves beat the Yankees (which could be a preview of this years contest) and Burdette was the MVP. He was 3-0, pitching 3 complete games, 2 of them shutouts. In 27 innings pitched he struck out 13 and gave up only 2 runs. A few years later he was the winning pitcher in one of the best pitched ballgames in history. In 1959 Burdette pitched 13 innings of shutout baseball against the Pittsburgh Pirates when the Braves beat Harvey Haddix, who pitched 12 PERFECT innings. How does this tie in to Can't Have Too Many Cards and his contest? Well, no one knows how old he is. That is part of his contest - guessing the year of a black and white class photo of his. I wonder if he is old enough to remember Lew Burdette pitching 24 consecutive shut out innings against the Yankees in the World Series? Could be... Obviously this card ties into the contest at Great Orioles Autograph Project because his contest involves picking the winner of the World Series. In 1957 not too folks thoughts Burdette and his Braves could stop the mighty Yankees. They did. I think the Twins can stop the Mighty Yankees in the first round - with Delmon Young on their side, they can't lose! Okay, got to show off a favorite card AND pimp 3 great contests a second time... Oh, speaking of contests... Once I finally ship off the last cards from the group break, there will be a good ol fashioned contest here at the Troll. I am nearing 100,000 hits, the Rays are on the brink of making history, I am hoping for 150 followers, I will someday organize and count my Carl Crawford collection, I am getting more and more cards from the 1930s and 40s which ALL come with looong stories, I am one page away from sponsoring 20 different player pages on Baseball Reference dot com, I am getting close to finishing quite a few sets (wantlists are uptodate!!!) and I am generally excited about this game and this hobby... So much to be thankful for and happy about! Stay tuned! Games start tomorrow... Don't know if I can afford to go to a game in the first round, but I am working extra overtime to guarantee a trip to the ALCS! Enter these contests please! Don't make me drop a 3rd post about it! Go Rays!!! WIN! troll out.

Straight Pimpin...

David Price says check out these 3 great contests! First, head on over to the Great Orioles Autograph Project and check out his sweet postseason contest. All you need to do is predict who beats who and who wins it all. I will give you all a hint and let you know that Tampa Bay is gonna win out. David Price just might win World Series MVP in the process...
NEXT... Head on over to Can't Have Too Many Cards... Hackenbush just made his 500th post and he is celebrating by giving away a whole bunch of SWEET 1980s rookie cards... Not garbage either - we're talking Hall of Famers like Cal Ripken Jr., Ryne Sandberg, Tony Gwynn, Wade Boggs and more! Enter his contest here. All you have to do is comment, but you aid your chances if you can guess what he looked like in 1965. Enter HIS contest HERE. For the last contest you need to hurry... You only have a few more hours to enter the Play at the Plate contest, so head on over there now! Good luck to all! Speaking of pimpin' - assuming that you have entered all the contests and still have time to read about cards, The Nitty Gritty Card of the Day is coming back. It will be strictly Nitty Gritty for now. Not a whole lot of fluffy Troll description, just the facts. Check it out! Go Rays!!! 11 wins baby! troll out.

The Joy of a Completed Page-2 of Them!

For set collectors there is nothing better than finishing off a complete page from a set that you have been hunting. Well, this weekend I emptied the contents of 2 separate packages I received last week into my 2010 Topps binder. Actually, I didn’t put all of the cards in the binder, but I did put away the Legendary Lineage inserts that I got last week from Play at the Plate and the Great Orioles Autograph Project. LL is a 30-card set which spans 3 and a half pages and 2 of those pages are COMPLETE! Thanks so much to Brian and Ryan both. 2 more cards and that set is finished. If you Legendary Lineage cards # 17 or 18, please get in touch! I am going to binder up the rest of the 8 pounds of 2010 Topps inserts that I recieved from Play at the Plate now... This could result in more Complete Pages and the Joy that comes from them... Stay tuned! Go Rays! Troll out.

A Contest?

No, not here, over at the Great Orioles Autograph Project. GREAT PRIZES, SUPER BLOG! Enter right now! Do it here. Busy today with my beautiful niece, Ruby May, the drummer of the future! She lives in London, England and has not yet experienced American baseball. That will all change soon. She did get her first taste of baseball cards and auto hunting... Cheers to all! Go Rays! troll out.

2 Steps Closer...

Well, I was finally able to amass a few bucks in my pocket, I stopped at Wally World on the way home from work last night and picked up 20 padded mailers, 500 penny sleeves and 30 top loaders and I have spent this morning packing up all of the cards that I have been promising to ship out these past couple of weeks, but before I hit up the post office, here is a super quick post…
Thanks to Ryan from the Great Orioles Autograph Project I am now 2 steps closer to total completion of the 2009 Topps Heritage Set. Unfortunately I am still about 300 steps away from total completion, but every little step counts especially when the cards have that dark raw cardboardy back… This is the first post I have done to show the bounty of my group break… I will be back with more posts from those breaks when I return. I do intend to keep my promise and wrap up the rip within a week. I will be doing another one immediately following it however. It will be limited to only 48 packs this time, the product is still TBA but it will be pretty similar to this last one. A few people have paid up in advance to claim slots for the next one, but most teams are still available… The teams that have been claimed and paid for are: The Blue Jays (Duane), the Brewers (Ed S), the Cubs (Paul) and the Rangers (Brian). Every other team is available. I updated my 2009 Heritage needs list to include the MANY high number cards that I still need and YES 2 SPs from this list will get you a slot. Thanks for the cards Ryan! Troll on his way to the post office and therefore out!

Tradin' With Ryan at the Great Orioles Autograph Project

Ryan at the Great Orioles Autograph project set some lofty goals for himself, but as I’ve read and followed his blog, he’s on the right track. He’s a Baltimore Orioles fan and has set out to get an autograph of every guy to wear an Orioles jersey, even for one game. He’s out there at games, tracking down former O’s, he’s going TTM and sending cards to guys in Independent baseball leagues and tracking down their addresses. He’s even hitting eBay to fill in the blanks. He’s at 49% already and he seems to have the diligence to finish this project. I used to work for the Orioles (minor league) organization. I also worked for an Orioles website for a few years. I wish I had thought of asking for autographs back then, cuz I would love to give Ryan a helping hand. Actually, I did get an auto from one guy… One of my favorite guys to interview was Moe Drabowsky. I learned from Ryan’s site that Moe had passed away. I wish I had kept in better touch with him and his family, its sad when you’re so busy that someone you call a friend dies and you don’t realize for 3 years. Another great player and good friend that I got to spend time with was former Rookie of the Year, Curt Blefary. He passed away 3 months after our interview. He had his ashes sprinkled over the Yards. Thats a true Oriole righ there.
Anyway, even if you aren’t an Orioles fan, his site is very interesting and filled with great pictures, so check it out…
Anyway, I wrote to Ryan to propose a trade and before I even got any Orioles cards together for him, I had a package in my mail box. He had checked out my collecting site at www.collectivetroll.webs.com and scoured my lists for 2008 Heritage cards and sent me 3 from my low numbers list, including card #65 Jason Giambi, which I had 9 copies of with a black back, but no green backs. Card #283 of Miguel Cabrera (which I had traded away not realizing I didn’t have doubles) and card #371 of (potential future Rays pitcher) Pedro Martinez. This is another that I have a slew of black backs of. When I first put the set into a book, I used black backs as spot holders for greens, then got all confused and figured since the space was full, I didn’t need it. I think I traded away a few Pedros before noticing. Anyway, Ryan corrected that problem for me, thanks! I thoroughly checked the book and yanked out the last black back. Anyone have a copy of card #201, JJ Putz they can send me? Or card #211 of Mike Sweeney and card #337 of Lyle Overbay? After that, I need just 8 short prints and the low number set will finally be done!
Ryan also hooked it up with the high numbers, sending along about 50 of those off of my list. Between hobby boxes and retail blasters, I opened over 350 packs of low number Heritage in ’08. I can’t believe I am still fighting to finish this one! I have taken a different approach for the high number set. I am going to rely on the kindness of strangers, err fellow bloggers, cuz I don’t have the $$$ to spend a thousand dollars ripping packs anymore, (yeah 350 packs, $1,000+, crazy!) so I bought 2 blasters and called it a day. Thanks to people like Ryan, Stephen from the Easy Life and Ed from Roll Out the Barrel, I only about 70 cards to finish it up.
Anyway, I put the cards directly into my book, so I don’t really have scans of them, but I can assure you they are all awesome in their Heritage-ness!
Thanks for the trade, Ryan! Good luck on tracking down all of those Orioles! I have a lot of stories to share about ex-O’s…In fact; I may even post an unpublished interview on here one day.