My First Soto

As many of you know, I am not much of a baseball card collector anymore. There are only specific things I really chase.

Group 1:

1. 90's Inserts/Parallels from any team/player as long as the cards are 1995-1999.
2. Derek Jeter

These Top Two I wouldn't trade away for anything. These are absolute locks for my collection as long as I live.

The next list I collect there is some flexibility on whether I would move them for something I want more.

Group 2:

1. Mickey Mantle (vintage I would keep)
2. Jasson Dominguez (as long as he remains a Yankee)
3. Aaron Judge
4. New players in a Yankees uniform
5. Key Rookies
6. Anything else that catches my eye

My recent trade with @ChrisParksIT brought in some of these cards.

Like my first Soto in a Yankees uniform. He looks so much better with the NY.

Jasson Dominguez rookie card.

Jasson Dominguez Good Vibrations rookie insert.

Aaron Judge To The Moon. I thought from a distance this die-cut insert looked great, it's even better in person especially since there is a shine I didn't notice before. I now need to add the Dominguez version.

I love the look of this one. Of course, I was already a fan of the Spring parallels and I believe this my first Yankee one.

 

The final card is a Rizzo foilboard parallel.

Thanks again to Chris for the trade and adding my first Yankees Soto among other great cards.

If any of you have a Dominguez To The Moon, let me know!

Blog Bat-Around: 5 Best Pack Pulled Hits (Here's Mine)

Matt, great name by the way, over at Diamond Jesters has sent forth a new Blog Bat-Around challenge.

He posted his best 5 pack pulled cards and wanted other bloggers to do the same.

Having been sponsored by sport card companies, I have opened a lot of products over my time with some nice hits in-between. However, for this challenge, I didn't want to count any of the pulls from the card company packs. Instead, I wanted to share hits from my own personal pack openings...back when I could afford to open them.

Most of the time, my own pack openings were complete duds. But, then there were some nice ones.

Let's take a look,

5. Is this /25 Totally Certified Gold Rookie Autograph of Luke Kuechly who was one heck of a linebacker. He will be one of the names forever known in Panthers history.

4. How could a sweet MJ parallel be number 4? Well, I would call it 1D. It was really hard to pick a top one in this top group.

3.I pulled this Deion/Cam dual auto from Panini Black for Christmas one year. Still the best Christmas pack pull I have ever had.

2. I usually don't like opening up retail Allen&Ginter. It's so boring. But, I still do it just to have some. I got lucky in 2020 with this one. One of my all-time favorite Yankee players.

1.Stallone auto. This is probably my best all-time pack pull including company sent products. It's really hard to top Rocky.

Well, that's my Top 5. There are a couple other pulls I could have put at number 5 but felt Luke had earned his spot. The other top cards were hard to beat.

I still have all of these cards except the Luke. I traded that away for something that fit my PC better. The others won't ever leave my hands.

As Matt put at the end of his post and I will add it to mine, let's see what you guys have pulled. I can't wait to read and see them.

The Grady Boxes: Box 2

A few times a year, blog reader and good friend Grady M (@gradyfishinsea), sends me a box full of goodies. He has been doing this for many years since we met on my Facebook page.

These boxes usually consist of my four New York teams, some player collections and so much shiny that I have no other choice but to smile.

I never know what is arriving and what surprises hide within until it arrives. But I do know that it will be fun.

So, when Grady sent me a Christmas box round of cards, I had a hard time waiting until Christmas to open it, but I did.

Inside of the big box it came in, were multiple empty blaster boxes full of treasure.

I thought to myself, how does one post so many cards on a blog without spamming it completely. After much thought, I sat down and decided I would show off some, yes some, of my favorites from each blaster box.

Let's take a peek of what was inside of this 2022 Topps Chrome blaster.

We kick it off with a new Junior.

My lack of buying in 2023 left a lot of empty spots in my collection, this Griffey fills in one.

Same goes for this Dexter Lawrence, Mosaic parallels are underrated.

Thunder and Lightning. Zenith has some pretty nice inserts, we don't have products that focus on inserts anymore.

This is a shiny parallel, was hard to capture it.

I didn't open any Big League, but it looks like it was a cool product. These Judges may be my favorite ones now.

Well, that does it for Box #2. There are more to come from this series and some boxes I show off more cards than this.

Don't Judge Me...Again

Just like my blogging, especially on here, there is a lot of come and go.

One of those perfect examples is my Aaron Judge PC.

Back in 2017, I was all in on the hard slugging hitter. I traded a ton of stuff away to acquire autographs, numbered rookies, inserts, etc. That carried over into 2018 then started to die off in 2019, 2020, and in 2021 where I unloaded all but five cards of my PC which had close to 200 cards.

I simply lost interest and it didn't help that he kept getting hurt. He was the one player that kept my baseball interest going (since Ken Griffey Jr retired) but with so many injuries, I stopped watching since he wasn't playing, and I decided that my collection belonged better in someone else's collection so I can get stuff that belonged better in mine.

Then came this past week. I felt that urge again to collect Judge. Was it because he was finally coming back from yet another injury or was it because I was in a stalemate with other parts of my collection. Either way, I dug what I had out again to see and even added a couple.

Here is what I discovered,

 

This is all I have besides a Bowman rookie, a Bowman Chrome Mini rookie, and two autographs.

See something I need or don't have? Let me know! I am currently trading for some Judges and hopefully this time I will keep adding.

In comments today, let me know if you have a player or part of your collection that you have gone back and forth on and what was that?

Quite Frankly, I Just Collect These Baseball Guys Now

I don't collect a lot of baseball cards or watch a lot anymore, but, that doesn't mean I don't add some on occasion. I have pretty much narrowed my baseball collecting to Aaron Judge, Derek Jeter, Jasson Dominguez, 90s inserts and Ken Griffey Jr and I am happy with that. I could use some narrowing in my collection.

Don't ask me about my football list. It's like Santa's good and bad list of kids long.

My recent trade with @TLFrankKing helped me haul in a few cards for those PC's.

Aaron Judge 1987 rookie insert.

1993 Upper Deck Derek Jeter

 

2020 Bowman Chrome 1st Bowman Mojo Refractor of Jasson Dominguez

And of course, the figure at the top of Judge. All really cool adds and that figure is so unique.

Thanks again to Frank for the trade and hope you enjoyed your end as much as I enjoyed mine.

Thoughts on my mail day welcomed in comments!

Random Cardboard Of The Day: 2020 Topps Holiday Candy Cane Variation Aaron Judge

Random Cardboard Of The Day: 2022 Topps Chrome Heart Of The City Aaron Judge

A Perfect Trade

*coffee smell is throughout the kitchen this morning waking up all of the senses. goes and pours creamer in, stirs, goes and sits for today's post*

Trading has really been slow for me in 2022 so far. It's not like I don't have the pieces to trade, it's just that I can't find the right collectors for those pieces and the few I have found didn't have anything for me in return.

That changed this past week where two decent pieces I had to trade found their way to new homes.

*takes a sip*

One of those pieces found their way to @ShoffJason who is a big White Sox fan and on top of that, had pieces for me in return. That my friends is called a perfect trade.

Speaking of perfect trade, this one was easy and fast which also makes it perfect.

I will start by showing off the bonus cards that Jason threw into this trade,

Shiny Derek Jeter I didn't have, awesome.

I only have a couple 20 Years Of The Captain, so all of these are new.

Christmas and Yankee PC all in one card.

Shiny Aaron Judge for my rebuilt Judge PC.

2008 Topps Chrome Uncirculated Gold refractor /199

Those were just the freebies, now onto the trade portion which will kick off with some new Kerry Collins,

1995 Playoff Draft Pick

1995 Ultra Gold Medallion (these still look better than most parallels today)

Team Pinnacle Collins and Marino

1996 Upper Deck Silver Team Helmets

1995 Ultra Extra Gold Medallion

Phone Card from Assets.

And now the finale but first....

*takes a sip*

The trade had started when Jason noticed I was a Giants fan and had a few Saquon Barkley available,

2018 Gold Standard Newly Minted Triple Relic with some guy from Cleveland, Saquon and a solid wideout from Carolina.

And the final card......

2018 Leaf Limited autograph patch rookie Saquon Barkley.

Thanks again to Jason for the trade.

*takes a sip before finishing up today's post*

I have another big trade to post coming up soon.

Thoughts on my trade today and if you feel your trading has gone down this year so far.

Have a thankful Thursday.

*Coffee Card Blogger Out*

Dinosaurs And Dino Roars

I was fortunate enough before Christmas to receive a couple of RAK's from a couple of Twitter hobby members. The first I will show off today followed by the next that I will show off tomorrow.

Today's RAK was from my long time Twitter friend @JGfan24ever.

 

Lenticular Dinosaur cards. Both a 90's feel and dinosaurs which I have always enjoyed.

Canvas feeling Dinosaur minis.

TTM or In-Person autos? I really like all three of them.

90's insert in Marino, need to see if it's a need for my set chase and a Gleyber Torres for my player collection.

An assortment of non sport cards.

Jasson Dominguez!!!! What a shiny, fun, new PC piece! I didn't have this one for my Dominguez PC.

 

And to finish it up, an Aaron Judge Ornament from the 2021 Topps Holiday. I really liked the look of these this year. Put last years to shame with the foil. This may be a set chase down the road.

Thanks again to Michael for the mail day. I really need to send you a return thank you at some point.

Thoughts on my mail day and the cards are welcomed below!