eBay buying from a blogger

A few weeks ago, Bru of Remember The Astrodome and now of a self-titled blog, reached out that he had a few Yankees-related eBay auctions ending shortly. They were very fairly priced with cards from sets I don't come across, so I placed a few bids. I'm glad I did!

My first win was for an autograph of Yankees 2018 1st Rounder Anthony Seigler. He's lost a bit of his prospect shine after a pretty rough season in A ball. His offensive game wasn't up to par this year, and then his season ended due to a fractured patella, which sounds pretty awful. He's still young and has plenty of time to turn it around. In the end, I was thrilled to score this autograph for just a few bucks.

The next lot of cards I bid on were from the re-birth of Leather & Lumber. Any new Judge and Gleyber cards are pretty awesome. Overall I like the look of the set.

I also got sniped at the end of an auction for this Aaron Judge Slugfest card from the same set. However, Bru said he had an extra and threw it in, which was super cool of him.

About a week later, another auction was ending, this time for five cards from Bowman Platinum. Again, Judge, Torres, Stanton, and the forgotten Miguel Andujar were included. There was also a RC of Chance Adams, who has at least 356 different rookie cards and 289 different autographs.

It's always nice to buy from someone you trust. Thanks, Bru!

The PWEs are alive and well

I don't come home to many bubble mailers of cards anymore. I've slowed down my trading a bunch - I just don't buy enough product anymore to create a few teams bags and send them away.

Plus my post office situation stinks. There's one by my work but that means I have to schlep a card package into NYC and then duck out during the day. On weekends, the post office in my town is open 9-12, and I can think of a lot better things to do with my Saturday morning.

So the packages I'm sending are few and far between, and in return, the ones I receive are few and far between. And that's ok!

But alive and well are PWEs, either via trade or random acts of kindness. And I've got one of each to show off.

The first is a Mark Hoyle special, sent earlier in the summer after he seemingly delivered every blogger some of those hard to find Utz Topps cards. The was the second Utz PWE he sent me!

I say it a lot, but holy crap is Gleyber Torres an incredible talent. He's a 22 year old middle infielder with 33 homers. He plays a very solid 2B/SS as well. He's cut down on his mental errors and, to my untrained eye, his base running gaffes. He's a star and I'm not sure how much better he can get, but I'm excited to find out.

The second PWE was from a Twitter follow named Tommy. We've exchanged a few cards before, as I usually send him a few Mets for his nephew. Out of the list of cards he send me to review for our swap, I chose the two above.

Thanks to you both for the excellent additions!

Just Anthony

Over the past few months, I've seen Yankees 2018 first rounder change his signature from "Anthony Seigler" to just "Anthony."

I don't have a strong opinion on such a matter, I just thought it was interesting. A player can sign his name however he sees fit, from very neat to very messy to very abbreviated. As someone who has long gone by initials instead of a given first name, I'm not one to judge an abbreviated signature.

I just found it interesting, and wonder if it was the result of signing so many autographs that he couldn't bear writing out his last name, or if it just naturally shortened over time and eventually ended up in its current state.

The first time I saw his signature, it was on this TTM autograph I received from him:

Here is Seigler's autograph on a recent Bowman's Best purchase I made.

And here is his autograph on some Leaf set I don't know anything about but bought it because it was a dollar and numbered to /99.

Looks like it's just Anthony moving forward. Or maybe he'll be Tony one day. Or Tone. Or Big Tone. As long as just Anthony/Ant/Tony/Tone hits and catches well and plays in the Bronx someday, he can go by whatever he wants in my book.

Sparkly Seigs

I know most current collectors are turned off by the lack of logos in Panini and Leaf products.

Sure, I wish there were logos too. But if you can see beyond that, you'd see some of the better looking products coming from some of these companies (minus 2019 Donruss).

Leaf is a confusing one to me. I have no idea where their products are sold or who opens them. However, I do know that they produce some semi-decent looking sets, many that include the game's top prospects. And this offers the chance to pick up some decent autographs if you don't feel like paying Bowman prices.

Take this card from Leaf. It's shiny and sparky and overall a very good looking card of 2018 Yankees first round pick Anthony Seigler. It set me back $5, or about 20% of the cost of his Bowman autograph.

And the seller, guessing I was a Yankees fan, threw this into the package as well. I'll take it!

Unless a guy makes it big, an autograph like this isn't a big investment that will turn into major cash one day. But it is a nice way to build up a collection of some prospects without breaking the bank.

Yankees first rounder comes through with the TTM success

I was pretty quiet with TTM successes for most of the spring and early summer, but the last week or so has been fruitful with some top Yankees prospects.

A return from earlier this week yielded me Yankees 2018 #1 pick (23rd overall), catcher Anthony Seigler. He's a very fun prospect who is a switcher hitter AND pitcher. However, the Yankees intend to keep him behind the plate. Seigler was committed to play at Florida, but signed with the Yankees quickly and has started his pro career in the Gulf Coast League.

He's off to a good start as well, hitting .381 through his first 26 PAs. He's dealing with a slight hamstring issue at the moment, but I'm also certain the Yankees are playing it quite safe with their #1 pick.

Overall, an awesome TTM success, and I'm thrilled to get his autograph so quickly into his Yankees tenure.