Not to get all Zappy on you, but...

I'm going to get sappy on you for a second. Actually, no. I'm going to get ZAPPY on you.

Every, let's say, six to eight weeks, I'm on the victorious end of a Zippy Zapping. Kenny, of Torren' Up Cards, loves (at least I think) hitting me with these epic card packages.

One thing I always enjoy, almost as much as the cards, is the creative way that Kenny packages. Last time, it was the re-created Bowman box. This time, it was a large stack of cut 9-pocket pages. It was like a PWE on PEDs. He could get a job in product packaging in a second if he ever wanted.

See? Good stuff.

So what did he send? Everything. I don't even know where to start.

I'll start with Eric Jagielo. Jagielo gets a little overshadowed by Aaron Judge now, but let's not forget that he was drafted ahead of him. Oh, and he's at .287/.382/.558 with 7 HRs so far in AA. Not shabby. I know Zippy likes Jagielo a lot, so I appreciate the autos.

I wish Jose Contreras got a longer leash with the Yanks. He wasn't awful with them, he just wasn't as expected. He still put up some decent numbers, especially in his first year. They traded him away for Esteban Loaiza, who sucked. Plain and simple. Contreras then went on to be an All-Star, and play a key role on the White Sox World Series team. Sigh.

I like Angelo Gumbs mostly because of his sweet ass name.

Peter O'Brien is interesting. The Yanks turned him into Martin Prado, then turned him into Nathan Eovaldi, among others. So they essentially turned an all-bat prospect into a 25 year old starter. Not a bad swap. O'Brien can hit and hit and hit. He had 34 HRs last year, and nine already this year. He just can't catch. But his power is going to carry him to the Bigs. He'd be a good DH.

What in the world? Ren and Stimpy Mojo?

Vintage! How did I take this long to get to these? National effin Chicle of a dude named Dixie? That's the '30s for you. How great is the back of the card? I mean, what a batting tip! Except, no, you can't step out of the box anymore. Oh, the PURISTS must be livid at this new rule since you could step out in the 1930s!

This card isn't that old compared to the Chicle.

Fast-forwarding a bit to new author Jorge Posada.A 1994 Bowman's Best RC. This ain't no reprint, son. This is the kind of card from the kind of set I would see in Beckett growing up. The ones I never saw in person or ever dreamed I'd own. They didn't sell these at CVS.

 

My first silk, and it's sooooo smooth!

I can't really mention Posada without Andy Pettitte, and here's a lovely rookie of the lefty.

From one ace to another! #BigMike! I needed this one. I'm up over 100 different Pinedas right now, and it's getting tougher and tougher. His prices are going up, up, up on eBay.

I don't think I've met any one collector who knows as much about the Minors, especially the Yanks' affiliates, then Zippy Zappy. He loves his minor league baseball, and his dedication to the Staten Island Yankees is admirable. He's also got, hands down, the best Luis Torrens collection out there. I can't imagine any collector out there has a better one. I am fortunate that he has probably acquired dupes and can spare ones like these for me.

And here are a few more prospects that we both like a lot, especially Jacob Lindrgen!

 

Jeter, on a Sega Gen? Yes, please. I really need to count my Jeters. I want to know how many I have. If it's less than 500, I am going to try and get to 500. If more, I may go for 1,000. Because, well, why not?

 

And a couple more fun ones that I love...

 

I think this is a great way to end it. Thanks, ZZ!

 

Zippy Zapped!

First off, I'm going out of order. Several weeks ago, Zippy Zappy sent me an EPIC package that I've just gotten around to scanning. I want to give the post full justice, so I'm going to slip ahead to a PWE Zippy Zappy sent me last week for Christmas.

Kenny and I have very similar collecting goals. We both love the Yankees, and love following Yankees prospects. A lot of the cards Kenny sends me are of current and past Yankee prospects, and we frequently email one another to discuss this prospect or that prospect. Zippy is also a loyal Staten Island Yankees fan, and has a very impressive autograph collection of the team.

These are not all of te cards sent me, but merely some highlights. The cards all clevely came in an opened pack:

 There were two Ty Hensley cards in there. This is a guy I'm probably going to add to "players I collect." I'm really excited about seeing him back on the mound this year.

This is my first Eric Jagielo card. Jagielo was the Yankees 1st round draft this past year. I do have his autograph on a Yankee Stadium team car, but this is my first card of him as the subject.

This is an awesome National Chicle Jeter I've never seen.

And last but not least, a Rizzuto RP from 2013 Bowman.

Zippy Zappy, thank you sir. Merry Christmas.

Rizzuto bat relic

I love Phil Rizzuto cards. I have three of his vintage cards, as well as one of my favorite TTM autos from him. One thing I didn’t have until now is a relic. I found this 2010 National Chicle bat relic for a ridiculously low price…it was $1.99 + .99 shipping on eBay. Come on, people. How did no one else bid? Like I care. It’s a really nice card. It’s classly looking, and the die cut “C” over the relice is pretty cool. The back says that it was used in a game. I was a little worried it might have been one of those dumb seat relics, but it says game used. Probably Old Timer’s Day or something. Either way, it’s a sweet card and I was really fortunate to pick it up for such a low cost. Now I just need to find a Rizzuto jersey card.

My Derek Jeter Painting - Part I

I wanted to do a different post and share with you a Derek Jeter painting that I recently finished. I always enjoyed art throughout school, but enjoyed it less and less in high school as I was being told what to draw. I didn’t like that. I wanted to draw or paint sports-scapes and not snowy landscapes. So I stopped doing art after 11^th grade and never touched it again through college. I started checking out some amazing artists’ websites – guys who focused on sports as their subjects. Then after seeing some inspiring painted baseball card sets, such as Diamond Kings and National Chicle, it gave me the itch again. I chose to paint a photo of Derek Jeter that I always really liked. It's a unique angle of Jeter's patented jump throw.

I have always been most comfortable working in acrylic, so I bought a 14x18 canvas art board and a small set of paints and a few brushes. I got these at a toy store, so I wasn’t working with hi-tech supplies. I don’t have room for a dedicated space in my tiny apartment, so I did this whole project on my kitchen counter.

I started by drawing grid boxes on the canvas (in pencil) so as to keep the drawing to scale. I would never survive without this method. This took probably an hour or so.

Next up, I did the background. I actually did the light blue sky and then the dark blue stadium at separate times but failed to document it. I decided to keep the background simple as opposed to making it as detailed as it was in the original photo.

Once that was mostly done, I started painting Jeter. I did the shoes first, and then his skin and the gray road uniform. I also added some darker gray to show the wrinkles in the pants and jersey and add some dimension.

My next step was to work on some of the details and shading. I added color to his number and belt, as well as additional tones of gray on his uniform.

After doing some minor touch ups, I was finished! I’m a perfectionist and am always critical of my work (not just artwork, but work in general), so I see a lot of blemishes when I look at this. I always will. But for not painting a picture in about 10 years, I think I did pretty well jumping back in. I’m most pleased with the shading on the back of Jeter’s head and his jersey. 

Here is a shot of my painting with the actual photo. I apologize to whatever photographer I stole this from.

I have yet to hang this in my apartment yet, but I'll do that soon. I'm not sure what my ultimate goal is, but I do want to do another one. Maybe one day I'll be good enough to commission a piece. Would be a nice side source of income, but that's not why I'm doing it right now.

In part 2 of this post, I’ll show how this painting could look as a baseball card in a popular set that everyone is going gaga for. Let’s see if I can hack it with the artists who do this for a living!