Do you know the way to San Jose?

A few weeks back, I got a nice mailing from San Jose Fuji.

I'm sure many feel the same, but to me Fuji is the ultimate blogger. Thoughtful posts, kind gestures, and always something nice to say.

For me, he's been a constant in my nearly eleven years with this blog.

Fuji sent me a nice rigid envelope of cards a few weeks back, highlighted by two Yankees relics from 2019 Topps Holiday:

I have to think that's my first Aaron Hicks relic, but I'm not totally sure.

Topps Holiday is always a fun set with fun relics, and I always seem to miss out on it. I don't have a Walmart nearby, and even if I did would I ever find boxes of these? I rely on TCDB for the singles, but Fuji certainly helps with the relics.

A couple Tinos were also included, include a fairy rare 1998 UD Authentic Sheer Dominance Gold (/2000).

Lastly, can never go wrong with a triplet of HOFers, including Jeter, Mantle, and Rizzuto.

Fuji, thanks so much for the 'blog friendship' over the years.

Look who Flew in

A great recent development in the card blogging world was the return of Rockies fan and blogger Johnny aka Hiflew, who runs Cards from the Quarry. His blog is very purply, and it's nice to see him come back into the fold. He's still been collecting and keeping his want lists up to date, and has found a lot of success selling on SportLots.

No matter, seeing him come back has been fun, and we've stirred up a few minor trades when we posts his PWE trade bait. It's always fun because he includes cards from mostly every team that are up for grabs.

Hiflew and I go way back, to the point where when he confirmed my address for our latest trade, it was an address I had THREE addresses and a lifetime ago. 

I sent him a few Rockies he didn't have, and in return, these cool numbered Yanks showed up:

That's Hall of Famer Mike Mussina /50, as well as a super shiny Miguel Andujar from Donruss. Perfect cards for some cards I has laying around, including a hard-to-find 2011 red parallel that Hiflew needed. Simple, effective trade. Everyone wins.

Good to see you back in these parts, Johnny. And thanks for the trade. If you haven't checked out Cards from the Quarry, do so here.

An old Habit returns to my mailbox

It had been awhile, but I completed a small blogger to blogger trade with Judson of My Cardboard Habit. Judson and I go pretty far back swapping cards. We made out first swap back in 2014, according to my blog posts. This was the first card he sent me back then, if my blog records are to be trusted:

My how times have changed!

Judson does more Tweeting than blogging these days, and recently had the stroke of luck of pulling some Yankee relics out of 2020 A&G. He thought it was misfortune. I disagreed. So we struck up a deal and these came my way:

James Paxton and the 'stache look hilarious!

Judson also threw in a few relics from A&G past. Tex = cool. Ellsbury = fool.

Always good to make a small swap here and there, Judson. If you want to find this cat on Twitter, he's @cardboardhabit.

The Best Cards from The Best Bubble

Recently Bob from The Best Bubble reached out about a small trade. I hadn't traded with him yet, so it was an easy yes, especially because he promised some Tinos! Bob is a newer blogger and collects a bunch of fun genres, so go on over and check out his blog HERE.

The best card to me - at least in terms of that I needed - was this Tino Martinez from 2020 Pacific Paramount. I definitely didn't have the green foil parallel of this card, and was surprised to see it included in the package. Really nice card to check off the list.

And I told you there were more Tinos.

Bob also collects die cuts, so I hope it wasn't too hard to give away this card. It's so pretty!

As is this Luis Severino All-Star jersey card. The 2017 jerseys - from Miami - were such a bright blue!

One of my other favorites were these two cards from Stadium Club - Power Zones of Gleyber and Andujar. I've always enjoyed the Power Zone insert set!

Bob, thanks for reach out, and I promise to get you some cards in return very soon!

Friday Ink

It's amazing how the prices of autographed cards can change. Back in the summer of 2018, I reluctantly sold a Miguel Andujar Bowman Chrome autograph for $180. I say reluctantly because I was between jobs and at the time felt like the responsible thing to do. He was in the middle of a very impressive rookie season, and the market was hot. So I sold it. That same card sold for $36 and $38 this past December, so 1. I'd like to buy it back some day and 2. I made the right call at the time.

Obviously missing the majority of 2019 due to injury caused his cards to plummet a bit, and they could still go back up with a strong 2020.

Still, I wanted to made sure I kept a few autographs of his in my collection, so I recently snagged this for less than $8 shipped. Pretty cool looking card, and quite affordable!

That same day, I picked up an autograph of a player I've wanted for awhile, and the object of many prank calls to Mike Francesa:

The joke got a little played out, but still was funny most of the time.

I had been wanting an autograph of his for sometime, but his Yankee ones are a little tougher to find at a good price. This was a minimum bid and I was happy to pay. I know his career certainly was very up and down, but I always enjoyed him as a player and as a personality.

Not a bad two autographs to pick up, and best of all, the price was right.

Miguel Andu-heart

That's as Valentine's Day punny as I'm going to get. And it really has nothing to do with this card.

Miguel Andujar had an excellent rookie season last year, hitting .297 with 27 HRs, and 92 RBIs. He played the whole year at age 23. Those are certainly respectable numbers for a guy so young.

Most people are choosing to focus on his defensive shortcomings. I think they are a bit overblown. Yes, he needs to improve, but he shouldn't be written off just yet. He's got a rocket arm, and many hacks have turned into above average defenders over the course of their career. I'm in the camp of leave the guy alone, let him work on his craft, and enjoy the benefits of his bat in the lineup.

He had many autographs last year in what was his official rookie card year. I wanted to pick one up to celebrate his season, and ultimately settled on this from Stadium Club...one appropriately showing him on defense.

I hope he has a big year and doesn't fall into the dreaded sophomore slump. He is a tremendous talent, and I, for one, am glad he's still a Yankee.

Minor Series One thoughts

On Saturday, I finally found some Series 2019 Topps Series One. I went to a more reliable Target that is a little further away, but I was able to add a few more errands to the trip, so it worked out.

I had been sitting on a gift card since Christmas, so ultimately I decided on two blasters, a hanger, and a loose pack that had probably already been searched.

My first card was Matt Davidson.

I really don't have any new thoughts that haven't already been shared from many.

I like the design a lot. The half border works well. I'm completely indifferent on borders vs no border, but what I like most about it is the excellent bookend it makes from 2015-2019. 16-17-18 all had a pretty similar look and feel, while 2015 was pretty great. This does a nice job of ending the last three years designs and setting the stage for Topps to go a number of ways in 2020.

The Yankees checklist is decent. I like the Didi Gregorius card a lot, although unfortunately didn't pull it. I pulled several Chad Green, Chance Adams, Gleyber Torres, and Miguel Andujars because of poor collation.

One nitpicky thing is that I wish the Rookie Cup logo was centered above the team logo, versus slightly to the right. Minor thing, yes, but would have preferred the symmetry.

I think the parallels - at least the foil and the gold - look excellent. The gold is easy to spot, and the foil looks nice with the white portion of the border. Thumbs up from me on both of those.

I've also just come to the conclusion that inserts in 2019 - or any year in the past 10 years or so - I just am not interested in. As a young collector in the '90s, I'm someone who likes a good insert set. Companies were one-upping each other, and inserts felt special and different. I guess that's where companies like Fleer/Flair and Pacific really always came through.

In 2019, they are so bland, both in topic and design. I'm sure the people at Topps are very nice who come up with these, but I don't understand the need to be so generic (e.g. Stars of the Game). I guess it's so they can shove 100 players in each set, including legends, because we all need more modern cards of Ruth and Mantle.

I'd say my favorites - at least in terms of aesthetics - are are Cactus and Grapefruit Legends inserts. They would have really popped with some shiny foil or texture, but the backgrounds are at least a bit more interesting. My mind went to 1996 Ultra Power Plus is anyone remembers those.

I pulled an Evolution of the Game Casey Stengel, which happens to fall 1:105. It doesn't look like a one-in-a-hundred pack card.

My two blasters yielded me TWO Nationls - Max and Trea Turner. Those are already claimed. I snagged a few SPs as well. I feel like the days of accidentally flipping past a photo variation are gone since they are so common now.

That's it! It's always fun to open new packs, and I do really like the base cards a lot. The photography is very good too. I doubt I'll open any more, but I'm glad I found some and that we can officially kick off the 2019 card - and baseball - season.

Ending 2018 with a very 2018 repack

I have so many fun things to show off on my blog - great blogger mailings, my awesome online marketplace find, and a gift from one of my favorite pro players. And I'll get to those soon!

Instead, I bought one last Walgreen's Fairfield repack yesterday. As noted, we had been traveling for a week. So I stepped out to Walgreen's for milk, and decided to treat myself to a repack. When I checked out the toy aisle, there were four baseball repacks, but one stood out:

New packaging! To most of us, usually these are a dark green, like this one:

Figuring these have new packaging and thus, possibly more recent cards, I took a chance. I was right. This was full of some interesting 2018 cards.

Most of the 2018s were from Bowman, including a Mike Trout and Clayton Kershaw. The Harper is 2016 Topps, of course.

There was also some 2018 Finest.

I was most pleased with the amount of 2018 rookie cards, including a sweet Miguel Andujar I didn't have, and a few other decent prospects.

There were also a lot of prospect cards from 2017, including Mickey Moniak and Tanner Houck.

The Young and Lee are from 2018.

There were even some 2018 Topps team set cards!

Of course, what is a repack without Barry Bonds?

Some of my more recent repacks had some newer Topps packs, but we're back to junk wax here with a pack of 1992 Donruss. No, I didn't pull a Ripken auto.

While I didn't get a 1:4 hit, hard to complain about this repack. The new Andujar RC almost makes it worth it on it's own, plus it had a lot of star power with Harper, Trout, Kershaw, and some top tier prospects.

Not a bad way to end 2018! Happy New Year to you all. If you're going out, have a fun and safe evening!

Secret Santa pays me a visit

I've been traveling since December 23rd, and won't be home until December 30th. I usually schedule a few blog posts during this time, yet this year, December got away from me. I figured I'd have lots of time to blog from my various family destinations, such as after the kids went to bed and all was quiet. Ha! That's not how it works out. I should know better.

But I didn't want to get too far past Christmas without showing my Secret Santa package, which came from none other than Tim over at I Love The Smell Of Cardboard In The Morning. I've traded with Tim here and there, so we're certainly familiar with one another.

Tim sent me a great package that was really catered to what I like. He even had my Tino Martinez "have list" on his phone when he went to a card show. That's dedication!

This one is definitely the most unique. While it might like a regular 2001 Topps, there is a portion of it that is embossed.

It's still hard to see, but the embossed surface shows that it's a Topps Employee Issue. Very cool! Hope Sooz doesn't mind me owning this.

Next up, a silver signature parallel from 2000 Upper Deck MVP. It's nice to see Tino's name scrawled across this one.

When I saw this card, I originally thought it might be a dupe, but turns our it's the unordered refractor version of 1998 Topps Mystery Finest. This set was pretty confusing with the bordered and unbordered cards.

Tim also sent some cool Yankees, including this 1996 World Series card /500. I'll always love the 1996 World Series.

There were a lot of current Yanks as well, many from the Walmart holiday boxes. I was thrilled to get this Miguel Andujar rookie.

And I think this alone doubled my Clint Frazier collection!

Tim, thanks so much for the thought and effort you put into this. It's much appreciated!

And a BIG THANKS to Jon at Penny Sleeves for organizing this year's program!

Strut my stuff, my stuff is so...SHINY

Easily, my favorite song in Disney's Moana is Shiny, written by Lin-Manuel Miranda and performed by Jermaine Clement. It's got some very humorous lyrics and is super catchy. It's definitely an underrated part of the movie.

Plus, that's one hilarious looking crab.

I can't help but hear the song in my head every time a new shiny card arrives. I literally sing "shiny" to myself in the crab voice. It's weird, but I do.

So when I received these cards from whatever Panini set this is (Chronicles I think?), I couldn't help but have this song on repeat in my head.

I saw a few bloggers post cards from this set, and it's extremely confusing to me. I think they are all base cards from various past designs? I'm honestly not sure how it works, but I think some of the cards look really nice, plus with some nods to some past Pacific names, makes for appealing trade targets for me. Luckily, Paul of Scribbled Ink was down to trade a few to me.

The two SHINIEST cards were from the Revolution portion of the set and have a very nice glow to them.

These were more of a Chrome versus a shiny, but I still needed 'em. I think I'm at the point now where Panini should retired Crusades since they'll never match 1998.

Back to SHINY! I mentioned in a Twitter post, but I think the Chrome 1983 anniversaries are the nice cards this year. They look awesome.

More shiny from Ma-shine-iro Shine-aka. See what I did there?

And maybe not shiny, but I'll take any card of this guy I can get.

Thanks for the great cards, Paul!