Oh there's no place like Doon for the holidays

Blogging legend Napkin Doon recently went on a Topps Holiday binge, and he was kind enough to send me an early holiday package.

Last I knew, he was building the 2019 Topps Holiday set, but was closing in on completion. I'm not sure if he's 100% there or not. To help his cause, he joined Trading Card Database. You can find him here.

Santa Doon's package consisted of a few items, including two broken down blaster boxes of the product itself. Doon has noticed I'm a crafting geek and make some coasters out of old blasters, so he helped send me some supplies. These will go to good use.

And if you're wondering, here was my first dabble at coasters. More to come.

I saw a lot of critics of this set from the whiney card collecting community on Twitter. Me? I think it's great. The design is a lot better than the snowflake pattern of the last few years. I don't even mind the gimmicky present and candy cane short prints and all that. To me, this is the perfect time to be gimmicky in a fun product like this.

Doon sent me my first sampling of them, and I like them in person as much as I hoped I would. Well done here, Topps.

While I remember the pattern of the last few years, I didn't remember this one from 2017. The snowflakes are embossed and sparkly. I thought that was cool. 

Nap also sent me a nice team bag of cards, included some Clint Fraziers. I still like Frazier a lot and seems like he always get a raw deal. He'll hit 40 HRs for the Pirates one of these years.

A nice numbered card of Yankees HOFer Mike Mussina! No logo on his cap if fitting!

And here's a lazy photo of a stack of cards. There was a nice Judge Bowman, and a vintage Bobby Richardson.

Thanks, Nap. As for everyone else, feel free to flood his TCDB was trade offers and pleas to come back to blogging.

In da Club(house)

Just a quick post today. I haven't picked up any Heritage yet, but got two in from 2018 Heritage Minors. My wife actually went to Target yesterday and I sent her photos of 2019 Heritage blasters, but they (unsurprisingly) didn't have any. My closest Target is turning into a real nightmare when it comes to finding new cards.

I guess that's why eBay exists! I had a little bit of money leftover on a gift card, so I found two cards of up and coming Yankees prospects. This is my second card of top prospect Estevan Florial, and my first relic.

Thairo Estrada, a favorite of Zippy Zappy, was on his way to the Majors before suffering a gunshot wound. He's back and healthy this year, and I hope to see him continue his path towards the bigs.

Two nice cards, 1/4 of the price of a blaster, and probably better than I'd pull on my own. Solid W for me.

Chistmas in July from Jolly Johnny

You guys make me wonder sometimes.

Where on earth do you get all of your cards?

Guys like Wes and Johnny have a seemingly endless supply of what I collect. I know that can’t be true, but there are definitely some bloggers out there who swirl in a sea of cardboard mystery.

John of Johnny’s Trading Spot hits me up about once a month these days…definitely faster than I can return packages to him. This one was labeled “Christmas in July” in a note he included. Indeed it was!

The first half of the package was nothing but Tinos. Like I mentioned, where does one stumble upon so many cards of the guy I collect? There were some neat ones too, like some old school Fleer Ultra inserts.

The second half of the team bag – prospects!

These ones made me a little sad. I didn’t load up on Blake Rutherford cards yet, so his trade to the White Sox didn’t break my heart from a collecting standpoint. Still, I liked him a lot, but do think it was a fair trade.

Chance Adams is a guy I don’t understand what the Yankees have planned for him. He’s really good, and comes in at #63 on MLB.com’s top prospects. Yet, the Yankees keeps saying he needs more development time. I get it. They know a lot more about baseball and their prospects than I ever coyld. But from afar, I don’t understand why they are running our Caleb Smith or Luis Cessa every fifth day. Surely a still-developing Adams is better than those guys. I suppose they want to set him up for success down the road, but it’s hard for me to accept that he can’t give a better effort than the current #5 starters.

Wilkerman! I’m officially going to stop sending him TTM requests. I think I’m 0 for 3 on him. Time to just sit on cards of his now instead of sending them into the abyss.

 

Zippy Zappy favorite Thairo Estrada! He’s so overlooked, but just keeps producing. He’s hitting .308 as a 21-year-old in AA. He’s got a shot.

Nick Solak is a solid prospect too. He produced in college at Louisville and has carried it right into the pro’s. It feels like he should be ticketed for Trenton at some point, although there is a bit of a log jam there.

Lastly, new cards of Gleyber and Frazier! I didn’t have either of these.  Frazier is a lot of fun to watch every night. Jokes were made about his “legendary bat speed”, but he seriously does have impressive bat skills, even to my untrained eye. And it’s crazy to think of the trickle-down effect that Gleyber’s injury had on the Yankees. If everything went according to plan, there is a very real chance he would be the Yankees starting 3B right now. But things never go according to plan, especially with prospects.

Johnny, thanks for the early Christmas present!

Big summer blowout

Credit: http://otionsoap.com

Overall, I'm not the biggest Blowout Cards guy. I appreciate the site, but I have found the message boards to be a bit of a mess, and mostly indicative of the current state of the hobby where most collectors only care about hits and high-dollar cards. I know it's not the case for every collector on there so I don't want to generalize too much, but I've seen that in a lot in my limited interactions on the site and forums.

However, I do spend time in the TTM section of the forums. I like to see what other collectors are obtaining via TTM, and share some of my successes. For the most part, my TTM successes are my blog posts that perform the worst and get the least amount of interractions. That's ok, that's not why I blog and am not upset when a post gets little views and no comments. No big deal to me. However, the forum gives me an alternate space to share some of my successes with those who are a bit more interested.

Although, I must say, for a TTM forum, a lot of people post in-person (IP) successes. Kind of odd, but whatever. There are a lot of prolific IP 'graphers, so it can be cool to see of their loot.

From time to time, a collector will list some autographs for sale, mostly obtained IP. Recently, someone listed hundreds of cards for $.75 each, mostly of minor leaguers. While I tend to stay away from purchasing autographs that aren't certified, I have no reason to believe that members of a TTM forum are screwing people over. So I decided to take a look and see if anything struck my fancy, and as it turns out, I was able to add three new Yankee autos for a total of $2.25.

Thairo Estrada, one of ZZ's favorites, is a guy that has eluded me TTM, so I was happy to pick up this one for $.75. He's definitely under-the-radar in terms of current Yankee prospects, mostly due to the fact that he's so young. However, he had a great 2016 as a 20-year-old in mostly high-A ball, so I think his days of going unnoticed are numbered.

The second guy I picked up, and two of the same card, is Tyler Wade. Wade is one of the best, most-advanced shortstops in the Yankees system, and projects to be a solid Big Leaguer. I think we'll see him in the Bronx at some point this season. The Yanks are trying to make him into a Ben Zobrist-type to help his path to the Majors, including him playing OF in the AFL last season. He doesn't sign TTM (as far as I can tell), and I haven't picked up a Bowman auto yet, so I figured this was a decent gamble.

I don't think I'll make a habit of buying from sales like this, but it's a great option once in awhile for those tougher-to-get signatures.