Freezer Day

In elementary school, one of the items on the lunch menu at the end of the school year was "Freezer Day."

I always enjoyed buying lunch on Freezer Day because there was so many delicious items available. I was a bit too naive (aka dumb) to understand that it was literally the lunch staff's way of cleaning out everything left in the freezer from the school year. Nuggets, fries, hamburger, ziti, meatballs, steakumms. All served to unsuspecting kids so that it didn't go to waste.

Pretty gross.

And awesome.

When I was looking through my scanned folder, I just saw a bunch of cards that are leftovers. Cards that have been sitting there for the last year or so without a post to call home.

So I'm taking a mishmash of what's left in my folder and creating my own little Freezer Day on a Sunday evening.

First off, Tino has to be part of Freezer Day. I remember buying this SI for Kids card because I thought I needed it. But when it arrived, it turns out it was a dupe. That happens a lot.

This was a recent pickup because I didn't realize Pinnacle Mint had cards that were printed with a medallion, versus the physical coin that usually goes in there. I have a few of the card and coin combos, but I was surprised that this version existed.

Wrapping up the frozen Tino section, my most recent pickup. It was another instance of me complaining on Twitter about crappy shipping by a seller who charged nearly $4 and sent it in a PWE. Two in a row!

Back in the spring, I bought this card, and I'm not sure why. Probably because "cucked" is funny and this guy's last name is Kucks? Cool signature and card though.

This Tyler Wade autograph was from last winter. I think I thought Wade was going to be awesome. He's mostly been overmatched in his short Big League career, but he was a bit better down the stretch and I think he'll continue to be a useful utility guy.

Stanton relic? I think got it during the COMC Black Friday sale, along with this cool Judge Tarot and Frazier Fortune Teller. The Tarots are very very cool.

When Mariano Rivera got elected to the HOF, I bought the two Topps NOW issued cards. I guess they arrived a few weeks after the news, so I never got along to posting them.

Lastly, spring chicken is on the Freezer Day menu, with this Yankee young'un. Deivi Garcia is the most promising Yankees minor league pitcher since Luis Severino. I'm excited to see him (hopefully) debut next season. I bought this card with some leftover eBay bucks last quarter.

That should do it for this Freezer Day. Glad I could finally clean this cards out of the depths of my scanned folder.

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.