Mail Day: Digging out

I forgot to include this card when I posted about my Jorge Garcia through the mail autograph success.  I also included a card to be signed which came out nicely as well.

Now that I’ve seen them, I’m wishing that I had one of the Rittenhouse cards signed and I may still try to get one signed, but I don’t want to be greedy.  Also, things are ramping up with the filming of the Lost finale supposedly and Mr. Garcia may be busy with other things after that and not have time to spend answering fan mail.

Here’s a Big Baby rookie green refractor.  If you’re going to get any Celtics refractors from this set, why wouldn’t you go with the green parallels?  They’re a perfect match for the Celtics uniforms and are numbered to 149 which is rare, but not too rare.

Big Baby seems to be the only guy on the Celtics who grabs any offensive rebounds at times.  The one thing that does seem to hold him back is his maturity level.  He earned a spot in Doc Rivers’ doghouse a few games ago after committing a stupid flagrant foul.  Hopefully he can overcome these maturity issues by the time Boston is looking for him to step into a starting role or it may never happen.

The black parallel is sharp as well and is numbered to just 75 copies.  The white outline around the player gives this card a little bit of a different look.

I think that I’ve been having the most fun with my Glen Davis collection because I’m able to pick up some cool cards at great prices.  That’s not the case with Paul Pierce, Mike Piazza or David Ortiz.  Piazza cards especially climb way out of my price range quickly.  I don’t have any Piazza autos while I have multiple autos of Davis and Pierce and now one autograph of Ortiz.

In typical eBay ridiculousness, I ended up paying less for the black refractor than I did the green and this one is rarer.

I’ve got a couple of Dee Brown cards that I got signed in person as well as an NBA Jam strategy guide that he was promoting.  So, why would I pick up a sticker autograph card?  Well, winning it for a dollar may have had something to do with it.  I also don’t really have many pack inserted autographs for the former Slam Dunk Champ so I figured that I would pick this up.

Brown is now coaching the NBA D-League team in Springfield.  I don’t know if the team was on the road, but it would have been cool for Panini to get this Celtics fan favorite to be a part of their Adrenalyn promotion in Springfield.


There’s no way that I could pass up this lot for a dollar.  I’ve been coveting the Larry Bird from this set ever since I bought one for my wife at a card show last year and this lot contains the refractor.  I would have paid a dollar just for that card, but I also got the regular Pierce and Parish cards from that set, a Pierce Finest rookie, a Garnett Finest card and three other Pierce cards.

The first thing that I did after trading away my Babe Ruth Yankees hat logo card was to start searching eBay for Red Sox players that I could add to my collection.  I got this Ortiz for a great price.  My auction closed at $5.50 when most others were ending in the $10 - $15 price range.

I know many collectors hate manufactured patches on principle.  These are great looking cards though.  I don’t mind at all that the B in this card wasn’t ever touched by David Ortiz.  Somewhere down the line, nice looking cards started taking a backseat to ugly cards with bits of crap in them or a random serial number printed on them.  These are great looking cards.  ‘Nuff said.

I picked up one Clay Buchholz autographed card for my collection prior to this just to have one.  I was at the no-hitter and have a mini collection of Buchholz cards.  Buchholz has a terrible autograph and I never saw myself picking up another one of his scribbles.  Seeing this card changed my mind.  First off, this is signed on-card while my other autograph was on a sticker.  Second, Allen & Ginter autograph cards are beautiful.  Third, Buchholz’s autograph doesn’t look quite as bad on the little mini card.  Next up, for the Buchholz collection: one or two of his 2005 rookies.  From there, I’d love to get something nice framed with the ticket stub and a signed photo.  Maybe not something this elaborate, but I would love that as a gift some day.

I’ve picked up these cards before, but I haven’t had the best of luck getting these cards in good condition.  I win the auctions cheaply and always seem to find people that think shipping cards wrapped in paper towels actually does something to protect them.  These cards aren’t necessarily damaged, but they don’t look at that great either.  One day I’ll just buy one of each of the stamped factory sets from my Rockies and Marlins inaugural year collections.

I love the Lumberjacks inserts and was holding on to the one that I pulled from a box back when these first came out even thought it wasn’t of a player that I collected.  Now that I have this Piazza in my collection, I can trade away that other card.

The Lumberjacks card is numbered to 5000 and the Great American Heroes card is numbered to 2500.  Big deal back when they were released, high print run by today’s standards.

The good thing about that is that I can now pick up insert cards that sold for $20 back when they were first released for a fraction of the cost.  There were a lot of cool Donruss/Leaf and Fleer Ultra inserts that I couldn’t pick up then that I can now add to my collection.

I never would have known about the Topps Tek set if it weren’t for card blogs.  Now it is safe to say that I’m officially hooked on this set.  I’ve picked up a few Piazza lots here and there and am slowly growing my collection.  Some of the designs are ugly, but the majority of them look nice.  The backgrounds with the various team logos in them especially look good.

Last, but not least, another Jeremy Piven letter.  I only grab these when they’re listed cheaply so I may never finish off this phrase.  Many people don’t want to list these cheaply after getting one of these as a hit in their Icons box, but they don’t really sell for more than $3 or $4.

On the letter front, just the second H from Kent Hrbek that I’ve ever seen showed up on eBay and went for a ton of money just like the first.  That’s another word that I may never complete.

That’s all for now.  Time to get the room together and things put away before I starting bringing in a bunch of new singles.

Technorati Tags: Mike Piazza,Glen Davis,Paul Pierce,Jeremy Piven,Clay Buchholz,Dee Brown,Larry Bird,Jorge Garcia