Favorite cards: Dwight Evans RC

From the moment that I started watching the Red Sox, Dwight Evans was my favorite player.  He is one of the most underrated players in the history of the game.  If only he had discovered the teachings of Walt Hriniak earlier in his career instead of halfway through the 1980 season, he may have gotten more consideration when it came to the Hall of Fame.

While Jim Rice had a couple of career years better than any that Evans put up, Evans had a better overall career and that’s without considering Evans’ far superior defense.  Rice is in the Hall of Fame, but Evans is not.  Ozzie Smith is in the Hall of Fame mostly for defense and some stolen bases.  Evans is a more deserving candidate than Smith was, but Smith had the one or two big career years to get himself into the minds of fans.  The biggest thing that hurt Evans’ consideration for the Hall was not having that one monster season.  He was well on his way to that in 1981 when the strike stopped play in the middle of the season.  Evans couldn’t get back on track once play resumed.  Even with doing almost nothing in the second half, Evans finished third in the MVP voting.  No one in the American League hit more home runs during the 80s than Evans and he was fourth in all of baseball.  He led the league in walks and OPS (long before anyone knew what it was) multiple times, but those aren’t flashy categories.  Without the strike, there’s a good chance that Evans tops 400 HR and 1400 RBI for his career and gets a longer look by Hall of Fame voters.

Dewey had a cannon for an arm, was amazingly accurate when throwing home and mastered all of the angles in Fenway Park’s right field corner.  His eight gold gloves are the most in the history of the Red Sox and only three outfielders have more than he does: Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente and Al Kaline.

Most of the time it is easy to accept the fact that Dwight Evans won’t ever be in the Hall of Fame, but it gets harder to accept when players such as Andre Dawson, Ozzie Smith and Jim Rice get inducted.  Evans is better than Rice, very similar to Dawson and better than Ozzie (who absolutely shouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame if Alan Trammel isn’t).

On to the card at hand, 1973 Topps #614.  This card pictures Dwight Evans along with Al Bumbry and Charlie Spikes.  Bumbry was the ‘73 Rookie of the Year and would later go on to be a coach for the Red Sox.  I miss having multiple rookies on one card.  It allowed Topps to include more players from each team’s roster in the setand resulted in fewer cards of guys who only had a couple of at-bats and never saw big league playing time again.

This particular copy of this card isn’t in the greatest of shape, but I purchased it with my own money back in the late-80s at a collectibles show at the Bayside Expo Center.  This copy will always have a special place in my collection even if I pick up better copies of the card.  I’ve got Sweet Spot cards signed on leather, Sweet Spot cards signed on a ball, Leaf cards signed with baseball stamps and a bunch of other cool modern cards, but none of those will ever come close to this card.  This card has been in my collection for over 20 years.  The only thing that could have come remotely close to this card would have been Dewey Dufex, but unfortunately he retired before Pinnacle unveiled the coolest parallels ever.

Technorati Tags: Dwight Evans

Mailday: Dude, where’s my cards?

Dude, Lost is back on the air and I couldn’t be happier.  I’m a full fledged Lost fanatic and really get into all of the mythology and details of the show.  My favorite character on the show is Hurley.  So, when I saw that Rittenhouse Achieves was offering this Hurley promo for free with SASE, I had to have it.  Their recently released Lost Seasons 1 – 5 set looks pretty good.  I definitely think that I’ll be busting open a box of that in the near future, but first I’m going to get myself a box of 2010 Topps Jumbos.

  Sticking to the non-sports department, here’s another Jeremy Piven letter to the phrase “Hug It Out.”  It doesn’t look like many people are breaking Icons anymore since I don’t see many of the Hrbek or Piven cards that I’m looking for.  Looks like I should have jumped on that one H from the Hrbek set that showed up on eBay, but it went for about four times what all of the other letters were going for.

This was a great lot that I won on eBay.  The cards themselves only cost .99¢ and shipping was the usual $3.  Now I’ve got a Pierce for the set and will need to pick up another one for my player collection.  I’ll keep plugging away on this set as I find cards that I need at great prices.


This is another sweet lot that I picked up on eBay.  I picked up the base, refractor and Xfractor cards from 2005-06 Finest.  I like the design of this set and all three of these cards are sharp looking.  The refractor is numbered to 349 and the Xfractor is numbered to 139.

I also added another Big Baby autograph to the collection.  As long as he’s coming off of the bench, his cards will probably be available cheaply, but I think that’ll change in a couple of years when there’s no longer a Big Three in Boston.

Davis was a big factor in the Celtics’ last win over the Nets.  There’s no way that the game should have been as close as it was, but the Celtics were without Paul Pierce and still don’t have Garnett at 100%.  The game finally turned around in the 4th quarter with the bench players in the game.  Davis played some tough defense on Brook Lopez and had some huge offensive rebounds that allowed the Celtics to pull away behind the hot shooting of Eddie House.  Oh yeah, he also scored in double digits off of the bench.

Here’s a jumbo swatch from a Mike Piazza Padres jersey.  I didn’t have any Padres relics of Piazza so I figured that I would pick this one up.  Since this isn’t a sick mojo patch, I think that I’m safe in trusting Upper Deck when they say that this is accurate.  Pot shots at Upper Deck aside, this is a nice looking card with a fairly low serial number.

I wouldn’t have known that this card existed if I didn’t have an eBay search set up for Fenway Stamp.  There were some items made with this stamp’s image on it that I was interested in as well as the Dwight Evans Leaf Century Collection autographed card with the Fenway Stamp.

This is a nice looking card featuring an actual stamp and not something manufactured on Stamps.com.  The low numbering and high number of Red Sox fans made this cost a little more than I would have liked, but at least I didn’t pay the price that the first 2 or 3 of these sold for.

These were two separate lots from the same seller, but the discount on shipping made it worthwhile.  I’ve always liked the oversized Donruss Action All-Stars sets and I thought it would be cool to have unopened packs with Dewey showing on the top.  This set is so small that it is probably easy to find any card in the set showing on top and I’m glad that someone had done so and was now selling those packs.  I’ll keep these sealed in my collection because I already have both of these cards loose.  I may upgrade them if I ever find them in better shape since these are still the original card that I had from when I was younger and these was nothing good for storing cards these size in back then.

This is a card that I had been chasing for a little while now and when you look at it you can see why.  This is a great looking card that leaves plenty of room for Evans’ beautiful signature.  I have a lot of Dewey autographs including two that I’ve gotten in person and this one is my favorite that I didn’t obtain in person.  I could do without the silver TeamTopps Legends stamp, but that’s about the only downside to this card.

I couple of these cards sold for more than what I wanted to pay.  The strange thing was that I was willing to go a little higher on this card when it was listed, but I ended up not having to.  Sometimes being patient can pay off.  That’s important when you’re collecting on a budget.  If this card never came down to a price that I was comfortable paying, then I just wouldn’t have the card in my collection, but I’m glad that it did.

Technorati Tags: Dwight Evans,Mike Piazza,Paul Pierce,Big Baby

Mail Day: Dribs and Drabs

My eBay purchases have been dwindling as of late.  These days it is just so easy to get cards that I want cheaper elsewhere.  I’ve been buying bunches of cards at .18¢ a pop on Sportlots and have been getting other singles on CheckOutMyCards.com for less money that you’d pay on eBay.  Still, there are still bargains to be found on eBay even with the $3 shipping fee that you’re going to pay most of the time.  Here are some of those bargains.

Dufex!  This 1995 Pinnacle Museum Collection card just had to become a part of my collection.  This is hands down the best parallel set ever.  I never minded getting common Dufex cards, but I’m not a big fan of getting common gold, mini or foil parallels.

Hopefully some card company brings back Dufex technology some day.  It’s much better looking than 99% of what the card companies are currently putting in packs.

Since I wasn’t all that happy with the kiss card that I got in my box of TNA Impact, I decided to see what some of the other ones are going for online.  I saw this one of Roxxi with a cheap price on it and jumped at it.  Roxxi is from this neck of the woods which is cool and I’ve always enjoyed watching her on TNA.  This is card 3 of 75 and is a fun card to add to my collection.

The only good thing about “Big Baby” Glen Davis getting injured is that there’s been a little less interest in his cards.  I won this for .99¢ and the shipping wasn’t bad.  I think it cost $2.50 delivered.  This isn’t the best looking card, but I like what they did with the sticker autograph.

Davis came back for 2 games before spraining his ankle and missing a game.  The Celtics on a whole are battling injuries at the moment.  Pierce will be out for a while, KG is going to miss a couple of games and reports state that Rajon Rondo will not be playing in Saturday’s game against the Raptors.  If this team is healthy once the playoffs start, they can bring championship #18 to Boston.  It looks like staying tough might be easier said than done though.

This is a very nice looking card and the auto is on-card.  The only problem is that Big Baby got a little carried away while signing this card.  It looks like it slipped or he was holding it crooked and he signed outside of the signing area.  It gives it a little bit of character.  Some day I may pick up a better version of this card, but this one is just fine for now.  I’ve got plenty of perfect Davis autographs.

I’m pretty sure that this is the only Ultimate Collection card that I own.  Those packs are way out of my budget and I’m not sure that I would buy them even if I could afford them.  I don’t see the difference between this card and something that you’d get out of the flagship set.  Every single card in packs that cost this much should be something special.  At least number the darn thing.

Here’s another set that I would never purchase any packs of, but there are some nice singles.  Topps refuses to get on-card signatures for its high end releases which can be annoying.  That’s one thing that Upper Deck really has going for them.  Most of the time, they have on-card autos on their high end releases.  Hopefully baseball isn’t full of nothing but sticker autos next year when Topps is the only game in town.

How many variations are there in this Sweet Spot Classic set?  I thought that I was actually getting close to having most of the versions out there, but then they started popping up in slightly faded gold ink.  I’ve also seen a red and blue stitched card that I missed out on.

Checking the Upper Deck site tells me that this was once black ink on this card.  I had forgotten about the fading issues with 2007 Sweet Spot.  Good thing I scanned this card because one day I may no longer be able to see the autograph.

Here’s a different card with faded black ink on a silver stitched baseball.  This one hasn’t bled badly, but the black ink has faded and looks gold.

To answer my previous questions, there are 16 different Dwight Evans autograph cards in the set including 4 1/1s, 4 bat barrels, and 4 glove.  I love the gold and silver ink cards that I have from this set, but these others leave a lot to be desired.  I may just have to forget that they exist and not pick them up for the Dewey player collection.

That’s it for now.  I’ve got a bunch of cards sitting in the CheckOutMyCards warehouse waiting to be shipped to me.  Once I get those shipped to me, there will be a nice sized mail day post for those.

Technorati Tags: Mail Day,Dwight Evans,Glen Davis,Big Baby,Mike Piazza

Mail Day: Rainbow Edition

I’ve got a fever and the only cure is more mail day.  I’m starting this post off with my Mario Chalmers Topps Murad autographed mini framed card…

My Mario Chalmers Murad…

Wait, that’s not a Mario Chalmers card at all.  Since Topps is losing their basketball license after this season, it seems like they haven’t put a lot of effort in getting rookies to sign their sticker sheets.  Because of that, I was sent this Spud Webb (that’s not what his signature reads) autograph card from Topps Signature.  Can you believe that Spud is considered an A List signature?  The card is numbered to 1899 and there are plenty of them available on eBay for one dollar.  This was in exchange for a card whose redemptions were selling for around $10 on eBay.  Equal book value my ass.  (Now can you see why I’m hesitant to send in my Dwayne Wade card to be replaced.)  I would have much rather gotten a non A List card of a Celtics player such as Rajon Rondo or whoever else might be in the set.  With the number of Webb cards that were sent out as replacements, I wonder if Topps even packed any of these out or if they saved them all for replacements.

Even though it is my largest collection, Piazza has kind of taken a back seat lately to other collections where I can get cooler cards at an affordable price.  I can buy 10 – 20 Glen Davis autographs for the cost of one Piazza autograph.  I think my best chance of picking up a Piazza autograph is pulling some other great card and trading it.

This here is a nice Diamond King.  I grew up during the era when the normal Diamond Kings were treated like insert cards long before they became actual insert cards.  You can’t tell all that well from the scan, but the picture in the middle is framed by the die-cut outer frame.  The card looks great in person.

The same seller had these two cards for sale.  The same card with two different colored jersey swatches.  This lot was just over a dollar a card.

Plain jersey cards aren’t all that appealing anymore, but something like this is something interesting to add to my collection.

Here’s the final card that I picked up from that same seller.  1998 Leaf Heading For the Hall numbered to 3500.  It’s a shiny, refractory card and everything red on the card is embossed.  This is another one that looks great in person.

I didn’t pull this card when I opened a box of SP Rookie Edition so I picked one up for my collection.  I’d love this set if you got more than three SP cards in a box.  It makes much more sense to pick up the singles that you want.  This color coordinated card has a refractory border.

Colors, colors, colors.  Here’s a Big Baby Finest Blue Refractor numbered to 199.  I think I just might like the blue better than the red that the regular cards have on them.  Now I just have to find out how many other cards I need in the rainbow.

I’m really not a fan of rookie cards with college jerseys on them.  Isn't that what the Rookie Shoot is for?

Davis put up big numbers at LSU, a lot of them second only to Shaq, but weight and injury concerns caused him to slip in the draft.  He was a steal at 35 in the draft and Danny Ainge was very smart in getting him included in the trade that brought Ray Allen to Boston.

Ebony and Ivory live together in perfect harmony.  While the 2007-08 Topps cards were black, the Chrome cards were… Chrome colored.  Here’s the white version of the Chrome card.  Everything really seems to pop off of this card as scanners really seem to like the grooves around the players.

This card is numbered to 99 and looks great.  I doubt that I’ll ever complete any of these rainbows, especially the ones that include a 1/1, but I’ll get as much of them as I can.

This is the “Wow, I’ve got a filthy and scratched up scanner” part of the post.  This card scanned horribly and showed all of the imperfections on my scanner.  One of these days I’m going to need to get a new one.

This card looks a lot nicer in person than it scans with a black and white picture of Davis ghosted in the background.  The card is numbered out of 1999.

I was very excited when I won this card and since it was through an offer, I didn’t have to deal with the drama of trying to win an auction.

I can’t afford these kinds of cards with any of the other players that I collect so I’ve enjoyed scooping them up for my Big Baby collection.

Dee Brown was the first Celtic that I collected.  I liked him from the moment that he stepped on the court for the Celtics and was thrilled to see him win the Slam Dunk Championship that year.  That led to Brown’s first card being released in a Fleer Basketball Update set.  Back in those days, early sets had no rookies in them.  Series two would have the lottery picks, but many lower picks would be ignored and that was the case with Brown.

Dewey!  2007 Sweet Spot Classic on a bat piece.  This is numbered to 75 which was a great year even if it contained one of the worst World Series travesties ever.

Evans’ catch in Game 6 of the Series should be as famous as Fisk’s home run.  Without that catch, the Fisk shot never happens.  Dewey did color the other day for a Sox game as one of many who are filling in for Jerry Remy as he recovers from Pneumonia related to recovery from Cancer.  Don’t smoke kids!  I’d have to say that he did a good job and I love seeing him back with the team.  This opens the door for the team to retire the correct 24, the one that roamed right field for most of 18 or so seasons.  Not the one that sauntered around left for 8.

This card here just arrived on my doorstep today and I love it.  This is numbered to 24 which is Evans’ jersey number and the silver ink looks great on the black leather.  I think this completes my Dwight Evans 2007 Sweet Spot Classic Memorainbow.  Now I can focus on picking up the cards from some of the other years he was in Sweet Spot sets.

Technorati Tags: Dwight Evans,Dee Brown,Glen Davis,Big Baby,Mike Piazza

Mail Day: Part 1 - Baseball

I tend to go through phases in my collecting preferences.  There are times when I want to bust open a bunch of boxes and then there are times when I get sick of pulling cards that I don’t want to add from my collection from boxes where you have no chance of putting a set together.

Lately, I’ve been shying away from wax boxes and have been picking up a lot of singles on eBay.  I’ve been keeping a decent stream of money coming in from card sales and have been turning that right around by picking up cards of players that I collect.  To lead things off, here’s a card that is already one of my favorites.  2007 Sweet Spot Classic Dwight Evans autographed leather numbered 5/50.

Dwight Evans was my favorite player growing up and I love that he’s included in some of these modern sets.  Topps, Upper Deck and Donruss have all done autograph and relic cards of Dewey in modern day sets.  Evans has a great autograph and it looks beautiful on this card.

I didn’t stop there though.  I also picked up the regular Dwight Evans autograph from 2007 Sweet Spot Classic numbered 7/125.  Another beautiful card with a nice design that includes images of historic Fenway Park.  In my opinion, you can never go wrong with putting Fenway Park on a baseball card.

As far as autographs go, this is the other end of the spectrum.  Clay Buchholz has a horrendous autograph.  I’ve been picking up Buchholz cards ever since I saw his no-hitter in person.  I’d love to get an autograph in person, but the prices that they are charging are absolutely ridiculous.  For now, I’ll settle for this card that I won for $5.50.

After struggling in the majors last season, Buchholz is off to a great start in AAA Pawtucket this season.  The only problem is that he’s got Justin Masterson who is currently replacing Dice-K in the rotation and John Smoltz ahead of him on the depth chart.  I’m hoping that he’ll be up pitching in the majors again soon.

After I purchased my one pack of 2008 Sweet Spot and pulled a Griffey auto bat barrel, I looked online to see what other cards could be pulled from the packs.  I saw a bunch of David Ortiz jersey cards selling for $.99 and thought about getting one, but hesitated.  Then I saw this lot for two of the card.  One of them either has a stitch or snag from production.

Thanks to a post by I am Joe Collector, I decided to look for the 2007 Finest rookie redemption cards of Red Sox hurlers Hideki Okajima and Diasuke Matsuzaka.  I won this Okajima for a whopping $.99.  Card of middle relievers don’t usually command a lot of money, but Okajima is the most popular one that I’ve seen in Boston probably since Rich Garces.  He has exceeded everyone’s expectations since he originally looked to just be a signing to keep Dice-K happy and didn’t come highly touted.  The Sox also didn’t have to pay $51 Million in order to have the right to sign him.  He’s been an incredible bargain so far.

I also picked up the combo card of Dice-K and Okajima for $1.34.  I don’t see how you can beat that.  You definitely can’t pick up either of these cards anywhere in Boston for these prices.  It does make me worry a little about the 2009 Finest redemption cards that I have.  Will those cards be worth a buck two years from now?  Should I sell them for $10 on eBay now while the selling is good?  Will the Nationals rush Strasberg to the majors making some lucky redemption card holders very happy?  Card #10 in both SPx and Finest might end up being very good cards.

From the same seller as the combo card, I won an Old Judge David Ortiz from 2005 Origins Baseball numbered 63/99 for $.99.  I think this card would have turned out a lot nicer if it were done in a framed version similar to Allen & Ginter, Mayo and Murad’s autographed and relic cards.  I like the middle of this card a lot, but I’m not crazy about the border at all.

Here’s another retro themed card that I love.  It’s a 2005 Donruss Throwback Threads Mike Piazza Polo Grounds.  This one is the Strike – Long Fly parallel that is numbered 22/60.  I also have the Strike – Short 3 Base Hit numbered 04/65 and the Hit – Short 2 base hit numbered 31/35.  Jersey number M0J0!!!!!!111!!  These are sharp looking cards that are one of the many reasons why I missed Donruss having a baseball license and hope that they’ll be making baseball cards next season.






Pinnacle put out some very nice small sets using the Dufex technology which I loved.  For some reason, I had never picked up this set which was strange since it included Mike Piazza who I still collect and Juan Gonzalez who I collected when the set was released.  I won the set for a little over $3 which was great.  There are a lot of other great players in the set so if any player collectors out there are reading this and don’t have the card from this set, let me know and we’ll work something out.  I’m always looking to trade.

I forget which card this came with, but I picked up this card for $.99 from a seller that I had already won another card from.  It’s an Atomic Refractor whose design I think is now used on Xfractors.  This card isn’t nearly as rare as Xfractors are, but it’s a nice looking card and it can go with my neglected Juan Gonzalez collection.

Technorati Tags: Mail Day,eBay