Crinkly trade and last call!

Last chance to lowball me, lowball offers only accepted until 8PM PST tonight!

Ted at Crinkly Wrappers recently claimed some trade bait from one of my posts and in return, sent me REFRACTORS!!!  Yes, the quest is still alive!

Here are a few...

In addition, he also threw in 5 Wes Welkers!

This one caught my eye.  It be beautiful!  Its also numbered /25.  Wow!  Thanks Ted!.

randcard

I reached in to my big box of cards and pulled out a random dude.  It's Pete!  He obviously comes from refined ancestors, huh?

Don't forget to make your lowball offer for the SPx insert set!  Tomorrow is the last day.

Highest lowball wins!

Behold, the 1999 SPx Star Focus insert complete set!!!  30 cards of 1999's hottest stars.  The scans dont show off the cards in their true look.  They are lighter than the scans show and feature the color photo on the left with a greyscale photo on the right.

The cards are in good shape!!  My scanner is doing a number on me.

So here is the deal.  These cards are 'worth' somewhere around $120 according to my year old Beckett.  I want less than that for them.  I want you to lowball me!  Anyone interested in trading for this set, make me an offer at kmattson2002@yahoo.com.  Comments are nice, but offers on this go to the e-mail address please.

I'll take offers until 8PM PST on Wednesday March 21st.  After that, I'll take whatever offer I consider the best.  Offer me a vintage common, a nice insert card, some refractors or even a WNBA card.  Anything goes!

Oooohhhh!  Big money!  LOL.  I'm off to clean my scanner!

I got two old farts in a draft

Plaschke (AKA Greg) who's sweater happens to be Argyle recently held a card draft that I was happy to take part in.  We each got to draft 30 cards, and I got mucho 'mojo' and other 'sick' cards.  (for the reason I use those lame collecting terms, see this post over at Community Gum)

Even though I got a lot, I decided to only show my 2 favorites from the draft...

A jersey of a HOFer?  Yes please!!

OK, this guy isn't quite a HOFer.  But he is vintage!  He is named Howie!  He is a rookie!  He looks like he is 55 years old!

Actually, Howie was only 24 in this pic.  Strange huh?

Thanks to Greg for a fun draft!

Featured Diamond Kings set of the month - February

Welcome to yet another series inspired by my blog goals for the year!  Every month, I will feature a Diamond Kings set in depth.  Gotta stay true to my roots!

OK, I know its not February anymore, but I had a rough end to last month.  Consider this catch up!  In January, I went old skool and featured the Original 1982 Diamond Kings set.  This time I decided to go the new skool route (relatively) and look at one of the subsets from 2003 Diamond Kings.  The 2003 Diamond Kings set was very different from the original inserts.  First off, it was a complete release, not a subset of the Donruss set.  200 beautiful cards!  Take a look at an example...

Aint it purdy? (oops, this is a framed parallel, but you get the idea)

But this is not the set I'm highlighting.  For that, let's look at the 2003 Diamond Kings Team Timelines insert set.

There are 10 cards in the set and each is serialed out of 1000.  They also came in dual jersey versions serialed out of 100.  The cards themselves are all differently colored, but share the basic design with swirly decoration near each player depiction in an attempt to create a classy look.  The players themselves are in the upper left and lower right of the card, drawn in standard Diamond Kings style.  Here are a few examples.

Most of the cards look great.  Mike Sweeney(below) and a few others might seem odd picks now, but at the time, they made sense.    The one I really don't like is the George Brett.  His head looks too long and his nose looks crunched.  Not a big deal, but every time I look at the card, I notice it.  It's just not George to me.

Here are the rest of the cards in the set!

I got this complete set on Ebay for a steal a couple of years ago.  Its one of my favorite little Diamond Kings sets!

I buy because...

Yesterday I posted a 'Why do I buy?' post where I put up some stuff that I purchased at Saturday's card show that I didn't feel the need to keep.  Well, here is the stuff that I will be keeping!  It's not really different from the non-keeper stuff, at least qualitatively.  But I like it!

Funky Jeter die-cut
Carew Kellogs (my 4th different Carew kellogs!)
Funky (again) Biggio die-cut #d /1000
Eddie Murray oddball - on the back in the small print, it says that the bearer of this card is a 'True Fan'.  I'm a true fan!!!!!
Ozzie Kellogs
1984 Star Yaz - I'd never seen these before.  cool.

Pickup of the day, Sandy Amoros 56 Topps!  Like most everyone, I love this set.  This card is in very nice shape for a 56.  Beautiful!

Why do I buy????

Card show yesterday!!!  In another post, I'll show what I am keeping, but here is a bunch of stuff I bought... that I don't want!  Why, you ask?  Mostly because it was too cheap to pass up, but partly for trading.  So if you see anything you like...

I have no idea what the 'Red Foley' Nolan Ryan is.

Lots of Piazzas in this bunch.

Told ya!

The Gwynn and Hendersons are 2001 Heritage SP's.

Let me know if you want anything!

The Ultimate Carew?

What is the Ultimate Rod Carew?

I've always liked Carew, with his wacky batting stance and preternatural ability to put bat to ball.  His .388 average in 1977 was HUUUUUGE... until George Brett did him one better in 1980.  But it was a foregone conclusion that when I returned to the hobby, I'd chase me some Carew's!

So is this the Ultimate Carew?????

Well, yeah.  It's a 2004 Upper Deck Ultimate Rod Carew #d/675!  And its in MY personal collection!

The Ultimate!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OK, enough hyperbole, while I like the Ultimate line, that can't be the Ultimate Carew can it?

How about this one, also in my personal collection?????

This just happens to be my only 1/1 too.  Pretty nice!?!?  Now I only need the Gold version (/50) and the Platinum (/10).  That's be a sweet little 4 card stack!

But for the Ultimate Carew, I probably need to go outside my collection.  How about something like this:

I'd take that in a heart beat!  It's a sticker auto, but still sweet as Rod's swing.

Naw, none of these are the Ultimate.  The ultimate is the one Topps Carew from his playing days that I don't have.  It might be one of the ugliest Carew cards too, but it is still my Ultimate Carew!

Oh, and if anyone's got one laying around... you know what to do!

feb fractor report

If you read this blog at all the last 2 months, you know I'm collecting refractors this year.  Any refractors!!  This month was brutal for the last 1/2 of it.  I got 0 new refractors in that time.  But the 1st half was awesome!!

Here is the monthly progress report for February!

As of February 29th, I have the following:
389 - Baseball Refractors
17 - Football Refractors
34 - Basketball Refractors

440 total Refractors!  That's 165 this month.

More math...

I have 44% of my goal of 1000 Refractors
I have been accumulating refractors at a pace of  7.33/day (down from 8.87/day in January)
I am on pace for 2677(!?!?) Refractors

As I said last month, "Holy *bleep*fractor*bleep*"!   I am very tempted to go back to my original plan of 2000 refractors this year, but things have got to slow down.  Right?

I hope not!

Huge thanks to all who have helped me along so far, with a special shout-out to Dennis of Too Many Verlanders and Too Many Manninghams fame, who sent this months largest fractor pack, 69 total refractors! Thanks again Dennis!