Draft 2 - Let's draft!

We are now drafting!  Madding is up first, if a pick is not made within about 2 minutes of the previous pick, then I will use the pick  lists you all sent in!

Please make your pick using the text below the card you want.  Examples: #3 - Saunders, #15 - DeJong.  The closer you can stay to what I have under each card, the easier it is for me to keep up.

A few have notes in the title if I noticed they were serial numbered, or the person who submitted the card had a note they wanted posted.  I decided to go with photos of the cards instead of scans.  On the whole I think they look OK.  Some of the shinier cards photographed very brightly.  They may not all sparkle quite as much in hand as they do in the photos!  For examples of this, see #18 - Oliva and 79 - Cronin.  Also, in some of the shinier cards, you can see a reflection of my hands holding the phone to take the pic.  Sorry!  

Draft order:  The draft will 'snake' each round, and here is the draft list we will be working from.  I will be adding the picks to this as they are made:

Round 1 madding -37 - Edmonds #/70 Mike - 59 - deGrom Crocodile -43 - Smith Laurens -89 - Torres #/25 Nick -18 - Oliva  Chris -34 - Hayes The Diamond King -72 - Tatis gcrl - 26 - Hollandsworth	Round 2 gcrl - 74 - Guerrero The Diamond King - 68 - Marshall Chris - 8 - Schumaker Nick - 42 - Chance Laurens - 5 Bart Crocodile - 29 - Koufax Mike - 65 - Saberhagen madding - 23 - Seager	Round 3 madding -66 - Ellis Mike - 86 - Berra Crocodile -82 Arrigo Laurens -3 Saunders Nick -64 - Hiura Chris -19 - Piazza The Diamond King -31 - Buckner gcrl - 7 - Garvey
Round 4 gcrl - 78 - Nomura The Diamond King - 14 - Evers Chris - 40 - Jefferson Nick - 80 - Rizzo Laurens - 36 - Delgado Crocodile - 77 Bell Mike - 73 - Rizzuto madding - 85 - Astros	Round 5 madding -50 - Mets Mike - 71 - Rizzuto Crocodile -87 Bryant Laurens -79 Cronin Nick -75 - Musial Chris -88 - Griffey The Diamond King -4 - Bregman gcrl - 53 - Thompson	Round 6 gcrl - 69 - Croneworth The Diamond King - 57 - Martinez Chris - 83 - Trae Young Nick - 17 - Ryan Laurens - 62 - Judge Crocodile - 56 Gwynn Mike - 20 - Martínez madding - 33 - Red Sox
Round 7 madding -9 - Bright Mike - 28 - Schoop Crocodile -10 Ripken Laurens -63 Abbott Nick -84 - Piazza Chris -16 - Cobb #/299 The Diamond King -6 - Masterson gcrl - 48 - Carlton	Round 8 gcrl - 61 - Seaver The Diamond King - 81 - Jeter Chris - 15 - DeJong Nick - 46 - Hakari Laurens - 32 - Kent Crocodile - 90 Musial Mike - 35 - Mathews madding - 41 - Crawford	Round 9 madding -11 - Black #/499 Mike - 44 - McGwire Crocodile -21 Ortiz Laurens -2 Zimmer Nick -70 - Abreu Chris -12 - Alexander The Diamond King -24 - Ryu gcrl - 45 - Mejia #/2021

The available cards:

1 - Vargas #/2006	2 - Zimmer (variation)	3 - Saunders	4 - Bregman
5 - Bart	6 - Masterson	7 - Garvey	8 - Schumaker
9 - Bright	10 - Ripken	11 - Black #/499	12 - Alexander
13 - Brown	14 - Evers	15 - Dejong	16 - Cobb #/299
17 - Ryan	18 - Oliva	19 - Piazza	20 - Martinez
21 - Ortiz	22 - Kruk	23 - Seager	24 - Ryu
25 - Smith	26 - Hollandsworth	27 - Beer	28 - Schoop
29 - Koufax	30 - Sosa	31 - Buckner	32 - Kent
33 - Red Sox	34 - Hayes	35 - Mathews	36 - Delgado
37 - Edmonds #/70	38 - Leaders	39 - Burns	40 - Jefferson
41 - Crawford	42 - Chance	43 - Smith	44 - McGwire
45 - Mejia #/2021	46 - Hakarl	47 - Abreu	48 - Carlton
49 - Zidlicky	50 - Mets	51 - Pozo	52 - Snell
53 - Thompson	54 - Russell	55 - Donaldson	56 - Gwynn
57 - Martinez	58 - Bellinger	59 - DeGrom	60 - Henderson
61 - Seaver	62 - Judge	63 - Abbott #/999	64 - Hiura #/50
65 - Saberhagen #/ 1999	66 - Ellis	67 - Indians	68 - Marshall
69 - Croneworth	70 - Abreu	71 - Rizzuto	72 - Tatis
73 - Rizzuto	74 - Guerrero	75 - Musial	76 - Caudill
77 - Bell mini	78 - Nomura	79 - Cronin	80 - Rizzo
81 - Jeter	82 - Arrigo	83 - Young	84 - Piazza
85 - Astros	86 - Berra	87 - Bryant	88 - Griffey
89 - Torres #/25	90 - Musial

Vintage swap

 **Draft update:  All the cards have arrived!  I am busy taking pics and setting up the Draft Post.  An email will go out to the drafters soon with some details.  See you all Sunday!

Bo over at Baseball Cards Come to Life recently inquired about some beat up vintage I had, and here is what he sent me back for it!!

Loads of fan favorites, and some of these are high numbers as well!

And here are some even bigger names!  There are a lot of pitchers batting on cards nowadays (though less now with universal DH!), but not so many back in the 70's.  This Kaat is cool.

Super cool Robinson and Torre.  Robinson was one of the most respectable and underrated greats.  Love him as an Indian, so incongruous.    The pic of Torre is simple, but he looks formidable.

If you don't love Mossi and Boog, you stink.  Strong statement, but I stand by it!

And Bo threw in a nice Frank Thomas RC to add to my collection of cards I will take every copy of.

Thanks a ton Bo!!  Vintage is always welcome at DK!

Black and White? Or Pink?

 **Draft update:  I received the first PWE today!

I hit another card show, with my measly $30.  That's why I am a dime box guy, right?  And I did find a bunch of fun stuff, here's a sampling.

These were from dime boxes and maybe a couple from quarter boxes:

2021 Panini Donruss - Liberty - Frank Thomas 

2021 Topps All-Star Rookie Cup - Kirby Puckett - These are kind of strange with the 87 design, but a slight blue glossy finish.  I kind of like them!

2021 Topps All-Star Rookie Cup - Mike Piazza

2016 Topps Stadium Club - Legends Die-Cuts - Brooks Robinson

2020 Topps Stadium Club Chrome - Vladimir Guerrero Sr. The first of 4 new Stadium Club Chrome legends.  I love them!

2020 Topps Stadium Club Chrome - Dale Murphy

2021 Topps SP Legend Variation - Baba Ruth - nice card, but this one is available for trade

2020 Topps Stadium Club Chrome - Wade Boggs

2020 Topps Stadium Club Chrome - Jose Canseco

Next up is a strange card, but I couldn't pass it up for a dime.

2002-03 Upper Deck UD Superstars - Rookie Review.  2 great guys!  I don't love multi-sport cards.  The design isn't great either.  Other than that, I guess it's ok!

More dimes and quarters, I had a lot of fun.

2020 Topps Chrome Update Series - Pink Wave Refractor David Ortiz - my 3rd or 4th new Ortiz refractor in the last month!

2000 Topps Gold Label - The Treasury - Cal Ripken - Love these!  They look and feel great.  Old inserts are the best.

2021 Topps Chrome Pink Refractor - Yadier Molina

2005 Donruss Throwback Threads - Prince Fielder - I didn't have a single Prince Fielder RC!!  Now I do.

2007 Topps Co-Signers - Daisuke Matsuzaka - I didn't have a single Daisuke Matsuzaka RC!!  Now I do.

2018 Panini National Convention - Rainbow Spokes /49 - Walker Buehler - I'm on the fence on this one.  I like Buehler a lot, but think someone else might like this card more than me.  So if there are any Dodgers fans out there that read here, put in a claim, I might just send it to you.

1997 Donruss Preferred - Mike Piazza

1998 Score - Artist's Proof - Mike Piazza - Back when "Artists Proof" meant something.  Now they are just a fairly common parallel.

2019 Panini Prizm - Fireworks - Prizm - Mookie Betts

1992 Playball U.S.A. Ken Griffey Jr. - Premier Edition - but not??  Promo??

The regular version of this card has different lettering on the upper left of the card and "Premiere Edition 1992" below the player name.  Also, the back has player stats.  The back of my copy looks like this:

Fun and different, I guess. 

One of my favorite dealers had a TON of Albert Pujols.  He said he had recently bought a "Pujols Collection".  It must have been pretty good one, because there were Pujols out the... well Pujols, I guess.  Sorry, that was out of line.  Anyway, I grabbed a few.  But one strange thing I noticed was on these 4 cards.

2019 Panini Leather & Lumber - Slugfest

2019 Panini Diamond Kings - 2002 DK Retro - Blue Framed

2016 Panini Donruss Optic - Back to the Future - Red

2020 Topps Fire - Shattering Stats

These cards are all from years that Prince Albert was on the Angels, but they all feature him as a Cardinal.  Or in the case of the Panini cards, as a St. Louis player.  When I found the Paninis, I thought they were kind of weird, but since they don't have a MLB license, I kind of shrugged it off.  But the Fire card from Topps caught my eye too.  I guess it's probably because the feat the card is documenting, hitting .300 for 10 straight seasons, was accomplished as a Cardinal.

How common is this, making a card of an active player on a team he no longer plays for?

And these last two were the only cards I purchased for more than a quarter.  The McGwire was $2 and the Mattingly was $3.  What do you like better, the Black and White or the Pink???

2021 Panini Donruss - Unleashed - Pink Fireworks
1984 Columbus Clippers Don Mattingly

Another awesome card show!

Card Draft 2 - sign up post

Full up!  All spots have been filled!! 

Here are our drafters:

1. Nick

2. Mike

3. Chris

4. gcrl

5. Crocodile

6. madding

7. Laurens

8. The Diamond King

This post will be the official sign up post.  Please read the plan and rules below carefully and if interested, sign up in the comments!  **For the moment, those who were in the first draft should not sign up for this second draft.  If it goes a couple of days, I may open it up to last times drafters.

The Plan:

There will be a total of 8 drafters in this second draft. 8 including me, of course!  And that means I am looking for 7 more.

Draft day will be Sunday March 20th at 4EST/1PST.  I am trying a weekend this time.  If you know you can't make that, I would ask that you not sign up.  If you think you can, go for it.  If something happens so that you can't make it after the fact, that's OK, I will just need a drafting list.

In order to make this as simple and easy as possible, I want to ask drafters to send cards in for the draft that YOU think would be interesting to other collectors in some way.  That does not mean that they need to be "valuable"!  Also, the newer the card, the better condition they should be in.  If you send a recent card, it should be more or less NM/MT, older cards could be in worse shape the older they are.

The idea here is to have fun.  Expectations that you are going to come out of this with a treasure trove are unrealistic.  That said, send the kinds of cards you would be glad to receive and that are appropriate for a PWE.  Nobody should send Jeter RCs or 1/1 cards.  Conversely, nobody should send a bunch of commons of lesser known players.  As Baseball seems most popular (even with the lockout), I would like to ask that at least 7 of the 9 cards you will send be baseball.

I am planning on adding ~15-20 of my own cards (baseball only for these extras!) to the draft pool (including the 9 I put in as a drafter).  This is basically insurance that if a drafter shorts the rest of the group (like someone sending in all 87 Topps commons), that there are still enough draftable cards.  Honestly, I don't think that will be a problem, but I still plan on that to make everyone comfortable.  Remember, all you are "risking" is 9 cards you aren't emotionally tied to and a stamp.

**note:  Nobody will know which submissions came from which participant.  

The Rules:

1. Sign up in the comments below.  I will need a way to contact you, so if your email is not in your blogger profile, or we have not corresponded before, please email me after commenting.  The first 7 to sign up in the comments will be contacted.  You are not in until I contact you!!!

2. When I contact you, I will send you my mailing address, and at that point, you can send me your 9 card submission. This should be done in a PWE to keep costs down. I will be sending out everyone's selected cards in PWEs as well.

3. If I don't receive your cards by March 19th, you will be dropped and we will draft with fewer players.  I plan on posting all the cards for review on the 19th.  Please try to be prompt and get the cards to me fairly quickly, earlier is always better!

4. Once I have all the cards, I will make a post with the randomized draft order, like I said, I plan on doing this the 19th.  This will be a snake order draft, meaning the last picker of a round will be the first picker of the next round.

If interested, go for it!!!!!

Sheshefski

 Have you ever met someone who pronounces their own name wrong?  Kind of makes you wonder if they have a screw loose or something?  But what if that same person, despite their seeming mental deficiencies, also has an incredibly high skill level in another area of life.

Like, maybe, coaching college basketball?

I have never been a really big Duke guy.  I liked some of their players, didn't like a few too.  Could take them or leave them.  But I have to respect the longevity and excellence of Coach K.  Yeah, he should pronounce his name Kre-zoo-ski or something close to that, but who doesn't have quirks.

I won't go on and blab about all his accomplishments, but they are pretty impressive.  So I was quite happy to poke through my excess basketball cards and find this RC of Coach K. There is a Hoops RC of him too, but I like this one better. 

This man not only can't pronounce his name, he does not look like he has any business being a basketball coach!

OK, I know that Polish names don't really use the same pronunciations that an uneducated American like myself might think they should.  You do you, Coach K.  Be nice to the Poles, Diamond King!!!

I look forward to the coaches last home game tonight.  He deserves most of the accolades he will get.  Should also be interesting to see if he can finish his career with another NCAA title. 

I recently found a RC of Nick Saban, and now Krzyzewski.  What other great college coaches have RCs that I might find in my old common bins?

Nice chaps, Nolan

PSA:  I am planning on putting up another Card Draft sign up post on Sunday. If you are interested, please check back and sign up on the official sign up post! I "think" I am going to specify a day for the draft so that people can plan ahead and only sign up if they know they can make it.  I am also going to open it up to people who weren't in the last draft first, though if it doesn't get filled in a day or two, I will likely let those guys grab a spot.  If you feel like giving feedback, would you prefer a weekday evening or a weekend afternoon for a draft like this?

Looking through a box of cards I found in my garage (that sure makes for a good day!), I came across this Nolan Ryan oddball thing.  Numbered /2500 and with some weird colored foil, I thought it was fun but ultimately didn't have a place in my collection.

Then I found another one.  And another one.  And another one!  I just kept finding them.  Turns out these are 1993 Bleachers - Promos, Spectrafoil version from the East Coast National.  I like to imagine some kid going around asking everyone for their free copy and hoarding them.  Maybe that's it, or maybe the truth is less glamorous, but either way, I now have 16 of them!!

 

Only 2484 to go, I guess.

Odd Couple - Cardinals and Mariners (mostly)

 I know you guys are probably sick of all my "look what I found" posts, but here's another one...

The title of the post is "Odd Couple", and this first card lives up to the billing!

That's Jay and his son, who according to the back of the card, walked into the photo shoot to say goodnight, and got wrangled into being on his first baseball card!  Very cool card.  It's in kind of beat up shape, all four corners are dinged.  I'll find a better copy someday.  I found this one while looking through a box of cards I found in the garage.  Not a lot in there that was any good, except this and the next card.

But what I really meant by "Odd Couple" was that this post seems to be quite heavy on Mariners and Cardinals.  Not a lot in common between those two clubs.  Different leagues, different geographic areas, one an expansion team, the other more tenured.  But two of my favorite teams nonetheless.  See if you can spot the 2 cards from other teams in this post!  However, I am not sure that any Mariners or Cardinals fans really read my blog, so this may go poorly!

Anyway, the second card I found in the garage box was this:

It is a 1999 Pacific - Gold Crown Die-Cuts.  Kind of unassuming card, but it turns out it's worth a few bucks!  Nice to find in a garage box.

And speaking of Griffey, I recently came across these 5 old Griffeys in a dime box.

These 1991 Star 'Diamond' cards say there were 2000 printed sets, so pretty limited for back then.  Not rare or valuable, but fun. The shiny blue one is a 1991 Playball U.S.A., numbered /15000.  And the Star card in the lower right is from 1989.  Rookie year!  Any Griffey RC is a card I would like.

And to finish up the Mariners, how about this awesome Ichiro 2012 Finest refractor!!!!  Now this is the kind of card I don't get a chance at very often with my budget!  Didn't scan awesome, but I love it!

Intermission for non-Mariners and Non-Cardinals!!  Here are two more recent dime box finds:

I love to see the proof that Gwynn still had some hops even late in his career when he was carrying around a few extra pounds.  What an athlete!  And the Gonzalez is awesome, I need more from that funky set.

Back to our regularly scheduled teams, here are some Cardinals!! First up, my first Jack Flaherty RC, a nice Chrome.  Wouldn't mind a couple more, especially if he comes back and plays well.  Maybe a refractor would be nice.

And now, three VERY different cards. 

I found that weird Pujols #d /49 in a fifty cent box.  The other two were in quarter boxes. Good deals! 

Here is the back of the Pujols, it is a 2016 Donruss Test Proof Cyan.  Kind of like a printing plate, as there are Test Proof Black and Test Proof Magenta and so on.  Here is a scan of the back of the card.

M's and C's!!  Now let's get those players back on the field, am I right??