Smooth as silk

A common refrain among collectors is that there hasn’t been enough innovation from the card companies in recent years.  While the 1990s saw the introduction of refractors, relic cards, and certified autographs to the collecting world, we’ve seen very little that’s really unique in the past decade.  It seems that every new card product features [...]

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Ever since I started collecting cards again in 2008, Topps Heritage has been my favorite product to collect.  Sure, you have worse odds of getting a good autograph or relic card than with literally any other baseball card product in existence, but I strongly believe that it is the most fun product with which to [...]

Continue reading about My first box of 2010 Topps Heritage »

So a couple of weeks ago, I was working on organization my collection, and I found a pile of cards that I had forgotten that I owned.  It was a pile of football cards from 2008 Upper Deck Masterpieces.  I bought a retail blaster of Masterpieces football sometime in the fall of 2008.  Since I’m [...]

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Upper Deck Masterpieces rocks.  It’s as simple as that.  And I don’t think that anyone is going to disagree with me.  Masterpieces is universally praised by collectors on a regular basis more than any other sports card product in recent memory.  Whether it’s either of the two Masterpieces baseball sets (2007 – 2008), 2008 Masterpieces [...]

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One of the reasons that I wanted to start blogging again was to show off some of the amazing new Evan Longoria cards that I’ve added to my collection recently.  None of them is more amazing than this one, which I’ve been waiting to show off for more than a week after winning it on [...]

Continue reading about The ULTIMATE prize! »

So if a tree falls down in the forest, but nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?  And if an old card blogger writes a post, and nobody is around to read it … I think you get my drift.  I didn’t think this day would come, but here I am, [...]

Continue reading about A comeback? »

A few people have been asking me about the future of the blog, so it is about time that I officially addressed it.  After a lot of thought and consideration, I’ve decided that my days of blogging are now over.  It was a fun ride while it lasted, but all good things must come to [...]

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I am so happy right now.  My favorite NFL team, the Buffalo Bills, just used their #1 pick to draft the best player from my college alma mater, Penn State, Aaron Maybin!  Maybin was a red-shirt sophomore for PSU last year, and emerged as one of the most dominating players in college football after being [...]

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Today, I went to one of my favorite places in the entire universe, Durham Bulls Athletic Park, for the first time in 2009.  The Bulls were supposed to play the Norfolk Tides, but unfortunately the game was rained out.  But I’m not upset about the rain out, mostly because of an unexpected surprise.  It turned [...]

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Since their amazing run to the 2008 World Series, the Tampa Bay Rays have parted ways with Cliff Floyd, Eric Hinske, Rocco Baldelli, Jonny Gomes, Edwin Jackson, and Trever Miller.  Today, they said goodbye to another member of the 2008 team, Jason Hammel, who was traded to the Colorado Rockies for a promising 21-year old [...]

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So here we are, the night before Opening Day for the 2009 Major League Baseball season.  This is the first Opening Day that I’ve had a blog.  I always make predictions about every new baseball season, and it’s fun to have a public forum for posting my predictions for the first time.  Now, at the [...]

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To all of my readers, I’m sorry for the lack of updates recently.  I’ve been back from vacation for more than a week, but so far my only new post has been a solicitation to get people to join one of my fantasy baseball leagues.  It’s true that I’ve been busy at home and at [...]

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Hey all – I returned from my trip to Florida over the weekend.  I’ll have a post up about my experiences at spring training very soon.  I had a great time, and I wish that I was still on vacation.  In other news, the Fielder’s Choice Blogger Fantasy Baseball League had its draft last night.  [...]

Continue reading about I’m back – and a quick plea for help… »

Vacation time is finally here!  That’s great news for me, but bad news for my readers.  It’s unlikely that I’ll be able to post anything new until at least March 28, when I return home.  Here are my plans:

My wife and I are leaving Friday morning 3/20 to drive from our home in Apex, North [...]

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I know that I am very far behind in posting about recent card trades; if you sent me something in the last month or so and I haven’t posted about it yet, rest assured that you’re on a list and I will be posting about it soon.  But I received something this week that I [...]

Continue reading about A reason to Re-Joyce! »

You can check out Part 1 of my “amazing card acquisitions” here and Part 2 here.
This post has been in draft mode for a while now.  Check out my third amazing acquisition:

Stan Coveleski is a name that is familiar to most baseball fans.  He’s a Hall of Famer, but not many people know much about [...]

Continue reading about Amazing card acquisition – Part 3 (or maybe not so amazing) »

As promised, here’s my follow-up post on my two 2009 Topps Heritage hobby boxes.  You can check out the videos here if you missed them.  First, here’s the breakdown of what I got in each box:
Box 1:

171 base cards (1 – 425)
8 short prints – Carlos Gomez (433), Elijah Dukes (440), Frank Thomas (454), Pirates [...]

Continue reading about More on 2009 Topps Heritage »

As you’ve probably noticed, my posting has been sparse since the beginning of March.  I’ve been very busy at work and at home recently, with very little time left over to devote to collecting, let alone blogging.  This will probably continue at least until the beginning of April.  My schedule is pretty packed for the [...]

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Whew.  It took almost an entire day’s worth of effort, but I finally got all four of the videos from my breaks of two boxes of 2009 Topps Heritage uploaded to YouTube.  Here’s some advice for you – if you ever try uploading a video to YouTube, and the upload just hangs for hours at [...]

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I have some good news – my two hobby boxes of 2009 Topps Heritage finally arrived last night.  But I was exhausted and had a headache, so I went to bed early, and woke up early this morning to bust my boxes on video.  The videos are currently uploading to YouTube, and I’ll share them [...]

Continue reading about My 2008 Topps Heritage set is finally completed »

I think that I might be breaking some news with this, but I’ve been so busy in the last couple of days that I haven’t been able to keep up with many blogs, so maybe this has already been reported.  But I found an interesting tidbit in my email today from Balenac & Abrams, a [...]

Continue reading about The future of Upper Deck basketball »

So I’ve had a link to Sportlots on my sidebar ever since I started this blog, and I’ve also mentioned it to a few people through email or Google Talk conversations.  But I wanted to write a post about it for two reasons.  First, it is a great place to buy cards, particularly if you’re [...]

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So check out what the 2009 Bowman hobby boxes are going to look like:

Yep, that’s David Price pictured on the box and on the packs.  This is just one example of the incredible amount of attention that the Rays have been getting from Topps and Upper Deck recently.  Every product preview that I’ve read on [...]

Continue reading about Amazing amount of hobby love for the Rays »

We all know that the results of spring training games are meaningless, and Thursday’s game between the Rays and the Yankees was no exception.  The Rays only had one regular starter in the lineup (Carl Crawford) and the team more closely resembled the 2008 Durham Bulls than the real Tampa Bay Rays.  And of course, [...]

Continue reading about Ray of the day: Wade Davis »

No, this post isn’t about this kind of card shark:

It’s about the book Card Sharks: How Upper Deck Turned A Child’s Hobby Into A High-Stakes, Billion Dollar Business by Pete Williams, which was published in 1995.  I read about this book on the internet sometime last year (I can’t remember where) and then purchased a [...]

Continue reading about Essential Reading: Card Sharks »

I just found out that I’ll be able to watch the Rays on TV today for the first time this year!  Their spring training game against the Yankees will be on the YES Network, so I can watch it on DirecTV.  Wade Davis will be the starting pitcher for the Rays against Phil Hughes for [...]

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It’s been a while since I’ve given any “shout outs” to other blogs.  There have been a lot of new card blogs lately, and I don’t want anyone to feel left out.  But I was inspired to do some shouting out when Jawdy, who is my favorite YouTube box breaker, a frequent trading partner, and [...]

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I announced the formation of the Fielder’s Choice Blogger Fantasy Baseball League a few weeks ago.  There was a lot of interest in the league, but the league membership is now finalized.  Here are the competitors:
Topps Division:

Carolina Xfractors – Dave from Fielder’s Choice
Urban Achievers – Mike from Achiever Card Blog
Morneau’s Mashers – Dusty from Need [...]

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Check out this amazing oil painting of Evan Longoria, entitled “Unleashed” from artist Justyn Farano:

It was on display at Florida Governor Charlie Crist’s Baseball Dinner at Tropicana Field last night.  The painting was personally autographed by Longoria with “08 ROY”.  This would look absolutely amazing in my living room, but my wife would never go [...]

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When I ordered the Joe DiMaggio set from Dave & Adam’s Card World, I spent enough money to earn two free packs of 2007 Upper Deck Elements with my order.  I wasn’t expecting much from these packs, so I was very surprised when I actually pulled two very nice hits from them.  Check it out:

Not [...]

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As time goes by, I continue to fall further behind in making trades.  I’m posting this to let people know that I haven’t forgotten about them and to motivate myself to get these trade packages shipped within the next couple of days…
I owe packages to the following people:

Topher from Crackin Wax
Greg from Night Owl Cards
Dan [...]

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Here it is.  This is what I referred to yesterday as “quite possibly the most awesome product that I’ve ever opened”.  I was intrigued after reading a couple of posts on Wax Heaven (here and here) about the Joe DiMaggio “cut signature” card from 2008 Playoff Prime Cuts, where Donruss-Playoff cut up certified autograph cards [...]

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So by now, most baseball fans know about 9=8, which was the Rays motivational slogan during their improbable run to the World Series in 2008.  It meant that if nine players played hard for nine innings every night, the Rays would be one of the eight MLB playoff teams.  It seemed far-fetched when Joe Maddon [...]

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So one of my best talents is procrastination.  I bought a hobby box of 2008 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects at a card show before Christmas.  I finally opened it on January 29 and posted my break to YouTube that same day.  Since then, I’ve been putting off writing this post.  I’m finally writing it [...]

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Holy cow – the blog just got its 50,000th hit today!  That really snuck up on me.  It was only a little over two months ago that I celebrated my 25,000th hit.  So I’ve had just as many readers in the last two months as I had in my entire first six months of blogging.  [...]

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