‘I was visiting my brother in Texas and we decided to “relive the glory days” and go through all of his baseball cards.  Since I was from out of town, I couldn’t bring mine along with me; so instead I bought a case of 2011 Allen and Ginter.  It started off pretty well as I pulled a Wood Mini card (1/1) on the very first box.  Things got better when I pulled a State Relic cabinet card of the New England states (includes part of the Green Monster) numbered 29/50.  But, there is no way I would ever have expected the next card.  I have attached a scan of the Manny Pacquiao RED Auto 05/10.  I still had 3 hobby boxes left and realized that everything would be downhill from there, but my goodness – I guess a box of Baseball cards has turned me into a Boxing fan!  Thanks for the Phenomenal case and a great walk down memory lane with my brother.’

WOW!!! What a pull from Allen & Ginter … Thanks for sharing Brian!!!

“I recently purchased a box of Leaf Best of basketball and two 2012 Panini preferred boxes from your shop and I thought I’d let you know that I got a couple of pretty nice cards from them. The leaf box had a 2010-11 SP Authentic Sign of the Times Michael Jordan auto, graded 9 overall with a 10 on card auto, and one of the the preferred boxes had a Kobe Bryant silhouette auto plus a Devin Ebanks prime silhouette auto redemption. Thanks for these awesome boxes and also for the fast postage to Australia. This was my first purchase from you guys and I’ll no doubt grab some more boxes from you in the near future.”

Thanks for sharing, Mate … We are glad your first experience at Dave & Adam’s was a good one!

Cheers!

We hope all of you have enjoyed 2012 Bowman Baseball to date. This year, we added a special Blue Wave wrapper redemption program to Bowman and the first 10K requests (there are multiple requests per person) will receive a special 5-card Blue Wave Refractor pack with a chance for autographs. The initial response has been great and we expect all wrappers that arrive by 5/14 and possibly 5/15 will be handled, but outside of that it is very unlikely we will have any inventory left.

Featuring all of the roster moves, Rookie call-ups, and 2012 MLB All-Star Game action, 2012 Topps Baseball Update Series is the perfect conclusion to a season of collecting.  

LOOK FOR…

§       1 AUTOGRAPH or RELIC per Hobby box!

§       1 AUTOGRAPH  and 2 RELICS per HTA Jumbo box!

Including…

§       Golden Relic Cards – 1 Per HTA box/1 Per Hobby case

§       Presidential Predictors

Check Out this Preview ..

After a trip to the local drive through coffee place I went to work, sorting and organizing, sometimes just putting rows of cards into boxes just to clear an area. Progress was steady, you could start to see the floor. Within hours my card dungeon was upgraded to a respectable room of hobby, a place where you can actually find what you are looking for. Figuring I was done for the night I sat down to relax and watch a hockey game. My beloved Buffalo Sabres weren’t scheduled to skate that night but I felt like taking in some hockey nonetheless. As I sat there scanning the idiot box, something caught the corner of my eye; The wad of cash I took of out of hiding when I was cleaning the card room.  I have a fire proof lock box I keep money and some graded vintage in for safe keeping, but for some reason I took the money out, probably to count it, or to take a picture of myself in front of the mirror with it fanned out like Lil’ Wayne for my Facebook page or something ridiculous like that.

The money was on the side table, but I felt like I stretched my arm a good 5 feet to grab it. When you see unexplained cash lying around you tend to grow super human characteristics like  stretchy arms. As I flipped the bills around, noticing I had an abundance of them, I remembered what I was saving this for; The Cup!

            Upper Deck has this hockey product called The Cup. It is an extremely high grade product (upwards of $400 for a tin of 5 cards) and they are the best looking cards you will ever lay your eyes on. In fact, the cards are so beautiful, patches so disgusting and autographs so crisp; They have to put a cardboard decoy in the tin with the case hit, just so you are aware which card is the best of the lot. I have seen countless tins opened on YouTube and in person and it has been nothing but good things to come out of it. I have always wanted one but couldn’t fathom the idea of laying down a mortgage payment to try my luck. So I saved a little here and saved a little there, forgetting about it in the process, until now.

Before I could talk myself out of it I was in the car heading down to my local card store, practically salivating over the opportunity to finally bust a tin of this stuff. I arrive at the store only to see the guy locking up and getting into his truck, or something that resembled a truck. For a business owner he really knew how to stretch the life out of an old Dodge. I’ve arrived as this guy has been closing up before, so I knew it was almost impossible to get him to open back up. As soon as I said “The Cup”, he couldn’t get back into the store fast enough. I guess if you are going to hand someone $450, an extra minute at work isn’t going to kill them.

I walk over the display that I stared at with admiration so many times before to see 4 tins left. I was hoping for it to be a full 6 tin case so I have a fresh chance at grabbing the case it. The man behind the glass claimed he put six out last week and had these left. To his knowledge, the case hit wasn’t pulled since both of the guys opened in the store. Screw it, I grabbed the first one and paid the man. Tucked it under my arm and headed back out into the wild, making sure I went straight home.

I arrived home and placed the tin on my kitchen table, eager to find out what was inside. Before I did that however, I started acting really strange. I took a shower, brushed my teeth and changed into a business casual outfit. I did my hair and put on a good pair of shoes, going as far as to change the laces because I noticed they were a bit frayed. I went downstairs and locked the door, turned off the outside lights and closed the curtains. I even went as far as to shut off the television and my phone. Wait a minute I thought to myself, what on earth am I doing? It felt like I was preparing for a hot date with this tin of cards. I literally did all of this stuff without event thinking of what I was doing, it had gotten so weird that I had to tell myself just to open the  thing and get it over with.

I attacked it like a man who hasn’t opened a box of cards since ‘08, not even giving the tin a moment to think of what was happening to it. The plastic wrapping was soon on my floor with the cardboard box that housed the tin following quickly after. My heart was racing; I started to sweat a little, only a thin layer of cardboard stood in my way from seeing my own personal glimpse of greatness.

The next minute was all a blur. Before I knew it I was staring down at six cards and shaking hands. What happened? I didn’t even remember what I pulled out of there. After I calmed myself and threw away the packaging, I sat down and recapped my break, sort of like putting the pieces back together after a long night of drinking. Here is what the bounty gave me;

Carey Price Base /249

Cam Neely Base /249

Brayden Schenn Rookie Patch Auto /249

Tomas Tatar Signature Patch /75

Joe Sakic Enshrinements Auto /50

And a Jeff Carter Gold Base.

The thrill was over, the fun was gone, and I don’t even remember it. I should have recorded it with my webcam but I was too busy getting pretty for my date that I lost all sense of reason.

Since then, I have opened a few more tins of The Cup and they were a lot better than my initial experience. Not that my first Cup Tin was a bad thing, but I would’ve liked it to be a little more normal than it was. I just felt weird after opening it, especially since I treated it like a romantic evening at home.

So when you decide to open your first high end box of cards, don’t look at it as a monumental event as I did, it completely takes the fun out of it. Just be yourself, enjoy the experience and relish that fact you are fortunate enough to do such a thing.

Opening a tin of The Cup? Send me a video … I’ve been known to be a hobby box voyeur.

- Card Guy Andy

• ·         Redemption Cards for Bryce Harper’s first Autographed Rookie Card!  This on-card beauty is in the 1984 Topps design.

• ·         Autographed Rookie Cards of pitching phenom Yu Darvish.

• ·         Six-Player Autographed Book Cards.  10 cards and all 1 of 1’s.

• ·         The first-ever “Touched By Greatness” Autographed card.  This oversized card not only features Cal Ripken, Jr.’s signature, but his hand print as well!

• ·         “I said sweep the leg!”…Hobby Box Loaders highlighting autographs from Martin Kove (the Sensei) and Billy Zabak (Johnny) of the Karate Kid.

• ·         Hobby Case Loaders…Find 100 different original Topps player contracts.

• ·         Fifty 1 of 1 Cut Signatures from the most beloved names of the 1980s.

• ·         Frank Robinson Autographed buybacks…88 in all.

• ·         50 redemption cards for a 2012 Topps Archives uncut sheet.

2012 Topps Archives Baseball … WOW!

Luckily for me, I only had two 5000ct. storage boxes of the product to go through, compared to some guys I know that have attics full of the stuff. I even have an Uncle that still steps over a box of them to get to his garage, too lazy to put them away after 22 years.

As expected, I did not find one, but the thought of one still sitting undiscovered in a pack somewhere haunted my every waking hour. So what did I do? Bought two cases on eBay, quite possibly one of the most exciting yet most dumbfounding thing I have ever done as a collector. Sure, we have all made the vow never to dive deep into the 90s wax rabbit hole again, but with any recovering wax addicts, relapses occur. Whenever collecting starts to get a little boring or stressful for me, I revert to a case of 1988 Fleer or box of 1992 Upper Deck just to bring me back to the days of being a poorly dressed 10 year old hanging out at the local card shop spilling his can of 7up on the glass display cases and paying for packs in change.

This time however, I was on a mission. A quest to find what has become one of the most mysterious cards in the hobby world and I was determined to rip all 1,440 packs in those two cases to find one. I waited until a Friday, to be assured I can go constantly without any interruptions like work or sleeping, you know, the things that come secondary to card collecting. I was ready; Fridge full of cold beverages, television tuned to an all night ‘How It’s Made’ marathon on the science channel, my most comfortable sweat pants and a clear table to stack all of the undesirables. This was my night; I was going to find one.

At first it was fun looking through the cards as they were opened. Seeing a fresh faced Roger Clemens, a slightly in-shape Tony Gwynn and a pre-head enlargement Barry Bonds brought back memories of being a kid and sitting on the floor of my parents house opening these same packs my father used to bring home from the beer store for me. What was even cooler was seeing a Jamie Moyer card, and the guy still plays 22 years later! Every time I would catch a corner of a Frank Thomas card I would slowly slide the card on top of it over, hoping to catch a blank name plate, but with each one that had that black ink on it, my spirits slowly faded.

Five hours, four cans of Dr. Pepper and a case of old wax later I started to wilt. My back hurt from slumping over the table, my hands were chalky from the stale gum residue that came off the wax wrappers. I started to question my impulse purchase, almost suggesting to myself that I should just resell the second case and call it a night. I had to convince myself that what was doing was pretty fun; I mean after all, it was, so I decided to keep at it. I went all night, each box becoming less enthusiastic then the last, each pack becoming more disappointing then the previous one. If I had to look at another Tyler Houston rookie card I swear I would flip my table over, but even when I pulled 10 more of them the table stayed upright, too much of a mess to be worth it. Speaking of Tyler Houston, whatever happened to that guy?

Two cases and not a single Frank Thomas Error card, which was to be expected. Like opening any product, you think the case hit will be in your box every time, but deep down inside we know the odds are stacked up against us. I retired to bed at 730am after that marathon rip session, miserable and sore. The worse thing about it was waking up the next morning and seeing 21,600 cards stacked in my living room, I couldn’t even see the TV if I lay down on my couch the towers were stacked so high. I couldn’t help but to laugh, it was such a horrible sight to wake up to. The garbage man was going to kill me.

Weeks go by and I nearly forget about my search for the Frank Thomas error, despite the stacks of cards still obstructing my view of ‘The Deadliest Catch’. On a whim, I typed ‘Frank Thomas Error Card’ into Google to see what I could come up with; maybe I can share my story with fellow collector’s trying to find one. It was only after a few minutes of surfing that I stumbled upon this

Apparently this guy started a thread on a trading card forum about his theory on the Frank Thomas Error card. While looking at an uncut sheet of 1990 Topps cards with the normal Frank Thomas card on it, he figured that since there was an obvious printing malfunction that made this card appear nameless, surely some of the other cards around it had to be affected. Upon reading his post, other collectors looked through their old 1990 Topps cards and noticed that indeed certain connecting cards on the sheet contained missing black ink in their design. Through constant communication and amazing sleuthing they devised that other error cards existed in the same print run of the Frank Thomas Error version, making them just as collectable. Some of the guys even sold them to local dealers or on eBay for upwards to $50 a card. I’ll repeat that, 1990 Topps Baseball cards sold for $50 a card due to the realization on these errors!

I mean, check out this picture. From the cards these guys were finding, they took pictures and replaced the original card image on the uncut sheet with the error card image and tracked the pattern to where the ink didn’t adhere to the printing plate. To imagine people took time out of their lives to actually put something like this together made me extremely hopeful about the hobby world. Check it out:

Take the time to read the whole thread front to back. You will come to an amazing realization that true card collecting still exists in the hearts and minds of some people. This whole undertaking was a true dedication to finding out the truth about a mystery that has lingered around the hobby since the error card was first made public in 1994.

So what do you think you have hidden deep inside your collection? Does this story encourage you to search through the tower of 5000ct storage boxes that is about to fall over in the garage. You could find some of the 1990 Topps black ink misprints, or even better, a Frank Thomas Error card. I guess the message of this story would be that anything could exist out there. Sometimes it just takes a little bit of searching and some dedication to the hobby.

What will you find?

- Card Guy Andy

Nicklas Lidstrom Honorable Numbers Jersey/Auto numbered 2 of 5!

and

Tyler Seguin Jersey/Auto numbered 60 of 99!

Not a bad birthday present at all…Happy Birthday Steve!

2012 Bowman Baseball streets in two days, so be sure to pick it up!  Bowman is all about getting in on the ground floor with tomorrow’s stars and this year’s edition will give collectors a real opportunity to do just that!  2012 Bowman Baseball will feature autographed AFLAC All American cards randomly inserted into hobby boxes.  Collect the very first autographed cards from 11 sequentially numbered subjects who are promising stars!

Look who is on the subject list…

Sonny Gray                        200
Andrew Susac                   210
Jordan Swaggerty            210
Dillon Howard                    225
Gerrit Cole                          225
Stetson Allie                       230
Mathew Purke                  230
Dillon Maples                     230
Austin Hedges                   240
Jose Fernandez                240
Daniel Norris                      240

Get in on the Ground Floor and Uncover Greatness.  Bowman Baseball.  Who is Next?