I Just Want To Give It My Best Shot

A quick post about player collecting.  I have given up on it over the past year in the traditional sense over the past year.  Not sure I ever put that in a post.  There was one in the works at one point about it, sure it's my my drafts somewhere.  Sort of felt like revisiting the whole thing after the Canseco super collector retired and started selling off all thousandsomething of his cards.  

I need to revisit that draft badly. 

There are so many different card products these days, with all sort of parallels, and variations.  It's not really possible to go out and track down a large percentage of a player's card checklist the way you could in the 1990s when I first started a few player collections, mainly focused on Ray Lankford.    

I do not own a bunch of Ray Lankford printing plates, and there are several low print run cards that I do not own, but I usually crossed off the overwhelming majority of his cards every calendar year.  

That feels nearly impossible nowadays.  Money being one factor, but also the fact that I do not want to take the time to track down all of the cards.  So, instead I have borrowed one of the cliches from Bull Durham to describe my modified approach to find cards of favorite players.

Of course they're boring, that's the point.  

I like Anthony Banda at the moment.  True, he's on the disabled list and is not coming back until next year.  It's also true that he pitched well for the Durham Bulls and Rays while he was healthy.  Banda has many cards for sale on Ebay.  I have been picking out a nice card here, nice card there.  Really, not bad prices for a decent prospect with some upside.  

So, two new cards to start the weekend.  

This is from Museum Collection.  Love how many different uniforms the Diamondbacks wear.  Earlier in the week I posted an Inception card with a picture of Anthony Banda wearing a purple and green throwback Diamondbacks jersey.  The patch swatch on the card was the dark grey road jersey.  

This card has the purple and green jersey swatches that match the Inception card.  Seems like there could have been some better planning here.  

Always amazed at products that cost more than $200 a box, but the autographs are on a sticker.  That's why I do not buy $200 boxes of cards, just buying your $5 cards of Minor Leaguers.  Just gave it my best shot and I won an Ebay auction for this card.  

This Banda Inception autographed card was a little bit harder to find at a good price.  All I wanted was to own a nice card of a player I enjoy watching.  I just wanted to give it my best shot.  I can't blame collectors for listing cards like this for $30 and $40 considering the cost of the Inception boxes.  I set out to find one copy of this card, the color of the parallel and serial numbering did not really matter.  Just wanted to own a nice card of a player I enjoy watching. 

Even though this copy if numbered to 150 copies, kind of a high number for Inception, it's a great looking card with a nice piece of patch.  Second Banda card in the past two weeks with a huge chunk of jersey patch, those are still sort of cool.