Road Trip Cards

I spent a few days traveling to the far reaches of northern Michigan for a few days with my in-laws.  There are not a ton of people in Northern Michigan, but there is loads of cool scenery and I dig being in a small town for a change.  It's not like I can walk a few miles from my home in suburban Raleigh and hang out by Lake Huron.  I found a nice picnic bench with this view.....

I also managed to pick up a few cards while I was in Michigan too.  My brother in-law has been collecting cards for awhile now and we had done a little trading back and forth.  I picked up my part of our trades while I was in town.  A few nice Cardinals, a nice Rays autograph, and the last few 1989 minis.  And Ozzie......

A pretty awesome group of cards.  While it is not the most valuable of the cards, I really like the looks of the Wainwright card.  Topps has so many parallels these days it's hard to keep track of them all.  I have a couple other sepia parallels, but they were pack pulls and players I do not collect.  Has a really cool look.  I might have to go out and find a few more Cardinals card like that one.

2014 Topps Series 2- A Few More Thoughts

I opened a jumbo box of 2014 Topps Series 2 a week or so ago at my favorite local card shop Big D's Cards in Raleigh, North Carolina.  I really enjoyed the box and had a few favorite cards that I pulled from the box.  I posted a video, but no scans.  Here's my run down with the scans along with a little something extra:

First off my jumbo box was very Joe Morgan heavy.  Two of my big hits featured the Hall of Fame second baseman.  I pulled this awesome Gold Label insert out of the box.  The card is a duplicate design of the old Gold Label sets from the late 90s, early 2000s.  The card has a metal frame and is numbered out of just 99.  Really cool pull.

My second Morgan card was a copy of his ring card.  I picked up a few of these from Series 1 and was happy to see Topps put them back into Series 2.  There are some really good names in this set that I am going to have to add to my collection.  The biggest two would have to be Mark McGwire and Ozzie Smith.  Although, the Morgan will have to stay considering he was one of the best players in the history of the Durham Bulls.

I was also happy to see Topps continue the 1989 minis set.  I pulled a few of these out of my box including an Albert Pujols and Mark McGwire.  I have the first set in Series 1 almost put together, so the new group of cards will be a good challenge.  Topps also continued over a few other cards from Series 1 with a cool twist:

This Chris Sale card is a Series 1 card that I pulled out of my Series 2 box.  The card was inserted into the packs of Series 2 as a variation with the Sabermetrics stats on the back.  Like this:

I think this is a pretty good variation and they have been pretty popular amongst collectors.  They are pretty affordable too and a little bit easier to spot than the sparkle card variations Topps has been using the last few years.  My other two hit cards from the box:

and this one.....

Which leads me to my bonus item.  There have been a few cards from the Series 2 set which I have been trying really hard to track down.  My biggest challenge has been trying to find some of the jumbo jersey and patch pieces in the set.  Really cool looking cards.  There are jumbo jersey and patch cards of Mark McGwire, Shelby Miller, and a few other Cardinals.  This was my first one I landed.

A few more are going to show up here in the next few weeks.....

Delcious Patch Leftovers

There are not enough posts involving food on my blog.  Wednesday was my first day back at work after a good three weeks off for my school's spring track out.  Love year round school schedule.  Last week, I decided to take an afternoon to soak up the final moments of my break by enjoying some good wings and a few baseball cards.  I was craving some wings and there is no better wings place in the Raleigh-Durham area then Apex Wings.  It's about ten minutes from my house.  Great spot for some good eats. 

My next stop was Big D's Sports Cards.  I did pick up a box and will be happy to share my winnings in the coming days, but until then I will share a cool single card I picked up at my favorite local card shop. 

Jimmy had a great run of pulls from the Gypsy Queen boxes.  One of the boxes opened in the store yielded a really nice Rick Porcello patch card.  It was kind of a cool looking card and caught my attention with the red patch piece on a Tigers card.  Definitely caught my eye and got my mind thinking.  I decided to buy the card from Jimmy and do a little research. 

 

The answer to the Porcello card was pretty easy.  I found a cool picture of the Tigers wearing some cool Detroit Stars uniforms they wore during a Negro League tribute they put on during an Inter-league match with the Pirates.  I'm not quite sure which letter the Porcello patch comes from, but a close look at the picture below shows that the bottom and edges of the lettering matches the patch piece from these uniforms. 

In fact, the patches in Gypsy Queen are really pretty cool cards.  Usually when you pull a relic card out of a pack it's really really hard to tell the exact game or dates that the relic swatch on the card was used.  There are cards that Topps has put into set that are date and game specific.  For example, Topps usually puts together a nice set of relic cards featuring All-Star Game jerseys in their Update set every fall.  Of course, a jersey can make a lot of little swatches and it appears that Topps had some tasty leftovers hanging out somewhere waiting to mix into a nice card set to make some tasty relics for collectors to chase. 

 

Some of the patch pieces in the set appear to be fairly innocent until you start to put the pieces of an individual player together.  Take this Yadi card above for example.  The card looks like a pretty unspectacular piece of red jersey swatch.   Yes, the Cardinals do wear red batting practice jerseys.  Let's start piecing together some more Yadier Molina cards from the Gypsy Queen set....

There are lots of patch cards the set that have little pieces of blue, red, and yellow swatches.  The cards look normal at first glance, but again patching several pieces together show that they really do not seem to fit the usual pattern of Cardinals patches.  The card below looks like a standard piece of the yellow bat piece from a Cardinals jersey.  However, the second piece below is not a standard patch piece from a Cardinals jersey. 

The jersey pieces and patches actually come from the jersey below.  The 2009 National League All-Star jersey.  While the jersey still has the yellow bat going across the front, the white lettering, red trim, and blue patch pieces fit the All-Star jersey to a tee.  Add in the fact that the good people at Topps actually used plenty of other All-Star jerseys in the set....

Only the other cards in the set coming from All-Star Game jerseys are a little bit more obvious than the Molina cards.  There are actually several really nice examples of these cards on the jumbo patches that Topps inserted into the set.  Below is a cool picture of a Chris Sale jumbo patch that came from the 2012 All-Star game in Kansas City.  Note the Royal blue jersey piece on the left hand of the swatch and the dark blue number with the stars on the number.  The Sale jumbo cards with plain blue jersey swatches have been selling for less than $10, but the patch pieces are looking a tad bit steep.  Like three digits, hundred dollar steep. 

and Sale is not even the top of the All-Star Patch heep in this set.  I really like these Big Papi patches in the set which obviously came from the All-Star game in Arizona with the snake skin print on the numbers on the left-hand side of the card.  Surprisingly the Ortiz patch sells for close to the same price as the Sale.  Hmmm.

Anyway, if you have a favorite player or team with patches in the Gypsy Queen set do your homework and see if the patch pieces might actually belong to a cool jersey that can actually be traced back to a specific event or game.