Hello Old Friend

I have almost lived in the Raleigh-Durham area for ten years.  Just a little short.  I have had the chance to see some really good baseball talent pass through the area during that time, but one of the real standouts was Rays outfield prospect Delmon Young.  You heard me right, Delmon Young.  

Most collectors and baseball fans do not associate Delmon with being quality, but he was the number one overall pick in the 2003 amateur draft and was consistently at or near the top of the Baseball America rankings for much of his minor league career which concluded in Durham with the Bulls.  Delmon played two half seasons in Durham and showed good pop with the bat, but he had some trouble taking pitches.  There was also this episode......

Delmon made it to the Bigs and spent time with the Rays, Twins, Tigers, Phillies, and returned to the Rays last year.  He asked to skip a minor league stop in Durham.  Hmmm.  Despite all that has happened to Delmon over the years I still kind of pull for him.  It's hard to be a really high draft pick and then turn out to be just a serviceable Major League player.  What would have been a good performance out of Delmon?  I am not sure, but sadly I see the same thing happening to Tim Beckham. 

Delmon did make it back to Tampa last summer and still had a few good swings in his bat. 

This spring Delmon is auditioning with the Orioles, but still shows signs of being the same old Delmon.  So far in 42 at-bats Delmon has 0 walks and 10 strikeouts.  Classic Delmon.  I would really love to see Delmon continue his baseball career, but have a feeling we are nearing the end.  Seriously, I am not sure how he can make the team.  

One of the positives that can result from a player not living up to their potential is the inevitable fall in the price of their baseball cards.  Delmon was a high dollar player/prospect from the time he was drafted until 2007ish.  Rookie autographs were often north of $100 and were highly desired and popular.  I did not buy any because it's a $100 card of Delmon Young.  If I had an extra $100 back then perhaps I would have taken the plunge, but I am glad I did not.  

Now, it's fun to sit back some days and pick up Delmon cards from his high end era for a fraction of their value at their peak.  I actually managed to pick up two cheap Delmon cards this months.  One of the cards was purchased for less than $10 and the other was a throw-in to finish a trade.  Ten years ago this would have been $200 most likely.  

I especially like the bottom Bowman Xfractor which is numbered out of just 250.  Really cool card back in the day and I would like to think it's still a pretty cool card.  With the way the hobby works there are plenty of other players whose cards are in the same boat as Delmon.  Brien Taylor and Mark Prior are two names that pop up quickly in my mind, but I am sure every card collector could name a few.  Anybody remember the Joe McEwing craze in 1999? 

Long Lost Project

I was working on putting together a complete set of Skybox Molten Metal Xplosion cards a few months ago, but paused the project after running into a few difficult traders/sellers.  I ran into my giant stack of heavy metal cards the other night and my interest was renewed.  I checked out a few different places looking for a trade or maybe some for sale and was able to find......

I added a grand total of six new Molten Metal Xplosion cards.  My set has now officially crossed the half way point, but it gets better.  I not only found these six Molten Metal cards, I also found another couple lots of cards which will be featured over the next several days. 

Zorilla Tribute

I have been doing well with the Ben "Zorilla" Zobrist cards in recent weeks.  I managed to pick up a cool autograph of the Rays super utility player from the Topps Tribute set.  Love the fact that this year's Tribute cards are on-card autographs again.  Last year, Zobrist was not featured in the regular Tribute set, but was in the World Baseball Classic Tribute set as a sticker autograph.  Here's the new autograph:

The card is quite attractive, but does have one drawback.  The majority of Zobrist autographs in this year's Tribute set turned out a little bit smudgy/streaky.  I have not noticed any other signers in the Tribute set with streaky autographs, but it is a little disappointing to have the autographs not turn out well.  The poor signatures have resulted in the Zobrist cards sitting quite often right around $5.  Not a bad price to pay for the 'graph of a two-time All-Star and one of my favorite former Durham Bulls. 

A Unique Magglio

One of the coolest relic based sets released during the past 5 years was the 2009 Topps Unique set.  There are lots of little patch cards which are easy to find and pretty cheap to buy, but there are also some pretty nice unique and rare pieces too.  There are plenty of pieces from this set which have popped up over the years on sites like Ebay.  The cards are often listed for ridiculous prices and can sit on the site for years.  I have had the opportunity to own a few nice pieces from this set over the past few years.  Although, I traded one of my favorite pieces from former Cardinals pitcher Anthony Reyes. 

I am always on the look out for cards from this set and managed to pick up a really cool piece which is pretty typical of the really nice Topps Unique's hits:

 

I was actually chasing a Jeff Weaver card from this set last week when I ran across this card.  I lost the Weaver card, but this card seemed like a good consolation prize.   I love the giant patch of the number 3 from Magglio's 30 he wore during his time with the White Sox.  I have no idea why the patch is upside down, but there are a bunch of patches like this in the Unique set.  The other odd thing about the Unique set is serial numbering.  There are not 40 patch cards of Magglio, but I believe there are 40 total jumbo cards including both patches and plain pieces of jersey. 

A Kuckleball Closer

There are not too many Cardinals autographs in this year's Topps Heritage set, but one of the autographs really caught my eye.  The autograph belongs to mid 60s Cardinals closer Barney Schultz who was the closer on the 1964 World Championship team.  He threw a knuckleball.

 

Good knuckleballs always seem to give batters fits, but I can imagine it would be quite difficult to chase after a long afternoon of Bob Gibson fastballs.  Schultz broke in with the Cardinals in the late 50s, spent a few years on the Cubs, and finished his career on the Cardinals in 1965.  His best season came in 1964 when he posted an ERA of 1.64 and an ERA+ of 234.  That's 234.  Aroldis Chapman posted an ERA+ of 151 last year.  Kimbrel was over 300.  I was surprised that Schultz appeared in a certified autograph set, but happy to add the card.  

Ozzie Ozzie Ozzie

Topps put some really cool manu cards into the first series of their 2014 cards.  I have already put up a few of the ring cards over the past two months since the launch of this year's Topps flagship dropped in mid-January, but I still was missing out on a copy of one of the Rookie Cup cards.  As a Cardinals/Rays person there are three easy targets in the set for me to add: Longoria, Pujols, and Ozzie Smith.  While Pujols is now an Angel, the cards feature players in their rookie year, so he's a Cardinal on that card.  Ozzie is a Padre on my card for tonight, but it's Ozzie.  Here's the card:

 
The Padres uniform is actually really cool on this card.  Two interesting things about this card.  Topps did a great job of slapping a serial number on these cards.  Most manu cards have been printed sans serial numbers in the past which, in my opinion, has diminished some of their aftermarket value.  Considering Topps does a fantastic job of selling retail blasters with a guaranteed manu card, it's nice to see them distinguish some of the harder to pull Hobby manu cards from the cards they have massed produced.  Next...

The Silver Slugger and Award Manus last year were really thick.  The Rookie Cup cards are in that ballpark in terms of card stock.  Really thick and heavy card.  I am interested to see how some of these really thick card age.  A few years ago when Topps put up Five Star, using thick card stock, there were a lot of problems with the edges of the cards chipping.  Curious to see if these do not become a condition sensitive set in time. 

Jumbo Zorilla Patch

I have not added too many cards from the Topps Triple Threads cards recently.  They've always been some of my favorite cards, the year really does not matter.   I already added a cool autograph of the former Durham Bulls/Tampa Rays super utility player earlier this month and was excited when I saw a cool jumbo patch card coming off at an odd time on a Sunday morning.  Mad shout out to my three year old for waking up at 5:45 on Sundays. 

 

I ended up landing this card for right around $10 which is a sweet price for two pieces of patch from a Rays home uniform.  Most of the patch pieces from the Rays uniform actually have both a white and light blue piece of trim around the patches.  The only letter without a piece of light blue trim is the left side, straight line,  of the letter R.  Pretty nice add.