Collecting the Durham Bulls: Brad Boxberger

Someone remind me why this guy is on the Bulls?  Brad Boxberger was drafted by the Reds in the first round of the 2009 draft after spending his college career at USC where he was named second team All-American.  After being drafted by the Reds he was traded to the Padres in the Matt Latos deal and then traded again this offseason in the Alex Torres trade landing with the Rays.  Fans initially disappointed in the return of Logan Forsythe need to spend a little bit of time checking out some of the other players involved in the trade.  Like Boxberger. 

Boxberger has appeared for the Padres and pitched quite well.  In 42 games Boxberger has pitched 49.2 innings and recorded 57 strikeouts for an ERA+ of 131.  His WHIP is a little at 1.45, but overall he seems to be a good relief pitcher.  In fact, his Minor League performance has been down right dominating.  In 261 Minor League innings Boxberger has recorded an ERA of 3.48, but has a strikeouts per 9 rate over 12.  His WHIP is right around the 1.20 range for his career.  However, his numbers have actually gotten better in AAA.  Particularly impressive considering he pitched last year in the hitter friendly Pacific Coast League.

In over 100 Triple A appearances Boxberger's ERA is almost a half run lower than his mark in Double and Single A.  His WHIP is nearing 1 and a strikeout per nine rate that jumps to over 13.  This year has been spectacular and Boxberger has been a bright spot for the Bulls in the early going.  In 6.1 innings of work this year Boxberger has struck out 13 while yielding just 5 base runners.  On to the cards.

 
Boxberger was a high draft pick from a high profile college baseball program, so naturally he has a plethora of cool rookie cards.  If you are looking for something in the way of college baseball cards I would suggest looking for one of his Donruss Elite cards.  His Extra Edition card is a sticker autograph, but is pretty inexpensive and fairly easy to find.  He also has a really cool patch card from that set with a USC patch.  However, sellers on Ebay seem insistent on demanding exorbitant prices for the patch card.  COMC?  Funny story.

If you look on the COMC site for Brad Boxberger......

They have never heard of him, maybe. 

Note the seller on this Amazon item of a Donruss Elite Brad Boxberger patch card is COMC.  If I owned my very own card store would I sell cards on a competing website which was charging me commission fees?  I guess maybe I do not understand the COMC business model.  I'm confused.  This is a cool card and the price is not too bad.  Might have to pick this one up. 

Of course Boxberger has some other cards floating around too.  He has a Reds rookie card in 2009 Bowman set which can be found in the signed and unsigned versions.  I like the signed version myself, but to each their own. 

Boxberger can also be found in the Topps Pro Debut set as a Minor Leaguer in the Reds organization.  While his card catalog is not huge yet, I would suspect that Boxberger turns into a solid, if not good, relief pitcher for the Rays and has a bright future pitching in the Majors.  You can pick up his cards now, while they are pretty cheap, or wait until he reaches the Bigs.  All signs point to Brad Boxberger getting there soon than later. 

Collecting the Durham Bulls: Ali Solis

The Bulls have a group of new catchers this seasons which were mainly signed as Minor League free agents including Ali Solis.  The Rays are the catcher's third team in the last three years starting with the Padres, moving on to the Pirates, before settling in with the Rays organization this year.  Solis is basically a career minor league player.  He's shown some pop at times, he had 25 doubles in 87 games in 2012 at Double A San Antonio, but has had a hard time getting on base throughout his career.  His career OBP in over 400 minor league games is just under .300 at .296.  During the first weeks of play in Durham he is following his career line to a t with a .269 batting average and a .296 on base percentage.

Despite being a career minor leaguer with an OPS under .700 Solis has some really cool cards out floating around.  He had several rookie cards in the 2011 card calendar including the Bowman base set and the Topps Heritage set.  

 

The Bowman card has all the usual variations including a cool flag variation which features Solis in front of a giant Mexican flag.  Pretty popular seller on Ebay.  Solis also appears in both the 2012 and 2013 Bowman Draft picks set as a relic card from the Futures Game.  I was shocked to find that out, but he was in the Future's Game and did get a relic card out of the appearance.  

The Solis relic cards are both inexpensive and can generally be found for less than $5 on Ebay or COMC.  While the cards have limited print runs, it appears at times that all 199 copies of this card cycle through Ebay every two months or so.  

More surprisingly than the fact that Solis has relics cards is the fact that he has really cool relic cards.  Really cool cheap relic cards.  I've seen several different copies of Solis jumbo patches, from both the 2012 and 2013 Futures Games Relic Sets, listed on Ebay.  They almost always sell for less than $10 and are a great find for the price.  I have not really seen enough of Solis to really say I am a fan of the journeyman catcher, but I think I speak for Minor League baseball fans everywhere when I say it would be nice to see a few more career Minor Leaguers (with good followings) to get a few more cool cards.  Solis cards sell, so someone really loves Solis from the past, it's just really cool that Topps made a few sweet cards for his fans to track down. 

Amazing Day of Gypsy Queens

I stopped by my favorite local card shop in Raleigh, Big D's Sports Cards, to open up some Gypsy Queen boxes.  Topps released Gypsy Queen this past Wednesday, but with family in town, it took me a few days to make it into the card shop to check out the newest version of this annual popular Topps release.  Jimmy at Big D's picked up a pair of cases of Gypsy Queen.  My two boxes were pretty amazing.  Small details first:

The base set is the typical Gypsy Queen product that Topps has issued over the past several of years with this product.  The base set is 350 with about 50 short printed cards which are generally the high numbered cards and a few singles scattered throughout the set.  The shortest of short prints appears to be the Tanaka card.  I did not pull a copy of the Tanaka rookie card, and out of the boxes that had been opened in the card store, only one copy had been pulled.  The Gypsy Queen set also features it's usual run of minis.  I pulled six black minis and a sepia mini in my two boxes. 

All of the Black Minis are numbered to 199 and the Sepia mini is numbered to 50.  Jimmy also traded a few minis with me and I also picked up a nice copy of the black Stan Musial and the Adam Wainwright.  I will probably try to pick up a few more of the black framed minis of the Cardinals and maybe a few of the Rays. 

On to the good hits.  Each box of Gypsy Queen should have four hits: two autographs and two relics.  I definitely beat the odds with my box.  Here are my autographs from my first box:

Nothing too great there.  KIckham and Hefner might both potentially be Major Leaguers at some point, but they are not probably going to be anything too great.  Kickham did go to Missouri State.  Connection, kind of...  I also was happy to pull a copy of a Bourjos jersey card with a picture of the Cardinals new center fielder in his new jersey. 

Really happy to pull the Bourjos card.  I had seen a few of these floating around this week and was really eager to add one of these to my collection.  Always nice when you can just pull one out of a box.  Now, for my good hits from the first box which more than make up for the fact that I did not get a second relic card. 

This is the first of my two good hits from my first box.  The plate is the mini Cyan of Dodgers right handed pitcher Zach Greinke.  Pretty nice looking card, but I actually landed a nicer card than this one in my box. 

This Shleby Miller Texas flag patch was my favorite card I pulled out of this box.  The card is serial numbered out of 5 and features a cool flag patch of Miller's home state.  Gypsy Queen has done a few insert sets with flags before in the past, but never with patches and never limited to just 5 copies.  Throw in the fact that the card features a Cardinals player and I am extremely happy with this pull.

Now, I did get a second box of cards, and while the first box was really good, the second box was really cool too.  In fact, the Miller card was the highest serial number (out of 5) of any of the extra hits I landed in my two boxes of Gypsy Queen.  So, my first move in opening my second box was to bust open the small box of minis on top of the box.  My second box was a little short on mini because this card was in the box...

 

I have never pulled a button card, so landing this Greinke was really sweet.  The card is limited to just 3 copies.  Just really really cool.  After landing the Greinke I went through the box and pulled my two autographs and my two relic cards.  My autographs were Steve Delbar and Adam Eaton. 

 

Ironically I returned home sorted out my base set cards and minis and witnessed Eaton hitting a home run yesterday against the Indians.  Eaton is now on the White Sox.  My two relics....

 

After pulling the two relics I was really happy with my second box and would have been more than satisfied with two autographs, two relics, and a button card limited to just 3 copies.  However, I managed to pull one more cool hit out of my box...

I am not a huge plate person and I rarely seem to pull them, but two in a day is a personal record for me.  Plus I managed to land two pretty good players with Greinke and Utley.  Overall, my two boxes of Gypsy Queen were pretty incredible.  Four autographs, three relics, a button card, and two printing plates is a pretty good day at the office.  In fact, Big D's had a great weekend with this product.  In addition to my good pulls customers in the store also pulled.  Here are four other customer's hits that Jimmy posted on his Facebook page including a Yogi Berra 1/1, Reggie Jackson 1/1, Puig Printing Plate, Dual autograph of Julio Tehran and Mike Minor, a Minor printing plate, and a jumbo Stanton.   I actually picked up the Porcello patch from Jimmy in the third picture down.  I will post it at some point. 

Collecting the Durham Bulls: Kevin Kiermaier

A few injury issues for the Rays have forced my hand on this post.  Kiermaier was high up on my list of players for this line of posts, but we will go ahead and cross him off the list since he was called up by the Rays Thursday afternoon.  I really like Kiermaier and would love to see him back in Durham, but at the same time, if he just stayed in Tampa the rest of the season I would not complain.  That being said, it was a great day for a Bulls game on Thursday, and I missed seeing Kiermaier in the lineup. 

Back Kiermaier.  The Rays drafted the speedy outfielder from Parkland College in Champaign, Illinois during the 31st Round of the 2010 MLB Draft.  He was actually called up to the Rays at the very end of last season and was actually on the team's initial playoff roster appearing in the American League Wildcard Game as a defensive sub.  Kevin Kiermaier does not appear on the Top 20 Prospects list for the Rays, but I would imagine their is a spot for him somewhere on the roster as a good glove, speedy and smart base runner, and an underrated bat.  He's actually shown a little bit of pop at the beginning of this season which carried over from last season's International League playoffs.

Card wise Kiermaier has a few options out on the market for collectors.  He has not appeared in a Bowman set yet, but has two Topps issued cards both from 2011.  The first is a Topps Pro Debut which uses the base 2011 Topps design, but pictures the players in their minor league uniform.  

 

In this case Kiermaier is a Princeton Ray.  He also has a card in the 2011 Topps Heritage Minor League set and is wearing a Bowling Green Hot Rods jersey on the card.  Kiermaier also has all of the usual team issued cards from the different minor league stops before Durham including Montgomery and Princeton.  

What about something higher end?  Another collector asked me a few days ago when I started this thread about finding nicer cards for some of these players.  The answer is two fold.  First, if they are on the Durham Bulls they have made it to AAA and there is a pretty good chance they will get some big league playing time.  That will result in more cards, more cards, and probably better cards.  Second, is to chase the extremely limited print runs and printing plates of the cards that are available.  For example, Kiermaier's Topps Pro Debut Printing Plate sold last month on Ebay. 

 

I know printing plates can be tricky to find, but if you are patient and are willing to spend roughly $20 it's not totally impossible.  More on this when we get to Vince Belnome. 

Quad Yadi

I am slightly sad to say that this is my first really cool Yadier Molina card of the 2014 calendar year.  Topps did a great job of including the great Cardinals catcher in their 2014 products.  Molina is now entering his 10th year of service time in the Majors, but has rarely appeared in card products outside of base sets and parallels.  Early in Molina's career he had a few nice autographs and a few nice relics, but there have generally been less than 2 or 3 every year after 2007.  This year Molina has appeared in Topps products a both a signer and on relics cards.  Here's a picture of my first Molina:

Find a nice quad relic out of the new Museum set is an excellent way to start off my Molina cards for the year.  The card is limited to just 75 copies.  I have seen a few Museum relics of Molina's floating around with patches, but those have had some pretty spectacular prices.  Hopefully as the year goes on Topps will continue to use Molina in their sets and I will be able to add a few more nice cards to my stack of Molinas.  An autograph would be outstanding. 

The Wizard of Museum Collection

I have been putting up a few Topps Museum cards the past few days, but have mainly focused on the jumbo relics.  I did manage to land a nice Wil Myers autograph, but still had my eye on a couple of other autographs floating around in trade rooms, Twitter, and Ebay.  My favorite Cardinals autograph target was an obvious choice.  Hall of Fame shortstop Ozzie Smith is featured on an awesome card in this year's Topps Museum set.

This is a great looking card and features a nice signature from Ozzie Smith.  The bottom of the autograph on the zz is slightly cut off which netted me a nice discount from the person who was selling this card.  Add in two bat pieces and a print run of only 50 and you've got a winning card.  

Myers Graph

I have posted several Museum jumbo relics over the past few days, but I have also managed to pick up a few autographs from the Topps high product too.  Similar to the relics, the autographs have also trended a little bit lower than some of the other traditional high end Topps products.  I had this Myers autograph scouted out for a few days and was really surprised at how little the price moved leading up to the end of the auction.  I ended being able to pick up the card for less than the jumbo relics. 

The autograph is the usual Wil Myers scrawl which I really think hurts his card values sometimes.  Honestly, I really like Myers and enjoyed watching him play in Durham last year, but feel a little bit squeamish spending money for his end autographs when there does not appear to be much effort put into signing the cards.  It could be why his autographs in high end products, like Museum, have a hard time crossing $20.