A 50/50 Proposition

Chris of The Collector blog has a fantastic deal going right now - sign up for a team and you'll get 50 cards of that team for ANY 50 cards from your collection. He collects Red Sox, New Jersey Devils, Green Bay Packers, as well as some specific sets and players. I recommend taking advantage before the deal goes away! 

I know it may be hard to believe, but I took the Twins. Every card shown is new to me! I totally missed out on 1994 Flair. The first time it came out, it was too rich for my blood.

The card backs have awesome full bleed photos.

1997 Topps Finest was released right as I left collecting the first time, so I never bought a pack of these, either/

Filling in some gaps in my collection.

A new to me Mauer!

A new to me Molly! Paul finally got a win against his old team, The Blue Jays, last night. Nice going, coach!

Finally, A new to me Kirby Puckett! I was not expecting to see that. This is Kirby number 412!

Thanks a bunch Chris!

The Breakdown Abides

As a follow up to an earlier trade, I sent Gavin from Baseball Card Breakdown some of my duplicate Kirby Pucketts for his player collection, and he fired back with a great lineup of Twins, and of course tossed in this custom Great Dude of History. The Dude of course was featured in Minnesota filmmakers' Joel and Ethan Coen's "The Big Lebowski."

I've seen stranger things than this custom yearbook photo, but not many with as well-groomed a pushbroom as Mr. Clarke

On to the cards! Mauer dutifully covers up the uninspired Minnesota State Flag, which is just the state seal on a field of blue.  The "Hometown" parallel is a great addition to Mauer Mountain.

Two new 2017 Doziers, including a shiny sepia Chrome refractor!

Gavin is a fine connoisseur of shiny cardboard and his mailer was jam packed with refractors and parallels.

These last four were also serial numbered, to boot! Thanks Gavin! Let's trade again soon.

Quick Stop at the ol Card Shoppe

Hopkins is a small town just on the outskirts of the Twin Cities, with a bustling mainsreet. Now it is essentially a suburb of Minneapolis, and the "downtown" area has a section of several blocks of shops, dining, and entertainment. Among those retail stores is a place called "Ultimate Collectibles" which sells vinyl records, comic books, and sports memorabilia.  

The main attraction for me is a long tall shelf of sealed packs from the 80s and 90s. This oddball set is all Dave Winfield career highlights, I was able to build the whole set with just 5 packs (it's a ten card set).

From the late 80s, Pacific had a run of "Legends" sets - should have posted Wally Moon yesterday, dang!

There were also a number of small complete box sets - this is a 50 card set from 1994 Stadium Club. No Twins in the set, though... Bummer!

From 1992, a really sharp set by Pinnacle showing the year's best rookies.

The backs are great, too!

Lots of fun stuff like Studio, too.

I planned to go in specifically to get more supplies (9 pocket pages and a new binder), but I walked out with a nice variety of packs to rip!

Sometime You COMC What You Want To See

I have the great fortune of living in a metro area that has multiple card shops and monthly card shows. However, even with that great luck, I miss a lot of those monthly shows, and the shops are just far enough away that I only go when I make time to go.

 But the internet is always open!

Thanks also to the internet, I've finally got a list of every Puckett card I need, which meant I knew all of the above were new to me. Never been too confident about those Fleer sets, there are so many of them and they all run together - Exciting Stars, Baseball's Best Sluggers,  League Leaders - at shops and shows, I would just look at them and think... Do I have this one already?

Still burning and churning on collecting all the Fernando Romeros... He's still only in three sets, but because of parallels and variations, I've found less than 20% of his cards

Of course, we can't forget about old friend Kennys Vargas! He was passed up for promotion when Robbie Grossman broke his thumb last week. Mitch Garver instead got his MLB debut last night as he is a little more versatile and can cover a corner outfield spot. In AAA, Byung Ho Park got a start in left field - his first appearance in the outfield since he was nine years old. Vargas will need to really start hitting, or learn how to pitch!

These were all needed - I'm still looking for the die-cut versions of the Donruss preferred cards above

I could have sworn that I've purchased the Miracles patch card before, but I never found it after moving into my house... either I imagined it, or it was somehow left behind!

Last but not least, a new paralell of his first Bowman card, and one of his few official rookie cards (from 2014). I have 167 different Kennys Vargas cards, which is still only good for 38% of his total.

Still on the lookout for his 2015 Topps Series 1 Clear Parallel /10 card. There's a bounty on that card! If you see it I will shower you with cards and $$$

Just One (Hobby) Pack of Topps Chrome

At the Card Shop on Monday, I purchased a hobby pack of Topps Chrome. Happy to get a Twin!

The cards are pretty much the same story as in past years. Shiny, same photos as flagship...

This card is pretty cool looking with a refractor glow on top of the chrome shine.

All of the inserts had a refractor effect added - it wasn't all that interesting on this card...

Future Stars are back again - Giolito was part of the return to Chicago for Adam Eaton. These look nice. Always fun to rip a new pack!

NOW We're Talking!

First card of Bartolo Colon as a Minnesota Twin. Unsurprisingly, it's from Topps Now. Colon is pitching again tonight for the Twins. Keep up the good work, Big Sexy!

There was a time when Colon thought about packing it all in. Really glad he decided to keep going after the Dodgers start. Until the last two starts things were looking bleak. Minnesota is glad to have him in the rotation as they fight for a Wild Card spot. Postseason can be a total crap shoot, so getting in is half the battle!

National Baseball Card Day (Observed)

I had a floating holiday since New Year's Day was on a Sunday - I decided to finally take it today, and of course I took the opportunity to head over to my local card shop. Finding Clemente above was worth the trip alone!

I missed National Baseball Card Day on Saturday, so I decided to celebrate today! The shop had a quarter box with 2017 Archives, Heritage, Stadium Club and Series 2.

I felt like I had purchased a lot of Archives already, but I still managed to find a decent stack of new to me cards.

Not a big Pedroia fan, but that's an instant classic. Series 2 had several fantastic shots as well.

I snuck in one more vintage card in there - this one had about 5 staples in it at some point, which made it very affordable for me!

My first Topps Silk parallel! There was a box of odds and ends with sigs, parallels and relics, ranging from 2 bucks all the way up to 20.

I found this Park pinstripe relic in the same box. Rumor has it that Park and the Twins might be working on a buyout, which would be understandable given his struggles.

I also purchased a pack of Topps Chrome, which netted me this bonus card, so I guess I didn't miss out on NBCD after all! Did anyone pull a Minnesota Twin in their packs? I think Sano was the only guy this year, maybe Joe Mauer was in the checklist too...

Zapped on National Baseball Card Day

Kenny got me good with a surprise zapping. Wrapped in packs of Star Wars and Bowman were some sweet custom made Twins hot packs. I wasn't able to make it to a card shop this weekend, so it was great to be able to open some cards anyway on National Baseball Card Day.

I finally finished logging all of my Twins cards, so I can tell you that you're looking at my 4th unique Travis Harrison card, my 6th J.C. Romero card, 66th Frankie Liriano, and 116th unique Chuck Knoblauch card. It's great to know what I have and what I am still looking to collect!

These 4 were all new to me as well, shocking to me that I still needed an 84 Topps card, but sure enough, I didn't have this Billy Gardner.

I feel like I opened about 100 packs of 2017 Topps, but this Glen Perkins wasn't in any of them!

This black refractor of Miguel Sano is very shiny in person, a really cool card!

Last but not least, Kenny threw in this early 90s gem of Yankees' owner George Steinbrenner hiding in an Iowa corn field during his suspension. Fun Stuff indeed!

Thanks so much Kenny, I am working on getting some return packages out to you and to the other recent generous trade partners!