Common Cards, Uncommon Photography - Splendid Splinters Edition

As noted in a previous post, getting ready for Collector's Day back in November left me with a full binder full of cards with great photos to re-launch my "Common Cards, Uncommon Photography" series.  So many in fact that I was able to set aside a few groups that fell into "themes."  So without further ado:

"Splendid Splinters" (Part I) - Cards Featuring Broken Bats~!

2011 Topps Ramon Hernandez #233

A beautiful shot.  I love that they got both halves of the bat and the ball in the same picture.

2000 Topps Chili Davis #42

Chili looks like he is about to test that old saying that there's no shivving in baseball.

2007 Upper Deck Carlos Zambrano #283

Amazing timing to catch the bat while it is still in one piece!

2004 Upper Deck Jay Payton #258

I think Jay got just a little bit jammed, seeing as how he has approximately zero arm extension on this swing.

2010 Upper Deck Kyle Phillips #32

A fantastic shot capturing the rare "split the barrel right down the middle" break.

1993 Upper Deck Wes Chamberlain #267

I can't say I've ever seen a broken bat go backwards or towards the dugout, but that sure appears to be what is going on in this picture.

That's all for today, more to come in the next post!

2015 Topps - A Sight For Sore Eyes

I'm guessing many of you already commented on the upcoming Topps baseball release back in August when the cards were first previewed.  However, as I've been away from the blog for a while I only just looked them up today, so I thought I would chip in my 2 cents.

Since returning to card collecting on a regular basis I've found myself growing more and more frustrated by the card designs Topps puts out.  Now don't get me wrong, none of them have been "bad" per se, but they have all been so plain and similar.  I mean, how many times can you put out a set with a white border, silver foil, and little else?

Seriously,

how

many

times

???

Contrast this with another 5-year period in Topps' history:

Now I may not like all of those (I've always hated the 1986 design), but 25-plus years later and I can tell you without hesitation exactly which year those cards are from.  25 years from now I highly doubt I'll be able to say the same about the 2010-2014 Topps issues.  I would be happy to endure the occasional ugly design to get others that are fresh and exciting.

Which is why I was so happy to see the new design for the 2015 set:

Is...is that COLOR??  And colors that change for each team??

Seriously, this made me SO happy.  Thank you Topps for doing something a little different.  And please, MORE of this!!

As far as the other previews of the new set, I am definitely interested to see what the Rainbow Foil parallels look like.  Shiny and colorful are almost always a hit with me, so I could easily envision myself putting together a Brewers team set if they turn out nice.

Of the inserts we know about, I love it when cards and history intersect, so I am most intrigued by the Baseball/History set which combines famous historical events with baseball events that happened on the same day:

The Gallery of Greats set also looks nice.  I am hoping that in person they have a little more of a "painting" feel to them, but it appears in this image that they are just regular photos:

I also love the "Future Stars" rainbow logo pin cards.  I very much hope that a Brewer is included in that set because that card will immediately go onto my want list:

Is it February yet??

Platinum Diamonds - Another Step Forward

This week I hit up what was seemingly the last remaining "you pick" lot on eBay for 2011 Platinum Diamonds and snagged 10 more that I needed.

(Gonna have to do something about that broken scanner, this "taking pictures with my phone" thing isn't gonna cut it.)

That brings me up to 520 out of 990 for the full set.  (Not counting the Hall of Fame SPs....yet....)  Unfortunately it is becoming very clear that finishing this set is going to be a looooong-term project, and also a bit pricey.  To this point I've been able to selectively hit the "pick X number of cards" lots to get just the cards I need at around 30-45 cents per card, however now that we are 3 years removed from this set's debut those eBay listings are few and far between.  It isn't hard to find any individual card I might need, but you usually have to pay more like $1 per card for the single card listings.  There are a couple big lots out there right now but they are the "you're buying the whole lot, take it or leave it" type, and I have too many of the cards in the lot to make it worthwhile.

As always, if any of you out there in the blogosphere have some of the Platinum Diamonds I need, I am willing to trade.  :)

Collector's Day at the Museum

A few weeks ago the Milwaukee Public Museum had their annual "Collector's Day," where regular people get to set up a table and show off whatever they may collect.  It's quite a mix of topics - there are old bicycles, autographs, troll dolls, banana stickers (who knew there were so many???), you name it.  My favorite was the guy who had a huge collection of playing cards of all shapes and sizes, from all kinds of different countries and time periods.  My wife has shown her collection of Civil Defense items a couple times now, and this year for the first time I signed up to show my card collection!

I almost immediately realized I had brought WAY more stuff than I could fit onto one table, so I decided to show off some of my more interesting "hit" cards, my Brewer collection, and some of my favorite and/or most visually grabbing Griffeys.  The 24 karat gold reprint of Griffey's 1989 Fleer rookie card was one of the more popular items with the visitors (thank you Google image search for saving me some time):

The kids seemed to get a kick out of the 1992 Upper Deck Comic Ball hologram that shows Wile E. Coyote trying to trip Griffey:

However, my rare reprint of the "Original Baseball Card" was definitely the highlight for my table. Almost everyone was interested in that one!:

Preparing for Collector's Day also had another huge positive side effect - it finally forced me to spend some time organizing my collection!  I now have 2 giant binders full of nothing but Milwaukee Brewer cards, a binder full of cards for my "Common Card, Uncommon Photography" series, and a couple binders full of miscellaneous star cards, old 1990s inserts, and other random cards I like.  All in all, a great experience!

You May Already Be a Winner! - Contest Results from Last Season

Last spring I did a post for my second annual MLB Prediction Contest, where I asked all of you to pick who would make the playoffs and which players would lead the league in key stats.  I didn't anticipate falling off the face of the blogging Earth shortly thereafter.  But here at The Common (Card) Man, when we say there are going to be prizes for a contest, then dammit, there's gonna be prizes, even if they are months late!

Since I didn't get to do the originally planned mid-season prize, I decided to award prizes to the top 2 finishers for the year. And boy was it a close one! Here are the results:

1. Dhoff - 128 points
2. Greg Zakwin - 127
3.The Diamond King - 119
4. Wilson - 113
5. Coronado2010 - 110
6. gcrl - 109
7. Play at the Plate - 108
8.  (tie) P-Town Tom & Dion's IP Autos Only - 98
10. The Lost Collector - 79
11. Superduperman99 - 75
12. Scott Crawford - 66

For detailed results, pick by pick, click here:

2013 MLB Prediction Contest Results

Dhoff and Greg Zakwin were neck and neck, but it was Dhoff nailing the Wins leader (Max Scherzer) that sealed the deal.  I will be reaching out to you guys about sending some prizes.

While picking the World Series winner wasn't officially part of the contest, everyone entered a pick - not only did no one pick the Red Sox to win it all, not one person even picked them to make the playoffs!  No one said predicting the future is easy!

People were generally more successful picking the playoff teams for the National League, though no one picked Pittsburgh to reach the postseason.  The LA Angels were easily the most disappointing team of the year judging by how heavily they were picked.

For the stats categories, picking Clayton Kershaw in the pitching categories was generally a recipe for success.  The offensive categories were tougher, though you couldn't go too wrong picking Miguel Cabrera.

Thanks to everyone for participating!  I plan on doing it again this year so I hope to see all of you back again!

Newest Addition to the Griffey Collection

I always appreciate quality photography, like on my newest Griffey card - a 1997 Topps Photo Gallery insert:

A perfect shot capturing the classic Griffey home run follow through!  The camera frame corners in gold foil are a nice touch as well.

A Return With Rockin' Robin

2013 was an....interesting...year.  I had several unexpected events come up, some of which pretty much eliminated my card budget, and so I dropped off the blogging map.  The good news is I made it through all the stress of last year, and I'm hoping to pick up where I left off here at the blog (at least on a limited basis).

To that end, I made my first eBay purchase in quite a while and added this cool Robin Yount card to my Brewers collection:

I've really grown to like these patch cards, even if they are "manufactured relics" - I just think a lot of them look cool!  Too bad there isn't a Paul Molitor card to go with it...

I also lucked out on price - I saw most of these listed for $12-$15, but I managed to snag mine for just $7 including shipping.