Nice Prize from the Diamond Giveaway!

Hey guys, Drew back here! So far, I've spent a majority of my day reorganizing my room, since it was recently painted. I was able to hang up my Babe Ruth/Yankees photographs that my Pop Popps gave me a while back, as well as a few autographed items I've gotten over the years as well. Once some pictures are framed and hung up in the coming weeks I'll be able to take some pictures or do a tour video of how it looks. Anyway, about a week ago a pretty large box came to me in the mail courtesy of Topps. I knew what it was as soon as I saw it, and was very glad it arrived. I opened it up and saw this inside:

It is indeed the entire 660 card 2011 Topps set, Diamond Anniversary Edition! I'm not quite sure if I ever did complete the set myself, but even if I did, this is still pretty awesome. I happened to dig this up as a prize in the Diamond Dig feature. Besides unlocking various virtual rings, this was without a doubt the best thing that's happened to me on one of these online sites Topps has had the past two years. I doubt I'll open it anytime soon, if ever, because I know what the cards look like. For not a single penny, I was able to add a $50 set to my collection. Not too shabby!

Any of you other guys get lucky on the Topps giveaway sites? See Ya!

Two More Tier One Relics for the Set!

Hey guys, Drew back here! A couple weeks back, I decided it was time to pick up a few more cards for my 2011 Topps Tier One set chase. I did well, only having to pay about $10 for the two, and a very cheap price for the first card!

The first of two happened to be of recent Hall of Fame inductee Roberto Alomar! This card came in dirt cheap, at about a dollar plus shipping charges. I bought both cards from the same seller though, so there was combined shipping, which made it even better. This card is numbered out of 399 and features a piece of his bat, which is pretty cool if I must say. He was a very good player without a doubt, and it's only fair that he was included in the 50 card set.

The second was of future Hall of Famer Albert Pujols! If this guy never has any suspicion of taking PED's in an era in which a good majority of baseball did, he could the best "Natural" player since Mickey Mantle. King Albert has a beautiful swing, a great glove, and an enormous fanbase that loves him to death. I'm certainly a fan of him, but I do kind of wish he stayed in St. Louis for the rest of his career. The money/business side of sports has been really killing the fun and tradition of the games. In a perfect world, Pujols would end his career as a Cardinal; Peyton Manning as a Colt; and Dwight Howard would remain a member of the Orlando Magic (given he does get traded at the deadline). Nonetheless, Pujols has helped given the Cardinals 3 pennants and 2 World Series titles during his tenure, so I don't think they should be too stubborn about his absence. They still have a great team and a very good chance at winning the Central this year. He wasn't the only defending champion, after all.

That will do it for me, but before I go, please check out my Tier One relic page, and if you have one of the cards not pictured, I would absolutely love to hear from you about a possible trade! Leave a comment or shoot me an email to yanks1996wsc@gmail.com! Thanks everyone!

See Ya!

Mail from the Pirates Treasure Room!

Hey guys, Drew back here. Man, do I have a lot of stuff to post. This is about as good of a time to be a baseball card blogger right now, when you literally can hardly see your desk because it's so cluttered with stuff! One of such endless stacks of cardboard happened to come from a blog that is filled with Pittsburgh Pirates treasure! My good buddy Brian from "Pirates Treasure Room" and I hooked up for a pretty solid trade all around! Take a look at some of what I got in my side of the deal:

He kicked off the trade with some really awesome 2012 Topps cards! I haven't bought one single pack of the new Topps. Yeah, I feel like I'm breaking one of the card collecting commandments with that. But I'll get my hands on some eventually. I'll probably have most of the Yankees inserts by then, thanks to all the awesome bloggers sending me them, but that'll be perfectly fine with me! I have to say I love the Walk-offs Concept but the design sucks; I like the Gold Standards for the most part; and the Golden Greats are alright I guess. 

The inserts that shouldn't have ever happened were definitely the Golden Moments cards. For relics, I can see it. But for plain old boring inserts? Nah. Nonetheless I needed a good majority of the 2012 Topps cards he sent over so that was certainly appreciated an awful lot. 

Brian also recognized my Jets collection, and sent over quite a few of them to me! As of what I've seen, 2011 was the year of Bilal Powell overload in football cards. While I like him, I can't see many others liking him all that much. After all, he is a 4th round pick, so it isn't all that intriguing to pull his autograph in practically every other pack. On a second note, I always love some Curtis Martin and Wayne Chrebet stuff, because they were two of the guys that got me into football in the first place!

I absolutely love the heck out of this card! I mean, the diamond/gold subject does tend to get a little old after a while, but nonetheless I still find this to be an awesome looking card of an awesome up and comer in Betances! He showed a few signs at the end of last year when he was called up, so hopefully he has the potential to make the Yankees rotation one day. 

I've been wanting to get a hold of one of these Topps Lineage relics for a while now, and when I saw his Prince Fielder relic in his for trade bin, I had to ask. I'm definitely a big fan of Prince, and although I prefer him in that Brewers uniform, I'll continue to like him even if he steals all Teixeira's All Star votes! These are really cool looking cards though without a doubt. Certainly something new and inventive, which is nice to see in the hobby. 

My favorite card of the trade, however, was this 2009 Panini Certified Darrelle Revis relic numbered out of 99. For a while I thought the future face of the Jets franchise would definitely be Mark Sanchez, but it seems like I guessed wrong! Considering there have been rumors flowing around about whether the Jets should go after Peyton Manning clearly shows the Jets don't believe all that much in the "Sanchise" either. Revis is one of the most talented athletes in the sport without question, and he sure is a talent to watch. Well, you don't see him often because he's never thrown towards by any quarterbacks. I don't blame them, because their completion percentage almost always only goes down when he's on the job. Anyways, the card is numbered out of 99 and I absolutely love the Jet-green relic. That color right there has always been my favorite color.

So, this was certainly an awesome trade. Thanks so much Brian for the all of the great stuff! Everyone please go give his blog a look, he's got some great stuff to show off!

See Ya!

TTM #81- Triple Crown Winner!

Hey guys, Drew back here! Well, it's about to be that time again, in which I spend many hours on the baseball diamond working to become a better player. Our school tryouts are on Monday, and I have to say I'm very worried about the overall ability and future outcome of our team. Our coach is a new guy in town and he doesn't know our talent well enough to be able to fairly cut players. To be honest, I don't think you can judge a player's ability by how they field ground balls on a hard wood floor. But it is what it is. Anyways, about a week ago I received one of the most unexpected TTM successes I've ever gotten back before. My 81st Through the Mail success just so happened to be of a player who did awfully darn well in the big leagues last year. Have a look see:

Behold, an autograph of the 2011 National League Cy Young award winner, Clayton Kershaw! Kershaw is turning into one fine young pitcher, and at the age of only 23, it's almost scary to see his numbers three or four years from now. Considering he was able to top Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Tim Lincecum, and the rest of the National League in wins, strikeouts, and ERA is just unreal. In the last 30 years, the only other pitcher that has done what Kershaw did at his age was Dwight Gooden back in 1985. He is without a doubt a special kid.

This success took roughly 380 days to get back. And no, there was not one typo in that last sentence. I sent it way back on February 7th of last year, to the Dodgers Spring Training complex. Apparently many collectors recently got back from him, so I wasn't alone, which is great to see in our hobby. I'm really happy with how the card came out, even though he doesn't seem to have the greatest of autographs. Can't complain one bit though.

Did any of you guys also hit jackpot with a Kershaw success?

See Ya!

Mail from "Plaschke, Thy Sweater Is Argyle"!

Hey guys, Drew back here! Boy, am I taking my time with this whole "catching up" thing. I've got about 3 trades sitting on desk, along with a few TTM's, and some eBay pickups that haven't even posted yet. Oh well, I'll get to them eventually. First, I want to share my results of a trade I made with Greg from "Plaschke, Thy Sweater Is Argyle". Hopefully I will soon make enough trades with Greg that I will remember how to spell Plaschke without having to go to his blog. Anyways, Greg sent me all sorts of great stuff after I sent over my Russell Martin autograph, which he needed for his Martin collection. Take a look at what I got in return:

First off, Greg sent over a lot of very nice Knicks and Nets cards for my basketball collection! I prefer the Knicks over the Nets, but I am a big fan of Brook Lopez; and former Nets Vince Carter, Jason Kidd, Richard Jefferson, and Devin Harris! A lot of the players were out of my time period in this case, but I recognized most of the names, and its cool to see Celtics coach Doc Rivers on a card as a Knick!

Getting back to my favorite sport, I was also sent a bunch of nice Yankees for my collection! I never saw the Daryl Strawberry and Alfonso Soriano cards before, so I'm glad I was able to finally add them.

There is nothing more exciting than opening packages that contain multiple relics and autographs inside them! Greg sent 5 of which in this package! The first was this awesome 2011 Topps CC Sabathia relic card, which is just a really great card all around. The relic isn't the plain white jazz you always get these days, but instead looks to be a different part of the jersey. I'm not exactly sure where, or if this is even from his Yankees uniform (I'm guessing Brewers), but if anybody has a reasonable guess, please leave it in the comments because I'm very curious to find out where this is from!

I doubt many of you have seen my "Secondary Collections" page, which contains a list of all of the other things I collect, and my current status at achieving Trifectas of as many people that I've met yet. If you can recall, I happened to meet Steve Garvey way back when, and after adding an autograph of his to the collection, I still was in need of a game used relic and a rookie card to complete his trifecta. While I'm still in need of the 1971 Topps Steve Garvey, Greg helped me out by sending over this 2001 SP Authentic "Cooperstown Calling" relic! Unfortunately, Garvey has never gotten a call from Cooperstown, but after looking back at his career statistics, he honestly deserved more of a chance. 

Hey, what do you know? It's a 2005 Just Minors autograph card of Russell Martin! If you remember correctly, I mentioned at the beginning of the post that I traded my Martin autograph in order for this trade to work out. It turned out that Greg is a big Russell Martin Supercollector, and he had duplicates of a rookie autograph of his that he could send over to me in exchange for the one I had, which he needed badly for his collection. I was fine with dealing my autograph, and I'm certainly content with this one here. It's numbered 75  out of 100, and while the design is lacking something in my opinion, the autograph is there which is all that matters. As a side note, I really like Martin's signature; in my opinion its one of the better ones in baseball today.

The final two cards were both of my beloved yet disappointing Jets. First up was this awesome "War Room" prime relic of rookie running back Bilal Powell. I don't know much about Powell, besides the fact that he was the 4th round pick last year and he didn't get much playing time last season. This card is supposedly a patch card, although no other colors are showing. It's also numbered very low, at 9/50! Hopefully he'll pan out someday!

The final card was of everyone's favorite wide receiver who doesn't like to shut up, Santonio Holmes! Holmes has certainly had issues on and off the field during his entire NFL career, but somehow I still love watching him play. If people have a problem with him as a team captain, don't make him a captain then. Other players can fill the roles much better. He has a lot of talent but that doesn't translate into a good leader always. He already signed a lengthy contract with NY prior to last season, so he won't be going anywhere. I love watching him make great catches in clutch moments, and hopefully the best is yet to come! This career is numbered 2/99, out of 2011 Panini Crown Royale!

Thanks so much Greg for the trade! I really appreciate it and I hope to deal with you again! Everyone please go give his blog a look!

See Ya!