Winnings from Johnny

 As most of you know, John from Johnny’s Trading Spot holds almost daily giveaways where all you have to do is follow and comment and you are entered. I won on Fridays post, and John like he always does sent a nice pwe filled with what he can find from his trade box that fits into my collection. 

My envelope arrived Thursday night and was filled with Rays, Tigers, and a certain guy I collect who shares my last name. 

I’ve been a huge fan of Brent Honeywell just because he throws a true screwball. I’m glad to see him doing well this year, but am sad that it is with the bat-flipping, showboating, drunk-spending Padre$. The Lowe Diamond King gives me his base and DK Optic cards. I may have the base and DK from the regular Donruss version as well. Next up are a trio of what I think are Atomic Refractors from 2019 Topps Chrome. Daz Cameron was a guy I hoped would do good for Detroit, especially given the fact that he is Mike Cameron's kid, and I figured the bloodlines would do him good, as the elder Cameron hit 4 HRs in a game and was a Gold Glover. Daz didn't do much with Detroit, and is now with Baltimore. The next card has the Atomic Refractor technology, but I believe it is from the Chrome Sapphire product (with the blue being the only difference I believe). Paul DeJong is a guy I collect because we share the same last name, and John usually hooks me up with his cards whenever he can find them. This time, it's his 2021 Topps Blue parallel, and his 2020 Topps Heritage Chrome Purple Refractor. Thanks for the great cards, John.

I haven't really been adding complete sets to my complete Topps project lately, but I have been inputting cards into my TCDB collection. I passed the 20,000 card mark, and all my Topps cards from NL teams are entered. I have also got them input from my favorite player, rookie card, sunset card, highlights, and special card binders. Currently, I am working on inputing all of my Detroit Tigers (even non-Topps) cards. I've finished the cards from 1951-1994, and will work on the 1995 sets once I post this.  I'll do the same thing with the Rays once the Tigers are finished, and after the Rays, I'll work on Topps sets from the AL teams, and then generate my Topps needs lists. Then input all my non-Topps cards from NL and AL teams, special binders, and then start to pull the trigger on some TCDB trades. Probably a year or so down the road, though. 

I decided to search for a cheap Topps complete set, and I figured 2007 might be cheap, and they were a little higher than what I expected on the first couple of Google pages (75-100 bucks), but a few pages down, I found a site that might be a nice one to search through every once in a while. Goodwill Finds seems like it is a centralized Goodwill selling site that ships from Colorado. I found a 2004 Topps set for 29.99, what looks like a complete 1991 Topps set for 16.00, and a binder that had pictures of 1993 Topps cards in numerical order for 26 bucks. I think it may contain the Jeter rookie, and even if not, I need many cards from that set to complete it, so it's a win in my book. There was a 2007 Topps set I might pull the trigger on in a few weeks when I get an inventory bonus, and what I really wanted to get my hands on was a lot of 3 binders that was 100 dollars. I think it's a tad high of a price, and didn't have everything I wanted, but for a guy looking to sell cards to fund other ones, it might be a good buy. It had what looked to be complete 2003 Topps and Upper Deck sets in binders, and what looked to be a complete 2001 Topps set in binders. The 2001 Topps set would've had an Ichiro Suzuki rookie as one of the final cards in the set, but the listing only showed a few pages of the binder. I could've used many cards from the 2001 and 2003 Topps sets, but I didn't need the 2003 UD stuff, and I just don't have 100 bucks to spend on cards on a whim. All of this and the fact I already had the Ichiro '01 Topps led me to pass on it. If you decide to jump on the lot and have cards from the '01 and '03 Topps sets that you don't need, please let me know and I'll try to trade something for them. 

I'll let you know how the shipping is and if the sets I purchased were indeed complete sets. You do have to wade through some junk, but I think I found some good stuff.

Thanks for checking out my latest post.

-Jeremy

Unexpected Incoming cards

 The last few days have brought in some incoming cards, with all of them being pretty unexpexted. I went to Target on Saturday after work with my wife and son, and got a hanging pack of Pinnacle Prizm. Not unexpected, but I was kind of expecting to see more baseball on the shelf but that was the only thing besides yucky stuff like basketball, football, and Allen & Ginter. The pack yielded some pretty good cards. 

The Franco and Arozarena are nice adds to my Rays binder. One day a few months down the road hopefully, I’ll put all my loose Rays cards in binders and it will look nice. The Rodriguez parallel is the 2nd Panini Rodriguez rookie parallel I’ve got in the past few months. Not saying much with the amount of products and parallels out nowdays, but I’ll take it. 2 others cards not pictured will be going out in trade packages. 

Speaking of trade packages, when I got home, I had a package from Dennis of Too Many Verlanders sitting in my mailbox. I sent him a few Michigan guys and a card of the namesake of the blog, and he quickly returned fire with a bunch of cool cards he had been saving for me. 

Dewon Brazton was a top draft pick for the Rays who never turned out. I probably saw him pitch for the Rays and got him to sign a 2002 Donruss Originals card during Rays fanfest during the early 2000s. Niemann put together a string of good seasons for the Rays before getting injured. He was friendly to the fans too, as I remember getting him to sign cards a few times. I had hopes Desmond Jennings and Carl Crawford would form a 1-2 punch with speed in the Rays lineup, but Crawford left for the Red Sox and Jennings only lasted a few years. The rest of this picture is fairly well known guys, with a nice Players Weekend patch of Longoria. 

Dennis helped me with the 2022 Heritage set with the main portion of this pic. If you know me, the last time I purchased a pack of Gypsy Queen was like 2012, so the only way I get any of the set is from shows, card shops, or trades like this. The last card is a sweet dual patch card of Jacob Nix, who shares a last name with my wife before she married me. Thanks for the great package of cards, Dennis! Hope you enjoy the ones I sent you. 

Sunday after church, we stopped a Big Lots, and found some packs of 2022 and 2023 Topps, as well as a blaster of 2021 Topps Big League. I chose the blaster because the regular Topps packs would’ve been 90% doubles. 

I pulled some great Rays cards, featuring the main moments of the 2020 postseason run (somehow Arozarena was missing from this set). The purple box card was Mike Trout, who I may already have got from the other blaster I got about a year ago. It’s either Harper or another Trout. I’ll have to check tomorrow, but if it is a double and anyone wants it, it’s up for trade. I like the highlights cards, but wish it would show a picture from the actual moment for some of them. 

Wish I wouldn’t have pulled that Dodgers highlight, but the Rays will always be the 2020 World Champions to me. Nothing really earth shattering with the parallels, but I figured I would post them in case anyone wants them. 

Today when I got home from work, I checked the mail and found an envelope from John of Johnny’s Trading Spot fame. 

John sent some very cool cards. I’ll start off first with Austin Meadows. He could rake with the Rays and I believe he still can and I wish him the best as he is recovering from anxiety and mental health issues. I have high hopes for Josh Lowe, and hope he can start hitting and getting more playing time with Tampa. I got a number of 2022 Ben Baller cards, and even though I don’t like high end products, I do think they are nice looking cards. The Yandy Diaz card looks like it could be a Gold Rainbow parallel, but I thought the back identified those cards, and this one doesn’t. I’ve been doing a bunch of logging cards in on TCDB and I tell you what, the pictures help a bunch. More on that later. The final card is a 2018 Topps Chrome Future Star of Paul DeJong, who I hope starts hitting again. MLB needs as many DeJongs as they can get, as Chase DeJong keeps getting cups of coffee but not many cards the past few years. Thanks for the cards, John!  I’ve got a stack for you that I’m starting. 

I am off tomorrow, and should spend most of it putting these new cards into my loose card boxes and entering favorite player cards into TCDB. Im going alphabetically, and am up to Quinton McCracken. Some of these current players are tough as every set has 500 parallels and it makes it a little difficult going through lists and finding the card you need to click on. We’ll see how many players I can get done tomorrow. David Ortiz is going to be a beast but I’ll keep plugging through. Once the favorite guys are done, I’ll probably get back to doing the Topps team cards, finishing off the AL. 

Thanks for checking out my latest post. 

-Jeremy

2023 Rays Opening Day game

 Ever since going to a Rays game in 2018 and seeing how they celebrated the teams 20th anniversary (even inviting back players from the 1998 team), I have wanted to to go to a game in 2023. I have followed the Rays since they became a team in 1996, and went to about 3 games in 1998, and probably 50 or so games since then. 

I ended up getting tickets to Opening Day this year, and had high hopes that the entire 1998 Opening Day team would be back. 

The Rays raised their Wild Card banner, and that was cool to see. I’ve seen a number of places making fun of it, but why did nobody make fun of the Bankee$ for having a banner after losing the Wild Card Game to the Red Sox 2 years back?  People love to hate the Rays, but if they can stay healthy this year, they could pull a Phillies this year or a ‘19 Nationals and ride a hot streak to a title. 

On the way in Kyler saw Raymond and DJ Kitty. 

He got a picture with DJ Kitty, and got Raymond to sign the picture of the two of them from 2 seasons ago. You can kind of see Raymond signing it in the background. Later in the game, the pair were in the centerfield stands, and Kyler went over and got DJ Kitty to sign a '22 Topps custom I made and Raymond to sign his '21 Topps Opening Day jersey card. I still have like 15 cards of Raymond, and hopefully over the next few years I will knock them all off, maybe 1-2 per game. 

After getting into the ballpark, there was a guy on stilts, and Ky got his picture with him and got a fist bump. 

Me, Karen, and Kyler in our seats. 

Shane McClanahan warming up. While I applaud the Rays brass on having them wear the '98 unis, I was really disappointed that it was about the only lengths they went to that honored the original team during the game. While they had guys like Quinton McCracken and others come back during the 2018 season, they didn't have any show up at the Opening Day game, even when their closer from that team, Roberto Hernandez, lives just a few miles away. You can't celebrate a 25th anniversary without honoring the history of the original team. 

Kyler was playing on my phone in the car on the way up, and I forgot he had it, so I didn't get very many pictures at the game because Karen had it and still had to do some work stuff with it. We still got some nice picutres. I had wanted to take a picture of the first pitch, but Karen and Kyler had left to go get food by then. Former Ray James Shields threw the first pitch. He wasn't even drafted until 2002, but I guess since he won the first World Series game for the Rays it was a good call. 

As far as autographs, I got Raymond on the jersey card and a team issued card from 1997 or 1998 which I think is his rookie card. Next is the DJ Kitty custom, and 2 customs I made of Rays reliever Ryan Thompson. A few weeks before, MLB Trade Rumors had a chat with him. It worked out that I've taken lunch during a number of them, including ones with Thompson, former Cub/Met pitcher, and Cubs GM Ed Lynch, former Tigers/Yankee$ pitcher Humberto Sanchez, and Indians 2B Jason Kipnis. During Ryan's chat, somebody asked him if he knew if he was getting any baseball cards and why he wasn't on any. Ryan said he didn't know and wish he had some. I made all of the missing Topps cards (2020 Update, 2021, 2022, and 2023), a few days before the game and started printing them out. I had planned to make 1 of each for myself and give Ryan a few copies, but of course my printer ran low on color ink and made the gems you see above. I got basically 1 useable copy of each and 1 bad copy of the 2023 and 2022 cards. I put the good versions in a penny sleeve and wrote the card year and my blog URL on the backs, and put the other 2 copies of the cards for myself next to them and got them in my box to take to the game. With just a few minutes before the game to start, Ryan comes out to the bullpen and started to throw a few handfulls of gum to the crowd. I went up and he saw my cards, and motioned for me to come after he got done with the gum. It was pretty loud (and I am famous for mumbling), and I told him that I heard he needed some cards from the MLB Trade Rumors chat so I made him some and that the ones in the sleeve were for him. He took the 4 cards for him in the penny sleeve, took the top one (2023 Topps) out of the sleeve and signs it, and then took my version of the 2023 Topps card and signed it. I started to take the last card for me back, and he says 'you still have one more' like he wanted to sign it, and I said something like 'no, those are for you', and then I think he got what I was saying, and he said thanks and went back to the bullpen. I think he ended up with the 2020 Update, 2021 Topps, and 2022 Topps for him, as well as the dying ink version of the 2022 Topps that I was going to keep. I got both versions of the 2023 Topps custom after all was said and done. I hope he enjoys them. I'm not sure if the game had started or not when he signed, because when I got back to my seat, I looked, and at least 1 pitch had went by. 

The game was pretty good, but it was bad timing a few times. I took Kyler to meet Raymond, and Jose Siri hit a HR. I guess the jumbotron showed our seats when me and Kyler were gone, so Karen got on it at least. We left the game in the 7th, and were just out of the tunnel when Manuel Margot made an amazing catch in RF which we would've got a good view of. We did have some nice luck, though.

 Some people behind us found a ball under their seats (maybe one hit under there during BP), and they gave it to Kyler. Kyler was starting to get tired, so with Miguel Cabrera coming up in the 7th, I asked if we could leave after Miggy hit, and Karen and Kyler agreed. We stayed, and watched him hit a double, so we'll always be able to say we saw him play in person and hit a double. 

After we got home, I found the prize from Johnny's Trading Spot in the mailbox. Remember those Bowman Julio Rodriguez's he mentioned in my last post? Well, he sent me a few along with some cool Rays cards from the latest 2 Chronicles sets. I have always been a Brent Honeywell fan. He is one of the few pitchers nowdays with a true screwball, and I figured he would've been a mainstay in the Rays rotation by now. A few Shane Baz rookies, a Vidal Brujan rookie, and those Julio Rodriguez Bowman's. Thanks, John. Perhaps I'll make it my way to your place before June and have some more stuff for you. We'll see how our schedules are. 

It was a fun Opening Day. Only way that would've made it better was if the Yankee$ would've lost and the Tigers could've also won. 

Thanks for checking out my latest post.

-Jeremy

A repack and a first year Bowman Julio Rodriguez

 So a couple of weeks ago my wife’s van got stolen. Long story short, a group of 7 people drove 2 cars from Apopka to Deltona, robbed a bank, drove to DeLand, one of the cars broke down, they stole ours and abandoned the other 2 cars, attempted to rob a store in DeLand, and drove back to Apopka where they abandoned our car. They are still at large, our car ended up being totaled, and now we have a newer car, but 5 extra years of payments. Not the best outcome, but at least the car is a little newer and this mess is finally done. It probably means I have to be a little more selective with card purchases as the payment is a tad higher. 

I wasn’t expecting to get any cards yesterday when we went to Target, but my mother in law was taking Kyler out to dinner, and they went to Walgreens after, and she got me a repack. It had like 100 cards and a pack of ‘89 Score. 

The cards were mostly what I expected, a bunch of junk wax, most of what I already had, but there were a few fun cards, like the All-Star Game stamp 2017 Topps Rob Segedin and the ‘93 Upper Deck Zane Smith with the throwback uni. 

The Mike Thurman card was from a Classic set I had never heard of. I pulled 2 ‘89 Topps Shawn Hillegas cards. Classic repack. 

The Blue Jays hologram was a nice surprise. One day I am going to take all of my stickers/holograms of team logos and put them on my binders on the fronts. The Hershiser might be a new one, and the last card was actually a Steve Young football card. Anybody know who I contact to get a replacement baseball card for it?

The real highlight of the pack was a Julio Rodriguez first year Bowman. Didn’t think I would see it in a repack, but you can one good cards in them. 

I know he’s popular and this card is going to be worth a ton with all of the Homers he’s hit and the ROY award last year, but I’m keeping it in my collection right now and maybe getting it graded. 

While the repack didn’t have much firepower, there were some fun cards and new ones for my collection, so it’s a win in my book. Especially if retail cards are out of the picture for a little bit. 

Thursday we’ll be going to the Rays game and I’m sure I’ll have a post about it when we get back. 

Thanks for taking the time to read my latest post. 

-Jeremy

Can't stop giving Topps my $$$

 So I got sucked into the trap of getting more cards today. Probably cards I didn’t need, seeing as I plan on purchasing the complete 2023 Topps complete set whenever it is released. Jim from Downingtown commented on my last post something to the effect of me enabling Topps to continue doing things I don’t like by buying from them and flippers. I guess I don’t have the right to complain, and I will try to tone it down until I can curb my penchant for buying new product. 

This latest purchase was 2 hanging packs of 2023 Topps from Target. Karen picked them out as she went there after joining me for my lunch break, and I met up with her after I got off an hour or so after coming back from lunch. Apparently those were the last 2 hanging packs of 2023 Topps as I checked out the card aisle before finding her. The aisle was stocked pretty well with 2022 Allen/Ginter, Stadium Club, Mozaic, and a few random other products. I would've probably picked a Panini product if I had been shopping myself, but as always, Karen always is a good picker with the cards as we shall see later.

The collation wasn't good with the 2 hanging packs, with a few pairs of doubles, and combined with some of the '23 cards I've purchased earlier this year, I think it's time to switch to a new product as I've pulled triples of 1 or 2. 

I did pretty good with the Tigers. Pulled a Harold Castro, 2 Rony Garcia's and 2 Austin Meadows's. The Yandy Diaz is a new Ray, and I will take it and the Tigers I pulled with me to Opening Day in 12 days in hopes of getting them signed. The Max Scherzer is my first look at one of those new Aces inserts, and it reminds me of a printing plate with the shape and the silver color. I don't know if these cards come as printing plates, but if they do, I'm sure there wouldn't be too much of a difference.

Here's where the Karen luck showed up (besides for all of the Tigers and the Ray). I pulled a few promising rookies in Cade Cavali, Audley Rutschman, and that Peraza guy for the Bankee$, but the one that jumped out to me when I pulled it was an autographed 1988 Topps insert of Tyler Freeman. He's not the biggest name, but I beat the flippers as the pack was clearly searched (as you unfortunately can expect from any kind of retail pack). 

I've almost finished pulling out all of my current Rays and Tigers from binders to bring to the game in a week or so. It's been a little bit tricky as I expect the team to do something special involving the 1998 team for the 25th anniversary that afternoon, and you never know who will show up. I have a hunch that Wilson Alvarez (who threw the first pitch in their first game), maybe Fred McGriff (a new Hall of Famer and Tampa native), and maybe Wade Boggs (another Tampa native) will show up and throw a first pitch. Other people could be Larry Rothschild (their first manager), and Florida governor Ron DeSantis (who I will boo mercilessly). I hope to get some autographs and maybe make some memories of doing so with Kyler. We have seats by the bullpen, so I've stocked up my box with Rays relievers, and hopefully we'll get lucky. 

I'm glad that Karen can pick such good boxes and I've got some 2023 cards to bring to the Rays game on the 30th. Even if I can't stop giving Topps my money.

Thanks for checking out my latest post.

-Jeremy

What about the kids, Topps?

 I was reading about Corbin Carroll’s extension and decided to see if he had a card in 2022 Topps. He didn’t, but when I was googling it, I stumbled upon a sell sheet for 2023 Topps Big League. Apparently they skipped the 2022 version. 

It was my understanding that the Big League set was a kid-targeted set. With the news on the sell sheet, Topps may claim that the set is for kids, but this set, along with the news that Opening Day is being shelved proves that it doesn’t. If you don’t want to look at the sell sheet, I’ll cut to the chase. 

The base set is broken down into tiers, 200 ‘common’ cards, 50 ‘uncommon’ foil cards coming at 1 per pack, 25 ‘rare’ blue foil cards falling at 1 in 18 packs, 25 ‘super rare’ red foil cards which are 1 in 90 packs, and 10 ‘legendary rare’ gold foil cards which fall 1 per case, which is 1 in 360 packs. 

I do applaud the company for putting mascots in as inserts (1 in 9 packs), but how do you make 10 cards in the set fall 1 in 360 packs and call it a ‘kids set’?!!  If Kyler wanted to put this set together, let’s imagine the blue and red cards don’t exist. Maybe a box or two and I can pull most of the foil cards. I’m either going to have to buy 10 cases, and have perfect collation in order to complete the set, or spend 20-50 bucks (I’m estimating) for 10 cards in order to complete the set. Not kid (or parent or low-budget collector) friendly!!!  I’m assuming since they are legends that I might not have Rays I have to chase from those 10 cards, but half a chance that one may be a Tiger. You can count this as another blow to team collectors as well. How do you basically put SSP’s in a kids set?!!!  I don’t mind if there are super rare parallels, but don’t put the case hit as a card in the regular set!!! Nobody is going to have the patience to build a set of you keep doing this, especially to the bottom rung sets. I swear if you don’t leave flagship alone and start putting SPs as part of the regular set, I’m done. This set is a kick in the gonads to kids who need a cheap product that they can spend money on that has a good number of players to get them familiar with them and no SPs so they can try to complete the set. It’s a kick in the gonads to team collectors because of the case hit cards and mid tier SPs have a good chance of knocking 15-20 teams out and people who collect those teams will either have to pony up the dough and get the cards they need  from flippers, or just have another uncompleted set to deal with. It’s a kick to the player collectors because you know Trout, Machado, and Judge are going to be SPs and they have to make a choice. This set is really a total win for the f-ing flippers since they control the market because they get the cards first and buy the majority of the boxes because of it. They will buy enough product to pull the SPs everyone wants and will be able to set the price as high as the feel they can get away with and just sit back and wait for bids. Way to appeal to all collectors Fanatics Topps!

With that being said, I’ll probably get a few packs in order to get some of the mascot cards since 2023 Topps Opening Day is not going to be happening. 2023 is a weird year in baseball cards with all of the late releases, no news on when products are going to be released, products being released at unusual times, a number of sets getting scrapped, and things being added or taken away from sets, but maybe if we endure a weird 2023, we will get some of the scrapped sets back (even if we might have to have them released at unusual times).  I just hope for the sake of the kids and team, player, set collectors, and average Joe collectors will have a set they can afford, have access to, and be able to complete without having SPs. Is that too much to ask, Topps?

Some cards in the midst of chaos

 For a month or two, it’s just been feeling hectic and chaotic in my life. Kind of like I have a ton of things I want to do but not enough time to do them, even when I have a day off. I think some of this is due to the fact of me trying to input cards into TCDB and getting a list of all of my Topps needs, and I think I’m ok with that. All of the NL teams are finished as far as Topps entering. I still need to put in the Topps cards I have for all of the AL teams, and favorite player, Rays, Tigers, rookies, etc, but the project is basically almost halfway done. When that’s finished I’ll have to basically start over from scratch, this time imputing all of the non-Topps cards in. Maybe I’ll be finished by this time next year. 

I have a few people I’m kind of actively working trades with, and I feel like I need to put that near the top of my list on my days off, and I have made some progress going through binders looking for stuff, mainly some 1997 Collectors Choice needs for a Tigers fan that emailed me, and some ‘97 Collectors Choice team set and 1997 Fleer Ultra cards for reader Poison 75 who has commented on many bloggers posts. I also have someone on FB looking through their stuff and getting me some Rays and Tigers. Good thing about that is I will just input those after the AL is done, so no need to add another thing to my plate. Really, anything after 2019 is fine to add to my collection, as I have complete Topps sets from 2019-2022, so any stuff I add will be non-Topps or just inserts or non-flagship and can be entered at the end of this whole TCDB project. 

I feel like work is stressing me more lately. I bake mostly at work. We bake donuts, breakfast pastries, more cookies than you can shake a stick at, pies, regular pastries, rolls, and about 20 different varieties of breads. On a Saturday (our busiest day) before the pandemic, I would bake 18-20 packs of regular 2 dozen chocolate chip cookies. Post pandemic, more like 23-24. We had some apartments go up by the store, and now a Friday it wants like 25-30. ITS LIKE THAT WITH EVERYTHING!!!  The store is making record profits!  A wise person once told me profits are just unpaid labor. I could really use a baking assistant just to help set things up for me while I throw stuff in an oven and take it out. I go in at 4:30, take an hour lunch, and most days get out between 1:30 and 2. I feel stressed because I have to pick up Kyler from school at 2:30, and I have about a 15 minute drive and on bad weeks where cookies or some other time consuming product is on sale, I barely make it. I’m getting to bed at 10, 10:30, and I just don’t have enough time to cook dinner, make my lunch, do dishes, to a little light housework, shower every once in a while, and have time for myself. Karen gets home between 5-6, and on days when she is actually feeling well (not many lately), there’s not much she can get done in the few hours before bed. Wish I could get to bed a little earlier, but it’s just not in the cards most days. 

There is a little light in the tunnel as we’ve been planning a vacation, and I’m going to opening day. It comes with a little extra work as I’m trying to get cards out of all the Rays and Tigers to try to get signed, and there is the packing and planning involved with the vacation. 

We decided to tentatively hit up Niagara Falls and Washington DC (are you close to Niagara Falls, Night Owl?  Maybe a blogger meetup?). We are planning sometime in June, and although the Nats don’t have a game on my 40th birthday (June 14), they are in town later in the week, so we might have to plan the trip to fit a Nats game in as well. Not sure where else we will go, other than probably the historic stuff in DC and see some people my wife knows from when she lived there in high school. Maybe hit up North Carolina and see some relatives on the way down. 

The trip was kind of in jeopardy as of yesterday. As if we didn’t have enough going on, we got up on Sunday to go to church, go outside, and Karens van isn’t there. We got ahold of the cops after going to church in my car and then coming back home. Both of us have Kia’s, and hers has the push button start. Apparently idiots can break into a Kia, pop something open in the front, use an app on their phone and a usb cord to turn the car on and just drive off with it. It’s a Tik Toc trend and everything. How these apps aren’t banned and videos shut down is beyond me. Should Kia be held liable for a design flaw?  Perhaps. We are fortunate (I think), and the cops called this afternoon and said that the car popped up in Apopka, about an hour and 15 minutes away. The touch screen monitor was smashed in, but other than that, they said it looks normal. Tomorrow we will figure out towing it, getting it evaluated, and hopefully be able to fix anything thats messed up. If you own a Kia, lock it up, maybe get some extra security feature, because these crooks are getting high tech. 

Enough of my whining. You read this blog for cards and I won’t disappoint. I got a hanging box of ‘23 Topps and hanging packs of Prism and Mosaic this afternoon, and here is what I got (minus some stuff I’ll probably send out to some bloggers when I can catch my breath). 

Just your NL base cards. Too many Padre$, but what can you do?

2 too many Yankee$, but that’s not bad with the amount of cards I got. I may be unpopular for it, but those Stars of MLB inserts are beautiful. Even the regular Topps ones just look elegant with the Diamond/jewel and rainbow foil board. Have you pulled a Chrome one yet?  If you think it doesn’t get better, it does. 

I finally pulled a Jonathan Aranda card, and it will be going to the Rays game with me. I’m surprised that’s my first card of him when Im basically known as the ‘Rays guy’. I pulled 2 nice looking Akil Baddoo Prizm cards, got some rookies I never heard of, some snazzy Prizm cards, and a Rainbow of a checklist. Thanks, Topps!  I’ve also been pulling multiplayer cards and putting them in a box, and once I update my Topps lists (and perhaps stop by John’s house again, I’ll put those cards in the binders I want them in and put all of my loose cards (almost 3 4,000 ct boxes full now) in binders. 

Most of the stuff in the pictures is up for trade, so if something looks good, hit me up. 

Hopefully I’ll get a few days off with nothing to do in the future, and I can get my cards input to the database, and the car/insurance stuff gets straightened out pretty quick. The plate will eventually get less full, I’ll see the Rays Opening Day game, get through the next 2-3 months, and be on another fun road trip while on vacation, and get to see some beautiful scenery, get some good food, and make some good memories. 

Thanks for checking out my latest post. 

-Jeremy