Oh man!

Not only have the brick and mortar card shops dried, but so has one of my favorite eBay stores.

If you remember all the way back to January of this year, I posted about the eBay store by luvbubby. He had so many Derek Jeter cards and for amazing prices. I bought a bunch of cards right there on the spot.

I bought from him once more, but haven't been back since. I decided to peruse the store on Friday night after not coming home with a huge haul from the Philly Card Show.

I discovered the store is no longer there. Luvbubby still has a user account, but his store is gone. I have more money in the process, but I am definitely saddened that he is no longer selling cards. He hasn't sold a card since October.

Sigh.

Bubble Mailer Day

Happy early birthday to me, from me. I picked up some random cards on eBay last week to fill in my player collections and found a nice group of cards from the same seller which was nice to combine shipping, and then won 2 cheap auctions from 2 separate sellers.

The first envelope had the following cards from 2009 T206:

Regular base cards
Mini Piedmont cards

The second envelope had my bargain card. By bargain, it was less than $3.00 and with the way the Cycle version of Pujols has been selling... I may never see one of those.




The final envelope contained a card that wasn't even a thought in my brain until Flash told me he had won one. Then I was like hmm... I would like one of those cards myself, and ended up on eBay rummaging. I won it for less than $10, and according to Topps it will be shipped to me no later than 03-19-2010. So we shall see when I get it considering Topps tweeted this week that Hughes has finished signing all T206 redemptions.


Not a bad birthday mail day. I love baseball cards.

Sunday Question: What would you get (Fill in the blank) as a holiday gift?

The blogosphere is pretty big. So, pick a blogger or three and give them something for the holidays.

It doesn't have to be trading card related. However, let's get a huge list going. By next weekend, I'll post the results of the best and funniest answers to see what everyone is going to get in their stocking.

I'll start.

For Marie: a 2001 Albert Pujols rookie autograph.

It's not funny, but goodness that's what she wants more than anything.

When is a 1/1, not?

Player collectors love their 1/1, at least I know I do. But when is a 1/1 not really one-of-a-kind, or at least as rare as you would like the card to be.

Apparently, when it's a Topps Unique card. Currently there are two auctions on eBay of Andruw Jones MLB logo autograph cards and they are both 1/1.

Auction 1

Auction 2

A Beckett search of Andruw Jones and Unique reveals that he has 13 cards in the set and all of them are 1/1.

There is a bat knob autograph, four Russell logo autographs and eight MLB logoman autos. Eight, but they are all 1/1 because they come from different jerseys, I presume. Not because it's one card that is unique (ha ha) to the entire set.

Jones isn't the only one this has happened to in the set. Here are a few examples: five Bobby Abreu, two Elvis Andrus, two Homer Bailey, five Hank Blalock, two Robinson Cano, two Jacoby Ellsbury, four Prince Fielder, three Alex Gordon, five Vladimir Guerrero, five Ryan Howard, four Torii Hunter, seven Albert Pujols logomans and seven David Ortiz.

This could mean the price won't reflect what a true 1/1 would go for. It's tough to want a card that says something despite the fact that you know it's untrue.

Luckily I won't have to make that decision as there no Derek Jeter cards in the set other than the base and parallels.

2009 Heritage High Number Series Packs

Can someone tell me why baseball cards are so addicting? No matter where I am I have to check to see if they sell baseball cards, or if I know they do I must stop and look. I wrote on twitter the other day that I picked up some packs since they were just putting them out, I got 4 Heritage and 4 T206 that are for Christmas.

I bought the Heritage to try and pull the Francisco Cervelli RC because I like him and he's Italian. No luck on the Cervelli RC, but I did pull a Matt LaPorta dark back (hubba hubba), 1 Chrome Refractor and 2 Chrome. For retail packs I think I did rather well. I scanned the packs because that's way more fun that reading words.

Pack 1: LaPorta (yum), and Andruw Jones /560

Pack 2: The Mlkman, Adam Dunn dark back
Pack 3: J.A. Happ (should be great for Philly), Juan Rivera /1960
Pack 4: Nyger Morgan (won my fantasy team a bunch of points til I dropped him), Josh Outman /1960
These were fun, even if there was no Pujols SP or Cervelli RC. The Jeter U&H card would have been cooler if that tool Youkilis was not on it.

Hitting the Philly card show

(Editor's note: All the pics are taken from my camera phone since I am at my parent's home and hate scanning cards anyway.)

The only big card show I ever attended was in White Plains. I've hit some mall shows before and find better deals at those. However, that doesn't mean I don't like the big shows. It has its benefits such as having a huge selection and finding more high-end cards.

I only bought five cards at the Philly card show and one them was for Marie. I also got two hobby boxes that I suckered my mom into getting me for Christmas, so this year I will be getting presents under the tree from someone other than Marie.

The first place I ended up searching was in a monster box of low-end game-used and autographs. This is where I looked for Kouzmanoff because on the east coast, no one other than me collects him. However, every Kouz card I found I already had and got for cheaper on eBay. They were asking at least $5 for autos.

I ended up with these three cards. The Adam Lind is for Marie.

2003 Playoff Prestige Connections Materials Derek Jeter/Alfonso Soriano GU base card /400
2009 Upper Deck Ballpark Collection #116 Jorge Posada/Michael Young GU jersey /400
2009 SP Authentic Signatures Adam Lind SP












I picked up two other Jeter GU cards for solid prices.

2003 UD Reserve base combo Ken Griffey Jr./Derek Jeter (This is the one my sister is giving to me for Christmas)
2008 Ballpark Collections quad swatch memorabilia Derek Jeter/Jason Giambi/Melvin Mora/Brian Roberts










After I finished scanning the single cards, I went to the hobby boxes. Topps 206 hasn't had a good receiving by the blogosphere, but I like these cards. I already own all of the Kouzmanoff cards from the set, except for the Carolina Brights 1/1 (and likely won't own). I have a Jeter base and a Francisco Cervelli base and mini Piedmont.

But I still wanted to open a hobby box.

For those that follow Card Bandits on Twitter knew I was going to the card show in a low-cut top hoping to score some kind of discount. And, here, it worked for a couple of bucks.

I saw a wax seller that I normally buy from in White Plains and mentioned to him that I normally see him in White Plains with my other female friend. However, we normally wear Yankee gear.

He said, well why aren't you wearing it today, not that I mind the way you are dressed now.
Me: Well, honestly, I was hoping to get a deal with this shirt.
Him: And, it's a shirt I like. How's this? $72 for 206.
Me: Sold.

Again, it's only a couple of bucks off, but I'll take it.

I also bought a tin of 2007 Sweet Spot.

I enjoyed the card show. Hopefully, next time I can come away with a bigger haul.

Love,
Sooz

New Jersey Nets finally win!

The New Jersey Nets finally picked their first win of the season after going a record 0-18. They defeated the Charlotte Bobcats 97-91.

I felt New York City shaking in anticipation for NJ to get its first win. (For the record, NJ teams are really NYC teams. There's just not enough room in the city.)

Brook Lopez had 31 points and 14 rebounds in the win.

New Jersey did this after firing head coach Lawrence Frank on Nov. 29 before the Lakers beat NJ 106-87. The Nets lost two games after changing coaches. The sad thing is, they got more attention for losing than they ever got for winning.

Check out this auction for Brook Lopez. A patch/auto /225 from UD Exquisite. You can find a number of these on eBay for much less than the asking price.

My personal Christmas gift

I'm doing my personal Christmas shopping a little early this year. We had a Sunday question where we asked if you ever get trading cards as a gift. As many of you noted, the answer was simply no.

I talked to my boyfriend about this just last week about why he never buys me baseball cards. Since our second bedroom is covered with them, he obviously knows I like them. His answer was that he doesn't buy them for me because he doesn't know what I don't have and he doesn't want to buy me packs or hobby boxes to waste the money and potentially get a box of cards I don't want.

It was sound reasoning. So, that's what I have Marie for. I know she is going to get me at least baseball-related gizmo for the holidays or my birthday.

Then, I also like to treat myself.

That comes today when I am going to visit the Philly Card Show. I've done White Plains a number of times with Marie, but I've never gone to the Philly Card Show despite wanting to hit it for at least the last four years.

There are no signings today, but I that's not what I am there for.

I've only been to one card show outside of New York. The problem in NY is the Yankees cards are always incredibly high because of geographic location. The other card show I hit was in Denver and came away extremely lucky.

I bought a box of 2007 Turkey Red at the show and my box topper was a Derek Jeter cabinet card signed by Dick Perez /25. I had to go all the way to Colorado just to get that card! A girl wouldn't be so lucky around here.

I have two concerns when looking for Yankees cards today. 1. They just won the World Series. So, there are going to be many people looking for their cards. 2. They're the Yankees and are probably expensive no matter what.

Either way, I have a little spending money from playing poker last night and plan on buying myself a little something.

Merry early Christmas to me!

The Revenge of 2009 Topps T206 Packs

If you really thought I wasn't going to go back for more, you need to read this blog more often. I was thinking about it last night that I got 6 out of 20 packs, with virtually nothing in them leaving the hits for someone else. Why would I do that? After spin yesterday morning I went back and had a go at the stack in the case. I asked the guy for the pile, picked 4 from the middle and gave it back.

Here is how this went down:

crap, boring, boring.
one for each of us, and a Honus Wagner that I can have graded then put up on eBay for a kajillion dollars to start for no reason.
Cubs party, with a fish.

Holla Teix NNO SP

The Mick checklist #2/7
Whiggity what?! Ichiro Piedmont game used.
Clearly going back to get hosed was a good idea. Not that it was a Pujols or Cano kinda day, but I like stuff that I can trade into stuff I want. I'm still not that big of a fan of these cards, but you do get 9 cards per hobby pack so it's not terrible. I hate buying packs that have 3 or 4 cards for $5 a pack, and then you pull 2 unknowns are a card that's worth a buck. At least you get some substance here.

I don't think I have any doubles from all the packs I've opened which is cool, and I would be willing to trade some base cards if anyone is looking for stuff. Ichiro is available as are the majority of the cards I posted from all the T206 packs.

I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff

I love seeing high school athletes succeed in college and beyond. The first taste of that was when I worked in New York and I got to see Ray Rice (I didn't cover his games often) go to Rutgers and now with Baltimore Ravens.

There aren't many that make it to that level, but I still enjoy the success stories. When it comes to baseball, there are very few who have made it to the big leagues from where I work now in southern New Jersey. However, I did two stories this year on South Jersey guys making it to the show and being successful. The first was San Diego Padres' Greg Burke, who also had a stint with the Atlantic City Surf, an independent minor league team that doesn't exist anymore.

The second was on AL Rookie of the Year Andrew Bailey. Both fun to talk to, but it's hard to be in a bad mood when enjoying the success they had this year.

Next up on the radar of guys from this area is Anaheim Angels prospect Mike Trout. I've seen him play, and he's a heck of an athlete. I covered a few of his basketball games last year and he's a beast. I also saw him on Thanksgiving as he was at his high school's Thanskgiving rivalry game.

I did a little search on eBay and found prospect cards for him already.



Why all our local kids end up with California teams, I'll never know (there's another in the Giants organization), but if he makes it to the big club, I am sure MLB Extra Innings will have get even more subscribers from here.