The First Post of the Year. Some goals, some cards.

Ahhh, the first of the year. When bloggers from across the card trading world post about goals and ambitions and the like. Wait, it's the end of January and not the beginning? How did that happen? Whelp. I guess there's no need for a long detailed post about what I plan on doing with my cards this year since I'm already a month behind.

Might as well just wait till March and a return to the Orioles Victory Card series. Already have 15 cards scanned, that should get me into early June. Oh god, it's going to be such a long summer. The good news is that, if plans hold, I'll be at opening day (my first ever) to hopefully see a valiant effort against the dastardly New York Yankees. I'm also holding out hope that I'll be able to see Pearl Jam at nearby Royal Farms Arena (haven't been there since the original Baltimore Blast were in town).  Based on how ticket sales went last week, that's highly unlikely, but you never know.

As far as collecting, I do actually have some plans for 2020. As I've tried to do every year since I've had to start lugging this collection around (from Florida to Chicago to Pittsburgh to Salt Lake City) I plan on reducing the amount of cards I own. 

Now a couple of times I've said, "I want to get rid of 1,000 cards this year" or something to that effect, and I've done it. The problem, I've also taken in more than a 1,000 cards that year. So, in the end, I still ended up with more cards than I started with, which is a problem. 

This year, I've refined the goal. My plan is to get rid of 2,020 more cards than I take in. Thus eliminating roughly one shoe box worth of cards from the closet. You're welcome, whatever moving company moves us next.

So far I'm off to a decent start with a -674 card count as of today. Granted 550 of those cards went out in one transaction, but who's counting (technically I guess I am). Also, I haven't bought any boxes of new product yet either. That leads into goal number two.

Limit the buying of boxes. I love ripping packs. It's one of the top things about this hobby that keeps me interested. Whether it's a single box/pack of SP Game Used or 20 some packs of Topps Big League, the joy of not knowing what's going to pop up in the next pack is so much fun. 

My plan for Series One is to just buy a collated set. Those tend to not be too expensive on eBay and will keep the extraneous cards to a minimum.  That will severely hamper the chances of me flipping any inserts or variations for Series One, but that's ok. God knows I have enough from the last few years that I haven't posted or tried to sell yet so I should be able to keep at least some money flowing into the Buy More Cards fund. 

I will most likely buy a few boxes of Heritage or Allen & Ginter when they roll out later in the year. That will give me some time to eliminate more cards and I do love the 1971 design for Heritage this year. I'm sure I'm not alone in that which means box prices should remain nice and high (being smarter was never going to be a goal this year).

Other goals include continuing to build the Personal Collection (currently consisting of Tampa Bay Lightning cards, Vincent Lecavalier cards and Eddie Murray cards). I did manage to get 99.9% of my Lightning cards loaded into TCDB which allowed me to post a Want List for the ones I don't have. That makes trading a little easier. 

I also plan on having my entire collection entered into TCDB by the end of the year, if not sooner. I'm roughly 40% of the way there and it gives me something to do while mindlessly watching TV. Entering cards has shown me that I have plenty of duplicates (thanks junk wax era) and surprisingly, there are people out there that are looking for those cards. I've ripped off a bunch of trades already this year and offers keep coming in every time I finish loading a set. 

My goal in regards to trading is to make sure I send out more than I receive in at least 95% of the trades I make. That will help chip away at that 2,020 fewer cards thing. I've never been huge on getting equal value out of trades, especially since it's mostly base card duplicates that I'm sending out, so throwing in an extra four or five cards a trade isn't going to kill me. 

Woe to those that list any late-80s, early 90s cards on their want lists. If I see you need 1989 Topps cards, you're getting some, no you're getting a lot. I have 2,170 duplicate 1989 Topps cards. that's too many by about 2,000. So beware of your want lists. I will ambush you with extra cardboard.

I do want to finish off a few sets. Last year's base set is still incomplete as is the 2016 base set (that one feels like it will never end). I've completed 46.2% of the 1976 Topps base set so I doubt I'll finish that off, but if I end up close to 75% I'll be happy. There are a couple of older sets that I'm almost done with that I'd like to finish off as well (1991 Upper Deck 88.1%, 1989 Fleer 87.7%), but they're not exactly a focus.

As for singles, I will still be buying PC cards, but also want to pick up some cards of classic players, or classic cards. I picked up a few last year (Griffey Upper Deck rookie, 1971  Thurman Munson, 1985 McGwire that may be a fake, etc). This year I'm looking for cards of the old players like Sandy Koufax and Roberto Clemente. Throw in some of the Robinson boys and Boog Powell as well and I'll be a happy camper. 

Other than that, I just want to have fun. I try not to get wrapped up in drama in this hobby, because, after all, it's just a hobby for me. I'm not in it for the money, just the memories.

In keeping with my goals here are a few cards I picked up recently.

1964 Topps Sandy Koufax World Series #136

I went online with the intention of buying a Koufax card from his playing days. Found this one that was not only affordable, but I really liked the photo of Koufax at full stride, probably right before he made yet another hitter look foolish. 

1976 Topps Dennis Eckersly

The "biggest" rookie card I needed for the 1976 set, Eck came at a reasonable price due to some soft corners. Still, it's pretty well centered and will look good on the page. Now it's just a matter of finding the other 300+ cards I need to finish off the set.

 A trio of Vinny Cards

These three cards put me up to 285 different Vincent Lecavalier cards. That's roughly 7.4% of the available cards he has out there. I'm currently ranked third among collectors on TCDB who have Lecavalier cards. I think with a little work I can get to second (310 cards), but first (374 cards) may have to wait until next year.

Orioles Victory Card Number 41: A Trip to the Virtual Card Store

Baltimore Orioles Victory Number 41: 8-1 over the Kansas City Royals

1955 Bowman Matt Batts

Hey how about a little winning streak? The Orioles pitching staff did it again, limiting the Royals to one run while the Baltimore bats banged out out three home runs and 12 hits. Speaking of bats how about a new oldest card in the collection?

A couple of months ago I turned a little eBay money into a COMC shopping spree. Shortly before leaving Pittsburgh my good buddy Link gave me one of the all time iconic cards in history - the 1971 Topps Thurman Munson. I don't even have to put an image here for you to picture the card do I? You already see the play at the plate, the dust, Munson making the tag with his mask off and hat on backwards, the big honking All-Star Rookie trophy in the corner and the iconic black border.

With that card in hand I made a somewhat languid decision to focus on picking up some more of the cards that everyone should have. Well, mostly cards that everyone should have. More like the cards that I think I should have in my collection. Instead of burning money on boxes, I decided to focus my eBay profits on certain cards. I even curated a Top Ten list of cards that I really want for my collection that I may post at some point.

So first up, a card every O's fan should have - a Matt Batts 1955 Bowman, right?  Ok, not so much. That came from the fact that I was looking for some cheap vintage cards and I happened to be reading The Summer of '49 by David Halberstam, a fantastic look at the pennant chase between Boston and New York in 1949. Batts was an ancillary character in the book as a  back-up catcher for the Red Sox that season.

When I was scrolling through COMC and his card popped up it seemed like an opportune time to pick it up. Now, you old timers might think, "I don't remember Batts playing for the Orioles" and you would be right. He never suited up for the Birds in their first season in Baltimore. Following the 1954 season Batts was part of a trade between the White Sox and the Orioles. However, just before the 1955 season started he was purchased from the Orioles by the Cleveland Indians. By that time Bowman had already had the cards printed and ready to go so he is forever to be captured as  Baltimore Oriole in the set.

However, that wasn't the iconic card that I had set my sights on that night while I was scrolling through. Neither is the next card featured, which is now my second oldest overall card in my collection.

1948 Fleer Billy Conn

I wanted an older boxing card and feeling slightly nostalgic for the recently departed Steel City I picked up a card of the the Pittsburgh Kid. A light-heavyweight champion from the 1930s, Conn will best be remembered for his two fights against Joe Louis. In June of 1941, Conn was by most accounts leading on the scorecards entering the 13th round when Louis managed to salvage the fight by knocking Conn out.

In the rematch, postponed five years by a little thing called World War II, Louis knocked him out again, this time in the eighth round. He finished his career with a 63-11-1 record in the ring and one draw outside of the ring as he foiled a robbery attempt - at the age of 72 years old.

The card I wanted to buy was a rookie card, but another rookie card intrigued me when I was still in the boxing section.

1991 Kayo Arturo Gatti

The Blood and Guts Warrior himself. Look at how young he looks in that photo (wow, is that an old person thing to say). This is Gatti six years before his Fight of the Year in 1997 with Gabriel Ruelas that put him on the boxing map, ten years before his big money fight with Oscar De La Hoya, and eleven years before the beginning of his way with Micky Ward that electrified boxing fans for a decade. This is Gatti before the swollen eyes, the broken hands and the blood, so much blood, a young fighter ready to make a name for himself.

Gatti's boxing style was straight forward. He never found a punch that he couldn't stop with either his hands or his face and he was always willing to dish out just as many blows as he took, even when he was outclassed in the ring. He always wore his fights on his face. In the 1990s and early 2000s there may not have been a more fun fighter to watch. Whenever he popped up on HBO, you knew it was worth while to hang around and watch the fight.

He retired from boxing in 2007. Two years later he was found dead in an apartment in Brazil under somewhat cloudy circumstances. Originally his wife was accused of murder, but the final cause of death was listed as suicide. To this day his cause of death is still intensely debated. 

Back to baseball. Having secured an old boxing card, an old baseball card and a rookie boxing card it's time to zero in on the card I wanted.  First a detour.  

1989 Topps Traded Ken Griffey, Jr.

A rookie card with Griffey Jr holding a bat on his left shoulder? It's the iconic pose for my generation's iconic superstar. Sadly, by the lack of a smile you know it's not the Upper Deck rookie.  Topps missed the boat with their flagship set, as Griffey didn't make the cut. They didn't waste anytime making sure he was in their late season add-on set, Topps Traded.  As you can see it's a bit off-center which just made it more affordable in my book.

While those are all great cards for my collection, they weren't the one I was looking for. It was, in fact, the other Griffy rookie that I had set out to buy. After 30 years of hemming and hawing about getting one, I finally pulled the trigger. 

1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr.

The card that launched an empire and survived the mass production era that was the late-1980s and 1990s. It introduced Upper Deck to the card collecting crowd and signaled the launch of the modern era of collecting. It isn't the most expensive rookie card of the era, Albert Puljos, Mike Trout and Derek Jeter dwarf him in comparison, but can you, the casual collector, picture any of those cards off the top of your head?

I don't have a high-grade copy, and I won't send it in. In fact, it doesn't even get a binder. It'll be slipped into a toploader and placed with Felix Jose and the rest of my 1989 Upper Deck cards, but that won't mean it's forgotten. 

Orioles Victory Card Number 18

Orioles victory number 18: 2-1 over New York Mets

1967 Topps Pin Up Poster Brooks Robinson


Alex Cobb picked up his second win on the season by striking out seven over six innings. The victory snapped the Orioles latest multi-game losing streak (this one was seven games) and got them within one game of not being in last place. As of Wednesday morning they still trail (lead?) the White Sox by one game for the worst record in the majors.  Hoo-ray.

Today's card - a Brooks Robinson "poster" from the 1967 Topps series.  I guess it's not technically a card since it's printed on paper stock, but this is my blog and I get to set the rules.  For a card that is 51 years old it's in pretty good shape. It is creased, but good luck finding one of these that isn't, and there is a small tear just above his lip.

I picked it up on ebay with some funds left over from off-loading an Ohtani card. I'm not buying a ton of cards right now (mostly because I haven't seen anything other than Donruss in Target over the last couple of weeks) and having given up on hockey cards I'm kind of treading water in terms of acquiring more cardboard.

There is a vague idea of picking up some cards of vintage stars, maybe some Koufax and Mantle cards that won't break the bank. Also, I really have to get around to picking up a Griffey Upper Deck rookie at some point as well as a Ripken 1982 Topps Traded. We'll see what happens.

Busting a pack on Opening Day!

Happy Opening Day! For the first time in history, or a really long time (I’m not going to look it up), almost all of the teams in the league are playing. There are no overseas openers that start at four in the morning four days before the rest of the league. It’s just wall-to-wall baseball starting at 12 eastern time and running late into the night.

To celebrate the return of our national past-time, I took the bus up to the local Target to get some new cardboard (and toothpaste. We were almost out of toothpaste). Not only did the store have some 2018 Topps fat packs (which I bought) they also had some Gypsy Queen. I think I’m going to like this Target a bit more than the one in Chicago.

Did I mention that I’m not in Chicago any longer? No?  Whoops, sorry about that. About a month ago The Duchess and I relocated to Pittsburgh. Why? Because we can. She works from home and I’m in the hotel business. So we’ve settled in to a much larger place for a lot less rent money and I’m looking forward to spending a lot of money at Pirates games this season.

And, based on what I’ve seen in one visit to Target I’ll be spending some money are cards there. To celebrate Opening Day, let’s take a look at one of the packs of Gypsy Queen. Target was selling them in packs of three with three exclusive green-bordered cards. It also came with a coupon for a free pack of Topps Opening Day which seems appropriate for today.

Card #1 - Gerrit Cole Pittsburgh Pirates

Well now. This a bit awkward. The former ace of the Pirates is still pictured in his Pittsburgh uniform despite his January trade to the Houston Astros for four unheralded players.  The Pirates rotation is currently listed as Ivan Nova, Jameson Taillon, Trevor Williams, Chad Kuhl and Joe Musgrove (one of the unheralded players that came back from Houston). Is that good enough to compete with the Cubs, Brewers and Cardinals? Most likely no.

Card #2 - Melky Cabrera Kansas City Royals

Cabrera has now been in the league for 13 seasons. It seems like just yesterday he was a young prospect playing for the Yankees. Did he ever live up to his potential? Maybe not, but he was consistent throughout his career. He’s currently a free agent despite a 2017 season where he hit .285 with 17 home runs. Will he find an organization in 2018?

Card #3 - Sean Newcomb Atlanta Braves

Newcomb is part of the youth movement taking over in Atlanta. He had a bit of a wild start last season as he walked 57 batters in 100 innings. He also struck out 108 so there is a lot of potential in his left arm. So, the one design issue that is driving me crazy with Gypsy Queen - the position lettering in the top right corner. Every single pitcher card I’ve got I’ve thought has had the Pirates logo on it. I’d rather have the team logo there with the position in script below it, but that’s just a personal taste

Card #4 - Logan Forsythe Los Angeles Dodgers

Former Tampa Bay Ray alert! He was traded to the Dodgers last off-season for Jose De Leon and found himself in the World Series. Not a bad deal for the second baseman.

Card #5 - Corey Knebel Milwaukee Brewers

Knebel is apparently the Brewers’ closer. I did not know that. He saved 39 (3rd best in NL) games last season and made $538,900. Once again I don’t understand why teams pay closers more than $6 million a year. No I’m not bitter that the Orioles are paying Zach Britton $12 million to rehab his blown Achilles just because he can be a dominating closer. Knebel did get a nice raise to $3.65 million and then promptly tweaked his knee in spring training.

Card #6 - Andrew McCutchen - Pittsburgh Pirates

Oh wow. Topps is apparently seeking to actively hurt Pirates fans. Am I glad I got this pack instead of some 10-year-old Pirates fan who would have been crushed to see two popular players that were traded away for a pile of magic beans. That would have been like me busting a pack of 1991 Topps and seeing Steve Finley and Pete Harnisch in it. Let me tell you, Pirates fans are not exactly please with the roster moves that Neal Huntington made this offseason.

The Cole trade is understandable, at 26-years-old he is entering the prime earning years of his career. He was signed to a $6.75 million contract this season and that number was only going up next season and then he would be a free agent in 2020. Might as well deal him for something because they weren’t going to be able to afford to keep him.

Dealing McCutchen is different. Much like Evan Longoria in Tampa, “Cutch” was a fixture in this town. He had one more season left at $14 million and had earned the right to finish the contract out in a Pirates uniform. If he wants to stay, then work out a new deal. Trading him away for two prospects and international money is almost an insult.

And that's the end of the pack. The Os won in extra innings so all is good in the world for at least one day.

Trade Alert! New old cardboard finds a new home

Part of the reason for bringing my collection up to Chicago was so that I could get back into trading and put to rest some sets I’ve been chasing for over 20 years.  The other reason was because I had really, really overstayed my in-laws hospitality by using up a significant portion of their closet space to hold the cards for five or six years.  Of course, my reunion with my collection coincided with the demise of my preferred trade partner finding site - Zistle. Luckily I quickly found another site.

After a little crowdsourcing I settled on Trading Card Database as a new means to find collectors to trade with. It’s gone rather well.  I’ve completed 19 trades in the last couple of months, which isn’t a crazy amount, but what I’ve most impressed with is the response rate. With Zistle I might get a response once in every three or four requests. So far with TCDB I’ve only had two requests ignored.  Which is awesome.

The only rule I have for trading is that I have to send more cards out then I bring in. That way I can tell The Duchess that I'm actually reducing the collection (sometimes once card at a time). She, as always, rolls her eyes and moves on with her life.

Here is a sample of my most recent deal, completed with user OCHawkeye.  In exchange for a bunch of 1992 Score that have been in a box since...well….1992 and a handful of 2017 Update dupes I received the following:

4 2017 Topps.  

My god, I might actually complete this set before the 2018 version comes out.  To many set builders that doesn’t seem like a big accomplishment, but I’m still chasing cards from 1991 for goodness sake.

2 2017 Topps Updates

I don’t consider the Update set as part of the main set, but I bought a couple of packs from Target and have now decided to complete this one as well.  Trey Mancini picked a really, really bad year to be a rookie. Twenty-four home runs, .293 average and seventy-eight RBI’s is usually enough to pick up the award. This season he finished third behind Aaron Judge and Andrew Benintendi.

5 1990 Upper Deck

The successor to the most important set of the 1980s, 1990 Upper deck is one of those sets that I am still chasing. I didn’t buy a ton of it when it came out (Topps, Donruss, and Fleer were more in my price range), but have picked up a few in repacks along the way.  Loved the team cards (with art work by Vernon Wells’ father), would love to see Upper Deck bring it back for their hockey base sets.

11 1993 Topps

When you’re completing a set that sometimes means you’re trading for checklist cards. Yup, I swapped an actual player card for a checklist card (actually two of them). In the pre-spreadsheet days I actually used these cards to mark the status of my collection. Good times.

The Hopeful Chase Trading Post is Open For Business!

So, recently I took a little trip down to Florida. While it was nice to leave the cold, gray Chicago behind for a few days the trip wasn’t solely to soak up some sunshine. After roughly seven years, it was time to take my collection out of my in-laws (saints) closet and bring it up to the Windy City.

The Duchess (also a saint) agreed to fly down with me and help drive 100,000 pieces of cardboard back to our cramped apartment.  I did kind of bribe her with the promise of stopping in Nashville for a couple of days.  Believe it or not, after 13 years together this would be our first roadtrip over 6 hours together.  That might be one of the reasons we’re still together.

On a Friday morning we left cold, slushy Chicago behind and hopped a flight to Tampa.  Once there we picked up our sweet ride for the trip.

When you’re moving a couple hundred pounds of hockey cards, baseball cards and random stuff (a trash can!  a toolbox!) almost 1,200 miles you don’t get a convertible no matter how nice the weather might be.  

After a quick lunch by the water, one of the things I miss most from the Tampa Bay Area, we were off to the in-laws.  It didn’t take long to load it up the next day.  When there are four people and no stairs involved things move pretty quickly. With the van loaded, it would proceed to sit in the driveway for the next day or so.  I borrowed the in-laws car to go to the Lightning game with a friend (something else that I miss mightily) and then, the next day, we were off at the literal crack of dawn.

I won’t bore you with the details of the road trip with this post, suffice it to say, it’s a long way from Tampa to Nashville and there isn’t much to look at.  Despite my mother-in-law’s concern, no one broke into the van while it sat in a public garage for two days. Or if they did, they realized stealing 40 boxes of baseball cards would be the dumbest crime in the history of petty theft.

The drive from Nashville to Chicago wasn’t much more exciting, although the windmill farms in Indiana are impressive.  We survived the trip (podcasts are a wonderful thing) and managed to get the cards up to the third floor without getting a parking ticket.

The point of this post is to let you collectors know that I have my collection back.  That means I am ready to deal.  That’s right it’s trading time, bitches!  At some point we’re going to move again and it would be cruel to make the movers carry all of these cards down three flights of stairs.  I figure I can cut the collection in half just by dealing my baseball duplicates and cutting my hockey collection down to what it was originally intended to be - Lightning only.

So this is your chance to fill some gaps in your collection.  If you have baseball needs from the mid-80s to 2010 or hockey needs from the junk era (PRO SET, PRO SET PRO SET) shoot me a line.  I’ll check your want lists out and we can work something out.  I’m not looking for a lot in return.  After all the purpose is to reduce the collection not just swap cards in and out.

I already have one deal in the mail and a couple of feelers out.  I will do my best to keep a running track of the number of cards that are shipped out.  I don’t think I’ll load anything new on Zistle, the rumors of its demise are swirling once again, and I don’t feel like loading that many cards into a new site one by one.

So, it’s time to go old school. Hunting through want lists and and sending out emails. It’s the way I traded when I first started blogging. Look for more card related posts here as well.  If I stumble across some card I haven’t seen in a decade I might post about it. For instance, I forgot how nice some of the cards in the 2008 Upper Deck set looked. Trades I’ll definitely post about.

The 91 Days of Stamkos project over at Raw Charge is winding to an end, and I’ll need to something to write about on a daily basis.  I think The Duchess enjoys the fact that I’m sitting at a desk doing something productive as opposed to binge watching Bones during the day. And I KNOW that she likes seeing cards go out the door as opposed to coming in.

I’m not setting any specific goals for trades, just want to reduce and make people happy.  I’ll be listing a few cards on eBay, but really there really aren’t many big ticket cards sitting in the boxes in our living room.

If you’re interested in trading, leave a comment, email me (yerf@hotmail.com) or hit me up on Twitter.  Thanks for your help!

2015-16 Upper Deck MVP - The First Product of the New Season

So...remember a couple of days ago where I wrote something along the lines of, “won't be buying any cards because I'm moving, blah, blah, blah”? Well that lasted all of three days. How was I to know that the first hockey product of the year was going to be released? Not only released, but at a pretty decent price point.

It's really John at Elite Sports Cards fault. If he hadn't sent out his weekly email about new products. If he didn't list it at a reasonable price ($55), I probably wouldn't have bought a box (or two).I am a man of little self-control. Since I broke that promise I figure I owe you all a box break review. Here we go – my first box of the hockey year:

2015-16 Upper Deck MVP

The Base Cards:

The design is a bit busy for my tastes. I would have liked to see them trim down the borders a bit and make the photo a little bigger. A total lack of foil makes the name easy to read, at least. The backs are standard MVP backs with four or five lines of statistics and basic biographical information (Wayne Simmonds was born in Scarborough! A good Ontario boy!).

Let's face it. We don't buy MVP because of the photography. We buy it because it's first and normally it's a pretty easy set to put together. That holds true for the first 100 cards of the set. Unfortunately the next 100 are all short printed. I'm not a big fan of sets where a large portion of the cards are short printed. It makes it a little too hard to complete the entire set. On the other hand, with 24 packs of 6 cards each – plenty of base to trade!

The inserts:

Colors and Contours:

Seeded at about one every four packs most boxes will yield six of these die-cut inserts. (Boo to Upper Deck by not going with “Colours and Contours”). Overall I like the inserts. Fancy die-cut and shiny are normally a plus in my book. My issue with this one – there are three “levels” and three different colors of each card. Oh and each level/color combo is seeded differently. For instance the Curtis Lazar is Teal – Level 3 which falls one every eight packs. God help you if you are a player collector trying to complete the rainbow.

In years past the Patrick Kane purple level 2 would be in running for card of the box. This year, well let us move on to a more recognizable insert for fans of MVP.

Silver Script:

Sam card as the base except everything is silver and there is a facsimile signature on the front. These fall about one every three packs and I don't think the higher numbers are short printed. I pulled four cards numbered over 100 and four numbered under 100. If you were going to try and put together a complete set it's almost obtainable.

Superscript:

Serial numbered to 25, the amped-up cousin of the Silver Script cards replaces the gold borders with a nice red and keeps the signature in gold. It's a pretty nice combination in my book. Good luck to those that collect these. I pulled this card pretty early in the box and was happy with it (expecting to get a relic card at some point) and would have considered it a pretty good box. Unfortunately I did not get a relic. Instead, hidden in the middle of the next to last pack, was this little gem:

An Alex Ovechkin 1-of-1 black printing plate!

Not a bad little card to pull, eh? What's even better – I have absolutely no allegiance to Alex Ovechkin and I'm lukewarm at best on printing plates. So that means it's heading straight to eBay (sorry Caps fans, I got to recoup a little of my investment).

With the exception of the printing plate it was indicative of what breaking a box of MVP is like. Lots of base, some ok inserts and the joy of knowing that hockey (and the release of Series One) is right around the corner. For $55 I don't feel like I got ripped off (which also goes for the second box that I busted that didn't have a printing plate in it).

It'll be interesting to see how the pricing on this set goes. With a lot of people chasing the first licensed Connor McDavid card (done as a NHL First Round Pick redemption to get around rookie card issues) and busting a lot of packs it might drive down the price of inserts and short prints while driving up the cost of a box. I imagine dozens upon dozens of dime boxes being filled with inserts from this set soon appearing at card shows around the country.

I'll put a lackluster effort into completing the entire set. By lackluster I mean I will add them to my wantlist on Zistle and occasionally throw one in the shopping cart when I'm binging on CheckOutMycards. In case you were wondering – all of the inserts except for the Ovechkin printing plate, the Witkowski Colors and Contours and the Kane C&C are available for trade.

I give it a random 3.5 stars out of 5. Anyone else out there rip some packs yet?

A Quick Post on my Haul From the National *UPDATED*

On a hot, humid Saturday I found myself with some free time before work. So I took the train up to Rosemont and popped into the National. Rule number 1 of the National – don't go if you only have 2 hours. You will be upset. Rule number 2 of the National – be prepared. I managed to break both rules, yet I still walked away with some new treats. In less than two hours I managed to pick up.

The boxes:

Stadium Club was one box I knew I was going to get. The Bowman was an impulse buy. I don't know why I buy Bowman, I'm not a speculator and I barely know players that have been in the league for five years yet alone prospects. My plans with that box – sort it and then forget about it for three years and then look and see if anyone panned out.

Ringside Boxing. Boxing cards from 1996. Soooo many doubles. But it was a fun break for $9.00.

The free card:

 A Kris Bryant/Jordan Speith Beckett Covers card. The guy said it was going for $25.00. That's nice.

The want list cards:

There was one guy that had a bunch of $.25 cards of sets that I was looking to close out. I managed to score 3 Topps Heritage cards and 1 1983 Topps before my self-imposed time limit was up. If I had all day to sort through the cards I would have probably cleaned up both sets, after all there was an open chair and no one crowding around.

From Scott:

My buddy Scott met me at the convention center for his first National. I feel kind of bad because I think I got him hooked on starting a Teddy Bridgewater card collection. Sorry about that. While I was sorting through the want list boxes he wandered off and came back with a Stamkos McFarlane I needed as well as a Ben Bishop figure (intact groin muscle variation).

From Sal:

Sal from Puck Junk was there and had a couple of Lightning cards for me. I believe the Lecavalier is the first The Cup card that I've ever gotten my hands on. No collection is complete without a Sal Berry Rookie. Sadly, since I was in a bit of a hurray I wasn't able to sit and chat with him for too long.

Random Purchases that I will probably sell on eBay

People love Cubs cards. I figure I can make a buck or two back flipping them even with all of the crazy costs involved. The Junior Lake was more for sentimental versions as he went to Baltimore in the annual Cubs/Orioles deadline trade. Chris Sale, because he's fun to watch.

**UPDATE**

I can't believe I forgot the greatest pick up of the whole trip!  For just $2.00 I am know the proud owner of.....

Yeah...he just hit a home run.

A signed postcard of Smokin' Joe O!  While Cal Ripken or Eddie Murray might have been the best player of my childhood, Orsulak was probably my favorite despite his relatively brief tenure with the club.  The guy I bought it from had about 15 in his binder...and yes I contemplated buying them all.

So it was a quick trip to the National. I doubt I'll go to Atlantic City for next years, but I'll definitely head back up to Rosemont the next time a show rolls in. Heck I might even ask for the entire day off.