Saturday, July 31, 2010

Sticky Cardboarding

Welcome to TWIC, and I mean Sticky has in you bought something on eBay and received it but the top loader is covered with scotch tape, making for a messy top loader, I have tried cleaning them with alcohol, but most time they are just ruined and off to the plastic recycling bin they go. Why am I getting charge so much in shipping when the sellers are ruining part of what i am paying for? So I have devised a feedback method which i hope catches on, somewhere, anywhere, please leave the following:

TLwTape - Top Loader with Tape, which of course leaves sticky residue and nastiness
TLwSlv - Top Loader with Fold over Sleeve, which of course is sticky free


Hope to see sellers being called out and get them to change the way they are shipping, it would be nice to be sticky free :)

hehe - thats some of next weeks cards :)

Now on to this weeks acquisitions

Finally found some Target and Walmart parallels of Mr. Longoria and and an SP i needed, along with the hobby give away card

All of these had been sticky-fied from two different sellers :(

The Target is definitely my favorite of the base Longoria because it is true cardboard, now to just find the Celeb"Rays"tion Target version.


and my last week's missing quarter will just be moved to this week, since the above just broke ten bucks
I first saw this card on Fielder's Choice Blog when I perusing some of his later posts, a fun thing to do when i have the time, if your a Rays fan. I have been watching ebay for a while now in hopes that this would pop up and it did about a month ago in a multi-card Longo lot, but it went for six or seven plus and i had to let it go because the cards i needed didn't justify me spending that kind of coin. Then i found a buy-it-now at six and offered half because the scan showed something that looked like a scratch and the seller agreed, not to mention informing me the card was just spiffy and that it was the scan and not the card. Well after much waiting i am happy to have this very cool looking Target Exclusive 400 series from the 2008 Topps Update. A very nice addition to my Longoria collection.

As always , thanks for checking This Week in Cardboarding and I hope you have an awesome week!!

Sunday, July 25, 2010

If I Ruled the World...

there would be blood testing for everything.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Serial Number Cardboarding

I was all set..

but, I just couldn't find anything to buy


so off to eBay


This week i went with some numbered cards, shipping really makes things add up quickly

two blue and a black parallel
PoH /299 - blue marble, Rocks!
Finest /399 - blue and shiny - ooooh!
Black Tribute /99 - wish it was blue
the black actually was the cheapest
at a penny short of three dollars shipped :)
kind of funny, since its the rarest
the other two and the below cards were
a penny short of four dollars shipped

Well maybe not all serial number cards, but i did score an assorted 25 card lot of CC,BJ and Longo - i got eight new cards to add to my CC collection, and two new cards to my Upton collection, the other 15 were doubles, but some pretty nice cards.


This only spent about 3/4 of my budget, i am still waiting for the last quarter of the budget to arrive.

Thanks for checking out TWIC.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Set Cardboarding

Hello and welcome to This Week in Cardboarding. This week has a bit of a story to go with my acquisition. So while searching the bay for Longoria cards I came across an 08 Topps card I had never seen before, so I go to Longoria authority, Fielder's Choice Blog, and check out his list and sure enough, a 08 Topps card number17 is sitting there on his list.



Since I have no idea what this will go for, I must decide the value to me and bid with what I would pay. I decide nine dollars with three dollars shipping, is what I will venture. Outbid pretty fast, no worries, but what if I never see this card again. Well, what should i do ...., I place another bid 11.75, keeping it under $15 dollars is how I justify the bid, two more bids with seconds to go and I am no longer high bidder. I guess a few others were thinking the same thing because it ended at 12.25. Thank goodness I did not win. It is so easy to get wrapped up in an ebay bidding frenzy. I'll have to keep an eye out for another one, because it is a sweet photo.

Two days pass and the seller gives me a second chance offer for my high bid, he has another one, now I am suspicious. Are these not that rare, so I look up 08 factory sets and on every set is extra rookie pack, most say five then I spot this:

Yep, ten exclusive rookie variation cards, so I compare the different sets, look at every description for the auctions posted. Most are Buy-It-Now for 35-40, plain ridiculous. Then I find a real auction 9.99 with no bids, I put in a bid, make sure I watch it, and win it for 14.24, eight for shipping. If I would had won the first auction at 11.75 plus 3 for shipping, I would have spent 14.75 on one card, not really that good when I got a whole set for less than that. So, for about the price of that one card I get my first factory set since 99 and I win the set and ten exclusive rookie variation cards.

Here are numbers 11-20 (minus Longoria #17)

Some great names Votto, Bruce, Cueto (all the Reds are together, nice) and Scherzer and Buchholz.

The original seller has since sold two more Longoria Variation cards (both ending around 5.50) with a third ending shortly, well below what the first one went for. He obviously has an untouched market since nobody else is selling these but I think he is wasting a prime opportunity by flooding the bay with all three so soon, I personally would have trickled them out trying to get top dollar for each. I guess he was absent the day they taught supply and demand.

I am truly amazed Topps does this, its like slapping all the set builders out there in the face. Not to mention there are twenty cards, so you need multiple sets and a whole lot of luck to get all the variant cards. Bad Topps

What did I learn from all this? EDUCATION is sooooooooooo important.

Two dollars and 24 cents over budget, but I was about eight dollars under budget last week so I am all good :) Are you asking yourself, did he just buy a whole set for one card, not at all, I love the 2008 Topps set and have wanted to buy it for awhile now. It is actually one of the things that helped me return to the hobby. The Design is a favorite of mine, it is has that classic vintage feel but of course it is a recent set, the cards are glossy but don't stick together like 07, and have foil names that are easy to read, and along with some nice photography, makes for a fun set. I actually bought more than one blaster in 08, because I genuinely like the cards so much. When the sets were released at Target, I really thought about picking one up, but thought $50 is truly to much money for a base set, so I am very happy with my twenty-two dollar pick up.

A fun thing I like to do is put all the little gold trophy cards together


They are in card number order

At first I thought they had four Outfielders and no third-base man, but a quick look up and Braun played 3B in 07
* Carlos Ruiz, C, Philadelphia Phillies
* James Loney, 1B, Los Angeles Dodgers (unanimous selection)
* Dustin Pedroia, 2B, Boston Red Sox
* Ryan Braun, 3B, Milwaukee Brewers (unanimous selection)
* Troy Tulowitzki, SS, Colorado Rockies
* Delmon Young, OF, Tampa Bay Devil Rays (unanimous selection)
* Chris Young, OF, Arizona Diamondbacks (unanimous selection)
* Hunter Pence, OF, Houston Astros (unanimous selection)
* Brian Bannister, RHP, Kansas City Royals
* Hideki Okajima, LHP, Boston Red Sox

One thing that shocked me about this factory set was that it wasn't in order, at first I was perturbed, but as I went through the cards arranging them in order, getting to enjoy each one, I quickly became happy that the cards weren't in order. I just pretended I bought an unique blaster that had every card plus 10 inserts and I had to put them in order :) Fun time!

Here are some Rays cards I enjoyed coming across


As always, thanks for checking out TWIC and please check out my Sketch Cards at chroko cards. Take care and have an awesome week, and best of luck in your cardboarding endeavors.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

This Week in Cardboarding



Welcome to This Week in Cardboarding, I found some clearance packs at Target. Three 08 Materpieces packs and an 08 Heritage Hi pack. Nothing spectacular but it is the first Masterpieces I have ever ripped. I really like the cards but only four cards is a big negative in my book, that may be why I never bought any til now, but never mind that, on to the break:

Pack 1

no set help :(

Pack 2

Gwynn sporting the vintage Padres uni, nice
J-Roll looking like a stud, with good reason
07 he posted 30 HRs and 41 Steals, with 139 Runs
Pack 3

Longoria, Sweet, even though I have like three of these already
its was still fun and exciting pulling one
Wright, sporting a nice little home run trot
and Vtek looking all captainish
Pack 4

Felix showing the pain of pitching
Hideki watching a homer
and poor Asdrubal having to share his card

By far the Gwynn is my favorite of the bunch, but only because the Longoria is a dup.

I still have been watching the bay, hoping for some cards to slip by on the cheap, I got a five card lot for a 1.25 which added two new Longoria cards (the Expotential and Icons) and I scored an 09 Chrome Xfractor for 99 cents. Very happy, with my pick ups




Thanks for checking out TWIC and don't forget to check out my Sketch Cards at chroko cards. Take care and have an awesome week, and best of luck in your cardboarding endeavors.

Friday, July 2, 2010

Present Cardboarding

Welcome to This Week in Cardboarding. Here is part two of my pre-Father's Day Father's Day presents. I guess, me mentioning Strasburg and Bowman quite a few times made it easy for my wife to go with a Bowman blaster, never mind my one blaster a year rule, i have to be nice and open it up, such a shame :) On to the break:

Pack 1

the Rizzo is a Refractor

Pack 2

anothe Sox prospect
Love the Throwbacks, Utley looks a little lost in the photo
but I am sure he is just calling it

Pack 3

Buster Posey Gold
Jamie Topps 100, having a nice season so, can he keep it up?

Pack 4

A Rays sighting
Starling Chrome
Pujols Throwback, pounce albert pounce
and a USA

Pack 5

Starling base
Iglesias Topps 100

Pack 6

another Rays with Upton
the Votto photo is really nice
and Beckham Throwback, he really needs to adjust
Hanley with Stanton on the back is also nice

Pack 7

a Sox in purple
its probably not good that topps talk about the scout and his hometown
more than him though

Pack 8

another USA card, is it bad that i have no idea who they are?

Nothing spectacular but still a fun break, got a Beckham i wanted and my first Posey card with the little RC on it, the 2020 is from the future and he is a grizzly veteran then and the Turkey was also missing the logo. A few Rays doubles and a bunch of Sox in this blaster. As always, let me know if you need or want something. Thanks for checking TWIC.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

clue, maybe?

Do you see any similarities??



How about now??

green is present, but what's it mean???
if anything