Card of the Day: 2005 Donruss Elite Passing the Torch #PT-20 Mark Prior 0341/1000

I know Mark Prior probably isn't in a lot of people's player collection anymore, but when it comes to blue shininess at this magnitude, I probably still would have bought it if there was cloned sheep or even Obama on it! Is it blue because it's a Cubs card? Are there shiny yellow A's cards and shiny teal Marlins cards too?! I must find out..


Last I heard was that he's a free agent after he played minor league ball for the Padres all last year without getting called up. Is he done for?

2009 Topps 206 Retail Pack Rip HIT!

I love it when there's a reason, any reason, to stop at the supermarket to pick up bread, milk or whatever. This particular time, my wife ran in and grabbed me a pack along with the groceries. She seems to have some kind of intuition with picking packs and she bought my last retail pack that had a hit in it. These are scans of my first 206 pack, and I was thrilled with this nice little hit which I've put on the bottom here.


This Johnny Mize is sweet but it makes me think, is this my first and only Johnny Mize card?





This is the standard Piedmont back mini. All of the different mini back's variations and rarities make ripping this set a ton of fun! My lucky charm wife bought my third and latest pack of this stuff for me yesterday and inside was a Cycle back mini of Cliff Lee #'d to 99! I'll get a pic up here soon.


And here's the big hit! Mat Gamel. Don't know who this guy is yet but I'll be watching for him now.

Trade Bait Scans #1 and 2

This is the first of hopefully many trade bait scans that I'll be putting up. Be sure and click the scans for a closer look. Hopefully someone will see something that they like. If you do, send me an email at danielchairet@gmail.com with an offer. If you like, I can even set something aside for a future trade, or even start a stack for you since I plan on posting lots more bait. Anyways, here's my set needs list. I also collect any Darryl Strawberry, Ichiro and Portland Trail Blazer cards. If you have none of that and really want to trade, try me with an offer, I'm pretty open. My email is danielchairet@gmail.com.



1. 2009 Topps American Heritage American Heroes Edition Chrome #C55 Women's Suffrage
2. 2008 Donruss Americana II Proof #112 S/N 245/250 Robert Wagner
3. 2008 Donruss Threads Retail Green #129 S/N 053/200 Derek Anderson
4. 2008-09 Upper Deck First Edition UD Legends #206 Michael Jordan
5. 1970 Topps #330 Lou Brock
6. 1970 Topps #1 World Champions
7. 2008 Topps #7 Mickey Mantle
8. 1984 Fleer #447 Rickey Henderson
9. 1970 Topps #10 Carl Yastrzemski


10. 2008 Topps Gold #27 S/N 0951/2008 Bob Melvin
11. 2009 Topps Gold #384 S/N 0115/2009 Bob Melvin
12. 1969 Topps #3 1968 AL RBI Leaders Ken Harrelson, Frank Howard, Jim Northrup
13-16. 1969 Topps #4 1968 NL RBI Leaders Willie McCovey, Ron Santo, Billy Williams
17. 1969 Topps #12 1968 NL Strikeout Leaders Bob Gibson, Fergie Jenkins, Bill Singer
18. 1969 Topps #10 1968 NL Pitching Leaders Juan Marichal, Bob Gibson, Fergie Jenkins

Card of the Day: 1985 Drake's #30 Darryl Strawberry

It had been awhile since I had added any cards to my Darryl Strawberry collection, so while browsing on eBay I decided on this oddball. I was the only bidder and won it for only 1¢ + 99¢ shipping. 4 days later, it arrived from the seller in a Christmas card! Merry Christmas to me! I've seen a Strawberry card from a 1983 set but didn't know there were others. Turns out they released sets annually from 1980 to 1988, plus one in the 50's, I think. The back of this one is the same as the Topps base set from the same year, except for the Drake's logo.

Sportlots Success Part 2 - The Ichiros

Here's the Ichiros I picked up through Sportlots.com last week. Nothing spectacular. He's only the second athlete I've chosen for a player collection after Darryl Strawberry, and I'm thinking Ichiro should be more fun because he's a current player. Opening packs will have even more of a thrill hoping to pull an Ichiro.


This one is the Target exclusive retro logo grey-back. Are all the Target retros grey-backed or is this a parallel?


And here's the Walmart dark version.


Grey-back means exactly that. They're printed on the old fashioned card stock that Topps stopped using for their flagship sets after 1991.


I pulled a Roy Oswalt of one of these a while back and I really liked it. I think its the rainbow foil that gets me.




And finally, the Goodwin. There must be a nighttime version because the listing specified "day".

Stay tuned for the third and final part of my Sportlots finds featuring Clyde "The Glide" Drexler!

Sportlots Success! Part 1

First off, can anyone tell me if these images are sized ok on this page? I'm trying to blog from my phone and I'm not sure how they really look.

Last week I finally placed my first order on Sportlots.com and I was able to complete 3 sets, 2008 Upper Deck X, 2000 Skybox Metal and 1995 Pinnacle Series 1. These 3 were just a few of the 10 or so I needed to complete the set. It took 3 half-price blasters and a handful of 99¢ packs from the supermarket. The last blaster I bought only gave me two base cards I needed, I was pissed.



A few months ago, I busted a cheap hobby box of these I found on eBay and only needed two more to finish the base set.



Oh wow. Almost two years ago, when I just got back into collecting, I was checking Craigslist daily for listings of free cards, and found this guy 15 miles away with a huge stack of 5000 count boxes to give away and I came away with 3! They were full of cards from the mid 90's like Pinnacle, Score and Upper Deck. This was the only one missing from this set.

Soon, I'll post the Ichiro and Drexler cards I picked up along with these.

My Glorious Return?

Well I think I've found a way to start sharing my collecting addiction with the blogging world once again! I still don't have web access on my computer, but today I upgraded from my Blackberry Pearl to this new MyTouch thing from Android. Very nice so far. Finally I have something that can work the internet pretty decently, even though the browser won't open the stupid keyboard on Blogger's "New Post" screen, but there's an app for that! Along with Photobucket's app, I think I can get by without too much toil. We shall see.
A lot has happened since I last posted. The damned won the World Series, and.. other stuff. I've been buying a lot of Updates and Highlights, or is it Highlights and Updates? Also American Heritage Heroes Edition and (crap, this app just crashed) '08 Upper Deck Baseball Heroes. I also just placed my first order on Sportlots.com to complete my first hand collated sets since I decided I was a set collector back in January! Yeah, that's sad but I'm poor. Those sets are '08 Upper Deck X (poor people LIKE X!) and 2000 Skybox Metal. I'd like to become more involved in trading, so I'll be posting better trade bait from now on. I still have my haves and wants posted down there on the right, but the for trade list is pretty much just a list of my doubles, few hits, if any. Well, let's see if this thing crashes again.