Happy Sunday Fwiends!
I hope everyone has been enjoying the summer of 2016 so far. My Orioles are in first place and are looking good offensively! (Pitching continues to be another topic)
Speaking of pitching I got to watch a show down between two of my nephews in their last Little League game of the season. My nephew Brodrick pitched for his team the Royals while my nephew Andy played utility fielder for his team the Orioles. The first time Andy faced Brody he popped out right to Brody on a first pitch swing. Brody 1 Andy 0
However in the 3rd inning and Andy's second time facing Brody he ripped a hard grounder past the short stop for an RBI single. Brody 1 Andy 1
It was great to see both of them succeed on the field and each have their own little highlight.
Here is a stellar shot of Brody on the mound.
Aside from watching Little League and listening to the Orioles on The Fan I've been busy tooling with my collection.
I come to you from a place of joy and sorrow and of loss and gain...
I recently decided to part with a couple of big time cards in my collection in return for a rather large haul of cards that I've been looking to collect for some time now.
It's never easy to give up a card that you rather enjoyed owning but sometimes it is a necessity in order to achieve a certain outcome. When this happens to me I usually fall back on a good tune to help me memorialize my dearly departed...
I usually go to the Boyz II Men well on occasions like this but today I decided to say goodbye a little differently.
That's right fwiends... it's time to break out this classic and knock the dust off you're CD player.
From the 1985 Film and Soundtrack The Breakfast Club comes Don't You (forget about me) by Simple Minds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdqoNKCCt7A
First I'd like to say good bye to a big timer from my collection and a card that was fundamental to the start of this blog.
Goodbye Sweetspot dual relic Ripken/Murray
your patches were the sickest and I sold you away for less than I should have... but it gave me insta paypal that I used to start a new relic collection and for that I'm grateful and will never forget the place you held in my collection.
Goodbye old friend
With you leaving my collection I was able to purchase 7 2010 Topps National Chicle Relics to get me on my way to completing the 38 card relic set.
I actively bought packs of this product when it first came out and loved the painted design and the checklist being a good mix of stars, hall of famers, and star rookies at the time like Buster Posey. I had a couple of the relics that I pulled but ended up trading a while back but I had always had the notion to complete the set in the back of my mind. So when I saw the 7 available at an excellent price I had to move something of value and after completing the 75 mini relics and 206 booklets my collection is thin on high value cards. So I made the tough choice and ended up with these!
So with 7 out of 38 I set out to see what others I could acquire when I saw on ebay one of the 3 toughest cards in the set to acquire in the form of this beauty.
A great seller on ebay had this card up and I reached out to him to see if he would be up for a trade. A majority of the time when I ask this on a card of this caliber the general response is "No" and I get it. You sell on ebay to get cash, but sometimes you find a collector and things turn out differently and that was the case this go round.
We agreed in principle that he would hook me up with Gehrig in exchange for another big fish from my collection and a fellow "Iron Man".
Yes, that's right... I gave up my 2015 Panini National Treasures Game Ball Cal Ripken Jr. auto /10, but for my first Gehrig relic it was a no brainer to me.
So long Cal
Now he also had a couple others online and I asked about an additional trade to see what else I could get towards the set and he told me he'd check to see all that he had. When he got back to me it turned out that he had all of them I needed with the exception of Ruth and Mantle, the other two toughest pulls in the set.
So with that we hammered out the details of the deal and I sent him the following...
In exchange for...
Aside from my first Gehrig relic I also got my first Rizzuto relic, Munson relic (with absolutely sick swatch including pin stripe), Hank Greenberg relic, and Pee Wee Reese relic. Not to mention a Jim Palmer game used bat card! Many of these cards I had no clue what I'd be getting and the number of relics I got with a pin stripe was amazing! In fact every Yankee jersey card is a pin stripe with the exception of Robinson Cano and Joba Chamberlain. Joba appears to only have the gray swatch, but Cano has a pin stripe and I'll be looking to upgrade my swatch.
Additionally Pujols and Ortiz both have yellow swatches that I'd like to upgrade to add more pop to the set. Overall, I can't believe how fortunate I was to build this set with in a weeks time and now get to look forward to chasing down my final two. LOL, It always comes down to Ruth and Mantle.
If you're reading this and have one or both of these available for trade, hit me up!
Thanks for reading and I'll catch up again soon!
