Mets Team Sets: 2011 Topps Chrome Orange Refractor

Qoute of the Day:

"That's about 3 inches right there. Not bad for a straight guy."

Well, that didn't take long to finish this set off.

2011 Topps Chrome "Orange Refractor"

Complete Set Size: 220 cards

Mets Team Set Size: 10 cards

Completer Card: Angel Pagan

How Acquired: ebay

Best Picture: Carlos Beltran

Number of SP: 0

Number of RC: 2 (Beato, Nickeas)

Number of All-Stars: 5 (Bay, Santana, Beltran, Wright, Reyes)

Number of MVPs: 0

Number of Cy Youngs: 1 (Santana)

Number of HOF: 0 (David Wright is still active)

 

 

(...Joe)

Quite Possibly My Favorite Birthday Present Ever

Wikipedia my birthday, December 19th, and the first event to come up is such:

Publius Septimius Geta, co-emperor of Rome, is lured to come without his bodyguards to meet his brother Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (Caracalla), to discuss a possible reconciliation. When he arrives the Praetorian Guard murders him and he dies in the arms of his mother Julia Domna.

Awesome

Prelude to an epic, for sure.

 

My girlfriend kept me in suspense this year with my birthday gift. All she would tell me is that she ordered it off ebay and that it would be late. I tried guessing but kept coming up short. Finally, it arrived in the mail on the 23rd. I gripped it tight with both hands and was a bit perplexed to discover that the package was floppy and soft (A-oh)

Love it!!!

It's a replica jersey, not an actual game used one, and it's beyond awesome! I've been looking at getting a jersey this past year, but never get past bitching about their price tags.

So far I've only worn it around the house but I've been super cautious about when I wear it. Like, I won't wear it while I'm eating (I can be a bit messy) and I'll only wear it on days after I've taken a shower. 

(...Joe)

Tradewinds: Dutch Card Guy

This post is brought to you by that awkward moment when you say "goodbye" to someone and then you both walk the same way.

Today's post is courtesy of yet another trade made with The Dutch Card Guy! If you haven't checked out his page, or traded with him yet then make sure to do that before the year's end!

Accompanying each photo today will be an awesome fact that you never knew. Enjoy!

A normal dial tone is in the key of "F". 

 

  There are more plastic flamingos in America than real ones.

 A pregnant goldfish is called a twit.

 The longest recorded flight of a chicken is thirteen seconds. 

 The word lethologica describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want. 

 Women love cats. Men say they love cats, but when women aren't looking, men kick cats. 

Thanks again for the trade Jeroen!

 (...Joe)

Picking a Project

What I Learned Today:

Never cook bacon with your shirt off

I love the collections I have.

My Mets team set collection, Mike Piazza collection and David Wright collection, every card I add to them is just as exciting as the last and the numerical milestones that are achieved add a little extra fun every now and then. Right now I'm closing in on 200 completed team sets and I'm only a few cards short of 750 for my Piazza collection. 

And while those three collections offer me a limitless amount of new cards to acquire, that also becomes one of their downfalls. There are a limitless amount of cards to acquire for those collections! Mets team sets, Mike Piazza, David Wright- none of those collections will ever be "complete". Sure, I can say "I'm done collecting Piazza after I get 1,000 cards" or "I'm only collecting David Wright base and common inserts and parallels". Maybe even give myself a cut-off date or a time period to focus the team sets on. But that just wouldn't feel right to me. That would seem to make each collection more incomplete than if they were to actually be incomplete.

The Mets history began in 1962, which is better from a cardboard perspective than if I were a Reds collector or a Cubs fan. But the late 90's and early 2000's alone make it impossible to put together every team set ever made and as long as there are baseball cards being made, there a new sets to build. Piazza and Wright are both extremely popular players so the number of sets they're in, plus the number of 1/1's and cards #'d/50 or less makes achieving all of their cards impossible as well. 

So I have to make "end points" within each collection to help give myself a small goal to achieve and not get overwhelmed with the enormity of it all. That's one reason the team sets are so much fun for me to build. I recently knocked off about 20 sets last month, but those were all one or two cards each. I wanted something that had more of a "project" feel to it. Obviously a vintage set would be perfect, but I don't have the funds right now to dedicate to one. An Upper Deck Flagship would be cheap to put together, but I wanted something smaller and with more flare to it. So I looked through my Mets "Parallels" binder and found that I kept seeing 2011 Topps Chrome "Orange Refractors". Five of them to be exact, which is exactly half of the Mets team set. 

An unnumbered parallel of a ten card team set in which I already have five cards of? Sure, I'll take that project up! 

The Orange Refracs look great on the Mets cards, but I can only imagine hideous they came out for the Brewers, White Sox and Marlins. Not that any design or particular colored boarder could make a Marlins card look good. 

I currently have Davis, Beltran, Thole, Reyes and Nickeas. I've already won a Wright, Bay and Beato on ebay leaving only the Santana and Pagan left to finish this off! 

All that's left for today is to end this post in an incredibly anti-climatic manor.

(...Joe)

1998 Mike Piazza E-X 2001 "Cheap Seat Treats"

This post is brought to you by that awkward moment when you say a joke from your favorite T.V. show and no one knows what the hell you are talking about. 

First off, I hate saying the name of this card. There's no rhythm, no alliteration, no iambic pentameter, nothing. It bothers me. 

 I won this card on ebay for just under $3 last week. These inserts fell one per box and it's a card that I've always seen but never picked up for one reason or another. The seat blocking Piazza folds down...

...to give you a full shot. It's kindda a neat idea, I guess.Unfortunately, the entire card is just sortta awkward. Even putting it into the binder was tough. It's thicker than a normal card, but quite as thick as a Relic. The die cuts on top kept catching the top of the page and I had to keep holding the sleeve up.

It's a Piazza card, so I like it, but it's one of those ideas I think was better on paper than how it actually translated to.

(...Joe)

Good News Everybody!

Did you just read that in the Professors voice from Futurama? 'Cuz I did.

I've finally done away with having to solve a captcha to leave a comment here. 

After leaving a handful of comments over the past few days I became increasingly pissed off at those stupid fucking word problems that blogger decided it would be funny to make us do. Then, I suddenly realized that I have that setting enabled on my blog too.

Well, no longer.

(...Joe)

Tradewinds: Sports Cards Ate My Brain pt.2

QUICK!

Look at this Platypus

squeezable

First off, let me say how stoked I am that Wright and the Mets agreed to a 7 year extension! I'm excited to know that I'll be able to continue watching my favorite (active) player play for my favorite team for the next 8 years and that there's the distinct possibility that he'll spend the rest of his career as a Met.

This is the other half of the deal with Scott over at Sports Cards Ate my Brain.  I've slowly been accumulating pieces of the rainbow from this set lately. I have the Jersey, the "Gold" version the Chrome and now the Refractor. That just leaves the base, the "Gold Refractor" and the "X-Fractor" to complete the condensed rainbow. Maybe I'll make it a project soon.

This is a pretty cool looking card. It's all plastic (or acetate or whatever it's called) and it hails from the 2005 Studio set. Odds are 1:6 and there's a Gold parallel #'d/500 as well as a Platinum #'d/50 which would make the complete rainbow a possibility. (I've been on a rainbow kick lately. No idea why.)

I opened a couple boxes of 2007 Co-Signers (although this is an '06 cuz I like to make sense and all) and they were pretty fun. Knowing I'd walk away with 3 autos including a dual and that there's a numbered parallel in each pack was neat. Unfortunately, the autos were all of terrible low level prospects and the parallels are pretty much pointless. There are millions of different kinds and they barely parallel the card at all. Still, it's always nice to pick one up of your favorite player and when it's #'d/75 that makes it a little more funner...er.

Another Refrac, but I chose this because just the other day I was explaining about how all the small little idiosyncrasies and nuances of the game that make baseball so much fun and beautiful to watch. The pitcher getting the signs from the catcher, the half practice swings from the batter, the positioning of the fielders. God, football sucks. Is it April yet?

Unique still makes me happy as a result of my group break from way back when. I already have the Mets team set, so the Red parallel set is next, although, this is going into the right binder first.

Scott, thanks again for the awesome trade!

(...Joe)