More Swag from Tribe Cards

1993 UD All-Time Heroes #108 Robin Roberts
1983 Topps #43 Bob Dernier
2001 Topps Chrome #339 Scott Rolen
2007 Turkey Red #177 Kyle Kendrick

Indians Baseball Cards. And then some... found himself with a few extra cards and I believe under threat of eviction was good enough to offer them up to other collectors.

Being the good person that I am and understanding Dave's plight I offered to provide a home for the extra cards and when I say extra cards....I mean extra cards!!! Dave sent out two 300 count boxes of cards. I will be sorting them out for days.

Above are some of the Highlights. In 1993 UD produced an All-Time Heroes set that homages the Hassan T-202 cards from 1912. The cards are a nice idea and very sharp looking.

1983 is a set that I am pretty light on, and may be the last year that I collected cards before returning to the hobby. Bob Dernier was one of my favorite players in the mid-80s and this is a great addition to the collection.

I will always have mixed emotions about Scott Rolen. He always played hard and put up good numbers, but boy could he be a Diva sometimes.

A lot of the cards Dave sent over were from the late 80s and early 90s, but there were a handful of cool newer cards like this Turkey Red Kyle Kendrick.

Live Music - Nila Kay @ Milkboy Acoustic Cafe, Bryn Mawr PA - February 21 2009

I recently caught the beautiful young singer/songwriter Nila Kay at the Milkboy Coffee Cafe in Bryn Mawr. Nila's styling is part Jazz, part Pop - her set included the expected "Girl from Impanema". The young performer initially seemed a bit timid in the intimate cafe setting, but loosened up in her second set. Kay, from Arlington VA, who has been writing songs since the summer of 07 seems to be developing her style and tends to write a lot of songs about the trials of youth, young like, and love. She branched out into some other subject matter including a song about her young son.

Nila performed two 45 minutes sets composed mostly of her own material with a few cover songs mixed in. She performed the vocals and played guitar, while Jon Laine accompanied her on percussion for about half the songs.

Here are some additional pictures from the show:

Phillies release Adam Eaton

2009 Phungo Black Frame Insert - Adam Eaton vs Alfonso Soriano

It will cost the Phillies 9 Million dollars to let go of the ineffective pitcher. Eaton surely won't be missed partly due to his poor performance and also due to his rather surly attitude. He didn't handle a move to the bullpen well in 08 and this year rejected a request to pitch at the AAA level.

This Phungo card is part of the Black Frame insert set. This set features a couple of cards with a batter facing a pitcher. The photo is from a game that my girlfriend, Jo, took me to for a recent milestone birthday. It was a great week as she set up many fun activities for us and our friends. Chicago is definitely a fun city - if you're visiting for a game at Wrigley, I definitely recommend giving yourself some time to check out the city.

I suspect that I was trying to get a picture of Alfonso Soriano batting and am extremely happy with this shot. Anytime you can get the batter pitcher and ball in motion all in a single shot, thats pretty cool.

The Phils didn't completely cooperate as they lost my birthday game, but we went back a few days later to spend some time with the bleacher creatures for a day game at Wrigley and the Phils won!

Phillies Spring Training and Jack Russell

1933 Goudey #123 Jack Russell

Today the Phillies played their first spring training game. They lost to the Pirates in Bradenton. On Thursday the Phils will host the Toronto Blue Jays at their relatively new home "Bright House Field".

Until 2003 the Philadlephia Phillies (as well as the FSL Clearwater Phils) played their home games at Jack Russell Memorial Stadium. Jack Russell was a major league ballplayer who settled in Clearwater, got involved in local politics and was an instrumental figure in raising funds to build the stadium.

During his 15 year career Russell pitched for six different teams, participated in two World Series (33 Senators, 38 Cubs), and earned a spot on the second ever All-Star Team in 1934. He never played for the Phillies but his name is definitely familiar to Phillies Fans.

STS 8th Inning Results Freddy Sanchez

2008 Moments & Milestones Black Auto MA-FS Freddy Sanchez (09/25)

Freddy Sanchez won a batting title in 2006 batting an impressive .344 for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He has also won Major League Baseball Tony Conigliaro Award for overcoming adversity that same year. Sanchez was born with deformities in each of his feet (one clubbed, one severely pigeon towed) and it was once believed that he would never gain the ability to walk.

I tend to believe that Sanchez's 06 campaign is a career year, that I doubt he will duplicate. Regardless, one has to admire a person who has overcome such physical challenges and excel at a competitive sports highest level.

I am also glad to see the Pirates have locked up Sanchez for a few years. The Pirates are a team with a great baseball history and their fans deserve a better product then their management has put together for the last dozen plus years.

This auto is pack pulled form the only pack of Topps Moments and Milestones that I have ever purchased. I picked the pack up at a card shop on a whim while picking up some supplies. I am pretty sure this shop doesn't do any pack searching as I have had extraordinary luck with hits at this particular store.

Congrats to Stats on the Back, who persevered and found this auto. The Double will give his team another run and put him right in the middle of the mix for the runner up spot in this seasons Spot the Sig competition.

This ain't a pretty auto but you can make out the F and S pretty easily, and there were a bunch of Sanchez autos out across the Topps line in the last couple of years - that is why I went with double on this one rather than Triple.

The Bonus goes to Nachos Grande who was 3 off of the serial number of 9. It is hard to make out on the scan but it really is a 9. This bonus was for those collectors astute enough to figure out that this is a Milestone card and those have a fairly low serial number range. This particular card was a "Black" Auto only produced to a number of 25.

Here are the standings with one inning remaining.

PTBNL - repsresentin those Fightin Phillies - 9 Runs - bases empty
Night Owl - Dodgers - 3 Runs in man on 2nd
Cardboard Junkie - Braves - 3 Runs in - bases empty
Card Buzz - Angels - 2 runs in on Vlad Guerrero Home Run! Bases empty.
Stats on the Back - Mets - 2 Run in - Man on 2nd

Nachos Grande - Reds - 1 Run in. Men on 2nd.
Cardboard Addiction - Bosox - Man on First
A Cardboard Problem - Yankees - man on first.
Covered in Wrappers - Cardinals - On Deck

For further information regarding the Phungo Spot the Sig! contest click here and join the party.

2009 Upper Deck Faux Blaster

On Saturday we showed the results of a fake blaster of 09 Topps by posting $20 worth of packs purchased at a recent card show. At the same show I picked up $20 worth of UD Packs. Here are the results.

2009 Fake UD Hobby Blaster
Configuration 4 Hobby Packs + a Bonus for $20.00

72/500 Base 14.4% - each pack contained 18 base cards regardless of the number or type of inserts. No Dupes. 2 Phillies #291 Chase Utley and #298 Brad Lidge above


1 Game Jersey Dual Swatch GJ-JV Jason Varitek #d 033/149
1 Rivals R9 Angels v Dodgers Vlad v Manny.


2 USA Baseball 18U-JM Jeff Malm, 18U-MS Max Stassi.
1 Stars of the Game GG BW Brandon Webb

I am with Chris from Stale Gum here, having minors on cards is a little weird, although Stassi the younger of the two players will be 18 in a couple of weeks.

2 Documentary 4925, 4926 - BOS ALCS5 and BOS ALCS6 Both Ws for the BoSox as they tried to mount a series comeback versus the Rays.
1 UD 20th Anniversary Retrospective #130 Randy Johson 130Ks in 160.2. Seems like an unremarkable stat, but if your looking to fill cards there it is.
1 YSL 6741 - Derek Jeter 9/20/2008 Yanks 1 O's 0. This was the next to last game at Yankee stadium. Jeter is picture on a card for a game where he was removed for a pinch runner. weak.

This Hobby Blaster came out to be about even with a retail blaster. Retail blasters have 10 packs of 8 roughly I think. These Hobby cards are 4x20. Retail guarantees one relic, which I also got in the Hobby packs. In comparison with the Retail Blaster opened over at Stale Gum the other inserts are about equal - I like the Documentary add on better than the regular Documentary simply because they are all playoff games. My biggest insert disappointment was not gettting a 75 OPC.

To me the 09 UD v Topps competition is a tie. Topps has narrowed the gap in photography and both companies have put out functional if not distinct designs. My knock on the Topps cards is the miniscule unreadable card numbers. My complaint on UD is all the wasted space used to name the players position. This is really poor on the landscape style cards.

2009 UD #312 Jake Peavy

Neither Topps nor UD came up with an insert set that I am interested in collecting, although I may work on the 75 OPCs.

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ok now for the bonus.

I got the dealer to toss in grab bag (box really) with the 4 packs. The front card was a 2008 Donruss Threads Bob Gibson, which is a set I am thinking about building, as I have picked up quite a few packs of it already. I wasn't expecting much from the grab bag as he sells them for 1.75 normally and he was happy to throw it in.

The 75 card box actually turned out to be pretty good.

3 Phillies (Dykstra, Dale Murphy, Gene Shall)
8 Moments and Milestones - How bout that These baby's are so worthless they are getting thrown in grab bags
6 08 Allen Ginter Plus 2 flags
20 cards of Hall of Famers mostly from the overprinted glory years
30 stars and notables also from those operprinted glory years
and about dozen cars that are absolutely worthless.

1987 Topps #312 Turn back the Clock Reggie Jackson
2008 Topps #122 Jeff Kent 42 RBI (of 125) #d 006/150

So in the end, the Faux Hobby Blaster was a bit better than a Retail Blaster would have been on the grab bag. There was enough decent stuff in those 75 extra cards for me to consider them worthwhile.

Spot the Sig! - 8th inning

We are on to the 8th inning. This weeks auto I consider pretty easy and is good for a double.

The bonus question relates to the card that this sig comes from, What Serial Number is this cards serial number. The bonus is good for a walk or stolen base.

and CONGRATULATIONS to PTBNL!

Yes, As spring training begins, we near the end of the Spot The Sig! competition. And I must tell you that I am pretty sure we can declare a Winner! Yep PTBNL's six run lead is likely insurmountable.

The W is much deserved. If my arithmetic is correct we have had 15 autos so far and PTBNL has gotten eight which is more than half of them. I think perhaps Card Buzz would have given him a run if he had gotten involved earlier. Regardless PTBNL is our winner, Congratulations again to PTBNL!

I think a lot of folks are in competition for the runner up spot and something makes me think there may be a couple of 2nd place prizes laying around here that can be doled out. I would like to thank everyone for their participation. The competition was intended to keep everyone in touch with baseball during the off season. I hope everyone has enjoyed the contest, and I will probably rerun Spot the Sig! sometime in the future - likely next off season, perhaps sooner if people really clamor for another round.

Let me know via comments or email if you thought the autos were to hard, to easy, to obscure, to similar, or whatever. Same goes for the bonus Questions.

Here are the standings going into the 8th inning.

PTBNL - repsresentin those Fightin Phillies - 9 Runs - bases empty

Night Owl - Dodgers - 3 Runs in man on 2nd

Cardboard Junkie - Braves - 3 Runs in - bases empty

Card Buzz - Angels - 2 runs in on Vlad Guerrero Home Run! Bases empty.

Stats on the Back - Mets - 1 Run in - Man on 3rd
Nachos Grande - Reds - 1 Run in. Man on First

Cardboard Addiction - Bosox - Man on First

A Cardboard Problem - Yankees - man on first.

Covered in Wrappers - Cardinals - On Deck

For further information regarding the Phungo Spot the Sig! contest click here and join the party.