Sox and more

I dropped off previous sorting at my LCS a week ago and he gave me some more stuff to sort. I was in his shop when Kevin text and said we weren't going to the show on Saturday so I grabbed some more to sort since I'd be home. I started it Friday when I got home and finished Saturday afternoon. There was a book of pages and a lot of cards in penny sleeves which is a pain because I have to take them all out. That probably took more time than all of the sorting. I went through a lot of baseball, some football and a real small stack of basketball but I only ended up with more baseball for myself.

We'll start with the older White Sox cards that I got. There was quite a mix of stuff in this sort as you see the above cards. That is my 109th card of Carlos Lee and my 192nd of Mags.

These are the shiny newer cards. Well, except the Colas, it's not shiny but he's a player I've been picking up cards of lately because I'm hoping for good things. The Keuchel is the Prism Refractor. 

There was also a ton of these Chrome Platinum Anniversary. I didn't realize how many cards were in the set because I figured I was getting close to the team set until I looked these up. I was wrong, these 4 give me 14 but there's 31 total. That's my 238th card of Tim Anderson and my 279th card of Abreu.

Then getting into the player collections, I got one Tier 3 of Gary Carter. The scan doesn't show but it's a pretty shiny card itself. This is my 350th card of the Kid.

Some more platinum anniversary Sox cards but both PC's. That's 233 cards of Moncada and 213th of Eloy.

1 more, same set, different team. I also found this Larkin to add to that PC.  This is my 749th card of Larkin.

As I said above, there was quite an assortment of cards.

I also found 6 cards to add to my 1971 Topps set. As you can see, they are in pretty good shape as well. These 6 give me 204 cards which is good for just over 27% completed.

Even better than the 1971's were these 4 from 1969. They give me only 71 from the set which is just over 10% completed.

The temps dropped below 0 for the first couple of days this week and they cancelled work so I'm working tomorrow to make it up so I'm not sure when I'll get back to my LCS to exchange cards. We have the show that got cancelled last week on Saturday as it got moved so it might have to wait until next weekend.

LCS Pickups

Kevin and I ran down to the LCS on Friday, we dropped off some stuff we sorted and picked up some more. I worked on that on Sunday and will probably finish the next few days as tomorrow is my last day at work until the 5th of January so I'll have plenty of time. I brought home 3 2 row boxes of baseball list players and 5 2 rows of football list players to sort. I probably won't end up with a whole lot for myself but I do usually end up with some.

While we were there, Kevin bought a bunch of colored parallels from them. We generally only pay a quarter a piece and throw them in our dollar boxes, or more if they are worth it. So while we were sitting there, I went through the box and pulled out a bunch for myself.

Everything above is a holo or refractor, lots of color up there as well. The Gavin Sheets in the top row of the top photo wasn't in the box, the LCS owner had set that aside for me and gave it to me, along with another card you'll see. The 3 Giolito's give me 153 of him. The 2 Anderson's give me 232 and the Abreu is my 275th.

Next up are Tier 3 pickups.

I picked up 1 basketball card and it's of Larry Legend. This insert is the holo parallel because yes, even the inserts have parallels. This is my 106th card of Larry.

2 more Tier 3 collections with this Stadium Club refractor of Steve Carlton and an Update Sapphire of Ripken. I guess technically the Sapphire isn't a color parallel as it's its own set but you all know I love the cracked ice. This is my 229th card of the lefty Carlton and the 976th of Ripken.

Next up is Tier 2.

2 more of Fisk, both in White Sox, both made to look like older sets and of course, not both parallels. The 1988 look-a-like is from 2023 and is an insert, the Platinum Anniversary Prism is from 2022. This is my 386th card of th OG Pudge.

I grabbed a couple more of the only star from last year's team. Let's hope he stays with the team and continues to get better. The 2022 on the left is another Prism parallel and the Optic on the right is the holo parallel of the insert. These 2 give me 203 cards of Luis.

The top card is a Stadium Club Chrome refractor, I already had the non-Chrome and the Chrome to go with it. The bottom card is the other card that the LCS gave me, it's only my 2nd relic of Moncada and these 2 give me 230 of him.

Really love the Buehrle, mainly because I don't pick up too many of him. It's only my 5th card that I've picked up this year and one of those was a week or two ago. It's also my 386th of him. At this rate, it'll be a few years before I hit 400. The purple Eloy is my 209th of him.

A couple of former Wolverine Tier 2 players. The Larkin is an insert parallel as it's the Holo and you can tell the Cronenworth is an XFractor. Oddly enough I have the SC Red, Chrome and now the XFractor but not the base. I have both of the base and the Holo of the Larkin though. The Barry is my 747th card of his and the 77th of Jake.

The LCS refilled his 1/2 off box and I went through that as well and pulled these 2 auto's. I feel like they equaled $36 and then half off was $18 but he gave them both to me for $10. He had others I wanted but I was trying not to spend too much. I grabbed the Burger just because I liked him and wish they wouldn't have traded him and I also like Sheets so those are the 2 I grabbed.

I am all caught up on posts, for now. We don't have another show until the 31st but I may go to the LCS with all my time off. I should finish the sorting so I'm sure I'll hit it sooner or later.

Christmas is coming, my stack is getting fat

As you probably know, Dennis is a very generous dude and for a little while now, he's been sending out Christmas packages. I've been lucky enough to be on his list for a number of years. We share a bunch of PC's so it's easy for us to pick stuff up for each other. I've got a box of stuff ready to go to him as well, I just got to get it to the post office later this week.

As per the usual, we'll start with the White Sox cards. These 4 all go to the Sox collection. The Reylo is the metallic winter. The Morel and McDowell are inserts and the Short is a purple refractor. The McDowell looked familiar but I didn't have it.

Just as the Reylo above was, this is the Metallic version as well. You can't really tell in either of the scans. This is my 228th card of Yoan.

Dennis sent me some of these Generation Now of Zimmy. These were the only 2 I needed to go along with the 19 that I already had. I also have 3 of the Chrome version. These 2 got me to a milestone though, I now have 400 cards of him.

One of our shared collections is Cal jr. I thought I already had this card as well, I was even thinking that I just added it not long ago but it turns out it was the Darryl Strawberry version of it. This Cal give me 975, not sure I'm going to make that 1k by the end of the year.

He even managed to hit my Vintage collection with this 1972 Topps leaders card. It is my 239th card from that set.

This was another card that I thought I had but I didn't. I do have the base version as this is a promo parallel which explains why I thought I had it. This is the 21st card of Tyrone Wheatley and being as he isn't a PC player, they are all in the Michigan uniforms.

I definitely like this card of our current Running Back. This is the International Trading Card Day card. I'm so glad Bowman can use logos now so they didn't screw with his helmet. This is my 5th card of hopefully many more in a pro uniform as well.

Now we get to the hit portion of the package.

First up, he sent me my 5th auto of Trey Burke. Out of those 5, this is the first one he put her jersey number on the auto. This is also the newest card I have of Burke so maybe this is the way he signs now. This card is my 60th card of Trey.

Funny story with this Funchess patch, Dennis came out to the Kalamazoo show (we'll be back there in January and May) and pulled a card just like this, only with a better patch, out of our boxes. A card I obviously didn't know was there. So he bought that and upgraded his and sent me the old one. It's still a cool patch even if you can barely see the other color. It's also numbered to /50. This is my 113th card of Devin.

Love seeing these 8 TK Legacy autographs as they are difficult to find around here, at least the Wolverine ones are. I see the Notre Dame ones all over. I even recognize a few of the names. He also added a Donovan Warren silver auto.

As always, a great package from Dennis of Too Many Verlanders fame. Thanks brother and I'll hopefully get you yours before Christmas.

Busy weekend

After 4 days of birthday posts, I finally get a chance to post again. Albeit, it's only a few cards.

Friday night, myself, 2 cousins (Sluggo being one) and a nephew got free tickets (and parking pass) to the White Sox game. When I was offered, I immediately jumped on them because they were playing the Padres so I was hoping to watch Cronenworth, but I forgot he's been out with injury. If you're a Ted Lasso fan, I did get to see Coach Beard throw out the first pitch so there was that. We lost 3-2 but I got to see Dylan Cease pitch and Moncada hit a HR. Benintendi almost had a grand slam but it drifted foul. We still had a good time even though we got home around 1 am and Kevin and I had to get up early for a card show Saturday morning.

We set up at the South Bend show and I actually didn't come home with any cards. Although I did look at some vintage but I didn't buy any. I noticed a table a couple down from me that had some White Sox bobble heads but I didn't go look at them because people always want more than I'm willing to pay. When I went to the bathroom an hour or so later, I decided to walk by the table just to see who they have. As I walked up, there was a Konerko one sitting on the front and I grabbed it to look at. The customer standing next to me said "I'm getting ready to buy that," Oops! I told him my bad and set it down. Then as I was walking by the table of the dealer between ours and the bobble head dealer he showed me a Mark Buehrle one that he bought from him. I was bummed that I didn't get to either one but I was also thinking I probably wouldn't have paid that much anyways. Then the guy said, he couldn't pass it up for $5. I cussed him out. Lol. I told him I was mad at myself enough for not looking earlier than he had to tell me that I could have had them for $5. That's what I get for being cheap at that. I could have had bobble heads of my 2 favorite Sox players.

I did sort some cards for my LCS on Friday before heading out to the Sox/Padres game. I went through 10 opened blasters of 2021 Topps series II, I already have the team set so the only thing I was going to take home was inserts or parallels. Let's see what we got.

For the White Sox collection, I picked up this Madrigal rookie 1986 copy. I liked Madrigal and didn't like that he got traded. This is my 47th card of Nick and I'm pretty sure he only played with us for a year. I do tend to pick up his Sox stuff when I see it because as I said, I liked him.

For Tier 3, I grabbed this die-cut Mike Schmidt. He's been getting new cards more and more so I've been getting more. This is my 344th card of Schmidt.

I also got this 1965 look-a-like of Robert who is out with injury, not that that matters now. This is my 194th of him so I'm closing on that 200 card milestone.

Nothing too flashy but that catches me up with pick-ups other than the old random posts so I'll try to get some of those done so then I'll be caught up with everything new I've added.

Going, Going, Almost Gone

I'm back but it's not another Michigan post. It's a White Sox post. This guy is one of those White Sox PC's that I started with some of the newer Sox players that I wasn't sure if I was going to keep or not. This guy is one of the ones I'm on the fence about. He has all the talent in the world but just can't seem to put everything together. He needs to have a really good 2023 season to build my trust back up in him again.

More of the 582 Montgomery's that I picked up my LCS.

I also grabbed this mini of Moncada from Sluggo, it was another payment card so I didn't pay anything for it.

These 3 cards give me 185 cards of Yoan which puts me 3 cards away from 1st place on TCDB. The nice thing is if I do drop the Moncada Collection is, they are all White Sox cards except 9 so I wouldn't even lose that many.

Come on YoYo, let's have an All-Star year next year.

Wrong Sox to the Good Sox

We never did go to the Baseball Card Exchange yesterday. We decided we didn't feel like making the 2 hour drive so we just hit the LCS. Sluggo picked up a few things for the shop. I went through a $3 each/4 for $10 box. I ended up pulling a few items for myself but ended up putting them back. It's just too hard to spend money right now with our hours cut back. I did spend $5 on a small stack from Sluggo though.

Watched the Michigan game today, it was a little scary for awhile but we pulled it off. Mike Hart was carried off the sidelines but I haven't gotten on the blogs yet to see why. They didn't really say much during the broadcast. I was hoping for a little better played game going into Penn State but hopefully Harbaugh can whip them up into shape before then.

Today's post is a guy who struggled all year (like most of the Sox) but I'm hoping it was injury related (like most of the Sox).

Fred brought this into me at work. It's the blue version of Select.

These 10 came from my last shipment from Sportlots. The top scan are the Red Sox and the bottom are the White Sox cards. It was a nice shipment of Moncada cards if I don't say so myself. Lots of shiny cards.

These 11 give me 183 of Moncada, closing in on the 200 mark.

Monday YoYo

Let's start the week fresh with some baseball. In hopes that we get a season this year. Last strike, I stopped watching baseball for awhile. I doubt that will happen this time but I won't be happy about it. As I'm sure most of you won't be either.

I picked up another Moncada at the last show as well. A very shiny Moncada. These X-fractors used to be all the rage back in the day, now they are one of a million parallels. It's still pretty cool looking but I like some of the color ones better.

This is my 164th card of Yoan.

Big Changes

Well, we didn't like that Topps had the only license but I bet nobody saw that coming. As much that as wrong with Topps, I didn't want them to lose their license. There are a couple of sets that I do enjoy and hopefully they don't discontinue but I guess we'll see in a few years. I won't even get into giving the license to someone who hasn't even been into cards. I guess they also have a few years to figure it out.

Today's post isn't a Michigan guy but rather, a guy who hit a HR this evening against Tampa Bay. As I type this, they are heading into extra innings.

I picked up this 2016 Donruss of Yoan at the National. It's actually my oldest card of him and the only one I have from 2016. It's also only the 3rd card I have of him in that other Sox uniform.

I also picked up these 3 from Sluggo. That Fire is a pretty cool looking card, or as the kids say, it's fire.

These 4 cards put the Yoyo collection at 155 cards.

Chrome & Colorful Moncada

Today's random comes up with a guy on our 1st place team that has forgotten how to win. It's like someone threw a switch and we suck now. I realize that we have a lot of injuries to our starting lineup but we were playing through it pretty well until a week ago. I just hope they can hold it until we start getting some guys back.

These 3 cards of Yoan came from Fred at work. A couple of Chrome and a Chrome like Panini. Both of those Chrome are pretty nice, I wasn't sure if I'd like them on other sets, especially the A&G, we've seen in on SC before, but it looks really good on it.

Everything else from the Panini above to the bottom of the post came from Sportlots. That Elite card in Pink really stands out.

As you can see, there's another Chrome A&G. I picked a few of them on Sportslots but Fred gave me some before I had them shipped to me, go figure. The top right is a Limited Edition and both of the bottom are the 582 Montgomery parallels.

These are all inserts and again, I wasn't sure I would like the Chrome on Turkey Red because I like that set as is, but it really does look good.

The top 3 are all parallel sets of 2020 and the bottom is a Class 1 Gold Label. Really like the Gold Labels.

Last but not least, a bunch of Donruss parallels. Very colorful to say the least.

These 25 cards bump up the Moncada PC to 151 cards. For shits & giggles, I looked up on TCDB to see where I rank and I'm in 2nd and only 4 cards behind the first place guy.