Chopping Away, Bit By Bit

The website has been lacking updates for a few days, and I apologize for that.  Unfortunately for us, it’s just something that’s going to happen every once in a while.  We both lead rather frantic lifestyles, and then when life should have a little bit of a slow down, a wrench gets thrown at you like having to help and take care of your wife because she sliced the webbing between her fingers open preparing for a family barbecue, requiring a hospital visit and 3 stitches.  You know, normal stuff like that.  She’ll be okay and the stitches come out on Saturday, but I’m surprised at how much time helping her with normally menial tasks can take up.

What all this means is that I haven’t had much time to put together a good, well-thought out, deep introspective post.  I still haven’t provided my evil side of Beckett, only what I consider to be the good.  Maybe this weekend.  I also want to talk about the #1 reason for the hobby’s decline (no, not Beckett).  That’ll have to wait.  I want to get reviews up for Platinum and Lineage, because we like reviewing and it’d be good to do a couple again and have those on record.  We’ve shot several videos in the past you guys haven’t seen yet, too!  The content is there.  It’s just not here.  Yet.

I’m also in the planning stages of my next group break.  I’m getting around to finding ways to spend my Kobe money (I took home around $2450 after fees – I’m going to be spending $450 on cards).  One of those ways will be by snatching up the boxes for an all Topps group break.  I’m going to stick with the years between 1996-ish through 2005, but expect most of it to be 2000 and later.  Unlike last time, I’m not going to go through the process of asking for suggestions (although feel free to leave them here), since that will take too much time for me to post and wait.  I’m ready to buy very soon!  I will say I won’t be incorporating Flagship, Chrome, Opening Day, or Stadium Club.  I want to keep this focused on more of the ancillary products.  Finest may get in.  Total might get in, but I did that once.

It’s all coming together, bit by bit.  Now to Chop away at my backlog of trade posts.  I’m going in order, and I need to get rolling on these!  Luckily I have a couple quick ones I can put up.  This one here is courtesy of Tomahawk Chopping.  He’s not really blogging anymore, but that’s because he’s off focusing on his photography business.  As film majors, Andy and I can appreciate what that can entail and wish Derek the best of luck.

Love that blue border!

I wish the parallels in main Topps looked like this.  Or that they would simply change up the border color each year, instead of sticking with gold.  I don’t ask for much.  Just switch it up a little.  Maybe go back to the 1992 style and foil trick-out the name like a mutha.

I can’t tell you how excited I was to find out that this card could actually be mine through a trade.  Do you know how rare it is to see good parallels of semi-star (or common players) offered up by bloggers or even featured on the site?  I bet several of you have cards like this that I need that I would jump on in a second if I only knew they existed.

Needs more flair

I found out after the fact that I already had this card through the massive package that AdamE sent.  I hadn’t updated my spreadsheet yet, and this happened.  Aside from the thicker card stock, later years of Flair don’t have much going for them.  It’s actually rather bland, and the border things remind me of an assembly line press that’s bound to smush Frank Thomas into a muscly cube.

Oh yes, he actually holds that record

I know the Topps 60 achievements don’t have the best track record of featuring the #1 player on the advertised list, but Carlos Marmol does currently hold the record for highest K/9 innings ratio in a single season.  He ended 2010 with a 15.99 mark, which is a full 1.01 higher than previous record holder Eric Gagne (2003).  Simply astonishing.  He’s not going to hit that this year, but who could expect that twice?

This is one of 4 relics to be found in 2011 Topps (so far).  They felt the need to issue another relic in series 2 (need) along with a diamond variation (have) and a dual relic with Mariano Rivera /50 (seen 1 on ebay ever so far, needless to say – need).

I’m certainly very happy to have this one.  I love pinstripes and if I have the choice between the two (on say Ebay), I’ll go stripe all the way.  But I ain’t gonna say no to a trade for a single color relic if any of you guys happen to have one I need.

Thanks again to Derek.  Maybe he’ll stop by and read this. If not, at least you all now finally know the trade was very much appreciated.

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