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Welcome to Part 7. I’m doing a terrible job of showing off all of my autograph cards with any sort of regularity. People like the flashy stuff, right? Well, it’s not going to get much flashier than the example we have today. Jorge Soler has been suffering injuries since his transition into the Royals staff, but I’m still hoping he can come back healthy and start producing the way I think he’s capable.
Even after having a hand in the case-breaking world, Autographed cards still fascinate me. Allow me to explain with this series introduction from the early days of the blog. To see the other parts of the series, click on the “Card-ography” tag at the bottom.
Now that I’m back into collecting, one of the biggest surprises greeting me at the door was that signatures on cardboard (or on stickers placed on cardboard) are now a regular part of the hobby. In fact, it’s basically expected at this point. I know there are plenty of people who feel that if their box doesn’t have an auto – or even the RIGHT auto – then it’s a waste of money. Hell, I’m still not completely jaded by relics, so I can’t understand this theory.
I know that most of the autos aren’t all that valuable, but seeing that blue, red, and sometimes black ink on a card in your hands still holds significance to me. It still makes for some of the most enjoyable moments in collecting.
That’s why I’m starting a series that will analyze the signatures we see. It’s common to see people lump them into “good” and “bad” categories, but I want to take it farther than that. This player took the time to sign your card (although some of them don’t take tons of time). I’m going to take the time to inspect it.
 A lot going on here This card came from a box I bought on Black Friday. I was lucky enough to land this blue mojo (I think that’s what they call it) thing #/75. From this product, there are still 5 other autograph parallels remaining.
Literal:
If you didn’t know his name, what would you think this said? “= Eulen”
Style points:
I dig it. You have the dynamic lines that are supposed to make up the “J” followed by more of a finessed last name. Plenty of visual interest.
Space Usage:
He has room to include his full first name, if he wanted to, but vertically, he takes full advantage of the space given. I have other examples of his as well where he expands the height when given the opportunity.
Laziness:
I don’t see laziness here, even with only the first initial. It’s clearly a style choice and the effort seems pretty evident to me.
Intangibles:
This card is very busy, and there are so many parallels, it’s no wonder people get burned out. But I have to give it bonus points for being the blue bordered version on a Cubs card, and for being on-card.
Overall:
Card companies also love to load their autograph checklists with young players, so my Soler quest is just starting only owning five so far. I doubt I’ll have a ton more to chase though unless he does come back to form. Either way, I’ll be happy to pick off these older ones as the years go on.
I’m feeling fairly confident that I’ll actually be able to finish this series, and close to on time as well. The Cubs have played over 110 games at this point, so I still need to catch up a bit, but aside from a vacation coming up the last week of this month, I don’t have much going on.
The Cubs do have something going on. In this ninth batch, they went from 4 wins to 7. I don’t know when it was they re-took the division lead, but they’re managing the cling on for now. The Brewers are still very much in contention. Uncomfortably so. Here’s hoping to some larger posts as we run it out.
 Bright-eyed optimism Win #46 – Almora – 3-3, 2 RBI. Both of those times gave the Cubs the lead. He left game early in a high-scoring affair that came almost completely from singles. Plating 14 runs, 17 of the 20 hits were singles.
 Could you tell it’s the refractor Win #47 – Lester – This “award” is not for pitching, although that was fine. Instead it was for the 3-run home run in the 8-run second inning. The Twins would come back and make it close in an 11-10 win, but I’m glad they pulled it out so I could honor that rare occasion.
 Aqua holo version Win #48 – Rizzo – Only 1-4 on the day, but he provided the tying run on a single and then the go-ahead run on a force out. Not a great game, but he produced when it was needed.
 I’m running out of Willson cards to show – down to 2 more Win #49 – Contreras – 2-3, 3 RBI, 1 walk at the plate. He was at bat when Javy stole home again, which doesn’t mean anything. He also had a double and a solo homer.
 Also the aqua version Win #50 – Baez – 4-5, 2 RBI. That’s not an unusual game for him this year. One hit was a solo home run, and he drove in the tying run in another Cubs come from behind game. El Mago also stole 3rd base for his 16th SB of the season.
 Coghlan standing in for Bote Win #51 – David Bote – Only 1-1, however Bote drew a bases loaded unintentional walk to give the Cubs a walk-off in the 10th. David has been decent for the Cubs in limited play and the rookie showed composure in a key spot.
 Odd logo placement Win #52 – Edwards Jr. – Lastly, the relief crew gets a rare nod. There was nothing spectacular in terms of batting. Edwards threw one inning and stuck out all three batters he faced.
Very shortly, I’ll stop the three package rotation of trades I’ve been carrying on lately. I need to squeeze in some new trades that are trickling in, or recently arrived. I’m hoping that the sooner I can post the newer stuff, the more likely people will be to trade with me. Probably not how it works, but humor me. Besides, I can always come back to finish up these trade series as needed. I’m not sure if it’s better to be caught up on trade posts, or to always have a backlog.
Feel free to debate that below as we dig into the fourth part of my trade with Tom over at The Angels, In Order. He sent me a ton of John Lackey and Tony Gwynns. If you want to review the first part, you can do so here. Second part here. Third, here. I took a break from Lackey stuff to focus on Gwynn last time. I’ll come back to him later, because there’s still more, but I decided to finally start at the earliest of the Angels cards and look at young John today.
 There was a time he didn’t look like he was in his 40s Every time I checklist these, I have to double check if it’s the Vintage parallel or the normal base set. I still don’t think I have a good grasp
 It didn’t last long A couple of rookie cards are good ways to start. I know very little about 2003 cards still, but maybe I can expand that knowledge a tiny bit with this collection.
 Not fair having two Garret Andersons on your team What an unfortunately bland card. That doesn’t feel like Fleer’s tradition.
 Back in the straight-up Anaheim days 2004 is an underrated design, or just not talked about very much. That tiny outline with the uniform number is such a nice touch.
 There’s that…I want to say…smile. It’s been a while since I’ve said it, but my opinion holds true, I don’t want Topps Total back (as we knew it). Not as budget friendly as people think and all the designs were trash.
 Spring Training fun Okay, Panini. You can skip this year in the Donruss reboot mash-ups you’re doing. Thanks
 Lack-ing a second “t” there Scot Another Topps Total card. This time, Lackey has to share space, and the look is still bad. I don’t care how much color you try to inject.
 Perfect arm position Two more. I can tell you’re getting tired. That red is a little harsh on the eyes, when there’s so much Cubbie blue usually.
 Smash! The 2006 Topps will close us out for today. From my count, I think there will be two or maybe three more parts to Tom’s package (almost half of each player).
Thanks, as always, to Tom for the great trade that really gave my collection a quick boost. I look forward to showing off the rest over the coming weeks as I expand the trade rotation.
This is part six of a twenty-five part series chronicling my budding collections of the 2016 World Series champion Cubs. Obviously, I’ve already starting showing off some of those cards, but I wanted to offer a formal introduction to the various players. With my legacy player collections, I’m still going to attempt to show every single card on the blog, but with these new guys I’m taking a different approach as you’ll see here where I lump cards in one scan, and will probably skip many of the more basic cards I get unless I can get a good theme together.
As I mentioned in my previous post, I think the best tactic is to start posting cards for some of the smaller collections now before I run out of cards. If I’m doing other posts with various topics or themes that might include the very few cards I have of these people, then I won’t have anything left over for this series.
Now, most of the time, the manager is introduced last, but that might be an anti-climactic end to the series. Also that whole previous paragraph thing…I don’t have much to offer. This will be short and to the point.
 I forgot about that terrible shade of green After two short managerial stints with the Angels in the late 1990s, Maddon took over the Rays position in 2006. He won the AL Pennant in 2008, which was his third full year of managing. The first two did not go well, but 2008 saw the team win 97 games.
 Looks worse next to the gold He also won Manager of the Year in 2008, which was probably appropriate. I don’t know what the other guys did that year, but I know it put his name on the map for a lot of people.
 Much better, but I prefer the lighter blue for the Rays After a few more 90 win seasons, he was eventually poached by Theo, Jed and the Cubs for the 2015 season, which was an immediate success.
 A few team cards – I don’t collect them, but don’t turn them away In that first year, the Cubs made a decent run in the playoffs, getting in as the Wild Card, and won 97 games in the regular season. The next year helped create most of the cards you see above (except the Wrigley A&G Die Cut – that was from the 2015 NSCC).
 Here’s some random cards from the 25 card WS box I scanned in one lump Overall, not a bad tenure with a young team. Three straight years of playoff appearances. Three straight years of 90+ wins. One World Series title (so far?) Pretty good, I guess.
I think I’ve now posted all of my Maddon cards so far. There really aren’t enough manager cards in Topps sets these days. Collecting for Joe will be interesting. There are only 37 more cards I need so far, but ten of those are minor league or locally issued things, some from decades back. Maybe I’ll find someone from Angels territory that would be willing to send some of those old 90s Mother’s cards or 80s minor league cards my way.
The 2018 National is starting today and I will not be attending. Maybe I’ll go to Cleveland in a future year, but not this time. Further east seems like less of an option. I could drive to Ohio, but I don’t want to pay for a flight to go farther than that. The good news is I have enough cards from last year (and 2015) to last a year.
It goes without saying that the show is huge. It can be very intimidating and overwhelming. So many cards and so little time (even if you’re there the whole time). You’ll be digging around for hours and days. And within that haystack, you have to search for needles. Some needles are tougher to find than others. Today I’m featuring cards from players where I found (and purchased – important qualifier in some cases) less than 5 cards over the course of the show. This year, I didn’t find a single Ryan Dempster or Carlos Marmol card I needed (the latter is a lot tougher). Also I couldn’t find anything for David Ross or Joe Maddon. Heck, I barely found any Kerry Woods. Justin Grimm netted me one card, but I posted that already.
Maybe someone already got those needles. Here are a few that I did find for myself.
 Gotta love the die cuts Mike Montgomery – I also got the Montgomery auto that I posted earlier, but here’s the only other one I found at the show, a sweet die cut refractor.
 1 of 7 Pedro Strop – I need 6 more cards of him from 2016 Topps. This is the rainbow foil, even though it’s tough to tell from the scan.
 Not as shiny as I’d like Hector Rondon – Relief pitchers don’t get a lot of cardboard love and dealers don’t stock them much. So, this gold is the only one I found.
 Pringle-fractor I only found 4 Chris Coghlans. I’ve already posted one, and I’m saving another for a different post, but I dig the X-fractors.
 I need a lot of these parallels These diamond whatevers are also pretty cool. I think a few bloggers are trying to get the set, if I’m not mistaken. Sorry, but this one is mine.
 I like the basketball version better This is only the second time I’ve shown Travis Wood cards on the blog after adding him as a collection. I have a decent amount of his cards, so I’ll have to find ways to change that.
 I wonder how they pick which number to use Panini parallels were sort of prominent in the dollar boxes. I don’t care about the no logos thing, but I do care about some cheap cards.
 Ride the wave The last of the three for him is another gold parallel. I don’t mind picking these off for a buck or less.
 A low numbered retail exclusive parallel To end things off, I will say that I found 4 Willsons, but I’m only showing this green parallel #/99. I have very few Contreras cards in general, so I want to save them for other posts where they may be needed. Hopefully next year, I’ll find a few more of his needles when I return to dive into the haystack.
Over the past couple months, I’ve been making a more concerted effort to get caught up on trade packages that I received over the past year (things got rough from Oct-Mar). I’m getting closer, but still several blog posts behind over three trade partners. That includes Kerry/Madding at Cards on Cards. I actually have two separate packages from him that I’m sort of combining when I feel like it with several sets of 9 cards to go.
To make matters worse (?), he sent me another package that arrived yesterday with like 50 more cards already! Hooray to more cards, but holy crap, let a guy catch up! I also have a few more envelopes from different trade partners that should be arriving shortly.
Look, the more I type, the longer it takes for me to move on to the next trade post, and you guys don’t care what I have to say, so let’s take a look at this older trade right quick.
 This was against the Cubs I’m starting with one Heyward, the silver parallel that was available in some specific retail pack. These (I think) are all part of two packages ago, and this is Jason’s only appearance in that grouping.
 I don’t recall seeing Zobrist’s auto before The rest of these are going to be Ben Zobrist cards, so settle in. I don’t think I’ve shown all that many of his cards so far.
 Dude has an expressive face It’s about time for the World Series MVP to get screen time.
 One of the few Rays I had heard of Ben is a local. Born in Illinois, he has a house in Chicago now as well, and seems like a pretty good guy.
 Told you about his face I don’t think that this is Miguel Montero on the ground, apparently dead.
 No reason to practice swinging 2013 was his second All-Star appearance, after 2009. He didn’t get into the game this year.
 Uh…watch that hand Zo also played for Oakland and the Royals as you may know, but this is almost all rays in this group.
 Hitting ahead of Rizzo Here’s the lone Cubs card in this post about Cubs players. Funny how that works sometimes.
 I should buy a box of these if they’re cheap Lastly, we have one of the Chipz. It’s hard to believe this lasted three years or so. I have a bunch from free packs that D&A gave away for buying $x or more in boxes. I should do a trade bait post of that sometime.
Of course, if I do, then Kerry will probably send me another mountain of cards to sift through before I can blink and we’ll be right back where we started.
After the massive month that was April, I had to take things a little easier. Aside from ebay, I also went on a huge tax money fueled binge on COMC and used a portion of my Sportlots credit I’ve built up over several years to buy stuff. So, a lot of time also was spent logging stuff (but not yet put into binders). Still, love of collecting always finds a way, and it’s been months since I’ve gone empty handed.
 I need two more for Hendricks I mean, there’s still some Topps Bunt cards I need, so that tends to make things a bit easier. Maybe I should add the 2016 Bunts to my watched list too.
 Somehow I have three of these already One card was it for the new guys. But I found a few more things to round out the month, like this Class 2 Blue. I wonder when, if ever, I’ll finish a year of this stuff.
 I can’t search for Precious Metals if its empty My memory is terrible, so I don’t recall how I found these. Maybe it was a random search for the tins out of curiosity (I’ve always wanted to open some). Either way, I found this empty one to add to my collection.
 Need another one for the Gwynn collection The same seller had this one too. Only 5 cards per tin is rough. This is the same year, but a different look, and there are parallels for the tins too. Should be a fun hunt.
 “Peices” Don’t expect this to become a habit, but I am making an effort to go after more autographs. I’m surprised that I got this for the price that I did. I fully expected to be outbid, because these don’t come up for auction very often and I know how popular this product is.
However, I will spoil things a bit for next month and say that it does also feature an autograph, a dual, and it’s a doozy!
I’ve done a horrible job of keeping up with other people’s blogs. The past 3-4 years was due to work. Now that I have free time again, I’m playing a lot of catch up with my hobbies. I tend to focus my efforts on writing my own blog, or toying around with my movie reviews or taking small steps to get my YouTube gaming channel ready for launch & streaming at nights. Too many hobbies, not enough time. Of course the wife wants to do things during the summer so my weekends tend to be full of stuff as well.
It is something I want to get back into, as I’m pretty sure (based on engagement I’ve seen) my blog readership is greatly suffering by not interacting back. Still, despite my set backs, I did become aware of the great bucket list post that Billy of Cardboard History fame created, and I wanted to give it a go with some very long term, but generally obtainable goals.
#1 – Secretive business idea.
Okay, tough start for the blogging side of things, but this first one I can’t talk about. It’s listed at number one because it’s the biggest one for me to accomplish and something I think about constantly. It needs other people that I’ve talked with to play key roles, and maybe it could possibly happen if the stars align. If that all falls through, then maybe I’ll talk more openly about it to find the right people in other places, because I can’t do this alone.
#2 – 100% Finish at least 5 player collections
 Closest with Marmol by far This may sound strange, but I don’t expect to finish collecting what I collect. Currently I collect 30 players and 1 manager. If the Cubs win another World Series, I’ll collect those guys too. But, even if I stuck with my original six, I know that 100% completion is not attainable. Even if I were to win the Powerball lottery, a huge obstacle is finding the cards that I need, and even if I was rich, I wouldn’t want to overpay just because I could. So, even with the restriction of nothing with a print run under 50, I will never have 100% of the Greg Maddux cards I’m chasing.
However, there are enough people with low prices and a low number of cards to chase, that getting 5 of them done is possible. I’m 75% done with Carlos Marmol after all.
#3 – Reach 50% on at least 15 player collections
 I should hit 50% within 5 years or so In the same line of thinking, I do think that 50% is attainable for most of my collections, so that’s a good goal to shoot for. Of course, I wouldn’t stop after hitting 50% on anyone, but I’ll be quite satisfied to get to that level.
#4 – Finish my 1995-96 Basketball insert quest
 A small selection of the sets I’m after This was my first real collecting goal 20+ years ago when I started it. I’ve made little progress since my return, but that’s largely because it’s tough to devote time at a card show or shop looking through basketball bins for one or two cards I might need. The selling sites don’t have these for as cheap as I want, so progress is slow. One day, I hope. I’ve waited over two decades, so I can wait longer. My want list has what I need if you care to try to help.
#5 – Finish the Garbage Pail Kids sets I’m chasing
 From the first flashback set This is tough to do among the blogging community, and I’m too anti-social to branch out further. I think I’m the only one trying to collect these sets that started in 2010. I want them all, and have finished few. I do have doubles, so if you want any, let’s trade. If you bought a couple packs and have stuff I need, I’ll trade baseball for GPK any day. Here’s the link to show what I need and have to trade.
#6 – Finish all the MLB Sticker Albums I’m collecting
 I need more trades like this! This only applies to the ones from 2011 and beyond. I had a lot of luck the first couple years with trading for what I needed, but no one seems to want to take me up on that anymore. Here’s the link again, because why not.
#7 – Finish the master sets I’m chasing
 Help me with this set! I’m not really a set collector, but there are a couple budget oriented sets that have really captured my interest. The big one is the 2011-12 Past & Present Basketball set, and despite buying a case of the stuff, I’m missing quite a lot of inserts. I’m also considering going for the follow-up year as well.
On the baseball side, I’m going for both years of Topps Bunt (I have the 2016 base set, but don’t have a want list published for the inserts yet. 2017, I haven’t put together everything, but probably need a few base cards and a lot of inserts), and I’m also going to go for the 2018 Big League set with inserts.
#8 – Post every card from my player collections publicly
 Even this one I’m currently behind on this by over a thousand or more if I had to guess. Holding off on buying stuff in large batches will make this possible. Posting more regularly will make this possible. Grouping cards together for some of the collections will make this possible. I still plan to individually separate every card for the original six whenever possible, but for the 2016 team, I can do multi-card scans. I know that you guys don’t care which way I go with it. It’s all for my own sense of satisfaction.
#9 – Purge at least half of my current non-collection cards
 A very small portion of unsorted stuff laying around the house I’ve accumulated a lot of stuff I don’t collect. It’s time to find new homes for it all, whether that’s through sales or trades or whatever. I want to get more active on all fronts to de-clutter the card room. I’ll be 40 years old in a couple years, and unless there’s some weird miracle I’m not going to have a child to pass this stuff along to. So, to make things easier on the person that will ultimately take care of my possessions, I want to start paring down now, because I know it will be a long, long process that is very long and very much a process. It’s best to do that while I still have energy and have some connections to people that might want the stuff.
There we have it. Boy, it sure ended on a little bit of a downer, but I swear it’s meant to be a positive. Thanks to Billy for spurring the topic (I still have to look through my basketball cards again to help you with your want lists). I hope I can start being more active on your blog (and others) soon!
I’ll end with an obligatory trade bait link. If you want to help with these goals, here’s a small fraction of what I have available.
So, I don’t know how many people read this blog, because the last time I turned on analytics, it broke the wordpress theme, and I’m too lazy to troubleshoot something I’m not trying to monetize.
But, if you do read regularly, how many of you noticed my recent attempts at a pattern? My goal is that as long as I have an unposted trade package from this year, or one that takes multiple posts, such as this, it will show up one every three posts. Trade, other, other, trade, other other, etc. I figured it would be a good way to break things up a bit. Hopefully the ones that read appreciate the attempt at variety.
I have a couple more trades in coming and I’m hoping to spend this weekend looking at a few blogs to maybe make a couple other deals as well (either that or I’ll work to put a bunch of extra video game stuff up for sale – to pay for more cards). We’ll see how long I can keep that third slot alive, but I have three ongoing trades including this one from Bill. I can say with confidence that this series will be going up to 8 parts after counting the unposted stuff.
As mentioned before, Bill doesn’t have a blog of his own, but he’s known as minibbcards on the Trading Card Database and his want lists are fantastic (and found here). With the new release of Ginter, now is the perfect time to give him a look!
This time around, we’ll be looking at some random stuff. I can’t think of good product themes, so it’s all about the randoms that are leftover.
 2009 doesn’t seem that long ago Until I added this card to my spreadsheet, I don’t think I realized that Upper Deck had an “Update” set. S1 and 2, yes, but update didn’t occur to me. Evidently so.
 Looking forward to the 2018 All-Star card Crazy that I needed this. 2010 was my first major year back in collecting and we literally bought cases of the stuff. But that was largely to flip, so a bunch went out the door (thank you U-pick BINs!). A bunch is still in my possession and I need to find a way to move it one of these days.
 Still need the relic version of this Reading the back, it’s not that great of a moment. This is just outlining a 1-0 win where he was a bit better than Jake Peavy
 Rizzo is also in this set I love the concept of the insert, but I wish the design was something other than a color change. Lester, a cancer survivor, is certainly deserving of a card in this set.
 I collect another Cub that wore 49 as well Just as an FYI, I still need a lot of base cards for these guys, so if you want to trade, don’t assume I only want inserts and parallels. Bill didn’t, and I’m thankful.
 Every AS card should be this Boy that looks strange. I love the picture, but just the Padres color scheme on a Cubs player is off-putting.
 Found him! Jake was just pure dominance for about a full season of baseball. It was a lot of fun to watch that guy pitch for us. Great team photo, too.
 Would be cool if they replaced words on the scoreboard We end with a Kris Bryant insert. I’ve said before that I like the concept of the insert, but the actual font they use in there is Windows 95 screensaver bad. If you can shift your perspective to get around it, it’s a nice shot.
As always, thanks again to Bill. We’ll be seeing his name on here at least two more times. You never know when his turn at the third-post cycle will hit.
Well, it’s Ginter season again, which means chasing those minis is on everyone-who-cares-about-chasing-minis’ minds. For the player collection types like me, it means another round of variations to very slowly go after. It’s a daunting task and I certainly don’t bring in more than what are produced each year, so it’s also a losing battle for now.
I’ve also found that many dealers and card shows I’ve encountered don’t seem to carry the minis in any noticeable place, which makes it harder to obtain them. At the NSCC, I saw a couple mixed in some of the bins, or they are in un-priced stacks, which makes me assume that they are too expensive for my taste.
So, if anyone has minis to trade, the odds are that I need them.
 Watch out with those finger guns I also still need a lot of stickers for the past several years. Let’s trade stickers! If it’s a player I collect, sometimes I need two of them. These are a few duplicates from my pack opening adventures last year.
 I need stickers from 2013 to present Here’s an older Fowler sticker I had laying around as well from his limited time with Houston.
 Only Montero faces front Here are a few assorted minis I had laying around when I started my championship player collections. You can see I had some luck with the A&G backs, including the Lester SP.
 Golden These last three I got from a birthday binge on COMC. That seems to be one of the best ways to get things cheap. This DK mini were about 1-2 per box and no mini variations
 Do you know what year this is from without looking it up? I don’t. Of all the minis, the black borders tend to be my favorite. Although the border is really encroaching into the picture.
 #/199 Lastly for today, here’s a more traditional black border, which is also good in my book. What’s even better is that Gypsy Queen has stopped doing minis these past couple years. It’s so nice to only hunt one set of parallels for the full size cards and not a second set of mini cards. We’ve already established it’s a losing battle. I’m also on the losing side of posting minis that I do have now, but if you like the stuff, let me know and I’ll throw together another small post.
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