Last week Sunday, in preparation for a week of dealing with family coming to town, I treated myself to a trip to a card show. It's one of the normal monthly shows here promoted by Frank Moiger, but I went to the East Cobb version instead of the North Fulton version. None of that means much of anything to you, probably, but it meant a little different group of vendors for me. I focused on cheap for me this time around. I did pay a little more for some on-card prospect autographs...but, you know, that happens sometimes. In fact, let's see those autographs:
Yes, another Damien Magnifico -- just days after my first one. This one is a die-cut Magnifico, serial numbered to 100. All of these were $3 a piece or 4 for $10. I got a few other cards from the same guy out of some quarter boxes too; these cards included, incredibly enough, these:
I think I grabbed nearly every Brewer in the box -- mainly because I needed them, of course. But to find purple refractors, Museum Collection, a 2005 Fleer National Pastime card of Robin Yount serial numbered to 650, and even the base and gold parallels of Ryan Braun's Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects rookie card (and the 2010 Bowman Refractor) for a quarter each was just an awesome find for me. And now, even more shininess...
Le Disko by the band Shiny Toy Guns gets to introduce the shiny Prizms and refractors that were sold at 6 for $1 (and obviously, I cherry picked from this selection for five of the prettiest:
I'm not a huge Panini Prizm fan, if only because Prizm has so many damn parallels to track. Also, the base silver cards are, frankly, ugly. I'd prefer that Prizm make the red or the green their base cards and shelve those stupid silver ones. I have yet to see a base Prizm card that I looked at and said, "That's a cool card." On the other hand, the Gallardo, Aoki, and Weeks cards above are cool cards due to the shiny colors. The 2010 Gallardo refractor and the 2014 Segura Orange Refractor are your typical Topps Chrome cards, I suppose. I'm not a huge fan of the orange refractor mainly because I just don't like the color orange and it does not look good for the Brewers either. Maybe for the Mets or Marlins, but not for Milwaukee. Okay, last group of cards.
We'll go "vintage" REM for these.
Yes, it's all about the vintage. These 6 cards cost me a total of $30. Obviously the Mathews 1962 is the top of that chart, and the Spahn win leaders was next. It's always good to see the seller who has these cards, as he is a longtime promoter and seller in the Atlanta market. He has a great network to find good cards, and these are ones I'm glad he found. Two more new packages came in the mail yesterday for me, so this week should be a good one for blogging if I can find the time. Thanks for reading.
I went to one of my local card shows today. As usual, I found some good deals -- some of which will be spread around the blogosphere, and others of which will be finding their way into my collection. Part of my reasoning for going to the show was to try to find cards to pay off on my contests from earlier this month. One of the winners of the contest was old reliable blogger San Jose Fuji. I hope he likes what I got for him at the show today with the $10 I spent on him.
I call him "old reliable" because he seems to have more material to blog about -- including some great flea markets that I envy greatly -- than I do. Perhaps it's because I'm not as much of a collector. I mean, Fuji collects a lot of different things and, further, he also buys to sell sometimes. Still, he also has accumulated a lot of great cards over the years. I recently received a bubble mailer from him unexpectedly with some great Brewers autographs, relics, and serial numbered cards. Let's get to them!
This Leaf 2013 "Memories Buyback" is serial numbered 1 of 5. Leaf does something right here that I wish Topps's buybacks did -- they tell us how many of this card there are available in buyback form. On the other hand, I find this buyback weird for a couple of reasons. First, this card is from the height of the junk wax era -- 1991. Why are there only 5 of these? Second, what is so memorable about a card that is twenty-two years old? Not 50, or 40, or 30, or 25, or 10, or even 5 -- but 22? That's just kind of weird. Maybe they just wanted to dump 5 sets they found in a storage bin in their offices. Still, this is not to disparage the fact that I have one of the five gold-foiled Jim Gantner cards stamped in 2013. That fact is pretty awesome.
This card is great. No, actually, it's better than great -- it's Magnifico! Enough with the puns, though. With the Brewers in full rebuild mode and having hired a GM who was born when I was in middle school and who was just starting kindergarten when I graduated from college, I am going to have to turn a little bit into Zippy Zappy and get excited about the Brewers farm system and prospects. One of the guys who emerged some this year was Damien Magnifico. Magnifico was a 5th round draft pick in 2012 out of the University of Oklahoma. He was a starter through 2014 with varying levels of success. He transitioned to relief at Biloxi this past season and looked impressive -- 4-1, 20 saves, 1.17 ERA. He impressed enough as a bullpen arm throwing BBs to pitch in the Arizona Fall League this fall -- probably based on his 100 MPH fastball. And, he impressed enough to be added to the Brewers 40-man roster last week to protect him from the Rule 5 draft.
From a guy who may never make it to a guy who's made it,missed a year, and was named the AL Comeback Player of the Year. I'm happy for Fielder that he's healthy again. Missing a year might be detrimental to his career numbers, but here's hoping he stays healthy for many years to come.
On to a guy who was great when healthy but whose health failed him. It would be nice for the Brewers to develop a pitcher out of the minor league system like Sheets or Yovani Gallardo -- if only to avoid mistakes like 4 years of Jeff Suppan or Matt Garza.
With recent trades and roster moves, it's pretty likely that Jean Segura will become an ex-Brewer sooner rather than later. It's possible, though, that Scooter Gennett will be jettisoned before Segura. At that point, Segura might switch to second base. Or, Segura may be on the way out with the addition last week of Jonathan Villar from the Astros. In any case, we're just waiting for Orlando Arcia to be ready -- which is pretty likely to come at some point next year after his .307/.347/.453 slash at the age of 20 (he turned 21 on August 4) in the Double-A Southern League. Robin Yount wants to know what is taking Arcia so long. Yount turned 21 in September of 1976 -- his third year in the majors.
Will Ryan Braun be traded this offseason? If the Brewers can find a taker and get a decent return, the answer is yes. That "return" part is the issue. I mean, Braun is older than his general manager and is rehabbing after back surgery. This is after Braun has had to undergo regular cryotherapy sessions on his right thumb to address a nerve problem. Also, another major issue is whether Milwaukee will pay some of his remaining contract. I'm okay if he stays, and I'm okay if he goes.
The last cards in the package from Fuji are a part of baseball card history. The 1996 Leaf Signature Series was the first set to offer an autographed card in every pack of the cards. I bet there were some unhappy collectors when their autograph was Ricky Bones rather than Jim Thome, Carlos Delgado, Alex Rodriguez, Greg Maddux, or Mariano Rivera. Still, I'd love to find a box of this to open today...though at $400 for 48 cards (12 autographs), it's a bit pricy. Fuji, thank you very much for this package. I hope you enjoy the rewards from the $10 I spent today at my card show...that package should go out tomorrow!
