BargainBaseballCards.com

2008 Upper Deck Documentary = Epic Fail

2009-01-30T18:07:00.006-05:00

So, I realize that I'm about a month late on this. But this seems so silly that I'll hop in on the Upper Deck bashing.

Upper Deck Documentary was touted by UD as "The most extraordinary set ever to be completed." The set was described as a card for every game for every team. I think in actuality it worked out to 166 cards per team in the set. (I have no idea what the extra four cards are, and after opening up a box.. I really don't care)

Now, at first glance this is a brilliant idea. I honestly thought that this had the opportunity to be a really cool and memorable set that team collectors would love, and set builders would eventually work on. (ignoring the high MSRP) To turn this good idea into a great set UD had to do what every single collector in the world would have done, and expected UD to do. Feature on the card front a photo of the player who was important in the outcome of the game. Of course we would prefer the photo be from the actual game played.

What UD absolutely could not do is use the same stock photos over and over.

What would be unforgiveable is using the same players irrespective of their influence on the game.

So, UD, in what I can only assume was a feat of unbelievable laziness and stupidity, did exactly what no one would want.

The photos on the cards bear absolutely no relationship to the game that the card is purporting to represent. Greg Maddux is featured regularly on cards in which he didn't pitch. I pulled 6 Ichiro's out of the one box I've opened. The same photo is on each card.

Card 4690 represents the Giants 155th game. The photo on front is a stock photo of Tim Lincecum. Of course Tim Lincecum didn't start that game. If you are going to feature a Giant in that game feature Travis Ishikawa who had three hits, or Bengie Molina who had 2 RBIs. Not Lincecum who may not have even suited up that day.

I just picked up the last card in the pile.. that was it. I'm too lazy to pick out any more as examples.. but what's the point? It's clear that UD made no effort to match photos with the right card.

UD had the chance to create a memorable set, that could have turned into a yearly staple. Instead they put out a worthless and useless 5000 card set just for the sake of putting out a 5000 card set.

Others equally angry:

handcollated

apackaday

capewood

paulsrandomstuff

cardjunk-automatic

fielderschoice

Everything is running

2008-06-10T00:47:00.001-04:00

Everything is running as it should, including credit card processing. If you have problems let me know.

Chris.

Logging in and Credit Cards

2008-05-22T20:39:00.002-04:00

Two issues I've noticed after everything was moved over.

1. The Secured Certificate hasn't transfered to the new server. That should be rectified in the next day or so. We have taken down the credit card payment option until that is transfered to avoid exposing your credit card information to super nerds who somehow know how to capture that information when not properly secured.

2. I noticed that I was unable to properly log in on the new server.. Don't know why but the cookie from the old server doesn't update to the new one. It can be fixed in a few easy steps.

In IE:

1. Go to Internet Options (in the latest version it is Tools/Internet Options)
2. Under the General tab, Browsing History section, click Settings
3. Click view files
4. Delete two cookies the cookie for bargainbaseballcards.com and the cookie for www.bargainbaseballcards.com
5. Attempt to login. It should all work.

Any other issues just let me know.

Moving to a new server!

2008-05-19T19:59:00.002-04:00

After a few weeks of inconsistent performance we are moving to a new server. What this means for you:

Tuesday evening at about 9 pm BBC will go offline. We will be changing name servers at that time. (not actually offline.. we will replace the current pages with the helicopter game... play it, its awesome.)
Starting at 9 we will feverishly move all the data from the old server to the new server.
The new name server information will propagate throughout the internets at whatever pace that sort of thing occurs. Eventually it'll get to your ISP.
When the new information gets to your ISP you will get BBC on the new server when you type BargainBaseballCards.com instead of the helicopter game. I would expect that by Thursday morning everyone will be pointing at the new server.

All of your account information will be moved. If you are a registered user your shopping cart should move too.

Email me with any questions.

Anticipated downtime

2008-04-25T13:04:00.005-04:00

UPDATE 7:00 PM 4/27:

The website is running almost as it should be. I have opened the order checkout back up so you can place orders. If you have any trouble at all please let me know.

Thanks.

Chris.

UPDATE 2:30 PM 4/27:

Still nothing. At this point, I'm probably going to have to switch service providers. It is clear the current service provider doesn't appreciate the issues.

END UPDATE

UPDATE 8:55 PM 4/25:

The website is back up.. Unfortunately the ASP engine is a bit askew. There are issues with the "SUM" function in SQL. Long nerd story short: the shopping cart relies on this function. You can't place an order until we get to the bottom of the mystery. I'm working on it until its fixed.

END UPDATE

Due to the recent surge in traffic and subsequent server issues we are moving BargainBaseballCards.com to a new server this afternoon. Some may be unable to reach the site for up to an hour. I apologize for the delay, but this should ensure that we run much more smoothly in the future.

Thanks.

Chris.

We're Back..

2008-04-22T22:44:00.003-04:00

With some reservations I'm happy to report that we are up and running. If you experience any issues please let me know.

Chris.

The website is down! :(

2008-04-22T13:49:00.002-04:00

As many of you are now aware, our website (BargainBaseballCards.com) is unavailable at the moment, and has been for the most part unavailable since about 3 yesterday afternoon.

As best we can determine we are the victim of a DDOS attack. This is the second attack in the last 90 days. I find it odd that my site, a baseball card site, would be the target of a DDOS attack. But alas..

There are a couple of different emotions I feel on this. First, "Well, I'm pissed off Rick." (an hommage to South Park's Fat Camp) But once I've gotten over the frustration its a little bit flattering. We've become important enough to someone, somewhere that they spent the time and effort to attack us. If you are irrelevant that never happens.

So, I guess there's that. But I'm still pissed off.

An additional post will come when everything blows over. Last time it was only about a day.

The Specials Section at BBC.

2008-04-15T16:16:00.004-04:00

Okay.. so I'm kind of a dork/incompetent scatterbrain.. If there is one thing I've been really good at over the years, its setting up a new feature that requires some ongoing attention.. providing that attention for about 6 months.. then um.. getting distracted. This blog is/was a prime example. (Though I've been really good over the past few months)

That was the fate of the "Specials" section of our website. The first handful of months I put that section up I faithfully updated the Specials each Monday morning with new specials. Then.. well, focus shifted elsewhere and I forgot to go back and update the specials. I'm pretty sure the same 3 specials that never sold out sat on that page for 2 years. (perhaps they weren't that special if they never sold out) Alas, I have resurrected that dead portion of the website, and hopefully have come up with a system that will prevent this same situation from occuring again.

On my desk is a box. In that box are all the cards that currently find themselves in our specials section. If I remove a card from that box to ship to a paying customer.. I must put a new card in that box. (so, you see, the box should always have cards in it.. cards that change regularly) But wait! There's More!

In addition to this, each Sunday I will review the cards currently in the specials section. If the card has been on the specials page for a week and hasn't sold, I'm going to lower the price. I'll do this every week until the card sells. (to make sure we keep fresh new cards rotating through the specials section.) Right now there are about 10 cards in the Specials section.. I hope to increase that over the next few weeks to about 20. At that point there should ALWAYS be about 20 cards on special.

So.. um.. buy one?

Counterfeit Public Service Announcement

2008-04-13T23:32:00.004-04:00

I saw this recently and thought it important enough to post here.

Recently there have been a lot of the 1993 BBM Ichiro rookies on ebay. More than we typically see, and because of the volume the prices have dropped. Unfortunately a lot of those hitting eBay appear to be counterfeit. I'm going to stick with "alleged" and "appear" even though, when viewing the pictures I'm pretty certain they are fake. You can make your own decisions.

I'm going to post a few images, but the work was done by "cwesley" on the Beckett.com message boards. He lives in Japan, and keeps an eye on these BBM rookies.

Real:

Alleged Fake:

Be very careful when purchasing these. Ask for a high res scan if you are buying online.

Influx of 1993 BBM Ichiro Cards on eBay - Beckett.com

The Card O' The Day (or every third day) - 2005 Donruss Champions 365 Alex Cintron

2008-04-13T23:00:00.004-04:00

Card O' The Day Volume 5: 2005 Donruss Champions #365 Alex Cintron

2005 Donruss Champions

I can't say much about 2005 Donruss Champions from personal expierence. I started growing frustrated in 2004 with the mass product from Donruss that was basically the same as everything else they produced. It had a different name and design but the products were basically the same.. structure, inserts.. Long sentence, just to say, I didn't buy this. I did buy one complete set from someone, and broke that up.. thus, I have about half that set still available. The design is outright pathetic. Action photos pushed to the far left, with blank space through 2/3rds of the card. Sure it looks good when you stick a relic on the rest of the card, but the base cards shouldn't suffer so the relic parrallel's can look good.
The set was a mix set of current and retired players. A bit obnoxious in that they'd have multiple cards of the same player spread throughout the set with no apparent reasoning to who got more cards. There are 3 Adam Dunns. 4 Andres Galarragas. Only 1 ARod. I never got it. On top of that, for many cards (many many) the player would be shown in one uniform on card front, but on the card back they would feature a season in which the player played for a different team. Really, thats just dumb. Boxes of this stuff is kind of pricey ($100) but its got 8 relics/autos per box.. so there's that.

Alex Cintron

I have it in my head that Cintron has been around for decades. He's just one of those guys that seems to always be around, but never really any good. But at the same time I'm also suprised that he's still in the league. He's a middle infielder, known by most for his years with Arizona. He played for the White Sox for a couple of years. He was cut by the Cubs this spring and then signed a minor league contract with the Orioles. He's only 29... I know. Shocked.

The curse of Google.

2008-03-27T23:06:00.004-04:00

I love google. Don't get me wrong. Google is the search engine I use. Google is responsible for 70% of my websites search engine provided traffic. Really, they are the only game in town that matters. MSN? Yahoo? Whatever fellas.

I haven't given a thought to google page ranking, google search engine rankings or any of that in 4 years. I was selling cards.. business was steady.. I didn't see how worrying about that was a valuable use time that could be better spent filling orders and putting new cards out on the website.

Then I sat down next to a guy at Tupelos in Hillsborough (nice place, near Chapel Hill for all those UNC fans out there) who happened to also have his own website. He's asking about my "analytics". Honestly, I wasn't even sure what he meant.. but I pretended. I then went straight home and googled it. I found out after putzing around that BargainBaseballCards.com is ranked #1 on Google for "Baseball Cards for Sale", "Baseball Card Commons", and "Baseball Card Singles". That's pretty sweet. We are also on page two for "Baseball Cards" also awesome, considering the last time I had checked (again, 2004) we were on page 12 or something rediculous. I also found out that we had a page rank of 3. Apparently thats ok. Not great, but as far as baseball card websites go, there aren't many, if any, that rank any higher.

This whole series of epiphanies happened about 10 days ago. I was on a mini-high. I never knew I was so well positioned. Woohoo. I found myself searching those keywords and checking that page rank every day. WooHoo... Still looking good. Granted I had gone four years without giving it a thought, but here, now, it was on my mind all the time.

Then: Tragedy! Google apparently updates their page ranks every few months. They did so in the last few days. We went from Page Rank 3 (sweet) to Page Rank 0 (eeGads) I had a mini-meltdown. The sky was falling.

I have no idea how Page Rank is calculated, or really what it even means. 3 weeks ago they could have bumped me down and I wouldn't have noticed or cared. I don't think it affects business (because we are still #1 for the above keywords). Really, I don't know if the Page Rank matters at all. But it sure did depress me seeing that big fat ZERO.

So.. thanks Google. Your metric that apparently has no bearing on search rankings, and isn't going to affect my business one iota has put me in a depression for reasons I can't quite explain. Jerk.

I'll forgive you tomorrow when I look at my google analytics and see all those visitors you sent. I can never stay mad at you long.

So I looked up how Page Rank is calculated, and though it is patented, it still seems to be cloaked in mystery. In any event, links from other websites factor in greatly. I have been ignoring link requests for four years. Again, didn't seem very important. Apparently others are more aware than I am.

So, here is my call. You have a website tangentally related to baseball cards? Baseball? Curling? Pretty Ladies? (okay, maybe not the pretty ladies, unless its, you know.. "tasteful") Send me an email (chris@bargainbaseballcards.com) and I'll link to you at BargainBaseballCards.com.

The Card O' The Day (or every third day) - 1982 Topps 134 Dan Ford

2008-03-08T17:49:00.005-05:00

Card 'O The Day Volume 4: 1982 Topps #134 Dan Ford.

1982 Topps:

1982 was the first year the Topps set contained 792 cards. This was a staple throughout my childhood. Honestly, as a kid I thought Donruss and Fleer were a bunch of hacks because their sets had 660 cards, instead of the required 792. The big card is obviously the Ripken Rookie card.. As a Ripken fan growing up the 82 Traded Ripken was the pinnacle of cards. If there was a card I dreamed of owning, but was certain I never would, it was that traded Ripken. My dad bought one when I was 8. That was when I was certain he was rich and lying to me about the whole money doesn't grow on trees thing.
There aren't any other really significant cards in the set, Terry Francona, Dave Righetti, and Lee Smith Rookie cards, and a Pascual Perez error card that doesn't show his position on the front of the card (I've never had one of these to sell, and they are fairly rare, but not impossible to find)

Dan Ford:

Dan played outfield for 11 seasons split between the Twins, Angels and Orioles. He retired after the 1985 season. His nickname was Disco. He wasn't a bad hitter. He hit 20 homeruns twice and cracked 100 RBI's once. His average hovered around .270 most of his career. I know these days we scoff at 20 homeruns and a .270 batting average, but those were respectable numbers in the early 80's. Dan hit for the cycle in 1979, and homered in the World Series for the Orioles in 1983 (man, its really been that long).

It's hard to find out where Dan is now. In 1991 he worked in the "speakers bureau" of the then Anaheim (or California, or whatever they were) Angels. If anyone knows anything more about Dan Ford let us know and we'll update this post.

Rick Monday's Top Play Nominee

2008-03-05T20:08:00.003-05:00

I had seen this video before, but only the clip itself. This little production was done by MLB when the clip was named one of the greatest moments in MLB history. This isn't at all card related but I liked it. (perhaps they could redo it without the cheesy background music?)

The Card O' The Day (or every third day) - 2001 Topps Limited 125 Ken Caminiti

2008-03-02T22:23:00.004-05:00

Card 'O The Day volume 3. 2001 Topps Limited #125 Ken Caminiti. The random number generator still hasn't spit out a really nice card yet.. Maybe I should start fudging the numbers a bit?

2001 Topps Limited:

Topps returned to making the limited edition or "Tiffany" sets in 2000. It only lasted through 2002. Honestly I'm not sure why they stopped. Maybe it wasn't very popular. I always liked it. The cards are on thicker stock than the standard 2001 Topps and have a high gloss finish. Sadly though the high gloss finish seems to break down over time, particularly if they weren't stored in a climate controlled area. The cards were only released in complete set form in a nice cherry finished box with a metallic Topps faceplate. Each box was individually numbered. (the cards are not numbered.) There were only 3,805 sets made. Commons in the set book at $1.

Ken Caminiti:

Ken Caminiti was a star in the 90's. He played 15 seasons and was the NL MVP in 1996. He ended his career in 2001 with 239 home runs and 983 RBIs.

Caminiti was the first baseball player to publicly admit to steroid use. In 2002 he admitted to using steroids for much of the latter part of his career including his 1996 MVP season.

Caminiti had problems with drugs and alcohol. He died of a drug induced heart attack in 2004.

Figuring out Topps Heritage

2008-03-02T18:52:00.011-05:00

2008 Topps Heritage is out, and its got some variations and SP's that need elaboration.

There are 75 Short Prints in the set. Short prints were seeded 1 in 3 packs. Here's the list:

11 Luke Scott
231 Kevin Gregg
315 Jacque Jones
381 Casey Blake
409 Jon Lester
426 Kyle Lohse
427 Doug Davis
428 Ian Snell/Matt Capps/Tom Gorzelanny/Paul Maholm
429 Miguel Batista
430 Chien-Ming Wang
431 Jeff Salazar
432 Yadier Molina
433 Adam Wainwright
434 Scott Kazmir
435 Adam Dunn
436 Ryan Freel
437 Jhonny Peralta
438 Kazuo Matsui
441 Emil Brown
442 Gary Sheffield
443 Jake Peavy
444 Scott Rolen
445 Kason Gabbard
446 Aaron Hill
447 Felipe Lopez
448 Dan Uggla
449 Willy Taveras
450 Chipper Jones
451 Josh Anderson
452 Chris Young/Justin Upton/Eric Byrnes
453 Braden Looper
454 Brandon Inge
455 Brian Giles
456 Corey Patterson
457 Los Angeles Dodgers
458 Sean Casey
459 Pedro Feliz
461 Chone Figgins
462 Kyle Kendrick
463 Tony Pena
464 Marcus Giles
465 Augie Ojeda
466 Micah Owings
467 Ryan Theriot
468 Shawn Green
469 Frank Thomas
470 Lenny DiNardo
471 Jose Bautista
472 Manny Corpas
473 Kevin Millwood
474 Kevin Youkilis
475 Jose Contreras
477 Julio Lugo
479 Tony LaRussa
480 Jim Leyland
481 Derrek Lee
482 Justin Morneau
483 Orlando Hudson
484 Brian Roberts
485 Miguel Cabrera
486 Mike Lowell
487 J.J. Hardy
488 Carlos Guillen
489 Ken Griffey Jr.
490 Vladimir Guerrero
491 Alfonso Soriano
492 Ichiro
493 Matt Holliday
494 Magglio Ordonez
495 Brian McCann
496 Victor Martinez
497 Brad Penny
498 Josh Beckett
499 Cole Hamels
500 Justin Verlander

Beyond the standard short prints there are 110 cards that also have a black back variation. Here's that list:

2 Placido Polanco
3 Eric Byrnes
5 Javier Vazquez
7 Joey Gathright
8 Philadelphia Phillies
9 Andre Ethier
12 Curt Schilling
13 Billy Wagner
14 Gary Matthews
16 Ichiro
18 Dontrelle Willis
21 Troy Tulowitzki
22 Brian Fuentes
23 Robinson Cano
24 Felix Hernandez
28 Ivan Rodriguez
34 Magglio Ordonez/Curtis Granderson
35 Adam LaRoche
40 Tim Hudson
41 Kelvim Escobar
42 Jason Jennings
45 Chris Ray
49 Bill Hall
52 Omar Vizquel
54 Justin Upton
57 Brad Lidge
58 Paul Lo Duca
60 Andy Pettitte
61 Brendan Harris
62 Chris Young
65 Jason Giambi
67 Rich Hill
69 San Francisco Giants
71 Trevor Hoffman
78 Josh Hamilton
79 Mark Loretta
81 Torii Hunter
82 Carlos Beltran
83 Jason Isringhausen
84 Brad Penny
90 Hideki Matsui
91 Matt Garza
92 Phil Hughes
94 Chicago White Sox
98 Jon Garland
102 Moises Alou
116 Wladimir Balentien
117 Daric Barton
122 Ross Detwiler
126 Dan Giese
127 Alberto Gonzalez
129 Luke Hochevar
130 Chin-Lung Hu
135 Mitch Stetter
150 Albert Pujols
155 Johnny Damon
173 Ronny Paulino
174 Mike Cameron
175 Jeff Weaver
176 Preston Wilson
177 Robinson Tejeda
178 Adam Lind
179 Austin Kearns
180 Jorge Posada
185 Brad Hawpe
186 Rickie Weeks
187 Carlos Silva
195 Carlos Quentin
196 Jose Valverde
197 Derrek Lee
198 Jerry Owens
210 J.J. Putz
211 Mike Sweeney
224 David Wright
225 Pedro Martinez
226 Rich Harden
227 Shane Victorino
228 Andrew Miller
262 Chad Billingsley/Derek Lowe/Brad Penny
263 Melky Cabrera
264 Shannon Stewart
265 Aaron Rowand
266 Matt Morris
267 Xavier Nady
283 Miguel Cabrera
284 Luis Gonzalez
285 Chad Billingsley
286 Tony Gwynn
291 Matt Chico/Jason Bergmann
301 Ronnie Belliard
321 Randy Winn
322 Richie Sexson
323 Juan Encarnacion
324 Rick Ankiel
325 Dan Wheeler
330 Ty Wigginton
332 Howie Kendrick
333 Kevin Kouzmanoff
334 Matt Holliday
335 Brandon Phillips
336 Ian Kinsler
337 Lyle Overbay
338 Justin Verlander
347 Chuck James
350 Jimmy Rollins
360 Magglio Ordonez
370 Justin Verlander
371 Pedro Martinez
372 Ryan Howard
415 Freddy Sanchez

Here's where it gets tricky. The green back version of all cards that have a black back variation are "semi" short printed. The entire run of cards combining black and green backs equals the entire run of green backs for those cards in which there is no black variation. (basically: instead of making black backs in addition to the green, they replaced some of the green) So, if a card is listed as having a black back variation there are fewer of the green backs produced. While not as hard to find as the true SP's, these green backs are harder to find than the standard green backs.

This green/black issue is apparently causing some chaos on ebay. There was a TON of pre-selling of master sets, base sets, etc, on ebay in the weeks up to the release. Now there is a lot of arguing over what is included in the base set with the buyers wanting the green-back variants included in the base set, and sellers insisting they are SP's and are not included. My take is that the base set is the 315 green backs in which there are no black back variations. Lesson to be learned: Never sell Heritage sets until you know what is in the set. Topps can be tricky with this one.

Other oddities and minutia:

There are two Jerry Owens cards in the set. #198 and #310. Neither is a short print. Not sure what happened there.

There are two versions of the Johan Santana card. The base version is a Twins card. There is an incredibly hard to find Mets version. The Mets version, because it is so hard to find is not part of a complete set, even one advertised as including SPs.

There are two versions of the John Smoltz #440. One spelled John, the other spelled Jon. The card also shows him with his glove on the wrong hand. This is to parallel card #440 in the 1959 Topps set in which Lew Burdette tricked the Topps photographers by wearing Warran Spahn's glove. Topps also mispelled Lew's first name as "Lou". The "Jon" version is very hard to find.

David Wright Dick Perez sketch. I don't know much about this one yet, but there has been one completed Ebay Auction. ($99) It's a David Wright card done by Dick Perez. ~~This has to be one of the rarest cards in the product.~~ It's a stinking wal-mart exclusive. I hate Wal-Mart Exclusives. (thank you commentor) Its not listed on sell sheets, checklists, Beckett.

I'll post more as I find out about them.

Edit: Apparently some people are displeased with these hard to find variations.

Are cards still for kids? At all?

2008-02-29T19:54:00.005-05:00

As a dealer I understand that the market for sports cards moved away from 8 year olds and to 38 year olds a long time ago. Even at that I still thought that cards were still, if not intended for kids, produced with kids in mind. I thought that the MLBPA particularly wanted the companies to market to try to draw kids back into the hobby. Kids were still relevant in the hobby. Or not:

Seriously? This card is in the 2008 Topps Heritage baseball "News Flashbacks" insert set. Who produces a product for kids that features "Murders Committed"?

Booo on this one Topps.

2008 Topps Heritage is coming!

2008-02-28T11:21:00.001-05:00

Should have it tomorrow.

The Card O' The Day (or every third day) - 1999 Upper Deck 450 Bobby Estallela

2008-02-22T17:24:00.006-05:00

Here you go all. Card 'O The Day volume 2. 1999 Upper Deck #450 Bobby Estallela. I was really hoping the old number generator would spit out a card that was significant.. or better yet.. really old. Instead we have this. Lets make the best of it.

1999 Upper Deck:

Nothing too significant about this set. Just another in a long line of adequate UD base sets. This was a period where I had taken a hiatus from collecting so as to fund my ~~excessive drinking~~ college expenses. My firsthand knowledge of the nuance of this set is very limited. What I can tell you is that it was a two series release (as are practically all the UD base sets) and it has 525 cards in the set. If I can recall correctly you could pull an auto'd Griffey card out of series 1, which I imagine was probably a pretty big deal in 1999. (yeah, it books at $1250) The wax on these isn't readily available, but you can still find it if you look around a bit. Only one guy has the product for sale on Ebay and he's been unable to move the Hobby series 1 and 2 for $40 and $30 for about 3 weeks.

Bobby Estallela:

Good old Bobby is a 9 year big league veteran. Played catcher. Known by most as a Phillie, he also played with the Giants, Yankees, Rockes, D'Backs, and Blue Jays. Bobby doesn't appear to have ever been an every day player, having played in more than 47 games in a season only once. (106 with the Giants in 2000) His career highlight was hitting 3 home runs in a game in 1997. (3 home runs constitutes 6.25% of his career total, so.. wow!) He last played in the bigs in 2004.

Interesting trivia on Estallela: He was signed as a free agent by the Tigers in January 2004 and released three weeks later. Before spring training even started. That can't be normal.

Estallela is from Florida and his grandfather (also Bobby) played in the majors in the 1930's and 40's.

Estallela was named in the Mitchell report.. for what its worth. I can't get over the fact that there are FOUR Bobby Estallela fan clubs on Yahoo.

The Card O' The Day (or every third day) - 2002 Topps 206 Pedro 113 Pedro Astacio

2008-02-19T22:38:00.008-05:00

A new feature to our oft ignored blog: The card o' the day. We'll use a random number generator to spit out a number.. We'll go to our giant database, enter that number, and whatever card shows up.. that'll be the card o' the day. Today the number was 117642. That gives us the 2002 Topps 206 #113 Pedro Astacio.

2002 Topps 206:

If I recall this was the first set to revive the pre-war card design and names. Every year since Topps has done something similar. The set was released in three series. Series 1 was the hot item. When this product came out it generated a lot of excitement. I remember a story about series 1. We lived in California at that time and I knew all the shop owners in the area very well. A few weeks after this product came out one of the local shops still had 4 boxes in stock and he hadn't raised the price since its release date. I do not recall the price point on the product at release but it was probably in the $65-$75 range. The price quickly shot up to $100-$110. The product had been generating a lot of noise so I bought his last four. If I didn't crack it, I could sell it on the website. Later that same day I visited another shop, and the owner asked if I knew where he could find some 206 wax. He had sold out, and really wanted to pick up a few more boxes. In that short drive I went from a shop that couldn't sell it to a shop that was desperate to find it.

As Topps does occasionally do, they killed the product. Series 2 was overproduced and watered down, and by Series 3 I had lost all interest. We still have some Series 1, and a decent amount of Series 2, but we didn't pick up a single box of series 3. By 2003 they moved on to Topps 205, which wasn't nearly as popular.

Pedro Astacio -

A 15-year MLB veteran that last played in 2006. A starting pitcher for the Dodgers and Rockies for most of his career. He hopped from the Astros, Mets, Rangers, Padres and Nationals for the last 4 or so years of his career. On the Card O' The Day he is pictured in an Astros Uniform even though he played in all of 4 games for the Astros in his career.

He came into the league like a rockstar. In 11 starts in 1992 he threw 4 shutouts. His best full season came the next year where he finished 14-9 with a 3.57 ERA. He had some decent seasons after that and finished his career with a 129-124 record. During his career he led the league three times in home runs allowed, and twice in hit batsmen. Oops.

Interesting Factoid courtesy of Wikipedia: Astacio "is an amateur Jai Lai player and has recently applied for Pakistani citizenship so he may compete in the annual National Jai Lai Championships (NJLC)."

Network Outage

2007-11-07T23:10:00.001-05:00

There was a network outage starting around noon Saturday through mid day Tuesday. A few hundred thousand websites were affected and we were one of them.

If you tried accessing our website you found it to be unavailable, for that we apologize. We got angry. Kicked, screamed, yelled.. all it really did was get me out of breath.

Included in this outage was our ability to review and fill orders. We are going through last weeks orders now and will get it all out over the next day or so.

If you emailed us over the weekend we may not have gotten it. They assure me that all emails over the weekend will eventually find there way to my inbox but I'm not counting on that. Please resend any emails that I have not responded to.

We are very sorry for the issue, and will do everything we can to get things back to normal.

Chris.

We are having a sale!

2007-09-29T21:41:00.000-04:00

More to come as soon as the playoff schedule is set. The discount will be keyed to who wins each playoff series.

Our wallet is bigger than our brain.

2007-08-24T16:06:00.001-04:00

The most expensive part of running a website like ours is time. It takes a long time to do anything. By far the most tedious and time consuming task is sorting and entering cards into our inventory. In the past we tried to pace our acquisitions with our ability to enter the cards into inventory.
Over the last several months we have picked up quite a few decent sized collections. We currently have between 1 and 1.5 million cards waiting to be entered onto the website. It's not all late 90's filler either. We have practically every Topps base card from 1956 on sitting in storage.

Why do I tell you this? Because we are not buying right now, and we are devoting our time to getting as much of this onto the website as quickly as possible. In the last 3 days we've added about 6 thousand cards to the website. Keep your eye out on the website. Chances are if you need it, we've got it, and we are going to get it listed soon. Need it now? Just send us an email. We'll dig through boxes to see if we can't find it for you.

Coming Soon:

2007-07-27T16:24:00.000-04:00

Here are a few things that will be added to inventory soon. Keep your eyes peeled.

2007 Topps Factory sets. These should be listed within the day.

2003, 2004, 2006, and 2007 Topps Heritage Singles. We will be listing every base set single, and most inserts from each of these sets. This includes every SP. We've carried a decent inventory of the 04, 06, and 07, but this will be the first large offering of the 03 we've had on the site. We are working hard on finding a few solid 2001 and 2002 Topps Heritage sets to break up. That said we will be listing the base set of 2001 Topps Heritage soon, this will not include SP's.

2007 SPX, 2007 Spectrum, 2006 SP Authentic, and 1985 Topps Tiffany base set singles will be listed shortly.

We will also be listing a handful of EX or better 1952 Topps singles.

As you may notice, Topps Heritage was a recent focus of our buying. One of our goals was to increase our inventory of the Heritage sets, and we have succeeded thus far, though the 01 and 02 are still on our list. Another of our goals was to dramatically increase our pre-80 offerings. I hope that we have succeeded there. While it does not show up on this list you should, soon, start seeing considerable 1950's, 1960's, and 1970's listings on the website.

Anything you need? Let us know. We'll find it.

1948 and 1949 Bowman!

2007-07-11T12:10:00.000-04:00

Typically I do not like buying collections from individuals. This is mainly because the value they see in the Beckett guide and the price at which I can buy and still pay the bills are greatly different. It can be uncomfortable. Today, however, not the case.

A gentleman called asking if I was interested in 1948 and 1949 Bowman. Of course I'm interested. I've been making a concerted effort recently to stock pre-80's stuff. We have 212,000 cards on the website and barely 1,000 of them are pre-80's. I need to fix that. 1940's Bowman would be fantastic additions to the website. The guy told me he had the Musial and Slaughter from the '48 set, and the Berra from the '49 set, as well as about 15 others. He also had about 30 48 Bowman football cards. He told me they were in 'great' condition. My expectations on grade are always far lower than what I'm told on vintage. People say great, I think G-VG at best.

Man was I wrong in this case. These cards are in fantastic condition. I do not expect PSA 8 or 9 out of them (upon further consideration I've changed my mind. The card featured above I think could grade 8 or 9), but they are all clean, no creases, barely any corner wear, beautiful color, only slight aging discoloration. I was shocked.

We agreed on a price, took care of that, and spent the next hour talking about his time in the army, his 13 years working for Skybox, etc. It was great. That is what I love about the hobby. It is full of great people. Sure we had business to take care of, but if we hadn't agreed on a price I'd have still been just as happy having talked to the gentlemen for an hour.

I'm including an image of one of the cards here.. see for yourself, the card is fantastic. If interested in high res scans just send us an email.

For the love of the minor leagues

2007-07-04T12:15:00.000-04:00

Mrs. BBC and I decided to take in a Durham Bulls game yesterday. For her this was her first minor league game. Ever. I know, just realizing how long we have been married, and to know that I have failed her up until this point.. it was devastating.

I love minor league baseball. As a kid we often headed out to see the Frederick Keys, and Hagerstown Suns. We even went into Baltimore and watched the Bowie Baysox play in Memorial Stadium after the Orioles moved. Basically, once the Orioles moved to Camden Yards Eskay stopped putting the "Buy one O's ticket, get one free" coupons on the inside of the hot dog packages. Without that coupon dad wasn't taking us to a big league game. Can't really blame him. That's the great thing about the minor leagues. Every seat in the house is awesome, and every seat in the house is less than $8.

The Bull's played the Toledo Mud Hens. The Mudhens appear to be one of the best teams in the International League, and there were solid prospects and former major leaguers on the field.

Michel Hernandez was the player of the game. He hit a 3 run home run in the 5th that tied the game. As you may recall Hernandez was originally a pretty well thought of Yankees prospect. He has since been through at least 4 other teams, without any big league playing time since 2003. Here's a name you want to remember: Joel Guzman. 3B for the Bulls. The kid is 6'6" about 250. He hit a rediculous home run in the game. The bulls have a big blue wall out in left field, ala fenway. My guess is the wall at the point the ball went out is 355' away and probably 35' high. Guzman, on a line, hit an office building construction project on the 4th deck ABOVE the blue monster. IE, he cleared the wall with a line drive by 40 feet. It was one heckuva shot.
Chris Richard, former Cardinal/Oriole/Rockie is the first basemen for the Bulls. While he appears to be having a good year (.300 average) he looked outmatched on this day (0-3 2k's)
One former big leaguer who did look good: Timo Perez. Plays left field for Toledo. He had 2 at bats that exceeded 12 pitches. He finally drew a walk on the first one (and scored on a Ryan Raburn home run) and extended the game with 2 outs in the ninth with a long at bat against Chad Orvella. He eventually singled to center but was left stranded this time when Orvella overpowered Raburn with a K.

Enough with all that.. It was a blast. Cheap tickets, sort of cheap food. Plenty of mid-inning silliness that makes minor league baseball great, (baby race, sumo wrestling, and the like) good people, friendly players, you could even buy the auto'd jerseys the players were wearing during a mid-game auction to benefit Durham's meals on wheels. (we picked up a non-game used Autographed B.J. Upton jersey.)

Go to minor league games. They are fun, cheap, and exciting. Even Mrs. BBC wanted to go back again this week.