2008 Topps Stadium Club Beam Team Autograph

Patience pays off sometimes.  As soon as I saw the Beam Team Autographs design out of 2008 Topps Stadium Club, I knew I wanted to pick up a Hamilton.  They started out in the $35 range for a total price including shipping.  Just a little bit too much for my taste for a base sticker autograph.  I waited it out until just before Christmas when I hit a BIN for $19.99 with free shipping.  I have a really hard time holding off on grabbing cards right when they come out, but I am getting better and reaping the rewards.

Enough with the nitty gritty details about how the card was acquired.  Onto the card itself.  These cards are acetate, so the coloured sections are transparent.  To further the stained glass effect, the black lines which represent the lead cames used in actual stained glass works are raised off the surface of the card, which makes it feel cool when you run your finger over the card.

There are also silver (/99) and gold (/50) versions of this card out there.  I think I will chase the silver version, but I just don’t really like the look of the gold one.

Dinged Corners New Year’s Post

Getting back into the swing of things with an easy one – a Q&A session devised by the good folks over at Dinged Corners.  There are two rounds.  My answers are mushed together, because that’s kind of how I end up doing things.

1-If I didn’t collect baseball cards, I’d collect…
Hmmmm, tough one.  I am the family packrat, so I collect all kinds of weird things.  I have a fledgling collection of WWII memorabilia (medals, dog tags, etc) from my grandfathers and a cousin who served, so I think that would become my focus.

2-My baseball heroes include one you probably wouldn’t know from my blog or comments, and that person is…..
I suppose I can’t really say Josh Hamilton here.  So, I’ll go with Joe Carter.  His home run in the World Series for the Jays was epic.

3-Every New Years I resolve to __________ my collection.
I don’t really make any resolutions about my collection.  I try to be as easy going as possible with them.

4-If I could spend a day with one person from baseball history, it would be…..
Jackie Robinson.  I’d like to meet someone who made a difference.

5-What is your favorite kind of dog?
Any mutt will do.  Our dog at home is a Norwegian Elk Hound / Border Collie cross, so I’ll go with that.  He’s really dumb, but I still love him.  His name is Spike.  I’d post a picture, but he is terrified of cameras.

6-Who is your favorite baseball player?
Josh Hamilton

7-What is your favorite team?
Toronto Blue Jays

8-What is your favorite baseball movie?
Major League

10-What is your favorite baseball book?
Shoeless Joe, by WP Kinsella

11-What is your favorite card?

Sports Illustrated Year End Story

The highly informative Rangers Blog has a copy of Tom Verducci’s story regarding Hamilton’s Home Run Derby performance.  I’m still not tired of hearing about Hamilton’s HR Derby performance, although I’m sure some are.

I will also add that I don’t want to make this blog into anything political (I am a bit of a politics junkie, but I like this blog to be nice and relaxing) but the quote Hamilton says comes from current President Bush is a good thing:  “There are some good days and there are some bad days, but every day is a joyous day.”

I am back from my Christmas break.  I had the chance to spend a full week ‘unplugged’ so I took it.  I missed a lot of stuff, but I think I replaced it with a lot of better stuff.  I’m still trying to figure out where all the MLB free agents are, but my current obsession is Team Canada at the World Junior Hockey Championships.  I hope everyone had a great hlliday season, and take a breather before ringing in the new year.

Holiday Break

I am getting ready to head out for the holidays soon, so the Hamilton posts will be sparse until after Christmas.  I hope everyone has a great holiday season, with lots of fun, family and friends.

Ballparking it…

Yes, I am aware that “Ballparking it…” generally means that one is going to estimate something.  I’m not using it in that context.  I’m using it as a title to announce that I have finished off the Josh Hamilton mini-project out of 2008 Upper Deck Ballpark Collection.  Hamilton had two octo jerseys and two hexa jerseys.  Here’s the last piece of the puzzle.

Ballpark Collection was a great set, in my opinion.  It wasn’t necessarily the best value in a break, but it produced some really nice cards – and it also made the multi memorabilia pieces accesible to a lot of people.  Although, some might argue – they are a little too accesible.

And now, a break for local news….

Police seek chicken flingers in Tisdale, Saskatchewan

There’s a lot of doom and gloom in the news today.  Things suck for a lot of people, and in all likelihood, nothing is going to magically change tomorrow.  But, every so often, in the midst of all the foreclosures, and dropping oil prices – there is a story about a man throwing a live chicken into a 7-11.

Some notable quotes:  “The owner of that store said the chickens were relocated to an area farm.” and “Police are calling the incident an apparent animal rights protest.”

I’ll grant you that some people out there think that killing and eating animals is wrong – but how is taking these chickens out in -35 weather and hurling them into a convenience store ‘right’?

The comments at the end of the story are great too.  I hope you enjoyed a brief respite from doom and gloom as much as I did.

Josh Hamilton Signs My Card!

Waaaay back in spring training, I packaged up a TTM request to Hamilton through the Rangers ST addy, and then began to wait.  After things blew up at the All-Star break, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be seeing this request again – he had just gotten too big.

Then, on a bunch of autographing sites, I started seeing Hamilton requests trickling back.  A couple here, a couple there.  One over at Bad Wax as well….  So, I started getting my hopes back up.  And in today’s mail, there was an SASE with an older style of stamps than I am currently using.  And the part of the postmark that I could make out said ‘Research Triangle’.  I was looking at going to grad school at NC State – I know where Research Triangle is.  And my hopes got even further up (while at the same time I was wondering if I had sent anything to any of the Hurricanes).  Today was the day, though.  Inside my envelope was this:

I sent him two copies of this card, and offered him one if he liked it.  That makes this request doubly awesome for me.  1)  I got my card signed and returned to me and 2)  Apparently Hamilton liked the card I made enough to keep it.  I have other pack certified Hamilton autographs, as well as a signed copy of his book, but this one is different.  its kind of like he signed it especially for me.

2008 Upper Deck Documentary Appears to be Live!

I finally got around to checking my morning emails from eBay for my saved searches just before noon.  I wasn’t expecting too much – a 7-day auction right now would end on Christmas Day.  Great for bargain hunters, not so great for sellers.

There wasn’t a whole lot of interesting items for Hamilton today, but this card, from Upper Deck’s new mega-set Documentary caught my eye.

I am not sure how exactly this set is going to work for the regular players – if Hamilton is on cards for 15 or 16 different Rangers games with the exact same picture, it will depend on how easy they are to pick up.  This card, commemorating his HR Derby performance will definitely be on my list of ‘must-haves’ though.  It looks like there is a series of HR Derby cards, as this one is numbered HR2 – there is probably a corresponding set of All-Star Game cards as well.

I imagine this set is going to be interesting for the dedicated team collectors out there – any of you guys care to comment on how you are tackling this?  Is every card a must-have for you, or will you pick and choose?

The important stuff in 2009 SPx

With the end of 2008 rapidly approaching (seriously, it was June, like, yesterday), I guess we can now start to look forward to 2009. In addition to me writing 2008 on my rent cheque for the first couple of months of the year – that also means that there will be new baseball products coming out. And, with me collecting a player who kind of, sort of blew up a little bit in 2008 – there will likely be a lot of Hamiltons in the 2009 releases.

First up (that I have seen a picture of a Hamilton card from – I have no idea when it actually releases) is 2009 Upper Deck SPx. If you want more than the details on Hamilton in this product, check out Beckett’s Blog – they have a lot more pictures, and they let me borrow the Hamilton image you are about to see. I asked after I stopped whimpering in the corner.

First the positives – its a great looking card, and it also features Hamilton in his Texas Rangers uniform – presumably that means UD has gotten ahold of some Texas GU for the upcoming cards – I am all for that. Now the bad – Hamilton has been elevated from sharing his card with such luminaries as Xavier Nady and Rick Ankiel to being pictured with Derek Jeter and Albert Pujols. Yay, me. I mean, its not like there are lots of Yankee fans out there, right? And who’s heard of that Pujols guy anyways? Any Lance Berkman fans out there that want to commiserate with me, feel free to comment below.

So, there we have it – my first warning that 2009 is going to be a very interesting year for collecting Josh Hamilton. Lots of cool looking cards? A definite positive for me. Lots of cool looking cards that feature some of the other most popular players of the game today? Not so good.

Hopefully, I remember this post when I snag an actual copy of this card, and I will be able to laugh at how worried I was at the time. More likely – this post will be salt in the wound every time I am outbid on a copy….

2000 Topps Tek Colour…errr…Color

A while back, I got really ambitious and scanned in all my 2000 Topps Tek Variations. I also took the time to lament that I had never even seen a ‘Color’ version of Hamilton. Well, the eBay gods must have heard me, because one popped up within a week or so of my post. It was listed with a BIN of $15.00 and he was accepting offers. I think I initially offered $6.00 + shipping, and was countered at $12.00. I passed. As much as I wanted one – I also knew the market for Hamilton’s inserts and semi-rare parallels where he is pictured in a Devil Rays uniform is quite soft. His autographs sell well out of any product, and his newer stuff starts off red hot, but 2000 – 2003 stuff is rather stagnant. I am getting to it as quickly as my Paypal account allows, though.

As I expected (and hoped), no one bit @ $15.00, nor was an offer accepted. Shortly thereafter, it popped up at open auction – starting bid $0.99 (my favorite kind). I set my snipe, and waited impatiently for 6 days. Turns out, I won the auction for $2.25 – $5.25 shipped to Canada. 🙂 Here’s what all the fuss was about:

Sharp looking card. This one is numbered 38-20. I believe there are 5 different Color variations – I can only assume (hope) they are 5 different colours. The base variations are cool looking cards, adding the colour to the opaque parts on the acetate makes this card look that much cooler.