National Sunglasses Day

Since breaking into the league in 2009, Cutch has always had a sense of joy and swag wherever he played.

Here are a few cards featuring Cutch wearing sunglasses.

First I am going to show off an original piece of artwork by the extremely talented artist Josh Trout

2022 has seen my favorite low budget insert in a long time. Check out those shades!

2021 had an insert set called Stars in Service showing athletes in the community.

It also had a base card featuring Cutch sliding to make a catch for his base card in Series 2.

2020 introduced the world to a worldwide pandemic and the coolest sports card ever produced.

2019 Stadium Club had a photo variant of Cutch 

2016 Topps Triple Threads featured images of Cutch at the 2015 All Star Game

This is an original art card by Brian Kong and was used to produce the Museum Canvas Collection reprints from this original artwork. 

2014 Topps Archives 

2013 Topps Archives All Stars

2013 had photo variants of the top stars sporting their sunglasses.  The most famous is the Yu Darvish card featuring a pair of sunglasses that should be sent back in time.

2012 had a photo variant of Cutch at the All Star Game

2011 Tier One had an autograph with Adam Jones where Cutch is sporting shades atop his cap.

2005 Bowman Heritage saw him sport a pair of shades on his cap for the base, mini, and mahogany parallels.  It is strange That the photo variant doesn't feature sunglasses on the cap as it was likely from the same photo shoot.

It also saw the 2005 Bowman Heritage Signs of Greatness autographs to feature the sunglasses on the hat.

2005 Topps Chrome saw Cutch wearing the shades atop his head.

Do you have any sunglasses cards to show off? We could do a blog bat around if so.

IYKYK, acquiring a super rare card for under $5

I see people post hash tags with IYKYK and I'm often looking at that saying IDK.  This new social media talk has got me worried about the future where all vowels will be obsolete and many common phrases will just be abbreviated. 

Anyway IYKYK means If You Know You Know.  It's often associated with something in the hobby that is known to hobby collectors, but the common collectors may not be aware.

I recently purchased a card off eBay for under $5 that tends to sell for over $100.  It shouldn't be valued that much, but the urban myths surrounding this card make it very very rare despite being serial numbered on back to 2013.

Unlike many cryptids like Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, this card does exist and has been documented with proof of it's existence.  That doesn't make it any less rare.

There were some posts on blowoutcards back in 2013 and 2014 about this rare card which you can visit here.

I contemplated messaging the seller about his very low Buy-It-Now price, but since I am a Super Collector and not going to flip it, I thought it would be ok to just take advantage of this good fortune.  In addition I have a goal to display all my gold parallels of Cutch in a large frame once he retires so I couldn't pass it up.

The seller also included a very nice note thanking me for the purchase and asking for feedback upon receipt of this card.

I still can't believe I got one of these for under $5. 

Have you ever told someone that a card you wanted to buy was way underpriced?

Retail Madness!

First of all, my photography skills with my phone are some of the worse on a blog.  I'm sorry. One of my purchases I plan to get next year is another scanner or some kind of lightbox so I can take better pictures.

One of the few purchases I made over the past few months is a card I have looked to acquire since 2013.

Yup, 2013!

Panini Prizm has always been one of my favorite card releases because of how bold the color parallels are, see below for an example.   

Recently the product has gotten a little silly with nearly 30 different parallels to chase after like lime green donuts, zebra stripes, etc but early Prizm was stunning.

Look at the group of parallels above that I scanned and showed off a few years ago.

Man, do those colors pop!

Pictured above is my latest pickup for the rainbow, a 2013 Target red exclusive coupled with my green retail exclusive. 

I always liked that Topps and Panini would do exclusive parallels to chase with some of the retail stores (Wal Mart, Target, Toys r Us, Meijer, Walgreens, etc).

Do you like the store exclusive parallels?

Despite not being licensed, do you like the Prizm brand?

Do you have any recommendations for taking pictures of baseball cards?

Congrats to Bryce Harper

Bryce Harper won the NL MVP for the second time in his career.

I like Bryce Harper.

A lot!

I love the way he plays the game

Above are all my Cutch cards that also feature Bryce Harper.  

Reflecting on Sharknado

I've mentioned Sharknado a few times on this blog in it's brief history.  It combines my love of sharks (Hey it's Shark Week on Discovery Channel!!!) and those bad animal feature films.  

The first film series debuted in 2013 and starred former 90210 heart throb Ian Ziering (born in Newark, NJ in 1964).  Ziering plays Fin Shepard, a former surfer who is the world's best hope to stop these tornadoes that spew out hundreds of sharks.  Shepard uses a chainsaw as his main weapon to combat this natural disaster.

Because it's Shark Week (one of my favorite weeks of the year) and Discovery Channel recently showed an episode starring Ian Ziering (and Tara Reid) debunking some of the stories discussed in all the Sharknado movies, I thought it would be fun to discuss my Cutch collection and Sharknado.

I wonder if there's a baseball card of Andrew McCutchen that references both 1964 and 2013?

Behold 2013 Topps Heritage!

The 2013 Topps Heritage Set uses the same design as 2014 Topps.  Andrew McCutchen's base card is 438, the same as a checklist in the original 1964 set.  Talk about a huge missed opportunity.

Above are the 9 cards I have of Cutch from 2013 Topps Heritage.

1st Row:Base, Base League Leaders, Chrome

2nd Row:Action Variant, Red Retail, Black Retail

3rd Row: Purple Hot Box Chrome, Black Refractor Chrome, Venezuelan black back action photo variant

I still need two of the chrome parallels

 Gold Refractor /5 and Chrome Refractor /564

A gold Refractor was listed last fall, but was pulled before the auction ended.  It was being sold by a seller in Japan.  I tried to reach out to the seller, but got no response.  Here's hope I can land one of the other 4 sometime.

Have you watched any of the Sharknado movies?

Superman Day

Every June 12th is celebrated as National Superman Day.

You may recall I discussed this day back in 2019 when I showed off a super rare 1 of 1 autograph booklet letter patch card.  

I was never a huge fan of Superman compared to other superheroes.  I always liked the darker more angsty heroes like Wolverine, Green Arrow, or Batman or I liked the comical heroes like Flash or Deadpool.

I do respect Superman though.  He is an American icon.

Superman is also known as The Man of Steel.

Here are some other Men of Steel from my Andrew McCutchen Triple Threads collection

Pirates of the Past

I thought it might be fun to look at cards that feature Andrew McCutchen with former teammates and do a "Where are they now?" type thing.

I got the idea from one of those ads that takes a look at a movie cast to see where they are now.  It was followed by watching the Friends Reunion show with Ms. CollectingCutch as we saw the faces of Matthew Perry, Courtney Cox, etc in their current appearance.

So the first person I am going to look at is Gerrit Cole. 

Gerrit Cole was drafted by the Yankees in the first round of the 2009 amateur draft, but chose not to sign and instead attended UCLA where he was drafted 1st overall by the Pirates in 2011.

Cole made his debut in 2013 and helped to push the Pirates towards their first playoff run in over two decades.  

He joined a young Pirates team loaded with talent that included the 2013 NL MVP (Andrew McCutchen) and the 2013 NL Home Run Champion (Pedro Alvarez)

Cole finished his rookie season going 10-7 with a 3.22 ERA over 19 games started.  He also went 1-1 with a 2.45 ERA and 0.64WHIP over 11 innings in the 2013 Postseason.

The following season saw the Pirates make another playoff push and finish with the top Wild Card position. Cole went 11-5 with a 9K/9 and 3.23FIP in his sophomore season.  The Pirates lost the Wild Card Game and Cole didn't get a chance to pitch in the postseason.  Meanwhile McCutchen continued to be a perennial MVP candidate (finishing 3rd in MVP voting) and helped anchor one of the best outfields in baseball.

The Pirates began 2015 the same way they finished 2014, as one of the youngest and best teams in baseball.  The young team constantly flirted with the best record in baseball behind their division rivals, St. Louis Cardinals.

Gerrit Cole emerged as a true ace of the Pirates pitching staff (that also included AJ Burnett, Charlie Morton, Francisco Liriano and saw top prospects Jameson Taillon and Tyler Glasnow continue to rise in the minors).

Gerrit Cole received Cy Young votes (finishing fourth) and MVP votes while making his first All-Star team.

Cole was joined on the roster by MVP caliber Centerfielder, Andrew McCutchen along with rotation mate, AJ Burnett, and team closer Mark Melancon.

The 2015 Pirates finished with the second best record in baseball, but would again lose the Wild Card game. Cole started the game and was the losing pitcher.

The 2016 Pirates saw some significant changes occur.  Previous year rookie of year nominee (finished third) Jung Ho Kang struggled with injuries.  Andrew McCutchen had the worse season of his career after four straight top 5 MVP seasons.  Cole regressed significantly after a breakout 2015 campaign and suffered a 7-10 record, largely based on his 1.44WHIP.

The Pirates also made some significant moves by releasing Pedro Alvarez and trading away local fan favorite, Neil Walker.

The Pirates struggles continued into 2017 and the team that seemed destined to become a constant postseason threat by having a top 5 MLB team (at least according to record) along with a top 5 farm system was making changes.

Just before New Year's 2018, the two faces of the franchise were traded away within days of each other.

Gerrit Cole was traded to Houston for a package that included Joe Musgrove, Colin Moran, and Jason Martin.

Cutch was shipped off to the San Francisco Giants for Bryan Reynolds and Kyle Crick.

Cole became a different pitcher in Houston and improved his spin rate becoming one of the best pitchers in the game.  

He made the All Star team both seasons in Houston and would lead the American League in K/9 both years.  In his 65 starts with Houston he went 35-10 with a 2.68ERA and 602 strikeouts over 412 innings.  His K/9 jumped from 8.4 with Pittsburgh to 13.1 with Houston.

Following the 2019 World Series, Cole became a Free Agent and signed with the team that originally drafted him.

In 148 innings with the Yankees, Cole alread has struck out nearly 200 batters and has a miniscule 2.54 ERA to go with a 13-6 record. 

In 18 postseason innings with the Yankees last year, Cole struck out 30 batters and won both games he was involved in a decision.

Should I look at other former teammates of Cutch and show off some of my cards with that player?