Need to buy a vowel?

I am starting to get more McCutchen letters and can make a heck of a Scrabble board using the letters M C T H N

Oddly enough I need more vowels though.

Here is a pair of 2018 Topps Definitive 1/1 letters I acquired last year.

I have a few more letters coming in that I have bought from a private seller.

Quite Possibly the Best McCutchen Giants Card Produced

Andrew McCutchen played roughly only 5 months of his career with the San Francisco Giants. 

In those few months Cutch received a lot of autograph love from Topps.  More autographs were produced of Cutch in a Giants uniform in those 5 months than in the previous 4 years wearing a Pirates uniform.

I have picked up a bunch of sweet autographs in the recent months of Cutch and will likely have to show them off next year.

Among all the sticker autographs and framed autographs of Cutch in the Giants uniform, I have picked up a few relics too. 

Only Topps Triple Threads produced a jersey relic of Cutch thus far wearing the orange and black.

This mammoth triple booklet numbered 1/1 takes the award for best Cutch relic in a Giants uniform. 

Boom!!! 

A nice letter "M" from an Arizona Spring Training game starts off the craziness of this cardboard juggernaut.

Check out the 60th Anniversary patch in the center.  It commemorates the move from New York to San Francisco for the Giants organization.

The massive number patch helps bring closure to it.

Not much else to say about it besides this is my favorite Cutch Giants relic I own.

A little too tactful

None of us like to get cards damaged in the mail.  I remember getting a Bowman red paper 1/1 that got stuck in the machine. Fortunately the top loader took the brunt of the damage and the card was fine.

Sometimes though sellers use so much added precaution that it makes getting the card removed more in danger.

Such was the case with this card I received several months ago.

It's a 1/1 so I appreciate the card being kept safe as it would be impossible to replace.

It's from Cutch's 2015 All Star Game workout jersey.

I wish I had thought to take a picture of how it was secured.  There was so much bubblewrap and space dividers around it, you would think it was a grenade.

With 2 space dividers tightly wrapped around the toploader then covered in about a foot and half of bubblewrap, this card wasn't going to get man handled by no postal machines.  Not a chance.

Rather than use painter's tape or other nonsticky tape around the card this sucker was firmly entrenched with enough packaging tape to send your next wave of Christmas presents across the U.S.

The odd thing?

What is the most obvious way a card can come out of a toploader?

If you said ....the top...you are correct.

THERE WASN'T ANYTHING AT THE TOP TO PREVENT THE CARD FROM SLIDING OUT!!!

Not that it would have had anywhere to go except a bubblewrap grave.

Thanks for the workout! I definitely got my cardio in with this fun exercise.

"M" I ever going to get updated?

Here's a card I have had scanned for close to 8 months.

And yet I never got a post for it.

This lead me to ask the question, "M" I ever going to get my entire Cutch collection updated for all to see?

Doubtful.

Happy MonPunday everyone!!!!

Time to panic?

I am getting tired of people saying trade Cutch and bring up the Meadows kid.
Austin Meadows as hopeful as we can be of him is no more than a Nate McLouth clone.
Andrew's hardware and pedigree should speak for itself, but if you need some facts....here we go....

Andrew is often a "slow starter" as his April career numbers will show.  He is currently hitting .263/.333/.438 with 3 HR and 12 RBI.

In 2012 he didn't hit his 1st HR until May 8th.  He would go on to hit 31 that season and finish second place for the batting title.

In 2013 Cutch was batting .217/.284/.370 and only 2 HR.  He would go on to win the MVP that year.

In 2014, the Pirates had the 3rd worse record in baseball at this time.  They would go on to have the 3rd BEST records in the National League.

The not so distant past shows that the Pirates and Cutch will be ok this year.

I am not panicking!

I bring up the term panic because as card companies often fail to guarantee their items from being any particular game, season, or event Hits Memorabilia has an online vault you can see the materials used to create the cards. This reduces the panic.

I have been adding a few of the Hits Memorabilia cards recently because even though they are unlicensed they have some beautiful looking cards that often times sell for significantly less than Topps or Panini releases.

Here are 2 more examples of Hits Memorabilia Mint.

Sweet looking, right?

As I mentioned in a previous post these card's jersey were used in a 2016 Spring Training game vs the Rays when Cutch hit his 1st HR of the year.