T206 Is Back

Topps t206 is coming back this year.  The set hasn't been produced since 2010.  I have always liked this set mainly for the ties it has to the infamous Honus Wagner card.

I have a few of Cutch's 2009 Topps t206 cards including the gold mini you see above.

Above are 3 of the different backs I have for the standard minis from Cutch's 2009 rookie year.

I also have 3 different backs from the 2010 minis.  I will show all my different 2010 parallel colors and chromed and such in a future post.

These are the 3 different standard size cards I have of Cutch for 2009.
Base, Photo Variant, Bronze parallel.

I think Topps should do similar relaunches of Gypsy Queen where it is only available once every couple years. 

#tbt: Gray Hair?

You may recall that I had a chance to meet Andrew McCutchen last September.  I showed off the custom dreadlock card that Tanner Jones made for me.  Brad from Brad's (Phillies) Blog met up with me at the show and filmed the entire meeting which I pinned to my Twitter.  The whole interaction can be revisited here on my blog.

Well as weird as it is to have a piece of cardboard with a piece of dreadlock in it, I wasn't done.  I asked Tanner to make another custom for me so that I could send it off to another McCutchen collector who has sold me A LOT of low number Cutch cards over the years.  In addition to that custom I asked Tanner if he could create a t206 style dna relic card.

As a Pirates fan there is no more desirable card than a t206 Honus Wagner card.  It is a holy grail of anyone who collects sports cards.  It makes it more special for a Pirates fan though.  I will never own an original, but did have a chance to hold one at a Chantilly show a few years ago which I wrote about on my old blog here.

Back in 2002 Topps released a bat relic card inside a framed Honus Wagner mini that resembled the legendary t206 card.  It is one of my favorite cards in my collection.  I showed it way back in 2013 on the old Pirates Treasure Room blog.

I asked Tanner to recreate something similar using a strand of the dreadlock I gave him for the custom and he created an awesome Cutch card in that t206 style sporting a Homestead Grays uniform.

Here is what he came up with.  This card is fricking awesome!!!

Cutch is one of the premier black baseball players in the game today.  It may not be a coincidence that his prime years were with the Pirates, a team housed in Pittsburgh. 

For the better part of a decade, the Homestead Grays of Pittsburgh, dominated the Negro Leagues.  I have talked before about Hall of Famers and Negro League legends like Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, and Cool Papa Bell. 

A pitcher who played the twilight of his career with the Grays may have actually been the best pitcher in Negro League history though.  And in case you're wondering, his name isn't Satchel Paige.

" Smoky" Joe Williams was born in 1886 to an African American and Comoche Indian parents.  He began his baseball playing career in 1907 with the San Antonio Black Bronchos. 

Not much is known of his stats, but it has been said that he struck out 27 batters in a 12 inning game and that he threw a no hitter against the New York Giants in an exhibition match.  His barnstorming exhibition games had him defeating many Hall of Famers like Waite Hoyt andGrover Alexander.

In his only matchup versus Paige, Williams bested him 1-0 as a 43 year old while Paige was just breaking into his prime.

In 1952 the Pittsburgh Courier named Williams the greatest Negro Leagues pitcher.

Williams was finally elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1999.

Not Everything is Flat in Florida

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness month.  Visit the official site here.

Breast Cancer will be detected in one of eight women in the US each year.
It is the second leading cause of cancer death among women each year.
On average every 2 minutes a woman will be diagnosed with breast cancer and every 13 minutes one person will die from breast cancer.
There are currently 33 million breast cancer survivors in the USA.

It's important to support the research for cancer.  Breast Cancer is often associated with the color pink so I will be showing off some pink Cutch cards.

In addition, you can expect to see some boobs with each post.  Who doesn't love boobs?

So let's start with what we're hoping to save!
Today's model is...

Christina Lucchi aka Christina Marie Hopkins aka Christina Model

Began getting famous for this ad

Among other ads for a t-shirt company

She began "modeling" at a very young age while still in high school.

Which lead to more t-shirts for her to model

In the days of MySpace, she was a very popular popup.

If you've seen gifs of bouncing boobs before you have likely come across a few of hers

Do I still have anyone's attention with the words I'm typing?

Uh oh

It's flatlining like Florida...

Oh wait, never mind....

Since she was just a high schooler when she became famous, I thought we should go back to school for some word studies.

Today's word study is Piedmont.

Piedmont comes from the Italian word "piemonte".  It simply refers to a gentle slope from the base of mountains to a region of flat land.

Piedmont is a 2 syllable word.

2!

Gentle slopes

To remind us that not everything is flat in Florida.

The 2010 T206 Piedmont Mini magenta printing plate was one of the first printing plates I ever got of Cutch.  At the time I had already quit MySpace and those annoying popup Tshirt ads featuring Christina Lucchi Model Hopkins.

But that picture is just as famous today as it was 10 years ago.

Look to Twitter for proof.

It is going to be a fun October.
I have been working on posts for this month long event for about 9 months.

I am open to any suggestions tho...

You ain't never had a friend like me...

Going to see the live action Aladdin with the girlfriend tonight.  It's been a long time since we went to the movies together and we both have been looking forward to this live action take on our favorite Disney property.

Genie was perfect when voiced by Robin Williams.  I am a little nervous of Will Smith living up to the insanely high expectations set forth by the late actor.

In anticipation of Genie and the movie in general, I have chosen to show off one of my favorite blue cards (base parallels only, so no relics) from each year Cutch was with the Pirates from his MLB debut (2009) to his final season in Pittsburgh (2017).  I didn't want to repeat brands a lot although I absolutely love the Prizm color parallels.  Including relics, I have 152 blue parallels of Cutch.  I also didn't want to show off high end releases like Museum or Tribute in this quick scan.

Top Row: 2017 Topps Fire, 2016 Topps Chrome Sapphire, 2015 Donruss Production Line

Middle Row: 2014 Finest Competitors, 2013 Prizm Band of Brothers, 2012 Prizm

Bottom Row: 2011 Elite Extra Edition Status, 2010 t206 Chrome, 2009 Topps Chrome (rookie card)

Happy International Polar Bear Day!!!

Today is International Polar Bear Day

To those of you that forgot to mark your calendars, don't fret.  Hallmark hasn't popularized this day nearly as much as Valentine's Day or Mother's Day.  No one will be expecting a greeting card or friendly phone call to celebrate this day.

It is still pretty important though as we should all think about the dangers that global warming has on the arctic animal and do our due diligence to prevent future generations of this awesome creature from going extinct.

What better way to celebrate than with a Polar Bear back (Topps Mini)?

This SP mini is from 2009 Topps 206 series. It is a very tough to find rookie of Cutch.  The Polar Bear minis were inserted only two per hobby box.  There was a 300 card set of these to collect, making this very difficult to obtain.  The Cycle backs were numbered to 99 copies and were inserted on average 1 per hobby box.  It is suspected that these, although not numbered, had a production run of only 200 copies per player.

The Piedmont Mini is the much more plentiful and common back.

Anyone else have any polar bear cards to show off today? Post em up!

Striking Gold: A Short Poem

I like to collect The Cutch
I don't like to spend too much.
I've bought from him before
That's why he didn't charge me more.
My latest card is a mini gold
The chrome looks really bold.
It's numbered to only fifty
This T206 Piedmont is way nifty.

I'm glad I was able to add this  2009 Topps T206 Chrome Gold Mini to my collection.  This is the first one that became available on the market in the past 4 years.  Super excited to get it in hand and add it to the PC.

It's no Honus Wagner, but I got a super rare T206

In my endless pursuit to add more McCutchen cards to the PC, I finally added a 2010 Red Chrome T206 to the collection.  I tried in two previous attempts in the past two years to add this card to my collection.

It's numbered 10/25 making it a rare early years Cutch card for the collection.

Showing off some customs

Occassionally I will come across some custom cards for sale that strike my fancy.  I'm not a huge supporter of these kinds of cards, but if it features an old Topps design I liked or a unique moment I usually pull the trigger.

Recently I came across this custom

I picked up his "team set" of Team USA.

I loved this year's WBC and rooting for Team USA.  I have to hand it to Jim Leyland for winning the tournament and sticking with his core guys.  I felt like the team lacked the "Superstar" and "Hobby star" names, but as a team they did an incredible job.

When you think of the big names in the card collecting world, who on Team USA draws the most attention?
Buster Posey, probably.
All their other guys play on small market teams.  Miami, Kansas City, Toronto, Pittsburgh, Colorado, Baltimore.  Most are low revenue teams.
Again kudos and Jim Leyland and the team.

I have also picked up a few other customs over the years.

This was a hand drawn sketch card that I thought looked really good so I had to pick it up.

These two were random impulse buys.

And to finish things off is this really sweet looking T206 Style Piedmont card.

The Mauer was a freebie the seller provided.
If anyone wants the Mauer let me know.