2018 Topps Update First Look

An early preview of 2018 Topps Update was revealed yesterday.  As a Cutch collector, I suspect that there will be lots of goodies to chase in that upcoming release.

Early previews show the gold parallel of Cutch's Giants flagship debut in addition to a 1983 autograph, the first time Cutch has signed for Topps in several years.

I will definitely be chasing as many of these parallels as I can get my hands on.

For more info on the 2018 Topps Update release click here.

Only A Select Few Can Be Golden

The title says it all

Panini may get a lot of hate for their logoless baseball cards and the problems that football and basketball fans have towards their products, but honestly they know how to make color parallels better than anyone.

The Select product lasted just one year in their recent production of cards, but the Gold parallels are beautiful pieces of cardboard to have.

With only 25 copies produced it is extremely tough tracking these rare parallels down for the unlicensed product from 5 years ago.

Two have surfaced recently and I was lucky to make a bid for one of them.

This Day in Cutchstory: Where we're going we don't need roads

So yesterday was May 17th and I completely forgot to highlight one of those most important events in Cutchstory that can be found on cardboard.

Come with me BACK TO this post where I said in THE FUTURE, I would highlight this card.

Above is a 2018 Donruss 1984 Retro Game Day Stat Line card.  The game day stat lines are incredibly rare as they feature an extremely limited number produced based on a stat line for that game.  In this case, only 2 were produced to highlight Andrew McCutchen's 2 Stolen Bases that day.

I wrote about this great game by Cutch exactly a year ago which you can see here.

The significance of the 1984 design? Back to The Future was being filmed that year for a 1985 release date.

So now that we have traveled to the past and the future, hows the Delorean Doc?

From the back of the card I posted on May 7th 2018 referencing the events of May 17th 2017.

Flawless

Quickie for today as I didn't want to go another day without posting.

From 2016 Flawless here's the ruby parallel numbered 4/15

Cheap Tricks

First off Congrats to Cutch for his 1,500th hit last night.  I am wkorking on a big post for that this week. 


We now return to tne regular scheduled programming...


I am not very good at photoshop.

Edward Vella claims these are not photoshopped.

Others say they are.

For $6, I don't mind adding essentially what is photoshopped limited print of iconic images of Cutch to my collection.  I have a few others of his already added to the collection anyway so why not keep adding them as they pop up for that cheap.

Truth be told I would much rather add an original hand drawn sketch by Juan Rosales, Chris Henderson, Darrin Pepe, or Brian Kong anyday.

Those guys got serious skills of an artist, unlike Strongbad

A Big 1/1 Arrives

Yesterday was one of the rare occurences where I didn't have a post ready to go.  Happy Belated Mother's Day to all the moms out there.

While I was away in Pittsburgh over the weekend, I received a handful of packages on Friday and Saturday.  Included in the bunch were 3 new 1 of 1s.  

This one is technically my biggest 1 of 1 in my collection, a 5x7 Blue Parallel of Cutch's 2016 Topps card.

I put a standard size Topps Chrome card next to it for comparison purposes.  

The back of the card is the same as the regular issue.

Throughout the rest of this week, I will show off some of the cards I got over the weekend.  Two things I picked up this weekend will have to wait until my October Save The Boobies event I do every year.  

Where's My Auto?

Remember back in February when I found an unknown printing error for a card designed to have an autograph on it?

Well...I got another one and have been holding onto it for a few months. I think I will use today's post to recap my adventure in Pittsburgh yesterday first though.

It's a six hour drive out west and I didn't think in advance to bring my car charger for my phone.  Shortly after arriving at the stadium at 5:35, I discovered I didn't have much juice left.

That kind of stunk because as I walked towards my seats in section 109 behind the Giants Dugout I encountered a small but growing crowd of people getting autographs.

This isn't anything new for fans to try and get autographs from the visitor team.

Well....except this visitor was Andrew McCutchen.

It was getting closer to 6pm and you can tell that Cutch would have loved to sign for anyone, but he wanted to start his pregame routine.  I overheard someone say he started signing as soon as the gates opened at 5pm.

When I first started Collecting Cutch and attending Pirates games I would have been pushing my way towards the front of the line.
Not this time though.  I was letting younger fans through.  Older women trying to get stuff signed for their grandkids.  There was so many cool stories I heard about as Cutch just kept signing balls, cards, photos, hats, jerseys, bats, etc.

The joy on their faces as they got his autograph.

I didn't go to the games this weekend to try and hound for autographs.  Sure if one fell in my lap, I wouldn't complain, but as I said to Matt from BobWalkThePlank via text, I already have 160+ different things signed by him.

Cutch is a visitor now in Pittsburgh.

I thought I would treat him like a guest and let the rest of the city get an autograph for what he did to this town that forgot what good baseball looked like.

I didn't need an autograph yesterday.  I could have easily gotten one, but I felt a greater sense of joy watching others get theres.

Maybe today I will actually try.

I didn't bring many options to have signed.  A few base cards to choose from and obviously my ticket stubs.

I wish I had brought my unsigned error card from Panini's 2017 Chronicles release.  The autographed version was listed as a SSP and for good reason.  Only one of each (signed and unsigned) has hit eBay since December which I proudly own both.

 The unsigned version has a more Prizm refractor look, but both feature the same backs.

I previously showed off the autograph version in December.