What killed the dinosaurs?

Continuing my posts about Arnold Schwarzenegger we have a line from Batman & Robin where Arnold played the villain, Mr. Freeze.

What killed the dinosaurs?

The Ice Age

Above are my Bowman Platinum silver ice parallels of Cutch 2016-2019. 

What are some other great Arnold one liners you'd like to see?

ICYMI : The Magic of 250

In case you missed it, Andrew McCutchen hit his 250th Career Home Run on Wednesday night.  

Here is a breakdown of his 250 HR by team

203 Pirates

15 Giants

5 Yankees

27 Phillies

I wanted to show off a few of my cards that were serial numbered to only 250 copies and decided to start with 2016 and 2017.  

My reason for those years?

Well, that's around the time I changed my focus from collecting all things Pittsburgh to be mostly just CollectingCutch

So without further ado, here are a few of my serially numbered cards to 250 copies

Now I should warn you all that if you have allergic reactions to the color purple, it is best to change the general direction of your eye gazing.

Let's begin with the year 2017

Bowman Platinum purple holofoil

Bowman's Best purple refractor

Topps Gallery 1951 Bowman Heritage green

Gypsy Queen purple border

⚾ ⚾ ⚾ 

Now we will travel back to 2016

Bowman Chrome purple Refractor

Bowman purple

Bowman Platinum purple

Bowman's Best Blue

Topps Finest purple

Gypsy Queen purple

Triple Threads Emerald

I do plan to make more posts celebrating Cutch's 250th career Homerun and will be taking a deeper dive into his homers.

Don't forget to head over to topps.com and purchase yourself a copy of the Topps Now card. I secured myself a copy of the base and the red parallel autograph limited to 10 copies.

Miggy Miggy Miggy, Can't You See?

My supercollector friend JT (aka TripleCrown24) sent me a Twitter message that he came across an Andrew McCutchen parallel that I needed.  

I always appreciate when people come across a new Cutch card I need while they're shopping at their local card shops.  This hobby is awesome!!!

Anyway, JT sent me this 2018 Topps Gallery 1952 Heritage green parallel.

The green on the card is an odd choice for sure.  

It is numbered to 250 copies on the back.

JT has also sent me some other Cutch cards I needed for the PC like this 2013 Bowman Platinum Sapphire parallel.

JT as you may be able to tell from his social media handle, TripleCrown24, is a Miguel Cabrera supercollector.  His goal is to get to 3,000 unique cards of Miggy before Miggy gets to 3,000 hits.  He's closing in on 2,800 which is an amazing feat of itself. 

Here are a few of my Andrew McCutchen with Miguel Cabrera cards.

2014 Immaculate Collection

triple patch /10

The back discusses the importance of each of these players.

2014 Immaculate Collection

Triple relic /49

2015 Immaculate Collection

ten player patch /10

2017 Immaculate Collection

Quad Relic /25

2017 Immaculate Collection

Quad Relic /99

As you can see Panini likes to use Miggy, Cutch, and Votto for their Immaculate Collection releases.  

Thank you for the new Cutch card JT.  

If you get a chance, follow JT on Twitter @itstriplecrown and subscribe to his YouTube Channel (TripleCrown24).

Christmas memories not associated with Christmas

Maybe this is just me, but when I think of Christmas there are often memories that pop up that (in most people's perception) have absolutely nothing to do with Christmas.

When I was in grade school during Christmas break my family never went on vacation.  My aunt's, uncles, grandparents all lived within 25 minutes of my home so I didn't even have to travel far for gatherings.  Oddly enough what I remember most about Christmas break from my preteen years were Chris Webber, Autobot Blaster (the Transformers boombox), and Disney animated movies.

Let's start with Chris Webber.  It was Christmas 1993 and my parents got me a full box of unopened packs, the first time I remember getting a full box.  The box was 1993-94 Topps Stadium Club.  In that box, I pulled a rookie card 1st Day Issue of Chris Webber. It was easily a $100 card at the time according to Tuff Stuff or Beckett Basketball.  Unfortunately I traded away all my 90s basketball cards for a piece of furniture about a decade ago.  

Transformers was one of my favorite cartoons growing up.  As an adult, I think the themes of Thundercats or Voltron were better, but as a kid seeing robots beat up other robots and transform into cars, jets, and boimboxes was MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE.  I know I had more Transformers as a kid, but there are only a few that resonate with me.  One toy I distinctly remember receiving was Blaster.  Blaster was a boombox that transformed into a massive robot using some mass changing property and battled the Decepticons.  He was my favorite of the Autobots.  

Fun fact: as a kid I couldn't pronounce Autobot.  I called them Ottobots.

I mentioned watching a lot of Disney movies above.  Well, there were two that I used to be able to recite word for word, albeit with a little boy New Jersey accent.  Both those movies were rooted in England literature heroes; King Arthur and Robin Hood.  

The Sword in the Stone is my favorite Disney movie ever.  Not far behind is the anthropomorphic telling of Robin Hood.  

There was a dog that Robin Hood tried to help out by giving money to Friar Tuck.  

I always liked the way the dog tried to swindle some money from King John by staging money in his foot casket.

That dog's name was Otto and oddly enough, according to Disney Wiki, he also appears in the best animated Christmas movie ever, Mickey's Christmas Carol.

The poor dog always plays the role of....a poor dog.

If you were sitting on a case of 2010 Bowman Platinum, you would not be a poor dog.  You would have the chance to get an autograph of some very good baseball players.  An average box of these cards sells for $1,100 now and guarantees 2 prospect autos (including a chance for Mike Trout) along with 1 relic autograph in every box.  I have completed the rainbow of the Andrew McCutchen relic/auto sans the Superfractor. 

Strangely enough, I don't call an autograph, a Ottograph.

This is today's pair of red and green parallels.  They are from 2010 Bowman Platinum.

Christmas is often associated with the colors red and green.  The theory of these two colors representing Christmas are because of the reason we celebrate the holiday in the first place.  

It is because of Jesus Christ that we "deck the halls" with red and green.

The green represents Christ's eternal life just as the evergreen trees remain green all winter long.  The red represents his blood shed during the crucifixion

What words do you know you pronounce wrong?

Are there any TV shows or movies you associate with Christmas for any reason?

A Platinum Christmas

Over the years I continued to make mix CDs of Christmas songs.  It all started in the late 90s with my ex-girlfriend and the MTV TRL era.  At the time I was listening to Nu-Metal bands like Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Deftones, but also had a small crush on Britney Spears.

In the year 2000 a mix compilation called Platinum Christmas was released containing many new songs by popular musical artists at that time.  I ended up using a bunch of the tracks from that CD to make my mix for that year.

Britney Spears My Only Wish (This Year) was used as a promotional single for the compilation.  Other artists on the CD were Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, TLC, Christina Aguilera, Whitney Houston, Dave Mathews Band, and so many more. 

Given the choice I wouldn't put any of those songs on a current mix except for Christina Aguilera's Silent Night.

For the 12 days leading up to Christmas I have been showing off a pair of red & green parallels.  

Today I looking at a pair of 2012 Bowman Platinum cards.

Unlike the current iteration of Bowman Platinum, there were only a few different color parallels to chase and none of them were serially numbered.  

They did have different rarities though.

The gold were found 1:5 packs

The emerald (green pictured above) were found 1:10 packs.

The ruby (red pictured above) were the rarest and could be found 1:20 packs.

The back of the card talks about Andrew's quick rise to being a superstar.

10 for 25 to start a career?  

Sounds pretty impressive

As I have been doing with the other Green and Red pairings for this countdown, I,am showing them on a Christmas tree.

Christmas is often associated with the colors red and green.  The theory of these two colors representing Christmas are because of the reason we celebrate the holiday in the first place.  

It is because of Jesus Christ that we "deck the halls" with red and green.

The green represents Christ's eternal life just as the evergreen trees remain green all winter long.  The red represents his blood shed during the crucifixion.

What are some of your favorite artists Christmas Song pairings?

I find myself listening to the My Chemical Romance (yay for NJ) cover of All I Want For Christmas a few times a week this holiday season.

Falco Files: Getting Chilly, Check Out This Icy Foil

A few days ago I talked about a Bowman Platinum Sky Blue that was a fat pack exclusive from 2018.

I am going to continue that  just as a filler post before I count down the 12 days of Christmas.

Andrew McCutchen wasn't included in the 2020 set, but the player the Pirates received in the trade (Bryan Reynolds) was part of the 2020 Bowman Platinum set.

Above is the icy foil parallel from the set.  

The 2020 Bowman Platinum set is a Wal-Mart exclusive release.  The icy foils were found only in the hanger packs at 2 per pack.  

Join me tomorrow for my final post before I count down Christmas.

Happy I Got Fat

The title may be misleading.

2018 Bowman Platinum had a few different parallels that were exclusive to different types of packs.

The icy foil parallels are exclusive to value packs and the sky blue parallels were exclusive to Fat Packs.

That's where this blog post is heading regarding me getting fat.

I have had the foilfractor 1/1 for almost 2 years, but hadn't gotten the sky blue parallel.

Well now I can cross off the sky blue

And I love the shiny foilboard this card has

Well thanks to some spare change, I finally got one.

Yup for less money than a toll on the NJ Turnpike I snagged this fat pack exclusive.

This was one of those rare cards that looks shiny, yet gets absolutely zero attention from collectors.  

Twitter Hookups in Red & Gold

I got tagged in a few Twitter posts over the past month and it resulted in 4 new cards added to the collection all seen below, all either red or gold cards.

These cards were awesome to add to the collection with half of them being limited to less than 10 copies

Let's take a look at each one and I will thank them each

First up is a card I received PWE from our very own blogger Daniel of It's Like Having My Own Card Shop.  This is the red foil 2020 Topps Fire card.

This is the gold foil 2020 Topps Triple Threads numbered 7/9 and features Bat relics and road grey jerseys. Brandon sent me this for an incredible price. Check him out   @bfcoach22 on Twitter.

I will always have a soft spot for gold parallels of Cutch in a Pirates uniform. ALWAYS!  Getting this limited print run (50 copies produced) gold border 1983 design of Cutch from 2018 Topps for $3 via PWE seemed too good to pass up.  Huge thanks to John for the awesome deal and hookup.  Check him out @ _JjOoHhNnZz_ on Twitter.

Topps Chrome is pretty cool.

😎Topps Chrome red parallels of Cutch in a Phillies uniform are cooler. 😎

John aka JohnnyBones aka Dr.Booo hooked me up with this red parallel /5

His twitter is @JohnnXf

*********BONUS CONTENT*********

I received a PWE yesterday after I had already scanned the above 4 cards.

One of my favorite player super collectors is JT aka TripleCrown24.  He has a huge Miguel Cabrera supercollection (over 2500 unique Miggys).  His YouTube channel and good presence on Twitter @itstriplecrown make him a fun follow.

He sent me the above 2013 Bowman Platinum Sapphire parallel.

The back shows how ****ing good Cutch was in his prime.

So there's a few cards I got over the past few weeks all through Twitter.

Thank you to everyone involved.

It's not the heat, it's the humidity

Growing up I watched a lot of cartoons.  Cartoons eventually got me into comic books and I remember the first comic book I ever bought had Gambit on it.  Gambit was my favorite of the X-Men because of his cool powers and quick wit.

Oddly enough though, my favorite episode of the Fox Kids X-Men cartoon didn't feature Gambit at all.  It introduced viewers to a government sponsored group of mutants called X-Factor. 

X-Factor 100 was the second comic book I ever bought and it was because it had a shiny foil cover with Havoc holding a lifeless Madrox, the Multiple Man. 

Many other things would happen over the course of comics including the X-books, but I always remember the excitement I had when I grabbed those newsstand copies that featured some of my favorite comic characters. 

Cold Comfort remains my favorite go to episode of any cartoon (X-Men or other) and I just got done watching it on Disney+ a few moments ago.

Whenever it gets into the summer I always quote the first line of the episode "It's not the heat, it's the humidity" half a dozen a times.

In addition to introducing the viewers to X-Factor, the episode also introduced us to Bobby Drake aka Iceman.

For hoping for some cooler temperatures in the coming days, I am going to show some Ice parallels from Bowman Platinum.

2016, 2017
2018, 2019


Are there any cartoons you remember watching as a kid that you still enjoy watching as an adult?

The New Order!

You may be thinking that the title of this post may have ties to what is going on in the world.

It doesn't. 
I will not get into politics on this blog. 

Instead it is the first thing I thought of when I was grabbing some cards to scan in. 

Nothing but blue cards.

On a Monday.

You could say it's a Blue Monday.

Tell me, how does it feel...

To treat me like you do...

A few of these cards I have written about wanting for a long time.

I wrote about the 2018 Bowman Holiday Blue card here.  It was a key want card when I redid my Wanted List last December.

And I have recently written several posts showing off the 2019 Austin Barnes card which features a Cutch cameo here.  I now have the Father's Day Blue to go with the mini blue I showed off less than 2 weeks ago.

And I just mentioned a few days ago about needing to up my Charlie Morton game in 2020.

And on Saturday I showed my Gold Medal blue parallel I needed to complete the rainbow excluding 1/1s, pictured below.

I have been getting a lot of blue parallels in the mail between my COMC shipment from April and some recent eBay purchases.  I also have gotten 3 new pink cards to show for October.