A long overdue Thank You

Because of moving and storage I didn't post much in 2021.  Along the way there were a few gifts that got overlooked.

Ray from All Cardinals All the Time sent me a 3 card random act of kindness over the summer and they were all 2021 Topps Chrome needs for the collection.

The prism refractors are absolutely beautiful. 

This is the base card from 2021 Topps Chrome.

My favorite though is the 2021 Topps Chrome sepia refractor.  The old time looking photo with new technology really make the etching on the card stand out.  It is just a great looking baseball card.

Another act of kindness came via Fuji who sent my girlfriend and I a case of Cactus Cooler, a drink that she loves that we can't find in NJ. 

I forgot to take a picture of it so the above image is a stock photo from Google.

Last, but certainly not least is a card that blew me away.  One of my followers on Twitter sent me this amazing one of a kind 1/1 from 2021 Topps Sterling

If you use Twitter please give Chris a follow @ItsRuffles318

Thanks to everyone who has followed the blog throughout the year despite not daily content.

Some Glitter I don't hate

Each year during the month of October, I show off only pink (and shades of pink like magenta, peach, etc) to help raise awareness of Breast Cancer, a leading cause of death for females in the United States.  

Due to my own financial situation this year I will not be able to make a donation for each (meaningful, non spam) comment left by those that follow the blog.  Once things settle down on the home front though I will be looking to make a donation in 2022 based on the comments left during this year's event.  Hopefully together we can help at least one woman get a much needed mammogram.  Early detection is key!!!

If you want to make your own private donation please visit the National Breast Cancer Foundation.  There is a donate button on the main page and it only takes a minute of your time.  Every little bit helps.

I have focused primarily on cards that only feature Andrew McCutchen on the card, but in recent years have also featured cards with a cameo appearance (either being seen on the card or as a name cameo on the back of the card).  In 2019, I created Falco Files which discussed players that replaced (Shane Falco Replacements movie reference) on an active roster, number worn, or trade.  I will also be showing some Cutch's Crew cards that show pink cards of players that have played with Cutch on multiple teams. I will continue to utilize these styles of posts as we celebrate the 5th Collecting Cutch Save Second Base event (I am no longer counting my first run on the Pirates Treasure Room I did back in 2014).

I am always looking for new ways to incorporate new celebrities into the event so today I am presenting

Mariah Carey

She rose to the billboards in the 90s and has become an international star thanks to her multiple platinum albums.

She was named the artist of the 90s 

The New York native is has also been a judge for American Idol

One of her most famous songs All I want for Christmas has transformed her into the moniker of "Queen of Christmas"

She starred in the film Glitter which also topped the Billboards for it's soundtrack.

Begining in 2021 Topps began producing a Magenta Speckled parallel in it's Topps Chrome release that looked like it was covered in glitter.

The cards are all numbered to 350 copies.  

I hate glitter!!!!  I wrote about my disgust with glitter 4 years ago here.

Do you have any strange hated items?

What's on your Christmas list?

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?

Wave(ing) Goodbye To 2020

2020 is close to an end and I can't wait to wrap this year up.

From a personal level, the year sucked.

From a collecting perspective, the prices elevated to insane levels...which sucked.

From a new product release by Topps, wait...Topps produced some cool new products?

Ok so Stadium Club Chrome isn't exactly new.  It first appeared in the early 2000s, but then went on hiatus for nearly a few decades before being resurrected in 2018 Stadium Club as part of their parallels.

In 2020, Topps released a product using great photography of Stadium Club with the well known chrome technology and it was amazing!!!

Above is the wave parallel from 2020 Topps Stadium Club.  

It features a different picture than the traditional image used in Stadium Club.  The foil and etching on this product might be the nicest thing Topps produced all year and is very under the radar if you ask me.

The back features the same writeup as the standard Topps Stadium Club cards released earlier in the year.  Fun fact: the Phillies were 5 games above .500 when Cutch was batting leadoff before his season ending injury in 2019.  The team played 5 games below .500 without him, thus enduring their stretch of not having a winning season since 2011 (longest in majors).

"Silver" Savings

With the Black Friday madness (or lack there of) behind us, I can get back to reporting about my collection additions big and small.

I know with a collection of over 3,000 unique cards of a single player the obvious reaction is likely one of these scenarios "I didn't know he had that many cards" or "You must have every card made".  

Both above statements are very false assumptions.  Andrew McCutchen has 6,254 unique cards according to TCDB.  If I ever actually spend the time to complete my checklists on their website I would have only roughly half of the produced cards of my main player collection.  To put into perspective, Mike Trout has over 14K cards and Fernando Tatis Jr has over 4K cards already.  

I am very content with my player selection and with each new card I add to my collection that adds roughly a hundredth (yes 0.01%) to the percentage owned.  

Simple math lesson, I need to add 62 new unique cards to the collection to make a 1% increase to the number of cards I own vs the cards produced.  

There are cards though that become available that I get really excited to add to the collection.

This is one of them.

Not only did I purchase it with a winning bid of only 49 cents, it also helps cross off a format of cards that I always covet when making my McCutchen purchases.

Shiny refractor ✔

Dreadlock era Cutch ✔

Pirates uniform ✔

Cards identifying his MVP season ✔

In the football and basketball world, Prizm silvers are the kings of collecting.  They are the equivalent to Topps Chrome Refractors, but with some amazing etching on the cards as well as some shine that really pops.  

Here they are side by side on the scanner, which never captures the refractor quality very well.

And here they are with a phone flash.

I can't take pictures of Refractors very well and my scanner does them ZERO justice.

What tips do you have for showing off the shine of those Refractor and Prizm cards?

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.

Yello, yello...is this thing on?

It's a short post today to remind everyone about my contest as we prepare for the 4th annual Save Second Base event on Collecting Cutch.  I have retconned the 1st annual Save Second Base on my original blog, Pirates Treasure Room, and treating like it never happened.  

As a comic fan, super heroes have their origin stories periodically and new #1 issues are published to set new standards.  

With over 3K cards in my Cutch portfolio, are there any subject matters you want to see me cover and try to connect it to a Cutch card?

I am up for the challenge.

After all, YOLO (You Only Live Once) or in the case of this card I purchased off COMC, yellow.

as in yellow printing plate

of Cutch's 2018 Topps Chrome card.  

Cutch has appeared in a few surprisingly fewer releases this year than I would have expected.  

He didn't appear in Gypsy Queen, Topps Chrome, Topps Archives, and most recently Allen & Ginter.  

He does have a jersey relic in Ginter, but it isnt one of the framed mini relics that Ginter fans really like.  

I suspect that next year will be even worse as Topps seems to be forgetting more and more about Andrew McCutchen because he's not new and shiny like so many other players they push in their products.

Over Cutch's career his baseball-reference Similarity scores compare most to Reggie Smith, Andre Dawson, and Ellis Burks.  I am sure that any baseball fan that has watched any of those three players play back in the day will tell you that they were all fan favorites and stars in their primes.  

It is becoming hard to accept that Cutch's career is coming to an end, but I still get extremely excited when I continue to add cards like the above yellow printing plate to the collection.  

Give me some writing ideas!

Go join my contest!  It ends on Monday

An Ugly Superfractor

Topps took a great hobby item, the Superfractor, and began combining it with the most impressive visual set in 2018 when Topps Stadium Club Chrome was introduced.

How could 2 iconic things go bad?

Well, when you get a card with a mostly dark background and try to turn it into a Superfractor, it isn't great as evidenced below.

The reflective light and circles just dont pop on this card the way my other Superfractors do.  This may be my worse looking superfractor in the collection.

I also have the 2018 Stadium Club Chrome Superfractor which I showed off here.

A 1/1 Challenge Or Something Else?

In case you don't follow me on Twitter (@CollectingCutch) I have been posting only 1 of 1 cards for the past 10 days.

I was wondering if I could post a 1/1 on here each day that I've never shown off here until Opening Day.

My question is would that be too much or should I spread them out over the course of the season.

With about 4 weeks until Opening Day, I think I could do it....

by showing off cards like this 2017 Gold Label Class 3 Gold Parallel 1/1

...OR...

Something that may be more challenging would be to count down the days until Opening Day by showing the card's actual card number in the set

Like this 2011 Topps Opening Day #27

...OR...



I could do something similar to my Serial History posts and just focus on the Serial Prefix number

Like this 2011 Topps Chrome #8 card serially numbered 27/50

 It is the Gold Parallel 27/50.

So in the comments below, please tell me how you think I should count down the days in March until Opening Day

A Huge Addition For The PC

I have been showing off a lot of Allen & Ginter over the past few weeks, but my favorite base set year after year is Topps Heritage. Topps Heritage High Number should be coming out soon and hopefully Andrew McCutchen is part of the set along with a few inserts to chase.

Heritage has kept a simple formula since it's original inception; create a checklist of everyday players for each team and keep the parallels to a minimum.  Over the past few years we have seen Topps get away from this slightly by adding parallels like flip stock, action variants, nickname variants, and throwback uniform variants.  Something that hasn't changed over the years though is the chrome stock parallels.  The original release in 2001 had a chrome version numbered to 1952 (the design that 2001 Heritage was based on).  It also had a refractor version that was numbered to 552 copies (giving another homage to the 1952 design). There were black parallels numbered to 52 copies (yet another homage to the 52 design), gold Refractors (5 copies), and Superfractor (1 copy).

This formula stayed in place each consecutive year with the chromes, refractors, and black refractors getting one extra card produced each year to give homage to the design it was based on. In 2013 the base chrome cards began being numbered to only 999 copies instead of 1964 which would have been the numbering that would have been assigned under the old system.  Refractors and Blacks continued the theme of /5(YR) and /(YR) respectively.

I often get commented on "I can't believe you didn't have card X in your collection" or "I'm surprised there is a Cutch card you don't have" but with over 5K Andrew McCutchen cards on the market (and that doesn't even include the 5x7 or 16x20 Topps Shop exclusives) there are still plenty cards I need for the collection.

That doesn't mean there aren't cards that I value more for wanting in my collection than others though.  I recently secured not 1 NOT 2, but 3 cards I needed and have had on the want list for a long time.

Let's begin with 2010 Topps Heritage Black Chrome Refractor

The 2010 Heritage design is based on the original 1961 Topps design, one of my favorite designs from the 60s.

This card is incredible.  I was reluctant to submit such a high offer on it because the seller didn't have much feedback, but considering this is the first one that has popped up in 5 years, I knew I needed to make an honest attempt at getting it.

It went super smooth and within 2 days of paying for the auction I had it in hand.

This 2010 black refractor is numbered to only 61 copies (numbering is based on the 1961 design).

I will show off the two other cards I have wanted for long periods of time over the next few weeks.  One is coming in as part of a monster trade. The other is coming from PWCC.

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)

X(Fractor) gon give it to ya.

The number of rap songs I like can probably be counted on one hand.  That's not a knock to anyone who listens to wrap.  It's just not my thing.

If I had to pick a favorite rap song it would be one of two songs.
Coolio-Gangsta's Paradise
DMX - X Gon' Give it to ya

I forgot how much I liked the latter until I was rewatching Deadpool again the other night and remembered that song was on the soundtrack.

Not to be outdone, this XFractor gon give to me massive savings.

I snagged it for half the going rate price.