Legends of the Burgh

I have shown this card off on Chasing 3,000 but since that blog gets only a quarter of the views that this one does I thought it was time to show it off here too.

This card is awesome.  It features two Hall of Famers and Pirates for life in Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell.

It also features the pair of outfielders who,were most responsible for bringing a brief winning culture back to the Steel City in Starling Marte and Andrew McCutchen.

The card is numbered to only 10 copies and pairs up nicely with these other 2015 Topps Heritage Clubhouse Collection cards in my collection.

Clemente, Cutch, Stargell /25

Stargell, Cutch, Marte, Polanco /10

 Clemente, Cutch /66

Stargell, Cutch /66

A Plethora of Pops

With the Hall of Fame voting revealed tomorrow I thought I should finally show off this pair of McCutchen cards with one of the greatest Pirates of All-Time and Hall of Famer, Willie "Pops" Stargell.

Stargell was a first ballot Hall of Famer getting 82% of the vote in 1988.  He finished his career with 57.5 WAR according to baseball reference.

There are 13 players on this year's ballot with career WAR greater than 57.5 WAR.
In terms of position players with outfield or 1st base experiience the following players have more WAR than Pops: Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield, Todd Helton, Andruw Jones, Manny Ramirez, Sammy Sosa, and Bobby Abreau.

This quad patch relic features the runPMC crew (Polanco, Marte, Cutch) with the Pirates legend.  Some people were really impressed by it a few days ago, but I never gave it the proper spotlight it deserved.

I grabbed it using an eBay bucks promo late in 2018.

I have had it as a saved draft for literally a year to the date.

I tend to scan cards and use the keywords tags to help locate cards to assist when I am ready to finally share the cards online.

Here is another low numbered Heritage relic featuring Pops, Marte, and Cutch.

I have a couple different variants of this 2015 Clubhouse Collection design with Cutch.  Others include
Cutch with Clemente
Cutch with Stargell
Cutch with Stargell and Clemente
Cutch with Stargell, Polanco, and Marte

I showed a lot of these off in the past.

And here is a card that regretably doesnt feature Cutch with Stargell and Clemente.

2 Pirates Hall of Fame Legends with a pair of recent Pirates Joshes.

I'm curious if there will be any Pirates Clubhouse Collection cards this year.  The Heritage set is based on 1971 Topps.  The Pirates were World Series Champions that year on an unbelievable performance by Roberto Clemente.

I was surprised that Topps didn't make a McCutchen Giants card in 2018 with McCovey, Mays, or Marichal last year.

Maybe there will be some Cutch Heritage relics in Phillies uniforms this year to chase.

New Goal: Chasing 3,000

Hello friends,
Thank you for following this blog and for on average leaving a few comments on every post.  I greatly appreciate the friendships that I have made since becoming more of a PC player collector then collecting everything Pittsburgh.  Save those cards for Matt at BobWalkThePlank.

As you all have learned last week, I have eclipsed my 2,000th unique card of Cutch.  Looking back at the past 8 years of Collecting Cutch I have learned a lot of things about this hobby.  It's best to collect what you want to collect and not go into purchasing things for investment purposes.  Unless you are really good at predicting the future and are in this "hobby" to make money you will most likely fail.  There was a 3 year stretch where McCutchen cards were on fire!  Things were selling for crazy prices.  They have since cooled down because Andrew, the player, hasn't been performing up to the same expectations we as fans put on him after his torrid 2012-2015 seasons when he was a top 5 MVP candidate for 4 years straight, winning the award in 2013.

Andrew, despite his hot and cold stretches is still my favorite player to watch play.  Not just today, but of all time.

I grew up loving baseball.  I had an uncle who was close friends with Ken Caminiti so I got to see up close the Astros teams of early 90s several times a year when they came to Philadelphia (it was the closest stadium to where we lived).  It was the early 90s Pirates, Twins, and Blue Jays teams that I rooted for though.  I thought Barry Bonds was an absolute beast (he was btw).  I would go on to hate the Braves mostly because of my mother rooting for them in 1991.  When the Bucs were eliminated I rooted against the Braves so was cheering on the Twins in the 1991 World Series and the Blue Jays in 1992.  All of those teams, I am still a closet fan of.

The 1994 strike happened and I hated baseball.

I got really into music and began forming my own punk and metal bands.  To curb my nerdy side I got into comic books especially Image Comics.

I still liked to play baseball though with my friends, but I had no idea what was going on with the sport.  Sports as a whole vacated my life.

Barry Bonds insane Home Run season brought me back...for one summer.  I watched the month of September and October.  Then I stopped caring again.

In 2005, I was given free tickets to a Pirates vs. Phillies game by my employer.  This was my first time going to the new ballpark and it was a lot different then the Vet which the Phillies played in for many decades.  Watching the game in person from the outfield bleachers with my dad, brother, and ex girlfriend I fell in love with the sport again.  The sound of the bat, the smell of hotdogs, popcorn, beer, and fresh grass.  The way the sun falls on the field.  It was like heaven on Earth....but it was in Philadelphia.  I hate Philly.  The Pirates lost the game 4-3.

I decided then that I wanted to get back into baseball.  I did some research on who was good and who was bad.  What were the guys I used to root for up to?  Paul Molitor and Kirby Puckett were already enshrined in Cooperstown along with Dave Winfield representing my Twins and Blue Jays love.  Andy Van Slyke was retired?  Barry Bonds was still in San Francisco, but his career was on the twilight.  It was approaching an end.

Pirates are cool!  I thought.  Plus Jerome Bettis made me a Steelers fan.  Let's just go with an all Pittsburgh theme.  My aunt and cousins are just outside Pittsburgh.  Yup.  I'm going to root for the Pirates again.

I researched how bad the team was and how they basically had sucked the entire time I left them back in 1994.  Ok, who is their top prospects?  Well they just drafted this kid Andrew McCutchen out of high school.

Cool.  I'm going to follow his entire career I thought.

And thus it began.  I rooted for the Pirates and my favorite player became Andrew McCutchen.

I got to see the Pirates AA team play against my local minor league team, the Trenton Thunder around the 4th of July and remember him making an awesome catch and almost hitting a HomeRun.  He also beat out an infield single.  The dude could fly.

Now in terms of card collecting, I really didn't get back into that until late 2009 early 2010.  By 2011 I had just a few dozen autograph relics of Cutch.

Six years after starting the Treasure Room blog, I moved on to have quite possibly the biggest and best Andrew McCutchen card collection in the world.  I often battle with a few others on the high end 1/1s and even some of the mid /50 or less cards, but I know my collection kicks ass and have been buying other former collectors out of their collections.

The next K milestone in terms of Collecting Cutch is 3,000.  I am going to slow down a little with all the plain jersey swatch relics, but will still chase down the rarest of cards.  Printing plates will now have a set budget by year that I am willing to spend.  Autographs will always be sought out and I will always pay a premium for on card certified autos.

But as I get nearer to this 3,000 journey, I am reminded of the number 3,000 and what it means to Pirates fans.  It's because of this that I am going to start another.

Join me at Chasing 3,000 my new blog where I will be chasing down my journey to acquire 3,000 Roberto Clemente cards.  I am interested in everything Clemente.

It should be a fun journey.  I suspect it will be decades in the making.  I currently have a few hundred Clemente cards so there is lots more to grab.

As always thank you for reading my cardboard adventures.
Please add my new blog to your blogroll.  I will continue to post on both blogs as daily as possible.

Thank you for your friendship and continued support

Brian aka CollectingCutch

Santa's coming, I know him!!!! (Daniel drops a Christmas gift on me)

Daniel from It's Like Having my Own Card Shop sent me a very unexpected Christmas present.

Included was a very nice hand drawn card that meant more to me than the gift itself.

In addition to the card he sent me this Gold Clubhouse Collection Relic from 2017 Heritage.

I didn't have this card so I am really happy to add it to the collection.

It didn't stop there.

He also sent me this 2014 Chips that I didn't have.

Thank you so much Daniel.

Merry Christmas to you and your family my friend.

A Pair Of Clubhouse Collections

I've been feeling very under the weather lately so I haven't been in the mood to scan any cards in.  Add to the fact that I have been working 12 hour days with an hour commute each way has really made me not have much new things to talk about.

Here's a draft I made a few months ago and never showed off.

Heritage High Number

The Gold is numbered to 99 on the back of the card.  Both swatches feature plain black jersey relics.

Blah