Next Year, I'm Swinging For The Fences

I missed a month long opportunity to highlight some of my Negro League throwback cards to celebrate Black History Month.  

I promise I will swing for the fences next year.  In the meantime enjoy the whimsical short print from 2012 Topps featuring Cutch and the Pirate Parrot playing wiffleball in the old Homestead Grays uniforms made famous by guys like Josh Gibson, Judy Johnson, Cool Papa Bell, Smoky Joe Williams, and Buck Leonard.

You can revisit some posts I paid tribute to those guys by clicking on their name in the links above.

Winning WARriors

The SaveSecondBase event takes a lot of research and planning.  In addition I normally work extra overtime the first few weeks of November (63 hours worked last week!!!).  It's because of these factors that I tend to not ship out prizes until things slow down a bit. I completely forgot to do the randomizer last Friday for the Lou Brock card so I did it today.  

If you remember, I asked everyone to name their favorite War movie to try and win the pink card with the late great Lou Brock.  I was surprised to find out that Lou Brock's WAR stat is basically the same as Andrew McCutchen's current level.

Before I get to show off the winner of the Lou Brock card, I want to show unique card 3,020 in the Cutch supercollection.

Topps has been putting these camo parallels in their sets since 2014.  Some Look better than others, but I have to say that the 2019 camo looks amazing in hand.  No pun intended, but many other years have the camo get hidden so they don't pop so much.  In 2019, the camo is featured all over the card, not just the right and bottom true borders of the card.

The cards were numbered to only 25 copies in 2019, making these one of the rarer parallels to chase from flagship.

All contest winnings will ship this Wednesday so please email me bstryker81 AT gmail.com with your address so I can get the cards to you.

Now to the Lou Brock autograph.

There were 21 valid contestants.

Cardinalsfan16 was on top after the first random

Diamond King was atop after the 2nd

Peter was on top after random 3

Night Owl flew to the top for the 4th random

Swinging in to the top spot on random 5 was Spyda-Man

But in the final random, number six, Jeff Laws rose to the top.

Jeff, please email me your address so I can get this to you.

Thank you to everyone who participated last month.

Card 3,001 is in hand

Yesterday I showed off a card that put me into pretty elite company.  I joined the 3,000 club.  I now own 3,000 unique cards of Andrew McCutchen.  I am starting to slow down a bit since he left the Buccos in 2018, but am still picking up plenty of Phillies, Yankees, Giants cards when they present themselves to me for a fair price or something so unique I have to have it.  

Card 3,001 came to me via a PWE for a cheap price off eBay.  It's the Meijer exclusive purple parallel of 2020 Topps Series 2.

Nothing too fancy, but it was a nice card to grab as I really like the purple parallels as they usually look bolder than many other parallels Topps Flagship uses.

And Then There Was 1

I made It clear I wasn't interested in overpaying for the Andrew McCutchen SP photo variant found in 2020 Series 2 Topps Flagship.  

The weekend around release the card was selling for as much as $350 and averaged around $250 for about 72 hours.  Talk about insane prices for a card that is only a SP with an insert ratio of 1:7 packs.

I waited.

And spent my money on other things.

And I waited.

And spent more money on other things.

Then I continued to wait...

Until I was able to secure both the SP and SSP photo variants for only $75 combined.

BOOOOOOM!!!!!

I now own the most swaggy card ever made of Andrew McCutchen.

It is just shy of becoming my 3,000th unique card too as these cards bring my total to....

2,998

AND

2,999

Yup!!!

Thanks to this Twitter purchase I am 1 card away from the milestone 3,000 unique Andrew McCutchen cards

Day 4 Mailings of SP Cutch Frenzy

I have been showing a lot of mail days relating to my Cutch SP Frenzy Challenge.

There are a few more PWEs that need to trickle in and obviously the COMC cards I purchased won't be here for many months at the rate things are going.

So let's get started with a classic card on CollectingCutch

The 2005 Topps Update draft pick card of Cutch.  I believe that 2005 Topps Update was the last Topps set to feature draft picks in their flagship release and we are all likely aware of what happened the following year with the Alex Gordon "Rookie Card".  I am always on the hunt for more 2005 Topps Update cards looking for them in the $3-$4 range.  The golds are numbered to only 2005 copies and I like to get them for under $20.

$17.98

I took advantage of the frenzy to grab another Big League card I needed.
This came via a PWE so I was able to save on shipping.

$1.99

A 1/1 for under $12?
Yup, I'm gonna do that all day.

Kyle Lohse gave up 3 homers to Andrew McCutchen in his career.  More on this in a future post.

$11.90


I thought I overpaid for this when it first hit eBay, but there were a few things going for it that I really liked.

It had a black border
It's got that great 1985 design
It has a pinstripe on the relic that is centered fairly well
It is numbered to only 199 copies.

As it turns out the average of this card is in the $20 range still with only a few having been sold or currently listed for sale.
$23.98


2020 Topps Series 2 has a great throwback image for Cutch's main flagship card and I went crazy grabbing as many parallels as possible during the buying frenzy for the SP. 

Unfortunately, my scanner doesn't pick up the foilboard very well.

$2.97

This brings the total for all cards purchased during the SP Frenzy in today's mail day to $58.82.  The collection added a limited print run gold prerookiecard, a 1/1, a black border pinstripe relic, and a few parallels.  This collection of cards cost only about 20% what the top rates were for the Cutch SP during the height of the frenzy.

Sales are starting to "settle down" on the 2020 Series 2 Cutch SP and the prices are typically ending up under triple digits.  I will continue to wait it out until they get under $40.

Cutch SP Challenge Day 2

I got some more packages in the mail Friday and they all relate to the 2020 SP Frenzy Challenge.

I said I wouldn't go after the SP and pay $275 for one card that on average could be available 1 in every 7 packs.

Nope.

Not gonna do it!

I did grab a foilboard parallel from 2020 Big League release though.

It cost me $3.25

Did you know that only 100 of these Foilboard cards exist? Only 3 have sold.

Did you know that there is likely 2,000+ of the McCutchen SP out there?  87 have already sold on eBay

Which one should have the ridiculous premium attached to it?

I also grabbed the 2020 Topps Finest Bryan Reynolds "The Man" insert.  This insert card has a nice layer of pink which I think could come in handy for October.

It has an Andrew McCutchen cameo on the back.

And...it only cost $2.65 shipped.

I also snagged another 2020 parallel I needed.

This is the gold parallel numbered to 2,020 copies (similar print run as the SP everyone is chasing)

This card cost me only $1.99

Yesterday's mail day cost only $7.89.  I feel like I got better value out of these cards than the father's day and vintage stock from Wednesday.

That brings the total to $44.89 for these 5 cards.  Not great, but the two best cards will really bring the prices down for the wntire project.

The First Wave Arrived Today

Over the weekend sales of the McCutchen SP went from $60 to almost $400 in less than 24 hours.  It was absolutely insane to see the hype and frenzy that surrounded that card all due to ESPN, Cutch, and Dick Allen's tweets.

I never put much into social media influencers and thought it was all a scam, but damn if I didn't see something like it first hand.

The average price of the cards at their highest selling point was almost $275.

Similar pricing spikes occurred around Memorial Day for the Project 2020 cards.

I refused to pay over $200 and certainly not  $275 for a Short Print photo variant

For
A
Card
That
Comes
1:7 Packs

Mind blown!!!!

Rather than use that money to be caught up in the here and now, I used it to only buy Cutch cards I needed from COMC, eBay, sportlots, and artist sites.

Over the course of the next week (I'm guessing) I will show off the cards and items I bought during that 24 hour frenzy.

Some of them I have been after for a LOOOOOONG TIME.  I will provide screenshots of the receipts too.

One of the cards is a unicorn I've been chasing for 7 years!

Now let me preface and say that I overpaid for some of these cards.  This isn't how I normally collect, but I wanted the challenge to be genuine and only purchase cards over the weekend of the frenzy.

The first batch came today and it's a pair of 2020 Topps Series 2 parallels.

On the left is the Father's Day variant numbered to 50 copies.  I really like the baby blue color on this card in particular because it matches up nicely with the Powder Blue uniform of the Phillies.

Speaking of powder blue uniforms, I also got the vintage stock and logo parallel.

This parallel is numbered to only 99 copies.

First 2 cards
$37.00

Too much swag!

A few people have already tagged me on Twitter regarding the 2020 Topps Series 2 photo variant Short Print of Andrew McCutchen.  A few coworkers who are also into cards text messaged me about the card too.

If you haven't already seen it I advise you to put on some shades because this card will blind you with it's swag.

The card community has gone absolutely nuts over this card and prices have varied from $12 to $100.

Many current auctions are in the $70+ range with days left.

The announcement that the season is moving forward and an extremely unique photo variant on a brand new release are definitely driving the price on this card.

I'm going to sit this one out for now though.  I'll let the prices drop back to the $10-$20 range which is where this card's value should be.


ESPN thinks it's a pretty cool card and I agree, but I can't pay those wild prices.

A New 1/1 Sketch

Wednesday is the day new comic books get released so I will try to save Wednesdays for art related cards whether it is a sketch card of Cutch or some nonsports comic release style card.

To kick things off, here is my latest sketch card of Cutch

2019 Series 2 sketch card by Juan Rosales

I also have a Series 1 sketch by Juan that pictures him in a Yankees uniform.

You can see the original post of That Yankees sketch here.

CSA Show Pickups

I wasn't really in the mood to sit through and look at all the boxes. I just wasn't feeling very interested in cardboard Sunday.

When looking at the number of unorganized boxes to try and sift through I lost interest in finding gems that could have been hidden.  I think it's because my sugar levels were goofed up. I should have grabbed a Snickers.

I did manage to find two new Cutch cards for the collection though.

2016 Topps Museum Primary Pieces.

The image used by Topps in the right corner is from Cutch's 1,000 career hit.

I also got a 2019 Topps Series 2 Gold /2019.

All in all I didn't get much, but did have fun with my brother and niece.

The Trevor Williams auto ran me $2. This is the first time I attended the show and spent less money than the cost of a blaster.  There's one both that is loaded with oddball Clemente stuff and I managed to pass up everything there.