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

Yellow? Yellow? Is this thing on?

On yesterday's post where I shared a bunch of blue cards on a Monday, Johnny's Trading Spot made a comment about having a hankering for yellow cards coming on.

I wasn't sure if he meant yellow cards

Or the band Yellowcard

since I did show a music video in yesterday's post.

I can only assume (and you know what that can sometimes mean) that he actually meant yellow cards.

Yellow has been a part of Topps color palette since they began with 1951 Topps Red Backs card game pieces.

The card game pieces featured a yellow and white background behind a red diamond and a black and white photo of the player.  They would be used to play a game of baseball using the cards.  This 2015 version of Andrew McCutchen features a triple by the 2013 MVP.

Topps would continue to use yellow as a strong background color choice in multiple sets in the 50s and 60s.

This 1958 style is a 2019 Topps Archives card.  I have a few different border parallels of this card, but this particilar copy is the base, which I received for free at the September 2019 Philly Card Show where I met McCutchen.

Many more sets over the years would feature yellow, but my first experience with yellow in the card design was a 1986 Rick Rhoden.

The first set I collected was 1987 Topps, but my first packs I had were 1986 Topps.  The Pirates had a yellow name printed atop the card.

There were supposed to be parallels of this 2014 Archives card produced as several other players that shared this design also got a gold foil parallel.  A quick google search and you will see that NONE have ever been sold on eBay, COMC, or sportlots in 6 years.


The most BOLD yellow card I have is this 2018 Topps Heritage High Number

This card is based on the 1969 Collector Cards Jumbos.  The back is very plain and boring.

Speaking of backs
I have shown off the 2017 Topps Heritage Bright Yellow back parallel in the past.

These are very rare Short Printed cards, but not nearly as rare as the SSP Gray Back from 2017 Heritage

Topps has produced baseball cards for nearly seven decades.

Like many other printing processes from those days they have used printing presses that utilize printing plates to create the images.  There are four colors used to create each of the baseball cards we love and enjoy.  The colors are black, cyan, magenta, and yellow.

Here are 8 of my yellow plates.  I currently have 26 yellow printing plates of Andrew McCutchen.

Of all the plate colors, the yellow is my least favorite.  Often times the yellow plates create the faces to look like zombie versions of themselves.

I don't know about you, I'm feeling 22

Taylor Swift lyrics on a baseball card centric blog?

That may sound crazy, but Andrew McCutchen has actually had some interactions with Taylor Swift over the years.

In 2015 he reacted to a picture his wife, Maria Hansloven, posted on Twitter.

He also briefly used the song "Bad Blood" as his walk up song.

And of course his number that he has famously worn throughout his career is 22.  Taylor Swift had a song called 22 that climbed the billboard top songs.

So when I saw this 1/1 on card printing plate with a nice swatch of indicating it belongs to number 22 become available, I had to add it to my collection.

It's only 22 days until Opening Day!!!!!

Elf Week: The Yellow Ones Don't Stop

JediJeff suggested another great line.

While on his date with Jovie he says to Zooey Deschanel's character "Watch out! The yellow ones don't stop" referring to taxis as they approached an intersection.

Now I could simply show off this 2014 Bowman Yellow parallel

 Numbered to 99 copies

 to wrap this quote up.

But...
It's good to know where this line originated.

When Buddy first came to the city from the North Pole he was completely unaware of all modern traditions.

Like don't play in traffic or how to wavedown a taxi...

The slow motion of Buddy getting hit by the taxi legit made me cry from laughing so hard the first time I saw this scene.

It helped set the stage for "Watch out! The yellow ones don't stop"

The same can be said for this yellow printing plate.  This 1/1 yellow plate...

Didn't stop until this card was produced...

 Here is the yellow plate next to the yellow parallel

How did I do with that one Jeff?

They Call Me MelloYellow

Being a supercollector can be exhausting and frustrating.  It is almost like an addiction.  On one hand you have the mentality of "I need every card possible", the reality is you can't have them all.  This is especially true if you collect a player that is one of the top 100 players in the game and has played for teams with loyal fan bases like the Yankees, Giants, and Phillies. Did I mention that he was the face of the Pirates franchise for nearly a decade?

Andrew McCutchen may not have all the hype of guys like Acuna, Alonso, Tatis Jr, Guerrero Jr, or Trout but trust me when I say that he is collected and has a VERY LOYAL following of collectors.

I have made some trades with other Cutch collectors and have bought large collections from guys that sold their Cutch cards after the Pirates traded him to San Francisco last year.

That being said there are at least two other collectors of Cutch that have been buying up his stuff lately.  One I was told has unlimited funds and has purchased a card for $100 more than a copy of it that sold the day before.

Now the pictures used by the seller may have influenced one being sold too much and one being sold too little, but that is a huge discrepancy for a 24 hour difference of basically the same card.

I am not going to buy new releases of Cutch in a team's uniform I'm not even a fan of for double or triple prices just to cross something off a list.  The Red Tribute /10 auto is probably a $40-$50 card.  Definitely not $133. If these other collectors want to battle?

Have fun!

I am sitting on several hundred cards that I have never shown off here ranging from high end autographs and 1/1s to base cards.

With getting 3 of my top 5 cards on my want list in the past few months, I am going to decide to lay low for a bit to not get into bidding wars with other collectors while they are being in my eyes too aggressive buying recent cards of the former MVP.

I'm sure some of you may remember the chaos that occurred a few years ago when a pair of collectors were battling each other for Omar Vizquel and Andres Gallaraga cards.  Some 1/1s were going for thousands of dollars.  I am not prepared for that $#*+.

Call me chicken.
Call me yellow.

Call me what you will, but I'm out of this madness for awhile until it settles down.

Today's post features just 5 of the 1/1s I have never shown off before.  They are all yellow printing plates, a fitting color for my recent admission to get out of buying new cards.  Of the five shown off today, the only one that has been bought recently was the Tristar Elegance pictured above.  I won it in June for only $9.99, before one of the other Cutch collectors resurfaced.

3 out of 4 ain't bad

A few days ago I showed a trio of 1/1 printing plates from the 2012 Archives Cloth Sticker insert.  While sorting through my 99 printing plates I realized I had a few other partial rainbows that I have never shown off before. 

I only have one true complete printing plate rainbow where I have all 4 plates used to create the card.  I also 4 sets where I have 3 of the plates. 

I showed the cloth sticker trio plates here.

And waaaaaay back when I showed another trio of Allen & Ginter plates when I was missing Mandy Moore "like candy" as part of my Save Second Base event.

Here are the other two sets I am trying to complete.
2016 Bowman Chrome missing black plate
2015 Topps League Leaders missing black plate

Gonna have to quote Ice Cube for this one

White Whales
Bigfoot
Unicorns

Whatever you call those legendary items that you have only read about and have only seen blurry glimpses of, I am here to tell you they most likely do exist.

I know because I ****ing caught one and am so jacked up about it!

Last year in December I mentioned I had gotten the Cyan Printing Plate from 2015 Bowman Best.  You can see the post here.

The previous year I showed the black printing plate. You can read about it here.

The Magenta has been shown off a few times. Here is 80 of my printing plates (May 2017 edition). Here is 200 of my favorite Cutch hits. (September 2017 edition).  I also recently showed it (along with Julie Benson) during my Save The Boobies event in October here.

Now if you're keeping track, that is the black, cyan, and magenta plates of the same card.

Well....I finally got the yellow to complete my first true rainbow of all four 1/1 printing plates for the same card.

This card didn't come without it's challenges in acquiring it though.  Once it popped up on eBay I immediately hit the buy it now option leaving NO chance for anyone else to get it.

However....

My 1/1 printing plate was sent to the wrong person.

In return I received a redemption card for a certain Kansas City Chiefs player that would have gotten me A LOT more money had I kept that card.

The seller made arrangements with us to ship the cards back and refund us the cost of shipping back to him and the original shipping fees.

So for only $20 I completed my printing plate rainbow.  There are still a few more series that I have 3 out of 4 printing plates for, but Damn does it feel good to pop this cherry.

In addition to having those 4 1/1 printing plates, I also have this 1/1 buyback autograph of the same card.

I plan on getting a custom case to house all four printing plates.  Once I do you can be sure I will show it off here.

In Need Of A Clever Title...

I literally couldn't come up with anything to write about. 

Here's a 1/1 yellow printing plate from 2018 Topps Update.

Toodles...