Whoops! One more from Comatoad

On Sunday I ran a post thanking Duff (AKA Comatoad from over at Bleedin' Brown and Gold) for a package he sent. As I was moving some of my scanned images into their appropriate folders from that post, I realized I left arguably the highlight of the package out of the write up.

Despite being a current Padre, Andrew Cashner as a Cub must not have fit into his collection.

This card from 2010 Topps Finest hit a quadfecta for my collection. As I mentioned Andrew Cashner is shown back from his Cubbie days. Ding! There's an autograph. Ding! Two jersey swatches, each with a pinstripe. Ding!

And when you flip it over to appreciate the backside, you can see in the upper right corner that it is serial numbered out of 499. Ding!

Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a quadfecta!

The Cubs sent Cashner and a minor leaguer to the Padres in exchange for Anthony Rizzo and another minor leaguer prior to the 2012 season. Cashner seems to be following in Jeff Samardzija's footsteps this season with his low ERA (2.35) but losing record (2-5). The Padres offense has been shutout in four Cashner's nine starts this season.

I vaguely remember being excited about the three young C's coming up in 2010, Andrew Cashner, Tyler Colvin and Starlin Castro. Tyler Colvin has since moved on to the Colorado Rockies and is currently with the San Francisco Giants. Luckily for the Cubs, Castro has mostly returned to his 2010-11 self.

Thanks again, Duff!

Cubs Lot #4

This is another smaller lot but one that I plan on spreading out over about 150 posts.

What?!

Don't worry, I'll explain in a bit.

I actually won several auctions from one seller who seemed to be doing a purge of his unwanted Cubs cards. Lucky me! I probably wouldn't have normally picked these up for the $0.99 I paid individually, but with combined shipping and the lot (you'll see at the end) that I won, I definitely feel I got my money's worth.

Now, most of these guys you'd probably have to be a pretty big Cubs fan to have heard of since just two made the big leagues. But I'm still happy to add these guys to the collection.

Brandon Sing made it as high as Triple A Iowa but spent the past couple of years in independent leagues. This blue refractor is limited to just 150 copies.

Elvin Puello topped out with six games in Single A Peoria in 2005 before going back down to low A Boise in 2006, his last year.

Chris Walker played for the Cubs organization from 2002 to 2007, rising up to Triple A Iowa. He's been bouncing around the minors and independent baseball since, spending 2013 in the Mexican League.

Kevin Collins played High A ball for the Cubs and Cardinals but hasn't played since 2006.

Ronald Perry "Bear" Bay didn't make it above A ball with the Cubs but played at the Triple A level for the Indians, Angels and Padres as recently as 2012.

Buck Coats had Major League time with the Cubs in 2006, the Reds in 2007 and the Blue Jays in 2008.

Matt Creighton bounced around quite a bit while in the Cubs organization, playing at multiple levels each season. But he couldn't quite break into the bigs. These are a nice pair of autographs to add to the collection though.

Bobby Brownlie is a former first round draft  pick for the Cubs and although he played Triple A for the Cubs, Nationals and Braves, he too, never broke through to the Majors.

Grant Johnson is a former 2nd round draft pick out of Notre Dame that topped out at Double A Tennessee.

Finally for the single cards, we have to most successful of the group, Tyler Colvin. A first round pick in 2006, Colvin made his Cubs debut in 2009. He was traded to the Rockies with DJ LeMahieu for Ian Stewart and Casey Weathers following the 2011 season. He bounced bewteen the Rockies and their Triple A affiliate for the next two seasons and is currently with the Giants Triple A team in Fresno.

However, the large part of this purchase was this lot below:

Nearly two hundred Mark Prior cards, all different. Considering my collection consisted of a meager 50-ish Prior cards before, this is a big boost. There weren't any autographs of relics, but there were a couple of serial numbered card. As I mentioned at the top of this post, I intend to get many posts out of this lot. There are so many different inserts that I missed out on in the early to mid 2000s that I think it will be fun to visit each (or most) individually. I'm thinking "Mark Prior Mondays" might be a thing although I may just use them when I get stuck for a post.

All of the cards in this post set me back $20.47 shipped, which works out to less than a dime per card. All of the minor league cards were new to me and I'm guessing at least 150 of the Priors will be new once I get them all scanned and cataloged. There weren't too many base cards which is what I mostly had. Not too shabby.

I will have to double check when everything is sorted out, but this may bump Prior up to my second biggest player collection (unofficial) behind Ryne Sandberg.

Cubs Lot #2, Part 3: The Serial Numbereds

Last week's first Cubs lot was a pretty manageable 217 cards. So much so, I was able to fit the scans and breakdown into one post. My second lot was nearly six times that size at about 1300 cards. But don't worry I'm only going to split it into four posts. Relics. Autographs. Serial Numbered. Everything else and the breakdown.

So you’ve seen the Relics. And you’ve seen the Autographs. Now on to the serial numbered cards.

I’ve got twenty-something cards today although that’s only about half of the serial numbered cards that came in the package. The other half are the now almost standard gold bordered Topps flagship parallels numbered to two thousand and whatever year it was. In their heyday, like the relics and autographs, serial numbered cards were given to up and coming to prospects and stars at the time. Nowadays, even middle relievers or backups get serial numbered cards if they make it into Topps flagship. Since most of these cards were late 1990’s – early 2000’s, let’s take a stroll down memory lane and see how many of these guys we remember.

I did say the other half were gold parallels, but I did try to stick with just one per player (unless I couldn’t pick a favorite) so a few others may have been left out. The seller must have been a prospector because the numbered cards seemed to favor the rookies instead of the stars, although there were a few big names.

In no particular order, and again with minimal comments, here the scans.

The seller must have been one of those prospector collectors because the numbered cards tended to lean more towards the rookies than the stars, although several big names were included. There were three copies of this 2003 Fleer Avant Hee-Seop Choi, all limited to 699.

The only other duplicates in the lot were these Juan Cruz cards numbered out of 800.

You don't see too many numbered cards over 1000 anymore aside from the gold parallels but these prospects below fit the bill.

I've said it before, usually around the time a new flagship set comes out and we see how many different parallels there are, I'll sort of semi-seriously go after unnumbered parallels or any where there are more than 100 copies. Anything fewer than that and prices start going crazy, even for a team as bad as the Cubs. I'll take them in trade, but I won't necessarily seek them out. These next cards should have been picked up somewhere along the way and weren't. Until now.

And now a pair of low numbers that wouldn't have shown up in my collection if it weren't for this lot (or I stumbled across them in a dime box somewhere.

Finally, for today, I was out of the hobby when Moments & Milestones was released. This is my first Derrek Lee although I do have some of the Greg Maddux cards. But somebody thought this set was a good idea? Does anybody who was in the hobby then know if this went over well?

While I never have gone gaga over serial numbered cards, I'm pretty happy with these pickups. They weren't even mentioned in the auction listing for the lot that I recall. The focus was more on the overall quantity of cards and the autographs and relics. 

Tomorrow, I'll have the best of the rest (base and unnumbered inserts).