Now that my son is older he requires so much attention and energy. The two or so hours between picking him up from daycare and bed is a non-stop whirlwind of play time, dinner, bath, and getting ready for bed. By the time he's asleep around 7 PM, I'm pooped. Then I have to worry about the stress of keeping the house together so I any sort of downtime feels like a very guilty pleasure. Plus, baby #2 is on the way is T-minus two months, which means life is going to be even busier. Unbelievable! I'm sure my hectic life is no different than other parents out there but it doesn't make it any less real.
Anyway, let's get on to the cards---
Over the Thanksgiving holiday I requested shipment of my 100 card COMC order. It's an order that had been building since at least the spring. The plan is to show off 10 cards at a time from that order over the next 10 posts [spoiler alert: this won't actually happen]. I haven't looked at the full order so it will be fun for me as a go through each card.
The "surprise" of remembering what I bought is one of the best parts of ordering from COMC.
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| 2017 Panini Encased |
Encased is a high end set, featuring 5 cards per box and only 1 base/parallel card per box. With ridiculous collation like that I'd be crazy to put together the 100 card base set, right? Well, yeah, you're right. But I did it anyway in a Frankenset fashion. Featuring both the basketball and football releases, I put together a full 100 card set to include at least 1 card from each team and 1 parallel. It was a significant undertaking and a lot of fun. I didn't waste any money on actually buying a box so everything was purchased on the secondary market. One day I'll show off the Frankenset. For now, here is a base card.
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| 2014 Topps Chrome - Refractor |
James Paxton is a great pitcher so it was sad to see him get traded. He would have been the Mariners #1 starter for the 2019 season. He did have trouble with staying healthy (albeit last year getting whacked in the forearm was not his fault), which did give me concern [in what should be no surprise, he injured himself again this season. Poor guy]. I'll root for him, even if it's on the Yankees.
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| 2017 Upper Deck Goodwin Champions - World Traveler Map Relics |
I really like this card and think the design is neat. For some reason though they seem to be more expensive than what you think. Victoria Falls, Africa, for instance, is going for $114 on COMC! The map pieces aren't anything special. Upper Deck likely went down to whatever gas stations were nearby and bought out all the Rand fuckin' McNallys.
I'm a maphead and I've been to the Notre Dame. That's good enough for me for $3.
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| 2018 Topps Stadium Club |
You don't buy Stadium Club for the design, you buy it for the photography. These cards are no exception. The oversized position letter is a bit much for me. Though that doesn't take away from the magic of The King's Court and Diaz's electricity. At $0.55 and $0.59 respectively, these were an easy buy.
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| 2008 Topps - Gold |
A card you'll probably be seeing a lot: 2008 Topps - Gold. I'd like to complete the gold parallel of 08 Topps and Update. A tall (read: expensive) task considering Kershaw and Scherzer are in Update.
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| 2018 Topps - Rainbow Foil |
I remember seeing a blogger (sorry don't remember who) show off this card and I thought it looked cool with the fireworks and foil. The card did not disappoint.
This was supposed to be a gif but for whathever reason it didn't take.
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| 2016 Panini Diamond Kings |
There have been a handful of times I thought I've completed this set only to discover when I look at my binder that it is in fact, not complete. I'm sure this purchase was intended to fill in a hole. Hopefully after this COMC order I've finally finished it. This set was one of the first I decided to put together when I got back into the hobby.
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| 2014 Topps Opening Day - Breaking Out Basebal |
Machado is not a player I collect so at first blush this appears to be out of place in my collection. Flip over to the back and you'll see why I picked this up. It fits into my birthday PC! I collect cards featuring my birthday (not counting player DOBs) as a nice way to celebrate the history of that day.
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| 2004 Topps - All-Star Stitches Jersey Relics |
I've been working on putting together a collection every Mariner base All-Star Game relic. I'm not concerned with parallels or jumbo patches, just the base. Although I do collect jersey color variations. I believe 2004 is the earliest Topps started including ASG relics.
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Thanks for reading and I hope to see you again at least once more before the end of 2019. See you then!
