Been Busy...Trading on Zistle

After nearly two weeks away, it's past time to put up another post.  I've been busy in about every aspect of my life lately, including trading some cardboard. Before I fall too far behind, let me post a couple of Zistle trades.  

User Dannicole contacted me about a trade that would bring me some junk wax that was missing from my collection.

These guys all won a Rookie of the Year Award, though they experienced varying degrees of success in their subsequent careers.  I feel more drawn to collecting the guys who peaked in Year One.  I think it’s partly because it’s easier to get a bunch of cards of the guys who never became superstars. 

Jerome Walton is one of those guys, and he gets bonus points for being a Cub.

Next come the All-Star Game MVPs.  Cal bridges the gap as having won both awards.  Even though he is a superstar, he’s one of my favorites to collect.  It seems like since I joined Zistle, everybody has been offering me lots of junk wax Cal Ripken.  Now that it is starting to fill up in my collection, maybe I can start seeing some trade offers for other things.

These two guys I pick up every now and then.  Wally Joyner is a former BYU guy and Curt Wilkerson goes in my family collection because he shares a birthday with one of my kids.

Dannicole also threw in some football for me.  Kellen Winslow (as seen above) is a PC guy because of his spot on the 1980s All-Decade Roster.  This is his rookie card and it fits nicely in my collection.

This card is needed for my back-burner building of 2012 Topps.

And finally, some Packers.  The Blood McNally is especially cool because I love that Honor Roll insert set.

Another Zistle user, Sandlot, is a Mets collector and we worked out a trade.  He sent me another Cal and some Cubs I needed.

Kerry Wood is another ROY+Cub=Awesomeness PC player.

The last card here is the gem of the post.  I was perusing COMC one day and came across some Cracker Jack micros.  I thought, “I wish I still had some of those Cracker Jack cards.”  Lo and behold, Sandlot contacted me the very next day offering one of my childhood baseball hero.  I couldn’t say no.

Thanks to those Zistle users for their trades.  And thank you, readers, for reading.

2015 Topps Platinum

Soon after I set up my Zistle account, I received a trade proposal from user YorksJJr.  We worked out a trade that centered around our team collections--I sent some Redskins his way, and got some good Packers in return.  One of them was this 2015 Topps Platinum Jordy Nelson.  Normally, I try to build the Topps Chrome set yearly, but I had been rather unimpressed with this year's Topps football design, and was a bit ambivalent about the Chrome set.  But this Platinum, with its refractor-like qualities, full-bleed photo, and giant team logo in the background, caught my eye.  I decided to Platinum this year instead.  I'll have more on the rest of YorkJJr's trade later, but right now I'll show you my set build of this shiny, fine-looking product.

 I bought a blaster box and a multi-pack rack pack and got off to a good start.  The base set was beginning to grow, and I pulled a nice Mariota X-Fractor among the other rookie parallels in the box.

Then I got a nice bonus--a BCA Pink Refractor numbered to 10--and featuring Brett Hundley, who just happens to be a wearing my team's uniform.  Not bad from a big box store blaster.

The rack pack had more base and included 5 Flame parallels.  Ameer Abdullah, Melvin Gordon, Kevin White.  Not too bad.  But the fifth. . . Brett Hundley again!  I'm suddenly starting a rainbow with two retail purchases.

I ordered a hobby box from Dave & Adam's Card World and hoped that would get me pretty close to the 150-card set.  Every hobby pack comes with a gold veteran parallel, and there are two autos and one auto-relic in every box.  Since my aim in purchasing the box was to build the base set, I began to get worried as the packs were running low and I still hadn't pulled either of the two most expensive cards in the set: Mariota and Jameis Winston.  I didn't really want to have to pay for both on the secondary market.  But the last card of the last pack came up Jameis.  Whew.  That knocked at least one of them off my need list.

My biggest beef with this box is the collation.  Maybe it was just dumb bad luck, but I pulled dupes of almost every card that I already had from the retail.  Where are all the other players?  Plus, every gold parallel in the box also included the base of the same player in the box.  I'm not too upset about that; they are two different cards after all, but it makes me question why all the same players are lumped together all the time.  Some of my golds were pretty good players, though.  I've already completed sent Cam, Russell, and Eli out in trades.

The was one blue parallel: Panthers rookie Devin Funchess.

 My two autos weren't all that noteworthy: La'el Collins and P.J. Williams.

The auto relic wasn't a great name, but it was a purple version.  The three-color patch is nice and it has a print run of 10.  It's a pretty nice looking card.


I came closer to set completion and a subsequent Zistle trade with Yorks brought me even closer.  But I haven't told you the best part yet.  The finale is . . .

a Sammie Coates black printing plate.  Folks, you are witnessing the first 1 of 1 I have ever pulled.  The first I have ever owned, in fact.  Between the Jesse James and Sammie Coates, this was a great box for Steelers collectors.

Aside from the poor collation and dupes--seriously, I would have had the same percentage of the base set without spending a dime on the retail packs--I'm happy with the product.  I like the design, pulled some super short prints, and even got a nice hit from my team of a blaster.  Now to track down the other 30 or so cards I need.

On a side note, if you haven't checked out the contest on Sports Card Collectors' blog, get into it.  Entry ends today, and you just have to let him know your favorite Topps product.

The Anatomy of a Draft Bust

Ever since childhood, I have been fascinated with the NFL Draft.  My parents got me an NFL almanac for Christmas when I was 10 years old, and I spent the next few months memorizing the first rounds of previous drafts and learning the overall draft positions of some of my favorite players.  It might sound weird, I know, but is it any different from all of us who memorized batting averages from the backs of the our baseball cards?  By the time the next April rolled around, I was ready to see which college players would go where.  I sat the entire day in front of the TV, watching the draft for the first time.  Within three years, I was making my own mock drafts and comparing my accuracy to Mel Kiper.  I even tried (unsuccessfully) to get the local newspaper to publish my mock draft over the syndicated one they ran every year the day before the draft.

I love the NFL Draft because it's simultaneously a time of cathartic closure and hopeful beginnings.  Many of these young men have been working toward and dreaming of making the NFL, and the suspense ends on draft day.  But as one door is closing, these prospects are bursting through another.  I'm the kind of guy that hopes that every draft pick succeeds, even though I'm not always convinced they are all they're cracked up to be.  In my perfect world, all first rounders become Pro Bowlers.  The top five picks should all pan out to be Hall of Fame caliber players.  I would love starting lineups to be filled with players taken between rounds two and four.  It's not that I especially love scouts and GMs, but I want all the players to live up to expectations.

While I have high hopes for every prospect, the chance that some may fail while others succeed well beyond their scouting report's ceiling adds drama to the draft.  But to me the question is always, "Who could be the hidden gem?" rather than "Which of these guys will go down in flames?"  I've been familiarizing myself with the big names at the top of the draft for weeks and wish them a successful career.

I suppose that's why I'm so intrigued by draft busts.  These are guys who I believed in.  A lot of people believed in them.  General managers put their jobs on the line to select them.  Fans invested in the idea that these players are the future of the franchise.  These guys have proven something somewhere along the way to get to where they are.  And then a few years down the road, hope has succumbed to disappointment, excitement has morphed to anxiety, and welcoming fanbases have turned angry.   How does it all go wrong?

The Injury Bug

Some of these busts are not to blame.  It's that pesky injury bug who won't leave them alone.  Ki-Jana Carter immediately comes to mind.  The number one overall pick blew out his knee in the preseason of his rookie year, and it was lights out for his career; he never fully recovered.  The injury bug busts are by far the most pitiable.

The Workout Warrior

Some guys were never really thought of as a great prospect--until the combine, that is.  Then they put on a show and flew up the draft boards to a bloated ranking.  Once at the professional level, the balloon is burst and they show that they may be physical freaks, but they can't keep up with the football talent around them.  Mike Mamula is Exhibit A.  He trained for the combine and came away with unbelievable numbers.  The Eagles traded up to snatch him, passing on both Warren Sapp and Derrick Brooks in the process.  He finished his career with 31.5 sacks.  It wasn't awful, but he became the poster child for the Workout Warrior.

The Overreach

The scouts agree: this player is a late first-rounder, early second-rounder.  But what's this?  He gets his name called at #7?  What is going on here?  Poor Kiper and Mayock are left scrambling to explain this pick, but the fact of the matter is, [insert your team here] just fell in love with this kid and couldn't risk losing him by waiting until next round.  Now the expectations are sky high, as is the eventual fall.  Darrius Heyward-Bey comes to mind here.  Heyward-Bey was a speedy receiver, and that was enough for Al Davis.  It wasn't, unfortunately, enough for his career.  Was he decent as a first-round pick?  Maybe.  He is still kicking around the league, after all.  But the expectations set with his draft position turned him into a bust.  Christian Ponder has fallen into this category, and E.J. Manuel is dangerously close to the edge.

The Character Issues

Some guys just can't stay on the field, but it has little to do with injuries.  In these cases, talent trumped red flags during the draft, but the issues ended up weighing far more in the end.  Lawrence Phillips and Johnny Manziel both fit the bill here.  Phillips had far more character concerns coming out of college than Manziel, and he managed to live up to about all of them.  His sad story ended in prison, where he passed away last year.  Johnny Manziel just managed to party his way of the league.  Always the hopeful one, I really do hope that he gets his life together, even if his future doesn't hold the NFL.

The Gilded Boy

And sometimes, the Can't-Miss Prospects just miss horribly.  I don't have an explanation for this, but the laundry list is long: Andre Ware, Tony Mandarich, Todd Marinovich, Rick Mirer, Heath Shuler, Tim Couch, Akili Smith, Cade McNown (what was wrong with that 1999 QB class?), Vince Young, Matt Leinart, Jamarcus Russell, Trent Richardson, etc.  I wish I knew why.  So does every scout, talent evaluator, GM, and coach out there.  Sometimes people just get it wrong.  Remember the genuine debate over Peyton Manning vs. Ryan Leaf?  Bill Polian made the right decision, but many (my high school self included) thought he got it wrong.  But imagine the course of NFL history if he had selected Leaf instead and Peyton ended up in San Diego.

As a disclaimer, I had no intention of making a comprehensive list of NFL Draft Busts.  There are plenty out there who receive no mention here.   I just wanted to touch on a few draft bust types and highlight some cards along the way.

Sometimes I feel like I should start a draft bust PC.  Or maybe a Frankenset.  Maybe that's just the morbidity in me, keeping mementos as kind of a requiem for the career of a player busted out of the league.  But it's too sad a collection to think about.  I appreciate having the piece of draft history in my collection, but I'll pass on having an entire collection of it.

What do you think?  Who was the biggest draft bust of all-time?  Sound off in the comments.  Thanks for reading!

Johnny on the (Trading) Spot

As I'm new to the blogging community, I've reached out to a few people about trades.  I may not have the same quality or quantity of cards as some of the trades I see being completed on the blogs around me, but I have found some cards on people's want lists.  I found a few set needs and binder guys that John at Johnny's Trading Spot had listed, so we arranged a trade.

I didn't collect a whole lot of baseball as a kid.  I've always been more of a football guy.  I've been on a baseball tear since I got back into the hobby, though, but one side effect is that my collection tends to be newer cards.  One of the nice things about not having the largest baseball collection is that when people want to unload their "junk," most of it is new to me.  This was the case as I received a nice package from John this week, most of it filled with 90s goodness of All-Star MVPs, Rookies of the Year, and World Series MVPs.  I may be the last collector on the interwebs to need these cards, but John found them a good home here.

Let's start out with the All-Star MVPs, which, aside from the Cubs, is the focus of my baseball collection.

 

All of these Griffeys were needs for my collection.  I have no idea what the Playball card in the top left is, but it's cool oddball that I never even knew existed.  It may be my favorite Griffey of the bunch.

 

 Bo Jackson was another great All-Star Game MVP.  Love the sticker with Eric Davis.  Am I the only who had forgotten completely, or never really known, that Bo was an Angel?  I have no memory of this at all, so the card was a shock to me.

Continuing with the All-Star MVPs, Fred McGriff and Tim Raines both fit the bill.  I love the spectrum of
teams represented by the Crime Dog here.

Cal and Ichiro are two of my favorites to collect because they were both All-Star MVPs and Rookies of the Year.  They'll bridge the gap here as we take a look at the ROYs.

Two more oddballs, from the 1992 7/11 Citgo set.  I apparently didn't frequent the right gas stations as a 10 year old, as I had never seen this set before.

 

Mark McGwire isn't my favorite guy to collect, because of the whole PED issue and the fact that much of his heyday was spent as a Cardinal.  But he does fit in the ROY category.  If I'm going to have cards of him in my collection, they're best his Oakland cards because that was when he won the award and those days came before everything that made me dislike the player.  Rafael Furcal won the award with Atlanta in 2000 and this my first card of him with the Braves.

 

The Braves collector came through with this Braves Rookie of the Year.  Check out that Shades card.  Yikes!  That is an almost frightening subset.  In all these cards, we have the first card that wasn't a need for me: the 1991 Score.  Everything else you have seen is brand-new to me.

The last PC theme that John hit was World Series heroes.  Here are a pair of cards from teams north of the border, though Pedro did his World Series heroics with Boston later in his career.

 

John hit me with another Braves player who fits into my PC.  I collect Andruw Jones cards solely because of the birthday he shares with my son--which is on Saturday, by the way.  Make sure you all send Andruw your best wishes...

Someday my son will receive my Andruw Jones PC for his birthday.  I really want him to learn some 90s hip-hop jive off the back of this card.  Definitely one of the most interesting card backs I've seen.  It sounds like when your teacher tried to drop the latest slang in an effort not to be lame, but proved himself lame in the process.  Trust me; as a teacher, I know what this sounds like.

We'll wrap the trade with this Vlad Guerrero promo card.  Not a PC guy, but a promo oddball is always welcomed.

Thanks, John, for the generous trade package.  My meager collection feels like it got a shot in the arm, if not a Mark McGwire-type shot.