Another Mini Rainbow to start

AJ Burnett was one of my favorite players to ever put on a Pirates uniform.  When he announced his retirement after the 2015 season, I was hoping to grab some awesome cards of Batman in his final season.  With all the Cutch cards I was buying last year, I put off buying a lot of AJ cards.  Now that it's the offseason and he's no longer active and likely not Hall of Fame bound, I can refocus on adding some great AJ cards to the PC.

For example this one

Numbered 1/5 and snagged for only $3.50

I also grabbed the black numbered /10, but am still waiting on it's arrival.

Starting a Mini Rainbow (literally)

So I am in the process of starting a John Holdzkom 2015 Topps Chrome Autograph Rainbow and will now start the 2015 Topps Mini Rainbow.

Here's two of the harder cards to find

 1/1 Gold

2/5 Red

Together these two cards ran me $28.  The other cards missing are the black and base.  Shouldn't be too hard to grab those though.  I think that Holdzkom will be a key piece for the Pirates bullpen this year.

McCutchen Mailday #11 - 21: Lots of low numbers, rainbows, and an another Strata

I have over 1,000 unique Andrew McCutchen cards.  Of all those, I have started many rainbows, but have only completed two officially.

My recent purchases which ALL arrived on the same day contained a lot of needs for my Prizm, Bowman, and Topps rainbows. 

It felt like Christmas opening all those packages.  There was so many cards that my girlfriend was actually calling me Jimmy Fallon based on the movie Fever Pitch.  "Wow Jimmy, looks like you got some more cards in the mail today" is one of her favorite phrases when I have big maildays like this.

Some of the key cards were
 /5 press proof of Studio 13
/10 Father's Day Element
/25 Prizm 2014
/60 Prizm 2015
/75 Bowman 2014

Chasing the Rainbow: John Holdzkom Edition

2014 was a memorable season for the Pirates as they set out to prove that their double decade long losing streak being broken in 2013 wasn't a fluke.  There was a breakout campaign by Josh Harrison as he came close to winning the batting title.  Andrew McCutchen had another monster year as he contended for MVP discussion again. 

One of the truly amazing stories though was career minor leaguer turned independent ball gamer to urban legend reliever, John Holdzkom. 

While watching him in his brief stint in the Pirates minor league system I grew a fascination to make Chuck Norris like jokes about how legendary he could become. 
Striking out 3 batters on 3 pitches. 
Batters don't swing the bats against Holdzkom in fear of embarrassing themselves

He instantly became one of my favorite pitchers on the mound.

When Topps announced that he would have an autograph in Series 1, I instantly knew that I had to add that to my collection.  When he was announced as one of the signers for Chrome, I kept my eyes open for any lower numbered cards, but never saw the Superfractor pop up for sale.  I wasn't going to overpay for the other parallels and patiently waited.  Waited longer.  And finally a lot of 5 became available for $20.

Behold the start of my John Holdzkom 2015 Topps Chrome Rainbow.

 Refractor (463/499) Blue (137/150)
Purple 206/250) Green (80/99)

Base

McCutchen Mailday #228-237: Gettin Tek'd up!!!! (another 1/1!!!!!)

Last year, I wasn't a big fan of Topps Tek when it first came out mainly because the two guys I heavily PC (Andrew McCutchen and Charlie Morton) both were omitted from having base cards in the set.  This year, Cutch got Tekked the F out!!!!! 

And I bought as many of the parallels as I could get my hands on including the 1/1 black and white

 Here's what else I have so far from the rainbow (sorry for the cut scan, but the scanner was acting up and I didn't know how to fix it)

 purple diffractor, cubes, pyramid, tidal diffractor /75
grass, spiral, circuit board, blades

There's a few more 1/1s that have already gotten by me, but I am hopeful that I can add some of the less scarce ones to the collection.  The backs of these cards are extremely tough to read.  I wish that the stats could have been a little bigger so I wouldn't need a pair of reading glasses to see them.

McCutchen Mailday #204: Seeing Red

I've been piecing together the 2015 Topps Gallery of Greats rainbow of Cutch for about a month and quickly completed it.  It feels great (no pun intended) to be able to finally complete a rainbow of Cutch. I've started a bunch, but have always missed out on the Superfractors whenever they pop up (which is almost never). 

Behold the power of red...

And here they all are together.

On a side note, it's not an official rainbow because I am sadly missing the base still.  With so many available in the $1 range, I'm hopeful that one day soon I can add a copy of it.

McCutchen Mailday #200: My first Superfractor of Cutch

This is it!!!! The big new addition to the Cutch PC this year as I have doubled my goal to add 100 new Cutch cards.

I've already shown off a few of the these Gallery of Greats chasing the rainbow parallels.

The rainbow is almost complete. I still need that darn base version though.

McCutchen Mailday #188: Another one down....

Here it is, another Andrew McCutchen parallel.  This is the orange parallel from 2015 Topps Chrome Gallery of Greats.  I have already shown off the Gold and stated I wanted to chase the rainbow.  With the Red, Base, and Superfractor still on my radar, this rainbow could be extremely tough to complete but I have faith that I can complete it before year's end.

We are approaching the second century mark of passing my 2015 Goal to add only 100 new Cutch cards to the PC this year.

Tony Tuesday: It's Finally Mine!!!!!!!!

One of my 2015 Collecting Goals was to try to grab a few more of my 2009 Bowman Chrome Tony Sanchez Autographs.  I've previously shown off the Gold, Blue, XFractor, and Base.  That left me to add 3 very low numbered cards (1/1 Super, /5 Red, /25 orange) and the refractor (/500).  My goal for the year was to add 1 more to the collection.

I did it in a big way by grabbing the Red /5. 

I submitted a best offer for only twice what the base refractor was selling for and the seller accepted!!!!

Behold the beauty of RED!!!!!

Since Tony didn't receive a September call up for the Pirates this year, I think that it's safe to assume that his days catching for the black and gold are pretty numbered.  His bat and glove never lived up to the hype of being an elite defender with a plus hitting tool.  He still has team options so it's likely that the Pirates will keep him on the 40 man roster for catching depth next year.  Elias Diaz and Reese McGuire have likely surpassed him as being the backstop of the future though.

I used to hate Topps Tek and now I'm chasing rainbows

I really should have bought a lot more of these Gregory Polanco 2014 Topps Tek parallels last year.  It's very hard to build the rainbow, now that I actually like it.

Here's 3 more of my recent pickups.

McCutchen Mailday #90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97 A NEAR RAINBOW!!!!!

In my Quest to add 100 new Andrew McCutchen cards to the PC, I knew I wanted to grab some parallels that I never had acquired before.  I never expected to be reaching the 100 card goal so early in the year and definitely didn't think that this would be my 7th and 8th 1/1s.

Did you see the 2 new 1/1s added to my collection in the scan above?
Need a better closeup?

I have already shown off 

#85: Letter "C" from Cutch's Jersey in 2015 Five Star

#73: Laundry Tag from 2015 Museum

#52: Letter "E" from Cutch's All-Star jersey in 2014 Topps In the Name

#47: Letter "N" from Cutch's All-Star jersey in 2015 Topps In the Name

#46: Original Sketch by Chris Henderson from Leaf Legends of Baseball Artist Proof

#12: Red Paper 2012 Bowman  (damaged by post office)

I am nearing my goal and actually have a bunch more cards due to arrive soon.  I can't wait to show them all off.  Some of these are absolutely sick!!!!

Like many of you I was a big fan of the silver frame parallels

Here's the rest of the near rainbow

Another Russell Martin Rainbow

I've shown off my 2013 Topps Chrome Russell Martin rainbow I was chasing in the past.  Earlier this year, I also showed off my 2014 Topps Mini Black printing plate of RussMart.  I'm going to attempt to put as much of this rainbow together as possible and since a seller had 2 of the colored parallels I needed I decided to grab both the pink and black parallels for $25 combined shipping.

You may recall that I showed the 2014 Topps Pink parallel of the base card back in October's Save the Boobies month.  That pink parallel was numbered to 50.  The mini featured above is numbered to 25.

Above are the backs of the cards and their low print run numbers.