30 cents well spent

I recently won these two fine cards of Steel City star players, Sidney Crosby and Antonio Brown for a combined price of 30 cents.  To achieve free shipping I combined it with my 2013-14 Hoops Team Set of the Pacers seen below.

The two highlights of this budget friendly team set are the two Pacers All-Stars, Paul George and Roy Hibbert.  The one thing I've started to like about collecting basketball cards over baseball is the action shots.  Very seldomly do you see Panini used photoshoot pictures like what Topps does for baseball.

All together, I received all 12 cards for $2.05.  Money well spent, I say.  Money well spent.

Let it snow, let it snow

New Jersey is currently under a snowstorm.  It's expected that we'll only get about 6 inches total.  No biggie.  While sifting through my football card collection trying to find a card played in the snow, I remembered the 2009 Winter Classic played in Buffalo when the Penguins beat the Sabres.

2008-09 O Pee Chee

Here's a card from my collection to show off that 1st Winter Classic bout.

Trading Post: Screaming Line Drive

I recently made a trade with Daddyoho of the blog Screaming Line Drive.  For a couple Phillies jersey relics and a few Flyers, I managed to get 3 nice Pittsburgh additions to the Treasure Room.

2003 SP Legendary Cuts Historical Impressions 175/200

Up first is the card that started the trade, a 2003 SP Legendary Cuts Historical Impressions Honus Wagner numbered 175/200.  It's a nice looking manucard made to resemble Honus' autograph.

On the back of the card is an interesting fact about how Honus ranked in the top 10 in the entire league in average, RBI, hits, runs, OBP, slugging, extra-base hits, and total bases over the course of a 11 straight seasons.  It also shows his career totals for his Hall of Fame career.

Once we started talking, we added more cards to the mix.

2002 SP Authentix Jersey Jason Kendall 

Included is this 2002 SP Authentix Jersey of Jason Kendall.  It such a shame that he suffered such a major injury during his prime cause he could have been one of the best contact hitting catchers in MLB history.  As it stands he finished his career with 2,195 hits and a .288 batting average.  That puts him 4th all time on the catcher's hit list.  4TH ALL TIME!!! Ahead of Mike Piazza, Johnny Bench, Yogi Berra, and Gary Carter.  Do you think that Jason Kendall will ever be recognized as a HOF player?  Probably not.  Mainly because of his off field problems with his ex wife.  And that's a damn shame because it would have been nice to see a Pirate I rooted for get his plaque in Cooperstown wearing the Black n Gold.

2012 Black Friday Sidney Crosby

The final card of the trade was a Sidney Crosby 2012 Black Friday base card.  I'm sure that since he's a Flyers fan, he was more than happy to throw this in since, well.....Flyers don't like Sidney and Sidney doesn't like them.  Why? He just don't like them.

I'll take $1, Bob (pt2)

My Penguins collection is not nearly as expansive of my Pirates collection which is a damn shame cause the Penguins have had some extremely good teams the past couple years.  However, there is one player that I love to collect of the Pens and that is Kris Letang.  The dude's a badass Defenseman and most of the time acts as an extra Forward when he's on the ice.  Even though he's missed considerable time he still leads the NHL Dmen in points this season.

I managed to grab 7 of his cards at the mall show as part of the 25 cards for $20 deal.

The Upper Deck card above is just flat out wrong.  Can't argue that it's a unique shot, but I'm just glad that Letang isn't the bitch in that relationship.

If anyone has any Kris Letang cards can you send them my way? PLEASE!!!!!!

Also in the $1 collection of Penguins cards to purchase was the above Larry Murphy jersey relic.  Sure it's nothing great, but for a Pens sweater, yeah I'll add it for $1

The final 5 cards in the lot that bought were of the Penguins Captain.  Love him or hate him, he's still one of the best talents in the game and the face of hockey.

Of course I'm talking about Sid.

You can send me cards of him too btw.

More Penguins cards: Crosby, Fleury, and Malkin!

The Penguins got some bad news this All-Star weekend when it was announced that Sidney Crosby has a vertebrate abnormality.  There was rumors before the season that Sid should just retire to protect his health.  I'm happy that the Penguins aren't rushing him back out there and despite other key injuries the Penguins are still contending and are bound for the playoffs. 

Evgeni Malkin has been looking like one of the best players in the league this year and has really stepped up to fill the void of Crosby.  James Neal has also been sensational on the offensive threat without Sid the Kid. 

Marc-Andre Fleury continues to be astonishing between the pipes.

I know the Penguins will make the playoffs this season and the most recent rumor is that Sidney Crosby, arguably the best player in the NHL, will return for the playoff run.  It's going to be a fun spring again.

Here's the rest of my Pittsburgh Penguins autograph/relic collection featuring Sidney Crosby, Marc-Andre Fleury and Evgeni Malkin.

Up first is my only "hit" of Sidney Crosby I own.  But it's a beauty.  This 2007-08 O-Pee-Chee Premier Rare Remnants Triples features Sidney Crosby, Marc-Andre Fleury, and Evgeni Malkin all on the same card with different color fabrics featuring each player to spell out "PIT" The serially numbered card is 46/50.

Up next is a nice 2 color jersey swatch from goalie supreme Marc-Andre Fleury.  Much like I try to find the yellow patches for Pirates or Steelers cards, I like seeing the gold in newer Penguins jersey cards.  It's just so much more unique to see that color on a card than yellow, black, or grey.

2010-11 Upper Deck Ultimate Jersey 15/100

Same rules apply to this card.  There was a black fabric piece available for this card too, but I opted to buy the gold because it looks better with the colors of the card.  Not a bad pickup for $10.
2009-10 SP Game Used Authentic Fabrics 79/100 JERSEY

I just love Malkin autographs.  I wish they weren't so darn expensive though.  This one was bought for like $28 I think.  It's an on card auto which makes it nicer in my humble opinion.
2010-11 SP Ultimate Signatures Evgeni Malkin AUTO

How many people out there collect hockey besides myself?
Anyone got Penguins cards to trade?

You know what it is, Black and Yellow, Black and Yellow

Yeah uh huh. You know what it is. Black and yellow. Black and yellow. 

After browsing the interwebs today, I see that Wiz Khalifa is being sued for plagiarism of his song Black and Yellow which was "stolen in concept" from rapper Maxamillion's Pink and Yellow song copyrighted in 2007.  While I don't really care for Wiz Khalifa, I am a fan of the song Black and Yellow because it gets me amped up to root for some Pittsburgh sports teams. 

But what gets me more excited is some pieces of cardboard featuring clothing with black and yellow on it.  Yesterday I went to my local mall after work and saw that they were having a baseball card show.  Since I live in NJ, there's not a whole lot of Pittsburgh love.  For baseball there's the Phillies, Yankees, and Mets.  For hockey, it's the Devils, Rangers, and Flyers.  Football has the Eagles, Giants, and Jets.  No one likes the Pirates or Penguins around here, but there are quite a few Steeler fans.  I had low hopes of finding anything of interest since that's what normally happens at these types of shows.  Boy was I surprised to see a vendor there with boxes upon boxes full of vintage Pirates cards.  I already have every base 1976-present Topps Pirates card, but I was able to get a good chunk of pre 1971 Topps for about $3 or less a card including some rag copies of 1952 Topps for $5.  My girlfriend even picked up an original Piedmont 350 tobacco card which I will post sometime next week.  In addition to the vintage cards, all of which will get their own post also next week, I picked up 2 sweet jersey cards of 2 of Pittsburgh most recognized sports heroes.

Up first is Hall of Famer and 2 time World Series Champion Willie Stargell.  I was looking at an extremely nice copy of Stargell's rookie card, but it was waaaaayyyyy out of my price range when the guy said "I just bought a Stargell jersey card last week. Do you want to see it?" I said sure, thinking it would be a standard white relic or something.  He dug around some of his boxes he hadn't opened up or priced yet and said here it is.  I asked how much and $15 less in my wallet it was now in my possession.  I'm such a sucker for those black and yellow jerseys.

At the next table over, I was rummaging through some .10 bins and came across a lot of Penguins.  The cards weren't in any order, not even by sport.  I grabbed them all which you can see below.  But the real highlight of this table was the card you see above.  Mario Lemieux!!!!  Are you kidding me?  $15? Um yes please.  Mario is one of the greatest hockey players of all time and is currently the owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins.  He's the first person in hockey history to win a Stanley Cup as a player and an owner.  I know the Pens aren't looking too hot the past couple weeks, but once some of their star players come back from injuries, Super Mario might win his 4th Stanley Cups this year.  Below are the cards I bought for .10 a piece.  I have already put them in pages and at less than $1 to fill a page, I couldn't pass it up.

At my last and final stop I noticed a table with jersey relics for $3 or 2 for $4.  I looked and looked and looked for Pirates players, but found nothing until the very last handful when I came across these two gems.

Dave Parker and Willie Stargell Fleer Fall Classic Post Season Glory bat relic of The Cobra.  This card is numbered 71/150.  The Cobra and Pops were part of the 1979 World Series Champions Pittsburgh Pirates.  My only regret with this card is that I wish the photo of Willie Stargell was from the 79 series with those funky uniforms.

The very next card was this 2005 MLB Game Used Apparel Upperdeck Artifact jersey relic of Andy Van Slyke.  The card is numbered 40/325.  Andy is still my favorite center fielder that ever put on a Pirates uniform.  It just seemed like if the ball got past the infield, Andy would be able to track it down in the outfield and catch it.  He wasn't a speedster like Andrew McCutchen is, but he had some of the best baseball instincts of an outfielder.  There's an interview where he says that he tried to get Barry Bonds to move more to the right in that famous "Sid Bream slide" 1992 Playoff game and Barry gave him the finger.  Sure enough, if Barry had moved over a couple steps, the Pirates probably would have gone to the World Series that year as Bonds would have thrown Bream out at home.  No matter how true that story is, the reality is that AVS stayed sitting in the outfield for an hour after the game just contemplating what had just happened. 

Stay tuned tomorrow for some old vintage Topps that I will post.

Oh and Let's Go Steelers!!!!