Small Business Saturday

Today marks the "official" day of Small Business Saturday.  Every year, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, consumers are encouraged to support small businesses that offer great products instead of buying through major franchises.  Topps currently owns a monopoly for licensed baseball cards.

Panini has been producing some great unlicensed cards over the past 2 years.  I've had these waiting to be added to the Treasure Room for almost a year now.

Each card features a sticker auto of Cutch and all are numbered to less than 100 copies.

2012 Panini Signature Series Signature Stars AUTO 5/25

2012 Panini Signature Series AUTO 26/99

2012 Panini National Treasures Signature Materials (AUTO/Patch)  10/25

I really love the design of each of these cards with the Signature Series being my favorite.  It's just a close up shot of the player's face with a white surface for an autograph.  It looks like Bowman had a stepchild that got neglected.  Sure it would have been nicer if all the autos were on card, but I'm not going to complain about adding 3 more autos of the 2013 MVP to the Treasure Room blog.  I'm thinking I might get to 75 certified autos of Cutch before Opening Day next year.  That's Crazy sauce with a captail C!!!!

Happy Thanksgiving: AVS Style

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

To celebrate Thanksgiving or Turkey day as my friends and I call it, here's a card of one of my favorite players of all time Andy Van Slyke on a 1992 Mr. Turkey card.

Above is the back of the Mr. Turkey 1992 Superstar card.  No it's not serially numbered 25 of 25.  Many unlicensed companies in the 80s and 90s produced cards where the number of cards in the set were printed on the card.  Due to alphabetical order, this card is the last card in the set.

I should really start to add to my PC of AVS more.  How often do you see guys win 5 gold gloves in CF in a row these days?

Gerrit Cole USA PATCH!!!!!

Much like my Austin Meadows Jumbo Patch relic, I decided to grab a Team USA patch of one of my favorite Pirate pitchers, Gerrit Cole.

2013 Team USA Game Gear PRIME PATCH 79/99

Cole was selected to be a member of the collegiate national team and went 4-0 with a 1.06 ERA while fanning 46 hitters in 34 innings while holding opponents to a miniscule .104 batting average.

I grabbed the above card a couple of months back for a major bargain price.

McCutchen Monday: Triple Clear Vision

I showed off a few of the 2013 Pinnacle inserts of Cutch over the past few months and more recently showed the "double" clear vision insert.  I've now added the Triple version of Clear Vision to my collection.

For $3 shipped, this card is nicely put away with the others.  Now I just need to find the HR version.

Another Jason Bay DUAL AUTO: Dontrelle Willis 2005 Rookie Cup

I will always have a soft spot in my heart for Jason Bay.  Last month I announced I wanted to update my Jason Bay partner project.

It was a lot of fun trying to get 38 different players to appear on a hit with Jason Bay.  So much fun, that I'm doing it again.  This time though, I want to get 38 unique players autographs with Jason Bay.

The above 2005 Topps Rookie Cups DUAL AUTO marks my 15th autograph of another player to appear on a piece of cardboard with Jason Bay.  Only 23 more to go...this is going to be fun.

Here is a list of the players that I have autograph cards with Jason Bay

Adam LaRoche
Bill Madlock
Bill Mazeroski
Bobby Crosby
Carlos Zambrano
Casey Kotchman
Dale Murphy
Dave Parker
Dontrelle Willis
Dustin Pedroia
Justin Morneau
Matt Holiday
Ralph Kiner
Tom Gorzelanny
Willie Parker

Nick Kingham Goodwin Champions AUTO

Nick Kingham was a 4th round pick of the Pirates in 2010, the same year the Pirates grabbed Jameson Taillon and Stetson Allie.  Kingham was a highschooler when he was drafted and reached the AA level in 2013 during his age 21 season.

In 2013, Kingham's line was very solid in AA Altoona where he pitched to a 3-3 record with a 2.70 ERA over 73 innings.  His command got a little worse than what he had been doing through the rest of his career as he increased his BB/9 rate to 3.7.

If all goes well for the Pirates, Kingham will likely start the 2014 season in AA and recive a callup to AAA mid season when Jameson Taillon gets called up to the majors.

I found the above 2012 Goodwin Champions for a lowbid of .99 with $2 shipped.

Waiting for AJ

AJ Burnett had one of the best seasons of his career in 2013.  He became a free agent at the end of the season and the Pirates chose to not give him a qualifying best offer of $14.1 million to resign with the club for the 2014 season.  I can't argue the logic though.  AJ said numerous times that he would either be retiring after the season or resign with the Bucs.  The worse case scenario would be AJ took the qualifying offer then decided to retire midseason if he started out poorly.  This would leave the Pirates payroll in jeapordy and would have wasted an offseason where they sought out other pitchers.

No matter what happens to AJ Burnett during this offseason, I am happy he was a part of the Pittsburgh Pirates the past two seasons.  I got to see his Pirates debut last April and there was a buzz around the stadium that something magical would soon be happening in the Burgh that rainy day when he shutout the Cardinals.  He became a teacher to the Pirates young arms and was trully a leader in the clubhouse.  I hope that maybe one day AJ returns to the diamond as a pitching coach and helps lead future arms to become better ballplayers.

The above green paralle "Band of Brothers" 2013 Prizm card was grabbed for $2 shipped on ebay.  I'm happy to put it away in my Cutch collection, but think that I should get a 2nd copy for my AJ Burnett page too.