The Legend of John Holdzkom

Many sports publishers released articles about John Holdzkom and his path to the big leagues in 2014.  For those of you that don't know Holdzkom was a 4th round pick of the New York Mets in 2006.  He's 6ft7 and throws hard.  After many minor league seasons he was eventually released and joined the Reds for a season in A ball as a 24 year old.  He would be released again and eventually joined several independent leagues before being scouted by the Pirates in 2014.  The Pirates signed him to a minor league deal and he tore through AA and AAA hitters striking out 37 batters in 26 innings while allowing only 15 hits sprinkled across those 26 innings.  The Pirates rewarded the tall righty with a September callup and he continued to dominate at the major league level as well.  He struck out 14 batters in 9 innings of work and surrendered only 4 hits.

The Pirates appear to have struck gold in the tall righty and I felt the need to add a gold rookie card of the Legendary John Holdzkom while the prices were still only .25 delivered.  Figured a quarter was a fair price to pay for someone being compared to John Lackey.

If you want to read more about Holdzkom check out the Baseball America article.

Throwback Thursday: Tracking down the Holy Veale

I needed one card to complete my 1965 Pirates Team Set and that was a card that featured the 1964 NL Strikeout Leaders including Bob Veale.  Veale lead the National League in punchout in 1964 with 250 in 279 innings pitched.

The card which also features Hall of Famers Bob Gibson and Don Drysdale ran me $3.20 and helped me complete 3 Topps Team sets with a recent COMC purchase.  I will show off the others as part of my Throwback Thursday segments.

Russell Martin sketch card by Chris Henderson

It's time to deliver another great sketch card by Chris Henderson.  Chris does some of the best sketch cards I have ever seen.  They truly are works of art.  

My latest addition is none other than the player who has the highest Free Agent contract ever issued by the Pittsburgh Pirates, the sensational backstop that helped the Pirates get back to .500, the former Gold Glove and All-Star Catcher Russell Martin.

Like all of Chris' sketch cards, these are 1/1s that feature an uncanny likeness of the player depicted.  This one of course features Russ before his scruffy I'm not going to shave all season long look.

When I initially set this up, I asked for two things from Chris.
1) That he uses the black alternate uniform to keep it consistent with the other sketch cards he's drawn for me (Morton, Marte, McCutchen, Cole)
2) That Russ is shown with his mask off getting ready to gun down a runner attempting to steal

I will continue to hit Chris up throughout this year and next for more Pirates sketches and most likely some Penguins and Steelers.  If you're interested in arranging to purchase something from his website visit his site.  Let him know that Brian, the Pirates fan sketch collector sent you.  Information can be found on his website below.

I struck gold for a penny!!!! Tony Tuesday

I won the above card for only 1 cent!!!! 1 fricking cent combined with several other items that cost me a grand total of $6 delivered for 10 cards serially numbered 62 or less.  What a fricking steal!!!!

Best of all it's an ebay 1/10.  Do the math and you'll see what I'm talking about. LOL!!!  Next Tuesday I'll show off another Tony Sanchez that I won for a penny.

McCutchen Monday: another 2014 goal complete!!!!!

It ran me $50 to grab this 2014 Donruss Series 2 DieCut Gold Auto of Cutch numbered 2/25, but it completes my 2014 goal to have 75 unique Andrew McCutchen certified autographs.  Since I started collecting Cutch back in 2009 his prices have just gotten insane for his autographs.  I remember as recent as early 2012 being able to get an auto/relic from higher end products of Triple Threads, Museum, etc. of his for under $25 and now his auto is fetching $50+ easily.  Nice prime patches of his often go in the same range without an autograph.

So far this year I have been very good about achieving my collecting goals.

I've added several 1 of 1s of Charlie Morton over the year including a 2014 Topps Yellow Printing Plate, the 24 Karat Gold embedded 2012 Topps card, a 2013 Topps Update Black Printing Plate, 2014 Topps Blank Back, 2014 Topps Heritage Blank Back, and a Sign of History Slabbed Cut Auto.  My goal was to add 1 more 1/1 Morton to the collection and I managed to grab 6 so far.  In addition to that I have tracked down several older Mortons that had eluded me for a long time and now I only have 2 non 1/1s needed to complete my Morton supercollection.  They are both Topps Factory Orange parallels from 2012 and 2014 respectively.

In addition to the Morton collection growing I've added several more Andy Van Slyke and Jason Bay cards to my collection surpassing my goal of 36 new cards for the year.  Ryan Doumit however I have struggled with adding only a handful and will likely not pursue collecting anymore of his cards going forward.

I've crossed off several vintage sets which I will show off on upcoming Throwback Thursdays in the coming weeks now that Save the Boobies month is over.

I added a Goose Gossage auto wearing Pirates gear in the first couple days of the new year.

I wanted to get 1/2 a rainbow complete of Tony Sanchez 2009 Bowman Chrome Autographs BGS at 9.5 or higher.  So far I've shown the blue, and base.  Still need a lot more.  This will become a focus as the year comes to a close.

My final goal was to add Bowman Black autographs of the Pirates top prospects.  I love Bowman Black autos.  They just look so beautiful being horizontal with nice big on card silver sharpie autographs. I showed off 3 Tyler Glasnow autographs, Gregory Polanco, and Jameson Taillon Bowman Black autos this year.  I still need Alen Hanson, Austin Meadows, and whoever they have printed in  this year's 2014 class.

Football Sunday: Fear the Beard!!!!

It's Football Sunday and the Steelers are facing the division rivals and much hated Baltimore Ravens.  November is NoShaveNovember so what person to show off on this 1st week of November Football than The Beard himself, Brett Keisel.

Keisel's career is coming to an end as the 36 year old has been relegated to backup and practice squad mostly at this stage.

I just got my first Keisel card and it's a boring old score card worth less than a half dollar.

Orange is the New Black: Sorta

Because it's Halloween week still, I'm going to show off a card I wanted to highlight earlier in the week, but due to the ongoing Save the Boobies contest, I couldn't.

To show my Halloween spirit, here's a card that features both orange and black.  I grabbed this dollar gem earlier in the year when America's Pasttime came out.  It's numbered 86/125

In the very near future I will be showing off a bunch of Andrew McCutchen cards that I recently purchased on COMC.