McCutchen Monday: 9 "new" additions to the PTR

I've been snatching up lots of Andrew McCutchen cards every chance I can.  He's been a top 3 MVP candidate in each of the past 3 seasons (including winning it in 2013), won a Gold Glove, 4 time All-Star, 3 time Silver Slugger, and all around great face of the Pirates franchise.  I'm expecting Cutch to really improve on his numbers in the 2015 season.  Call it a hunch, but I think he's just starting to enter his prime.  30/30 season seems very likely for the talented 5 tool athlete.

The 9 cards pictured above ran me just shy of $10 and bring my McCutchen total to ....well I will have to check that count when I have more time.

Football Sunday: Saved by Le'Bell

My fantasy football team has been an absolute force to be reckoned with the past few weeks.  The past three weeks, my team has posted over 200 points which is just crazy numbers for those of you that do fantasy football.  I play in a PPR League on NFL. com and my team name is Saved By Le'Bell.  I chose the name because every year I pick a Pittsburgh Steeler (my favorite team) and draft a player and name the team after him.  I went overdraft and got Le'Veon Bell (after the drug arrest) in the 2nd round with the 14th overall pick.  I had a good feeling about what he could mean to the Steelers offense and boy have I been rewarded with my instincts.  Last week thanks to his 3 Touchdowns I was rewarded with 52.5 fantasy points.  He almost beat my opponent by himself as my opponent only mustered up 56.46 points.

The Steelers post season hopes as well as my own will be riding Le'Veon Bell hard today.  Let's see if both teams can be "Saved by Le'Bell"

Seeing Red: Locked in savings

I'm in Pittsburgh today attending PiratesFest and am looking forward to getting autographs from some of the Pirates Alumni (Dave Parker, Bill Virdon, Doug Drabek, Mike LaVaillere, Al Oliver, Jack Wilson, and John Smiley) and newest additions to the club (Cervelli and Holdzkom)

I was late in purchasing my autograph tickets so I am sadly missing out on a lot of the "headline" guys.  That's ok because I picked up this awesome Gypsy Queen Red Border auto of Jeff Locke for less than $7.  The low numbered (/49) parallel features the 2013 All-Star's terrible looking signature.

Stolmy Night....

The Pirates received Stolmy Pimentel in exchange for former All-Star closer Joel Hanrahan.

2014 Panini Imacculate Rookie Inscriptions 36/99

When the season opens, Stolmy will be just 25 years old with two short seasons in the majors.  It looks like Stolmy will be a part of the Pirates rotation/bullpen plans heading into 2015.  In a short period of time he has looked incredible and at other parts he has looked abysmal.  He posted a strong K/9 last year (38 punchouts in 32 innings), but his groundball rate got substantially worse which could have lead to his batting average against going up.  If he can get back to form and keep the ball low in the strike zone I think he could be a very useful arm in the Pirates pitching staff next season.  The autographed card ran me $6 delivered and because the image shows the back of Pimental's jersey I am perfectly ok with it being logoless.

Throwback Thursday: Vintage 58s

It's been too long since I've shown off some true vintage (pre60s) on my page.  

I managed to grab the above 8 cards I needed for my Topps Flagship sets for $4.90 delivered.  In addition to the 8 cards above I also grabbed Gene Freese, Frank Thomas, Dick Groat, and Buddy Pritchard in the same lot.  None of these cards are museum worthy, but for the price I just couldn't resist adding more vintage cards to the collection.

Black is the New Black: The White Sox are trying to rebuild using the 2007 Pirates

I was looking for some autographs on COMC a few months back and came across this card which I absolutely needed to add to my collection for the price paid ($5).  I don't have many Adam Laroche autographs in my collection and this card was low numbered and signed in silver sharpie (one of my favorite kinds of signatures).  I decided to grab it.

Upon receipt of the card I realized that maybe the 2015 Chicago WhiteSox will look similiar to the 2007 Pirates.  They just signed Adam Laroche and Zach Duke for a combined $40 millions.  Wow!!!! Good Luck with that ChiSox!

Update: This was scheduled for Saturday but I messed up the dates. It looks like the White Sox will be more aggressively contending in 2015 more that they have traded for Scrabbleboard and signed David Robertson.

241 Tuesdays: Why buy 1....when you can get 2 for the price of 1????

In my continued pursuit to build a reverse box of 2014 Topps Triple Threads, I won these two Gerrit Cole Unity Jumbo Relic cards for $6.54 delivered.  You just can't beat that with a baseball bat.  These 2 cards completed my reverse box which I successfully built for nearly half the price of a box.

Each different version of the parallels features a different image of Cole on the front

6/27

20/36

Along with a different blurb on the back.

My running total for the Reverse box challenge of 2 for the price of 1 currently sits at $83 after purchasing
a very low numbered auto/jumbo jersey relic (/10) Jason Grilli
a pair of gold parallel /99 cards (Alvarez and this McCutchen)
an Amethyst /325 parallel (Alvarez)
an Emerald /50 Triple Relic/AUTO (Andrew Lambo)
3 unique players base cards (McCutchen, Cole, Alvarez) including doubles of McCutchen and Alvarez and a free throw in of Mike Piazza
a Gregory Polanco base and amber parallel

2 boxes of 2014 Topps Triple Threads would include
2 Triple Relic/Auto (currently at 1)
2 Auto/Jumbo Relic (currently at 1)
2 Jumbo Relic (currently at 2)
2 Triple Relic (currently at 1)
12 base cards (currently at 7)
8 Parallel cards (currently at 4)

I successfully built a box for almost half price.  Now the challenge is can I build 2 for the price of 1?