Card Showing 2.0

While the blogging around here has been slowed to a small drizzle this year. One thing that has been going strong so far this year is my card shows. With it only being February, and two card shows at Mall 205 this year. I luckily have been able to hit both shows, a trend that I know will probably end for March's show.

Honestly I wasn't going to do the show this past weekend, but an e-mail from Rod from Padrographs changed things. Rod mentioned that he had some stuff to send my direction as he is doing some downsizing to his collecting.

Meeting at the show Rod dropped a box with bobbleheads for the collection I have.

Before running off I talked about the Jack Cain one, and how cool it was to add his into the collection finally. Mr. Cain owned the single A Bend Rockies, and later Portland Rockies. Along with those he had a few businesses that I'd been to when living in Bend. Rod added into the excitement by pointing out it was autographed on the back. While not shown in the picture these have all found a place on their respectable shelf.

When it came to cards this show was much different than the January show. During that show I made some serious strides in the set collecting with most being for the soon to be posted Fleer Team Action football. This show I didn't add a ton in cards, but what I did add were for the player collections.

Nolan Ryan is one of those players I don't list on the player collecting. The simple reason is I have most of his cards, and so putting him on the list seems crazy to me. Getting six cards was cool, but I haven't put these into the collection yet. Going out on a limb I'm going to bet that I'm only missing three of these, but at the price I took a chance on all six.

The Arenado collection has been slowly growing, and only grew by two cards as the middle card was a double. Blackmon is a player that after picking up these two I am still toying with adding onto the player list. Gray's card is the first one in the now new Jon Gray player collection. While I should know better than to start a collection of another Colorado Rockies pitcher. I came across Gray at the Mariners brocation this fall, and he seems to be an awesome guy. That interaction has stuck with me, and has led to this new player collection. After a couple Rockies pitcher collections that have been discarded you'd think I would know better than to start a new one. Instead here I am going full force into another.

Closing things out were my most expensive pick ups from the entire show. All these Trouts were cards I've missed over the last couple years, and thought why not finally getting them before getting to into the 2016 cards. This same seller had many more, but the cheapskate in me wasn't willing to go for more than the six dollars, and forty cents I paid for all these. Most of his remaining were running at three, or five dollars each.

Overall it wasn't a bad show, and will hold me over until I am able to make the trip north again. 

Joining The 2016 Topps Party

Since they came out, and haven't been very well received on the blogs. The 2016 Topps cards were a kind of thing that I was not sure if I wanted to buy any packs of. Then came today, and the daughter wanting to make a trip to the evil big box store. While There I just felt the need to buy what will probably be my only pack of 2016 Topps.

For my first card I think I did ok with Jon Lester. Ironically this is the second straight year that my first card pulled was a Cubbie. Last year it was Javier Baez attempting to turn two.

Rather than bore people with tons showing off all the cards, or listing them one by one. I am sticking with just the few subset stuff.

This card has a shiny look that the daughter noticed right away, and was fascinated by. Not a bad person to get one of these for if you ask me. If there is a Stanton collector out there who wants this card it is available.

The remainder of the subsets like Stanton are all up for grabs if you'd like any of them.

Most brutal about all the cards was not one of them fit into my personal collection. This is the reason I will be sticking with the plan of just buying the cards for my player collections. No reason to accumulate a bunch of unwanted cards when I can just simply buy the cards I need.

Next up will be the Opening Day cards that come out in the near future. Being I have been collecting the mascot subset. There are very high odds that a decent amount of packs will be bought in hopes of acquiring some of those. Currently I'm teetering on the edge of if I want to go the route of building the set, and subsets. Who knows which route I travel as I am currently undecided on my feelings about the 2016 Topps design.

Arizona DiamondBacks Bobbles Thanks To Kenny

In another of those loooooooong overdue posts. Back around September, or October I did a bobblehead trade with Kenny from the online group TradingBases. Kenny took me up on an offer to clean out some of the bobbleheads I'd accumulated doubles of. In return he sent six very cool bobbleheads. Today I will be showcasing four of those as they have now become a new team collection of bobbleheads that now have their own shelf.

Out of all the bobbleheads in the entire collection the Parra has to rank in my top 5 favorites. Him diving for the ball is a very cool look that I have seen for a few others, but not any that until now I had in this collection. Sitting on the shelf, but taken out for the picture is a Chris Young bobblehead, and another cool DBacks item I will show off at a later date.

First Ever College Basketball Game

On Sunday I got to do something I have never done before. That thing was go see a college basketball game. Why up until Sunday it had never happened is a mystery as we have the Oregon State Beavers within twenty miles, and getting tickets for them is real easy. Despite that it had never happened before, but odds are it might be happening on a more regular basis now.

After doing the guys weekend I had mentioned to a few people including the wife that there were still a few sporting events I hadn't gone to. Those events were college basketball, NHL, MLS, NFL, and NASCAR. When making that mention I thought it would be cool to eventually knock all, but one off the list. While I'd love to do a game of NFL. There are a ton of other things I could do with what it would cost to get nose-bleed seats to an NFL game. Sorry NFL, but you are a league that is just to rich for this cat's blood.

Hearing the list the wife talked to a co-worker who goes to Oregon Ducks games, and he asked if I wanted to do a game this year? All on board he went out, and bought tickets. Little did we know at the time it was Super Bowl weekend, and my favorite team the Broncos would be playing. All was cool in the end though as the game started at 1, and I listened to the first quarter while heading home.

This was the view from our seats, and I didn't zoom in the phone's camera for this shot. Personally they were great seats,and we got to see all the action quite well.

I watched the Utah Utes warming up as the reason he picked this particular game is my being a fan of the Utes. As time got closer the team took over the full court when the Ducks went in to get dressed for the game.

As you can tell the Utes bench was on our side of the court.The thing I thought was most crazy about the game is I think both teams used maybe one timeout, and two at most. They were showing the game on ESPN 2 so TV timeouts were the norm.

For the game itself. Things were close until the second half when the Ducks took over. Utah just couldn't seem to get any closer than nine points, and trailed by almost twenty at one point. In the end the scoreboard shows it all.

Some interesting things I have learned from not just this game, but the Huskies football game my friend, and myself did in the fall.

When it comes to sporting events I have always been a fan of showing up before the doors open, and touring the place. In college basketball there isn't a whole lot to see so you basically end up sitting in your seat waiting for the game to start. This might be different in other places, but here in the Northwest this seems to be the normal thing. At the football game we could walk around, and check out people's tailgating murals to kill time. There wasn't any of that at the game so it was sit, and wait for the hour until game time.

At the two games I've been to the view for the college game is simply more amazing than the pros. A few years back we went to some Blazers games, and once sat close to the area we were at Sunday. Those seats didn't give the same views we had in Eugene. The college venues seem to be built so that you almost feel like you are on top of the action. I know in both Eugene, and Seattle where I saw the two games the playing surface was dug down.  The hole seems to help give off that vibe of being almost on the field, or in this case court.

Overall I had a great time, and we talked about maybe catching a game or two next season. Odds are we won't be doing Utah, but two other teams so for those games I'll just root for the Ducks.