Piazza Friday

Thanks to Night Owl, Joe over at the Sandlot, and Sportslots.com I have added quite a few Piazza card to my collection recently.  Below are probably my three favorites.

First, Joe was nice enough to send me this awesome bat card.  It actually was my first Piazza as a Met bat card (I already had an Allen and Ginter Piazza as an Oakland A bat card). 

I love the painted looking card and I like relic cards, so this one was a win win for me!  Thanks Joe.

In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I picked up this 2011 Piazza Bat card from Sportslots along with a bunch of 2011 Opening Day inserts to help me towards completing that set (though I am still in need of some).

The interesting thing about this card is that there is a Jersey relic card with the same picture on it, maybe I'll pick that up too eventually.


Finally, of all the cards Night Owl sent me, I am choosing to highlight the funniest:

Poor Piazza, surfing in Flushing Bay could not have been as fun as the surfing options in LA.

Thanks guys!

Padre Piazza

In 2006 Mike Piazza played for the San Diego Padres. He actually had a productive season there posting an OPS of .843 and hitting 22 HRs while playing 99 games as catcher and getting into almost 30 more as a pinch hitter or DH. He even had fairly even home and away splits and helped the Padres get to the playoffs that year. He only had one double in 10 post season at bats, but his numbers seem to indicate that he tired a lot in August after a torrid July.

Well, I mention all this because Joe from The Sandlot sent these two Padre Piazza cards my way in a much larger trade. That brought my total number of Piazza cards in which he appears in a Padre uni up to 4. So thanks Joe, because before I looked up the numbers I did not realize what a solid year he posted for the Padres and thanks for the trade!

Mike Piazza Collection Over 150 Cards

While Saturday was a sad sports day after the Mets and US Soccer team lost, I checked my mail late and was greeted by a package that brightened the day. Reader Eli and I worked out a huge trade in which he sent me a whole bunch of cards for my player collections while I sent him a bunch of Ryne Sandberg, Ivan Rodriguez, Vlad Guerrero, Jeff Bagwell, and Craig Biggio cards.

Part of Eli's incredibly generous package of cards for me were 38 different Mike Piazza cards that I did not already have. That brought my collection of Piazza cards to one short of 160. I happen to think that is pretty impressive. Anyway, I thought I'd highlight some of the Piazza cards Eli sent me.


I'll start with one of the Piazza's from the Dodger years. This one has a cool foil effect and is die cut a 1997 Upper Deck Star Attractions:


Next, here is a 2001 UD MVP Drawing Power insert.


I kind of like cards with geometric patterns, so here is another from Upper Deck (though the lines are less obvious).



Finally, perhaps my favorite of the bunch is this 1999 UD HoloGrFX StarView #S7.


Though I could not afford the packs when these came out, I always liked the HoloGrFx set and inserts. I don't like them quite as much as I did back then, but I still enjoy them. They are much nicer in person than this scan shows.*

Anyway, thanks again Eli!

*PS All these scans are from COMC.com, so they are not the actual cards that Eli sent me, but this was a lot quicker than scanning them all myself.

Card(s) of the Week & New Layout

First off, I got a new layout which I like a lot better than the old one in part because of the translucence of the foreground in this template that I think matches well with my blog's concept. Now if I could only figure out how to use my own background picture rather than using one from blogger's selection I'd be set.

Anyway, in celebration of the new layout here are two cards of the week. I'll show them both together first to give you some appreciation of their respective sizes (the smaller one is the size of a normal baseball card).


So these are both from Topps Gallery's Gallery of Heroes subset. The 1998 and 2000 versions. They are both made of acetate, which I have already described here. The great thing about these is that they are made to look like stained glass. The larger 1998 version was a box topper in 1998 Hobby Boxes of Topps Gallery and does an amazing job of replicating the feel of the famed Tiffany Stained Glass.

If you are a fan of Tiffany Stained Glass or Stained Glass in general, I highly recommend the Museum of Stained Glass which always offers free admission at Chicago's Navy Pier. They do have some sports related stained glass there including a Michael Jordan window, but unfortunately nothing as nice as either of these.


The textured look accomplished by modifying the acetate is incredibly cool, and cannot be done justice by these scans. So, these are some of my favorite cards because 1. They are clear and made of an alternate material (acetate) and 2. They are made to look like a second material (glass) of which I am also a big fan.

Two Gems from the Card Show

For those of you in Northern IL today is your last chance to visit the card show I went to on Friady at the Hawthorne mall in Vernon Hills IL. I really wanted to post on two of the other cards I got there Friday.

The first is a 2007 Topps Sterling Base David Wright to go along with my White Suede Boarder version:


This looks more like traditional leather than suede and is numbered to 250 rather than 50 like the suede. Either way it looks nice next to the white suede one in my binder. I know the boxes are insanely expensive, but I like the base cards.

Second, is this game used Piazza bat card:

I really like the game used bat cards that are burned with extra embellishments. This may actually be the most intricate of those types of game used bat cards that I've seen. Both the shape and the design of the bat piece are pretty cool. While I am no Rangers or Astros fan, I would think this insert would look even cooler for those teams player considering the star design.

Hopefully Santana can win the match up of the lefties today. Let's go Mets!

Trades

Thanks to Roy over at The Paper Chase for a great stack of my favorite Mets. It was a pleasure sending him some Blue Jays cards in return.

Here are some of the cards I netted in the deal:

First, on the heals of my last post, an Aurora John Olerud. Aurora was a weird set, but now I have Olerud, Alfonzo, and Piazza from this set.

Next an Ultimate Victory Edgardo Alfonzo which I like because he's got some shades on.

Here's a sweet Piazza SPx Radiance card. I enjoy the fact that the SPx medallion (or whatever you call their logo) is actually cut into the card. Plus, I think the rays emanating from the medallion are amusing.



Finally, a nice John Maine from Topps 206. I like the Topps 206 set because of the exposure effects on the sets, and I like Maine because I kept reminding everyone that the Mets got a young pitcher in return for Kris Benson and that he could turn out to be an interesting player even if Jorge Julio stunk. Then Maine went out and had a great year (better than anything Benson would do with the remainder of his career), and while he has never replicated that performance I am hoping he has a solid, injury free, high strikeout year.