Back with a Contest post

Sports Card Collectors, is having a contest that happens to end on my wife's birthday next week.
Looks like a very cool prize.

Go on over here and check it out, and tellem Dawgbones sentcha!

Thanks for reading,
have a GReat day!
Dawgbones

Chasing Utley around for a contest...

just a quick little post with a Wallet card spotting...

yep, rode into work this morning and decided to take a few snapshots in the parking lot before heading inside.

and how about a selfie...

Ah yes, that V-Twin rumble!! No better way to wake up in the morning!!
Oh, and the fore-mentioned contest, for those that have not heard, is over at a new blog I discovered recently, Bubba's Bangin Batch of Baseball Bits. but you might want to hurry, the deadline slipped up on me faster than I ride (and that's pretty danged fast!!). So go on over here and check it out!

Thanks for reading,
Have a GReat day!!
Dawgbones

500 Posts and a Contest

Nope, sorry, not here, not me... all you've been getting from me lately is the overwhelming sound of crickets chirping!!

No, not that kind of cricket... though I wouldn't mind her chirping at all!!!

This kind of cricket!!

But my good friend over at Baseball Card Breakdown IS having the post-titled event right now!

Go on over and check it out here...

and as always, tellem Dawgbones sentcha!
Have a GReat day!
Thanks for reading!
Dawgbones

King for a day...

So I found another group of mystery type figures at Target the other night.

Yes, more Minions!! I just can't help myself, I love the minions!

The only drawback to this set is the absence of odds! I guess that means you have an equal chance of getting any one of the bunch! (at least until you've bought about 60% or so... we will have to wait and see...)

Bet you can guess from the post title which one I got!! Yep, that's

British Invasion King Bob Minion...

That's it for now!

Thanks for reading! 

Have a GReat day!

Dawgbones

Eugene, You Genius!

back today with a few more Funko Mystery doubles that have joined my collection here at work.

 The new gang...

 KAAARRRLLLLL!

 Rick Grimes. (or as my wife says, "Dick!")

 Abraham.

 Eugene... (he's a Hot Topic exclusive, and hence, the post title!)

Michonne.

Michonne and Karl are actually from Series II, whereas Rick, Abraham and Eugene are from Series III.

Thanks for reading,

Have a GReat day!

Dawgbones

TWD, Mystery Solved...

My wife is heavily into these Funko blind box Mystery Figures. Especially the Walking Dead. She has most of the first and second series, as well as the newest, Series 3. But that doesn't stop her from trying to complete the set. She has purchased both the regular retail as well as Hot Topic boxes, receiving a nice mix of regular base figures and exclusives, as well as a couple of the rarer versions.
Which is a good thing for me, as I get to put some of the doubles in my collection in my cubicle at work.

Today I added 4 figures from series 3:

My favorite couple from the show, Maggie and Glenn.

As well as both base versions of Daryl.

She is actively hunting both the Motorcycle and Carol. She is using the rest of her duplicates to decorate a "Christmas" tree that is a permanent fixture on our kitchen counter. I will share that project when it is further along.

Thanks for reading,
Have a GReat day!
Dawgbones

A Pleasant Surprise (plus a first!)

So,
Along with the return of my W.C. Utley, my new found friend over at Cards on Cards also sent me a second, surprise bubblelope of cards which included a couple Utleys, a Hamels, a Schmidt, and a first for me...

The first would be one of those sparkle variation cards from last year's update set. I've hunted for a few of these over the past year but could not afford the premium that some of them were commanding. Much to my good fortune, Kerry has sent me a very fine example for my Phillies collection.

Hopefully Buchanan can overcome his third inning bobble against the Sawx!! I think it's going to be a very long year for this ole Phillies Phan in 2015.
Thanks for the pleasant surprise Kerry!
I love the sparkle!!
Thanks for reading!
Have a GReat week!
Dawgbones

The Gauntlet has been thrown!

Matt, over at Hearbreaking Cards of Staggering Genius, has thrown out the challenge gauntlet, and I've gladly picked it up, with a little help from my new friend out west. I've been planning this post since the Wallet Card game began, but it took a little longer than I anticipated to pull everything together!

So, apparently, my wallet card took a vacation, and left my sorry ass at home!! A while back, I arranged to join a small group break over at Cards on Cards in exchange for a few cards from Kerry's want list. I decided to strike a second, smaller bargain, for Kerry to show Mr. W.C. Utley the sites and sounds of Portland. He did not disappoint as it looks like Chase had one helluva good time out west! He gladly agreed and Mr. W.C. Utley hitched a ride out west with my end of our bargain!

This is at Music Millennium, the oldest record store still standing in the Pacific Northwest.

Though Mr. Biggs is more a fan of browsing their records and CDs, it's worth noting they also co-opted the "Keep Austin Weird" slogan from Austin, Texas and sort of made it a thing
around here for some reason.

Kerry told ole' W.C. that he worked in this building for the Water Bureau for a brief time. And he's never actually seen the TV show "Portlandia" (nor have I) but the statue predates it by more than a couple decades.

The Portlandia statue in downtown Portland at the Portland Building.

This is a very interesting picture and may be one of my favorites that showed up. Apparently on top of a freshly cut stump in Kerry's yard. There are a lot of trees in Portland and, hence, a lot of stumps. He's somewhat annoyed that this tree was cut down with no explanation.

Next Stop, the bricks in Pioneer Courthouse Square, sometimes referred to as "Portland's Living Room". People were able to buy a brick to engrave their name into when it was being built.

In the background is one of a "ridiculous number of bridges in Portland". This is the Hawthorne Bridge.

At a Voodoo Doughnut food truck parked in the Square. He usually avoids the main location as it's a tourist trap and the doughnuts are just doughnuts after all, but they've had this truck open quite a bit lately. This is a Cap'n Crunch doughnut.

And their last stop for this trip, here's Umbrella Man at Pioneer Courthouse Square. His official name is "Allow Me" according to Wikipedia, and has been called the "most photographed man in Portland", serving  as a symbol of the city and its residents.

Well, that's it for this trip, and a big thanks to Mr. Biggs for hosting W.C. and showing him a good time on his first trip out west!
Thanks for reading,
Have a GReat day!
Dawgbones

A wallet card Selfie for 2015 Opening Day

Now granted, it's no wild alligator...
But we do find W.C. Utley relaxing after his most recent cross-country vacation, readying himself for the onslaught that is OPENING DAY!!

But more on that later...
Have a GReat day!
PLAY BALL!!
Dawgbones

A 2nd Blaster of 2015 Series 1

... or why I should have taken the money and ran!!
A bit earlier this year, Play at the Plate held a contest for a Series 1 blaster when they came out.
I won, then casually forgot all about it! until contacted with a prize offer. Brian would gladly purchase the blaster and send it my way or he could send me a gift card/$$ for said blaster and I could then purchase it myself here in my hometown.

For those of you that have not looked at the blasters this year, they are quite heavy (with the manufactured Homerun Commemorative Medallion coin cards) and somewhat bulky to try to package and ship! we both agreed that it would be much easier to go with choice "B".

I've actually had the $$ and bought the blaster some time ago but wanted to "cool" my jets a bit prior to posting about the contents of the "prize" blaster.

As I alluded to earlier in this post, I should have taken the money and ran!!

I posted about my first blaster, showing the contents here. And I had planned on scanning and showing the most interesting card in each pack this time around.
But the first half of the blaster proved to contain a LOT of doubles!

Then the second half of said blaster contained MOSTLY doubles!! Seriously!! Are ya kidding me??
Even the inserts were duplicated!!

I bought said blaster from Target in hopes of gaining a few more of the Jackie Robinson Story set, since it is only 10 cards, should be easy, right? WRONG!! I average 2 cards per blaster and one of those was a duplicate!! And now all four of those are available if anybody needs them.
I pulled 2 JR-3s (.387 with Kansas City), and 1 each of JR-8 (World Series® Title in 1955) and JR-10 (Number 42 Retired across MLB®).

So I then decide to show off the most interesting pack in the blaster (plus the medallion card...)

Each pack of the ten packs in the blaster contains ten cards. wait-a-minute!! What in the name of !!??
Let's take a closer look...

Yes, 1 of those 10 cards is a coupon? A frickin coupon!! Are ya kidding me Topps?? SERIOUSLY??
I get it, you are in the business of selling cards... and you want us to buy more... but giving me a coupon in the midst of a blaster of mostly doubles is beyond me right now!! Quick math tells me this card is worth roughly at least 2 cards in the discounted pack I would buy but I would much rather have the single card that you replaced with this piece of shit!! Especially since I've had it with 2015, have received all the Phillies I would want out of series 1 and am now waiting impatiently a few more days until I can pick up my box of Opening Day from my LCS next week. (in which I will most likely pull exactly half of the Mascots set, and an incomplete base set of cards!!, but we will report on those disappointments later)

The only redeeming quality in this Blaster of Woe would possibly be the guaranteed Home Run Medallion card. I already have the 2 Phils from this series. And we have...

Don Mattingly!! Not too shabby! From the list on the side of the box, there weren't too many others that I could pull that I could put in my collection, though I am not dead set on keeping this one if the right offer presented itself!

So, there we have it. The second and possibly final blaster of the flagship offering for 2015! I may just try and grab the other Phillies from S2 in trade. And the only insert set from S1 that I'm actively chasing is the First Pitch set (though I do like the Robbed set as well). Sadly I've only pulled 4 out of 15 so far!!
If anybody has extras that they don't need, I'd love to have them. I am in need of:

FP-01 Jeff Bridges Los Angeles Dodgers ®
FP-02 Jack White Detroit Tigers ®
FP-03 McKayla Maroney Chicago White Sox ®
FP-04 Eddie Vedder Chicago Cubs ®
FP-05 Biz Markie Oakland Athletics ™

FP-07 Austin Mahone Atlanta Braves ™
FP-08 Jermaine Jones Los Angeles Dodgers ®
FP-09 Tom Willis Kansas City Royals®
FP-10 Graham Elliot Chicago Cubs ®
FP-11 Tom Morello Chicago Cubs ®

FP-13 Suzy Los Angeles Dodgers ®

and I would like to have the Ben Revere Robbed card (#R-11) if anybody pulls an extra.

Thanks for the contest Brian, and I in NO WAY what soever blame you for Topps' shenanigans at all, I just should have taken the money and ran!!

Thanks for reading my ranting,
Have a GReat day!
Dawgbnes

Twenty-One years...

Do you know where you were or what you were doing 21 years ago today?
I do...
and those two words had a whole lot to do with it!!

Today is my 21st wedding anniversary, and thanks to mother nature, I got to spend it with the love of my life, my best friend, my wife! We got a little over 4 inches of snow topped with a layer of sleet/freezing rain and temps that barely reached the mid-20s today!

What do you do for your better half after 21 years? You get a little creative!
My wife is absolutely in love with cheesy horror movies and zombie flics!
Many years ago, I taught myself how to do counted cross-stitch. It's a great way to relax, and can be a lot of fun to be creative.

So with a little internet research, I located the perfect pattern. After collecting the proper materials and selecting the right colors, we begin:

Yeah, this would take a bit longer than I had anticipated!!
but, with a little perseverance, we finish.

Now to find the right frame. I know I want to try and match the colors in the piece, I was hoping for something in the red family... ie: the blood-red family...

Well, no such luck, but the two shades of green will set off the zombie theme quite nicely. But the O.C.D. portion of my brain is now kicking the insides of my skull quite profusely, screaming that there is something missing... something just not quite right...

you can do better...

come on...

think man...

think

Ok, off to the internet I go. first off to find the right color.

for those that can't quite see the label, that's color X-27, Clear Red... then the right tool/technique...

Yes, believe it or not, a simple tooth brush later and we now have:

Oh HELL yeah!! that is perfect!! Turned out as good or better than I had hoped! and after flicking the paint to create the splatter, two of the fingers on one hand were mostly red, so I had a stroke of insanity, paint the third finger and make sure the first two were good and wet to create the bloody finger prints!! Too cool!



now I have a small quandary... I've done so good so far, let's find the right shade of green for wrapping... Yeah, bright green wrap at Hobby Lobby was $10 a roll!! Let's see what the local Dollar store has... then with a little youtube research, mainly on how to create fancy bows... and what the hell, let's get a little more creative with the paint again...

damned fine job, and not bad at all for a fancy looking gift that I'm sure she will like.

and yes,
She loved it!! I am just thrilled with the way this project turned out!!
Thanks for reading!
Have a GReat night!
Dawgbones

2015 Topps...

...or when will I get my Phirst Phillie of the new Topps?

For Valentine's Day, Mrs. Dawgbones bought me one of the new blaster boxes of 2015 Topps Series 1. I really like the new design and it's going to be real hard not to try and chase at least the base set.

I actually won a blaster from Play at the Plate earlier last month but it hasn't arrived yet. I generally buy loose packs and rack packs as the blasters tend to be pricier for the gimmick cards in them. But I also happen to like the First Home Run Medallion cards that can be found in this year's retail blasters.

I also mainly buy from my local Target stores as my local Wally Worlds don't really stock much in the way of baseball cards anymore!

I won't bore you with scans of every pack from the blaster, but will just show the cards that I found most interesting. So, when will the first Phillie player show up, and whom will it be?

not to be overly normal, I selected my "first" pack out of the middle of the stack of ten 10 card packs that come in each blaster.

There you go!! Not my first Phil but my first and second!! Marlon Byrd and Ryan Howard, not too bad!

Out of the 10 packs of cards, I actually pulled 7 out of the 12 Phillies in Series 1. I'll take those odds any day! I did pull two "duplicates" if you want to call them that...

I got the rainbow foily version of Craig Gentry's card, and it would have been the most interesting card from that pack had it also NOT contained the base version of the same card!!

and I also pulled the base and gold versions of Joakim Soria's card, but from two different packs.

I really like the First Pitch insert cards and will probably chase these over the season. I spied the Jack White card on a few posts and really like the concept behind it. Though the funniest one would be the one that I actually pulled from this blaster. Read about Fiddy Cent's exploits over at The Raz Card Blog, complete with video short of the wayward toss!!

Which brings us to the medallion card, and my reason for trying the blaster to begin with. obviously, I did not get the Utley version that I was hoping for! But I really like this design, it's a very heavy card, the coin weighs it down quite a bit. But it's a nice shiny team logo medallion to celebrate the chosen subject's first home run. Paul's example is available for trade as the only one(s) I am trying to secure from Series 1 are the two Phillies, especially Chase's.

And that brings us to the final card from the blaster, and I almost overloooked it as it blends so well with the rest of the design this year. The biggest difference is the numbering on the back. This is one of the "Snow Camo" parallels. These fall 1 in every 267 packs and is one of the first rare parallels that I've pulled from a pack of cards. Of course Mr. Wilson is not one of the better (ie more demanded) players and is not worth much of a premium but is still a neat card.

and that about covers my first blaster of 2015.
I'll be back with the winning one when it arrives.
Thanks for reading,
Have a GReat day!
Dawgbones