World's Biggest

MICRO

Micro-organisms

Micro-film

Micro Machines

Microwave






MINI

Mini-Me

Terrell Owens

Minnie Mouse

Mini-Cooper

Winnie Cooper


BIG

Le Big Mac



Big

Biggie

The Big Bang Theory (new night and time)

The Big Show

The Really Big Show

WORLD'S BIGGEST!!

Blue Whale

Skyscraper

Castle

Mountain

Tree


As the mini-craze continues for my collection, I stumbled upon a lot of five "World's Biggest" minis that I could not pass up. Of the secret sets, this one is pretty impressive and seems to be mostly obtainable in retail and blaster packs.

SIDE NOTE: I have purchased two blasters of Ginter and HAVE pulled a couple hard to find minis, but not World's Biggest. That's a later post though.

Tribute Pack(s) Summary

High-end stuff is my weakness.

Ever since SP Legendary cuts, which is not TRULY high end, but pretty spendy for 12 packs of cards, I have had a taste for the upper-tier sets that come out each year.

I started out with Sweet Spot 2008, which I assumed was the MOST that I would ever spend for one pack. I was thrilled to pull a Sweet Spot auto of Hideki Kuroda out of my very first pack, and loved it. Never mind that I totally defied the 1:6 odds of hitting it...which ultimate resulted in me buying more and more Sweet Spot packs and being utterly perplexed that I could not repeat the feat.

Alas, there were more expensive packs to be had.

Ballpark. Okay, this stuff was just ridiculous. I am proud to say that I bought one and only one pack of 2009 Ballpark. Multi-swatches just were not enough of a payoff for my pretty penny. Some people really love swatches that have front and back subjects. I am mostly just annoyed by it, especially with the extra card that comes with it that implores you to keep it with the card as proof of authenticity. I threw it away. Rouge swatch.

Sweet Spot 2009 came out, and my luck was absolutely terrible, as I pulled nothing but bland and uninspired swatches pack after pack. Plus the prices of 2009 skyrocked so quickly that it was not even worth my money. Pretty sweet looking base cards with the baseball stitch-raised design, but base cards are pretty pointless in this box anyways.

Onward I went to 2010 Topps Finest (or is it 2009??) Anyways, LOVE these cards. I bought the dual-box, so it guaranteed some nice refractor cards and two Rookie Letter Patch auto refractors that are fantastic looking. I had two problems with this set, in that glossy, shiny cards are impossible to keep clean of fingerprints and are often suffering the wears of the manufacturing process, with scratches and dents etc. Plus you get a bit worn on serial numbered parallels. But since I was only getting the two boxes, I was pretty happy with what I got, put my nine favorite in a binder and called it good.

NOW Topps Tribute comes along, and while I have had plenty of fun sniping some great auto-relics off of eBay, I think there is just a part of me that needs the thrill of the unknown. Yeah I know that whatever I pull will most likely only net me 1/2 to 2/3's what I paid for it at the the shop, but again, since I am only looking to complete a hybrid page of autos and relics, I don't really care what I pull because I plan on keeping it.

So I must confess that I started with two packs....that then became four packs. I could not help myself. The cards are really beautiful, even if they do attract fingerprints and there are definitely some factory flaws as well.

Here, then, are the highlights of a couple of the packs. While the relics and autos are off the market (unless you REALLY can convince me) I am not particularly attached to the base, and some are quite nice. So make yer offers!



Here are some shiny old-timers.

Stargell, McCovey and what I guess is Tributes answer to the obscure subset..Rivalries or something like that.

Here is a smattering of current talent as well as my "always pull this guy" old timer Dizzy Dean. He is my Shin-Shoo-Choo, and my Aramis Ramirez (whom by the way I pulled ANOTHER relic of last night) of the HOF group.

Typically I don't get too fired up about relics, but being a fan of the "Flying Dutchman", if this truly is part of a Honus Wagner game-used jersey, then I am thrilled to have it. Eddie Matthews Jersey just looks and feels old, plus the color-scheme is really nice on this card.

Pack 3 had a nice Kung Fu Panda Auto Relic that is suspiciously missing here.

Pack 4? Well, let's just say that it was a sign that I am to call it quits on Tribute for the year. You play with matches, you get burned!

It's here!

...The mini of all minis has arrived safely at JD's house. I proudly give you.....Easter Bunny.

Hopping merrily along, from apparently New Jersey, the Easter hopped his was out West, depositing Easter eggs to all the good little children of the World and spreading joy while shunning the "creature" moniker that has been unfairly bestowed upon him at the Topps compound.

The Easter Bunny is probably my MOST sought after mini from this year's Ginter set. I have not even sniffed a creature card this year (last year I pulled Dragon), and have tried several boxes and a blaster in an attempt to pull one of this subset.

Alas is was not to be so I went to the good ol' eBay backup and the previous owner sent the bunny merrily on his way. Of course with my new found love of minis, Mr. Rabbit will end up random sleeve and will quickly be "out of sight, out of mind", but for the moment this is BIG news (a hint for what else is on the way).

Here is a little of Charles Schulz' Easter Beagle and some dancing bunnies to get your day going.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6w566K4Bw0

While you were out...

Last week, it would appear that a great number of collectors migrated East...at least East of Oregon, and attended the great Mecca that was the National. I have to admit that I was initially jealous of such a fantastic show. I don't think we have anything anywhere near that caliber out here in the Northwest.

But as the blog reports and reviews came in, I felt a lot better, as most people seemed to report that most products were vintage and slightly high-priced. I am a newer collector who is focused on newer products and would be looking for killer deals to be had, so while the spectacle and the sheer entertainment value may have been there, the bargains probably would not have been worth my time.

HOWEVER, I did take advantage of the general collecting populous being away from their computers to jump onto eBay and find some outrageous deals on Topps Tribute that would have easily been double the price that they were going for on eBay that week. Here are a few of my lucky snags...

Carlos Pena Auto-Relic 23/99. My goal is to fill up a sheet of Tribute...five autos and four relics. There is nothing overly outstanding about this particular card, but I have always like Pena, and wish Boston would have kept him around. I also like these single-relics because the display both a team logo and a player number. The double relics have just the logo, and the triple relics...well, you better know your players. Of course, this is Tribute and not Obak, so player recognize SHOULD not be an issue.

Anyways, the fun of this find was that I discovered it with a mere 13 seconds left and somehow found a way to get in an absurdly low top-bid and Carlos made his way to Oregon.

From here things got a lot shinier!

Ah, Big Papi! Gold #5/25 double-relic auto. No scanner does justice to any of these cards, but the gold cards especially. If you thought that Pena's auto was perplexing, check out Papi's.

And if you though Papi's auto was perplexing, Check out Fielder! #4/25. I Like GOOOOOLLD! This is my first Fielder autograph and definitely a quality snag.

I also threw down for a couple packs. Not the most economically sound decision, but you gotta have that thrill factor from time to time, right? Results were not all that shabby. I will post those soon!

JD's Wild Cardz is getting smaller!

Mini-small that is...

Piggybacking on yesterday's post regarding the lack of originality and card subjects in recent products, when I assess where the "wow" factor really comes in to play (at least in my collection) is with the various product mini cards...

For the longest time, as long as time gets when you only have been collecting for a year...I found that mini cards were a bit of a nuisance because I had no way to store them, as well as mini cards were a bit of an enigma because I could not wrap my noodle around why somebody would clammer over a scale-version of a base card.

Of course over time both of these issues resolved themselves. I have since found tobacco card binder sleeves, and actually find that the mini cards look pretty fancy all lined up together...and I also have discovered that there are a ton of mini-exclusives produced, especially in the Ginter set. Salty sailors, world's biggest, creatures of joy, national animals, dinosaurs!!

So at least to me, it appears as if the originality that I feel has been lacking in regular sets has appeared to be pumped into mini production. That being the case I have decided to sleeve up all my minis and start a new binder!

My sleeves came in the other day and my first dilemma was "how do I organize these"? I have several greek gods, dinos, wordsmiths etc, but do I organize numerically by set? What happens when I acquire another card, do I shift them all? Which set do I like best and where do I put those.

So for now I just decided to randomly throw them all into sleeves and figure it later...hey, it's the collectors way, right?

But then I noticed something when I flipped though my sheets...I LIKED the chaotic look to it. One one page I had a shark, a greek god, a Jim Palmer, a Cougar, a Kurt Suzuki, the atom card, and a horse.

On another, a dino, a sheep, William Shakespeare, Coco Crisp, The Parthenon, Mike Aviles...

Hmm, and after I flip through the 10 or so pages I flipped though again and on each of these pages I found my attention drawn to different cards each time! It was like looking through a page for the first time.

I kinda like this mad-scramble of chaos. I realize now that lining up an entire set of mini's side-by-side tends to make them all blend together and I scan right over the top of them. Having no display pattern makes these cards infinitely more interesting! I also threw in my magic 8-ball goodwin of Vlad, my hand numbered Heinrich Hertz...just sleeve em all up and let em mingle!

So I am going to turn some of my attention towards mini cards, with Obak being my next target. I don't really care for full sets, or particular cards...as long as they are not a dup, I want em! Occasionally I will share some of my favorites of the moment with you.

Oh yeah...and I have my APB out for any of the World's Biggest mini cards as well as the Easter Bunny and the Invisible Man. If you would like to do some mini swapping, please let me know.

Here are a couple of my current favorites...

This card is RAGIN'! I love the black border on this card, it really gives it an extra creepiness factor that really makes this card original.


I have loved this card forever, but finally broke down and sprung for it on eBay. So far, this is my hand's down favorite of all mini-time. More minis to come!