Saturday, March 29, 2014

Retail Review: Topps 2014 Opening Day

Opening Day is everything I love about baseball cards: Fun cards, great looking inserts, beautiful parallels. Hits are fun, but honestly, I love a quality looking card and a chance to get plenty of fun inserts. The Blue Opening Day Edition Parallels look awesome! Even though this set is not about big hits, I think the value per dollar is huge! The mascot cards are a cool set to collect with 25 cards to collect. I also liked the between innings set, still needing the Racing Presidents card. Can't wait to buy a hobby box or two of these fun cards!


What's in the Box #1
Packs in Box 11
Cards in Pack 7
Total Cards in Box 77
Inserts Pulled: 9
Parallels Pulled: 4
Hits: 0



What's in the Box #2
Packs in Box 11
Cards in Pack 7
Total Cards in Box 77
Inserts Pulled: 12
Parallels Pulled: 4
Hits: 1


Hit List
Jay Bruce Relic





Inserts from Blaster #1:


Hits/Inserts from Blaster #2:






Inserts from a few Jumbo packs I bought:


2014 Topps Opening Day Blaster 2



2014 Topps Opening Day Blaster 1



2012 Bowman Sterling Yu Darvish RC @rangers #rangers #cardoftheday


1969 Topps Eddie Fisher #cardoftheday


Saturday, March 22, 2014

Top 5 Holy Grail Cards

My holy grail cards are different than the typical. Of course we all want a Mickey Mantle Rookie, the T206 Honus, a Goudey Ruth, but the cards that would be the crowning achievement of my PC would be these  I am going to list. I believe they are attainable, at some point.

 

These are mine, Share yours too!

 

#5 1955 Topps Ted Williams

#4 1968 O-Pee-Chee Nolan Ryan RC

#3 1968 Venezuelan Topps Nolan Ryan RC

#2 1990 Topps NNOF Frank Thomas Err

#1 1990 Topps George Bush

 

2012 Bowman Platinum Leonys Martin Gold RC @rangers #rangers #cardoftheday


2012 Bowman Clay Holmes Auto #cardoftheday


Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Review of the Sports Card Album App from @sportscardalbum

SportsCardAlbum.com is easily one of my favorite sports card sites. Like most all of us, I have my iPhone attached to me at all times. With Sports Card Album, I have my card collection in my pocket at all times too. Before using the site, I had tried the usual suspects of online mass storage (Evernote, Drop Box, Social Media apps) to attempt to store and sort my card for trade or for me to have record of what I have. No other app allows you to upload, sort, organize, and connect with others like this app. I use SCA daily to post photos on Instagram and Twitter of my card collection, and use it daily to make sure I’m not buying a duplicate of a card I already have in my collection.

When SCA announced they would be designing an iPhone app, I was stoked! I love the website application, but for the phone, an app would make it easier to stay logged in and have performance that is not limited to your web browser.  The App came out 3/11/14 and I downloaded it as soon as I heard.

 

After downloading and logging in, it provides an experience that you are familiar with on the website, but it seemed faster and easier to transition between different parts of the site with the navigation buttons at the bottom. After liking a few photos from the feed of cards from people I follow (which functions just like the other social sites you know and love), I had to upload a card to see how fast I could upload. I happened to have a photo or two of cards I just got and gave uploading a shot. I uploaded the 2013 Bowman Platinum Mike Olt Auto Relic. I found the photo upload was fast and entering the description info was super easy. I was done with the upload way faster than I thought, so fast I thought I made a mistake and didn’t upload the card. The new feature of the app that I dig is how easy it is to share the card to Twitter or Facebook. The twitter post uses the actual image with no link for the reader to click to view.

 

I’m a huge fan of this website, and the app has made it that much better. I feel like I will be soon zapping a bunch of card photos and can upload them as I have time.

I highly recommend any card collector get this app. What a great way to organize your collection!