Three In A Row

So after my first and second purchases to kick start this year, I picked up one more baseball card on eBay.

It's nothing too fancy (it came in a PWE) but it is something I wasn't going to turn down.

The card itself is a 2007 Choice NY-Penn League Top Prospects card of Zach (Zachary) McAllister. McAllister was originally a third round draft pick by the Yankees back in 2006 but he was traded to the Clevelands in the Austin Kearns trade (*blech*). He's carved out a nice career for himself as a reliever although it looks like he and the Clevelands may part ways (Yankees reunion maybe?, the NYY always want bullpen arms).

Z-Mac was one of the two Staten Island Yankee representatives in the 2007 Choice NYPL Top Prospects set.

The other was Dellin Betances.

So after all these years (all two of them) these two are back together and reunited in my collection.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).

My First Baseball Card Purchase Of The Year...

...hasn't arrived yet so here's my second baseball card purchase of the year.

A week or so ago I finally snapped and decided to buy some things on eBay. And by "things" I'm of course referring to baseball cards. I know I said I'm on a six month no-baseball card goal but I never said that those six months had to be consecutive. I've got three months down, I can get the remaining three out of the eight months we still have in 2016 (there's only eight more months of 2016 BTW).

So yeah my first purchase isn't here yet, so instead here's my second one that arrived faster and is probably a lot more appropriate given what this blog is about.

See what I mean?

I finally tracked down one of the two remaining non-printing plate Luis Torrens parallels I needed from 2014 Bowman Draft. This particular specimen is the silver wave variety.

And it's numbered 18/25. The reason I've been after this for so long is because these are really overpriced for somer reason. Outside of a few stray auctions I missed out on these are only readily available as Buy It Nows for like $15 + shipping. Considering how I got the shimmer refractor (numbered to 15) for less I'm not paying that.

But then I found a pretty good lot deal on eBay where the crown jewel was the silver wave and it was accompanied by lots and lots of Torrenses. You want to know how many?

Excluding the silver wave there were 65 Luis Torrens inside the lot.

I was too lazy to scan them but there were five normal refractors.
There was one silver ice parallel.
There were 14 chrome base cards.
And finally there were 45 paper base cards.

In all I paid around $20 for this lot. If you exclude shipping it evens out to roughly $10 for the silver wave and $7 for everything else, which is decent I suppose. At the very least it doesn't hurt to have a giant stack of Torrens cards ready for if/when I ever see him again and want to just give him some cards.

Anyway with the silver wave now in my possession all I need is the superfractor and I'll have completed the 2014 Bowman Draft Top Prospects Chrome Luis Torrens rainbow (minus the plates).

For now the one printing plate I do have will have to fill the gap. Note that this excludes the paper cards.

Only one more chrome parallel to go...

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).

One Tear For Torrens

A few days ago I briefly mentioned that Luis Torrens' return was imminent but also delayed. Well here's a blogpost to expand on that because this is Luis Torrens fan blog.

So earlier this week (or was it near the end of last week?) the Charleston Riverdogs announced their official opening day roster. It featured a ton of notable guys like Domingo Acevedo, Kyle Holder, Hoy Jun Park and Thairo Estrada.

Now that's all fine and good but one key player was missing, Luis Torrens.

Thanks to a contact of mine down in Florida it was quickly revealed to me that Torrens was being held behind in Tampa due to some shoulder issues.

A few days after that Pinstriped Prospects had more regarding Luis Torrens' shoulder.
Apparently there's an irritated labrum (according to Riverdogs manager Luis Dorante) on the bone that's going to take a little while to heal.

Exactly how long Luis Torrens is going to be out remains to be seen but obviously I'm hoping for a quick recovery.

Unfortunately I haven't bought any new Torrens cards to go along with this post, but I might just scoop one up for the heck of it. Once Torrens gets back on the field, it'll be much harder to collect him I'm sure.

So yeah, Torrens' return and 2016 debut is delayed, but it is coming. Expect the worst, hope for the best I guess.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).