Aaron Thompson - 2011-12 Brisbane Bandits

Originally from the Gold Coast, Thompson played the in the first two seasons of the ABL with the Brisbane Bandits. Thompson had previously been signed by the Texas Rangers, but only played a single year of Rookie level ball in 2010 before being released.

2011-12 Brisbane Bandits Aaron Thompson card front - © 2012

2013-14 Official ABL Cards by Dingo Cards? Here's Hoping

Saw a post on Facebook last night by Very Graphic Designs promoting designs for 2013-14 Australian Baseball League cards. Appears to be promotional work for a company called Dingo Swap cards - I've not heard of them before, but I have to say that the preview cards look very nice. There are some great player shots on these cards - love the Hightower card especially.  I'm presuming that they're done by Very Graphic Designs - the same gent who designed the Brisbane Bandits team issued sets last year.

Here's the promotional ad:

And here are the card previews put up onto Facebook (Just to reiterate, these aren't my card designs):

Dingo Swapcards Promotional card design for 2013-14 ABL cards (from Facebook)

Dingo Swapcards Promotional card design for 2013-14 ABL cards (from Facebook)

Dingo Swapcards Promotional card design for 2013-14 ABL cards (from Facebook)

Dingo Swapcards Promotional card design for 2013-14 ABL cards (from Facebook)

Dingo Swapcards Promotional card design for 2013-14 ABL cards (from Facebook)

Dingo Swapcards Promotional card design for 2013-14 ABL cards (from Facebook)

Dingo Swapcards Promotional card design for 2013-14 ABL cards (from Facebook)

It's a great idea - I hope they get traction. The Select cards last year were a step in the right direction, but were let down by poor quality control and average photography choices. One of the gimmicks Dingo are trying to use is the concept of producing a card for every player from every team. I'm not sure exactly what that means - the rosters do change over the season, so it would be a reasonably large set - probably 210+ cards, maybe closer to 250, and there were several players who only made extremely brief appearances fro single games.Still, it would be nice if they can get the licencing.

2011-12 ABL Season Checklist Card

To go with the Header Card for my 2011-12 season card designs, I also made a Checklist card. All up I had card designs for 125 different players from the 2011-12 ABL season.

2011-12 Checklist card CL02 - card front - © 2012 Adam East

2011-12 Checklist card CL02 - card back - © 2012 Adam East

Inaugural COMC Motherload - Part 1 - Grant Balfour

As posted last week, I received my first ever shipment from COMC recently. I'll be posting up over the next couple of weeks the goodies that I got in my package - ranging from the common through to the awesome.

First up are 9 cards of Oakland's Aussie reliever (and Australia's second ever MLB All Star) Grant Balfour. Nothing overly exciting in this lot, but still, all cards that I needed. My Pick of the Buy™ for Balfour's cards would be the 2001 SPx card, given it's a numbered rookie card of Balfour's.

Grant Balfour 2001 SPx 103 #d/2000

Grant Balfour 2008 Topps Update Gold Border UH48 #d/2008

Grant Balfour 2011 Topps Update US135

Grant Balfour 2011 Topps Update Wal Mart Blue Border US135

Grant Balfour 2012 Topps Gold 652 #d/2012

Grant Balfour 2012 Topps Gold Mini 652

Grant Balfour 2013 Topps Gypsy Queen 345

Grant Balfour 2013 Topps Gypsy Queen Mini 345

Grant Balfour 2013 Topps Heritage 303

Phil Brassington - 2010-11 Canberra Cavalry

I was surprised to find that I had missed posting up Phil Brassington's card design from the 2010-11 ABL season. Brassington is one of the veterans of Australian baseball. He was drafted by the Kansas City Royals in 1993, playing with their low A affiliate, the Eugene Emeralds.

Originally a hard throwing starter, 1993 would be his only year of affiliated baseball, with his career continually dogged by injury. He spent 9 years in the original incarnation of the Australian Baseball League, where he played for 6 different teams, but managed only 64 games. This included stints with both the original Perth Heat, and the Canberra Bushrangers.

When the original ABL finally folded, he headed over to the US,  playing five seasons of independent ball in the early 2000s, before returning at the spritely age of 40 to the newly formed ABL in 2010

It was great to see him briefly back in the new ABL, with short stints playing for Canberra in the first two seasons, and a (presumably) farewell game for the Perth Heat in 2012-13. This was possibly a tip of the hat to the team he debuted with in the original ABL back in 1991. I don't know if he'll be returning again for 2013-14, noting that the new ABL has not been kind to him: 3 seasons, 8 games, 22.1 innings, 32 runs (2 unearned), and an ERA of 12.09. He's still one of my favourite players though.

2010-11 Canberra Cavalry Phil Brassington card front - © 2011 Adam East

What to Post Now? - 2011-12 ABL Season Header Card

It's still 80 days until Opening Day of the  2013-14 Australian Baseball League season, and I've finally finished posting up images of my backlog of card designs from the 2012-13 ABL season. So, what am I going to continue to post until I start getting images from the 2013-14 season?

Well, several things:

1. After having reviewed by archive I've discovered a handful of card designs from the first two ABL seasons that I've accidentally missed posting here. I'll rectify those mistakes and post them up.
2. I've had some recent bulk purchases of cards of Australian MLB players, so I'll include some bulk images of these cards.
3. Card design concepts for the 2013-14 ABL season card set. With only 80 days to go, I need to come up with a new design ready for when I start capturing photos and creating new cards for the coming season. I'll post some images up when working on designs.

For now, here's one of the cards from previous seasons that I'd missed posting up. For the set of cards I created for the 2011-12 ABL season, I created a header card. Essentially it was like a "title" card that also had part of the set checklist on the back.The front of the card featured an image of an official ABL baseball - a foul ball that my son got at an ABL game that season.

2011-12 Season Header card - front - © 2012 Adam East

2011-12 Season Header card - back - © 2012 Adam East

Todd Van Steensel - 2012-13 Sydney Blue Sox - Redux

Van Steensel's card was the first card I posted up of my 2012-13 ABL card design ... except that I changed my design afterward by adding in the lightning background. It's fitting then that as I reach the end of posting  my card designs for the 2012-13 season, that I return to where it all began, and that Van Steensel's is the last 2012-13 season card design that I post.

I've revisited his card and added in the background from the original image.

2012-13 Sydney Blue Sox Todd Van Steensel card front - © 2013 Adam East

Corey Adamson - 2012-13 Perth Heat

Adamson spent 2012 playing  for the San Diego Padres minor league teams the Fort Wayne Tincaps and the Eugene Emeralds before returning to the Perth Heat for 2012-13 for his third ABL season. In 2013 he returned to the Tincaps in the US until he received a promotion last week to the high A level Lake Elsinore Storm of the California League.

I had to give Adamson a haircut in this photo. He had bad batting helmet hair in the original photo I took :)

2012-13 Perth Heat Corey Adamson card front - © 2013 Adam East

Discovering the Joy of COMC

I've only recently become a convert to Check Out My Cards, but I have definitely become a convert. In the past I've historically had two main sources to purchase American cards - Ebay and the stores on the Beckett website. Unfortunately, there are no brick and mortar card stores within 600kms (400 miles) of where I live, and even then my collecting area is that specialised, I'm usually far better to try getting cards from the USA as Australian card stores don't stock what I'm after.

In buying cards from the US, Beckett marketplace has always had the best variety, but the shipping costs were pretty steep. Trying to price up $15-20 worth of cards would likely leave you with an extra $30-40 in postage charges.

Ebay has become even worse. The main issues being:

• Many American sellers won't ship outside of the US. 
• American's charge ridiculous shipping fees. $US7.00 is quite a common shipping cost for sellers to charge to send to Australia. Apaprently US Post charges over $US6 to send a card to Australia. I can send several cards to the USA in a bubble mailer for less than $US2.50
• The farce that is the Ebay's Global Shipping Program. This rather idiotic concept means that instead of shipping overseas, American sellers can ship to an American address, and a contractor for Ebay will then ship it overseas for them. Concept OK, reality is a farce. Using this program means that it can cost over $US30 shipping for a single $US0.99 sports card to Australia. Overseas buyers are learning to pretty much steer clear of any seller using Ebay's Global Shipping Program due to the unrealistic shipping costs.

Why non-American buyers avoid sellers using Ebay's Global Shipping Program

So that's where Check Out My Cards comes into play. $US3.00 flat rate for shipping. Niiiice. After a couple of months of Ebay selling,  I jumped over to COMC and made my first ever purchase with them - 89 cards - with my profits from Ebay selling. 

Earlier this week, my COMC package arrived, a box full of Autographed, Game Used and Parallel cards of Australian MLB players. Niiiice.

Kevin Reese - 2012-13 Melbourne Aces

Reese is a returning American import who played with the Melbourne Aces during the 2012-13 ABL season. Reese had originally been playing club level ball with the Malvern Braves before earning a spot on the Aces 2011-12 ABL roster. He returned to play for the Aces again in 2012-13. Reese had previously played for several teams in the Frontier League - being named as a Frontier League All Star in 2010. Not to be confused with former New York Yankees picker Kevin Reese who was born in California in 1978, this Reese was born in Philadelphia in 1985.

Being a pitcher in a league employing the Designated Hitter rule, you might ask "Why does my photo of Reese have him wearing a batting helmet?" And the answer would be because the photo was taken of him acting as First Base Coach for the Aces during a game in Canberra.

2012-13 Melbourne Aces Kevin Reese card front - © 2013 Adam East

Ben Warner - 2012-13 Canberra Cavalry

Canberran local Warner returned for his second season with the Canberra Cavalry during the 2012-13 ABL season. Warner was one of those players that I seem to get a lot of photos of, but no good photos of, so this was the best I could do for his 2012-13 ABL card.

2012-13 Canberra Cavalry Ben Warner card front - © 2013 Adam East

David Sutherland - 2012-13 Brisbane Bandits

"Goofy", a mainstay of the Brisbane Bandits team, returned for his third season with the Bandits for the 2012-13 ABL season.

2012-13 Brisbane Bandits David Sutherland card front - © 2013 Adam East

Reed Brown - 2012-13 Adelaide Bite

Brown is an American import who was called up from South Australian club level baseball to play for the Adelaide Bite during the inaugural 2010-11 ABL season. Prior to this in 2010 he had played with the Stock City Cubs in the Austrian Baseball league.

Brown must have liked his time with the Bite, returning to play with them again in both the 2011-12 and 2012-13 ABL seasons. In the intervening 2011 and 2012 seasons he has played for the Roswell Invaders of the Pecos Baseball league back in the US. This photo - my first of Brown, shows him from the 2012-13 ABL season.

2012-13 Adelaide Bite Reed Brown card front - © 2013 Adam East

The Forgotten eTopps Cards!

Back when eTopps was all the rage in the early noughties, they released a card for Aussie Mariners prospect Chris Snelling. For those not familiar with them, eTopps cards ended up becoming a form of virtual speculation - you would buy the cards of rookies and stars, and have them transferred into your eTopps "portfolio" - but you would rarely ever get them physically into your hand. They were all "safely" stored away by Topps in a climate controlled warehouse, awaiting their assumed procession through multiple owners via online transactions for many years to come.

Chris Snelling 2003 eTopps #95 card front

Chris Snelling 2003 eTopps #95 card back

These eTopps cards were rather elusive for Australian collectors to obtain. Firstly - most eTopps owners never actually took physical possession of their cards - you had to pay extra to get the cards shipped to you, and the whole concept of eTopps was about the virtual ownership. The system wasn't really designed for you to physically take possession of the cards.

The second factor making it difficult for Australians to acquire these cards was that even if you did get an eTopps account and purchased these cards for yourself, eTopps refused to ship outside of North America.

On eBay the other day I noticed a bulk lot of Snelling's eTopps cards going cheaply, and realised that COMC's Mailbox program meant that I could order the cards and get them sent to my COMC Mailbox in the good ol' US of A. Hello Chris Snelling eTopps cards!.

First though I thought I'd check to see how much postage eTopps would charge to see if it was financially feasible. I dug out my eTopps login from many years ago, logged in, and discovered two things. The first, was that eTopps has shut down. Well, not shut down completely, but they haven't been issuing new cards for 18 months.

The second thing that was really surprising was that my eTopps account had a portfolio of 10 copies of Chris Snelling 's card in it already! Then it came back to me. I had managed to purchase a lot of Snelling's cards cheaply over 5 years ago. I'd planned to arrange with one of our American friends to get the cards shipped to him. Obviously that didn't happen. I'd obviously forgotten about the cards that I'd bought and they've been sitting there happily declining in value over the years. (Snelling's injury proneness meant he never lived up to the Hot Prospect tag.)

So, I've just arranged to get 5 copies of the card sent to COMC, and will then get them sent on to me, and I will have my Chris Snelling eTopps card in hand ... and a few more to trade!

Luke Wilkins - 2012-13 Sydney Blue Sox

Wilkins remained with the Blue Sox for the 2012-13 ABL season, following his move from Canberra to Sydney the previous season. I haven't been able to find any reports about Wilkins for the 2013 Australian winter, not even in the Euro leagues, so unsure of what he's currently doing , presumably taking it easy in Sydney.

2012-13 Sydney Blue Sox Luke Wilkins card front - © 2013 Adam East