Getting Closer Now

Whenever a card I really need towards my collection pops up, I've found that I immediately pounce it.

Such was the case last week when this red autograph of Luis Torrens from 2014 Leaf Metal Draft popped up on eBay.

It's numbered 4 of 5 and was one of the last big/key cards I needed from this particular product.

For now I only need the base autograph (which I understand is a short print) and two printing plates to complete the whole entire master rainbow. Wish me luck everybody.

Torrens has had some good and bad moments since being called back up to Charleston. He's not hitting as much as he did in Staten Island (suffered a pretty bad slump in July actually) but he's still not without promise. After all, this year is just seeing if Torrens can stay healthy. Next year is when it'll be key to see how his development can take a step forward. Plus on a brighter note he did hit his first dinger of the year in Charleston.

In the meantime there was this cool little video on Torrens done by an intern at a local news group. If you've ever wondered what Torrens' voice sounds like and how far his English has come, here's your chance to find out.

And Torrens has also managed to make it onto MLB.com's top 10 catching prospects list at number 10. For the record, Torrens is also now the 17th best Yankees prospect according to MLB.com after all of the trades the Yankees made (I'll talk about those prospects another time). By this time next year the future Ted Williams/Johnny Bench hybrid will be the 17th best prospect in all of baseball no doubt.

Now I suppose that's where the story would usually end, but here's the thing. The seller actually threw in some nice bonus cards. I wanted to touch upon two of them.

And that was my latest Torrens pickup. Been a while since I picked one up actually. Hopefully I can track down the remaining three I need one day. As for now, I'm just glad I was actually able to leave the base version as the last remaining piece I needed for a rainbow.

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

A Strong Forceful Post

I'll admit that I don't exactly care for a lot of Topps' Star Wars offerings. Most of them are centered on the original trilogy, the prequel trilogy and the current ongoing trilogy. That's good and all but that's not exactly what I'm looking for.

But this. This is exactly what I'm looking for. Kanan Jarrus is one of the main characters in Star Wars Rebels (the animated cartoon that takes place between Episode 3 and Episode 4, roughly a decade after the events in Episode 3). He's tied for my favorite Star Wars character ever with Captain Rex. And obviously I just had to get his cards.

And yes I said cards, as in plural. These Kanans come from 2016 Topps Star Wars Evolution. In person these cards are pretty shiny. I understand that there are parallels (because of course there are) but I just picked up these base cards for fairly cheap.

Kanan even had a manu-relic. A commemorative flag patch. I'll be honest, I'm impressed and I like this card. I can like manu-relics when it's impossible to create legitimate relics in the first place.

Kanan even had this insert in the Lightsaber Evolution subset. It primarily describes how Kanan has kept himself hidden and how he keeps his lightsaber split into two pieces so he's not easily identified as a Jedi.

With this last Kanan insert I actually took advantage of a combined shipping deal and got some other cool Star Wars stuff.

Like this Attax card of my other favorite Star Wars character ever, Captain Rex. This is really cool because he doesn't have his helmet on. This is also an earlier version of Rex as the helmet he's got is his phase I helmet, and looks relatively clean (it becomes riddled with tally marks later).

For the record, Rex has two cards in Star Wars evolutions. A manu-relic numbered to 50 that is overpriced on eBay, and an autograph card signed by Rex's voice actor Bradley Dee Baker (who is one of the coolest mofos ever for the record). I'll obtain them eventually but for now, this Attax will do. I'm always game for Attax cards of cool clones.

Anyway those were my latest Star Wars pickups.

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

ICHIRO ICHIRO ICHIRO

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As always thanks for stopping by :).

#IchiroForever