Brubaker’s Dozen Finds of Ebay #12: Thanks A Latte

Welcome back to the Brubaker’s Dozen. Bringing up the #12 slot in the order, we have a lovely lot of Hunter Pence cards. I stumbled across these when the last card here showed up in one of my saved searches at a really reasonable price. Then another, and another, and so I threw in some placeholder bids. Two of the cards jumped up above what I wanted to spend, but when it became clear that I was going to win the third one, I went to see what else the seller had.

That’s when it became clear that someone was liquidating their Hunter Pence collection of hits. The same seller had around 25 or 30 autographs, relics, and printing plates up, all ending within the same fifteen minute window. I picked out a few to target, knowing that I’d miss out on most of them. The first score I landed was this Endorsements autographed insert from 2007 Upper Deck Exquisite Rookie Collection. That makes this a certified auto (a sticker, although it’s hidden quite well) of Pence in his rookie year, and it’s numbered just 8/50. Nice!

This one ended within seconds of the other, and as I didn’t have an autographed card of the “local coffee shop owner,” I wanted to make sure I came away with at least one from the slew of auctions. I wound up with two out of half a dozen that I threw bids on, and this comes from the same UD Exquisite set. It’s another autograph insert, called “The Future,” and is numbered a scarce 11/20. I have had a pair of signed Pence baseballs for a while, but it’s nice to slot one of these into the Astro-graphs binder. I’m still hoping to run into him over at Coral Sword sometime this offseason, but he’s currently playing winter ball for the Toros del Este in the Dominican Winter League.

Of course, with so many awesome Pence cards ending at the same time, I threw a few more bids out there. The one other card that I landed was this beauty of a patch card from 2008 Upper Deck Premier. It’s two different patches, something that I wasn’t certain about from the auction. The O is from a star or jersey lettering of some sort, while the F is very clearly from the chain-stitched Houston script on the front of the road gray jerseys. It’s numbered to 5/75, and thick as all get-out, as you can imagine patch cards usually are.

The last of the quasi-lot that I assembled for myself was the card that started it all, a lovely framed mini yellow printing plate from the 2009 Topps 206 set. Just look at it! I love the blue frame and how it provides a nice contrast with the image, and the fact that there is a good image showing on the plate. I landed this for just about 10 bucks, which is ideally the window I like to spend on printing plates. I don’t have many – I should go back and check sometime soon – but this is probably number 6 or so in the collection.

Stay tuned for more finds in the days to come. Oh, and trust me – if I do run into Hunter this offseason, you’ll be the first to hear about it.