The 30-Day Baseball Card Challenge - Day 6

"A card you spent more than $10 to get."

2015 Panini Elite Extra Edition Yadier Alvarez #/100 die-cut auto [$14.99 BIN plus $2.95 s/h] - I picked this certified autograph card up from eBay since the Los Angeles Dodgers pitching prospect is a flamethrower with ace potential, ranked No. 26 among Baseball America's Top 100 prospects and No. 43 among Major League Baseball's Top 100 prospects.

In a minor league game I saw this spring, he sent one guy’s bat flying over the visiting dugout on the third base side - that may not mean anything, but that’s kind of the stuff he has.

Once in a while I still want to impulsively grab first-year certified autograph cards of random prospects - frankly I'm just not going to get into the Bowman Chrome autos and corresponding parallels, but maybe a card from a lower-end prospect product catches my attention.

In 4 starts with Rancho Cucamonga Cucamonga Quakes, he's been battered around with an ERA of 6.43 - he hasn't shown much yet, but he's actually whittled his ERA down and once he figures things out in a hitter's league, who knows how well he'll end up doing.

2015 Donruss Yasmani Tomas Preferred

I guess I've been on sort of a Donruss kick - the base cards are bland and seem like filler, but the parallels and inserts give the product a little bit of life.

If Tomas plays, he'll have his share of cards, ones that will actually picture him in an Arizona Diamondbacks uniform - but I figured to pick one this VIP Reserved insert, serial #'d to 99, just to put away for now.

There have been rumblings that Tomas isn't going to be a particular great player especially if the Arizona Diamondbacks are insistent he stick at third base - he could have a season like fellow Cuban Jose Abreu in 2014 or might find himself with no immediate place to play, despite his immense power potential.

Featured autograph - Odrisamer Despaigne

Featured autograph - Yoenis Cespedes

I feel like I've lost my way with this blogging thing, but here is an autograph I got in-person of Oakland A's star rookie Yoenis Cespedes - I thought he was good about signing autographs when there was opportunity for him to do so when the A's visited the Angels this past season, though he shortened his autograph from the beginning of the year.

Obviously Cespedes is starring in the American League Division Series right now - looking to help the A's even things up with the Detroit Tigers.

Featured autograph - Yasiel Puig

Yasiel Puig is a Cuban outfielder baseball pundits knew little about when defected - because the organization can, the Los Angeles Dodgers still gambled and signed him to a $42 million, seven year deal to see if he can be an All-Star talent once he gets to the Major Leagues.

He made his Single-A debut for the Dodgers' California League team in Rancho Cucamonga last Tuesday night and I got his autograph - the autograph isn't great but he put his number '8' and put 'Dodgers' on my dummy card.

Before the game, Puig signed for about 10 minutes and then warmed up by himself out in left field for about five minutes, before running back into the dugout as the game was to start - obviously he speaks little English, but he was accomodating otherwise.