'Tis The Season To Be Zippy.

       I have declared this month the one where I settle all draft folder business.  I have finally (and mercifully) come to the end of my first tier of posts to close out, my unwritten trades.  It is a relief to have these out of the draft folder and into the world, if only to thank the kind souls who sent me stuff. 

This past Christmas brought me few glad tidings and fewer reasons for good cheer, but one shining exception was an unexpected package I received from Kenny, aka Zippy Zappy.  Kenny and I have exchanged packages since he started his blog two years ago and I must say, if we were keeping score, I would say he's winning.  This one was sent as a holiday gift in thanks for all our past swaps. 

If you read his blog, you'll know that ZZ is a huge prospector and his love of rookies was my gain here, as I am now flush in minor league Mets.  One name really stands out here, L.J. Mazzilli is the son of Mets favorite Lee.  This was great to get in December but that joy has been slightly tarnished now that he has been suspended 50 games of the 2015 season.  Luckily, that tiny Dominic Smith card more than makes up for that.

ZZ sends off some major league cards too. 

Better than jokes about my shiny Dickey would be mentioning my handsome little Dickey, right? Right?  Hello?  Is this thing on?

Back to the bread and butter of ZZ, the rookie prospects.  Here is a six pack of Extra Edition.  I have heard of two of these guys, so in that arena I am batting a cool .333.

There was a bit of gratuitous junk wax, which is fine, but what makes these stand out is the immortal Kelvin Torve, the first Mets player since Willie Mays to wear #24 (the number is unofficially retired).  Hey, it's nice to have something to be remembered for.

Some more major league cards. I have a soft spot for that Topps Ticket to Stardom set from a few years ago, so it was nice to see more of those, including a Jose Reyes insert I didn't have.

Seeing Luis Castillo going up for a pop-up is kind of a mean photo, Upper Deck.  Mets fans know what I am talking about. Lets move on before I get mad.

There was a few more older Mets cards, including a tremendous 1972 Tug McGraw card that I somehow didn't have. 

He also included some New Jersey Devils cards.  I haven't bought much new hockey in the last decade or so, so these are always appreciated.  It would have been even more appropriate if they were in their green and red uniforms, given the time I got this package. 

Last but not least is the absolute highlight of all these cards:

In our first trade, Kenny included a Japanese David Wright card and even translated it for me.  Here, he makes me a multiple David Wright Asian card collector with another oddball from the far east.  He also wished me Happy Holidays in Japanese.  So let me return the fond wishes here, on St. Patrick's Day mind you, and say thanks for Zapping me for Christmas, Kenny.  I should probably take down my tree, now that I think of it.

Allen vs. Ginter: The War To Settle The Score.

       I have not given up completely on Allen and Ginter, but let's just say the bloom is off the rose.  I, like most, fell head-over-heals in love with the stuff in 2006.  I bought 2 0r 3 boxes the first two years and built the set and sold the inserts and just couldn't get enough.  I think I only bought one box in 2008 and 2009 and didn't even get around to completing the set.  Then in 2010, I didn't buy any.  No hobby boxes, no spare packs, no blasters.  Somehow, the world kept turning.  I think I have given you a similar rant about Topps Heritage if I recall correctly.  The last few years, I have been content to pick up some here and there, usually an impulsive blaster or rack pack or two.  Now, don't get me wrong, I still love the stuff - I just get my fix in different ways. 

This year I made a slightly modified plan; I was gonna pick up my usual four pages worth via Just Commons (a website I recommend wholeheartedly).  I am a Topps completest after all, so I figured I would pick up 40 or so cards to make a page of current, vintage, sports, and non-sports.  This was an excellent plan that I had every intent to follow through on, then I found myself in the card aisle of Target.  I wasn't even looking for packs, I was looking for cheapo pages and yet somehow, a value pack of 2014 Topps Allen and Ginter found its way into my little red basket.

On the same day I bought this pack, my huge package of 134 cards arrived from Just Commons which contained my haul of 44 individually selected Allen and Ginter cards.  So let's do a slightly modified version of the ever popular Gint-a-cuffs, one where I fight with only myself and my own sad dichotomy of level-headed pragmatism and hopeless impulsive consumerism. 

The Value pack you see above contained three regular 6-card packs and a bonus pack of three exclusive mini cards, as you can see here:

I believe the exclusive minis have a different border, Topps' version of a new hat. 

Here is the page of current players I chose from Just Commons:

All of these were chosen for their color and properly aesthetic photos.  They all cost .15 cents each.

Here is the first pack from the Target Value Pack:

Okay, I guess getting inserts, SPs, and minis is certainly a plus for the packs.  Not to mention this pack has my new hero Bartolo Colon - as I have mentioned before, he has reached this status due to the fact that he is older than me, he is fatter than me, and he is pitching in the major leagues (this line never gets old).  The Donaldson here is a high number SP.  The Ford is not a vintage star I chose for their page, but the Riess is a double.  I might decide to start collecting Car-Go cards early, just in case all those Mets-Rockies trade rumors turn out to be true eventually.  The value pack cost ~$10 (with tax) so I am assigning a cost of $3 each to the packs and $1 to the bonus.  At .50 cents per card here, no matter how interesting they may be, I have to give the win to the JC selected page. 

This is the Just Commons selected page of vintage/retired players. 

I was excited when I found out the Dusty Baker card was a retired player card and not a manager card.  I snapped that one up immediately since he is not one of the usual suspects Topps uses.  Same with the Maris and the Newhouser.  The rest are definitely of the been-there-done-that variety, but it is always nice to get a Jim Palmer on the page since I usually send off my O's cards.  And I really like that picture on that Bob Feller card.  Six of these cards cost .15 cents and three of them cost .20 cents.  This page is not perfect, but I think it turned out all right.

This is pack two of the Value Pack:

There is the aforementioned Cargo again.  I was originally going to include him on my current players page but opted for Michael Cuddyer instead - a wise move it turns out.  Some people have been complaining about the write-ups on the Pastime's Pastimes cards but personally, I think they look so nice, who cares?  I will eventually be making a page of those.   That bottom three is a clean sweep of wonderfulness.  Mark Twain is an all-time favorite of mine.  Mike Piazza is my second favorite baseball player of all-time.  And Felicia Day is just too damn adorable for words, though it is odd to see her in an evening gown.  I always think of her as slightly more come-as-you-are and down to earth.  Mark, Mike, and Felicia win this one, even though as you will soon see, Ms Day is a double. 

The sports themed page from Just Commons:

Bowler, golfer, weightlifter, swimmer, CrossFit champion, wrestler, race car driver, batting stance imitator, blogger.  Okay, the last row sort of stretches to be "sporting" but I will call them "sports related" for the purposes of this page.  I am pretty enamored with that Samantha Briggs card in the middle.  Not to reveal too much about myself, but I find the idea of a woman who could throw me over her shoulder and carry me and/or throw me to be quite the turn-on.  And on the David Portnoy card, they left off the word "douche-bag" from their oddly beaming description of his career as a blogger.  Of course, I look forward to someone calling me names when I am included in the 2020 edition of Allen and Ginter.  All of these cards set me back .15 cents each.

Third and final traditional pack from the Value Pack:

Yawn.  Yawn.  Yawn.  I am certain I reject all three of those top cards for my current player page, although I can never be too bored by a dude named Jurickson Profar.  The bottom three are a little better, The World Capitals insert has a lovely picture and there is a bit of irony in a Babe Ruth mini card.  I might use that Hellickson to exchange with my created page to break up the red.  As nice as the Ruth and Rome cards are, though, I have to give the win to the created page. 

Here is the created page of non-sports personalities and such:

This one I had a ball making.  The top three Personalities are Chuck Klosterman, who wrote a great book and a bunch of good ones, Ryan Riess, who's card was chosen because of the photo, and Kevin Clancy, another blogger from Barstool who was also chosen because of the appearance of what seems to be a Ding Dong on his card (does this make it an unofficial Hostess card?).  The middle three Entertainers are The Iron Sheik, who needs no introduction to anyone who grew up in the 1980's, Kevin Smith, Jersey based film auteur who peaked early with Clerks, and Snoop Dogg - I just can't bring myself to call him Snoop Lion - heck, I just stopped calling him Snoop Doggy Dogg.  The bottom three has a combo breaker - hey it's my page - The Newsworthy are Helen Keller (whose card should be in braillle) and Buffalo Bill Cody, who has been part of Ginter before but when you are as cool as Buffalo Bill, who cares?  The combo breaker is Anthony Bourdain, because I didn't like the other Newsworthy old-timey cards I had to choose from and I like his show.  All of these cards except for one was .15 cents.  Snoop Lion set me back two dimes. 

This is the bonus pack of mini cards:

Madison Bumgarner did not have me very excited when I saw him on top, but I now see he was covering up a double dose of tremendous disappointment.  With that Wilin Rosario card along with the two Carlos Gonzalezes, somewhere in Colorado is someone who should have gotten this pack.  At .33 1/3 cents each, even with a fancy "exclusive" border, it wouldn't take much to beat this trio - the Iron Sheik could have done it all by himself.  Any of the cards from the Value Pack are available for trade if you need them.

Let's look real quick to see if I beat the odds:

The full size inserts are 1:2 so I came out ahead there at a cool three for three.  The Pastime's Pastimes and SPs are also 1:2 so I guess I'll call that even there.  Alas, no other interesting pull was in the packs, but the black bordered Piazza was a 1:10 pull however so that was a minor upset.  A mini framed oddity relic would have been both miraculous and fun to say over and over again. 

Ah, but the final nail in the coffin for the Value Pack is the "leftover" cards I picked up from Just Commons for various collections:

Part of the fun of A&G is you might happen upon a lovely lady.  Here you see three.  The middle row were all picked up for player collections, including the Mike Piazza base card and a Blue Dickey.  The bottom two are Orlando Cepeda, who is getting a hall of fame page, and a leftover from the current player page.  Since Didi Gregorius was in the same pose, the choice between him and Nick Franklin was pretty clear.  All of these except for the Piazza were only .15 a pop. 

With the 44 cards from Just Commons costing me just $6.95 and the 21 cards from the Target Value Pack costing $10.15, it is obvious my level-headed pragmatic plan was a much better idea than my impulsive consumerist pick up.  I sort of equate it with sex with your wife vs. a one night stand sex with a drunk stranger.  Lesson learned (and I won't even need a divorce lawyer*).
 

Night Owl Trade: Part 2. (or The Night Owl Strikes Back)

       Last month Greg of the indefatigable Night Owl Cards sent me what was promised to be "part one" of what is our never-ending volley of trades.  Part two arrived in my mailbox a week or so ago and, you know the old cliche about sequels never living up to the original?  Well, the Owl outdid himself here and sent me the Godfather 2 of trade parts (or it could be The Empire Strikes Back, depending on your level of film geekiness). 

Turns out ol' Greg was playing possum with me on this particular pile.  He knew all along that he had these cards for me but gave me no indication.  I knew it was you, Fredo, except he didn't break my heart this time.  He made it all a-flutter with shiny Mets cards. 

You have to wonder where this cadre of randomly awesome Mets cards came from...seems he was part of some massive group breaks and he chose the Mets as his secondary team for some of them.  This landed me those shiny ones from before and these Archives short prints that I never would have gotten around to acquiring.  Plus it landed me a Kevin McReynolds autograph which will go nicely on my page of 1980's Mets signatures. 

Look, more sparkly shiny Johan goodness!  Though you will also notice which player I chose to cover up with Greg's nice little note.  And I know how it must have pained him to send me minis, much less hall of fame Tom Seavery minis.  In fact, all those cards on the bottom there are tiny.  Those 1980's league leader minis are held in high regard in my world as I vividly remember finding a big lump of change in the cushions of my couch when I was 12 and buying out the Rite Aid of the 1987 variety.  You will also notice he didn't even Bip me this time around.  And to think I was looking forward to making a page of 9 1989 Donruss Lance Blankenships.  Oh well, you can't have everything.  Thanks Greg! 

Night Owl Trade Post #8000.

     I have lost track of all the jiffy packs and PWEs I have sent to upstate New York for Night Owl.  Our constant trading alone should be keeping the USPS in business.  While I am sure the number isn't quite 8000, I am sure it's gotta be about 50.  He also posts my stuff a lot more constantly that I post his, but that is why he has the best card blog on the block and why mine is merely a curiosity to about a dozen of you. 

So anyway, after busting my 2014 Topps packs and putting aside all the nifty Dodgers cards, I packed up those and a few other cards we had negotiated for and in return, I got what is promised to be "part 1."

Pretty sweet "part" if you ask me.  I got the last 2014 Zack Wheeler TFIN insert I needed, a great Matt Harvey insert (who am I kidding, all Matt Harvey inserts are great), and a couple Walmart parallels that I will never get on my own.  Not forgetting the Kaz Matsui rookie I didn't own and a super sweet David Cone jersey piece with a pinstripe and a low serial number, though anyone who reads Night Owl (which is everyone) knows how he now feels about jersey cards.  While I am a skeptic, I also am compelled to touch fuzzy things, so you can send them all to me if you want. 

Oh, and he bipped me.

Mutherfucker.  Last laugh is mine, though, I am putting these nine "devilish" Mickey Hatcher cards into my nine of a kind pages.  Nice try, Night Owl, nice try.  I eagerly look forward to part 2.

Double Trade Post*

*in which I am grateful for my trade partners' generosity and then a dick about their idiosyncrasies.

I am way behind in my trade posts so I am gonna try to tackle them all this week and I am going to start by taking care of two of them, both dealing with two first time traders and new Topps cards. 

First comes a wonderful swap with Gavin of Baseball Card Breakdown.  During the flurry of 2014 Topps posts, I noticed he had posted a Red Target Zack Wheeler parallel and dropped him a line saying I would love to have it.  He immediately got back to me and we were off and running.  He sent that wonderful Wheeler and a few other goodies.

The first was a chrome card of the gone-but-never-forgotten RA Dickey - sure it's metallic, but not shiny.  Now if it is shiny you want, that Pacific John Franco can't be beat.  That is not only a spectacular card, but also a card I did not have, which is always a marvelous surprise when trading blind.  Then came a few recent cards of Mets players and then some junk wax.  Okay, I always appreciate the effort.  But wait!  This is Gav we are talking about and he does a special thing to junk wax:

This is the best I could do to capture the magic - Ansel Adams I am not.

He makes those mutherfuckers glow in the dark!!!! And he sent three of them for me, all of them numbered and signed buy the artist...

My only issue with Gavin's package?  He used header cards for protection (always smart) but he wrote his note on this graphic filled Ultra Pro card when he had a nice blank canvas to scribble on this Fleer checklist.  Boy, can I be a nitpicking dick or what?  Anyway, sincere thanks Gavin for the great surprises in the trade, I am certain this won't be our last.  I hope what I sent makes up for my being a bastard.

My other 2014 Topps swap was with Chris of The Raz Card Blog.  After I had listed my 2014 Topps  series 1 goodies, Raz asked me about my four Power Player inserts.  I told him if he had any Mets from this year that I didn't have that I would be glad to send them.  And boy did he send some Mets:

Two Zack Wheeler inserts and a Matt Harvey for my player collection, not to mention a sparkly red Daniel Murphy - that is a great picture on this year's card with the Home Run Apple in the background.  He also sent me three of the All Rookie Cup Team inserts, of which I had pulled exactly zero.  Along with an incomplete eBay lot, I was able to put together the whole set in easy frugal fashion and take it off my want list. 

And my lord, look at how neatly these cards were packed:

I have received hundred dollar cards from eBay sellers that weren't so well protected.  Not to mention the penmanship on the note...way to make the rest of us look bad Chris.

So this is what I have become?  The kind of person who find fault in the kindest of gestures?  What is wrong with me?  I am such an asshole.  Chris, on the other hand, is awesome.  Thanks for initiating this trade and I am sure we will do it again soon. 

The New Favorite: 2013 Topps Museum Collection Mets Pitcher Jersey Piece Goodness.

       I have severely cut down on my purchases of fancy modern game-used cards in recent years.  I've done this for a few reasons: cost, the veracity of the pieces, and simple overkill.  What was very new and neat in 1999 is not so much in 2013. There is only so many times you can see a swatch of bat or jersey and lose your shit before the emotion just isn't there anymore.  The manufactured scarcity of low serial numbers should be factored in to the equation.  But every once in a while I stumble upon a card and I must MUST make it mine...

Oddly enough, this is not that card.  The original one I saw was all patch pieces and numbered much lower.  When the bidding went into the triple digits for that one, I gracefully and sanely bowed out.  But when I searched eBay for similar cards, I stumbled across this one.  Granted, it is not all colorful patch pieces and the serial is higher, but damn, ain't she a beauty?  It nicely covers the past, present, and future of New York Mets pitching.  I mean, yeah, the perfect choices for that card would be Zack Wheeler, Matt Harvey, Dwight Gooden, and Tom Seaver - but you can't have everything.  Sometimes, you have to roll with the Topps punches and they did a nice job of selection in spite of themselves.  Seaver is a must, Johan pitched the Mets' first no-hitter, Dickey won the Cy Young award last year, and Matt Harvey is the heir apparent to all the rich heritage Mets pitching history has to offer. And while it is all one-color jersey pieces, they did go out of their way to get different textures and colors of the four different pieces.  In the end, quite a nifty card. 

A couple of quibbles with the back...Topps numbering system continues to baffle.  PPFQR?  Why not just go with L.H.O.O.Q.? I also find it troubling that their disclaimer is now bigger than anything else printed on the back and is so vague and far-reaching it may as well say "The fuzzy pieces on the front of this card are figments of your imagination."

Oh No! Not My Dickey!

       Firstly, I could not think to blog this weekend (thus no football post) and really couldn't do much of anything after the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut on Friday.  I know life must go on, but I could do nothing but reflect and mourn after such an incomprehensible horror.  

With that said, today has ended the long saga involving the trade of my favorite Mets pitcher of recent vintage, 2012 Cy Young award winner R.A. Dickey.

I am torn on this trade.  On the one hand, it makes long term sense.  R.A. is 38 years old and it is wise to trade older players at the height of their value.  Coming off a 21-win Cy Young Award season, that value aint gonna get any higher.  Plus, the Mets are getting back from Toronto some very good prospects.  Travis D'Arnaud is a stud.  A stud like Buster Posey?  Maybe not, but close. (I just added this card to the collection and I will probably snag a few more while I can).  Noah Syndergaard, while having a wonderful hockey name (remember hockey?), has shown early promise, though only in class A ball.  Also, swapping Josh Thole for John Buck at least will stop me from constantly swearing and throwing things at the TV over Thole's lack of power, passion, and defense.

On the other hand, Dickey could pitch for another 5-6 years.  He had secretly good numbers in 2010 and 2011 and got it all to work in 2012 by winning those 21 games rather than 8.  I think he could easily have another 3 or 4 seasons like 2012.  He is the perfect kind of pitcher you want as a number 2 or 3 starter. That is worth $25 million and more.  Plus, whatever happened to team loyalty and in return rewarding a player who showed it? 

I don't think this trade was made over money but for building for the future.  By the time Zack Wheeler and Matt Harvey and Reese Havens et al are ready for prime time, say 2015, R.A. Dickey won't have the value he has now. So I understand the thinking behind it.  The Mets lost Reyes and didn't get a damn thing for it  - not even a high draft pick, since the Marlins finished so low in the standings the year before.  So trading Dickey now and getting back two players that might be on the team in 2020 is smart business (which I know to Mets fans is an unfamiliar concept).  I just hope in the long term, Sandy Alderson knows what he's doing.  This is a bold, risky move.  I pray it works out better than other Cy Young trades the Mets have made.

On top of all this, this will no doubt be the last time I get to make a good Dickey joke on this blog. The only player on the roster with a fun name worth mocking is Lucas Duda...although John Buck is a great porn name.  Godspeed, R.A. Dickey.  I will be rooting for you in Toronto to keep the Yankees out of the playoffs.

***UPDATE*** I must say, the man knows how to say goodbye.

Ketchup.

       I hate people who lament how much or little they blog.  I believe I blog just the right amount.  I do it as a hobby or, more to the point, to augment the hobby I love.  I do it when I have time or when I am inspired.  I have gotten behind, though, it would seem, as I have a bunch of drafts and a fuckton of scans that I haven't used.  So what am I gonna do now? Post about brand new cards I just scanned, of course. 

When I returned from New Orleans, there were a few packages waiting for me, one of them an eBay lot I had purchased and seemed to take forever to arrive.  I believe it was coming from Long Island, so I found it in my heart to excuse any Sandy-related delays.  I am a sucker for Topps Triple Threads.  I used to buy a few boxes of the stuff every year.  It seemed I would nail a big hit that would pay for the others.  It was a nice zero sum game.  Then, two years in a row, I kind of struck out and it soured me on the whole thing.  But I still like to have a nice page of the base cards, or in this instance, the sepia parallels:

I bought this lot because I got a lot of other cards that I wanted/can sell.  This is a good looking page and highlights the brief time Hanley Ramirez was in a Miami Marlins jersey. 

The other exciting package was a thick load of 30 cards from COMC.com.  I probably should have waited for Black Friday, but I am a firm supporter of Buy-Nothing Day, so I decided I can spend a dollar or two more for the bulk shipping and wait patiently.  Let's looks at the first nine:

OK, eight.  No surprises here.  Two Gary Carters from this year that I needed.  Two Zack Wheelers to start off my collection of him.  I think he and Matt Harvey will fight for my affection by the end of the 2013 season.  Also here are a 1984 Topps sticker of Tom Seaver and a 2004 Topps Pristine Legend of Reggie Jackson in his Arizona State uniform.  For all my huge Reggie player collection, I did not have single one with him in his Sun Devil digs; now I do.  Lastly, there are a mini Dickey and a golden Dickey, which matches my shiny Dickey.

Second nine:

Since no one seemed to have them to trade, I broke down and grabbed the two short print rookie cup cards from this year's Topps (the Reddick and the Arencibia). I also didn't have the Revere, but somehow overlooked snagging the Brett Lawrie...anybody have that one to spare/trade?  This shipment will expose the self centered habit I have to collect cards of people named Max.  You can see four of them here, two of them fictional (the Mann and Rebo) and two of them real, of which I did not have any (Russell and Monica Maxwell).  Rounding these out is a Cameron Jordan die cut rookie, Saints player I like (more on the direct purpose of that tomorrow or next week) and a OPC Legends card of Claude Lemieux, one of my favorite Devils of all time.  Remember hockey?  Yeah, me too.

This next batch are five 1996 Pinnacle Trophy Collection parallels and four 1984 Topps USFL cards:

I needed these to complete pages...

Here:

and here...

I now have pages of both USFL Topps sets and two from Pinnacle's late 90's obsession with dufex parallels, though I haven't featured the other yet. 

Since I have been obsessed and sorting my football cards, I have a few more to show.  I had found seven faux-vintage cards of two of my favorite old players, Gale Sayers and Joe Namath.

I snatched two more of each...

And now have a fantastic page of The Kansas Comet...


And Broadway Joe:

I should think about putting together that whole Namath UD Football Heroes set.  I do so enjoy those.  Namath and the Jets were my mother's favorite when she was a kid (for obvious reasons).  So while I am not big on the Jets in general, it seems fitting for me to have a page of Joe Willie.  The man is just too epic and awesome not to be represented.

***

You will also notice I updated the header graphic and added a festive holiday background picture (I would hate for all of you to get bored with my layout).  I have a bunch of Mets ornaments that go on my tree each year.  I would do a post about them, but someone already has a definitive Mets Christmas online repository.

C.Y. Dickey.

Congratulations to 2012 National League Cy Young Award winner R.A. Dickey.

He said it best during the interview following the announcement, this is a nice little consolation after a very disappointing Mets season.  But as a fellow 37-year old oddball who has been counted out many times over, I like to think this is a win for all of us...Huzzah, R.A.!!!

World Series Rack Packs.

       Walking into K-Mart on a Friday afternoon before Halloween and the perfect killer Frankensnowideathicane 2012, in retrospect, was not the best idea.  First of all, I bought candy a good 4 days before I am going to need it, which means most of it will be eaten between today and the Hallows on Tuesday.  Secondly, I had to walk past the card aisle not once but twice and the siren song of new Topps and discounted product was just too much to ignore.  I noticed that the Update series was out, so I grabbed a couple of the jumbo rack packs, just to amuse myself.  I also saw there was some discounted OPC hockey from a couple years ago, so I snatched one of those too.

Quick aside: I noticed Topps puts their Twitter and Facebook right on the packages now.  Even just 2 years ago, Upper Deck did not have that information on their wrappers. I will have to look to see when they started to put this on the packs.  One thing I love about the old wax packs from the 70's and 80's are the clubs and freebies they advertise on the backs of the wrappers and how dated and odd they look now.  I wonder if kids will look back at these packs in a couple of decades with the same sort of wonderment.  "What the heck is a facebook?" they will ask and go back to playing their 3D imbedded sensory video games that are implanted at birth, or something like that.  Anyway, back to the matter at hand.


The World Series often brings out a longing for baseball cards, new and old alike, in my heart.  Granted, I haven't watched my team in one for a dozen years and haven't seen an actual winner in 26 (though 2004 and 2007 were fun), but there is still a rush that comes from the fall classic.  I like to watch the games, or at very least have them on in the background.  It is all the more enjoyable this year that the Yankees are not involved.  Anyway, let's take a look at what came out of these packs.  I don't like to list every card, so let's just go with the nine highlights:

Hey look, it's superman Mike Trout, I am touting him as MVP of the league.  Sure Miguel Cabrera won the triple crown, but Ted Williams won TWO triple crowns, do you know how many MVPs he won in those years?  Zero.  So I don't think the triple crown is an automatic MVP win.  Also here is the newly minted Giancarlo Stanton.  If I had such a lyrical name as Giancarlo, I would never let anyone call me anything but that.  I assume he went by Mike as a kid because other children couldn't say Giancarlo.  Kids are the worst.  We also have some rookie cards of Trevor Bauer and Will Middlebrooks (who is also on the Golden Giveaway card).  I also got the obligatory Bryce Harper card.  It is players like this that make me feel old.  I am technically old enough to be his father (if I was very popular/irresponsible in high school, that is).  Roy Oswalt tried to pull the Pedro Martinez/Roger Clemens trick of coming in halfway through the year and didn't fare so well.  I have liked Roy ever since I read that he got a bulldozer as a signing bonus (or maybe he bought one with his signing bonus) either way, he went on his ranch and played with it for days.  He didn't really have any heavy earth to move at the time, he just played with it...that sounds like a kid at heart if ever I heard one. On the bottom there are more 1987 minis, the shiny gold and, in a similar move to last year when they put the series 1 and 2 liquorfractors in update, they have the gold numbered parallels for the regular issue in the update.  Why Topps chose to do this and not just, you know, put them in with the proper series, proves that Topps sometimes just likes fucking with us.

Here is Rack Pack #2, and not that it is a contest, but this one was far better:

I didn't get a single Met in the first pack, in this one, I got four, including two Dickeys.  And I have proven time and again how much I love my Dickeys.  Also there are one of my new favorites on the team, Jordany Valdespin, adored for his awesome name, goofy attitude, and hard hitting.  Valdespin can't catch a cold, which means he will eventually find his way to the American League, but I will enjoy him for as long as he is on the Mets.  On the complete opposite end of the love spectrum is Manny Acosta.  The Mets bullpen in 2012 was made of kerosine, but Acosta was more water on magnesium.  I watched him give up 3 runs in 2 innings and his ERA went down.  He was awful.  I mean car crash involving a school bus and a liquid nitrogen tanker awful.  He was so bad, I heckled him in Citizen Bank Ballpark better than the Phillies fans could.  If Manny Acosta is on the team next year, I will know the current regime has no plan on winning anytime soon.  In that upper right corner is the very odd sight of Ichiro in a Yankees uniform. [UPDATE: Eagle eyed reader Nick of Baseball Dime Boxes tells me this cool card is the SP] I watched him the last couple of months of the season and all through the playoffs and I could not get used to this.  I can only imagine what Mariners fans thought of the whole thing.  That other base card is a great shot of the Reds catcher with a glove on his head.  I enjoy silly cards like this and this one is kinda subtle since it does not feature the player listed on the card.  This card will probably make it on to my 2012 Topps page.  The last row is the inserts, which are the same kind as the other rack.  I have no idea if that is the way they are supposed to be or if it is a coincidence.  That mini Mattingly reminds me of the 1987 league leader mini, which is one of my favorite Mattingly cards.  He had a very distinctive follow through on his swing and any card that captures it looks pretty damn good.  If you are building this set/series, drop me an email with your wantlist and I will be happy to send what I have to you.  Everything except the Mets, the Trout, the Ichiro, the Mattingly, and the Simon card are for trade.  I did not use the Golden Giveaway numbers, either, so those are up for grabs if you drop me a line as well.

Wait! There was also hockey cards in this purchase.  I am so mad at hockey right now, I cannot really express my feelings on the matter without swearing and screaming.  The usual cliche anger of millionaire vs. billionaires is tinged with the fact that they just did this 7 years ago.  How greedy/stupid/self-destructive do you have to be to have a lockout again?!?  Anyway, the World Series always reminds me that hockey is around the corner, but this year, it just reminds me that once it ends, I have to wait for all this NHL nonsense to be cleared up; nonsense that really could be settled in a couple hours if everyone involved wasn't dumber than a box of hammers.  I could rant and ramble about this for a long time, and I have done enough of that in this post...

/soapbox

OK, enough, let's look at the highlights of the 2009-2010 OPC pack:

I got one lonely Devil, Colin White, who isn't even on the team anymore.  I also got one rookie, a dude named Matt Hendricks whom I have never heard of before, but I went to school with a bunch of kids named Hendricks and I am pretty sure one of them was named Matt.  I am sure it is not the same one, though.  Also here are former Devil Bill Guerin, rare black dude Wayne Simmonds, a whole bunch of goalies, and one of my favorite hockey names - Martin St. Louis.  If you are a hockey fan/francophile, you know how to pronounce his name correctly.  Why he hasn't been traded to the Blues, I will never understand. 

Completed Pages, Complete With Joy.

     While my blogging may have slowed down some recently, my collecting never stops.  Today I have some completed pages, one quite recent and a few more than a decade in the making.

I haven't bought much Bowman the last few years.  In fact, I haven't bought any Bowman the last two years.  I used to be quite the Bowman backer, especially Chrome.  I liked the shiny and the speculation, and I also liked the vague rookies who you'd never hear from again (there is a reason my collection is eclectic and devoid of great value, after all).  This year, my interest in Bowman was renewed, well, my interest in one specific kind of card was piqued.  A while ago, Night Owl sent me an R.A. Dickey from the silver ice parallels and I was immediately struck by it.  I am such a sucker for the shiny and in this case it was a different shiny than I had ever seen before on a card.  I went to eBay with the task of finding myself a lot of them.  The cards themselves were only popping up one or two a box, I believe, so the prices were a little high.  I waited out a nice lot of 12 and snagged it at a price I could live with.  From those, I made this page:

The scan does not do these cards justice.  They are really really really shiny (no, really!).  They remind me of the 1998 Bowman's Best Atomic Refractors, my all time favorite shiny (and a page I have yet to complete).  I got a nice mix of players and colors in this lot; even the Yankee player is a tolerable one.  I am quite pleased with this page.

While recently rummaging through a pile of cards, I found a 1998 SP Authentic Jeff Conine.  I had forgotten all about this set but I remembered that I really liked it when it came out.  Back then, SP Authentic was very high end stuff and (I believe) this was their first baseball offering.  I liked the foil-like pictures and the use of negative space.  I looked around in a few boxes, but alas, that Jeff Conine was the only one I had.  So, in my quest to make a page, I went first to eBay, but eBay did not have any lots of the base cards (nor had they in a while - hint: always check completed auctions when looking for something vague to see how easy/hard it will be to find).  So, I went to COMC.com for these instead. 

I was able to pick off these cards for 20-25 cents apiece.  I went with a few beloved subjects (NOMAHHHH!! and a catcher pose) and a few reviled subjects as well (Clemens, Palmeiro).  Overall, I think I captured a good mix of players and poses and it only took me 14 years to get around to it. 

I also read a blog piece recently (the blog itself escapes my memory, lemme know if you recognize your dilemma) that was very puzzled with the 2001 Donruss baseball set and what they did for parallels.

This page here is of the 2001 Donruss base cards.  This page has been in my binders for quite a while.  See, 2001 Donruss was their first baseball set since 1998 - I am not sure if their exile was self imposed or contractual - and it celebrated their 20th anniversary.  For the parallels, they decided to fill in those two missing years by making "2000 Donruss" and "1999 Donruss" cards.  I always found this odd and I can certainly understand some collector's confusion over the cards, especially 10 years after the fact.

I had, along with that 2001 Donruss page a 1999 Donruss page. 

A pretty sharp (and Indians heavy) page.  What I did not have was a 2000 Donruss page to go along with the other two.  Since I decided my Donruss pages would not be complete without it, I went to eBay again, but only found a large (and way overpriced) lot for sale.  Back to COMC.com again for me!

Since I still had the 1998 SP Authentics cards still unsent, it made sense to grab the cards I needed for the 2000 Donruss page as well.  This is what I came up with.

Once again, a nice mix of players and colors, and, as an accidental aesthetic choice, a lot of batting follow thru pictures.  I snagged these at 20-35 cents apiece with the Tony Gwynn costing me that big 35 cents.  I had never actually seen the 2000 Donruss baseball cards and I immediately recognized them...they copied the 2000 Donruss football set.  I have had this page forever:

Now, Topps used to, and in fact still, uses their baseball set as a tablet for their football design, and some card makers use the same design for each name plate brand for each sport (like Prestige or SP etc.).  But this is the first time I can think of that a unique and singular football set was the basis for a baseball set and not the other way around.  Can anyone else think of one?  You know, if you can even understand what the heck I am talking about.

Anyway, COMC has had a nice cheap bulk shipping option for the last couple months, so I might load up on some more neglected or ignored pages in the future. 

***
And as one final update, I recently showed the spoils of a recent new product buying binge.  Some specific cards were put aside and dropped in the mail this week.  Some of you know they are coming and some of you don't.  Anyway, rest assured, they are out there and on their way...

Right now, if anyone wants to reciprocate, I am desperately trying to get my hands on the two SP rookie cup cards from this years Topps - #158 Josh Reddick and #207 J.P. Arencibia.  I am also looking for the Dwight Gooden Mound Dominance insert from this year's Topps and the 1977 Gary Carter reprint and cloth sticker from the Archives set (plus his Gold Foil parallel). I am always dubious of people actually looking at my wantlist, so if anyone has any of these, please please email me post haste. Thanks!