Fuck You Topps.

Reason #7561:

This could easily become an overwhelming feature, so I will just leave this here and grumble. 

My Last Trip to the Card Aisle For a While.

       This week got all messed up and never recovered.  I had Taco Tuesday on Monday, Spaghetti Wednesday on Tuesday, I saw an old friend on Wednesday making that Throwback Thursday and I ran all my Thursday errands on Friday.  I needed all weekend just to figure it all out.

My Thursday errands on Friday found me in Target and wouldn't you know it, I couldn't stay away from the card aisle.

I wasn't going to buy any more Archives but I remembered something this time that I had forgotten last time...

Coupons!  I still had my two coupon books from series one, which as you can see from above, included the hard-to-resist $5- off of series two.  Plus I got some Oreos because Oreos.  Sadly, these are the end of my coupons.

Let's take a look at what came in each of those boxes of series 2.  While I enjoyed the design of this year's Topps flagship, just about everything else underwhelms...

More of the inserts that I don't care much about.  More parallels, though instead of yellow they went with burnt orange, which will make for a very interesting look for anyone who decided to put together that set.  I got one Met in this box and one rookie cup.  I like that Mike Napoli and I have the same beard and I also got a Nelson Cruz to taunt me since the Mets could have signed him all winter and instead they got Chris Young.  Shoot me now. 

Box number two is more of the same...

Old faces in new places, one whole Met, same old inserts, and I got Target red parallels instead of burnt orange ones.  Since I am not building the set, I guess my enthusiasm is very muted.  Those Phillips and Reddick cards will have to supply my joy.  I do like the inclusion of the Saber Stars inserts - a little learnin' goes a long way.

If you are building series 2, drop me an email with your want list, I have about 100 base cards that would love to find a proper home.  Plus, any of the inserts you see are available as well.

My feelings about Topps Archives was pretty strong this year, I don't think I need to rehash.  Sadly, the packs didn't agree with me and gave me doubles of doubles I already had - those are, you know, triples.  If only I was an Astros fan.

I did get a current Mets player this time around and a few new faux-vintage players that I like.  I also was intrigued by the dusky sunset on that Andre Rienzo, you don't see that much on a baseball card.  I also pulled a retro Future Star of Ron Gant and a Major League movie card of Roger Dorn, but that is too little too late. 

Finally, here is a photo I promised in that Archives post:

You'll find this picture has everything: the bottom of my aforementioned epic beard, my fancy new Reggie Jackson A's jersey, and my Reggie short print from Archives that matches the jersey perfectly.  If you squint hard enough, you can plainly see that Mr. October and I are practically twins.

Let's All Go To The Lobby.

       It's been a sad, troubling time the last few weeks for baseball and death (not to mention my Mets have been a worse fate than death to watch...3-11 *rolls eyes*).  So to cheer everyone up, look at this wonderfully goofy page that I just completed:

It combines cards featuring two of my favorite baseball movies.  The Natural cards came with a DVD set from a few years ago and those long overdue Major League cards came out of this year's Topps Archives set.  Now if only they made cards of It Happens Every Spring, Bull Durham, and Field of Dreams I could expand on the concept. 

The backs are fun too, treating the subject with reality and respect:

I hope this post brought a little much needed frivolity into your day.  This hobby is supposed to be fun, dammit.

Archivist.

     I have been in the middle of some major spring cleaning here at Starting Nine World Headquarters.  Not just the collection, which is getting a sprucing, but the whole darn house.  Which means two things, I haven't had time to blog much and I have to go to the store to buy something new every other damn day to replace or improve what's there.  Yesterday found me at Target and wandering around Target means but one thing, walking by that card nook 5 or 6 times.  This, as always, is too much to take and I found a few jumbo packs of Archives in my basket at the end of the trip...

I opened this Friday night while watching yet another disappointing Mets loss so maybe my enthusiasm was low so I waited until this morning to write about the cards; I can't say my mood improved much. 

Let's start with something they did very right, the 1973 design:

This is one of my all time favorites and they nailed it.  They got the fonts right and the position logos are there in all their glory.  My only quibble?  The pictures are all tightly cropped the way they have been this year and maybe they would have gotten things perfect if they had chosen a few off beat, wide angle oddball shots like they did back in the day. 

They also did they 1980 design:

And again, the design and font looks wonderful, the only problem?  They just used the 1980 design in Archives two years ago.

Now we get to where things start to come apart:

Okay, disregarding that the 1989 set is hardly a classic, let's look at the major flaw that makes this a failure.  They got the design elements of the team name and the angle of the ribbon and even the curved corner correct but look closely at the player names.  Once again, right font (which is always appreciated and a surprise from Topps) but the alignment is all wrong.  They all seem to be justified to the left and this is not how the original set looked.  Yes, it's a small thing but to someone who opened a million packs of this stuff, it is huge.  Look at the Sonny Gray or Bob Gibson or even the Adam Eaton or Joe DiMaggio.  The names on the 1989 set were centered and it makes 90% of these cards look all cockeyed and wrong.  It wasn't that good looking a set to begin with, so to flub this detail and make it look worse is just inexcusable. Plus, haven't we seen that picture of Adrian Gonzalez some place before?  Somehow, the page I made for current players has three of these '89 cards on it.

Let's have a brief six card palate cleanser.  Back to the 1973 design, these six vintage players look like they could come straight from the original set, if it weren't for a few team issues and the "Topps" logo...and maybe the fact that Juan Gonzalez was 4 years old in 1973, but I digress.  Even with a Tom Seaver photo they have used 100 times before, these six cards show what is right and good about this set.

Oh but we are right back at it with those bottom three, they show what is so so wrong.  It's like Topps did 95% of their job on this set and just said "eh, fuck it" and didn't bother with the rest.  It is what I find so frustrating with Topps and their exclusive agreement with MLB; they have no motivation to give that last 5% - which is maybe the hardest five percent - the little things that are the difference between a disappointing set and a "wow! this is freaking awesome!" set.  So what is wrong with those three cards?  Well, the Yankees cards are blatant and obvious to anyone who collected back then.  The Yankees team name was white and not blue.  The Braves blue was much lighter on the originals as well.  These are the little things that are the difference and they would make me pull my hair out if, well, it wasn't mostly gone already.

What is the other great failing of the 1986 design?  It is the smallest defect but really the largest....

Those damn copyright/trademark logos after every team name!  The originals did not have these and in the long run, they are superfluous as most of us have railed against oh so many times before.  The backs of these cards get marred by three or four lines of copyright information and ownership rights and the like.  If all that information is there, why on earth do they feel it necessary to mess the front with this as well?!?!?!?  If you have it on the back, you don't need it on the front and vice versa.  It's like I'm taking crazy pills here...  I am way too worked up for a Saturday afternoon but it just looks awful here; little bleach spots that are pretty illegible but so terribly noticeable.  Between that and the color issues (the Brewers and White Sox are incorrect as well), it ruins all the things they did get right. 

I didn't pull any short prints in four jumbos but I did nab a couple of inserts.  Those 1980's style glossy all star ones were never much to get excited about 30 years ago and nothing has changed.  That deckle edge Derek Jeter is beautiful, I hate to admit. 

There are six more vintage player cards that, once again, look tremendous and proper to the era.  I made a veteran page that tries to highlight the best looking of these cards.  Want to know something as a fabulous aside?  My brother got me a yellow A's Reggie Jackson jersey for my birthday.  I should take a picture of me wearing it holding that card. **UPDATE** Turns out that Reggie is a short print because they made the short prints this year in the same designs as the base set.  We can also put that on the "fail" side of the ledger for this set.

Also in the "so close but so far away" column are the backs.  They did so many things right with the backs but then once again dropped the ball with the little details...

I will let it pass that they can't print complete batting records for the vintage players without the font being so tiny as to be illegible but it is still frustrating.  You can also see the aforementioned copyright information and, come to think of it in tiny illegible font, you can believe every single card has that on it.  Topps got the colors and the fonts all correct on the back and even decided to include cartoons where they were appropriate and even matched the style of each set.  Problem is, they only made about 10-12 cartoons for each 50 card subset so they repeat over and over again.  Are you telling me that in Topps vast archives, they couldn't come up with 40-50 separate cartoons?  Or if they wanted to use new ones, were they too cheap to commission that amount.  Once again, it is the little things that kill.