The Dark Knight (and this blogger) Returns.

       So the other day, while slogging through yet another long terrible winter day, something magical happened.  I turned on the TV and there was blue skies and green grass.  Even better, Matt Harvey was on the mound in a spring training game throwing pitches for the first time in 18 months.  I have had an awful go of it the last few months between the weather and health and death and car crashes and a dozen other things that seem to get to me this time of year every single year.  I haven't been in the mood to get out of bed much less focus on my hobby (and my complete lack of writing the last 8 weeks can attest to this) but like magic, the Mets show up in Florida and my brain suddenly snaps back into shape.  Sure, it doesn't solve all my problems or issues, but it sure as hell makes me feel better and look forward to spring.  Harvey was brilliant in 2 short innings and my mood improved ten fold, to the point where while I did some shopping, some new cards found their way into my basket.

So while I am a little late, lets take a look at the new 2015 Topps.

My blaster came with ten 10-card packs and a little manu-patch pack as well.  I had seen some previews and reviews of the new flagship offering, but I like to wait until I have them in my hands to formulate an opinion.

Well, they certainly are colorful.  But even with all those bursts of color in the borders, there is a cleanness to the design.  No extra waves or flourishes like last year, just name, position, logo.  Sure, the little graphics in the color splashes looks like something out of Upper Deck circa 2002, but hey, what can you do?  It's not too boring and not too busy; Goldilocks would eat this design.

There was some parallels in there, of course, and I like them. They jazzed up the obligatory gold parallel a little for a change and though you can't see it from the scan, the one in the middle is called Snow Camo, certainly more than a little different.  The one on the right is a rainbow foil, sort of a discount refractor but reminiscent of the 1995 Cyberstat parallels that I am so fond of.  I'll need to put together a page of those shiny badboys.  They also seem to have eliminated the store-based rainbow of parallels, a most welcome addition by subtraction.

The inserts are a predictable range, one with yearly highlights, creatively named Highlights of the Year, a then-and-now type set called Inspired Play, and some current and past stars mixed together in a set called archetypes. I am keeping the Frank Thomas/Jose Abreu card, but any of the others here are available for trade.

Let's go a little deeper into the base...

I think this design actually works better horizontally.  It allows the texture in the color border to breath and opens it up a little. 

They expanded the base set to 350 cards, giving Topps more room to add players and concepts, and yet they seem to have stuck to the template they have used for a while in terms of subsets. 

The leader cards are top-three across, the checklists have stars' seasonal highlights or milestones.  Plus, since I am picking nits here, I can see squeezing another last Jeter card into the set, but is 2500 hits something that deserves mentioning?  Garrett Anderson and Steve Finley didn't get cards when they recently reached the big 25-0-0.  Topps is weird.

Topps thankfully didn't include a theme as they have the last couple years, but they continued and seemingly expanded the Future Star designations from last year.  I noticed the All Star Rookie Cup cards all have the Future Stars logo on top and it clutters up the works, in my opinion.  I think the handsome little cup deserves the spotlight all to itself.

The rookie logo celebrates it's 10th year on the flagship and Topps continues to release Bowman every year, making that logo completely useless.

Okay, one last thing before I go.  With all the color flying around on these, you would think Topps would mix up the photos a little...

...and you would be wrong.  One thing I have noticed, at least from the 100 cards I got, is a bland sameness to the photography...lots of pitchers mid-motion from the waist up...

...and lots of hitters in their follow through from the waist up. 

Lots and lots of them. It almost makes me long for a few goofy "candid" portraits with the cap off, or maybe I am just getting old and jaded.  Plus I can't tell if there is too much photoshop going on in the quality of the pictures or if the border just makes some of the presentation look too busy.  It's not quite the cropping and quality nightmare of the 2008 set, but this is definitely a step down from the last couple of years, picture wise.

Oh, and I got this thing.

My manu-patch card, which is actually a manu-coin card, is a big bust.  It holds no appeal to me, and since Heyward was traded from the Braves late in the off season, it will probably garner little attraction to either Braves or Cardinals fans.  *sigh* some kid in Atlanta no doubt opened his blaster and got a David Wright and is just as pissed off as I am.

Last but not least, Topps is running one of their epic contests and I got a card for it.

I haven't scratched this thing as I am not interested in such nonsense, but it anyone wants it, drop me a line and I'll send it along.  I think I can see enough of a chance of spring that I might even answer your email. 

One Star.

       Well, it's the All-Star break again and Tuesday means the big game is ready to be played.  One of the many good things about this baseball season is getting rid of Bud Selig, who a lot of people hate for the wrong reasons.  The A-number-one reason to hate that dude was the 2002 All Star Game, when he just threw up his hands and let the game end in a tie.  Any one of 20 other ideas could have come to him (off the top of my head - let position players pitch, let a pitcher reenter the game, have the coaches toss an impromptu home run derby - winner take all) but instead he did nothing. What a jackass.  Instead, remember, This Time It Counts™! 

That little rant aside, this year only one Mets player made the game and it is a different sort of pick, Daniel Murphy:

Murphy is a scrappy player who makes the most of his limited talents.  He will never be a "star" per se, but he plays his butt off every day.  And he can definitely hit.  Now he gets to have the little All Star banner over his name on his Baseball Reference page forever.

Sadly, Daniel Murphy is destined to join such glorious Mets solo All Stars as John Stearns, Lee Mazzilli, Pat Zachry and Joel Youngblood in the annals of history.  And how the hell did Armando Benitez ever make an All Star Team?  Yikes.

This year the game is being played in Target Field in Minnesota and last year it was played in Citifield.

How much did that mean to me?  I didn't write a single word about it last year.  In fact, the last time I mentioned the All Star Game prominently was two years ago and it was a less than glowing recommendation.  I did make this page of cards from last years Topps Update because it had the ASG logo on it, which was very Mets-centric.

I didn't go to any of the Mets Fan Fest events last year and I regret that because I did go to the one from the Yankee Stadium game in 2008 and it was a lot of fun.  I even held the fastest thrown ball at the booth with the radar gun for like 20 minutes.  I got there early and 69 MPH was enough to give me 5 more minutes of fame than I deserve. 

I also picked up these four Fan Fest exclusive Mets Manu-Patch cards.  Three of the four obviously make me very happy, though my hatred for Jose Reyes has diminished since he went to Toronto because now he is on a team whose job it is is to keep the Yankees out of the playoffs.

Mail Call: Weekend Wives and Dives.

      Some weekends lend themselves to heavy blogging and some don't.  This weekend's unbelievably beautiful weather obviously was not one of them.  I spent time outside and even spent enjoyable time with my family. *gasp!*  On Saturday, though, a pile of envelopes with some eclectic contents was sitting on the table:

Inside you have a bevy of football cards from all over the map, from commons to cards for my 527's to nifty manu-patch cards of Drew Brees.  Also there is a wonderful oddball, a 1971 Bazooka card, a set that has slipped through my fingers for some time.  Best part of that card?  I picked it up for nothing on Listia.  The last two cards are wonderful in their own personal way.  Penny Hardaway is one of the all time "what if" players in NBA history, sure, but why did I pick up this particular card?  Well, while surfing the aforementioned Listia, I ran into this card and it reminded me of a girl I dated from Memphis and her father's soul food restaurant.  Turns out, back when Penny was in college, after games they would all go to this joint.  Her father, who was quite a character, had all sorts of memorabilia on the walls and would ramble on and on about that team and how good Penny was. He'd also feed us just the most amazing food you have ever imagined: fried pork tenderloin, mac & cheese, collard greens.  Simply amazing.  Now, I hadn't thought of that particular little anecdote in years, decades even.  But that one card brought it all back...the smells, the stories, the hero worship, and the food (oh the food).  If that isn't why we collect these silly cards, what is?  The other card there is one from one of the terrible Batman movies featuring Drew Barrymore.  I have been in love with her since I was 6 years old and saw her in E.T.  Needless to say, I think of her all the time and don't need reminding, but it's nice to have her in cardboard form too. 

****

If you kids get bored with the same old cards, head over to View From the Skybox and get your filthy mitts on some new ones via his latest contest which is pretty nifty if you ask me.

Mail Call: Little Letters from Listia.

       I have covered this phenomenon before, but it seems my mailbox is always jam packed on Mondays, as though the post office does everything on Sundays.  Either that, or Monday is the regular delivery guy's day off and he leaves the bulk of the heavy lifting to the fill in.  I would be easily persuaded to believe either theory.

Today's odd twist is that all of the letters in the box today were short ones - #8 to use the vernacular as opposed to #10 (business size).  Well, all except that one large manilla envelope.  One envelope to rule them all!

So enough postal jargon and minutiae, what goodies are inside these?  Let's take a look:

Two of those top three were straight impulse buys.  I like those 2008 Stadium Club base cards, even if the whole set and execution of that product was a disaster, and that Magglio called to me.  That Sidney Johnson is not only a nifty photo but a card #527 I did not have, so it is easy to see why I sniped that one up.  The top left card is a manu-patch silk card thingy from this year's Topps flagship of Matt Harvey's rookie card.  I wouldn't pay money for that thing, but I was happy to nab it for much less than the GIN credit price.  The Matt Moore is from this year's Heritage and since I am fond of the design, I thought maybe I would put together a page of these badboys.  The Heritage Chrome refractors always seem extra shiny to me for some reason.  Oooooo shiny....  The bottom row is a batch of Walmart parallels from this year that I got on Listia, yet another type of card I will never pay money for, at least not from the source that is.  I will put together a page from these.  I now have two of the three retail parallel pages covered with just Toys 'R' Us not represented.  I kinda like the odd symmetry that the colors are blue, red, and purple - it's a color wheel thing.  Okay, I am rambling now.  Last but not least is the little packet there.  While I am 99.99% certain my mother does not read my blog, inside that homemade little pouch is part of my mom's Mothers Day present, so I will err on the side of caution and not reveal what's in that until after the first Sunday of May.  And no, it is not a Saints football card; I have offered my mom those on countless occasions and she always says "that's nice, but what the hell am I supposed to do with this..." so I don't even try to give them to her anymore.  Moms?  Amirite?

Football '13 Week 18: Wild Card.

       A couple of times this year, I posted very early on Sunday morning going on and on about how the Saints were going to destroy that week's opponent.  That was a poor choice of blurbs as both times the Saints ingloriously lost on the road to lesser foes.  So I learned my lesson for the playoffs and decided to hold off any pregame braggadocio and let the games take their course.  This course of action worked well as the Saints beat the (hated) Eagles in Philadelphia for the first road playoff victory in team history.  Sticking it to the awful Philly fans was just a bonus. 

In celebration of the Wild Card victory, let's look at a couple of player pages with a different player stuck in as a, um, wild card.

Here is a page of Superstar Jimmy Graham with a Chrome Kenny Stills rookie card in the lower right.  Stills showed great promise as a fifth round pick this year. 

This is a page of unsung receiver Marques Colston.

There are some great inserts on this page and in the lower right, a rookie card of Nick Toon.  Sadly, Nick got hurt before last season and has not returned.  I am rooting for him not just because he is the son of Jets great Al Toon but because he has one of the great simple wonderful names in recent memory.

OK, that whole idea is a little silly, so let's just look at some cards instead.  I grabbed the first two fancy cards on top of my Saints pile and scanned them for your enjoyment.

The first one is a manu-patch of Drew Brees from the Super Bowl season.  Those last two things way overcome that first one.  The second is a great autographed patch rookie card of Kenny Stills.  I believe that swatch is from the '8' from the TV numbers on the shoulder.  That or Kenny is a much smaller guy than we are lead to believe.

Oh, and look, a team set.  I always liked this design and Topps used it across the sports that year.  I think it actually works better for football than it did for baseball.

In case you were wondering, these are from 2010 Topps...

...and we all know what happened that year...

Next stop Seattle.  Revenge is a dish best served piping hot.

Mail Call: Instant Gratification.

       When I was a kid, somewhere I heard the old adage that you never know until you ask and picked up the old positive affirmation that if you ask, all someone can say is 'no'.  This makes me one of the most annoying kinds of human beings: the kind that asks a lot of questions.  I think my point got lost in all that, I guess what I am saying is, I am not shy about asking for things, not that I am an insistent pest.  Sorry, my intros are rusty.  

I got a package in the mail from Night Owl HQ yesterday.  Because we are constantly shuffling things back and forth, I have no idea if this is in response to stuff I sent or if I now owe him stuff.  Either way, I have a pile for him.  This particular package was full of wonderful things:

You can't really see it in the scan, but trust me, the Harvey and Dickey cards are quite shiny.  The Wright card is a manu-patch card, but this one works nicely, good colors, very fancy intricate patch.  I used to hate these cards, but I have grown to not only accept them but enjoy the ones that look very good.  I still think they are confusing and ruin the value of actual game-used pieces, but I guess we have also learned those "actual game-used" pieces aren't worth the paper their disclaimers are printed on.  The bottom three cards are the ones I was sort of addressing my awful opening paragraph.  Night Owl recently posted about the new Topps Archives packs he picked up.  I requested he set those cards aside for me and we could work out compensation.  He told me that not only did he have a package ready to go out to me, he would put these inside.  The package got here in two days; in the world of blog transactions, that is the very definition of instant gratification.

In my last post, I snarkily addressed Topps' photo choices on vintage/retro cards.  The cards on this scan perfectly illustrate my point.  On the Gypsy Queen Gooden, that is a picture I am certain I have seen before but it is now in painting form, so I suppose that makes it better (as long as they don't use the same picture next year).  The Archives Gooden is not only a photo I have never seen before, it is a damn nice one - full of nuance and intensity (please do this more, Topps).  Conversely, the Seaver is a photo that has been used so many times, I could probably make an entire page of cards using it. The Ted Williams photo has also been used ad nauseum, but it is so iconic, you can almost forgive it here.  Almost.  Also, I can give the Williams card a slight pass because there are no doubt far fewer images of him in the Topps vault than of Seaver.  Plus, since he is dead, I am sure they have to okay the use of his pictures through his licensing company, which I am certain adds a layer of annoyance.  *steps down off his soapbox*

Night Owl not only sent that pile of Mets goodness, he has been perusing my want list:

Those 2010 Upper Deck now complete my page of these cards.  I hope I never have to mention this set again.  The next row has not one but two Rookie All-Stars I can scratch off the list, a pair of parallels at that.  The Opening Day Tavaras card has been especially elusive for me for such a recent card.  I wanted that one greatly because his Topps base card omitted the trophy, and that little cup is the whole point of the collection.  Night Owl's love of 1975 minis is well documented, so for him to give up a couple is surprising.  I have this vision of him in my head hoarding them by the thousands in a bunker under his house.  The Nomo will go on my 1997 Upper Deck page, one that has also been difficult to fill (odd, too, that N.O. would give up a Nomo card).  I never bought any of that set and for some reason I also never see them around.  Four down, five to go. 

Also from the want list:

Three Mets of varying importance, from nothing to everything.  I am praying that a stint in the minors will do Ike some good, considering I could hit .165 in the majors.  The 1964 design this year on the Heritage seems to really do the modern player justice.  They just look good to me, better than the last few years, at least.  And I do so prefer the old school trophy on these cards. 

Final batch from Night Owl:

The top three cards finish my Mets Topps set from 2013 Series 1.  I am slightly disappointed the Opening Day set has white borders, I was so hoping they would give it a green border to differentiate it from the flagship set.  I think the abstract ball field design cries out for green - and not the crazy shiny Emerald pattern they used as a parallel, but a nice muted kelly green.  As always, Night Owl wisely includes a little note in his package.  Each and every one of these cards is of use to me, in case you were wondering.  Thanks Greg!

Also in the mail was an odd thing for me, Yankees cards:

I realized I did not own a single Robinson Cano card and I have a feeling he is not going to be on the Yankees next year, so I won't have to automatically hate him, so when I saw a very cheap lot of 11 cards, I snagged it on eBay. That is a rare sight indeed, a current Yankee with his own 9-pocket page.

I was on a roll and scanned all the cards I got in the mail Tuesday, so here are the rest:

Those top three cards are a lot from Listia I picked up literally for nothing.  I got it just for the Reggie Bush, the other two will end up in a box to be forgotten.  I am slowly but surely becoming a user of that site.  The bottom two are the other 2 Cano cards, which I might actually list on Listia since I have no need for them (unless someone wants them).  The last card there in the middle is a mini refractor of Zack Wheeler.  The Mets have threatened to actually let him pitch in the majors next week, I'll believe it when I see it.  But I figure I should grab his cards now while I can.  I am not sure what the purpose of making that card mini is, though, but I do like the shiny.  Shiny > mini.

Ask and ye shall receive! I think that is what I was going for with the opening.  Sheesh, my brain is so sluggish and tired lately.

Recovery.

       First and foremost, we are all okay.  Hurricane Sandy blew through New Jersey and most of the northeast Monday & Tuesday and knocked some trees around and took the power out.  Luckily, my family and I all made it through in one piece.  Unfortunately, the power company says I will not be getting any juice back for another 5-10 days(!) so I am currently a refugee in Pennsylvania because my brother somehow kept his electricity thought out the storm.  I am making good use of myself by dog sitting his adorable puppy while he and his wife work overtime, so I have some time on my hands.  While the dog sleeps, I figured it would be a good time to post. 

I recently had some COMC.com purchases mailed to me, and since this is probably the last bit of mail I am gonna see for a while, let's take a look at those:

I have threatened to make a page of the Upper Deck Heroes blue parallel Mets and I plucked four on the way to that goal.  The Gypsy Queen base set isn't much to look at, but some of the inserts are marvelous.  I picked off the regular and mini version of the Endy Chavez Glove Stories.  For three innings, that was the greatest catch ever.  Still, six years later, it is pretty damn good.  I also grabbed the Gary Carter mini numbered out of /99 since these cards work well in mini and sepia tones.  Also here are a couple of David Wright cards (the Mets just wisely picked up his option for 2013 and *gasp* may actually spend the money to sign him long term....).  While I am not a big fan of plain white jersey squares, this year's Ginter picture of Wright is so good - and the price was so right - I grabbed it anyway.  The last card there is a 1976 SSPC card of Jerry Koosman and Duke Snider that Night Owl featured a while ago and I was so taken with the card, I immediately went online and bought it.  The internet = instant gratification.  Of course, I waited almost 4 months to have it sent to me, so I also delayed gratification on that one too.

The second part of the batch; I was on a Tom Seaver kick:

The card that started that kick was the Allen & Ginter What's in a Name insert.  I found that one and decided to grab the other two 2012 Golden thingies I needed.  I also then got the Archives base and floating head rubdown.  The 2012 Ginter search lead me also to the Sketch card, which I grabbed, and then, somehow, I got to the 1984 traded (which I could have sworn I owned but it turns out somehow I didn't) and also some 1984 ultra oddball rubdowns.  Twins fans would like that one too.  The last card there is a Mike Piazza manufactured patch card.  Something seems a tad amiss with that one...let's take a close look:

Enhance!!!

Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick, look at that!  That's not even close, Upper Deck. Nice quality control.  What you can't really see there is the smear of glue where the patch was placed and then somehow slipped off.  I guess UD should also put the "contents may settle during shipment" warning they place on cereal boxes on their wrappers.  Oh, and this was not the card they had scanned into COMC either. I don't know who to complain to about this one...well, other than to you guys.

And on a serious note if you were in Sandy's way, I hope you and your family are safe, that the damage isn't too bad, and that the power and insurance companies are expedient.   Plus, it is times like this when we all pull together and figure stuff out.  As long as you and your loved ones are safe, that is all that matters.