Opening Day Heritage.

        The title of this post would seem slightly contradictory since it is the name of two different Topps products.  And since it actually is opening day, it would make more sense if I was opening packs of said product, but no, seeing how my local Target seems to be restocking will all the efficiency of a dry goods store in Cheyenne, Wyoming circa 1850, my last trip (finally) brought me some value packs of 2015 Heritage three weeks after its release (no Opening Day was to be found).  So before the Mets/Nats game starts at 4pm, let's tear in and see what the pack gods wrought.

Last year saw Topps do one of my absolute favorite sets of all time, 1965.  This year finds us moving on to the next year, 1966, which is one of the more blasé designs of the 60's, second only to the absolute yawn-inducing 1961 design.

I wonder if anyone actually pays attention that Topps Heritage makes the point of making the modern packs the same style of the vintage ones.  I wonder if anyone outside of the blogosphere actually cares?

Out of my three packs, I got two all star rookie trophy cards, this is the absolute highlight of these base cards for me.  I also got one other Mets player, who is now a former Mets player.

One thing I do enjoy is some of the little things Topps does, like include manager cards.  Also making combo cards that somewhat reflect the ones in the original set.  I (and others) have screamed ad nauseum about the superfluous copyright information on the fronts, so I am just going to (try to) ignore that for now.  I also noticed that the team cards are not the normal posed team photos that have been used forever on such cards, both modern and vintage, but are field action shots, mostly of celebrations.  This switch up in Heritage mirrors the team cards in the base set.  I am not 100% sure I like this twist since they do the team cards in the base sets the same way; it would be reasonable to use the classic posed shots for Heritage.  Maybe teams don't pose for such pictures anymore?  I am torn. 

Topps did the multi-player rookie and leader cards in similar style to the 1966 set as well.  I had to look up if they all used black borders and low and behold, they do.  Good on you Topps, for getting that element correct.  One thing they did not do back in the day was put two team names on the front of the rookie star cards, they lumped them into league banners.  I am okay with this slight stylistic change.

They are doing the usual action photo variations, along with some other good (trade lines on back) and bad (color swaps on front) variations as well.  I commend their photo selection overall, it reflects the mostly posed and sideline candid style that the mid-60's cards always had.  They also did a lot of them at spring training, which is also a nice touch.  You get a lot of palm trees and minor league looking advertising backgrounds, which is fun. 

After looking over the 60 cards I got in my packs, this is the page I came up with:

Why these nine cards?  They captured the essence of the vintage set while having some nice modern touches.  Plus, there are some cool things going on in most of the pictures, like light towers, trees,, missing afros, and teams that didn't exist in 1966.  Not to mention they all have beards to tie it all together (and match my glorious facial hair).

While we are talking about the photos and their overall aesthetic, let's look deeper at a few of the quirks and minutae.  I have 20 minutes to kill here.

I like how it is pretty obvious that some teams just lined up at spring training and got their photos taken.  That's how you get the same light stanchions, chain link fences, and blue skies in the background. 

Oh, those blue skies. 

Is the White Sox spring training facility near a park?  This is the second year in a row I have noticed that pretty tree line on their cards. 

If I was a baseball player, I would be very self conscious of photographers because it seems that no other sport lends itself to more goofy candid faces than the grand old game. 

Seems that dude in the Angels dugout was working overtime.  And the Cabrera card looks like the photog snuck up on him and said "hey Miggy!" *click*

Alright, it seems I have scanned just about all the cards I pulled, a rarity, so let's pull the Gilligan's Island Theme trick and do the rest. 

I did get a couple of high number short print cards but it seems that any inserts or variations were lacking, that is until I got to the last pack, when I pulled a rare two-fer.  Seems those two Then and Now cards were stuck together, literally.  There was some kind of goo on the back of the Koufax/Price card, giving me Killebrew/Santana one as well and a grand total of 61 cards in three 20 card value packs.  Too bad this couldn't have happened with the low numbered autographs. 

Okay, they are singing the national anthem in DC, so at last it is time to Play Ball!

Tease and Re-Tease.

     Thursdays always bring me the same errands and appointments, I am kind of a creature of habit that way.  I like to have one day a week where I bang out the nonsense chores and I have found it is infinitely easier to do it on a weekday rather than a weekend.  I usually try to interject some fun into the slog of doctors and pharmacies and supermarkets, so I always stop in the card aisle of Target when my day finds me there.  I had seen on some other blogs that Heritage packs had been spotted in retail settings so today I made sure I got to the right spot.  Alas, it was not to be.  Two Targets, zero packs of Heritage found.  But there was a fine consolation prize...

A discounted Pete Rose The Living Legend blaster.  I have seen this product in a few different places and think I bought a single pack of it at one point during a former trip to Target.  I had even seen it in this cheap form amongst the blogs, but I had never come across this kind of autograph-promising blaster.  I decided to take my chances, because really, what are the odds Leaf would ever properly fill a redemption card from this product?  I tore it open and boom!

I got an autograph right in the box, just like it said.  It was even already nestled in a top loader.  So that's a pretty good trip, I got me a Pete Rose autograph for $13.  It is a halfway decent picture on the card - though it is a sticker - and in my estimation there is even a 50% chance he signed it himself and not some assistant or his crazy Asian girlfriend.  The other 60 cards in the box are mostly filler, though I am sure I will make a page out of them.  The real interesting ones are pictures of Pete in an Expos uniform or highlighting his horrible haircut and/or fashion choices.  The man was one of the highest paid players in the league during the 70's, you'd think he could get someone to do better by him, look wise. 

That blaster was the only card related thing I bought at either Target today, a rare display of restraint by yours truly.  But then I was driving home and I felt empty and unfulfilled.  What I really wanted was Heritage and a Pete Rose autograph, no matter how cool, was not going to cut it.  So while I was trapped in traffic at the 4 and 17 interchange, I darted up route 4 instead of heading up 17 and made a beeline to the one store I knew would have Heritage, a hobby shop.

So this evening I will chill out with some terrible TV and tear this bad boy open, my first hobby box of Heritage in 6 years. Some Thursdays, I will not be denied. 

Another Trade With Robert of $30 A Week Habit.

       My collecting habits have been well chronicled on this blog, as have my buying habits.  Which is to say, my habits are consistently inconsistent.  I go to shows and dive into dime boxes.  I buy and sell on ebay.  I have a new love of the junk on listia.  I am the king of the impulse buy at K-Mart and Target. What happens to all these cards is they get neatly sorted into piles.  I think that is the zen part of this hobby for me.  I sit on my couch in front of a little card table in a yogi position with my legs folded under each other (no joke) and break all these cards that come into my collection into piles of what goes, what stays, what I need, what others need, etc. etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

       I read so many different card blogs and it is hard to say why some folks get piles and some don't.  Maybe it's because he has a hook or because he has so many interests, but Robert from $30 a Week Habit gets such a pile.  My excess Blue Jays, Maple Leafs, and Topps serial numbered cards all get thrown together and when the pile gets too big or I get tired of looking at them, I compare and contrast what he needs (or might need) and out the door they go.  It is an inelegant solution but it seems to make me seem altruistic.  Sometimes I even remember the actual cards we agreed to trade.  Lucky for me, Robert is always ready to reciprocate:

That Darryl Strawberry is from this years Archives and it is a beaut. The mini Ted Williams I asked for a long while ago and only remembered that I had when I saw it.  The Topps Gold Nieuwenhuis is a great picture of a player that has proven you can't steal first base enough that I don't think the Mets will call him back up no matter how well he fields.  The shiny Jose Bautista was on my wantlist - yay! someone reads my wantlists - because I want to make a player page of him (3 down 6 to go).  He also included a nice shiny numbered autographed Devils rookie card...because, hockey!

Finally, the Chrome Heritage David Wright (always appreciated) is a nice contrast to the 1964 Topps Joe Gibbon, the actual card we had agreed to trade.  He bought it for his set not realizing it had the added Heritage parallel stamp on it.  I wanted one of those because I have been integrating one into the Topps pages since they started inserting those things in 2008 with the 1959 set.  I sent him one, sans foil, from that '64 page he needed: the John Roseboro (a player whose most famous hit with a bat did not involve a ball).  And as always, Robert included a nice little note to remind me who sent the cards...as always the man is unflappably polite.  Thanks Robert!

***

Want to get a pile too?  Really the best way is to be a team collector since I have boxes and boxes of cards all sorted into teams.  If you have stuff from my wantlists, send me an email and let's get cracking. 

Trade with Brian of Play at the Plate.

       It is a sad coincidence that I am posting today about a trade that features the 1971 Topps Thurman Munson. Lord knows I hate the Yankees, and I certainly was never a fan of Munson and his act, but perhaps it would be wise to show a modicum of respect on the 34th anniversary of his death.   

And whether you like Munson or not, one cannot deny the sheer beauty of this card (even in this rough of shape). It has always been one of my absolute favorites.  This particular copy sat in my Rookie All Star box for decades.  I recently found myself an upgrade and this card was relegated to the ebay/trade/listia limbo pile.  A sad end for such an epic card.  Ah, but not so fast.  Last month, I saw a comment on Fuji's blog on a post about plays at the plate and whom should extoll the virtues of this card but a man who runs a blog with the tremendous and apt name Play at the Plate. Not only did he praise it, but he mentioned he did not own it.  It all clicked in my head.  I would swap this badboy to a man who will truly appreciate it.  After all, how can someone whose blog is called Play at the Plate not own this card?  That'd be blasphemy, I tells ya!

So after a few emails, we agree I'd send the card and he would put together some stuff from my want list.  I must say, it was quite a nice pile:

Right away, a couple of this year's Heritage and some Series 2 Mets.  Also, there are some shiny Mets Bowman Platinum prospects.  The one on the left is PURPLE and the other two are X-Fractors that did not scan well.  Trust me, they are very shiny indeed.  I now have 4 different versions of that Cesar Puello card and the only thing I have heard about this kid is that he was somehow mixed up with the PED-biogenesis nonsense. Wonderful.

The second part also has some shiny to spare:

Any Matt Harvey card is always greatly appreciated.  Brad Emaus was a spring training sensation a couple of years ago (much like Collin Cowgill this year).  Seems the Mets have one of those every year and they never even seem to end the year with the team. *sigh*  I am glad I own a Shawn Marcum card wearing a Mets uni to remind me of his 1-10 record from this year. The Gary Carter in the center is a white border parallel and I must say, these Gypsy Queen cards work much better in white.  The prime shiny, though, is that Ike Davis on the left center.  The scan does not do it justice; it is a wicked looking card.  I plan on picking up the other 5 Mets from this parallel and may even break down and make a page of them.  On the bottom are two David Wrights and a Darryl Strawberry.  It is interesting that Wright just claimed second place on the Mets all time home run list this evening, and he will soon top that list, taking the title from Straw alluded to on this card. 

Third and final part:

Minis!  Tom Seaver mini!  Another GQ card of Wright looking dashing in white.  The three Walmart parallels that are greatly appreciated since 1) the Mets cards look good in that light blue and 2) I don't shop at Walmart.  Last but certainly not least is one last shiny David Wright and a Top Prospect card of Zack Wheeler, specifically one I did not have.  That is a fabulous card.

The denouement of this trade post is the little note Brian left in his package to me.  Absolutely, these cards are of use.  Thank you very much.  I am glad that old Munson of mine found a good home. 

It's Time.

Take me out to the ball game

Take me out with the crowd

Buy me some peanuts

and Cracker Jack

I don't care if I never get back.

Let me root, root, root for the home team

If they don't win, it's a shame.

For it's one

two

three strikes, you're out!

At the old ball game.

Even More Joy.

       Complete pages are what my collection is all about.  Starting Nine is not just a name, it's a philosophy.  These eight pages have all been finished recently and then added to their respective books.  Each one has its own story of who, what, where, and why and I will fill in the blanks if circumstances call for it.

I didn't buy much 2010 Topps.  I believe I bought a series one jumbo out of habit and it was not long after when I realized the bloom was off the rose for me constantly purchasing new product strictly "out of habit."  This is not to say 2010 Topps was a bad set, quite to the contrary, I rather liked it.  I especially liked the Franchise History cards they gave each team.  It was a good way to add a little wrinkle to the base set.  I recently gathered the doubles from that aforementioned jumbo box and wouldn't you know it, I had nine of the Franchise History cards in there.  That calls for a page:

Sometimes I go out of my way to find nine very specific cards for a page.  This is a good example of the exact opposite, making a page out of only nine cards.  I mixed up the horizontal and vertical and got a nice mix of old and new teams, not to mention a nice mix of different pictures. 

I think I have made a good point of emphasizing my love of dime boxes.  I am the guy who, when he finds a nice one, will pull up a chair and pour over the whole thing while at a show.  I take care not to block others with equal love of the dime box, but I have been known to make an afternoon of especially good full boxes.  I found one such box at the White Plains show over the winter.  I plucked 442 cards from that one.  That particular haul has been poured over and divided a few times, but there were some leftovers that I never got around to sorting until this week.  The following five pages come from those cards.

I love Topps Finest, but in my typical contradictory fashion, I have never really bought any of it.  I can't really tell if it is a price thing or a fatigue thing (Finest usually comes out later in the year).  Finest, more often than not, lives up to its name, at least visually.  They are usually very good looking cards.  I found a vein of the 2010 base cards in this box and made a pile of them.

I then, while still sitting at the dime box, went though them, found a nice mix of players and poses, and plotted out my page.  I do this a lot and while it usually illicits a funny look, it hardly ever gets questioned aloud.  Eventually, I will make a page of all the Finest offerings, for now, I have a lot of mid 90's stuff and only a smattering of recent offerings. Quick aside: I once bought a box of 1993 Finest for a (relatively) cheap price just to find a refractor - and, of course, hope it was a good rare one.  Oh, and I got a refractor...the player I pulled: Lee Smith.  Oh well.

Dime boxes are usually the dumping spot for a lot of unwanted base cards plus unnumbered and unautographed inserts.  While this is a sad end for some nice cards, it also lets me build pages I otherwise never would have even considered for less than a buck.  Much like Finest, SP Authentic is a venerable brand that I have long admired but rarely purchased.  This is a page of abandoned 2008 SP Authentic inserts, a handsome little set called Authentic Achievements.

I kind of like these little orphan inserts.  The scan doesn't show it, but the writing is all in a shiny rainbow foil, and the set itself is like 50 cards, which is large but not unwieldy.  Anyway, there were only about 12 of these and this was the best I could do with what I had.  While not the most aesthetically pleasing group of pictures, I think it fits with the whole nature of this set and the reasons for me finding it.

Ahhhh, the 2008 UD Documentary set.  This set has been run through the ringer so many times, I am not going to dig up the corpse and do it again.  Needless to say, it is one of the perfect examples of a great idea poorly executed.  So poor, in fact, that this set may have been the nail in Upper Deck's coffin in the eyes of many collectors.  I avoided this set like the plague.  I heard so many bad things, I never bought a single pack and never even asked any one about it.  In this dime box seemed to be about 1000 of these cards. 

Enough time has passed since the initial release of this horrorshow, so I took a chance.  I made a pile and, once again, carefully selected a nice assortment of photos and players for the page.  I purposely ignored any write ups on the front or back, knowing that I would be infuriated by what I read.  Overall, I think this is a very good looking page, as long as I never read a word and just look at the pretty pictures.

I need to learn to write things down.  I know how unorganized I am and yet I do very little to remedy the fact.  If I consistently wrote things down, both important and trivial, I could save myself a lot of headaches.  Every once in a while, though, I randomly remember something at the right moment and those little moments of synchronicity make good things happen.  While going through this box, I found a little run of 1993 Stadium Club stars.  Big stars.  This made me recall that while looking at my Topps books recently, I noticed that the only SC year I was missing was 1993.  Instead of rummaging through all my boxes to see if I had any, I now had all I needed to make a page.  Well, almost...

...I got eight cards from this dime box.  Look at the names here and I will let you decide which is the one that does not belong.  That card was found amongst my endless team piles and placed on this page to complete it. 

The nice thing about collecting your way is you get to make the rules.  Every once in a while, I get to make an executive decision about a page and that word is law.  We're still in that same dime box and I found a bunch of 1994 Fleer inserts.  These inserts were as understated as the base set.  But, much like that set, they work.  And while they all seemed to be the same, it turns out, they were different.  I found 6 Team Leaders and 5 Prospects.  Not enough to make a page of each, but, since they looked so strikingly similar, I decided to make a page that combined the two sets:

Both sets have gray borders, super imposed players, gold titles, and big colorful logos in the background.  If you just glanced at this page quickly, chances are you wouldn't even realize they were different sets.  The differences and similarities contrast very nice, I think.  It makes for a nice change up in my Fleer book, if you are even paying attention. 

The last two pages here have been a long time in completion, at least in my definition of completion.  This first one has been sitting in my retro book since the set came out in 2002.

Well, eight of those cards have been in that page for 10 years, that middle one was only recently procured from COMC. These cards are specifically a subset called the All-Time Series Team and it is from the 2002 Fleer Fall Classic set (a most handsome faux vintage set as has ever been produced IMHO). I have no idea why it took me a decade to complete this page.  The middle card was forever a random insert from this set featuring Yogi Berra and Thurman Munson.  I am not sure if I didn't like the three outfielders breaking up the nice symmetry of the two players on the other cards or if I just never pulled one of the two outfielders cards from this subset. Recently, I decided I didn't like how this page looked - unfinished - so I went online and fixed that. 

Last but not least is a similar dilemma I found a distinctly different solution to.  I have, since they started the set in 2001, bought some of the Topps Heritage set when it came out.  Heritage has a nice regimented sameness to it.  The inserts always have the same theme yet a unified look to the design of the year in question.  Since I am a sucker for faux vintage in general and nostalgia specifically, the Then and Now inserts have always been a favorite of mine out of Heritage.  But what to do?  Having page after page of the same kind of insert set would be dull.  Plus, there is always 10 cards in the T&N set, which ruins my love of 9 card pages.  Who do I leave out?  Do I leave out the same card for every year?  Not to mention the cost of accumulating all these inserts would be prohibitive to the overall result.  What to do, what to do?  Well, make a page with one from each year, of course. 

I had between one and eight of just about each year of the Then and Now inserts.  I didn't have any from this year, nor did I have any from 2001, 2002 or 2004.  So, to complete the page with a run of years, I went back to COMC and grabbed the 2004/1955 Herb Score/Kerry Wood card you see there.  Perhaps in seven years, if Topps is still marching the Heritage set out every year, I will make another page, including the missing 2001 & 2002.  Please check back in 2019 to see if I do.

***

Robert of $30 a Week Habit has claimed the 2012 Topps Stickers from last post.  The system works.

The Starting Nine.

     It would figure that I would start a blog and my main computer would immediately crap out on me.  Am I gonna let that rather nasty foreboding sign stop me?  Not on your tintype, sister! Ok, enough yakity yak, what am I driving at?  Well, I have worked hard to get the bulk of my collection down to nine card pages.  As a hopeless completest, I used to have to HAVE TO have all the cards.  Now, I try to narrow it down to the essence of a player.  I once had over 300 Dennis Eckersley cards, now he is represented in my Hall of Fame book by these nine:


These aren't the only nine Eck cards I own, but I think these nine represent him well.

As most of you do, I have/had far far too much from the junk era:

Being a Mets fan, I have a soft spot for the Doctor.  I have a whole binder full of identical nine card pages.  I call it "All work and no play..."
(and just for gits and shiggles, here's another just for Night Owl - minis!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)



I have each annual Topps set represented by a nine card page:

I once meticulously built an entire master set of 1969 Topps and sold it years ago to pay the rent.  So sad to even think about...let's move on...

from 2006-09 I bought some of EVERYTHING.  I had that kind of disposible income.  Now, my disposable income being disposed of, I buy a pack or two and make a page:

Sometimes I just collect odd cards here and there and slowly put them together:


Other times, I dive into the dime boxes at shows and put together a page:

I am a dime box connoisseur.

Speaking of food, one of my minor obsessions is food issues:



I also can integrate other things into the pages, like my rare forays into TTM autographs.  Pat Neshek is a classic signer through the mail with an epic signature:


And lastly, like most of you, I love the shiny. OOooooooo....shiny...


This page includes an example of one of the cornerstones of my collection, which I will cover later this week.  You won't guess unless you know exactly what the hell I am talking about, I just like to be a little cryptic and keep my audience riveted.