Love In The Time of Corona.

       Last Monday morning, I went to Costco and Target and it was a very quiet, uneventful trip.  Little did I know that in the next few days, going to the store would become something like a cross between old Woody Woodpecker cartoons where the women kill each other, bridal day at Filene's Basement, and the Road Warrior.  Lucky for me, I am a slight hoarder at all times and don't need soap, sanitizer, or toilet paper any time soon.  Also, I did stop in the card aisle in Target and grabbed some Heritage packs (they had no blasters) and impulsively grabbed a blaster of Star Wars Skywalker Saga cards while looking in vain for Heritage blasters.  This would prove very fortunate and unfortunate but not in the way I thought.  Kind of like how most of our weeks went.

I rarely buy single retail packs of baseball cards because I find all you ever get are base cards and maybe an odd parallel but very rarely do you ever get something of substance.  I figured since all I wanted was some examples of the Heritage, I would just grab 6 packs and go about my business.  These might have been the luckiest six packs of retail cards I ever bought.

One thing I collect in totality is Topps rookie all stars.  I love me some fancy trophies on my baseball cards and I got five of them in these six packs, including two short prints.  The two short prints I got were Pete Alonso and Vlad Guerrero Jr., the two cards I figured I'd have to pay through the nose for on eBay if I ever wanted them, and here I got them in back to back retail packs.

I even got one of the two Alonso league leader cards and three of the postseason cards.  And we are just getting started.

I got five inserts.  That's practically one per pack but it didn't quite come out that way because I got two Tom Seaver Flashbacks stuck together in one pack.  I also got another Flashbacks insert, Rod Carew, and two Then and Now cards - one of them also with Tom Seaver.  Look him up, kids, he was pretty good.  I did get one other base double in the five packs - it was Michael Conforto, a Mets player.  This never happens.  I always get doubles of San Diego Padres or Milwaukee Brewers.

There was one other Met and one other league leader card.  Not too shabby. 

I am pretty sure the 1971 set is in my top five all time designs and the Topps people really nailed the look of it.  The colors, the lower case ee cummings style names, and the random action photos - which were new in '71 - are all here.  Even the random rookie cards and odd position designations are here.  I didn't scan the backs but the backs all look right with the head photos and esoteric write ups. They even have SSPs of the OPC backs, which are some of my favorite OPC variations.  Alas, I did not get one of those.

I also love poses where the hitters are swinging and pointing the bat at your face, I got three of them in three different styles.  I saw that the Alvarez/Aquino rookie card is hot.  I am not one for hot rookies, so if anyone wants to trade for this thing, let me know.

This is the page I ended up piecing together from the five packs, I think it looks great.

I went with just about all posed shots but got a variety and the one action shot is decidedly inactive (I picked a Luke Voit action shot for the vertical example, that's on the back, the back I didn't scan).  I chose a few teams that didn't exist in 1971 just for a little timely juxtaposition.  I was thrilled with my choice to lower myself to retail packs.  I know it will never turn out this good again.  If anyone is putting the set together and has a wantlist, drop me a line and I'll see what I can fill before these go to ebay or Listia.

On the other hand, the Star Wars cards were...underwhelming.  The blaster had 10 packs and 60 cards but no indication on the outside what they looked like; this seems to be on purpose.  The design is very staid.  I prefer a little color and whimsy in my Star Wars cards and all I got here is some stars from a NASA chart or something off of a Battlestar Galactica poster. 

The photos and subjects seem to cover all eight movies, I assume this set was leading into the ninth.  All the cards are vertical and none of the captions are puns or anything.  I am falling asleep just looking at them.

I scanned a second group to continue the monotony.  Not even Natalie Portman can make these more exciting.

Though I gotta say, I do love that middle card, it is a great shot from the climax of the Force Awakens.  Lightsabers and snow, more of that please.  One out of 60 is a very bad ratio.

Each pack had a parallel base card where, oooo pinch me, they changed the color of the thrilling border to a rusty orange or a royal blue.  I suppose the blue is a slight improvement but I got two of those and eight of the rusty orange.

Seriously, the write ups on the front and backs of these cards is more boring than my write up here.

Each pack also had an insert.  These were at least a little more interesting, if slightly repetitive.

Five of them were from the Path of the Jedi set, which were almost exactly the same as the style and substance of the base cards.  I do like that Han Solo card because the highlight of the seventh movie to me was the fact that Harrison Ford didn't mail in his performance as he has in a few of the other movies he's done in his old age (I'm looking at you, Indiana Jones 4 and Blade Runner 2049). So that's 2 out of 60.

The blaster's special insert was a manu-patch and I got A Princess Leia.  I actually have a use for that card so it is staying in my collection.  I might cobble a page of these together but it will hardly find a place of honor in my Star Wars book. 

That was the other Path of the Jedi card, which looks like the other one on the other page.  The best looking card in the whole blaster was the advertisement card with that borderless shot from the first movie.  If anyone wants to use that 10% off code, be my guest.  It really had been an odd week indeed.

Coupons.

       I was at Target today shopping for birthday cards, Easter ephemera, and deodorant when the siren song of the card section drew me in.  This is what I picked up...

Why?  Coupons!  I had totally forgot I had these little coupon books that came in the 2014 Topps blasters I opened at the beginning of February. But there they were in my little coupon pouch.  There was one for $5 off a Heritage blaster and $1 off three pack of Opening day.  There was also one for $1 off two packs of Gypsy Queen, but GQ is new product so of course my Target didn't have any...*eye roll*  I am a sucker for a bargain so I got these almost in spite of myself.

I got these packs of Opening day for basically 66 cents a piece, a price I haven't paid for a pack of cards at a store since I was a kid no doubt; let's take a look at what was in there.

They put an insert in each pack of Opening Day now.  I really like those blue parallels (I see a page build in my future).  They are not quite as glittery as last year but they are a little more shiny.  The 3D stars are nifty and very busy.  I know these cards are aimed at the kiddies and my inner 7 year old approves.  Adult Max thinks the grey is too washed out, though.

I covered the Heritage pretty comprehensibly already and I also decided not to build the set, even though I adore the design and Topps did a really good job on this year's set.  I will breakdown a selection of the cards I pulled:

I like that Topps used head shots similar to the ones from the original set.  One thing you won't see on those cards from 1965 are things like the mohawk on Didi up there or the bald head and psychotic grin of Cody Ross there.  I am a little puzzled why Adam Jones is so sad on his card - smile dude, you are an above average major league outfielder.  I bought this blaster wearing my Sox hat with a thick beard leftover from winter...dear lord, I am Mike Napoli's doppelganger!  Aaron Hill is pictured holding up his Aaron Hill model bat, that seems more like a 90's Pinnacle photo than a contemporary Topps shot.  Poor Hiroki and Albert were captured making as goofy a face as you can make without knowing someone is taking your picture.  And finally, those Houston Astros cards show that they followed the '65 oddity of having both "Houston" and "Astros" on the fronts of the cards.  Also, Max Stassi is very tastefully named.  If anyone needs any of these singles for their set, please let me know.

It was a pretty good box for inserts too:

I gushed over the idea of the 1st Draft set when I initially wrote about this set and then I found out there are only 5 cards in the whole thing.  I got that same Graig Nettles in my hobby box.  This seems like a missed opportunity.  The red Target parallel looks wonderful with a Red Sox subject, I must say.  I also pulled a game used jersey of Buster Posey and a mini of Hunter Pence, both of which are very high ratio pulls.  Those are destined for ebay unless there is a Giants fan out there who wants to trade.  Lastly, I am showing the backs of two different players.  The Roy Halladay there is now something of a final tribute as he retired before the season, so that is his entire major league record.  I also have Alex Rodiguez's card back there too.  Will those be his final major league statistics?  Will any team ever take a chance on him again if/when he comes back next year?  The whole A-Rod thing makes me very sad. 

***

Oh, and I have leftover coupons I am not planning on using.  I still have one each of the $5 off a Heritage blaster and the $1 off three packs of Opening day.  I also have the two $1 off two packs of Gyspy Queen which I now plan on not using at all.  They are all good until the beginning of June.  If anyone would like any or all of these, drop me a line and I will send them to you.  Hey, money is money.  Eight bucks is eight bucks.

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?

Damage Control.

       After hearing about the Matt Harvey injury yesterday, I ran through the The Kübler-Ross model a couple of times.  I have, though, settled in to accept the fact that I won't see him pitch again until 2015 and that 2014 will be yet another stepping stone year for the Mets.  Ugh.

No matter how you deal with the stages of grief, the depression often lingers the longest.  So to cheer myself up, while shopping for a few odds and ends in Target, I decided to break my vow not to buy any and plunked down for four rack packs of Allen and Ginter.

Each one of my therapy sessions costs $200+ and these only cost $25, so since I don't see my shrink until Thursday, this seemed like a fine immediate investment in my sanity.  Let's take a look at what I got, all 56 cards:

First off, let's look at the legends cards:

I would like to commend Topps in selecting a few different players this year.  Red Schoendienst, Bill Buckner, Will Clark...it's refreshing to pull some unfamiliar names (and photos) rather than the same 30 names over and over again.  Notice something?  Yeah, I got two Andre Dawson cards.  This will be the start of a pattern (I will also need a ninth old player for my page, email me if you have one for me).

Ginter means kooky historical inserts:

The write-ups on the Civilizations of the Past cards are nifty, history geek Max like.  The One Little Corner inserts might need to be bought en masse, since astronomy geek Max needs to be satiated too.  I hope the photos on the Curious Cases cards are more interesting than the one there for MKULTRA - why not show someone in an acid freakout?  Finally, the player-based insert set is the Across the Years (and for the first time in a while it isn't horizontal) and they are okay, I suppose.  Hey, look! I got two Jacoby Ellsburys, who seems to be saying "come here and pull my finger..." Classy.

Allen and Ginter also means minis!

The Johan is obviously staying. Vida Blue got a great write up from Night Owl recently, so it was nice to see him conjured somehow by my enjoyment of that post.   The black minis seem to work nicely this year; Topps seems to go back and forth on those.  There are a couple of insert minis here too: Peacemakers, with the Babe Ruth of peace Gandhi, and a well-referenced (if incorrectly quoted) Heavy Hangs the Head insert with King Richard the I.  I was very excited when I saw a card that said "Marley" on it, but imagine my disappointment when I saw it was Ziggy and not Bob.  Sort of like pulling a Tommy Aaron in 1966 rather than a Hank.  Finally are the three rookie logo-ed cards I pulled, including the wonderfully named Jurickson Profar.  His moniker sounds like Kurt Vonnegut and Charles Dickens collaborated.

What about the base cards?  Well, fine, we can run through those too.

I like the borders on the Ginter this year, but is it me, or do the pictures seem like 5% too small?  Maybe they could have stretched that fancy stuff out just a touch.  When working in 2.5" x 3.5" every millimeter counts (to mix my metaphors and my measurements).

Here is more base:

I have already made a page out of these baseball players, but if there is any card you would like to trade for, drop me a line before the remaining lot of these winds up on ebay.  Keep in mind that the Brett Lawrie and Andre Either already have destinations, though.  I only got two high numbers in four packs (which I think was the ratio anyway) and, of course, both of them are Freddie Freeman.  As a Mets fan, that is like a double punch to the stomach.  I also only got two non-baseball subjects, though I know they have cut back on those in recent years.  Needless to say, John Calipari and Scott Hamilton are, um, underwhelming.

Last batch, the horizontal base cards:

I know some people complain about the horizontal Ginters, but if the photo is great, I think they work fine.  I would say, in fact, that all seven of these are good to excellent, with that Reddick being spectacular.  Speaking of Kurt Vonnegut, he gets a shout out on the advertisement for whatever silly contest they are running this year (always nice to see my favorite author get some props).  Oh yeah, and my retail purchase certainly beat the odds and netted me an autograph.  Granted it is Tommy Milone, but beggars and choosers and whatnot.  It was a nice feeling to get a hit out of packs from Target.  It actually made me briefly smile for the first time in two days. 

I Continue To Treat My Birthday Like I Am 8 Years Old.

       My birthday was Memorial Day.  Please, please, no need to regale me with good wishes (though I will always accept cake). This year I didn't do much of anything on my birthday as most people were having barbecues and such in reverence for war dead and I just felt like sitting around drinking and eating baked goods. So that I did.  I also watched my Mets beat the Yankees; it was a good day. 

So a few days later, I found myself in Target looking for some new shorts because it is suddenly July hot.  As I was walking towards the men's department, I saw the little card nook.  I thought to myself "hey, it was just my birthday, I deserve a little treat," so treat myself I did.  I saw rack packs of Triple Play, and I liked those a lot last year, so I grabbed one of those.  I also saw some of the new shiny Panini Prizm, so I procured some of that as well.  And while I was standing there, my 8-year old impulses kicked in.  I saw a box of discounted non-sports cards for .99 cents a pop and I went a little hog wild.  I also snagged a couple packs of Topps Opening Day and a repack, because, hey, birthday!

There is the little pile I gathered on that Wednesday and I got home a tore them open and ate my lunch and had a ball.  Let's take a look at what I got:

The caricatures were cool last year and they look even better this year.  I also like the clean design to allow the art to pop.   As a way to get around not having an official license, this is by far my favorite.   I don't even mind that Matt Harvey looks like the kid from Napoleon Dynamite.

Here are some more of them, along with the nick-knacks:

I got both the card and the sticker of Starlin Castro, pity I am not a Cubs fan.  I also got some Derek Jeter stickers.  Meh.  Those all-star cards, though, are wonderful, I may have to make a second page of this stuff just to highlight those.  Those Dodgers on the bottom have a destination, but if there is anything you really really have to have, drop me a line and I am sure we can trade - and that goes for any of the stuff we will look at here...

The Opening Day...

...was exactly what I anticipated it would be.  Getting both a Bryce Harper and Steven Strasburg makes me wish these packs had gone to a Nats fan, but oh well.  The picture on the Miguel Cabrera is magnificent.  And as much as I would like to keep that Manny Machado card, I know someone else who wants it more.

Now for some heartbreak...

I had such high hopes for Panini Prizm, but man, do these work better in theory than in practice.  I know Panini is trying to make the best of not having a MLB license. I mean, look, the players association logo is right on the front, so they are kinda official, right? (I have never seen that before) It just seems that the airbrushing and logo obscuring poses just don't work on a chrome-like set.  No matter how nice they try to make these look, they still look cheap.  And it's a shame, because it's not a terrible design and lord knows I love me some shiny.

I bought 4 packs of this stuff and it just doesn't work and didn't grow on me and now looking at it a week later, I really feel the weight of that disappointment.

They have old time players involved in here too, and they have the airbrush/obscuring thing going on as well.  That is fine for 1989 Cap'n Crunch cards but not for modern $3 a pack cards.  I see Panini is putting Extra Edition cards in here too.  Does that mean they won't do a separate set of these like they have in the past?  So many questions. This set is a noble effort but a tremendous failure.  I don't think I will even make a page of these.

Let's cleans the palette by taking a look at some highlights of the repack:

There was the usual odd mix of cards, some new stuff, a chunk of 80's junk, some 90's junk, and some real surprises.  I had forgotten all about the 1990 Starline set.  I remember the posters were quite popular in the late 80's, but I never saw they did a card set until well after the fact and I don't own any of them.  I got 4 cards from the 40 card set in here, including a Met, Frank Viola.  Overall, though, this repack seemed like a real dud until I got to the second to last card, that's where I found that Frank Thomas Supermarket Rookies card.  Thomas is one of the players who shares my birthday; I also did not own this card.  Sounds like fate to me.

I decided also upon a couple packs of last year's Star Wars Galactic Files set:

This was described on it as "the definitive set" full of the original trilogy, the prequels and some canon stuff.  I got a real interesting mix of all three.

There were a couple names I didn't recognize, so I googled them, this may have been an error in judgment when it comes to one of them...all I can say is the internet has far too much time on it's hands when it comes to female characters in sci-fi. SMH.  Anyway, the center card is a Memorable Quotes insert with the best two words in all of the Star Wars universe.  This is the page I made out of these cards. 

And then there were the .99 packs.  First off are some Mario Cart cards.  I had no idea such a thing existed.  So much of my time in the last 20 years had been elegantly wasted playing Mario Cart. Now I have some in card form:

I bought two packs so I would have 10 cards to make a page from. 

These are some leftovers...I have no idea why I stuck them here.  Moving on.


Next to the Mario Cart packs were Super Mario Wii packs.  I bought my brother that game for Christmas a couple years ago and we spent a good amount of time playing it proving that we do not work well together.  We also had a ball...

...once again...

I bought two packs so I would be sure to be able to make a whole page out of them.

A few years ago, a Super Bowl commercial introduced me to the most overplayed song of the decade and Yo Gabba Gabba. Not having any children, I was unaware at the time I was being introduced to Yo Gabba Gabba, I just thought the toys in the ad were the work of some trippy marketeer.  I was wrong. 

I actually kind of enjoy the completely drugged out nature of this show.  I will never have kids, but if I did, I would totally let them watch this.  I felt I should own a page worth of their cards.  Plus, there were 10 in a pack, so I only had to buy one. This made my inner 8-year old very happy.  I even continued the childish non-sports bonanza buy picking up a pack of Bill Nye the Science Guy cards on Listia.  You can see how that turned out here.

The other highlight of the afternoon...

White Castle! I rarely make it down far enough on Route 17 to indulge in these treasures.  But on this day, since I had designated it Birthday present time, I decided to go hog wild.  Luckily, the shorts I bought at Target have an elastic waist band. 

Blaster of Puppets.

       Today I had to go to K-Mart today to pick up a few staples I knew they would have cheap.  I also saw that Night Owl had posted about new Topps Chrome being out, so I knew that these two pieces of information would come together to make me drop my disposable income on a blaster.  As I have posted before, I have a disturbing predilection to Chrome, mostly because of the shiny.  OOOooooo....shiny...

Since I have a page of Chrome going back to its 1996 inception, first things first, let's look at the page I created from that blaster:

A very nice mix of team colors and players with a couple of my obligatory catching poses.  I would have liked a Pirate or an Athletic to break it up a little more, but oh well, the purple of that Tulo will have to do.  This page nicely keeps my run going.

Now let's get to the shiny.  SHINY!!!!

The blaster came with a bonus 4 card pack of purple refractors (which is why I chose the blaster over the rack packs - extra colorful shiny!).  I got three stars and a rookie I have never heard of before.  The blue Trumbo there is numbered to /199.  I was hoping to get a Met since those look so nice in blue, or a Dodger to trade to the aforementioned Night Owl.  The regular refractors of Cabrera and Pill are in the 'meh' column.  The Ackley is an X-fractor and those always look better in person, but trust me, it is plenty shiny.  The cream of the crop here is the Mike Trout.  I have decided to keep all Mike Trout cards I pull and I am going to try and trade and or buy all I can.  The kid is the goods.  The other 8 cards here are all available for trade if you want them.

Just for the sake of completeness, here are the rest of the cards in the blaster.  They are also available for trade if you see something you want/need:

The two hiding there are Stephen Strasburg and Hunter Pence.  Man, I got a lot of players traded during the season in this blaster.

Here is the blaster box, which will be cut up for some homemade card(s).  Of course, I couldn't just buy one thing, not when I had some time to kill.  As you can see, I also bought some of the new Triple Play.

I remember Donruss Triple Play from my youth.  It came around in the early 90's while I was in my mid to late teens, so I think I was a little out of the demographic they were going for...I still am, but I am glad they brought the name and notion back; there should be more cards specifically for kids.

Panini, of course, cannot use Major League team names or logos, but they worked around that in a pretty nifty way, with stylized cartoons of the players instead of photos.  I kinda like this idea.

This is the page I made from the four packs I bought.  The Posey and the Longoria are especially nice.  But what is the point of a cartoon of a head shot?  I mean, OK, for someone as known and cartoonish as Big Puma Lance Berkman or The Freak Tim Lincecum, sure, it works.  But I couldn't pick Carlos Santana out of a line up (unless it was the guitarist) nor Brett Wallace for that matter, so those seem a very poor choice. On top of that, the only reason I know what Justin Verlander looks like is because of that video game commercial he was in with Kate Upton that they played at the beginning of the season ad nauseum. And to be honest, I wasn't looking that closely at him during it.  

Since the Triple Play brand is for kids, they put "kid" things in the packs, like giant puzzle pieces:

Since I like the caricatures, I would like the puzzles too, though I doubt I will never put one together.  I think they could have made the puzzle pieces a little more interesting on the front (or is that the back) other than a repeat of the original card picture over and over again.  (and what is that Bruce Bochte card doing there?  Well, he was laying on the floor of the K-Mart, no doubt a refugee from a busted open repack.  So I picked up Bruce and put him in my pocket.  I have a collection of mangled found cards, and while he is not really mangled, he will find a good home with those misfit cards.  Technically, I guess this is stealing, so I guess Bruce is not only a refugee but a fugitive too!)

Since I couldn't make a full puzzle, I made an odd little collage that sort of looks like a baseball player:

I also realized I could never flip it around to scan it, so I had to take a picture of it sitting on my scanner.  How meta. 

There were other "kid" things like stickers and an insert set called focus:

OK, as a kid I loved stickers, so those are a winner, but the "Focus" inserts are kind of silly.  A close up of the intensity of a cartoon?  Someone did not think that one through.  That kind of nonsense barely works with actual photographs.  Overall, my inner 8 year old was very pleased with these cards, and at a buck a pop, my 37 year old wallet was pleased as well.

I almost got out with just the Chrome and the Triple Play, but then I looked down and saw the discount blasters.  One of them was a tin of 2005 Topps Football for $5.99.  I can't resist really cheap cards and in a tin to boot, so I grabbed it without thinking about it much

Oh, caveat emptor.  I forgot that the 2005 draft was not very distinguished, so the rookies I got were underwhelming to say the very least.  Even the stars I got were less than exciting.  I did get a Drew Brees All Pro card, but in 2004, Brees was still on the Chargers.  I may as well have set this six bucks on fire.  Damn you, lack of impulse control.  I don't think I will even make a page out of these.

Last but not least, I saw one of those dispenser display boxes of Mars Attacks.  OK, I am obviously going to be helpless to the allure of alien cartoons on cards.  Plus, I had been meaning to pick up a few pack of this to make a page:

They do not disappoint. Aliens, spaceships, flames, lasers, giant bugs, dogs in distress, tractor beams.  Needless to say, I am tickled to death with this page.  Plus, as a neat bonus, I pulled one of those 1/1 sketch cards out of these three packs (not shown); those are a 1:96 pull, so that was certainly unexpected.  Since Matt from Heartbreaking Cards of Staggering Genius is kind of obsessed with these things, I will surprise him and send it to him. 

Stickers.

       I am a sucker for impulse buys.  The little pile of crap near the checkout counter was made just for me.  I own more shiny packs of gum, keychains, nicknacks, and bad magazines because of this retail tactic than you could possibly imagine.  I am not sure if this is a chicken/egg situation with my love of baseball cards as I often will scan the counter looking for packs...or perhaps I came to love cards so much because they are a prime choice for the front of the shop.  Anyway, this was true when I was seven and it is true now at the tender age of 37.  I was on a recent road trip and at a 7-11 getting car snacks and a soda when I saw they had these three packs of 2012 Topps Stickers.  Now, I haven't bought a pack of stickers in about 24 years (1988 Panini forever!) but for whatever reason, I just couldn't help myself.  I don't even know what they cost and now I am stuck with them - pun intended.

Oh, but am I?  I plucked out the Mets (all two of them) plus one other and now there is a neat pile of 21 cute little stickers cluttering up my computer area.  They are adorable and look great, but in the end, I don't want them.  So I ask my favorite question: Who wants it?  I will even list them in case someone is collecting the album: (11, 22, 23, 28, 29, 49, 68, 103, 105, 112, 121, 129, 135, 138/145, 202, 205, 209, 223, 231, 248, 291).  First one who comments they want them, gets them.  No muss, no fuss.