Hmmm....the best of 2012?

My wife and I decided to do all of our errand running on New Years Day, part of which included trips to Target and Wal-Mart for various items.  Visits to both stores included trips down the card aisle, and after buying a couple of loose UD hockey packs at Target, the following box caught my eye at Wal-Mart.

We've all seen the repack boxes, usually with a couple of decent packs and then a lot of stuff from years past that just couldn't be sold.  What's funny is I saw the "Best of 2012" seal in the lower right, and both of the see through windows on the box had a pack of Bowman Platinum visible, so I figured what the hell why not.  I figured at worst, it would be worth at least one post.

I expected to see maybe 4-5 packs of what was promised on the front, and then probably the rest would be Series 1 or Series 2 to fill out the box.   

Wrong.  The box contained 3 Bowman Platinum, 2 Topps Chrome, and 6 Allen & Ginter packs.  No flagship.  Nothing from past years.  I actually let out an audible "wow", and proceeded to open the packs.

Pack 1:  Topps Chrome

Not much to write home about in this pack...couple of Yankees, no Blue Jays

Pack 2:  Topps Chrome

A little better here.  Pulled a X-fractor of Adam Dunn, which is earmarked for Jeff at 2x3 heroes...

Pack 3:  Bowman Platinum

I hadn't opened 1 pack of these at all.  Had no interest.  $3 for 4 cards is a little steep...

The cards are nice enough for sure, but the price point is just too rich for my blood.  I believe that the Hamilton is a refractor. 

Pack 4:  Bowman Platinum

Nothing overly exciting in this pack, at least for me anyhow.  Somebody out there might think differently however.

Pack 5:  Bowman Platinum

The Robbie Erlin in the upper right is a blue parallel, numbered 140/199.  That spot has already been taken in the SNI set, so maybe Marcus  who is a Padre fan might be interested in it.  I am actually looking forward to seeing how Rivera rebounds from his knee injury.  Miguel Sano in the center?  Well, he can hit the ball quite well, but if you're a fan sitting on the first base line when he's in the infield, you better bring some protection.  Miguel committed a whopping 42 errors at 3B last season, but hopefully his youth is a big part of that (he's only 19).

Nothing overly exciting in these 5 packs, so we'll wait until tomorrow to show you the 6 Ginter packs.

I did a little better with those....

thanks for reading, Robert

For what it's worth, my 2 cents on Update

If I could write this post with my hand on my heart to swear that I'm telling the truth, I would.  You can't type fast with one hand on your heart though.  I really want to buy the new stuff and say that I whole heartedly enjoy it.  I can't quite do that with update.

Now there are things that I really do like in the update boxes I purchased.  Yes, I said boxes.  With no card show this weekend (bummer), I had to drown my sorrows in something, so two retail blasters from the wonderful world of Wal-Mart was my therapy.

I know what you all are saying already....."Robert needs a new doctor".

Anyhow....here goes nothing...

The serial numbered gold parallels are back!  You knew I had to start with that.....

This may be my favorite card so far this year...Buck looks bad ass getting ready to chase down Jemile Weeks.  What does he get for his troubles?  A bat headed in his direction.  For me, this is a great picture.  Even better was the serial number is one that I need....

More stuff that I like....things that should be in an update set...such as RCs

Players in their new uniforms...or uniforms you don't see on cards too often, such as the Padres Sunday camouflage.

These are what an update set should be about

Now with a beef (or two).  All-Star cards, I can live with them, and I can live without them.  If you're going to add All-Star cards, picture the player in the AS jersey, such as these two...

Love the powder blues....you don't see these every day on a card, so include them.  But if I am going to open a pack of cards and see these next 5 cards back to back to back to back to back, you're going to hear an audible "what the @!$$%#"

I know these guys are all stars, I've also seen them in their standard uniforms many times.   What is the Update here?    Sorry Topps, but this is a miss from where I stand...

The '87 minis are back, makes sense to carry these over from the other 2 products.  They will likely be traded though....The Gold Standard and Golden Greats are also back as well...I didn't bother scanning those, but I will be perusing peoples trade lists to get these cards into the hands of people that want them.

Blockbusters is a new insert for the Update series.  Featuring blockbuster signings and trades that occurred in the past.  For the blaster boxes Topps also incorporated these blockbuster cards as well...

I'm 50-50 on these...not sure if I like the fact that the photo covers up part of the hat relic...I'll definitely trade for the Jose Bautista relic if anybody out there pulls it.

Yes, there is also the Wal-Mart blue parallel, and the Gold sparkly parallels that were featured in series 1 & 2.  But the final thing I'm going to show you just annoyed me....

NO.  NO.  NO.   NO.  NO.  NO.  NO.  NO.  NO.  NO.

Not because it is Mitt Romney.  Why in the hell do I want a presidential predictor?  Come on Topps.  I want baseball cards please, not predictor cards of this years presidential race.   Give me a predictor of something I really want to follow!!  Try something like these:

1. Print 10 Josh Hamilton cards photoshopping him in uniforms of teams that he's already rumored to be signing with.  Make the 11th card  "the field"
2. How about a 10 card predictor set of when the next time someone will win the Triple Crown.  Make all the cards expire at the end of 2013 just to piss everyone off.
3. Try a predictor set of the potential team that Bobby Valentine gets hired to manage. (ouch)

OK, now that I've had my fun, in all honesty the update set is OK for me...yes I will complete it...but like many of you out in the blogosphere, there are things that I would like to see change.

One day, maybe....

Thanks for reading, Robert

Blue Yu and other musings

To be honest, I really haven't felt like writing about anything serious.  Nothing has really happened lately that has given me cause for alarm.

OK, maybe one thing....the piles and piles of cards that surround me each time I write a post.  Ever since, oh let's say the middle of July, I have felt very little motivation to put things in their proper place.  It seems that every time I do sort out one group of cards, another group or 3 arrives to replace that .

So to punish myself, and maybe you too, I've decided to hunt through some of the piles and, well, try to muse on some of the cards I see.

Cards such as Blue Yu.  Yu Darvish has been around for several months now, and I have not taken one opportunity to use his name in a play on words.  Awful lines such as...

I'm calling Yu

Me and Yu and a dog named Boo

Yu Betcha!!

We all live in his Yu-niverse

Yu can't always get what Yu want...

He's in the prime of his Yuth.

OK, I know, that's enough....here's the Blue Yu at least  (It's funny, lately I've wound up with a lot of cards that belong in Texas.)

Brian??

 (HEY Dave Stewart, what did you think of all those Yuisms???)

Ahem...moving onwards... 

You will all see a post from me next week about a certain autograph card that I pulled recently (contest), but in the mean time here's an auto that just doesn't make sense.

Please tell me how "Erik Gustafsson" turns into an auto with the letters    S  V  S.   What???

All right...let's see what else is on the desk here...how about we run to the Hills and get some cards?

Are there any Hills stores left?

Another part of the package that my wife found me at the Goodwill a few weeks back.  I had never seen any of these glossy Team MVP cards released by Topps in 1989.  There were a few decent names in the pile, such as Mark Langston, Fred McGriff, and Dale Murphy to name a few.  Oh and those Dodger players above as well....they'll do in a pinch.


Come on Topps, you waited until Series 2 to put his card out, couldn't you have at least used the name that the guy wants to be called??  Giancarlo if you need help spelling it.....

Mike Pelfrey wants him banished

Finally, a little love for the 64 Topps set that I'm putting together.  I would love to see more cards like this in modern sets (I know that Heritage is doing it...)

Wonder what those 2 people in the stands are doing there?

For all of you that made it to this portion of the post, be thankful for one thing...

I didn't dip into the piles of GQ and A&G....have a great weekend!!

Thanks for reading, Robert

My how the landscape has changed

I admit it, when it comes to cards, I am spoiled.  I grew up in a very large city, and the shows that I attended when I was younger were pretty damn good.  Mind you, when I was attending shows regularly, it was during the boom period between 1989-1993, when everybody and their brother was trying to make a buck selling cards. 

It was fun attending shows on a weekly basis, getting out and meeting people.  Looking for the latest and greatest cards amongst a group of 30-40 regular dealers. 

My how the landscape has changed.  I hit a mall show down in Pittsburgh yesterday, and if there were a total of 10 tables set up, I'd be surprised.  Even the mall show that was closer to my hometown here usually had about 20 tables up and running. 

Hopefully this is just an indicator of the time of year that we are in; summertime usually means more people outside, and card geeks like me having a harder time finding good card shows. 

I didn't fare too badly at the show however, I managed to pick up a few cards that were interesting.  First off, I always get a kick out of seeing a pitcher featured on a bat card, and this card here is no exception.

195 career hits..0 career HRs

It is a 2010 Topps Tribute card, #33/50 of Don Sutton.  The bat portion is kind of cool, it is so rough that you would think that you could get a splinter if you rubbed your finger the wrong way on the card!

I also snagged an auto of a 70's Dodger pitcher that is sure to make a Dodgers blogger happy.  (At least I hope it does, cause he's been waiting a while for my end of our trade)

My quest for the elusive 'dime box' came up empty again (do these things actually exist in the world?), the closest I could find was a 3/$1 box.  I was able to find a handful of vintage cards in there that were in decent shape, so in the pile they went...

The Dalton Jones card is actually in excellent shape, one of the best vintage cards I've ever got my grubby hands on.  The '64 Dick Williams is kind of rough, but still it's one more to check off the list. 

For those of you that follow hockey at all, one of the big themes of the weekend seemed to be the movement of brothers around the league.  Luke Schenn being reunited with brother Brayden in Philly, and Jordan Staal moving from Pittsburgh to Carolina to be with his brother Eric to name two. One of the best stories of the weekend was the brother of Montreal defenseman PK Subban, Malcolm, being drafted by the Bruins.  It was very cool the joy that PK expressed when his brothers' name was called; the rivalry that should develop between those two should be fun to watch for years to come.  I managed to snag a jersey card of big brother PK at the show...

Black Diamond has always been one of my favorite UD 'brands'

Maybe the lack of shows is another sign that I should be saving my money for the National at the beginning of August.  After all, 5 weeks isn't that long to wait, right??  Let's see if I can get there without the budget being dented too badly.

Thanks for reading, Robert

At least the base cards I pulled didn't have any retired players

Decided to pick up a blaster of Series 2 today, figured I would check it out and see if I felt like putting the set together.  For me, there were some good things in the blaster, and some that I could do without.

As far as the good goes, there were a few new inserts that I didn't remember pulling from Series 1 packs.  The first is called "A cut above", and is seeded one in every 6 packs:

I sort of beat the odds here and pulled 2 of them in the 10 pack blaster, and lucky for me I received a couple of good players in Kemp and Longoria as well.  One the back is a trait of the players game and a write up on that trait.  For example, Kemp's is durability, and the back goes on to mention how he had the longest streak of consecutive games played which was 365 (guess that was a jinx, huh?)

Another new insert is the "career day" insert, also seeded 1 in 6 packs.  I managed to pull two of these as well:

This to me was also an interesting idea for an insert set.  The Pedroia card was especially informative, as the card spells out his 5 for 5 day on 6/24/10, with 3 HR, 1 2B, a single and a walk with 4 runs scored.  Pretty cool when you can say you're only the 2nd person in MLB history to do that (Jimmie Foxx was the other).

The third new insert that I came across was mound dominance, and the two cards I pulled featured retired stars Gaylord Perry and Bob Gibson.

Same as the career day insert set, only for pitchers.  You get the idea.

There is also a bunch of returning inserts sets as well, including the gold parallel set, the '87 minis, and the other Golden themed sets (Futures, Moments, Standard).

I was lucky enough to pull a Gold Blue Jay for the personal collection, and the minis were decent players as well.

What disappointed me the most here though was the fact that the blaster included 2 full packs (!) of the Wal Mart blue parallels.  I'm not sure why they decided to do this, because now it's just overkill.  I didn't buy any blasters in Series 1, so for all I know they did this then as well.

Topps also brought back the manupatches for Series 2 as well, one per blaster (at least the boxes I saw at Wal Mart said this).   I pulled the Jim Palmer retired number:

All in all, not bad, but nothing earth shattering here as well.  Not that I expected anything earth shattering for $20, but hey, one can always hope.

Any of the cards (save the Henderson Alvarez gold parallel) are available for trade, just send me an email at rmitchell6700 at yahoo etc etc...

Thanks for reading, Robert

I was just Trolling one day...

When all of a sudden, I get a nice little package in my mailbox from everybody's favorite Troll.  This is part of the 5 package lot of goodies that was in my mailbox on Saturday when I came home from running errands.

As usual, there was a nice little assortment of goodies in the envelope.

Marck had mentioned that he had been quite the beneficiary of blogger generosity as far as 2012 Topps was concerned, so he decided to spread the wealth...

Now you know these had to be dupes, the Troll just doesn't send Rays away...

Next up, you guessed it, Blue Jays aplenty.

Let's see...Brett Cecil is a red bordered Target parallel...the Ricky Romero at the bottom center is a platinum parallel, the Mike McCoy in the lower left is a bronze parallel from 2010 Topps, lots of great variations here, some great stuff. 

Finally, I received an autographed card that I wasn't expecting, but was pretty cool none the less.

I had to think for quite a while about this card, until I remembered a post that Troll had made a while back detailing how he came about the autograph on this and a few other New England Patriots cards.  Cool beans!
This card goes next to the Eddie Murray '78 Topps on the shelf...two cards won in contests!!

The sad part is, when I commented on the post, I told him I would send some cards his way.  I can't even remember if I did. 

I guess I'll just have to send him some anyways...  Marck, thanks again for the Jays/Topps set help, it is much appreciated!!

thanks for reading, Robert