The best card I found in my blaster of Opening Day

I ended up picking up a blaster of Opening Day, for some reason.  I don't know why. I don't plan on putting the set together and I've already ordered my Brewers master team set, so I guess I just wanted to bust some wax, err plastic, whatever.  It's kind of sad that I enjoy the inserts from this low end set more than the flagship.  Anyways I was flipping through the cards and noticed this card of Scooter Gennett signing autographs.  And I thought that's cool then I noticed it was one of those Stadium Scenes inserts and as I looked closer I realize that that's not Miller Park.

Nope that's Wrigley.  And all I could do was laugh, because now if you're a Cubs collector you need this card featuring a Brewer on the front for your Cubs collection, or not.

The Lamest trade post ever!

I apologize this is going to be really lame.  Really,really lame, but I need to put a big thank you out there to some great traders.

First a big thank you to those that I haven't recognized.  Johnny from Johnny's Trading Spot, Jimmy from Talking Smack Cards, Caitlin from Yankees and Jay, which I guess doesn't exist anymore, and of course Tony L from Off Hiatus Baseball cards.  All great trades and I'm pretty sure I didn't post about most of them.

I also got two nice big trade stacks in the mail last week and I figure I'd at least take a photo of the haul.  The big stack is from Jedi Jeff over at 2x3 Heroes.  Jeff sent me a huge stack of 2014 A & G  and Topps needs as well a big old pile of Brewers.  I'm still working though them.

The other pile came from Colbey at Cardboard Collections.  He was breaking a set of 2011 Diamond Giveaway Baseball and I didn't have the Brewers team set.  I asked if he'd take a Lego poly bag instead of money and he agreed.  He also sent me a nice stack of Brewers and a Judge Minifigure from Series 9.

So thank you to everyone that's offered trades.  They mean a lot and even though most of my trades aren't very flashy they are all appreciated.

cb out.

2015 Topps Tribute Recalled!!

Just thought I'd throw this out there.  I'm sure you might have already seen this if you follow Topps on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, but Topps has officially announced a recall of the this years Tribute Baseball.  Topps is asking for shops to return all unopened product.  It has also said that it will replace any damaged cards with cards of equal value, uh oh.

Couple of thoughts.  First, I don't know if I've ever heard of a sports card product ever being recalled.

Second, what the hell happened to quality control?  Yes I know Topps has had issues before.  Like Five Star and it's flagship product a few years ago.  As a matter of fact I've seen quite a few comments on damage in this years Series 1 baseball.  I have no idea how Topps handles it's pack out especially for high end stuff, but it seems to be that someone really dropped the ball.

Third, is Topps going to reissue this set later?  There has been a ton of product already opened, but I'm sure there is still quite a bit sitting on the selves.  What's going to happen to the base cards and hit's that aren't damaged that are being returned?

My final thought is Topps has really screwed the pooch on this one, but in the end it won't matter.  They have their exclusive deal for another 5 years and we really don't have much of a choice if we want new baseball cards.  That being said if this is an isolated incident I think Topps will bounce back alright, but if this is just a harbinger of things to come I don't know if Topps can last 5 more years putting out a crap product and having to do a full recall.

Thoughts?

Some semi-interesting news from the Industry Summit

I get the Sports Collector's Daily feed on my Facebook feed.  I like it. It interjects some much needed hobby news in my relatively lame stream feed.

Anyways some may know that the Industry Summit just rapped up and SCD had a nice post summing up the announcements from the big 3.  Nothing really exciting from Upper Deck other than they extended their contract with Michael Jordan. I don't know what that means since Upper Deck doesn't have an NBA license and Panini seems to have locked up all the collegiate stuff as well.  Panini's big announcements seemed to revolve around soccer.  But Topps had a lot to say.

OK here's the break down.  The big news is that Topps has finally decided to heed the yells from the shop owners and collector's about it releasing so many baseball products after the season.  So it's moving up a bunch of it's releases like Chrome, Stadium Club and Finest.  It's also getting rid of Bowman Sterling and Inception. It's also, sadly getting rid of Prime Football, which is a shame, since Prime is one of my favorite football releases and I'm surprised that Topps never tried to carrier over the brand to Baseball.

Topps has also decided to split Bowman up into 2 series, it's bring back Bowman's Best, and it will release Heritage High Number series as it's own packed product instead of an online box set exclusive.  No word if they plan on throwing in all their left over Update card in the packs again too.

Topps is also adding High Tek Football, Strata Baseball and the new Diamond Football (analogous to Dynasty Baseball).

I'm sure there will be lots of other stuff not announced that will come down the pipeline.  I'm kind of bummed that Topps still hasn't listened to a large number of us that would love the return of Topps Total, in either or both Football or Baseball, but what can you do.

In other Topps news, Tribute came out this week and I guess the product is riddled with defects.  Topps even posted on Facebook that they'll be issuing a statement about it.

Alright that's it. Feel free to comment.

cb out

TTM Spring Training Success - Brandon Kintzler

I have a pretty full mail box Monday. I had two huge trade packages, the David Goforth TTM return and this guy.

Brandon has been on the team since 2010, seeing his first Bigs action September 10th.  Since then he's been up and down, but had a break out season in 2013 becoming the set up man for Jim Henderson.  Brandon's rookie card is in the 2011 Topps Series 2 set.  I wish I'd have been able to dig out one of his rookie cards, but I'll settle for a nice auto on his 2014.  I might have to try him again in Milwaukee to get his rookie card signed and I can take that crappy Nyjer Morgan auto out of the spot.

Brandon's a great TTM signer.

TTM Stats:

Date Sent: 3/2/15

Date Recieved: 3/16/15

Address used:

Maryvale Park

3600 E 51st Ave

Phoenix AZ 85031

It's interesting both Brandon and David's envelopes were postmarked the 9th which means that they probably signed them almost right away.  I can't believe it's taking letters a week to get to me.

TTM Spring Training Success - David Goforth

Holy moley it's been a long time since I had any TTM successes.  It's also be a while since I sent any out.  But I managed 8 TTM's to the Brewers Spring Training park down in Arizona and got my first one back today.

David has been in the Milwaukee minor league system since 2011.  Last year he was a minor league all-star and at the end of the season was added to the Brewers 40 man roster.  We'll have to see if he starts the season there or not. David hasn't seen any Major League time and doesn't have a Topps card yet, but maybe he'll get one this year.

I sent him a couple of his minor league cards and he sent them back in about 2 weeks.

TTM Stats
Date Sent 3/2/15
Date Recieved 3/16/15
Address used
Maryvale Park
3600 E 51st Ave
Phoenix AZ 85031

I'm kind of speechless.

Topps released some images featuring the 2015 Topps Football cards. This will mark Topps' 60th and last set.  At least for the foreseeable future.

This is what they've come out with to end their run.  I really have no words to describe what I'm seeing.  

Feel free to comment on the design.

Sanity restored?

I'd like to thank everyone who left feedback on my Stop the Insanity post.  It figures after I post that I end up finding some great deals on the COMC site.  And to clarify I wasn't bitching about the prices of the high end stuff.  You know the super rare auto relic universofractor numbered to 3 kind of cards, no I was bitching about the low to mid range stuff. 

To be honest the card that set this off was this little old Robin Yount High Tek card.

It's the whirlpool or spiral pattern. It's the next rarest card after the base card. I paid $3 for this card.  It's still sitting in my account waiting to be shipped and it'll probably be there for at least a few more months.  So after I bought that card I had my eyes on the base card which was priced about the same.  Three dollars for the base card seemed fair as well. I mean this was a pretty high end product. But I needed a little more cash and I've been building my store credit up with the COMC challenges.  By the time I had the money in my account that $3 card was gone and some one had put 2 more up for $50 a piece.  Seriously, then someone else put one up and under cut those two cards by pricing theirs at $42.50, huh? And a fourth card popped up at the much more reasonable price of $33.  This is what pissed me off.  I understand you can list your cards for whatever price you want, but this is ridiculous. There are other examples on the site as well, but this is the one that got me going.

Fast forward to last week and those cards were still up there for the crazy prices and someone offered this card for a whole $2.25.

 Did I buy it. Hell yeah I did.  This is the Gold Diffractor #d to 99.  For less that I probably would have paid for the base card.  That my friends was a deal.  But that's not all I also picked up a couple Triple Thread parallels on the cheap as well.

 This Amythest parallel set me back a whole $1.47.  If you take out the quarter COMC tacks on I got this card for a $1.22. Not too shabby at all.

Then I saw this beauty as well.

This is the Onyx parallel numbered to just 50.  It set me back another $2.00.

In the end, my point is  there still  seem to be some people who still want to sell some cards and there are deals to be had.

On a side note I took the advice left in the comments and did an error report on those high priced base cards.  Since I did that yesterday 3 have been removed for sale.  We'll have to see if they get relisted at a reasonable price.

Stop the Insanity part 2 or the Topps Bunt edition

I'm a lover of history.  World history, American history, Baseball history, even my own history. So when I got a twitter suggestion to follow the Digital Card Values I was intrigued.  Hold on the history part will come into play in a minute.

Topps Bunt Sparky Anderson Signature Card

I play Topps Bunt and that led me to playing Topps Punt and Kick as well.  If you don't know what those are they are digital trading card apps.  The premise is pretty simple you download the app, Topps gives you some coins, you buy some digital card packs. You want more coins you can to tasks on Tapjoy or just buy them.  You get daily coins and a weekly bonus for logging in 7 days in a row.  Of course packs aren't cheap and the coins you get is limited, so of course Topps wants you to buy more coins, that's how it makes money.  There is also a game involved, much like fantasy baseball and football.  You add cards from your inventory and if the player does something you get points, earn awards and more coins.  You can also trade to complete sets for more coins and trading is half the fun.

So it's not hard to imagine that of course people have started to sell these digital cards on ebay.  Not only that, but people are buying them and paying some big bucks.  Paying for cards that don't play in the game and don't really exist.

This reminds me of, here's the history part, of the Dutch tulip craze of the 1600's.  Don't know what that is, here's a wiki page.  I guess people have way too much money and way to much time on their hands.

Don't get me wrong I like the Bunt app and I like trading and playing the game. And Topps has the opportunity to try out all sorts of ideas for cards that really don't cost it more than the designer and coders time.

 But I've never purchased coins and I'm sure not going to buy 0 and 1's off of ebay.  Seriously check out the site and the prices some of these cards are going for.  I really don't understand it.  Maybe you can explain it to me.

cb out

Stop the insanity.

I like to consider myself a multi-tool collector.  For those of us who were collecting cards before the days of the internet your choices for adding cards to your collection were limited to busting wax, buying singles from your LCS (if you had one), trading with fellow collectors, and mail order.  All of those options are still valid, but the internet gives us so many more options.  Sites like justcommons.com, sportslots.com, eBay, Listia, and COMC offer all sorts of options to not just buy new cards, but to sell as well.

Like I said I consider myself a multi-tool collector, meaning I will use any means available to further my collection.  That being said I noticed a very disturbing trend over on COMC on my last Black Friday shopping spree that was echoed around the card collecting blogosphere.  Good deals on COMC are becoming much harder to find and in some instances the pricing is getting absurd.

If you don't know the story, COMC parted ways with Beckett over a year ago and has been trying to rebuild it's card catalog using customer help.  What that meant was  no longer was a Beckett book price listed with the card.  Say what you will about Beckett pricing, but at least it put a ceiling on pricing, usually.

If you've been on COMC lately the offer a SRP - Suggested Retail Price, a SLP - Suggested List Price, and a SWP - Suggested Wholesale Price.  And for very common cards that have lots of sales  on COMC that works OK, but when you start getting into some of the rarer cards, or cards that there are only one of for sale and there is no SRP or SLP, then it starts to get a little crazy.  Sure there's a quarter added onto the price for COMC's handling fee, but some sellers really just throwing out some crazy prices.  Maybe they expect you to just come back and counter offer to their insanely high price, but for me I just shake my head and move on.

For me the advantage of shopping on COMC is you can peruse a lot of cards and there's just one flat shipping fee, but if I can find a card cheaper elsewhere, I'm going elsewhere.  It also hurts that COMC's overhaul of their site still isn't finished and sellers on their site are getting a little impatient, which probably leads to fewer sellers sending in cards to add to their inventory, which means lower overall selection, variety, and competition.

I was going to put up some examples, but I rather you journey over there and explore the issue for yourself and post your findings in the comments.