Spring Training - Joy!!!

Well it's official. Spring training has begun.  Sure it's just the first day and like the first day of school not much gets done.  First official work out won't be till tomorrow, but still....  I love this time of year.  I have to say being able to go down and enjoy a couple ST games last spring was a blast and something I would do again in a heart beat.  This year I'll have to satisfy my joy with TTM's and watching games on the internet, but still I'm excited.  I'll probably be excited for the first month and then as my team slowly sinks into the cellar of the standings become less excited, but with a new season comes new hope and new players and old players.  I'll have a TTM post here in a couple of days I'm waiting for some cards to arrive to send down and I need to go buy some stamps.

In baseball card news....Upper Deck yesterday was posting on Facebook and twitter all sorts of intriguing questions about what if they got a baseball card license what would you like to see UD make.  And I saw not too long ago that they tweeted to Cardboard Connection that they would be putting out baseball cards this year.  Of course UD had "baseball cards" last year too that weren't all that impressive. And the cards they put out this year won't be MLB licensed, but could Upper Deck make a move for next year? Do they have the money?  Would MLB even deal with Upper Deck?  Did Upper Deck just come into some money say from a life insurance policy on McWilliams?  Who knows.  But I'm glad to see that UD and Panini both are sniffing around the edges.  It might just mean we see a little more variety next year.

So everybody enjoy your Tuesday, I've got an outhouse to build.


cb out

2013 Topps Allen and Ginter - The annual pre-release look

I noticed that the 2013 Topps Allen and Ginter sell sheets were out a while back.  And I've actually been meaning to do a post about this years offering like I normally do, just kinda forgot.

Allen and Ginter has become one of my  favorite Baseball releases of the year.  Oh sure I get excited about Series 1, mainly because it's the first baseball set of the year, but A and G has me hooked.

Here we have the base design. Not to terribly different from last year.  A classy art deco border and a nice photo of the player.  I will say that once again these cards will look great signed.  So you TTMer's take notice.

Of course there will be mini's, lots of minis.  Regular back, A and G backs, black borders, no number backs, hand numbered to 25 baseball backs and the holy grail of A and G mini's the 1/1 woods. There will also be framed cloth mini's as well.

Will there be box loaders?  Of course.  This year you have a shot at some great Pele autographs too.

This year there will book cabinet cards, as well as some of the cool super relics like last year and cut signatures.  One of the base cabinet cards will be Wonders of the world and I'm sure some baseball highlights like usual.

Will there be inserts?  Really? You had to ask.  Ginter is one of my favorite releases because of all the cool and oddball inserts, full size and mini.

This years mini insert topics include, the First Americans, Inquiring Minds, Heavy Hangs the Head, Codes Ciphers and Cyptographs, Peacemakers and Famous minds.  I'm sure there will be a few surprise SP and SSP mini inserts as well.

This years full size inserts include the big 100 card baseball themed Across the Years, connecting baseball stars and someone else who share their birthdays.  One little corner which are space related, Palaces and Strongholds, self-explanatory, Martial Mastery, and Civilizations of Ages Past.

While there aren't too many mini sets I'm that interested in I really like the a few of the full size sets.

But what about the really goodies, what about the hits???
 You get 3 per box.  Any combination of relics, autos, rips, ect.  Those all relic boxes do suck though.

This year on top of regular rip cards there will be double rip cards.  Double the pleasure.  Last year was the first year I didn't pull a rip card. I have yet to actually rip open one, as I decided to sell them to recoup box prices, seeing as how they go for such silly high prices.

Rip cards are one per hobby case on average.

There will be three, yes three relic card designs. I don't know why.

And taking a note from Gypsy Queen this year there will be full size relic cards to join the mini framed relic cards.

Plus there will be Guitar Pick relics, Oddity Relics, and DNA Hair relics, creepy.

And of course there will be the mini framed autos as well.

This guy amongst others.

You might also get something like this...

But don't count on it.

There will also be framed original Allen and Ginter cards inserts.

And these one of a kind mini's that Topps says will truely be one of a kind, with no other parallels.

And lastly if your lucky, really lucky, you might walk away with a redemption for one of these.

Clearly a rip-off, or homage, to Upper Decks Entomology inserts this thing should be large and thick and very cool.  It's not like Upper Deck never ripped Topps off.

As always there are sure to be unannounced surprises mixed in with the set and now we only have about 5 more month till it hits the streets.

Going to the Polls - A Look Back at Topps Exclusive License Part 5

This will probably be the last part to my series, unless I get a response from the Commissioner Selig or Tim Brosnon.  But when I started my look back/bitch about the last 3 years in the kingdom of Topps I added a side bar poll.  Two actually.  I wanted to know what you thought.  Because ultimately that's what its all about what we want.  I opened the polls for 2 weeks and probably should have pointed them out more as only 37 votes came in, but that's still not bad.

The first question I asked was did you want to see Topps get another multi-year exclusive deal. Here's the results.

DO YOU WANT TO SEE THE MLB GIVE TOPPS ANOTHER EXCLUSIVE MULTI-YEAR DEAL?

Overwhelmingly you guys said no.  Who you like to see get a license is a  whole other matter, but it also interested me to see that about a quarter of you that voted said you would like to see Topps reign as MLB's exclusive baseball card maker.  I wonder if Topps was having employees stuff the ballot box?   Also interesting was that out of the 72% that said no 43% of you really don't want Topps to be exclusive again.

I also asked if you thought that Topps' exclusive license hurt the hobby and industry.  I also added if you liked pie and according to the results alot of you do.

DID TOPPS EXCLUSIVE MLB LICENSE HELP OR HURT THE INDUSTRY?

I'll assume that the 21% that said it helped it also voted yes for another exclusive deal.  There were even a few you were honest and Didn't know or care.  But the majority of people who voted and didn't take the funny choice, I'm not blaming you I'd have picked I like pie too, said that it Hurt the industry.  

I'm pretty sure you can guess which way I would have voted, but in case you don't I'll tell you.  I too don't want to see Topps reign alone anymore.  So that begs the question who would I want to see get a license?  Well who I would want to see and who's most likely to get one are different answers.  I think if any company is going to get a license it'll be Panini.  I'm not a huge fan of Panini, but I'm not a hater.  And to be honest I would love to see a nice Donruss set again.  I kinda miss Diamond Kings.  And we can most probably rule out Upper Deck.  Besides suing itself out of existence Upper Deck had that whole license infringement back in 2010 and couldn't come up with the money to pay the NFL for a license so I think it's safe to say we won't be seeing any Upper Deck baseball anytime soon.  So who does that leave?  ITG, Leaf, or some new upstart?  Maybe. 

Did the Topps Exclusive License help or hurt the industry.  Well that's a tough one and it all depends on how you look at it.  We are now down to 3 big companies.   I'm still counting Upper Deck in the mix for now.  And if Upper Deck had got a MLB license back in 2009 would it be in the trouble it's in now?  Who knows.  But the one thing we can say is the card market got smaller as a whole.  I'm sure Topps pocketbook fared very well, I think that was kinda the point.  But the industry includes the hobby shops and consumer and while I haven't talked to a ton of people, the over all sense I get is that collectors are buying less and that hobby shops have less to sell with fewer products.  And after an initial release if a product is hot a lot of times the price skyrockets.  2010 Heritage and Gypsy Queen anyone?  That's bad for both consumers and hobby shops.  One it cost us more money to go after cards and so we buy less.  It cost the hobby shops more to keep product in stock if they have to go out on the secondary market and pick more up to keep their shelves stocked and then we buy less so they make less.  I  had a post a few years ago about how bare the cupboard looked at the hobby shop.  It was so true.  And I'm not looking for the days when there was one to two new products a week coming out and filling the shelves, but I know there has to be and can be a happy medium.

cb out.

TTM Success - Cecil Cooper

I'm gearing up for my big Spring Training TTM send off.  That doesn't mean that I'm only sending to guys in Spring Training either.  I've got a few past Brewers I want to send off to as well.  That being said, it's been a while since I sent any TTM's out so I've pretty much written off anything I'd already sent out.  And then low and behold I get one of my return envelopes in the mail the other day.  From Phoenix no less.  Who could be sending me a card back from Phoenix? 

Why it's former Brewer great and the old head coach of the Astros, Cecil Cooper!! Wow I had sent this off almost a year ago, back to Cecil's home address in Texas.  Cecil is a Texas native if you didn't know.  I haven't heard what he's been up to since getting axed by the Astros and I could have sworn I'd seen his house for sale when I did a google search, I know creepy.  I also couldn't find any current info if Cecil was working with a new team, which is what I would suspect if he's sending me my cards from Phoenix and Spring Training is about a week away from starting up.  If anyone knows, let me know.

Anyways I'm really happy to get Coop back! Plus that 1982 is the first 82 I've gotten signed so it also helps fill a hole in my Brewers TTM project and the 1980 is a nice back up.

Date sent 3/26/12
Date Received 2/2/13

Address used (I'm not sure if this is good anymore)
Cecil Cooper
24802 Boulder Lakes Ct.
Katy, TX 77494-3900

Thanks Cecil!!!

2013 Trade Bait-a-poloooosa Come and get it

While I threw my hits up on eBay as soon as I could.  Gotta try and make some money back.  I have lots of parallels to trade.  Emeralds, Golds, Reds and Blues and a bunch of inserts I won't be collecting.  I also have a nice stack of extras if anyone needs a few cards to fill up a set.  I was lucky enough to get a full set from Jumbo, blaster and rack pack.  I also ended up picking up a Target blaster just to see what red parallels I could get.

What do I want you ask?  Well I'll take any Brewers parallels you got, any 72 mini's off my need list and the Calling Card and The Greats inserts you want to get rid of.  There all right here. I also would take any help from any of my other set needs or Brewers or Packers team sets.

Here's what I have....

That Green A-Rod has a bent corner.

and that red Haren has a crimped upper right edge/corner too.

I know I've already got a couple people interested in trading and have started piles for them.  So drop me a line on here or email me through my profile.

cb out.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner! The 3rd Annual Almost the Easiest Super Bowl Contest on the Web has a winner!!

Well that was an interesting Super Bowl I guess.  I wasn't too impressed with the ads this year, not that anything I see during the Super Bowl makes me want to buy a product, but usually they are entertaining.  Not so much this year.  And lets face it, it looked like the Ravens were going to run away with it there for awhile and yes I realize that it came down to the last two minutes and the Niners almost made an amazing comeback, but most of the game was pretty boring.  Especially since I wasn't vested in either team. And what was up with that hour long power outage?  But we have a winner.

This year we had 25 enter and we had 5 going into the final. Here's the original post.

I asked you just to pick the winner and  few tie breakers.

Here's what a perfect prediction would have looked like.

Ravens over Niners, 65 points, 3 Turnovers

Up for grabs were a trio of great rookie cards and I always throw some bonus cards in as well..

Here are our 5 finalists and our winner! 

Shane P. - Ravens over Falcons , 39 points, 5 TO

Adam E - 49ers over Broncos, 48 points , 2 TO

arpsmith- 49ers over Broncos, 36 points, 3 TO

Skroeker - 49ers over Patriots, 45 points, 3 TO (pimp)

Robert - Ravens over Packers, 47 points, 3 TO

Robert who writes the great blog $30 a Week Habit and I do believe is a Blue Jays fan, not sure if he has a favorite football team, but seeing as baseball is just around the corner I'm sure I can come up with some Jays too if nothing else.  Robert I'll be emailing you shortly. 

But wait there's more.  We still have the door prize to give away.  Everyone who entered is in and four of you guys were nice enough to pimp the contest and let me know about it to get an extra entry.  I've entered everybody into Random.org's list randomizer and randomized the list 3 times.

It's the High Five Man better know as Justin from Justin's World.  

Justin I'm not sure what team you root for, but I'll be emailing you shortly as well.

Thanks to everybody who entered and making this the biggest contest on the blog yet.

3rd Annual Almost the Easiest Super Bowl contest on the Web Pre Game Trash Talk

It's here, well almost.  This year we will have a winner outright.  But of course we will have to find a winner from the tie breakers.

That being said here are our 5 finalist!!!

Shane P. - Ravens over Falcons , 39 points, 5 TO

Adam E - 49ers over Broncos, 48 points , 2 TO

arpsmith- 49ers over Broncos, 36 points, 3 TO

Skroeker - 49ers over Patriots, 45 points, 3 TO (pimp)

Robert - Ravens over Packers, 47 points, 3 TO


For those of you who forgot what's on the line.  Why these sweet cards are!!!

And don't forget we also have a door prize to award after the big game.

See you after the game!