2012 Panini National Treasures Baseball - Panini Steps it up.

If you're like me, and by like me I mean cheap and not well to do, you like to window shop.  I love watching Youtube box breaks and reading forum posts of super high end box breaks.  And the more I watch and read  the less I ever want to actually open a box of this high end stuff.  Just so much risk for your buck.  But I digress, the latest super premium baseball card offering is Panini's National Treasures.  And after watching the box breaks and reading about them on forums I have to say I really like this stuff.  I still would never spring for a $400 plus box of this, but I could see taking that $400, if I had it to blow, and picking up stuff I wanted online.

I have to say that Panini has really stepped it up with this super premium product.  Each "box" contains 8 cards all hits of some kind.  Including one book card and one on card auto guaranteed.  The one thing I would like to tell Panini is when you advertise your product you might not want to refer to most of your subjects as commons.  When you look at the sell sheet and the collection breakdown it says 150 commons and 75 rookies.  That's a terrible way to sell your product.  Might I suggest you say something like this, 150 active, retired, and hall of famers and 75 rookies.  Calling the majority of your players commons really doesn't lend to how great of a product you're trying to put out, especially when your product is 8 cards in a box inside a tin.

But I digress.  There are no base cards in this product.  There are lots of different themes and subsets  but they are all either memorabilia, autographed or both.  And I know I'm usually hard on Panini, but I have to say from what I've seen I really like this product.

Sure there are your base relics like this Al Kaline bat...

this Jackie Robinson jersey.  I really do like the over all design of much of the cards.  Instead of airbrushing all the players Panini decided to do head shots in black and white, cutting off the hat logo and chest logo of the player.  But what you get is a nice close up of the player and for an unlicensed MLB product, they do have a players association and HOF license, it looks really good.  I also think that Panini did a great job making these look retro, but modern and pretty much gave us a modern day cabinet card.   With great filigree and borders and just a really nice clean over all appearance, that  I find very attractive.  Not to mention there are some insanely nice cards in the product. Here are a few I found while window shopping.

There are lots of book cards.  Everything from this awesome Granderson patch to some large plain patches. All are very low numbered.

Panini released a pretty extensive drool gallery before the product launch and one of the really stand outs were the button cards.  Topps will also be putting out button cards in Gypsy Queen this year.

There are also some really nice patch cards too.

Panini also brings back the Rated Rookie with these signed patch cards.  There are also MLB Players Choice cards that are just like this with a different embroidered logo.  No Diamond Kings though which is kind of disappointing.

One of my other favorite themed cards in the set are the Hall of Fame auto cards.

This will be one of the cards I'm going after.  I do believe these are numbered to just 25 and are all hard signed.  A great design with the players year of induction and the HOF's logo.

But probably the best cards I've seen and I have no chance of ever owning one, because the few that I've been tracking in ebay are going for crazy money, are these bat knob cards.

I mean this would probably be the crown of my collection if ever it was to be acquired, or something like this.

Panini put out a drool gallery of these card too.

Color me impressed Panini.  If Panini can transfer this kind of effort over to more mid to low range offerings, if and when they were to get an MLB license, well it just might work out all right.  And the more I thought about it after my whole Look Back at Topps Exclusive License, the more I wouldn't mind the return of Rated Rookies and Diamond Kings.  Maybe there's hope on the horizon.  Anyways congrats to Panini for putting out a great product that I will never buy a box of.  But damn if it ain't fun to window shop.

cb out.

What you don't race outhouses??!!??

Sorry I've been slacking here at the Crack.  I've been really busy the past two weeks.  It's Fur Rondy time up here in Anchorage.  Fur Rendezvous is the annual winter carnival and now buts up to the start of the Iditarod sled dog race which will start this coming Saturday.

That being said this was my second year helping out with our Outhouse race team.  To be honest our usual team leader was out working and I had to take over.  I had some great friends to help out.  But it's been 2 weeks of going over to a friends garage to do the build a couple hours a night after work.

This was only my second year with the team, but the team has been racing for the last 7.  And every year we build a new outhouse.  The old outhouse gets burned at the annual Slo-Mo Cornhole Party at a buddies house.  Anyways we try to do some current political or other news worthy theme. This year we picked the Kulluk oil rig near disaster.

Here's the mostly finished product.

I found a cheap helicopter at Value Village it really tied the outhouse together.

I also didn't get to take many pictures as I was racing most of the time.  Which is too bad. But I did get a few.  There were lots of great outhouses this year and we did really well. Dr. Who even showed up.

They won best theme.

  There are two classes in the race, traditional and unlimited.  We accidentally got lumped into the unlimited and I think if we'd have been in the traditional we'd have taken the class and maybe the grand championship.  Some of our races that we lost at the end were insanely close.

We ended up taking second in our class and winning for best architecture. We took the skirt off the back to race.  We had talked about taking the whole decking off, but to be honest it makes the outhouse.  I designed and built her to be super light and maneuverable.  She didn't disappoint.

Thanks to Team Love on the Rocks.  I'm in there if you can figure out which one is me.  I don't normally post photos of myself so good luck.

We now return to your regular posts.

2013 Turkey Red - going, going, gone live!

As I write this there's not a ton of stuff up on ebay yet, but I have seen a few posts on box break forums that people are getting their Turkey Red orders in.  Here are a few scans of what the cards look like and a few autos already up for sale.  I assume that in the next 48 hours ebay will be packed with this stuff.

Here's Yu.

And Bryce.

One of the autos I'll be chasing. Sadly I have a nicer TTM auto of this guy.

Here's what a back will look like, I'm assuming the auto and regular backs are similar with the autos haveing the Topps Disclaimer.  Looks like all autos are sticker autos as well.  Some of the subjects like Jose here are very low numbered.
There are also dark bordered parallel autos all numbered to just 10!

Topps Spring Fever Hobby Store Redemption Cards

Just a reminder that today is the first day to officially redeem your Spring  Fever Redemption cards if you got any and live near a hobby shop.  Although it appears that full sets are already on ebay and have been for awhile.

 I know that last year I was in a hurry to make sure I got all my NFL Kickoff packs. I was worried about the stores running out, but it seems that they had plenty.
Here's what the cards look like..since there are already up on the ebay.

They're foil shiny!
Here's what an auto will look like if your lucky enough to get one.

Here is a link to the list of stores participating.  I'm glad to see both of my favorite LCS's in town are in it.

I'll let you know what I get out of my two packs.

TTMing: a short and one sided primer

So here we are with start of Spring Training and a great time to get that players autographs you wanted.  Spring training is also a great time to get those prospects and rookies you're after.  Players have more time during spring training and usually are a lot more amicable to signing, even bigger name players.

I'll admit, I'm a novice when it comes to TTM or Through the Mail autograph requesting.  I only started a few years ago, but I've had a few people ask me over the course of me posting about my successes and even a few failures how to do it.  I mean what's more appealing that getting an autograph from an athlete or celebrity you like for a few stamps? And to be honest it's pretty easy.

Let's first explain a few of the acronyms and terms you'll see when you get into this.

TTM - Through the Mail
LOR - Letter of Request
SASE - Self Addressed Stamped Envelope.
Pre-Print - A preprinted autograph usually on an 8x10 photos that stars use as a general send out.
Pre-Signed - An authentic auto usually on an 8x10 that a star signs a lot of and that someone else personalizes later.
Auto-pen - A machine produced facsimile autograph.  Presidents use these!

When I started to send out TTM's I focused on celebrities. I actually took the time to make my own autograph cards and sent them out. And to my surprise I was incredibly successful.  I had thought about doing the same when it came to sports stars, but to be honest sending them one of their own cards is way more convenient and you don't infringe upon their trademark.  I'm going to focus on sports stars here, as that is what I really enjoy and do more than anything now.

There are lots of great websites out there to get addresses from and to see others successes and failures.
The one I use the most is the SportsCardForum's TTM manager. It's free, which is always a plus, and a great website to boot about all things sports card related.  The other site I've used to get address from is FanMail.biz   This one is oriented more for celebrities, but they have sports stars as well.  The are are other sites as well free and pay to choose from  just do a google search

So first you thing you have to do is decided who you'd like to send a request to.  And then hopefully be able to find an address that's had some recent success to send the request to. Spring training is great for this because all you need is the team's stadium address easily found on the internet.

Next is picking out what to send.  I'm working on a Brewers TTM project trying to get as many former, current, and future Brewers as I can for as many different years and brands as possible.  So my over all focus is on them, but I do occasionally send to other players I enjoy.  I have a large collection of extra Brewers cards I've been hording since I started collecting back in the mid-80's and that I've gotten putting team sets together.  As a rule I never send more than 3 cards out to be autographed and with the more famous and popular players I usually will only send one or maybe two.  You don't want to appear greedy or look like someone who just wants to turn around and sell their autos on ebay.  I pick cards that I won't miss if they never make it back to me.  That's always a risk in TTMing.  You might not ever get a response.  So pick cards you think would look nice autographed, Allen and Ginter look great and so do 1994 Upper Deck cards, but don't break the bank.

If you're looking for single cards to send out and you don't have a stack of extras laying around check out sites like Sportlots.com and Justcommons.com for cheap singles.

So now that you have the player you want to send to, the card(s) you want to try and get signed, and the address to send to here's what you need to do.

First you'll need two envelopes.  I use a #10 envelope to send and include a #6 SASE for my return. I like using the smaller envelope because then you don't have to fold it to fit inside the sender. Tom Owens who writes the blog Baseball by the Letters and posts a lot about successful TTMing had a nice post about using old Valentines Day envelopes and other colored envelopes to stand out.  Not a bad idea either.

Next you'll need a nice LOR, Letter of Request.  I usually hand write all my LOR's. Some people opt for type written, which is fine too, but I always feel that the handwritten letter lends a little more sincerity to the request.  I write things about myself and what I liked about the player and what they've done, that I'm glad they're with or were with my team and any other cool memories I have.  I tend to keep is short. One page or less and I like to use wide ruled paper, but that's just me.


Stamps!  I tend to buy a few booklets of forever stamps.  Well because they last forever! But to be honest you'll start going through them like water once you get into TTMing.

Now all you have to do is put your letter, cards and SASE in the #10 envelope, seal it, send it off and wait.  I've had returns as fast as 5 days and some as slow as 11 months and sometimes sadly they never come back at all.

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised how successful you are.  And nothing beats seeing one of you return envelopes in the mailbox.

HELP again!

Well you guys are awesome.  I just want to tell everybody that contacted me that all the trade packages went out yesterday or are going out this afternoon.  With the exception of the Baseball Card Snob who I need to look through your want list  this weekend.  That being said I'll probably update the trade post with my 2013 inserts and parallels available.  Sorry to say that all the Dodgers, Giants, Rangers, Mets, and Braves are gone and possibly Yankees after I get done trading with the BBCS.  And it was a little overwhelming with other stuff going on, but I think I took care of everybody.

Now onto the help part.  Last month I asked for help completing my 2012 Allen and Ginter set.  Marcus over at All the Way to the Backstop stepped up and not only sent me the card, but a crap load of other goodies.  Marcus your thank you package is on the way.

As you know I'm working on putting together Brewers team sets.  Right now I'm focusing on Topps and I am insanely close to being completely done with this task.  I have completed all the base sets, but I still have a few cards I need from the Traded and Update sets.  All from the 2000's.  I have been picking up lots of cards off of SportsLots and Justcommons, but there are a few cards on my list that aren't on either site.  As a matter of fact I haven't been able to find them anywhere.

So here's my list of cards left to finish off my Brewers Topps Team Sets.  You can also find my very long want list here and on the sidebar.

2001 Topps Traded
T212 Jason Belcher RC - This is one of those cards I can't find anywhere.

2002 Topps Traded  - a few of these are hard to find as well, at least for me.
T23 Nelson Figueroa
T47 Glendon Rusch
T63 Eric Young
T71 Paul Bako

2003 Topps Traded

T78 Wes Helms

T86 Eddie Perez

T90 John Vander Wal

T264 Mike Adams FY RC

2005 Topps Update and Highlights

303 Manny Parra FY RC

2007 Topps Update and Highlights

150 Ryan Braun RC

I know Topps Traded and Update is not one of the most collected sets in recent history, but I figure I'd see if anyone out in the blogosphere can help out.  

Let me know I'm sure we can work a trade out.

Thanks

cb out

Happy Valentine's Day!!