An unexpected addition from the LCS and an addition to the Top 100

I stopped in at Don's Sportcards here in Anchorage last week.  My wife was picking up my son so I was kid free and decided to just pop in to Don's to see if there was anything interesting and to pick up a couple boxes for a couple sets I was putting together.  Don has a great feature in his shop called the drop board.  It's a huge section of wall with peg board and hooks and he hangs a bunch of cards and packs up.  Each card is listed with a price.  Usually a good 20 to 25% off from the Beckett price and ever week that card doesn't sell it gets marked down a little till it reaches a dollar and that's the lowest it'll go.  But I've picked all sorts of good relics, autographs, and vintage from that drop board for crazy low prices, a lot of them for the bottom dollar price.  Well to my surprise Don had a ton of this year's Panini Cooperstown hanging on the wall.  All sorts of inserts and autographs from the set.  And then I saw the Ignitor just sitting there marked down to I think it was six whole dollars.  I couldn't pass it up.  I'm not a huge collector of Paul Molitor, but he was a Brewers for most of his career, is still beloved in Milwaukee, and I do have a nice stack of his cards in my collection, but I didn't have an autographed card till now.  I have a sweet relic I picked up years ago, rookie cards and everything in between, and now I have my first, but hopefully not last auto of the #2 all time top Brewer.  On top of that I haven't added a card to my Top 100 in while.  I had to look and see what number I stopped on.  So this is card #72 in my Top 100 cards in my collection (the number is not the card's rank in the Top 100, the Top 100 has no rankings).

Welcome to the collection.

Don't make him angry....you wouldn't like him when he's angry

Love him or hate him Ryan Braun is the face of the Brewers. As a Brewers fan that fact disturbs me a little.  Mainly because we have and have had other players that could easily have replaced him.  I have forgiven him for his steroid use and the whole circus that followed. Well forgiven him to a degree, he did get a man fired for doing his job just to save his ass for a year.  But that's a whole other story.  

Regardless of Ryan's past transgressions I've wanted to add his autograph to my collection for a long time.  And up to a few years ago that would have cost me big bucks.  Oh what a few years and a steroid scandal can do.  After selling a few things on ebay I had a little money to play with and decided to see I could find.  I wasn't sure which way I wanted to go, just an auto, a relic auto, dual auto.   After looking for a few weeks I found this beautiful 2015 Topps Five Star on card auto.  Overall I really like the look of the card.  I had thought about trying to track down one of those great looking black cards with silver signature, but this card fell into my lap and I ended up picking it up for less than $10 delivered.  

Almost the Easiest World Series Contest on the Web 5 - Official Entry post

Well it took till the last game of the season to have all the pieces in place.  With wildcard games starting Tuesday that doesn't leave too much time to do a sign up, but I'm going to leave the sign up open till Friday night, lets say 8pm Alaska time.  That'll be midnight on the East Coast.

So are we going to mix the contest up for the 5th Annual offering?  Nope.  This is and always will be almost the easiest contest on the web and all I want you to tell me is who's going to win?

Of course some of you might pick the same team so we need a few tie breakers.  So I also want you to tell me who the opponent will be, how many games in the series, and how many total home runs will be scored, both teams.

So your entry should look something like this.

Cubs over Yankees, 7 games, 9 home runs.

The tie breakers are ranked in that order, opponent, games, HRs.

So what are you playing for?  Well I'm still trying to figure that out and pull stuff out.  To make matters worse the next two weeks are going to be very busy for me.  So trust me that I'll put together a nice prize package and the winner will also get some cards of their favorite team and/or players.

Let's not forget, there will also be a door prize just for signing up.  I'll enter all the entries into Random.org and randomize the list 3 times.  Person at the top gets the prize.  Plus like always if you promote this contest on your blog or other social media you'll get an extra entry into the door prize drawing.  Just leave a link to the pimp so I know you did it.

I would also like to ask if you sign up for the contest you have some way of me getting in contact with you. ie an email attached to you profile.  Believe it or not I've had prizes go unclaimed before.

Alright here are you choices.


American League
Toronto Blue Jays
Kansas City Royals
Texas Rangers
New York Yankees
Houston Astros

National League
New York Mets
St. Louis Cardinals
LA Dodgers
Chicago Cubs
Pittsburgh Pirates


I'll be posting reminders all week.  Alright good luck and thanks for playing.

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?

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.

2015 Topps Series 1-- cuz it says so right on the back!

I always get excited when the new Topps flagship baseball comes out.  It's a new year, spring training and then opening day are right around the corner.  I'm not nearly as excited when Series 2 comes out or update, but Series 1, well that's all new.

I ended up going to Bosco's trade night last night.  I pondered not going, I hadn't been in in a few month and didn't have any tickets yet to the drawing, but I knew this would be the last trade night at their current location, they're moving into a new, fully renovated, custom designed nerdtopia on Valentines Day, that and Series 1 was out.

I've been trying to be good about my spending habits and I had even contemplated not buying any packs at all and just buying a cheap set somewhere down the line, but in the end I picked up 3 jumbo packs, because hey I love to rip packs!  So lets see what I got and look at some Topps.


There was a lot of talk about the base design.  After getting some of these cards in hand I really like the look of the border.  I'll give credit where credit is due and Topps really went outside their comfort zone with this one.  And I like it.  As a matter of fact I think the last time we got a base card this unique and colorful was way back in 1990.

 I also have to say they did an excellent job on the backs as well.  Large, readable card numbers in the upper right hand side will make for easy collation for those of us who still store our sets in boxes.  Topps even added the Series One over the number.  I'm not sure if that was necessary, but it really doesn't hurt, and it might foreshadow something to come in a later set.

Topps also brings back the Future Stars imprint.  Here's an example.

According to the Cardboard Connection checklist the Rainbow foil parallels fall 1:10, but I'm pretty sure you get one a pack in the jumbos.  I only found two, but I'm sure my third is still mixed in with the base.  They don't scan well and the two examples below look pretty much like their base counterparts.

 I also pulled two gold parallels.

Here's a look at the game piece for Topps' online promotion.

 Looks like once again I won't be able to participate.

Topps is once again ruining perfectly good vintage cardboard.  I pulled this 1974 Williams buyback.

 In years past Jumbo packs usually contained one of every insert, so you got about 40 base cards and 10 inserts per pack.  This year I'm pretty sure Topps scaled that back to about 5 inserts per jumbo pack.  I only pulled one of these Free Agent 40 cards in my 3 jumbos.

There seemed to be a lot of excitement over these First Pitch inserts.  I really don't understand why, the set doesn't really appeal to me and reminds me of those Fans of the Game inserts Donruss put out years ago.  I think the only one I'd be interested in would be the Jeff Bridges card, who wouldn't want a card of the Dude.

I got one of the Inspired Play inserts.  I like the overall look, design, and theme.

I also got one Baseball History.  These cards are set  up like Garbage Pail Kids with A and B versions, the A versions are World History and the B versions are Baseball history, I guess.

 I'm not sure why, but I really like these Archetypes inserts.  Maybe it's because I pulled a Hank Aaron.

Lastly I pulled 3 Highlight of the Year inserts. An interesting note on insertion.  All of the inserts were inserted in the middle of the pack, like they normally have been for years.  All except these inserts.  All three of these were inserts on the bottom of the pack.  I'm not sure if that means anything, but it did jump out at me as I opened them.

You can see I didn't really get anything to write home to mom about.  One note is that all of the inserts are numbered for this series.  Something I bitched about a lot when it seems Topps for some reason lettered all the cards in the Update series last year.  There are also a couple retail only inserts, like Robbed and the First Home Run cards.  You'll also notice Topps didn't do a mini insert this year and they also didn't do a large insert set.  I think the largest set is only 40 cards, where in years past they usually had a large continuity insert over 50 cards that usually spanned all three series.  It looks like the Highlight of the Year insert will be the only insert being continued into Series 2 and if it's continued into Update the set will have 90 cards, but that's a far cry from years past with the continued inserts sets reaching 150 cards or more.

Some of the bigger hits are just now starting to hit ebay and like usual I'm sure there are all sorts of variations and other surprises to find.  Overall I think Topps did a good job this year, shaking up the insert formula, going bold on the base design, and mixing up their insert themes so they aren't all so similar.

2015 - State of the Blog Address

Well with 2015 well under way.  The Super Bowl just over the horizon and Spring Training only a couple month away it's that time again to access the collection and the blogs.

Well last year I really didn't accomplish much on the list with a few exceptions, but I look at the State of the Blog address not as a to-do list, but as a vehicle for looking back and ahead.  Pretty deep.

Last year was a big year for me. Not in the blogging or card collecting world, but in my personal life.  I welcomed my son into the world and that put a huge crimp in my collecting.  For one, about this time last year I cleaned out my man cave to make room for a nursery.  I also pretty much lost most of my disposable income to the diaper fund.  But for the almost 30 years that I consider myself a card collector I've never stopped being part of the hobby.  Sure there were times and situations that I wasn't as fully immersed as I had been, but I never considered myself out of the hobby.

So lets look forward to this year.

1. More TTMing.  I have a big list of former Brewers that sign that I'd like to send to.  And Spring Training is just around the corner and there are a ton of prospects I'd like to send too as well.  After my original Spring Training send off last year I really didn't do anymore mailings and that can be seen in my success rate.

2. Limit my box buying and the number of sets I put together.  This is a carry over from last year and to be honest I really did do a good job.  Near the end of the year I kept finding fantastic deals on boxes so I did buy a few, but my baseball box buying was very sparse. I don't even think I sprung for a box of Allen and Ginter and that's probably my favorite set of the year.  We'll see how much Topps baseball I buy, but it's not looking good.

3. Trade more.  I really, really mean it.  I was terrible last year, but you know work, baby, etc.

4. Work harder on my Packers and Brewers collections.  Having mothballed the majority of my collection hurt this one as I wasn't going after cards to fill holes because most of my collection was boxed up.

5.  Keep up posting on my other team and player-centric blogs.  I really like how my Robin Yount blog turned out this year.  I was able to feature great cards, do checklists and galleries of current releases, do general news, and publish more posts then all the previous years combined.

6. Draw more.  I don't know if most of you know this, but I do like to dabble in art.  And not to toot my own horn, but I'm not too shabby.  I even started an art blog.   To be fair that blog originally started off as a rant blog, but I decided to use it to post my art.  And I've been terrible about keeping that blog up as well.  Let me just say having this many blogs was probably a bad idea.  But my wife has challenged me to produce one to two quality pieces per month this year and she would try and get me my own showing.  That would be cool.  However my drawing space has been relegated to the kitchen table.

7. And finally lose 30 pounds.  Maybe I'll actually try this year.

Actually that's a pretty lame list, but I'm working on my 6th year of blogging here folks and I don't really plan to change to much.

Alright  cb out.