I miss competition in the marketplace

When I have a little free time I've been working on cleaning up, verifying, and adding teams to baseball set checklists over at the Trading Card Database.  Part of that involves verifying that cards have the right card designations.  Meaning that if the card has a prefix or suffix it gets added.  So a few  month back while working through a bunch of the 2004 sets, and there were a lot of products released in 2004 with lots of inserts and parallels, I came across this Genuine Insider auto set.  One of my go to places to verify card numbering is COMC and I couldn't for the life of me figure out where the autograph was for these cards where.  I figured that maybe these were book cards.  I also found that the Brewers had a card in the set featuring former Brewer Scott Podsednik.  And what's more COMC had one for cheap.  I figure I'd pick one up just to see what these cards were all about.  

Much to my surprise the card was not a book card, but had a slide out autograph.  The mid-2000's were awash in trading card products, especially baseball and football.  Companies were trying everything and anything to get you to buy their products.  Of course after seen the card and playing with it a little bit it dawned on me why the set is called the Genuine Autograph Insider!  For a guy who didn't collect much between 2001 and 2004 rediscovering these great gimmick cards if a lot of fun and even more fun when you can add one for cheap to your collection.

Hey Rickie!!

Ah Rickie Weeks. Like a flag in the breeze, sometimes Rickie is red hot and other times not so much.  And the fact that Rickie took the rest of this year off doesn't lend much to his collectability, but when you can pick up an early auto card of one of your team's franchise players for cheap, well that's not a bad thing. 

Rickie became a fixture on the Milwaukee diamond in 2005 and while some years are better than others, especially this year, he's still one of my favorites.  Rickie signed a 38 million dollar extension in 2011, so it looks like he'll be with the team at least one more year, maybe, there are are always rumors. Rickie also has the unfortunate distinction of leading the league with the most errors of all second baseman for a couple years in a row and even was ranked as the worst starting second baseman in the majors in 2009, ouch. 

Poor Rickie, I'm hoping he comes roaring back from injury next year, it would be nice. But in the mean time I really wanted to add a nice auto to my collection, since I didn't own any and I never got Rickie to sign anything for me at Spring Training or TTM. 

2004 Fleer Platinum Rickie Weeks Inscribed autograph card I-RW #d 036/200

I really like the look of the autographs from this set. So much better than those clear auto stickers they use now. There's also at least one other Brewer auto in this set and it's fairly cheap as well and that's Scott Podsednik.

Sunday Musing

As I sit here and bid my time till I'm filled with either over flowing elation or nerve deading season ending depression as the Packer/Cardnials game is on in about 2.5 hours from now, I've been surfing the blog 'o' sphere reading other's Sunday rambling and sooz over at A Cardboard Problem posted a Sunday question about all the post career and post life issued cards of players ie Mickey Mantle.  I posted a few thoughts and read a few other's thoughs on the matter and it got me thinking.  And trust me that's a dangerous prospect right there. 

I have also been reading a series in Tuff Stuff about what's wrong with the hobby.  ie: exclusivity, $50 packs, ect. ect.  And how companies are alienating the set builders and pricing the youth of today who will be the next collectors of tomorrow. 

So my thinking was what exactly defines us collectors and card junkies? 
And like anything there are lots of diffenent species of us.  Bear with me.  I'm sure we've all thought about this and I'm sure it's been blogged about before and the scientist in me has decided to try and classify, at least the basic, kinds of collectors out there.  See where you fit.  These are in no  particular order.

1.  Player collector:  A collector that collects cards and memoriblia of a certain player, regardless of what team(s) they have played for. 
  Sub-species: Regular issue collector:  A collector that collect only cards issued in the regular sets issued from card companies
                        Insert collector: collector that collects inserts and oddballs of a certain player.
                        General collector:  collector that collects all cards that were issued of that player by all companies and brands. 
                         Completeist:  A collector that tries to collect every card ever issued of a player, even thought the possiblity is slim that it will ever be attained.

2.  Set Collector:  A collector that puts together and collects sets issued from card companies.  This may be a collector that purchases factory sets or hand collates their own sets.  Set collectors may have preferences to certain companies and/or sets. 

3. Team Collector:  A collector that collects cards and card sets from a specific team.

4. Vintage Collector:  A collector that collects only cards before a certain date.  Usually 1975 or earlier.

5.  Autograph and Game-used collector:  A collector that collects only Autographs and game-used cards( bats, jersey, helmets, ect).  This collector may be a sub species of team and player collectors. Also may include Through the Mail (TTM) collectors.

6.  Rookie collector:  A collector that collect rookie and prospect cards.

7.  Speculative collector:  A "collector"  that collects cards in the hopes that they will become more valuable over time and that they can turn a profit.

That's all I can think up at the moment.  If you guys can think of anything that needs to be added to this list or you think you're not represented let me know.

Now this list isn't to pidgeonhole any body.  One person can be a multiple kind of collector.  As for me I know I fall into at least 3 of these catagories.  I'm a player collector, I love Yount, Fingers, Reggie Jackson, and yes, I still love Brent Favre.  I collect sets.  I have been putting together Topps baseball sets since 1987 when I started collecting cards,  and I'm a team collector collecting Brewers and Packer cards.  And I have a nice Autograph collection and there's nothing wrong with that.

God this one still cracks me up.