A big old box of cards for National Baseball Card Day

So for National Baseball Card Day a couple weeks ago the son and I hit our two LCS's to pick up free packs and check out the deals.  While at Don's Sportcards here in Anchorage I spied a Super Shoebox full of randomness that I couldn't resist for $10.  Let's see what was inside.  

First off 1/3 of the box was 2012 Triple Play and close to another 1/3 was 1990 Topps, but mixed in was some great inserts, a few player collections, and even a card that paid for most of the box.

First up 3 1991 Fleer Ultra Ultra Team inserts.  Sadly one of the was not Bo Jackson

Next up a nice pile of Kevin Youkilis cards.

and a stack of Manny Ramirez..

What would a box of random 90's cards be without some Barry Bonds?

How about a stack of Evan Longoria?

Any Uggla fans?

Some Gary Sheffields.

A really nice collection of Arod, too bad I don't collect him.

Even more and rare Uggla cards!

A nice stack of 1990 Swell Baseball Greats.

This the stack that actually sealed the deal for me.  1989 Panini baseball stickers.  And it's almost a complete set.  And had a Robin Yount sticker I didn't have for my PC!  There was also an almost complete set of 1989 Topps Mini Leaders, which also had a new Yount for my collection.

Complete 2007 Topps Boston Red Sox team set

A little more randomness and gold from 2003.

Chipper rookie?  Yes please! And a cool insert of Chuck Carr, who? Yeah.  Oh 94 inserts!

2000 Pacific Prism Mariano Rivera Rapture Silver parallel.  Neat.

But the money card was this 2011 Phil Rizzuto SP Legends Variation.

In all I'm pretty pleased with the contents.  The Triple Play and 1990 Topps will be used to fill Halloween giveaway packs.  And getting two new Younts was surprising and well worth the price of admission, plus the box alone is worth almost $5, so all in all a fun buy.

The Keepers - Darryl Strawberry edition

As collector's we tend to impose arbitrary rules to our collections and our collecting habits.  These rules help us focus on what type of collection we have.  I'm sure there are those out there that might argue with this logic, but it's these rules that separate a collection from an accumulation.  We can put labels on the types of collector's we are.  Team collector, player collector, set collector, autograph collector, etc, etc.  As a collector of cardboard I'm no different I have my own rules governing over how and what I collect, but......but there are those cards in my collection that break those rules.  Cards I keep and cherish in my collection, but don't fit into my collecting rules.  I call these cards my keepers.

The first card in my keepers collection is this great 2010 Topps Tribute Darryl Strawberry Auto Relic.

I personally pulled this from a pack over 8 years ago and even blogged about it back then.  That pack of Tribute marks the most I've ever payed or will pay for a pack of cards.  And I remember pulling it and thinking dang that's a pretty sweet hit.  If you grew up collecting cards in the 80s, like myself, you most likely had a few Darryls in you binder.  Regardless of his personal tribulations he was a fun player to watch.  I'm not a Mets fan or really a big Darryl Strawberry fan, but this card found a place in my personal collection.  Maybe it was the nostalgia, maybe it was the fact that this was my hit from the most expensive product I've ever ripped a pack of, or maybe it's just a sweet card.

Anyone have any keepers?

Clearing off the Desk - Thank yous and a new addition

Been a busy couple of months here at world headquarters, but I would be remissed if I didn't at least make an effort to say thank you to a couple great bloggers and their generosity.

First up Chris aka Raz from Raz's Card Blog. He sent me an unexpected packaged a couple weeks ago.  Chris was the door prize winner and a finalist in my World Series contest from last year.

 First up was a pair of shiny Braun cards.

 A nice trio of 2017 Topps Holiday cards.  I didn't pick up any of the holiday boxes last year and these are my first 3 holiday parallels

 There was also a pair of 2017 Topps Mini cards.

 There was also this Eric Thames 2018 Donruss card.  I haven't had time to see if this the base or one of the many parallels available in the set.

 A nice Orlando Arcia Topps High Tek rookie card.  I have a small PC for Arcia (I know he's a Brewer and I would be collecting him anyway), but I'm cautious because every time I decided to add another Brewer to agressively collect the team trades them away (Scooter Gennett ahem).

For me the best card of the bunch was this Robin Yount card.  Anytime I can add a new card to my PC is a boon.  It might be hard to tell but this is the Rainbow Foil parallel.


Next up another Chris this time the proprietor of  Nacho's Grande sent me a nice little package as well.  Chris had ripped some 2018 Donruss and pulled a Brandon Woodruff autographed card. I had asked Chris before I left for my vacation if he'd be willing to trade for it.  The card is the blue parallel numbered to 99.   It's my first auto from the young player.

Chris also sent along a nice selection of Brewers cards (there were a lot more I didn't scan).

And a nice 2017 Topps Gallery Arcia Artist Proof parallel

 I still need to send Chris my end of the deal, but we've traded enough to know that I'm good for it.  I'm hoping to get my package sent next week.



And finally I broke down and bought another Topps Now card.  I have a feeling, like last year, this will be my one and only card, unless the Brewers manage to make it to the World Series and then all bets are off.  I picked up Josh Hader's recent card for setting a MLB record throwing 8 strikeouts in less than 3 innings.  That hair is dreamy and I've jumped on the Haderade train.

Thank you to both the Chris' the cards were great and well apprciated.

Collecting with laser beam accuracy

I figure I'd do my monthly post to make sure I let everyone know I'm not dead.  Especially since I'm on the edge of leaving for 2 weeks to see family.  I'd call it a vacation, but visiting family is never really a vacation.  Ahem.

If you follow me on Twitter, @cynicalbuddha, you know I've been knee deep in a massive Brewers team set organization and documentation this winter.  I've been a member over at the Trading Card Database for almost 10 years, but just recently started using their collector's tools to inventory my collection.  I've had a couple thousand Brewers cards sitting in boxes from trades and acquisitions that I hadn't organized.  My winter project was to start to sort through all that and figure out what I had, what I had dupes of, and rework my team sets needs list.  And I'm happy to say I'm still not even nearly done.

Although  I have made a little progress.

I also got tired of trying to remember what sets were which in my binders so I got a little anal about my organization and started making pocket checklists for each set.

I started doing this because trying to tell sets apart like the Turkey Red, Topps 206, or the thousands of set from the mid-2000's was hurting my eyes squinting on the backs of the cards.

The Night Owl put out a blog bat around a couple weeks ago and while I had thought about participating in it, I didn't, but it did get me thinking about my own current state of collecting.  To save myself a ton of money and space I decided that I wasn't going to do any more set building, at least for the foreseeable future.  I actually stopped last year before the 2017 Update set.  I still potentially plan to pick up factory sets, but building sets from packs and boxes has just become too expensive and I'm running out of space for all my dupes.

I've decided to focus on two main areas of my collection.  My Brewer's team sets and my Robin Yount player collection.   My other player collections have taken a back burner as well, but I still try to add to them opportunistically.

That being said I'm still looking to finish what I started and my set needs are up-to-date.  My Brewer's team set needs are still a work in progress.

So my goals this year is to focus my collecting with laser like precision and minimize and reduce my stacks of unwanted cards.  Will see how I do.

See you all next month.

The Return of the Affordable Group Break

If you've been around the Blog-o-sphere awhile you may remember Colbey, aka Flywheels, use to put on an affordable group break pretty regularly.  He stopped for awhile, but it looks like he's itching to get back into it with a new facebook group and a new break.  There are a couple classic boxes of Pacific waiting to be ripped.  You get your choice of one team and then a random team from the remaining unclaimed teams.  Spots are only $7 and the includes shipping!! 

Still lots of great teams to choose from.  Go on over to Cardboard Collections or find the Cardboard Collections Group Break group on facebook to join.

Card Anatomy 2018

Well the 2018 card season started a couple weeks ago.  I decided a while back I would not be putting a set together from pack buying, but I did break down and buy a couple packs when Series 1 came out.   And my overall feeling for the card design is: I don't hate it.  How about that for an endorsement?  Let's take a really close look at the base card design and break it all down.

The front of the card is the glamorous side of the card, the party, the looker,  from now on I dub the front of the card the Mullet.  I just so happen to have a very nice scan of Mr. McCutchen's last Topps flagship card as a Pirate to look at.  Overall the basic design isn't bad.  I wouldn't go so far as to call it great or groundbreaking, but it's not bad.

This is the third year in a row that Topps has gone borderless.  I kind of miss the borders, but the 2015 set was a tough act to follow, arguably my favorite set in the last decade.  I've only casually looked through the set, but of the cards I've seen Topps has done a nice job with photo selection and the card design really reflects that Topps is letting the photos shine.

While the lower banner takes up a good section of the bottom of the card for the most part it's unobtrusive and presents the basic elements pretty well.  The player name is large enough to be easily read, team name present, team logo a tad large, but not imperious.  Waterslide?  Present, but I don't hate it.  The only gripe I have is the digital disintegration at the end of the name and team banners seems pointless and unnecessary.

Alright we've had our fun time to get to the business side of the card.
There's a lot going on back here.  The card number is large and readable, although I think it could have been bigger. It's also harder to make out with some of the colored backgrounds like the yellow here.  Once again Topps is putting the series on the back of the card.  Not a terrible idea, but honestly unless they are going to start putting our 3 or 4 different series again it's kind of pointless.  I will say having what series the inserts came out of is much more helpful.

We also are still only getting the last five years of stats on the back of the card I guess that's to make room for the much more important social media handles the player uses.  This is the second year for that addition and it seems timely and odd.  In 10 to 15 years will anyone care what McCutchen's Twitter handle was?  Would it hold up if Topps had put player's Myspace account on cards back in 2006? 

Topps also has just enough space for a short blurb or factoid.  I think McCutchen's trade took most people by surprise so can't fault Topps for the mistimed platitudes.

So to sum up, not terrible.  It seems Topps has this cyclical pattern of coming out with something pretty awesome, like the 2015 design, and then they tone it down and play it safe for a few years.  While the waterslide design seems a little funky it does show that Topps put some effort into the design.  I do like the full bleed photos on the front, but maybe it's time to mix it up with a border, or an inset photo or a back photo. 

So how do you guys like the set this year?

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner - 8th Annual Almost the Easiest Super Bowl Contest on the Web Wraps up!

What a great Super Bowl.  I love when the game is close and I have no horse in the race.  They said it was going to be a shoot out, but man that was a pretty crazy game with a few questionable calls, but over all I really enjoyed it.  In the end we had 15 players who were still in it, we had 3 players pick the correct match up, but in the end we had only one player who pick the Eagles to beat the Patriots, so no need for the tie breakers, but the correct prediction would have been:

Eagles over the Patriots, 74 total points!!, 5 Field Goals


jasongerman9 - Patriots over Eagles, 59 points, one field goal.

night owl - Patriots beat Saints. 56 points. 2 field goals.

Matt Stupienski - Patriots over Vikings, 58 pts, 4 FG

The Angels In Order - Patriots over the Rams, 53 points, 4 FG.

Mark Hoyle - Pats over Saints. 65 points 5fg

Swing And A Pop-up - Patriots over Rams. 61 Points, 4 FG.

Vrooomed - Eagles over Patriots - 45 points, 4 FGs.

Eric C - Pats over Eagles - 51 pts - 4 fgs [AnalogKid @ TCDB]

Sport Card Collectors- Pats  over Vikings 52 points 5 fg

Fuji - Patriots over Vikings, 64 points, 5 FG.

GCA - Patriots over Saints, 32 points, 3 FGs, PIMP

Jafronius - Patriots over Vikings, 44 points, 2 FGs

Trevor P - Patriots over Saints. 69 points. 2 FG.

arpsmith - Eagles over Steelers, 55 points, 3 FGs

Red Cardboard - Patriots over Saints, 49 points, 0 field goals



Congrats to Vrooomed, who interestingly enough is the second person from the Trading Card Database community to win one of my contests.  And he also happens to be an Eagles fan.

Now onto the door prize... I entered all the entries into Random.com and randomized the list 3 times, if you promoted my contest you got an extra entry into the door prize drawing.  And the winner is..

Adam K who writes the great blog Infield Fly Rule!  Wins a nice stack of shiny cheerleadere cards.

I'll be contacting both of our winners shortly.

I want to thank everybody who played.  I may not post much, but it's nice to see we had great participation.

And you know baseball is just around the corner.