Video Post: Trade Packages, Box Break, and Other Goodies

Here is another video of some TCDB trade packages and a Hobby Legends Topps Series 2 break. I am pjdionne12 on Trading Card Database if you want to trade!

Here is a better view of my Topps Home Run Challenge winning cards. There is a lot of talk about the numbering and a lot of people are claiming to be owed cards beyond the numbers that have been printed. I am awaiting a public response from Topps. Should be interesting and I am a little leery of moving these until I find out what the numbering issue is and how it will effect the market on these. Leave it to Topps to screw up something relatively simple. These are available for sale or trade for other winners of Hoskins, Soto, or Arenado.

Bought a pack of minor league at the LCS while picking up penny sleeves. This was the only interesting card. 

Retail blaster of series 2.

A couple of Meijer packs gave me these.

I'm working on one of these things I've seen people do.

Topps Home Run Challenge Winners!

I am getting pretty good at this contest. If you didn't know; Topps has Home Run Challenge cards in most of its 2018 sets. They give you a code and a player, you have to decide what day he hits a homerun. If you are right you get a card numbered to however many winners there are for that player in that month. I am now 4-13 in the contest. Really 4-12 considering I put in Adam Duvall hours before he was traded so he did not play on the day I chose. I am 2-2 with Edwin Encarnacion which is kind of interesting. I have given my brother all the winning cards except the Machado since he decided he didn't have time to do the research to play the game. I told him I would do it and give him the winnings. Somehow I keep winning on his cards and losing on mine. Except Manny...

I still have a handful of these left to do. I think its super fun and kind of hope Topps keeps doing it but also want this to be the only year to increase the value of the cards. I have Mike Napoli who I am pretty sure fell of the face of the earth and Gary Sanchez who may not play again this year that will stay unscratched forever probably. I'm picking Jonathan Schoop to homer off of Chris Archer on the 14th. He owns him. Wish me luck. If anybody has any of the unscratched they want to trade me or want me to research and play for them let me know!

Proof of my record so far.

Also, here are some recent cards sent to me in trade on TCDB:

Night of the Living Set: Your PC Is Dead

  First off...

 REALLY TOPPS?! 

What makes this card a $449.99 card and the other more than an okay used car? Just experimenting to see how much an idiot will pay?

Moving on...

 

 

Your PC killed your PC.

This is my narrow minded rambling mess of thoughts on player collections, the current hobby climate, Topps overproduction and TOPPS LIVING SET, and what the future will bring. I haven't sat down to write in this style for a long time so I apologize if it is straight up, unreadable garbage.

We now live in a futuristic age of print at will and name your price cards monopolized by Topps. The company has handcuffed the player collector by spitting out too many sets, ridiculous amounts of 1/1 cards, and exploiting set collectors with "living" sets. We the sheep, purchase all this crap because they have us by the heart strings. They make us believe if I don't have this card of my favorite player then I am not a real fan. I can't place all the blame on money hungry Topps. A pack of this year's Donruss set contains more variations and inserts than base cards. Things are a bit out of control.

Who do you PC?

Was having a complete PC of a player, meaning one of every card made, ever really a goal? Probably before my time and up until the early 1990's you could have a real possibility of completing a player collection. Soon though, if you lived and collected long enough the emergence of the dreaded printing plate 1/1's and online exclusive cards would have exhausted you to death. If you look at The Trading Card Database and search these players here is the allotted search pages each containing up to 50 listed cards for that year. Again, 1 page is up to 50 individual listed cards.

Nolan Ryan 
1977 - 1 page
1987 - 1 page
RETIRED FROM BASEBALL 1993
1997 - 1 page
2007 - 9 pages
2017 - 12 pages

Roger Clemens
1987 - 3 pages
1997 - 5 pages
2007 - 60 pages
LAST MLB APPEARANCE 2007
2017 - 9 pages

Mickey Mantle
1957 - 1 page
1967 - 1 page
LAST MLB APPEARANCE 1968
1977 - 1 page
1987 - 1 page
DIED 1995
1997 - 3 pages
2007 - 112 pages (Topps did his career homerun cards)
2017 - 5 pages

"So what does this have to do with anything? Whats your frickin' point?" you may ask. There are lots of takeaways from these stats both positive and negative. Here is my view.

The positives? Baseball is alive in and of itself and will live on forever. Mantle quit in '68 and died in '95 and yet decades later he is still honored and celebrated in hundreds of baseball cards. That is a great testament to the resilient, timeless magic of baseball. Watching a game is exciting but as soon as the last out is made some of it gets filed away our nostalgia folders in our hearts and brains. That is why the sports thrives.
In some ways a positive is you can never get bored or have nothing else to collect as a PC collector.  New Nolan Ryan cards will still be produced 100 years from now. I think that is a good thing?

The negative aspects of this? Complete player collections are dead. Maybe they always have been and the hunt is more important than the trophy but that is a rabbit hole I am not going down today.  It is the card company's ability to access our brain and heart nostalgia folders to get to our wallets that gives me card rage. I like the idea of the "Living Set" from Topps in that they are trying something new. I am sure the person who came up with the idea got a standing ovation in that meeting. BUT, isn't that what Topps Now is supposed to be? When I go to the Topps website I get overwhelmed with all these different cards that they print at will and charge whatever they want for them. I feel taken advantage of. I am kind of old school and set in my ways. An old man already in my mid-thirties. I think it is great the card companies are moving forward and always looking for new ideas. I just wish those ideas weren't $10+ cards with a time limit. Also, if this Living Set is supposed to encompass all of baseball past, present, and future; will the style change from the 1953 one they are using now? Why start with Aaron Judge as the first card?! When he becomes a flash in the pan will they regret doing so? You cannot convince me it was a random decision simply by making Panik and Castellanos the next two cards. You know what you did Topps. Drop the charade and just make an all Judge set already.
Judge being the first card put a bad taste in my mouth for the set and made it all seem too novelty for my liking. Then they produced a Tiger player for the third card. Probably making up for the disgusting lack of Detroit players represented in every set this year. Look at the Gypsy Queen checklist. Just do it. All base players with no inserts for Tigers players. Not even one. They included Anibal effing Sanchez as a Tiger in the set. WTF. Anyway, I bought the 3 pack of the first production of the Living Set out of curiosity and the chance that the Judge will get me my money back. Yes, I am a hypocritic and a sucker.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Although I believe we are living in Junk Era 2.0, I do see some great things in the future. A lot of artistic baseball card fans are going rogue and creating stunning cards of their own. I am sure many of you have seen theses "sketch cards" and "art cards" out there. From some small companies forming (Gyspy Oak) to artists doodling cards up for their friends. I think the future is bright for out of nowhere card sets that won't compete with Topps/Donruss/Upper Deck but also won't need to. Right now many sketch artists are following Topps in its corrupt exploitation of rare cards by making countless 1/1 cards to make a quick buck. More power to them, the more 1/1's that float around this earth the less value we will place on them. I do think these talented card producing vigilantes will hold a big place in the hobby in the near future.

Time to Panik! Yeah, I'm a Sucker...

I bought the first round of Topps Living cards out of curiosity and because it included Nick Castellanos. The price sucked, buying a Judge card SUCKED, and they took forever to get to me. The case they are in is smashed on the top even though the box they came in is pristine and was bubble wrapped. That tells me the damage happened before packaging and they still sent it to me. The Joe Panik card is scratched on the face of it even though it was sandwiched by the other two cards. So overall, I was not in the right mindset to be impressed in the first place but was even more disappointed when they finally showed up.

That took a heavy shot.

The white spot on his jaw is a chunk missing from the face of the card. Come on Topps! This is why I buy second hand and NOTHING straight from the company.

If I Owned Donruss...

In my opinion Topps is getting a little big for it's britches. Putting out an insert set in 2018 depicting their own "print as needed" Topps Now best sellers is the last straw. Pat yourself on the back on your own time, don't waste a spot in my pack for a card of a card you suckered people into buying. I know how big of a deal licensing has become and many people don't give unlicensed product the time of day. I don't think that is the other companies faults 100% and they put out some great looking cards even without logos. Here are two moves I would make if I controlled Donruss to give the company a little shot in the arm and take a shot at Topps.

1. I would make up mock teams to fill in for the lack of licensing. The Detroit Kittens, Kansas City Princesses, New York Federals and Suburbans in the NL. I would create logos of these made up teams to fill in the blank spots until I got a license agreement. I would sell hats, jerseys and shirts of these fake teams too. This is probably illegal in a million ways so as soon as the lawsuits came flooding in like TTM requests in spring training, I would start selling ad spots where logos should be.

2. Topps likes to "celebrate" its own designs from the past every single year. This year the 1983 design is being shoved down our throats with so many variations its not even worth collecting, I just trade them for junk wax.
If I was Donruss I would make a set called Donruss Deja Vu. This set would use the design of the most overproduced, most nostalgic, and least valued set of all time: 1990 Donruss.
Instead of making countless numbered and variations I would reproduce the errors from the original set. Aaron Judge would have a reversed negative picture like the Juan Gonzalez card from '90. Justin Verlander would have a King of Kings diamond king card like Nolan Ryan with all the error variations. Garrett Cole's picture would be on Lance McCullers's card like the Glavine/Smoltz error from '90. The MVP cards and the Diamond Kings inserts would be there along with the Rated Rookie set. There would have to be a puzzle so I guess it should be....Jim Thome in an Indians uni.

Old School Bball & Breaking Some 1991 Topps Wax from Papa Jack's Box

Old School Basketball

Penny Hardaway, Shawn Kemp, and the Glove Gary Payton were all superheroes when I was in middle school. I collected baseball cards hard but I went to an "inner-city"ish school and basketball cards were currency. All of my cards that survived from that time look like I have carried them in my wallet since. So when I saw Jeff at Fan-Attic Sports Cards Blog was dishing out some sweet nostalgia I had to get in on it. Jeff sent me some amazing cards that took me back to the good ole days. Other than the Michael Jordan I don't think I ever had any of the other cards. I still have a couple boxes of basketball cards but these gems are hitting a binder ASAP. Thanks Jeff! Make sure you check out Jeff's blog and his store tab. Its a very impressive offering that I will be hitting up after Xmas!

What's in Papa Jack's Box?!

It has been a real roller coaster ride for me lately with a lot of things stressing me out. I NEEDED some cardboard therapy and with no card shows let alone money around I had to sneak back into Papa Jack's Box for something to tear up. This time: 1991 Topps.
Known for its Chipper Jones RC, 1991 Topps was a staple in my childhood collecting. It is one of my favorite designs of all time and I had a blast busting this box. I was able to find one Chipper RC but as you can see by the pic, the lazy-eyed Topps card cutter hit this one crooked as a politician with 4 feet of border on the left and 2 inches on the right. But, I'm not a graded card guy anyway and pulling this from a pack felt oh so good.

This will forever by in my top ten sets of all time. I have two more boxes of it sealed in Papa Jack's Box. I'm hoping to bust another one with him during the holidays and save the jumbo sealed box of celo packs for Nolan somewhere down the line. Things are starting to look up around here I think. We are at least sounding a bit healthier we just need some other family members to get out of the woods with their health and we will be on our way to a Merry Christmas.

Card Collecting Confusion: 2016 Topps Update Blaster Box

I have talked to a lot of collectors like me who were baseball card crazy in the 80's and 90's and lost interest a little after that. Whether we found girls or other hobbies to invest out time or that baseball hit a lull that didn't interest us, many of us have found our way back to our cardboard addictions. For me, I have come back with training wheels on. When I was a serious (as serious as a 12 year old can be) collector back in the 90's I understood the hobby. In those pre-internet to pre-ebay days the Beckett was your bible and everything was black and white so it seemed. Today's cards are beautiful but annoyingly complex. Collectors in my opinion are taken advantage of by card companies with an noncollectable amount of variations. Rookie cards used to be when a guy put in enough time in the bigs, now Bowman cards throw high school kids on cards just to have the first card out of mostly never big league players. Anyway, that is way more bitching than I like to post. Check out The Lost Collector for a much better description of how us returning collectors feel.

I say all this because recently I grabbed a blaster box of 2016 Topps Update. It was marked 25% off so I bit. I was confused by a lot of the cards. Here are some pulls:

These Seager cards are of great confusion to me. One is a RC, one is not? They are from the same box, the same pack actually. What's the deal? How many Seager cards are even in this set and why?

Now Mazara who looks to be a great up and comer for Texas. Why two cards that celebrate the same thing?

Why do some RC's contain two players? So Seager gets a handful of RC variations and Dae-Ho Lee gets 1/2?

Couldn't they find a Berrios picture of him doing something else? Why make two cards almost the same and just turn one?

I thought these inserts looked sweet!

Another insert set.

A nice Gold Numbered RC

The Fire inserts are awesome but too common.

A lot of the photos rival Stadium Club.

Rainbow foil or refractor or something like that.

Awesome photo of Trumbo.

Heavy-ass medallion card.

Strange Franklin advertising card.