by Matt | Jan 27, 2016 | Cards
I was fairly vocal last year about my disdain for Topps Chrome. I didn’t buy any, I didn’t like it, I was just done with that whole product. I remember having lunch with Sam back in September and discussing Chrome in general and how this year, allegedly, retail was “loaded” and that (factually, not just allegedly) they had moved some of the harder to find colored parallels out of Hobby and into Retail boxes.
I promptly forgot the entire conversation until I was standing in the card isle days later. No blasters to be found, but there were a couple 3-pack hangers. “What the heck”, I thought, “might as well try it.” I liked what I found, then I ran back to the store and bought two more. I officially retract my previous statements about Chrome as a whole. They seem to have made it considerably more interesting again. In a few measly hanger packs, here’s what I found…
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by Matt | Jan 25, 2016 | Cards
I mentioned the other day how I had some really terrible luck with retail boxes. I nearly swore off retail buying entirely after that fiasco and it wasn’t until a trip right before Christmas that I decided to buy anything again. I had become enamored with those chrome sparkle parallels. I was having bad luck finding a Brock Holt gold parallel and I saw one little blaster and decided to try my luck. It’s a good thing I did.
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by Matt | Jan 22, 2016 | Cards
There’s several posts I’ve got lined up that deal with buying retail. It’s my closest option, it’s my only option if I want to buy something in person. In two of these posts I’m going to actually (hold on to something) give Topps praise for doing something right. This is not that post. This post is to illustrate when things go very very wrong.
Over the past month or two, I bought a couple blasters of 2015 Topps Baseball Update, as well as a couple boxes of the “Update Chrome” stuff. Normally I buy about one a month, during a normal Target run. On this particular day I bought two. I had just been paid, I hadn’t bought cards in a while, why not. Mostly I wanted the “Update Chrome” for the Chrome packs, which had that neat sparkle pattern thing going on this year. This is what I got…
8 cards per pack, here’s the first pack from each box…
PACK ONE
- Thomas Field – SAME
- Rearick & Mazzoni RC – SAME
- Stephen Vogt – SAME
- Joe Blanton – SAME
- Shane Victorino – SAME
- Ryan Lavarnway – SAME
- Yoenis Cespedes / Paulo Orlando – DIFFERENT
- Insert – Different
I didn’t realize what was happening until about pack 3, but I was thinking to myself “hmm, already got that Victorino card”. Little did I know…
PACK TWO
- Rafael Betancourt – SAME
- Jose Altuve – SAME
- Alex Claudio – SAME
- Todd Frazier – SAME
- JR Graham – SAME
- Joc Pederson – SAME
- Francoueur / Rizzo – DIFFERENT
- Insert – Different
Again, completely oblivious. I’m excited I got an extra Pederson RC, and more Todd Frazier and Jose Altuve are always good.
PACK THREE
- Alex Guerrero – SAME
- Scott Kazmir – SAME
- Justin Nicolino – SAME
- Joe Panik – SAME
- Manny Banuelos – SAME
- Randall Delgado – SAME
- Jason Heyward – SAME
- Insert – SAME type, DIFFERENT player
By now I’ve caught on. I normally option a pack and make a stack in front of me. At this point it was pack 3 of box 2, so I separated the two boxes worth and started looking back at what came out of box one. I wasn’t very pleased. I get the fact that these all come out of the same factory, cut from the same sheet, etc., but I always thought there was some sort of mechanism in place to help with collation of this stuff. A few duplicated cards isn’t a big deal. Heck, even if HALF the box was duplicated I doubt I would have cared. I would have chalked it up to just bad luck. Three identical packs in a row is a bit harder to take, but wait, there’s more…
Pack Four was mercifully different, there were only 2 duplicates (4 cards) in that one, it didn’t make it to the scanner. Pack 5 however, that came right back to the party…
PACK FIVE
- Sam Dyson – SAME
- Teijuan Walker – SAME
- Burgos / Hernandez – SAME
- Ross / Iglesias – SAME type, different player
- Cowgill / O’Sullivan – DIFFERENT
- Gonzalez / Pollock – DIFFERENT
- Romine / Zobrist – DIFFERENT
- Insert – SAME type, DIFFERENT player
While both packs had a couple of different cards, the fact that the rainbow foil parallel fell in EXACTLY the same spot, in the same pack, in the same card order was a little too much. It’s just like buying a hobby box and knowing that the bottom pack on the right has the auto in it. Again, mechanical process, the machine is making the packs, I get it. I know there isn’t a human being putting packs into boxes in a specific order just to mess with me. Then again, maybe there should be. Maybe all the packs should convalesce in a big pile and non-machine workers should put them into boxes randomly. That’s probably too much to ask.
I consider it a good lesson learned. Never buy two boxes from the same shelf or shipment on the same day. I would shake my fist at Topps and tell them this is unacceptable, but I’m pretty sure they stopped caring at some point in the 1980’s.
by Matt | Jan 21, 2016 | Cards
The best kind of Christmas cards aren’t those with wreathes and holly or pictures of fat Dutch saints with beards. The best kind of cards are small, covered in pictures from this crazy game called “base ball” and from friends. These particular cards came from my Yankee’s fan counter-part in New Jersey, AJ the Lost Collector. It’s always a great sign of the generosity in this hobby that fans who would normally be polar opposites with their team loyalties can trade numerous time and with such joy. Kind of restores your faith in humanity a little.
Pitchers who led the Sox to a World Series from a set I haven’t finished, an awesome way to start a package.
Two cards for Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez (that has such a nice ring to it).
Two Nomar cards I didn’t have, always a welcome sight.
Three from the “big dawg” Mo Vaughn, including a “Double Trouble” appearance by Nomar. Solid cards all around. I love the insane metallic purple floating eyeballs on the Pacific Metal Universe card.
Last but not least, the Large Father, looking all retro in Topps Heritage.
Awesome package AJ. A return package is forming itself in a pile on my desk!
by Matt | Jan 20, 2016 | Cards
I’m not exactly sure what my plan was regarding this card. It’s not like it fits into a box, or a page, or even my display case. Regardless, nabbing a 1/10 5×7 “Topps online exclusive” card for next to nothing was rather appealing.
It’s big, it’s huge, it’s 5×7 for goodness sake. I love it in it’s “I’m a wacky, different, sort of card” way. Apparently the regular versions were available online, but the red versions were only available in a set, and there were only 10 sets, so says the page on Topps.com (see here). They were also apparently $2k. Woah. So, some dealer got their hands on a set and split it up and sold them individually on ebay. The seller I bought this from had pretty much the rest of the set as well.
1/10 certainly isn’t shabby. The only real problem I can see is that Topps didn’t really seem to care about the production value. They used the same card stock, which is fine at 2.5×3.5, but starts to feel flimsy at 5×7. They also just “enlarged” the card design instead of recreating it at a higher resolution. You can see the obvious printing dots with the naked eye…
Lastly, they didn’t even bother to foil stamp the logo or the Future Stars writing.
I mean, if you’re willing to do that for 700 cards x millions of copies, why can’t you be bothered to do that for TEN copies of something you’re selling for big money. Oh, yeah, that’s right, it’s all about the money.
In the end, I don’t really care. It’s a conversation piece in my collection. It has the coolness to stand on it’s own, and I can’t believe I got it for less than $10. Oh, and did I mention it’s huge?
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