stuff you may have missed (part2)

Here is the second installment of stuff you may have missed. As stated yesterday, Topps added a few exclusive cards to their factory sets this year. Lets see what we have today, shall we?

Here are cards numbered RC1-RC5:

Here are cards numbered RC6-RC10:

The rookies, or at least the most popular rookies of this season. My reason for showing these off are simple; maybe you haven't seen them. I know some of you guys collect Braves, Orioles, Marlins, Tigers, etc. and in your quest of collecting these teams and players, you may not have come across these cards before and maybe you want to add them to your collection. These are not for trade, but I assure you that they can be found relatively cheap. Plus its another Strasburg! Don't we all collect him? Or is that just what Topps wants us to do? I forget. They did have three more exclusive sets that I haven't gotten my hands on yet. Those being 5 card sets for the following teams: Phillies, Red Sox and Yankees. Each team got an exclusive themed box and a 5 card pack of variations. I think I'll get them eventually.

A 54 came today too!

a Rookie of the Moose! His birthday is in three days too as it states on the back of the card. Though a quick Wikipedia look-up suggests that his birth year was 1930, when the card says 1928. I wonder who is right.

stuff you may have missed (part1)

Topps added some cards to their factory sets this year. I know this is nothing new, they add gimmicks to their sets all the time. Be it a Mantle manu-patch like 2009, or the Mantle relics of 2007, there is always something extra. I thought I would take the time to show you guys some of the cards they did add to the factory sets this year, in case you missed them.

This set came in the All Star game edition of the factory set. It is only Angels cards numbered AS1-AS5. All horizontal and great in game shots makes for some great cards for Angels collectors (there has to be some of you....right?)

This next set of five are the veteran variations, numbered RS1-RS5. Just different shots of some of the star players in either series. I'm not exact on which factory set these came in but I'll guess retail until I find out otherwise.

You can find these cards individually or by the set on eBay as I did, and for relatively cheap too. I think the Angels set ran me 5 bucks and the Veterans ran me 10. I believe it was the hobby sets that came with the red bordered, numbered to 299 parallels but I am not positive if they came with any sort of variation set. As the title mentions, this is part 1. I will be posting up the second part tomorrow.

factory eighth (and announcement)

Now this is a set I had a literal metric ton of. My collecting friend did too. Back in 1991 our baseball card collecting habits were in full swing. He and I collected pretty much anything our parents would buy us. It was pretty cool because he would get packs each weekend, so I was always able to see new cards all the time. 1991 Topps was no different, and we both had a bunch but I don't think either of us completed a full set. It also marked Topps 40th anniversary (they must count 1951) in the baseball card universe, much like next year will be the 60th (damn, its hard to believe this set is 20 years old...). Its an OK design, nothing fancy really and I think I felt the same way back then too. The backs are weird too, being almost a pinkish with the blue text. It is however, much better than the 1990 set with its yellow and black. This set is a fun trip trough memory lane for me. Looking at some of the cards and remembering them well. I remembered the Wade Boggs instantly, with him in a batting stance with nothing but the clouds and sky in the background, a still awesome shot. Much more action shots in this issue too, than years previous.

The second thing I wanted to address is the guessing contest I held this week. AdamE from over at Thoughts and Sox will be declared as the winner. He guessed on the first post and the first guess on the second. In each of his guesses he guessed a right year, so the box is his. The years missing from the box were 1996, 1998 and 2002. I already have your address, so I'll be shipping them out this week, I hope you find something that interests you.

factory sixth

I am a big fan of 2007 Topps. Another set I had not seen until recently, well I'm not really sure why I say this because I didn't see anything past 1995 until I started collecting earlier this year. I really like the black design, its good to get away from the white for a while. Very reminiscent of the 1971 issue, with the exception of being able to be kept in good condition. Team cards are included! As I have stated before, I'm a big fan of them and apparently this was the final year for the 'traditional' team card. You know, the card where the entire team sits in for the picture? I love 'em. 2008 didn't have them, they opted for 'Classic Combo' cards instead, but that is a future post. Every team has its color squares in their colors on the card face. A nice facsimile signature like Topps did in their early days. While these came back in a previous set, I feel they work better on the black. I have gotten a few packs of this year, so I do have some inserts. They seems pretty rounded out, with the exception of the continuation of the Mantle-fest that Topps decided to pull the year previous. Generation Now inserts are horribly lame and way too vast in number for anyone to really collect. I do like the Distinguished Service (history!) , Topps Stars (shiny!) and Opening Day (the one that shows an opening day game with both teams standing on the field) subsets. This is also the set with the famed Derek Jeter card that featured Mantle and Bush II in the picture. I do remember hearing about the buzz surrounding this card but didn't pay all that much attention due to me not being into baseball at the time. Overall this is probably one of my favorite modern (2000 to now) sets that I own (maybe even the favorite). Kudos Topps!

artsy fartsy

Ah yes, 1990 Topps. So much color. So many good players, some great rookies. TOTALLY WORTHLESS! The highest booking card is $2.50 (Sammy Sosa's rookie). I don't care though. I had so much of this set in my youth collecting days. The big one was the Frank Thomas rookie, if you had that, you literally had GOLD. Well, not really but it was a big card between our little circle of collecting. Now 20 years old, I feel this set really looks the era it came from. Many of Topps sets are really nice, and some of them timeless. They don't look the era, or the year they came out, which is good. Its nice when Topps strikes a design that can be looked at later on and not be stuck in a certain period of time. This set is sooooooooooooooo 90's. You cannot mistake this set for any other era than the 1990s. Much like 1972 looks 70's, and 1986 looks 80's, 1990 is pure 90's. This set gets put on the shelf with my 1987, 1988, and 1989 as a set that I had so much of as a kid.

doing the unstuck

I am not too pleased. I got my 1994 Topps factory set today. I opened it up to find one massive brick of cards. Well it was more like 10 or so smaller bricks, but regardless. They all stuck together and while pulling some of them apart, it ruined the finish on the backs/fronts. Its the type of gloss on the cards. The same thing happens to earlier Stadium Club cards, Fleer Ultras too. Its that early to mid 90's gloss thats not slippery. My 2003 and 2004 sets stuck too, but they came unstuck without damage. 1994 wasn't as lucky. It wasn't factory sealed, just taped on three sides like Topps used to do. Maybe some moisture got up in there and made 'em all stick. Whatever the case is, that set is pretty much ruined and I'm watching another one. If the same thing happens, I'll be abandoning the mid-90s Topps sets altogether.

topps is rolling in the d'oh!

Topps, good old Topps. I finished sorting out the monster that is the 1993 set and found that it is missing 19 cards. 19! All of them come from series 2 (397-825). Weirdness for saying its a complete set. The same thing with the 2003 set. I was missing card 130, Gary Sheffield. 2005 was missing card 368. All of these sets can be completed online, via eBay sellers, selling various cards from various years. Pick 30 cards from 1995! Finish your set! Then they list off the numbers they have. Actually very handy for set builders like myself (of course I wouldn't NEED to build if Topps just didn't screw up). I can't gripe I suppose seeing as how I got them so cheap, but they were new, so its definitely on Topps' end of the deal here. I haven't found many missing cards, just those three sets, but then again I haven't finished every year that I have gotten so far. I wonder if they fixed this issue for the 2010 sets...

factory fifth (o-rama!)

Topps 2000 is another set I didn't see until I came back into collecting. While not a bad design, there isn't much more I can say beyond that. Its not boring but nothing makes it stand out as a set that screams "collect me!" (like 1987, that wood grain siding, pure awesomeness). It is a small set at 478 cards, and that usually means that its less daunting to collect than some of Topps' 792 card counterparts. Unless you buy the set outright of course, like myself. Then again, its also ten years later. Anyway, they gave McGwire card #1, and it looks like he just pounded a ball to the moon with one of his 'roid runs'. I'm not going to judge him though. He did what he did. Who didn't in baseball around then? I won't call him the "Home Run King" though, nor will I Bonds. That man to the right of Mr. McGwire is the true home run king. Yes, its come under some suspicion that Hank may have used some substances in his day, such as uppers or whatever. He was still the same size and didn't turn his arms into tree trunks to hit home runs. That was all him. Oh, that shiny Hank above came in the set as well, a sweet bonus. Apparently they did a chrome reprint of every Hank card, here we have the 1965. Overall this set is another for the collection, and it'll be another fun one to go through.

factory fourth (fleer edition)

I am mainly a Topps collector. I have many cards from other sets, years, etc. We all do. None of us have exclusively one company's cards. Its not as much fun that way. Fleer has had a long history in not only the card business, but in the candy business as well. from their humble beginnings in 1959 with their Ted Williams set, and vintage players the following two years, to their first annual set in 1981. Fleer ran into some financial trouble and was bought by Upper Deck in (I think) 2005. 2007 was their final year as a baseball card manufacturer, and now with Upper Deck out of the picture, it seems very unlikely that we will ever see the likes of Fleer again in the card biz. I feel the 2007 set, besides being a very nice issue, has some great historical element in our hobby, as much as 2010 Upper Deck does. The final issues of two of the 'big four' seem significant as a point of where the hobby changed forever. Never again were we to see Fleer packs sitting next to the Topps and Upper Deck, giving us a nice healthy choice of product to sift through. Yes it all became too much eventually, but the choice was certainly there. I ended up with some of this set from some random packs I picked up at Target one day. I liked them from the start. It felt just like the Fleer of old, back when I collected as a kid. Except my Fleers were bright yellow (1991 for those who chose to forget :) ). Nice set, and once I saw that there was a factory set, I knew I wanted it. Much like I would want a factory issue of 2010 Upper Deck (that we will never see), for that significance I explained above. Its sad to see a respected company leave the hobby, but sometimes shelves run out of room for the glut of product, or the collectors leave due to their own personal reasons. Whatever the reason may be, we can still look back at the previous years and see how they fared, what they did right, wrong and everything inbetween, and just remember then fun of collecting.

factory third

The next factory set I have obtained and busted open is 2003 Topps. I really like this set, nice design, sooooo much blue, and a great player selection and subsets. Some decent rookies this year including Cole Hamels and Kevin Youkilis. The rookies have a huge '1st Year' foil stamp on the card front. So much blue. Everywhere. They gave Alex Rodriguez card #1 back when he was a Ranger. Before the 33 million a year. Good photography as per usual, Topps really started to notch up the photo quality around 1992-1993. Overall a really nice set, and I'm glad to have added it to my (quickly) growing factory set collection.

factory second

I never saw 1999 Topps until a few months ago. Its an alright layout. Kinda rounded design on the fronts and backs. A lot of gold, and overall kinda....boring. Not one of my favorite Topps issues, but its small (462 cards, one of Topps' smallest) and it has a great player selection. Topps pulled one of its first "Mantles" with this year. What I mean by that is they made 70 variations of card 220 (one for each HR McGwire hit in the '98 season) and 66 variations for card 461 (one for each of Sosa's HRs). I only need one of each, no way in hell I need 70 cards numbered 220. Apparently the factory sets come with one of each random Sosa and McGwire. I got 19 and 2, respectively. They gave Roger Clemens card #1. He was a Blue Jay that year, always good to have one in front. In conclusion this set is solid player-wise, its just a little bland design-wise but I do enjoy having it in my collection along with the others.

factory first

I've decided to collect Topps factory sets, as I stated yesterday. It allows me to catch up on what I missed in the past 15 years in baseball carding. Two of these such sets came in mail today, 1993 and 1999. Lets begin shall we?

I'll bet most people know this year as either; A: the set that had Derek Jeter's rookie card in it, or B: the first set that included the then new Rockies and Marlins. This set is HUGE. 825 cards in this monster, which I believe is Topps' biggest ever. They were at that 792 mark forever and then this comes out and breaks that up (they went back to the 792 for 1994). Its a nice, clean design overall, very 90's looking. Second year for Topps Gold, Black Gold was also here too. The cardstock is different too from the previous years. Its now glossy (kinda) and feels less...cheap than 1992 and before. Maybe it was Topps' delayed response to Upper deck's quality (which for 1993 was a VERY high quality release, as most of you all know). I did collect 93 Topps when I was younger, and I thought it was cool when I fist saw the Rockies and Marlins cards, especially the horizontal split cards which featured two players. Almost junk wax but just at the end of the over-production era. I'll be conducting a review of the 1999 set once I go through it. I have about 7 cards from this particular year and know very little about it, so it'll be an adventure.

factory showroom

Here's a question. Is it wrong of me to buy up Topps factory sets just to open them up and go through them? Now I've missed a lot of years here. I have various Topps cards from 1952 to now. I have obtained them all within the past 5 months or so. I collected when I was younger and I had my vast collection of 1987-1991 Topps and boatloads of 1987-1990 Donruss, some 1991 Upper Deck, plenty of Score, etc. You get the picture. While I enjoy collecting the sets, opening packs, hunting for single cards I need, it all gets expensive. Quickly. Especially when Topps collation is tricky. I find myself buying packs just to get a final couple of cards I need for my third full set. Its that compulsion thing. Gnaws at me, heh. So I finished 2010, I'm now 1 card short of 1987 (which is coming), and I picked up cheap on the 'Bay 1988 and 1989. I bought 1997 (apparently a tough year to find) in my local card shop, just sitting on a table, begging to be bought. Also coming from eBay are about 7 more various years. It is essentially just to play 'catch-up' on all those years I missed in the years I didn't collect. Yes they get opened and yes, they get put into numerical order. I enjoy it (for some reason), and its does do good catching me up on what I missed out on. I do have a rule though; I only grab them if they are sealed and if I can get them for under $20-25 including shipping. Which is tough because they are heavy, and usually run anywhere from $7.50 to $11.00 for shipping. Regardless, I think this is the best way for me to get the full set and see what I missed.