2010 legends variations part 3

Welcome back to the final installment of the 2010 legends variations collection of posts! Today I will go over the Update series batch. There are 22 total.

661 Bob Gibson / US-15 Willie McCovey / US-45 Steve Carlton
US-50 Reggie Jackson / US-85 Andre Dawson / US-100 Robin Roberts
US-175 Bruce Sutter / US-185 Jim Palmer


US-203 Tony Gwynn / US-214 Dave Winfield / US-225 Brooks Robinson
US-276 Rickey Henderson / US-317 Babe Ruth / US-318 Bo Jackson
US-330 Johnny Bench


US-25 Philadelphia Athletics / US-58 New York Giants / US-200 St. Louis Browns
US-220 Boston Americans / US-320 Washington Senators / US-330 Cleveland Naps
US-260 Brooklyn Dodgers

Another fairly easy batch to complete. Nothing eluded me too badly. The Ruth was probably the most expensive to obtain but is pretty cool seeing him in a Sox uniform. I pulled a few of these myself also. I like the inclusion of the teams in this series. Great teams in history that have moved to a new city or simply turned into a totally different team altogether. I love the Brooklyn Dodgers card, although the back of the card is upside down. I believe they are all printed this way. You'll notice that 661 is Bob Gibson, who parallels the 661 Strasburg. Well Strasburg may be good and all but he's no Gibson, nor will he end up being (probably).

2010 legends variations part 2

Welcome back to part two of the legends variations collection! Today I'll be showing the cards from series 2. There are 20 total.

331 Eddie Mathews / 354 Johnny Mize / 369 Jimmie Foxx
370 Mel Ott / 403 Ozzie Smith / 409 Richie Ashburn
476 Thurman Munson / 479 Dizzy Dean / 489 Roy Campanella

532 Dale Murphy / 549 Pee Wee Reese / 569 Tris Speaker
590 Ernie Banks / 600 Honus Wagner / 615 Nolan Ryan
650 Ty Cobb / 652 Mickey Mantle

377 Tom Seaver
400 Frank Robinson
559 Eddie Murray

Series 2 was not nearly as difficult to finish. The only one I had a tough time with was Mantle but that was due to me not wanting to pay too much for it. I pulled a few of these myself, including THREE Eddie Murrays. They have been since traded but I pulled three myself. What are the odds? Some of the better pictures they used were Nolan Ryan (a funny little tribute to his Upper Deck card), the great Ozzie Smith picture doing what he did best and the Ty Cobb, where if you look closely above his head, you can see a fingerprint in the picture itself. Probably from being handled for maybe 100 years or so. Stay Tuned for the Update set next!

2010 legends variations part 1

Ah the legends variations. I still remember coming across my first one, Ryne Sandberg, in the early days of my re-entry into the hobby. Sure it was only about a year and a half ago but it seems like forever. I had no clue what I had and assumed that Topps put in older players in the mix of the base set. A short time later, I pulled Robin Yount. Both of these are featured below. I know these tend to be the bane of some collector's existence with them being short prints and all but you don't have to collect them nor are they part of the set officially. I like them though and I made a valiant effort to collect them all.

Today, I begin the legends variations series of posts, with the offerings from 2010 series 1. There are a total of 20.

1 Hank Greenberg / 20 Warren Spahn / 50 Cy Young
56 Whitey Ford / 80 Christy Mathewson / 85 Jackie Robinson
90 Rogers Hornsby / 94 Carlton Fisk / 95 Rickey Henderson

110 Willie Stargell / 116 Robin Yount / 125 George Sisler
200 Walter Johnson / 250 Lou Gehrig / 294 Babe Ruth
300 Ryne Sandberg

100 Stan Musial / 130 Reggie Jackson
165 Joe Morgan / 175 Roger Maris

Like I had mentioned a few times before, series 1 is the most difficult to finish. I assume it could be due to a lower print run than series 2, or that it is older and most were probably discovered and sold shortly after release. I'm just late to the party. I noticed the hardest ones to get were Greenberg, Musial and Maris. The Hornsby, Morgan and Reggie don't appear too often either. The best pick up I had in this lot (and out of every vintage legend I've ever obtained), was the Whitey Ford. I found him in a ten cent box at a local show. Ten cents. Obviously it was a mistake on the dealers part but who am I to argue? Stay tuned for series 2 next!

hank's missing!

Corner that is. Before I went into the vintage legends scans, I wanted to touch upon what happened to my Hank Greenberg and why it needed to be replaced. Hank was card 1 in 2010, mirroring Prince Fielder, an accurate paring I suppose. Although normally Topps tends to pair up Hank Greenberg with Ryan Braun or Ike Davis (see 2010 Legendary Lineage subset) or other players based off of the fact that they are all Jewish. While there is nothing wrong with being proud or even just celebrating religion, I feel the comparisons should stick within the realm of baseball stats. The thing being that Hank was persecuted and treated differently due to his beliefs and was probably why it took him so long to get into the Hall of Fame, unfortunately. Players of today don't have the social issues that players of his day went through. No one is out in the stands shouting racial slurs at Carl Crawford as they did Jackie Robinson. Things are very different today and obviously for the better. No one need be persecuted or treated different due to who they are. Anyway, this post has turned into something completely different than I envisioned so before I go on and on, here is what I was going for.

I needed Hank for the collection and his card is one of the tougher ones to come by. I was very pleased I won it for around $12. The card came quick but when I opened the envelope this is how I found it:

Now, I open my packages with a boxcutter. Maybe not the best way, (obviously I need to be more careful huh?) but it gets the job done. I slit the top part of the envelope about an inch down from the end and I noticed I had cut the corner off of poor Hank here. Of course, it is my fault for feverishly opening up the envelope with total disregard of its contents but would it have killed the seller to tape up the top of the top-loader? No. It wouldn't have. Needless to say, I had to get another one. Luckily I found one on Check Out My Cards for $9.95, so I snapped it up and now Hank is in good standing with the rest of the binder. The cut one above is in my doubles section. I open packages much more careful now. Or at least I just pay attention.

random pack monday

First, I would like to acknowledge Martin Luther King Jr. day today. Being a fan of history, I feel he led one of the most important social causes in America. Its really too bad that people like him and John Lennon, who only tell people to get together and stop the hate, live in peace and spread the love, get killed because of their views. Too tragic, but their legacies live on, with the spirit and emotion that they gave to us and left behind when they were taken too early from us as a people. The legacy of Dr. King lives on as strong and empowered as it always was.

Now, on to less serious matters. Random pack Monday! Today we feature this pack:

2010 Bowman Platinum retail. I have seen the huge division over this set and it seems that either you love it or you hate it. I happen to like it quite a bit. As I stated in an earlier post, I feel its a good mix of veterans and rookies without so many no names, as Bowman tends to have so many of. Here is what I got:

As you can see, retail packs feature four cards, as opposed to hobby's five. This pack was pretty good. I got the Wells I needed and it had an Ike Davis (I like Ike, remember). I don't know Sonny or Felix but they'll be for the set if I decide to end up finishing it off. I'm always a sucker for shiny and this set is nothing but.

Next week's Monday pack will be chosen by you. I have some Topps packs coming in the mail and later on this week when they come, I'll pick a few out and you guys pick which one you want me to open. We'll continue this until I run out of packs, I guess. One last thing of note is that my wife has gotten her blog up and running kibblez-n-britz, about her various adventures in cooking. So if you are into some good cooking (and I think she is going to start adding her knitting up there too at some point), check it out. It's good eats!

sunday funday

On Sunday, the wife and I managed to make it over to the local card shop. I needed some small card boxes for shipping and that is where I pick 'em up. While there, I picked out some packs of Bowman Platinum and WWE Platinum. A bunch of each really, around 6 of each or so. She ripped the WWE and I ripped the Bowman. I really can't get enough of the Bowman Platinum and I've no idea why. I really don't like Bowman much but I think this set walks that fine line of balance between rookies and veterans and no name prospects (and USA baseball too). Its a smaller set at 150 total cards and there's no confusing BDPP, BP, BDP, ABCDEFG numbering like regular Bowman does (man, I HATE that), so that means things are kept to a minimum. 100 rookies/vets, 25 no namers and 25 USA baseball kids. While I could really care less about USA baseball and most of the prospects (save for Kyle Drabek), the base set is a good bunch of players and great rookies from this season. Anyway, I managed to get two hits from the 6 packs I picked up:

Not too shabby really, one auto of a guy I may never see again and a relic auto of a player I know. Hey, at least they are shiny, and the prospect is on-card. Why one would be on-card and the other not, I have no idea. Silly Topps. I may end up finishing off the set if I am impulsive enough...which probably means yes.

etopps

I forget exactly how I heard about eTopps, but when I did I decided to check it out. It's a set of exclusive cards released only online, with a weird sort of trading/buying element to it. I have no interest in selling on there, but they did offer up some Jays earlier in the year. Here they are (I apologize for the blurry scans, the cases make scanning difficult):

Jose Bautista 225/749.

Adeiny Hechavarria 450/749.

Seems that every card they release is limited to a certain number. In both these cards cases, they are limited to 749, or the most random number ever. I do have a third card in my 'portfolio', but it isn't ready for shipping because it takes roughly 7 years (ok, not really but it did take almost 4 or so months) to make these cards and have them available for shipping.

How it works is that you sign up for the newsletter on the website, they send you a weekly email with which cards will be available. If you see something you like, you buy into the 'pool' of cards and if you were lucky enough, they add it to your portfolio, which is basically your online collection. I say lucky enough because they limit each card to a certain amount and they take the first say, 749 people that signed up for that card but maybe 1000 people bought into it. I don't know, it's weird. All I know is that once I got the email with the Jays cards, I jumped on them. I figured they would be pretty cool. Once you have the card in your portfolio, you can buy it and have it sent to you (for pretty cheap actually) but only once the card is ready. Like I mentioned above, it takes a long time for them to become available for shipping. I think I bought these two in August, and they didn't get shipped to me until about two weeks ago. I know they do some football too and sometimes they will have autographed stuff as well. It's an interesting program and we'll see what 2011 brings. Anyone else do the eTopps thing? Or am I alone on this one...

*new feature*

In continuation with what I did last Monday, I have decided to make a regular feature out of opening a pack and showing its contents. Random Pack Monday will be the new regular attraction for the time being. It'll be fun and I hope to keep it up for a while. What did we open up today (really yesterday):

2010 Topps Magic Football. I'm not a big football guy but these cards look quite fancy and would be interested to see what a baseball set could look like in this format. dayf was entirely right about the packs. The colors definitely pop right at you and they look like something from the '60s. Here is what I got:

Now, when I opened this pack, I got the assumption that this set was filled with nothing but stars, rookies and Hall of Famers. Well, its not but this pack certainly was. I actually picked up three packs total and this was by far the best of the bunch. I definitely know Franco and Troy and Brett. I've heard a lot about Colt this season and he seems to be a break-out rookie this year. I have no idea who the other two guys are but I'm sure some of you do. I don't know how much I'll buy, maybe these will be the only three packs I end up with. I do have to give kudos to Topps on how this set looks though, classy all the way. The cards could use some stats on the back though and that would be my only complaint. Well, I hope you join me every Monday for a different pack to open up (....err well, I hope you join me every time I make a post, really) and see the mystery of what awaits us in these wrappers we love ripping so much!

2010 obak

2010 Obak. Has anyone seen these yet? I picked up three packs while at Target the other day. Its no secret I like minis so this set is kind of cool in that aspect. I've also noticed some weird cards, like the hot dog guy next to Heyward. Another one I got was the beverage founder. That is some great baseball history right there, no joke. You won't read about those guys in most areas of baseball history. The packs state that they are printed on recycled paper, so I guess they are environmentally responsible. No MLB license obviously, but it doesn't stop them from putting in MLB greats. I got Hank Greenberg, Dwight Gooden and Denny McLain. Nice non-Topps set here. I may buy more if I find 'em.

topps chrome

So Topps Chrome has hit store shelves. Initially I was kind of put off on buying any, due to the very small 4 card packs at 3 bucks per pack. Almost impossible to collect a set that way. Well, unless your wallet is fat, and mine ain't. So I decided to conduct an experiment. I did buy a box and two blasters. I didn't want to but I couldn't help myself. I didn't get anything spectacular. More base cards than I imagined though. I bought a bunch of 2008 Chrome for real cheap at a local store, they were on clearance. Each pack had at least one parallel, and sometimes an insert on top of that, leaving only two base cards. Needless to say I don't have a 2008 set. The hobby box I got had few parallels and even fewer inserts. The retail blasters had some better luck, with usually 6 parallels out of the 7 packs. Some of you have mentioned that was the case as well. So the experiment I am attempting is to see if I can get a full set, a Jays team set, the Mike McCoy auto, and the Vernon Wells rainbow (regular, refractor, xfractor, orange, purple, blue, gold, red, superfractor and print plate). The box cost me $75. I want to see if I can get all that for less than or equal to the box. With the exception of the superfractor, that'll be some money. I have already started it, and is well underway. When its completed I'll post up the results. Until then, if there is anyone going for a set, I have a bunch of duplicates due to the box and set coming.

topps 206 blaster

I picked up a 2010 Topps 206 blaster at the local Target today (along with two loose packs) and I have scanned the minis shown here. As far as anything else goes, it wasn't anything but base and the thick bronze parallels. So no cool stuff like autos or short prints or anything. Here are the minis:

There are four American Caramel backs, one Old Mill, two Piedmont and one Polar Bear. The other two are historical events inserts, which are pretty cool. I may try for all of these, but I don't think I plan on buying much more of this set beyond maybe a few random packs. I don't think this set needs to be an annual issue and could be rotated every other year with Ginters, but hey, its not my damn company. I do like minis though...

the "other" 2010 topps cards

I haven't collected football cards in an even longer time than I did baseball. I was curious to see what they did with the 2010 design so I bought a few packs. I'm not sure who's who anymore, although I did recognize Donovan McNabb, Eli Manning and Ray Lewis out of what I got. I do have to applaud Topps on the Peak Performance cards in the football set, as they are superb looking and far superior to the baseball brethren. I think the white font looks pretty good too. As for the WWE, it was something the wife and I could bust together. We watch both WWE and TNA weekly and are fans of many superstars (and not so fond of others), so its cool that we could go through these boxes together and compare what we got and so forth. We got four boxes so far, its a lot but the boxes are relatively cheap at my local shop. It also looks great in the 2010 format. Its a great set with some great hits (dual autos, jumbo relics, etc.), with a blue parallel set like they used for Opening Day. If anyone is interested in the WWE set, I have many duplicates for trade if desired. I even completed a few sets. I'll post up some of the hits I got in the coming days or so (some real cool ones).

something fishy...

You all know this set, right?

How about this set?

This set was put out by Topps in 2002, for the Post company. I'm not sure if it came in the cereal boxes, or was a send away, but I do know it looks vaguely similar to this years annual issue. Thats not a bad thing though, I like both designs, and may have to find some more of the 2002s. (this one came from Joe over at the sandlot)

tribute?

This card is pretty much the single card I want from 2010 Tribute. It stands as the single Tribute card I own period. This set is way too expensive for the small return you get back. My local shop busted two boxes of the stuff and he let me look through what he got. Yeah, some nice super shiny cards (mmmm....shiny) and some cool relics/autos of HOFers and current players, but NOTHING I'd pay nearly $60 a pack for. Topps is out of their minds with this product. I thought UD's Sweet Spot was absurdly overpriced, and he sells that for $30! I did try one of those though, not sure why. I ended up with a Tim Raines jersey. Cool, but not $30 cool... Anyway, I'll be waiting until the hype over Tribute wears off then I'll pick up the few other cards on the cheap and those would probably just be base cards (the shiny-nesssssss....). According to the release schedule on BaseballCardopedia, the next set I'll be buing some of isn't until October, with Topps Update (or series 3 as it should be called). Maybe I'll get into Topps Chrome in late September, but even that may be pushing it with its 4 card packs for $5 bucks (I think). Calling the set "Update" makes sense, but I still feel it should be Series 3, starting with card 661 and ending with 990. Yes, nearly 1000 cards in a set is daunting, but the releases are stacked far apart so its no big deal. They did series' in the 50s and 60s (maybe the 70s too), and they came up with the Traded series in the 80s. Oh and see? If they called it series 3, they would be paying tribute to their heritage once again. (ha, not funny!).

ps- Don't forget to take your guesses on yesterdays post to win my duplicate box. Some of you guessed right with one of your years, but no one has guessed two right yet. Keep 'em coming! I'll announce the winner tomorrow, but if no one wins by 3 PM tomorrow, I'll give the word and those who guessed already can guess again.

2010 topps red parallels

In case some of you haven't seen some of these. Topps decided to put these red-bordered parallels into their hobby edition factory sets. They are numbered to 299, and come five random cards to a set. They do have a gold stamped number on the back, much like every set had before this years Topps, with its sloppy black numbers. They did do the Strasburg of course, and not surprisingly dealers want way tool much for them. Other than him, you should be able to find any player reasonably priced on ebay. I picked the two of these up for $2.99 each. The Overbay is numbered 187/299, and the Hill is 009/299. Fear not readers, the Vernon Wells is on its way. When I saw these pop up on eBay, I obviously wanted the Wells to add to my rainbow (I'm still looking for that platinum that I know I'll never see), and I searched each day until he came up. I suppose there aren't too many of these reds floating around (299x661=197,639 total) and not everyone is going to break their sets open just to get these, so if you see a player you want I'd say grab it because they may not appear too often. I haven't decided if I want to complete the Jays set yet, but it is a possibility.