my apologies and a d'oh!

I know I'm in the middle of a draft break but I just had to get this off of my brain. I am a dope. There I said it. Here is why:

I had the chance to meet a living baseball legend. I even heard it on the radio, so it was totally a go. Except that I either heard it wrong, or totally processed the information I heard wrong.

Story is that Connecticut has two minor league teams, the New Britain Rock Cats (Twins double A affiliate) and the Connecticut Tigers (Tigers single A affiliate. The Tigers held a game at HOME (more on that in a second) on Monday. Well at this game, signing autographs and cheering on his grandson was none other than Tigers legend Al Kaline. The way I heard and misinterpreted what I heard on the radio was that he was going to be at a CT Tigers game, in support of his grandson but for some reason I thought the game was an away game. WHY THE HELL WOULD THEY ADVERTISE AN AWAY GAME?? I believe they played the Lowell Spinners, not a Connecticut team. Why would I think that?? Then I totally forgot all about it until this morning, when on the Blowout Cards forums, there was a guy talking about what he had gotten signed. Kaline limited autos to two items but still. ARGH...Talk about missed opportunity. What a schmuck I can be sometimes...

In some good news though, I have managed to complete THREE sets this week. I completed 2011 Allen & Ginter (all 350, in the new fancy binder, with a big help from Chris over at Nachos Grande), 2011 Topps legend variations (all 49 of them) and the 2010 Topps legend variations (I have a story that I'll share at a later date about this one). The 2010 spans series 1, 2 and Update and it is finally complete. I run some scans of everything soon, along with my steals and deals (and not so deals). I know we've all seen 2011 but some of the series 1 2010 guys are pretty tough to come by (Maris, Musial, Greenberg), so maybe you haven't seen them before. 2009 is kind of underway, although I don't seem to be as aggressive with it. Maybe due to me not liking 2009s design so much.

ahh...good old topps...

You know, all this talk of Gypsy Queen is making me....I'm not even sure of the word I'm looking for. Let's begin with the basics here. Normally I'm all for retro themed sets. Sure, they look nice too but seems impossible to collect with it's endless amounts of parallels. They reduced the size of the set by 100 cards, now standing at 350. This is good. 450 was WAY too many. Apparently they also screwed up the relic/auto collation too. Nice. That isn't whats gotten me into this thinking though. While checking out Baseballcardpedia, I noticed they have a little 'hobby buzz' section on the bottom right side of the page. Essentially telling us the goings on of the industry. I was pretty miffed when I read this about Gypsy Queen:

Upon the release of Gypsy Queen, there is talk abound the hobby about limited availability. It appears that only small amounts of Gypsy Queen are being made available to collectors, hobby shops, online retailers, etc... Some long-time set builders are debating on buying retail rather than hobby due to the high initial cost of hobby boxes.

THIS IS COMPLETE CRAP! They are limiting the amount of product released...when they're going to sell it anyway? Creating an artificial demand of a product that has demand, and raising box prices to unrealistic levels. Why wouldn't it sell? They are the only company in the baseball card industry!! Seriously Topps, get with the damn program. I know I'm not going to be paying $140 per box, $7 per pack. Nuts to that. This whole bunch of nonsense is almost making me want to buy NONE of this set, save for the six (yes, SIX) Blue Jays for my collection. You know? It's almost a good thing that I'm broke-er than I was, so I won't be tempted to fall for Topps' hyjinxs. Also thankfully I have no interest in any products coming out before series 2 in June, then Lineage in August (unless they mess that up too). I'm not big into Ginter's and could care less about Bowman and Pro Debut. What crap. CrapcrapcrapCRAP. I'm only holding back due to this blog being PG but man, am I miffed...

Send in the failboat!

frustration

I couldn't help myself this weekend. While at the local card shop searching for Hall of Famers to add to my collection, I decided to buy a hobby box of Update. The results? Nothing. I opened no pack with the promised hit. This makes box number 2 with a missing hit. If you remember about a week ago, I purchased a jumbo HTA box, and got the auto and bat barrel, but that was it. This hobby box yielded neither an auto or relic. Both of these boxes did have silk cards in them, but since when is a silk card an auto or relic? Clearly, I have been screwed. Twice. I just saw the article on Mojo's blog and I have to fully agree with everything. Their quality control is apparently on permanent vacation. I haven't gotten too many damaged cards though, and I must say the overall quality of the Update cards is way better than series 2. They've got a nicer feel to them and not too much silver overload on the names. Damaged cards are one thing, missing hits are a totally new epidemic in itself. I wrote off the jumbo box as a 'whatever' thing, but after the hobby box, I really felt, well...quite pissed off. What are the options though? Deal with it and think' thems the breaks'? Or do I contact Topps, and wait like 3 months for two hits I could care less about? 'Cause you know they wouldn't be anything other than some common All-Star jersey card of a player who probably didn't see game time. Or an auto of someone who wasn't even in the base set. Cards that would sit in a box and be forgotten. I'm all for autos and relics, but it just doesn't seem worth the hassle. Or maybe it is. What do I do? Have any of you contacted Topps and dealt with this situation before? Any information could be helpful.

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...

dear Topps....what the HELL did you do? part two!

Alright, last night in a late night rant about Topps' slacking off this year, I forgot to mention a few things. Series 1 was not without its faults. Incorrect colors on certain players (45 David Hernandez, 131 Dustin Richardson and 196 Ian Desmond to name a few), a player with the incorrect position (68 Brandon Inge listed on front as a pitcher, but really a 3rd baseman). At least everything was there. I'll explain. There are 30 MLB teams, and each team got a card in series 1, 15 told the 'franchise history' (cards that I am a big fan of) and the other 15 had the team name on the front and some info on the back (2009 record, managers name, day/night win/loss record, etc). Now, one would expect that this trend would follow in series 2, and it did. For the most part. While there are 30 team cards in series 2, only 29 teams are represented. The 15 that did not get the 'franchise history' in series 1, did so in series 2. The other 15 on the other hand were 14 of the other team cards, and another Texas Rangers card. This card was already in series 1 but it seems they corrected some info on the back. What they neglected to correct was giving the Tampa Bay Rays their card. No Rays team card. Smooth move Topps. Even the checklists are wonky in series 2. Besides being almost impossible to read on the card fronts, they are out of order. Series 1 checklists went 27, 204, 237, 269, 302 for checklists 1-5. Series 2 checklists 1-5 are numbered like this: 350, 543, 637, 636, 510. ??? Seriously? Haven't checklists gone in numerical order since the dawn of time? Was Topps on vacation while planning series 2 and they had their grandparents come in and finish the work? Again, all minor gripes but they all add up to.........laziness. Really friggin lazy. Oh, and as one fellow blogger pointed out in last nights post, the damaged cards. I've gotten at least 20 damaged cards so far from this set, thats more than double what I got out of series 1, and I bought WAY more of that. Unaccepable, how do all these error happen? Its not like they have to rush the product out to market to beat Donruss or Fleer. Makes some checks and double checks of the work to make sure things are correct the first time, its not difficult or all that time consuming. I know they love Mr. Strasburg and all, but they shouldn't let it cloud their judgment and ability to make quality ball cards. They have withstood this many decades for a reason, now isn't the time to start throwing it all away just because there is no competition.

dear Topps....what the HELL did you do?

Topps....oh Topps. You are the only baseball card maker left. We all know this. Why would you go and do this to your product? Your FLAGSHIP product? The annual release we have seen since 1952!! Come on guys, get with the damn program. What the fuss is all about are my gripes with Series 2. I really liked series 1. It was enough to get me hooked back into collecting as a full time hobby. I anticipated series 2, like the rest of you. And was kinda let down. It feels sloppy. Lazy even. Examples: the over EXCESSIVE use of silver foil in the names. I really liked how in series 1 the names were outlined in foil. Nice touch. For series 2, they cranked the machines to overload, so all the names look funny and have a thinner black name area where series 1 has, you know, readable names? Try reading Jarrod Saltalamacchia's name. Or any of the checklists fronts for that matter. Why is the text so damn small?? Saltalamacchia's name too small? Make him a horizontal card. There, long name issue fixed, you have all the room in the world now. Oh wait, the checklists were horizontal too, and they STILL messed those up. Series 1 was perfect they way it was, why mess with it? The only thing I can hope for is a fix in the Update set (or series 3 as it should be called), going back to how series 1 looked. Man, I hope so. Topps shouldn't be getting lazy just because they are the only game in town, thats just bad business. Minor gripes, maybe its just me, but I'm all for uniformity, and uniformity this ain't.

oh topps...

Does anyone else besides myself think that Topps short prints base cards to force us to buy more product? Or is it just my dumb luck? Example; I have purchased 2 hobby boxes and 1 retail box so far for 2010 series 2. I still do not have one complete set. I did get the last 10 cards I needed out of the most recent box, but they were all damaged in some way. I'm guessing they all came from the same sheet and that sheet should not have left the factory. Mistakes happen, I get it. I just find it odd after all the product I've bought so far (and there have been packs, a couple jumbos and 2 cereal boxes thus far too) and I still cannot complete a set. Second example; I bought a box of 2010 Opening Day and pretty much completed a set besides 3 cards. Now as with series 2, I bought more besides the box (about 3 blasters and some random packs, maybe 10-13). How can I still be missing base cards? Inserts I get, they are supposed to be "short printed". It even says right on the product description for OD that its 'easy to collect'. Not if I have to buy and buy and buy it isn't! I'm sure this is nothing new for Topps or any company for that matter but seriously, no short printed cards please unless otherwise noted. I know the higher end sets have short prints right in the set, like National Chicle (which is why I stopped collecting it), Allen & Ginters and Heritage, but not for the flagship set, or a supposed 'easy to collect' set like Opening Day. So what is it? Is it Me or is it on Topps?

keep hope alive

Not too happy with Topps today. I finally got my two retail boxes in the mail today (nothing outstanding, Colby Rasmus and Aaron Hill Relic cards, Eddie Murray short print, two original backs) and I only needed twelve cards to finish off my first set. Well wouldn't you know, I did manage to get all twelve (only one of each mind you) and only two of them were undamaged. The other ten had corner damage in one corner of each card. Pretty crappy if you ask me, quality control-wise and collation-wise. How can I open up four boxes and only get these cards once, and have them all damaged?? Only my luck sheesh...