Mail Day Post: Breaking Down the Break Down

After that post-a-day week for Gint-a-Cuffs, I was happy to take a break on Friday and Saturday from the blog and, instead, just read others' posts, catch up on e-mail, and work on my continual project of organizing my Brewers.  Sometimes, I think I should change my blog name to "Organizing the Brewers." I probably would get traffic from folks thinking I was talking about craft breweries. Considering the number of different beers I have tried, perhaps I should start writing about that.

Maybe.  But not right now.

During the Gint-a-Thon here, I actually received four packages from other bloggers.  That's good, because otherwise I'd be putting up pictures of hot girls to draw web traffic. Unfortunately, the Brewers don't seem to have any female celebrity fans.  Instead, we have a really cute dog.

So, with Hank the Dog's approval, I'm turning now to the package I got a couple of weeks ago from Gavin at Baseball Card Breakdown.  He and I have swapped cards a few times, and this one as far as I can remember was a "just because" package.  

First off, he sent some Archives Brewers, which helped push me nearer to completion on the Brewers for this year.  

I'm pretty sure that these complete my Archives team set.  I'm still looking for a silver parallel Robin Yount from that set, and of course I'd be happy to take any printing plates of any of the Brewers off someone's hands.  I have one each of the Greg Vaughn and Jeromy Burnitz autographs, even.  But in terms of the base cards, I'm good.

Gavin also sent four great Bowman cards that I did not have, including one of those cracked ice variations:

Gavin even sent me a sticker I needed.

On the right side of that sticker is long-time Brewer stalwart Charlie Moore. Charlie is one of my player collections in part because he was with the team for so long and -- more to the point -- he was one of the nicest, most genuine guys I've ever met.

What started all this out, I think, was that Gavin had opened some packs of this year's Allen & Ginter and had gotten a base card of Jean Segura.  I got one in the two hobby boxes I opened, but I needed two and asked Gavin if I could get Segura.  He was happy to send the card my way:

I really liked the card when I saw it.  Since this year's cards in nearly every Topps set have doubled up on photo use -- I'm sure it isn't laziness, but rather cheapness in not having to pay Getty to use different photos for all the different sets -- I paged through my Jean Segura cards to see what other card had used this photo before.  I was surprised to see that I could not find any.

Then, on Friday, I was on my way home from a morning doctor's appointment and stopped at the local Target (with the Starbucks attached) to get coffee for the day, ground coffee for the weekends, and a blaster of 2014 Topps Series 2 in my effort to collect the base set. I got home, went through the packs -- thankfully only 3 doubles in the whole blaster -- and found this insert:

I knew the idea that Topps might use a photo only once was too good to be true.

Thankfully, the cards that came from the Breakdown were real and wonderful.  Thanks, Gavin!

Gintacuffs Timefilling Post 2: Highlights from the rest of the Box

As I sit here this morning with my cup of coffee watching Major League, which was on this new movie channel yesterday, I thought that I'd finish off the Hobby Box of Allen & Ginter that I opened already.  I was thinking about drawing it out a bit, but I just don't have that amount of patience right now.

So, here are the highlights of the rest of the box.  I got my requisite 24 mini cards, my requisite number of hits, and a couple of Brewers.  Frankly, on that level, the box was disappointing in that I did not get a Molitor or a Yount -- either a regular size or a mini.

But I did get some decent cards -- and cards that I like too -- nonetheless.  Let's go worst to first.

Yeah, it's a relic, when the guy's claim to fame is being the inspiration for Van Wilder...and that he was named the "top partier" at Florida State University in about 1998, well, color me less than excited.

Don't get me wrong -- I like the Fields of Yore subset -- but why not include more stadiums that have been gone longer than Yankee Stadium? Okay, I don't hate that this Stadium was in the subset even, but why is Wrigley in there?  Must be the Ginter Code.

1980s players seem to be ignored somewhat by the Hall of Fame because their numbers did not reach the levels of the steroid-infused 1990s.  Read that sentence again.  "Steroid-infused."  Dale Murphy has been criminally underappreciated by the voters from the Hall, and I'm glad to see him getting a bit of love in the A&G set.  Makes me wonder why the Archives set couldn't include guys like the Murph.

So the only full-sized card autograph is from a basketball player.  That's fine.  Heck, this card has a great resale value on eBay even.  It would, at least, if the packaging process hadn't devoured the bottom of the card.

My final hit:

It's a white swatch of fabric.  Kind of boring, but it is Joey Votto.

Glenn Waggoner has to be my Rotisserie Baseball representative over Dan Okrent because, well, I didn't get a Dan Okrent.  I would rather have featured Okrent, though, because (a) Okrent wrote the excellent book 9 Innings: The Anatomy of a Baseball Game about the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers and (b) I just beat Okrent last week on a trivia website called Learned League in Animal Trivia.

It's the little things in life that excite me.

Here are my two favorite inserts that I got:

Turner, along with John Constable, were major influences on the Impressionists in France who followed him historically.  The Impressionists like the landscapes and Turner's use of light.  Then, those painters -- especially guys like Gauguin and van Gogh -- started becoming influenced by Japanese woodblock prints and, between the two, we started seeing a breakdown in the "reality" depicted on paintings.  It's an interesting study historically.

I like Diwali because it's a frequent trivia question answer.

Now, for the guys I collect:

Yeah, other than the Jean Segura from pack 1, I got the regular and mini sizes of Aramis Ramirez and the regular sized Carlos Gomez and Eddie Mathews.  Not exactly a box chock full of Brewer fun.

But, it filled the time between Archives and Gint-A-Cuffs!

GintaCuffs 2014 Timefilling

One of the first boxes of cards that I opened when I got back into collecting was an Allen & Ginter Hobby Box. When I was first getting back into buying cards, it took me a good week to figure out what the heck hobby boxes are and how they differed from blaster boxes and retail boxes and jumbo boxes.  And, I'm still not sure I totally understand why those differences exist.  Well, I do understand why -- I would just rather there not be such a differentiation.

Anyway, back in February, when I cracked that box, Mark Aubrey left a comment saying that I should participate in the Gint-a-Cuffs game this year.  I checked it out, and I loved the concept immediately.  I mean, any contest in which Yankee cards are treated in the same way as I treat them -- as pariahs, to be cast off immediately for fear of infecting the neighborhoods in which they dwell -- well, that's right up my alley.

So, now, I sit here refreshing the Gintacuffs blogspot page about once an hour every hour waiting for Mark to post the rules.  I bought two hobby boxes and tore through one already, though, so while I wait for Gint-A-Cuffs VI to go live, I thought I would hand out the highlights of that first box.

Boxloader

Well, that didn't start well.  I'm glad this is not my GAC box -- that box loader would be a less-than-stellar way to begin.  At least I have already communicated via Twitter with AJ The Lost Collector to make sure that this thing finds a good home with a Yankees collector -- especially one who just gave me such a great Robin Yount Art Card in a contest.

Pack 1
It was the best of packs:

That's the first card of the first pack I opened.  I immediately thought, "dang, I should have opened the other box instead."

It was the worst of packs:

I mean, I don't hate Joe DiMaggio, but Olt has been sent down for being terrible in ways that would make Mario Mendoza say, "Damn, that guy can't hit at all!" And, Soriano's already been DFA'ed.  Wow.

Pack 2
Nothing special.  Justin Masterson Mini, Tony Gwynn base, Mark McGwire Pastime's Pastime (which, I was shocked to learn, was not hypodermic needle use).  The scan didn't break the cards down into individual files.  Oh well.

I'll post more from this box later.  But, needless to say, these first two packs made me think, "God, I hope the other box is better!"