I Need Therapy

Just before the end of the year, a package from Adam at Addiction As Therapy showed up in my mailbox. It contained a plethora of great cards. I'm going to showcase a few of them and use this time writing simply as "therapy" for my collecting. I have no idea where it's going, but y'all are coming along.

There are things about collecting cards these days versus my original days back in the 1970s and 1980s that I like a lot. Back in those days, you had one shot at what the big companies released as card sets. Sure, there would be random other stuff -- 5x7 photos from Topps, card-sized stickers from Fleer, Donruss's Action All-Stars -- but those were really oddballs. 

The real action was each company's flagship, eponymous set.  

These days, it seems like it is a rare week when a new set doesn't come out from Topps or Panini that is available in stores, and it is indeed a rare week that Topps doesn't issue something new. Sure, unless you have unlimited funds, you will have to pick and choose what you collect. But the options these days are many. It's hell for a completist, but it's fun to chase. 



Of course you can't chase everything. The feature of collecting today is also its defect in many respects. Trying to catalog what a "complete" team set each year would look like is tough. All the parallels and inserts get mind-numbing. In that regard, it's almost worse than the "overproduction" era of the late 1980s/early 1990s. 

I worry about the hobby with things like this. It makes me wonder whether cards will still exist in, say, 2035. With how focused on the high-end sets Topps has become, and with how much of a cash cow Topps Now had to have been, it begs the question of how long Topps will continue to issue a Flagship. I could see them continuing Heritage and Archives for the nostalgic among us, but will they continue putting out a new eponymous set? 

And, how much longer will we go with only one card issuer? How long will it take MLB to bring card printing in-house when it sees the kind of cash that Topps generates or, conversely, when Topps fails financially and ends up leaving MLB without a card company? Could that happen?

Maybe the question is, "why wouldn't it?"

After all, Donruss looked like a pretty solid company. Now, its rotting corpse is being used to put out chrome cards without logos and with discolored jerseys. 

Going stream of consciousness on you and speaking of the future....

Here's Future. Perhaps the best comment about this video is, "This dude be speaking cursive."

Anyway, just remember, the future isn't always bright. At least not in a dystopic world. That's probably why I could use some therapy. It's tough to stay positive sometimes, especially when it seems that the world has turned against people who value intelligence, or expertise, or thoughtfulness. 

Is our world's anti-intellectual bent (I say world because, well, look at Brexit and Europe generally) just a phase? Or is it a dumbing down of the world that will be tough to reverse?

Who knows.




On happier thoughts about the future, perhaps in 2035 we will be celebrating the use of the 1994 set on Heritage and Topps will have dragged out the 1979 design for still more cards for Archives on multiple occasions. While the 1994 design is nothing special, I'm in favor of having the 2035 Archives set feature 100 more cards with the 1979 design.

Of course, will I still be collecting in 2035? 

If so, will I still be looking for another Corey Hart Topps Heritage card that I don't have, or some Jonathan Lucroy Archives short print from 2015 -- to complete a team set or a player collection? 

Probably. 

Well, I say probably. I assume a lot there. I assume I'll still be alive at the age of 63. 

I assume I'll still be collecting.

I assume I'll still be collecting in the same way that I'm collecting now. 

I'm hopeful that there will be better technological advances available then such that we will be able to automate some of the processes that we do manually now -- like, say, a set release that comes with an automatic filter to sort the cards however you want and then with photo recognition to check them off the checklist when you have them.

That is, if there are still physical cards being issued.



Just wait, though, till the 2015 and 2016 card designs end up on Archives. Is there any rule that Topps has about how old a design has to be to appear on Archives? If not, why haven't we seen some cards echoing the 2007 design? Or the 2000 design? I mean, the year 2000 is now 17 years ago. Those cards will be seniors in high school this fall. 

On a similar note, I have baseball hats older than that. In fact, I have a Brewers trucker-style hat with the mesh back from 1987 that my grandad used to wear. I still wear it from time to time. It's in good shape, so why not? 

Is there any point to these thoughts? Not particularly. Sometimes, it's better just to let the words flow and see what happens. These cards, this blog, these relationships we all have with others online -- all of it is what makes things fun. Just like any gathering of people, sometimes things will get one or more of us really upset. No one will like everything. 

It's tough to be zen. It's tough to be quiet. It's tough to be contemplative. It's easier to go through mood swings, to be upset and share that upset with everyone, to pop off when something seems off. I know -- I do all of those things, and being loud, upset, and popping off is far closer to my default position.

Part of me thinks that my job as a lawyer has done this to me. I'm always coming up with counterpoints to the points made by others. I'm perpetually trying to convince others that, sure, maybe J.J. Hardy did use that piece of wood in his card as part of a bat and it's not from a random 2x4 from Home Depot. 

Another part of my job is to remain calm, though -- to appear unflappable, unemotional, poker-faced. When something bad happens, the response isn't to go nuts, or to cry -- it's to think. It's to try to make things right. 

All that together makes it tough for me not to engage Topps from time to time -- to call them out when they ignore teams. I want Topps to be around in 2035 (I want me to be around then too), and I see too many occasions where there does not appear to be a plan with them. It seems short-sighted to give short shrift to the Brewers or the Twins or the Astros earlier in the decade or the Rays simply because there might seem to be fewer fans of those teams that buy cards. Maybe it's that those folks don't buy cards from Topps because, well, Topps does very little to cater to them. 

Again, that's all a discussion I've engaged in before. 

Maybe just a little typing therapy helps sometimes. Just like collecting can be an addiction, it can be therapy too.

Adam, many thanks for the fantastic cards. I hope you didn't mind tracking through all this randomness.

No, Really, I Didn't Miss You Guys...Okay, Maybe a Little

This past weekend, I spent a few hours at my local card show. It had been several months since I'd gone to the show. I told myself that I would stay away for a while to save a little money and then go to one of the shows in North Carolina. 

Instead, I ended up spending more money on eBay. That wasn't the way it was supposed to work. But, at the same time, thanks to that massive SuperTraders mailing I did earlier this year, my wife was under the impression that many of my eBay purchases were actually return envelopes from folks in that group. 

Some of them were. Most of them weren't.

This past week, though, I decided I'd missed going to the local show. So, I grabbed some cash from the ATM and started humming an old John Waite tune.

Actually, that's a line. I have never in my life hummed that song. In fact, I pretty much have never liked that song at all. Seeing John Waite in that video with his very short hair makes his appearance as a hair-band member in Bad English and the song "When I See You Smile" absolutely hilarious.

Anyway, y'all didn't come here for a music history lesson. At least I don't think it is why folks stop by here and read the stuff I write.

I'd better get to the cards I got before I lose you.

Let's start with a few Brewers this time and see how far "Missing" will take me.

Starting all K-Pop on you here with "Missing You" by GDragon featuring Kim Yoon-Ah. Thanks to the scrolling translation, it's tough to see what Ms. Kim looks like; I think this is her:

By the way, she's 42 years old. Speaking of 42...

I was going through one of the regular seller's boxes at the show -- Ms. Brenda -- and there was a guy next to me going through the 15-cent cards from Series 2 that Ms. Brenda had out. I saw this card on the top of the stack and asked him, "Do you want that Peralta? Because I'm a Brewers collector and I'll gladly take it if you don't want it."

He handed it over immediately to me -- he was a Chicago native, incidentally, who lived for several years in a town about 20 minutes from where i grew up. As soon as I got it, I pointed out to Ms. Brenda that the card is one of the Short Print 42-jersey variations. When it came time to tally everything up and check out, she asked me, "how much are those going for on eBay?" I went to Mavin.com and told her -- "well, with shipping, it's listing anywhere from $4 to $11, and it's selling for around $5 with shipping."  So, she gave it to me for $2.

To be fair, with the damage that big Wily has done to the Brewers' ERA and team record, I feel like he should be buying up all of them himself with his $2.8 million salary and distributing them personally to each Brewers' baseball card collector in America. 

After that, he can work on apologizing for sucking so bad to everyone.

To be fair, his comps through age 26 (last year) had some hit and miss in it. Hits? Max Scherzer and Kevin Brown, maybe Dustin Hermanson or Charles Nagy or even Steve Renko. Misses? Bill Laskey, Frank Castillo (a workhorse early in his career, a complete dumpster fire later), and former Blue Jay Luis Leal, who provides the scary comp of washing entirely out of the major leagues at the age of 28.




That's Australian singer/songwriter Betty Who a/k/a Jessica Anne Newham, who was born in Sydney and lived there until her mid-teens when she moved to Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan to play cello. She's also a Berklee College of Music attendee. 

It doesn't look like this song, "Missing You," was released as a single as of yet. It's actually a pretty catchy song, at least on its first listen. To use some familiar references, this music is what might happen if Mazzy Star was remixed by Armin van Buuren -- you get dance, but it's also with an ethereal feel.






Now, that's a recent-card-dump right there. Basically, I finally found the last card I needed from Series 2 from last year -- Jason Rogers -- in a dime box. In a quarter or 5 for $1 box, I found all the Bowman from this year that I could stomach. For 15 cents each, I knocked some more cards off the 2016 Series 2 want list and picked up the Brewers team card from Heritage -- where I discovered that Jonathan Lucroy featured and, therefore, I need another. And, for a nickel, I finally found the last 2015 Heritage High Number card that I needed in Mike Fiers...whose trade helped bring Brett Phillips to the Brewers system.

A pretty good haul by itself already.

But wait -- there's more.

One more song and one more group of cards for today will do the trick.

Wikipedia describes the band All Time Low as being an "American pop punk band from Towson, Maryland" that was named for lyrics in a song by New Found Glory. I'm afraid I've never heard of this band, but I feel like I should have heard of them already. They are veterans of the Warped Tour and the Reading Festival in England, among other major tours.

I listened to this song, of course named "Missing You," and thought I'd stumbled into a One Direction concert.

That's not true at all. I don't know what One Direction sounds like. I'm not sure any of their fans do either, what with shrieking at the tops of the lungs at the mere mention of their names.

I listened to another song by them called "Cinderblock Garden" and I'm not all that impressed by that song either. They seem like a less interesting version of what Jimmy Eat World was doing 15 years ago.

It's all so derivative....

When we collectors talk about derivative, we could be talking about (a) all the recycled card designs being used by Topps in Archives and Heritage and as inserts to the flagship, or (b) all of the dadgum parallels that get issued all the time. 

I hate to say it, but as a pathetic/over-the-top/obsessive/compulsive completist, I feel like I must collect ALL the parallels. I've started drawing lines -- not needing cards for the team collection with serial numbers of less than 100, for instance....a line which may need to be revisited as a "going forward" line rather than a "all-time" line, for example. 

All of these, however, are cards I must have. We have Denson and Phillips and McGehee in Bowman Chrome Prospect parallels from the base Bowman packs -- an always confusing proposition, what with another actual product called "Bowman Chrome" floating around out there. The Kapler is a Walmart parallel (I think) from 2009. Gallardo is the base Topps Chrome from 2010 -- for just a dime -- and let's be honest about Chrome generally: it is just another excuse for Topps to reuse the photos it pays for from Getty Images without paying an additional user fee. 

That Overbay foil parallel from last year was just five cents. I don't feel bad paying a nickel for that.

Finally, the Villar gold from this year is too cool considering I paid a nickel for it. I mean, come on people -- that's your National League leader in stolen bases (as of the All-Star break) and probably in TOOTBLAN too (that's "Thrown Out On The Basepaths Like A Nincompoop" in case you're not a cool kid in the know...I know because I spent a couple of years watching Carlos Gomez).

Then again, sometimes, being TOOTBLAN has its, um....downsides.

Thanks for stopping by. More cards from the card show tomorrow.