Tardiness, Thy Name Is Off Hiatus

In some respects, Shakespeare presaged the internet. By that, I mean that Shakespeare was really incredible at coming up with pithy yet memorable lines that completely foretold the coming love 500 years later for memes. 

One that has persisted for centuries derived from Hamlet -- "Frailty, thy name is woman." To paraphrase Wikipedia, the "____, thy name is ____" phrasing is used to indicate the completeness with which something or somebody embodies a particular (usually negative) quality. 

That applies completely to me this month. I keep complaining about how work keeps getting in the way of blogging, but it does. I guess I need to start writing things up on weekends and scheduling and releasing them during the week or something. But then, I get tired of writing or I start writing in the same vein constantly and I fear that folks will get bored.

At any rate, today I am going to combine a couple of things that came in to the OHHQ from random directions. One is an obvious source and the other sounds just strange.

Happy Holidays from Topps

While I was never a fan of Wham! or of George Michael, there is no denying that the man could sing and write catchy songs. 

The Wham Christmas song goes well with Topps's Topps Now Holiday card. Lord knows I am critical of Topps on many levels. Topps deserves much of the criticism I send its way too. Take this holiday card, for instance. On the back, it features Ichiro (for his 3000th hit, I'd assume) and David Ortiz for his retirement. And while I have made multiple jokes about the multiplicity of David Ortiz Topps Now cards, the fact is that Ortiz had an excellent career. 

Then you see this side of the card. You get Kris Bryant -- the NL MVP who led the Cubs to the team's first World Series victory in 108 years. 

But Gary Sánchez? 

Gary Sanchez, thy name is shoe.

Yes, he had a good debut this year for his two months in the majors -- 20 homers in 53 games is nothing to sneeze at. But come on! He wasn't the AL Rookie of the Year -- Michael Fullmer was, and deservedly so. Sanchez was not the AL MVP -- Mike Trout was and deservedly so as well (only Mookie Betts was within a win by WAR of anyone in the majors of Trout's shocking 10.6 WAR) and, in fact, did not even get a single vote. 

So what the hell is he doing on a 2016 Highlights card, other than the fact that Topps had its own little Sanchez-gasm, spewing Gary Sanchez Topps Now cards around like Ron Jeremy at the AVN awards? I guess Topps felt like it needed to send its own employees a Christmas card with their favorite team on it.

Cards from Christmas for Kids

My wife does a lot of volunteering around Dunwoody. One of the coolest ones is Christmas for Kids. The Dunwoody Police Department collects up toys through donations. They then work with local social workers and local child services organizations to identify children in need and give those children invitations to a special outing the weekend before Christmas. 

At the event, the children are ordered by their relative level of need. The neediest go in first and get to select multiple gifts for themselves. The kids get to meet Santa, and they get to eat free food from local food trucks which volunteer and donate the food for the day. 

At the end of the event this year, there were tons and tons of toys left over. There were so many toys left over, in fact, that the DPD drove around Dunwoody on Christmas with toys in the back of a patrol truck and handed them out at local apartment complexes. My wife saw some cards laying around unclaimed and asked the police about them. Turns out that the cards had been left for a couple of years, so they said that my wife should take them.

It's a bit sad, therefore, that I have these cards. After all, it means that dozens of kids decided they would rather have some GI Joe toy -- or whatever else was available -- instead of grabbing baseball cards. I'll take them, but I feel bad about it.

On the bright side, I got some good stuff:

Such as a complete factory set of the 2009 Upper Deck First Edition set complete with relic and five 20th Anniversary cards. What did I get from those?

Josh Barfield didn't make it past 2009 as a major leaguer. He started his career pretty well with the Padres in 2006. He was passed by Asdrubal Cabrera in the organization by the end of 2007. He kicked around the minors thereafter, and played last in 2013 in the Atlantic League. Most recently, he has been a part of the Arizona Diamondbacks organization as the Assistant Director of Pro Scouting.

Otherwise, my 20th Anniversary cards were decent. Granted, I'm not a hockey guy, so I had to Google him to find out that Eric Staal is a "Triple Gold Club" member, being a winner of the Stanley Cup (2006), the World Championships (2007), and the Winter Olympics (2010). 

I've heard of the other four people/things, though the whole idea of putting "The Universe" on a card is a bit ridiculous. Maybe we can get a "stars of the stars" card set to highlight all the great stars in the sky soon.

As for the set itself, well, it's a set. I needed nearly all the Brewers in the set, so no complaints there. It was fun to see CC Sabathia in a Brewers' uniform and to see Mat Gamel listed with uniform number 98 though.



And, this set was a great reminder of how good a card design can be when you don't have the creeping death fog at the corners of the card.

I hope everyone had a good Christmas, and I'll try to write again this week -- but I do have to go to work some too!

#SuperTraders Box Break: So, What Did We Get???

I listed out the boxes that I bought to break up for the #SuperTraders group on Thursday. I titled the post "What are you THINKING Tony?" because I'm always complaining about how I hate the logoless Panini -- and then I go and get three Panini products to circulate around. 

Being an impatient sort, I literally ripped through all the unopened packs on Thursday night. Last night, I scanned the better cards and sorted most everything out. Today, I finished sorting and packaged up everything to go out in the mail. With it being 26 packages, I am leaving it to my wife's discretion as to whether all of them go out at once or whether they go out over a few weeks. 

After all, as anyone in a relationship knows, the best way to have a happy life is to make sure that your significant other is happy. Well, that, and making sure that you still indulge in those guilty pleasures like chocolate, baseball cards, and a good bottle of your favorite tipple.

That proves two things: first, that you can find a song for nearly every word imaginable and, second, there are still people paying money to hear Fiona Apple play music. 

Or, maybe that was a free show in Portland. I don't know.

Anyway, here's what the #SuperTraders got in our boxes of cards here at Off Hiatus Central:

1.  2012 Panini Cooperstown Blaster

This one did not have much to offer us. No parallels of any sort, no serial numbers, and barely any inserts. It was like a pack-searched blaster.  To be fair, this is a pretty cool set generally. If Panini didn't put out literally the same set every year with very few changes to the photos, it would be a better set.

Because I felt like I needed to scan something from the blaster, here's a card that helped me:

I mean, I own this card already, so it didn't help me *that* much.  Let's move on.

2. 2014 Donruss Baseball Factory Set

This could have been a much better set. It's been said before elsewhere, but this set is annoying. The first half -- the original release -- was pretty cool. A decent design with pretty good photos and a pretty good idea generally to bring back the Donruss name led to a more successful release than Panini expected, I'd guess. 

As a result, Panini tried to capitalize on that good feeling and released Series 2. Series 2 was a car crash in a flood caused by a tornado destroying a dam by pushing a bridge over onto the dam. Seriously, it's that bad. 

Why? Well, there are two Diamond Kings for each team. That never happened before. There are two sets of Rated Rookies, which may or may not have happened before, but it was unnecessary and not in keeping with the 1980s nostalgia part of the release. 

More to the point, Series 2 featured cards for a multiplicity of players who appeared in Series 1. If Series 1 had been, say, 800 cards, then I could see this being necessary. It was not -- it was like 150 to 200 cards. Why repeat players?  Also, there were a few random retired players thrown in -- such as two or three retired Cincinnati Reds and a couple of retired New York Yankees. But, not every team had a retired player in the set. And, what the hell are retired players doing in the set (unless they were a puzzle insert?)? 

It's just a nonsensical set generally.

There was one relic card in the factory box, just to keep up with modern collector needs:

Congratulations to Sam, the Daily Dimwit, who is the lucky recipient of a Rated Rookie Relic of George Springer serial numbered 14 of 99. It looks like this is a new addition to his Springer relic collection, so that's an awesome hit for him!

3.  2012 Topps Mini

This box promised one autograph or relic mini card. In addition, six packs had inserts and, in addition, there were five Gold parallels serial numbered to 61. Let's start with the inserts:

Yes, it's the return of Golden Moments, but in mini form. Also, my apologies go out to Jaybarkerfan, as you'll have to wait to get your Smoltz mini insert because it got buried under the Diamondbacks and I didn't find it until your envelope was sealed up. Don't worry -- you'll get it, though!

Next up: the gold parallels.

So far, so good. All but the Indians were claimed of these inserts and parallels. It's always cool to get a parallel that is numbered to less than 100 total, so hopefully these are good additions to the various collectors' collections.

Finally, this box featured one of the funkiest looking relics I have seen:

Is that relic made cooler by the writing, or is it that the Rays wrote the date and had an employee sign it -- and then Topps just cut that part up too and put it in the card?  I'd like to think it was Longoria himself writing that, but it's probably my wild-ass guess that is closer to the truth. Still, I do feel like this is a more interesting relic due to the writing.

4. 2009 Upper Deck O-Pee-Chee

So, I blew it on this one too -- I didn't cut up the box and insert the cards I was supposed to insert into the various envelopes. Sorry guys. Next package, I promise.

Anyway, I hate myself for my reaction to this box. I really like these cards -- they are attractive cards that are intentionally styled after the 1976 Topps set. My ugly reaction, though, was of disappointment for not getting any autographs or relics in the box. 

I've become a modern collector. Dammit.

What did we get?

Well, I got a Corey Hart black mini:

There were six of the "20th Anniversary" cards:

There were two "New York, New York" inserts that were thicker than the average card:

Looks about right. The Yankees get Jeter, the Mets get...Mike Pelfrey.

And, there were a few other random insert-type things:

So, it wasn't a bad box overall...well, other than the fact that I received only TWO base Milwaukee Brewers cards in the whole box. Maybe that's what's coloring my view.

5.  2015 Panini Contenders

As with all things Panini, I was ready to hate this product. There are some things that are not great about it. It's basically about three main sets thrown together with a bunch of random inserts. Set one is the "Season Ticket" set of current players -- some minor leaguers, some drafted last year, some current major leaguers, and some retired players -- in color photos from their college days.  Let's have John Elway (yeah, really) model this card:

The second set is the "School Colors" set. It's pretty similar to the Season Ticket set with the color photography and all, but it has no backgrounds other than the player's college colors. Here's Brewers' 2nd round draft pick (out for 2016 after TJS) Nathan Kirby from the university whose students refer to their school humbly as "The University":

So, I hate Kirby already for two reasons -- that he's out with a ligament transplant, and because he was the pitcher who closed out Vanderbilt in the 2015 College World Series. If I need a third, it's that his middle name is "Winston." Seriously. The guy should talk like Thurston Howell III on Gilligan's Island.

Finally, the third set within a set is the "Old School Colors" set. This is where it gets annoying, because I can't explain what the hell this set is about except being "School Colors" with black & white photos.

At least I can add that one to my player collection.

The upside to this box were the six autographs. 

Again, because of the random way that some of these cards are named, a few guys are shown with college logos and four are shown with their major league city. 

Probably the highlight -- at least for Mark Hoyle -- is the fact that the Red Sox's top prospect, Yoan Moncada, was one of our autographs. I wish the autograph were better, but I'm guessing Yoan signed this sticker in the middle of signing several thousand for Panini. Still, this autograph was going on eBay for somewhere around $50, so it doesn't suck!

The best autograph, of course, is the one going to Brett Cooper of Blake Perkins -- you have to appreciate a guy who actually took his time and signed the sticker well.

I hope y'all enjoy the cards you get from this break!