A Malaise Falls over the Crowd: Topps Now

I have been in a rut this year. At first, I thought it was because of being super busy with work and all that goes along with it. Then, I thought it was because my creativity in terms of blogging had slipped. I've come up with all kinds of reasons why I might be in a rut, but none of those reasons dragged me out of my rut.

Then, this morning at work, with my morning coffee, I read this fantastic post from Dan's Other World called "The Great 2017 Baseball Card Price-Out: A Commentary." It helped me put my finger on a few things that have happened over the past six months to a year that have really turned me off to modern cards to some extent. 

I suppose if I'm honest with myself, my malaise truly began with the introduction of Topps Now at the beginning of last season. The idea, in concept, is a good one as I have said on many occasions. In its execution, it's a money grab by Topps. Topps is happy to feature Aaron Judge or Cody Bellinger walking on the field each day as a card in Topps Now, and those cards sell well even at their ridiculously overpriced $9.99 per card (or even at the $79.99 price per 20, or $4 a piece). 

There are signs that collectors generally are a bit tired of these cards. Last year, the lowest print run was a Chris Carter card near the end of the year, which had 178 total cards purchased. This year, that number has been surpassed on an incredible thirty-six  occasions so far, including a recent Marcell Ozuna catch card (Card 362) that just 113 cards sold. 

Before I go on, let me show you the Brewers Topps Now cards that came in from eBay recently. 

I still feel compelled to buy them right now. I have two more on the way, I think. I'm guessing that if the Brewers fall off (and by the way they are playing lately, they will fall off the pace quickly) Topps will fairly ignore them going forward.

I am quickly arriving at the point, however, of ignoring current cards. Sure, I'll collect them if they are sent to me, and I'll probably even buy them as team sets on eBay or at card shows. Even then, I'm not 100% committed to it. It's still "probably" because I'm kind of burned out on the decision making that goes on at Topps. 

For instance, there is the inexplicable decision making that went into the Archives set autographs -- particularly including Zack Hample as an autograph subject. If Topps did not have a completely tin ear, it would have known that Hample is an object of scorn both in the baseball card community and in baseball generally thanks to his ballhawking getting in the way of things like decency and letting military people go to the game at Fort Bragg last year. Similarly, Topps included a New York Yankees fan in the Archives autographs (Fat or Loud Vinny or whatever...who really cares what his name is). Even if those two were in Allen & Ginter, it would have been disappointing. 

Speaking of Ginter, I really liked this set when I first got back into collecting. Ginter & Archives. This year, the Brewers had three base cards in the set. How does that stack up? The Cubs and Mets have 15, the Reds have 9 as do the Diamondbacks, the Rays and Twins have 7, the Padres have 6, the Yankees have 17, and the Red Sox have 19. I know -- the world was clamoring for a new Johnny Damon on the Red Sox card or a new Henry Owens cards (since we sure didn't get enough of those last year /sarcasm). The only team close in terms of the small number of base cards is the Angels with 4 and the Montreal Expos, Milwaukee Braves, and Brooklyn Dodgers with 1 each. Of course, those last three teams no longer exist.

Where am I now with collecting? I don't know, honestly. I'm still grabbing Brewers cards here and there, but I'm more likely to find myself deep-diving on eBay looking for a new police department set to add than I am looking for the single Ryan Braun autograph from a set. I guess what that means is really that I will focus as much -- or more -- on the things that I enjoy in collecting: oddballs.

I'll keep posting here -- don't get me wrong -- but my attention may be spent more on the 1980s Oddball blog than here. 

This was more of a personal vent than anything, so I apologize if it made you upset or if you are the world's supercollector of Henry Owens for whom Topps is printing cards.

A Bowman Blaster Buy

Last week Friday, my wife and I decided on what qualifies as the spur of the moment for us -- just 6 hours advance notice -- that we would treat ourselves to a really good dinner. My wife loves steak. I mean, she could eat it every day of the week and twice on Sunday if her appetite and money would allow. So, it was off to the nearby Capital Grille for an excellent meal. Pricy, but excellent.

Not the actual Ribeye my wife got, but a reasonable facsimile thereof

The nearby Capital Grille is located near a lot of malls/shopping center areas. So, we finished off our dinner with a trip to Target because, why not? It was close by, after all. My wife had some around-the-house clothes she needed, so I wandered over to the card aisle. Nothing really grabbed me, so I grabbed a blaster of the latest and greatest -- Bowman.

In each $19.99 blaster, Bowman promises a total of 80 cards -- 8 packs of 10 cards -- with the possibility of a retail exclusive autograph. As with all retail purchases, I kept my expectations low and, frankly, didn't expect too much.

And, that's about what I got. Not too much.

In terms of major-league-base cards, the Brewers have only 2 cards in the 150-card set: Ryan Braun and Jorge Lopez. Lopez is still young (turned 23 in February) and was the Brewers' second round pick in 2011 out of Puerto Rico. He made two starts at the end of last season for the big club (1-1, 5.40 ERA, 10 innings, 5 BB, 10 K, 14 H) and he has been pretty atrocious this season in the worst Triple-A location to develop pitching, Colorado Springs (6.25 ERA, 40-1/3 innings, 49 hits, 31 BB, 32 K in 9 starts).

In the prospects set, Milwaukee has just four players. The fact that the team has just four players from what is a consensus Top 10 organization is pretty irritating, to be honest. I've expressed my irritation on Twitter -- as I tend to do with nearly all things Topps-related. 

The four players that the Brewers have in the set are Orlando Arcia, Trent Clark, Brett Phillips, and David Denson. Here's another irritation. 

There is no denying that David Denson is a good story as the first openly gay professional baseball player. Setting aside the story, however, and looking at it only based on prospect status and ability, Denson should not be anywhere near the Prospects set. Denson was not among Milwaukee's Top 30 prospects according to MLB.com coming into this season. The top 5 were Lopez, Arcia, Phillips, Clark, and Double-A lefty sensation Josh Hader, who did not get a card. 

Don't get me wrong -- the Brewers need a first-base prospect to emerge, and hopefully Denson can be that guy (though he has been DH'ing more than anything this year so far). If he can keep up his early season successes -- so far at Single-A Wisconsin, he's slashing at .301/.391/.449 -- he could still turn into a very useful player. On the other hand, it is his third time in the Midwest League....so, in what is now 146 games (576 plate appearances) there, he's slashing at .255/.358/.380. 

Based solely on merit, however, Denson should not be in the set. And as we all know, merit does not matter to Topps/Bowman. Only the bottom line does.

Yes, that is enough complaining.

I did pull two Brewer cards in my box of 80 -- which is probably about as many as I could expect. 

Happily, the two guys I pulled were the two I most wanted. Orlando Arcia and Brett Maverick Phillips. Phillips became known among Brewers fans this spring training for his absolutely fantastic -- or as Sports Illustrated called it, spooky -- laugh that got him plenty of attention.

Reliever Will Smith then took advantage of this and tried getting Phillips to laugh with "Mom Joke Monday":

We challenge you to watch this without laughing. #MomJokeMondayhttps://t.co/KRnRC54wpY

— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) February 29, 2016

The fact that Phillips doesn't take himself so seriously and looks like he actually has fun being a ballplayer makes me like him even more. This appreciation for him is pushing him closer and closer to being a player collection for me. I'm waiting, though, at least until he makes it to Triple-A and starts hitting a little bit better than a .250/.350/.425 slash line. Then again, he's still very young, and he's had some problems staying healthy, so maybe I'll restrain my enthusiasm for another couple of years.

The rest of my Bowman blaster wasn't bad -- it just wasn't Brewers.  Here are the highlights, provided without comment:



The one card I'm considering keeping from this is the Hayes card. I've always liked the "father-son" cards -- an idea that Topps is resurrecting for the first time in a long time in its Archives set this year with a "1985 Father-Son Recreate Set" insert and an autographs insert as well (including more Griffey!). In fact, maybe I'll start a mini collection of "relative" cards like the 1976 Topps father-son cards and the 1977 Brothers cards being included, among others. 

Perhaps that way, I'll have something to collect when Topps eventually phases out including the Brewers in all of its sets and completes its transition to "All Cubs, Yankees, and Red Sox all the time."

All Cardinals Sends All Brewers

I've gotten a lot of mail with cards enclosed this week. A couple of those were eBay purchases, but the vast majority were cards from bloggers. After the large pile of envelopes that I sent out in February -- which I'm lucky that my wife takes to the post office for me -- my wife commented to me that all my hard work in putting those together has paid off recently.

I don't view it that way, to be fair. I view it more as just the normal back and forth of blind trades in the blog world. Even the whole #SuperTraders thing to me is just a consolidation of that thought. I enjoyed breaking the boxes that I bought for that group (and, depending how things work out with the group, I may buy a few more to break later this year), but I will always try to trade with whomever is interested.  

Someone I've swapped cards with a couple of times in the past is Ray at All Cardinals All the Time. This time, a great PWE arrived from Ray with a few recent parallels and inserts that I needed either for team collections or player collections.  

We start with the foil parallel of Ryan Braun from this year. This one will go to my team collection, which now features a grand total of about three cards right now. All the parallels can be frustrating sometimes, what with some of the cards barely looking any different from their main set counterparts.

When it comes to team sets and parallels, I am certainly trying to put together team sets of any un-serial-numbered parallels and even those that are serial numbered anything above 100. That said, I have my doubts about trying to complete team sets of parallels from anything high-end. Even the ones numbered to, say, 325 -- which should be at least somewhat available -- can get expensive quickly simply because they come in boxes with a total of 14 cards that will run you around $180 a box.

You know, like Triple Threads....

Funny thing, though. For whatever reason, this card has been very accessible to me. This is my third different amethyst parallel of Braun from the 2013 Topps Triple Threads set. With serial numbers, though, every card is a different addition to the player collection -- even if one may find its way into a team set for the parallel for that set.

Another tricky issue as a team collector are the inserts. Some inserts are easily obtained -- you know, the ones that come in practically every pack of the flagship set, like the ever-present reprints of past cards repackaged as Cards Mom Threw Out, or 60 Years of Topps, or Berger's Best. 

Then, there are the "cross-trainers" of inserts and even the Archives set -- putting current players on older designs. This Braun insert from last year's Topps Finest set reuses the 1995 Finest design but for some reason numbers the cards with a "94F" prefix -- which, strangely enough, is the same prefix that Topps used in 2014 for its 1994 Finest inserts. 

That's a small thing, but we all know that details are important in life. Not paying attention to the details has become commonplace for Topps as of late, what with the issues with the Cubs that Wrigley Wax has detailed and even the reference to Robin Yount's nonexistent 1974 Rookie card ("especially in mini form") on the Berger's Best inserts this year. It seems that Topps is more concerned with coming up with more photo variations than it is in getting things on its cards correct.

And that is truly a shame, because some of the parallels and sets Topps puts out look really sharp.

Like this purple refractor from 2015 Bowman Chrome of Khris Davis serial numbered to 150. As much as Bowman has way too many parallels of the same photo and same card and as much as the Bowman sets would be far better if the parallels were cut in half, the shiny refractors are still quite the draw and look sharp together in a binder.

I'm not as sure that the same can be said of the Gold Parallels over the past two years.



With the very colorful borders in 2015 and the general lack of borders in 2016, these cards just are not very attractive. I have a particular worry, though, about the honeycombed look on the 2016 Topps Gold Parallel cards.

My concern is that Topps is going to use the pattern to create more parallels that we don't need in the hobby. Maybe not this year, but next year, would it surprise anyone if suddenly we had a short-print variation in the flagship set based around these textures or backgrounds in the fashion of Topps Hi Tek or the old school Topps Tek? This year it's honeycomb in flagship, next year it will be spiral icebreak parallels.

Or worse -- I could see this coming up later this year in Topps Chrome, where the white clouds in the corners are transformed to even more parallels beyond simply the color parallels. We'll have orange honeycomb, orange spiral, orange brick, orange peel, and orange Kool-Aid refractors, each serial numbered to between 123 and 129 or something ridiculous like that.

In the end, though, I definitely appreciate these cards greatly from Ray. It's a great day when an envelope arrives, and it's an even better day with over half the cards being serial numbered and needed for team sets and player collections.

Thank you, Ray!

A Rant: Favorite Teams and Topps Cards

Harris is a well-known polling company here in the United States. They take America's pulse on a variety of subjects too -- everything from people really not trying to become more energy efficient at home to an increasing sentiment that some books should be banned completely (which is terrifying to me) to the still-strong belief  (61% of people) that the death penalty should be used in some circumstances. 

But I am not here to talk about politics. Frankly, I have strong opinions on a lot of issues, but most of those opinions relate to sports and our hobby. In particular, I have been pretty strong in my calling out Topps for its abominable distribution of cards within sets.  In particular, I have railed in the past about how Topps will jam as many Yankees as it can into a particular year's cards -- whether in inserts, parallels, or straight-up base cards -- at the cost of ignoring the "smaller" markets or teams such as the Tigers, the Twins, the Indians, and my Brewers.  Note that all of those teams are Centrally located...there's a theme there too.  

Harris, though, has been tracking America's Favorite Major League Baseball teams among all adults who follow baseball since 1999. Yes, the Yankees always do well in this poll, and the Red Sox have finished second every year since 2009. 

But here's the thing that is interesting: check out number 9 both this year and last year: the Minnesota Twins.  Who's that in 13th place in 2013 and 2014 and now in 10th? The Cleveland Indians.  Looking at 5th in 2013, 6th in 2014, and 5th again in 2015? There's the Detroit Tigers.  And, look at #8 last year and #13 this year -- the Milwaukee Brewers.  Ahead of the Mets, ahead of the Orioles, and ahead of the Nationals too.  

How did the card world look from Topps's perspective last year? According to Beckett, there were 6918 Yankees cards from Topps last year, 6546 cards of the illegally snooping St. Louis Cardinals, 4984 cards of the Mets, and 3517 cards of the Washington Nationals....and 3318 Milwaukee Brewers cards.  To be fair, that's still a lot, but when there are literally more than twice as many Yankees cards as Brewers cards -- indeed, of current teams, only the Marlins, the Twins, and the Padres had fewer (and, if you add the Florida Marlins to the Miami Marlins, then the Marlins move ahead of Milwaukee also).

This is not a one-year fluke, either. In 2013, Topps issued 6726 cards with Yankees players on them, 5282 with Cardinals, 3232 with Twins, and 2670 with Brewers.  Of active teams, only the Houston Astros had fewer cards issued in 2013, as their players appeared on 2226. 

2012 was different, as the Brewers were coming off a first place finish in the NL Central and an NLCS loss in 6 games to Satan's Messengers on Earth. That year, Milwaukee appeared on 3068 cards issued by Topps -- good enough for 12th overall and about 100 behind the 3rd-place-in-the-Central-finishing Cincinnati Reds. The Yankees stood at 6014.

But come on, Topps -- look at which teams are supported by their fans and create cards accordingly. Just because you are in the Yankees backyard shouldn't mean that you only serve the East Coast or that you should only print cards of teams you perceive to be popular.  I get that you are a business, but you are also a monopoly in terms of licensed products.  In that position, you need give up some autonomy and serve the greater good. 

And, I don't mean that you should compensate with more "wall art" money grabs. People from Milwaukee are smarter than that.  No, really -- we know grammar and everything, unlike your New York-based staff, apparently:

Seriously, though, that's a low blow. But, we are not ones to want to feel taken advantage of or, worse, being ignored.

And that's where we are, really -- Topps puts Brewers cards in packs because it is contractually obligated to do so.  But if Topps wants to grow sales, shouldn't it be tracking who the popular teams are and issue cards accordingly?

One would think that should be the case.  

Thanks for reading. After being away from the blog for a few days with sorting and organizing and, then, networking, for some reason I felt it was time for my yearly bitching about Topps post.

Fun stuff will return tomorrow (or over the weekend)!