To celebrate and in recognition of the fact that time will not be easy to find over the next few months, T.J. sent out a bunch of packages around the blogosphere -- including one to me. Now, I'm a little disappointed that I did not receive one of his badass personal blogger cards on the 1987 Topps design. You know, this one:
For a while in the 1980s, I thought about trying to collect the entire 1987 Topps set in autographed form -- mainly because I like the woodgrain a lot. I know many disagree, but tough luck -- it's what I liked.
You know, like this O-Pee-Chee version of Robin Yount that T.J. sent my way. I have since thought better of that, mainly because there are way too many cards to try to get signed. So, I would have loved to have gotten one of these. Maybe next time. Still, it was pretty awesome to get one of those packages from T.J. So, let me help him out a little bit with some ideas for making his child a true Griffey fan. 1. Nike Air Griffey Max 1 Preschool Shoes from Kids Foot Locker
Sweet looking kicks that keep your child looking stylish and, at the same time, giving props to the first Seattle Mariner in the Hall of Fame.
To go with those badass Nikes, let's go with some Bowman Chrome parallels. We have a Green Axford, a Blue Khrush Davis, and a straight refractor of Johnny Hellweg. None of these guys are with the Brewers any more, as Axford and Davis both are now members of the Oakland Athletics and Hellweg -- who came to Milwaukee as part of the Greinke trade to the Angels -- was released last fall and signed with the Padres. 2. The Requisite Seattle Mariners Onesie
Every baby needs onesies. They are low maintenance, generally, and they are much easier for parents than regular clothes when it comes to changing diapers and getting the little one dressed. Now, I don't have any children, but I was 11 years old when my younger brother was born. So, I have changed my share of diapers and helped little ones get dressed -- and onesies are so much easier than anything else around for the "up to age 2" crowd.
I view these cards as a collecting equivalent of the onesie. They look good in the card sheets, though they don't blow anyone away as being the height of fashion. But a Brewers collector has to have them, just as any parent really has to have the onesie for their kids. 3. Griffey Money? No, really. A "Junior" dollar that you can buy on Amazon from "Kev's Toys" in Florida for the low price of $11.99 plus $4.49 shipping. I mean, sure, your overall transaction has you paying $16.48 for $1 of value, but you can use the Griffey money to teach kids how to save money. "See, son, this is what we call 'a money grab'." Topps is guilty of engaging in conduct that can charitably be called a money grab. Whether it is endless parallels in every dadgum product that gets put out these days -- like these two Gypsy Queen parallels of Yovani Gallardo from last year -- or their affixing foil stamps to old cards, all of this really does feel like a money grab. But, yes, I need them and yes, I'll take them and yes, actually, I appreciate these greatly -- especially the silver mini parallel numbered to 199! 4. Moby MLB Edition Wrap Baby Carrier
T.J. will be missing a great opportunity to have his wife represent the Mariners if he doesn't buy this awesome Seattle Mariners teal baby carrier from Bed Bath & Beyond. Only $50! Every one of these cards is sort of like that baby carrier to me. You won't know you need them till someone points them out to you. Granted, I feel like that baby carrier might be a bit overpriced at $50, so that's why the Prince Fielder Topps Tribute card shows up here -- I have yet to feel like the high-end sets are anything but overpriced hype. Sure, some like Tribute, Triple Threads, and Museum Collection -- the ones with base cards included -- tend to be pretty nice cards generally. But, in those products, the base cards always seem like letdowns or afterthoughts to someone trying to buy cards for "value" rather than for "collecting." 5. Salvino's Baby Bammers Griffey Bear
Another item available from Amazon, but this one is available for just $10.95 with free shipping if you have Amazon Prime! It even comes with an Edgar Martinez bear! Now, this is something for the real hardcore Mariners fan. It's from 17 years ago, and even then it was really only a knockoff of the real Beanie Babies. I'm not even sure what a Baby Bammer is. I always thought that that term would describe this:
Anyway, the best card to put with this hardcore item for a Mariners fan is to have an item only a hardcore Brewer fan could really appreciate.
An autographed 1974 Topps card of Brewers all-time wins leader, Jim Slaton. As I have mentioned in the past, the Brewers' history with pitchers is not exactly a good one. Slaton has the most wins in franchise history with 117, and he is the only pitcher in club history to throw more than 2000 innings in a Brewers' uniform with 2025-1/3 innings. If Slaton had pitched only for Milwaukee, that total would be good enough to put him 427th all-time in innings pitched, 1/3 of an inning behind Johan Santana and Vern Kennedy. Slaton pitched another 658-1/3 innings with other teams, so he's actually 197th all time. That should tell you that the Brewers either don't keep pitchers around generally, or they don't keep the ones they do keep around healthy (see Ted Higuera, for example, or Ben Sheets). Still, to add a clearly authentic autograph of a guy who is a player collection for me is just awesome. Thanks, T.J., for the cards and congratulations again on the addition to your family!
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!
Last week Sunday, in preparation for a week of dealing with family coming to town, I treated myself to a trip to a card show. It's one of the normal monthly shows here promoted by Frank Moiger, but I went to the East Cobb version instead of the North Fulton version. None of that means much of anything to you, probably, but it meant a little different group of vendors for me. I focused on cheap for me this time around. I did pay a little more for some on-card prospect autographs...but, you know, that happens sometimes. In fact, let's see those autographs:
Yes, another Damien Magnifico -- just days after my first one. This one is a die-cut Magnifico, serial numbered to 100. All of these were $3 a piece or 4 for $10. I got a few other cards from the same guy out of some quarter boxes too; these cards included, incredibly enough, these:
I think I grabbed nearly every Brewer in the box -- mainly because I needed them, of course. But to find purple refractors, Museum Collection, a 2005 Fleer National Pastime card of Robin Yount serial numbered to 650, and even the base and gold parallels of Ryan Braun's Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects rookie card (and the 2010 Bowman Refractor) for a quarter each was just an awesome find for me. And now, even more shininess...
Le Disko by the band Shiny Toy Guns gets to introduce the shiny Prizms and refractors that were sold at 6 for $1 (and obviously, I cherry picked from this selection for five of the prettiest:
I'm not a huge Panini Prizm fan, if only because Prizm has so many damn parallels to track. Also, the base silver cards are, frankly, ugly. I'd prefer that Prizm make the red or the green their base cards and shelve those stupid silver ones. I have yet to see a base Prizm card that I looked at and said, "That's a cool card." On the other hand, the Gallardo, Aoki, and Weeks cards above are cool cards due to the shiny colors. The 2010 Gallardo refractor and the 2014 Segura Orange Refractor are your typical Topps Chrome cards, I suppose. I'm not a huge fan of the orange refractor mainly because I just don't like the color orange and it does not look good for the Brewers either. Maybe for the Mets or Marlins, but not for Milwaukee. Okay, last group of cards.
We'll go "vintage" REM for these.
Yes, it's all about the vintage. These 6 cards cost me a total of $30. Obviously the Mathews 1962 is the top of that chart, and the Spahn win leaders was next. It's always good to see the seller who has these cards, as he is a longtime promoter and seller in the Atlanta market. He has a great network to find good cards, and these are ones I'm glad he found. Two more new packages came in the mail yesterday for me, so this week should be a good one for blogging if I can find the time. Thanks for reading.
