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.

Mailday Post: Trade with Sportscard Mask-A-Rade

Roger at Sportscard Mask-a-Rade had some parallels up for trade that I wanted, so I checked out his want list and sent some Cards cards his way.  In the cards I sent to Roger, I sent a bunch of stickers -- both as blanks of sort and as substantive trade items.  Thankfully, his post did not say that I stuck it to him on this trade, but rather that I stickered him.

I'm in a musical mood as I write this, so how about we go off the beaten path in a direction that will make sense in a moment.  When I was in college, I loved the rap in the last verse of this song:

That's Onyx with the song "Slam."  The last verse, of course, has no rhythm to it, really, but it is so different from the usual rhyme-alongs.  The rapper for that last verse was a guy named Kirk Jones -- better known by his stage name Sticky Fingaz.  Jones also is an actor who appeared in Next Friday, among other shows and movies.

So, I hope Roger didn't get ten sticky fingers from all those stickers I stuck in that package.  The package he sent to me was and is excellent -- so much so that I feel that I owe him a few more cards soon.  Here's what he sent, including some guy who is currently the Cardinals manager:

MINI!

Cirillo for the PC.

2014 Molitor Museum Collection

I have yet to figure out how to play the Topps Attax game.
Not that I've tried very hard to do that. But I like the card.

Target Parallel Ax

This is shiny Soup, though the scan doesn't show it.

Wally World Gomez.  Just a few more parallels to go!

SN37/150

SN107/3000

SN923/2000

SN1359/2001

SN9619/10000

Roger, thank you very much for the first trade between us.  It's proof either that both of us want to get rid of the cards from our divisional rivals or that we can put aside our differences in the interest of, well, getting rid of cards from our divisional rivals.  Let's do it again soon.

And no, Mr. Sticky Fingaz, it's not a figment of your imagination! 

Chasing Parallels

As I got more into my collecting, I started to realize what a daunting task it is to try to collect "all" of a players cards.  Back in the 1980s, Baseball Cards Magazine would run features that ostensibly were complete checklists of all the cards printed for a particular player.  In those days, it seemed simple to be a "player collector" since it seemed like you were chasing base set cards, maybe some all-star subset, maybe some multi-player cards, a couple of regional issues, and voila! FIN!

I realize now, of course, that it wasn't even that easy back then.  We have much more information now about what regional issues were available.  Also, even in the 1950s, Topps was issuing at least a couple of different oddball sets a year to leverage its licensing rights and squeeze more pennies and nickels out of the youth of America.

The 1980s, as everyone knows, was the pinnacle of both the junk wax era, but also of the random retailer-supplied sets.  Everything from what seemed to be countless 44-card sets from Fleer with different titles and featuring nearly the same set of players in alphabetical order -- meaning that Robin Yount has a bunch of #44 cards in those sets -- to the Topps-issued Gardner's Bakery Milwaukee Brewers sets (increasing my love of white bread carbs by 800%) to the MSA Discs that popped up from time to time.

Topps started its Tiffany set in the 1980s, along with issuing an exact parallel set with the Nestle logo on it in 1984.  And that was when the parallel set craze really started, as far as I can tell.

By 9 years later, Topps was issuing its base set in at least 5 complete parallels and one partial parallel. I bring this up in part to show off some eBay victories, but also because the proliferation of parallels has become more and more intriguing the more I read and learn about them.

Okay, let's start with the 1993 Topps base set, Card #1, Robin Yount:

1993 was the second year that Topps printed its base set on bright, white card stock -- unlike years past with the brown/gray cardboard used for literally decades.  This is an attractive card of Robin Yount completing his swing and hitting what appears to be a fly ball or popup.

Next, Topps had its "ToppsGold."  Again, 1992 was a watershed year of being the first year for the Gold Inserts (and the Gold Winners Inserts), and 1993 continued that trend.

Again, an attractive card, but less so than the base set because the imprint for Yount's name is not deep enough to make his name and team easy to read.  

In addition, Topps pulled its "Micro Card" gimmick in 1993.  Here's the base Micro card, next to its Gold big brother to show scale:

Now, the micro card is as attractive a card as the base set is, so long as you don't need glasses.  I mean, the stats on the back are nearly impossible to read without a magnifying glass.  

I believe that 1993 was the year that Topps started figuring out the super sparkly diamond-like printing process.  Perhaps wisely, they used the Micro-sized card as their guinea pig, and even then only used the process for a limited number of cards.  Here's the Yount sparkly micro:

You can tell by the distortion and lack of focus how small that card is.

1993 was also a special year for baseball, as two new expansion teams -- the first in 16 years -- joined the National League.  Topps was up to the task and honored both teams with a special base set of all 792 Topps cards with a gold embossed logo.  And, that's the reason for my post -- I just got the entire Brewers team set (except for manager Phil Garner and the 4-way rookie card featuring Matt Mieske) of the Rockies commemorative set as well as just the Yount from the Marlins commemorative set off eBay for a total of less than $20.  

Here's the Rockies commemorative card, and the gold-leaf logo:

 And here's the Marlins card and its gold leaf logo:

I'm glad I've got these for completeness, but it is a frustrating chase sometimes.  This will be especially true for those of you/us trying to get complete parallel sets for the 2014 Topps.  Camo, Pink, Red, Blue, Purple, Black, Gold, Yellow, Green, Platinum, Printing Plates, Opening Day, Chrome, short print variations -- I'm hoping Topps isn't pure evil and prints parallels for those too -- just a crazy, mystifying combination.

Sometimes, less is more.