Starting Nine Turns PWE into Manila Envelope

It's getting to be the time of year when Jacob Marley characters appear on stage nationwide and worldwide in theatrical presentations of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. As a kid, our school made it a yearly tradition to take one of the school grades -- I think it was 6th graders -- to Downtown Milwaukee to the Pabst Theater to see the Milwaukee Repertory Theater's adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Watching that morality play unfold on stage was a true pleasure.

These days, I equate Jacob Marley -- or, rather, jacobmrley -- with the excellent Starting Nine. blog. We have exchanged envelopes a couple of times, and Max always sends me far more card and items than he ever asks for in return. 

For this trade, he asked for a couple of Goodwin Champions cards that I got a recent card show. In return, he said he'd send me some Carter items that I might be able to use.

He was right -- I can use this Dunkin Donuts disc from 2006 celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the New York Mets winning the World Series.

He didn't need to do it, but he added a few more cards that I needed as well either for team sets or for player collections:

The Ben Sheets Donruss The Rookies card and the Paul Molitor Memorable Moments cards both go into the respective player collections, while these other cards all go into my team collection.

Some day -- hopefully soon -- I will get a complete list of what I have and what I need put together. That day isn't here yet. But hopefully soon it will be.

In the meantime, many thanks go to New Jersey and to jacobmrley.  

You won't hear a "Bah Humbug" coming from me!

I've Been Promoted...I *think*

When I started blogging about 10 months ago, I never thought I would spend as much time and effort writing about cards and baseball players as I have. Of course, I really did not -- and still don't -- have much of an idea as to what I'll write on any given day about any given cards.

I did not think that, back in February, I would have sent out and received so many cards via the U.S. Mail -- especially without haggling about it first. If anyone has gone back through my old posts, I even questioned the blog-o-tariat about whether book value should or does matter when trading with people.Once I got past that particular hangup and took the position that, generally speaking, I would be happy to get rid of any cards that are not Brewers or Gary Carter or Paul Molitor, I have become a much happier collector. I only worry about whether I have sent enough cards to people that they want or need in return for the cards they have sent me.

One blogger with whom I traded very early on in her blogging days is Julie from A Cracked Bat. Since that time, Julie has been sprinkling cards throughout the blogosphere like Tinkerbell sprinkling that pixiedust that, as the Disney Wiki claims, "grants the abilities of flight."  Sounds like LSD to me, but I'm a rotten cynic who stopped believing in Santa Claus before Santa Claus stopped believing in me.

Anyway, on more than one occasion -- including with her most recent group of cards -- Julie has given me a promotion to being THE Tony.

I'll happily accept that moniker. I'm almost as happy to be THE Tony as Nori Aoki.

The colorful parallels over the past few Topps sets have proliferated like so many rabbits with a plentiful food supply. A lot of them are attractive -- I'm somewhat fond of the red borders like the Aoki -- but the green/acid rain parallels of 2013 and the Red Rain Peter Gabriel parallels of 2014 are just a bridge too far.

Stick with the basic red and you're in good shape. Wal-Mart blue isn't terrible either, even if every time I see one of those I instinctively think, "cheap! Low low prices!"

Even Carlos Gomez has a tough time making that Wal-Mart blue look okay. "Detergent, sir? That's in aisle 18."

Julie sent me the majority of a team set of Brewers as well -- from the 2012 Topps Mini set. I think Topps should consider making the Mini set a retail issue with no parallels and a lower price range. Let it replace the "Opening Day" set as the one directed toward kids and set builders. That way, kids get a complete Topps set to build at a decent price.

Those three are the PC guys that were included for me that were not horizontal (Gallardo is in that group). I really kind of like the little minis, even if they are yet another parallel.

Julie also threw in a bunch of cards from random other sets -- whether inserts or otherwise.

The Cirillo card made me a bit dizzy. Willie Randolph is trying to tell Matt Mieske that he should not pick at that chip on his bat, because Matt should know by now that cheapskate Bud Selig won't buy him a new order of bats until spring training ends.

The final group of cards came in a team bag with the following label:

These two Allen & Ginter cards are the "Code Card" parallels. I missed these cards when they were released, so I had to spend the last 15 minutes figuring that out. Now I know.

That said, I kinda like that little black flourish on the Axford card. I'm sure the corner locations and designs on certain cards had something to do with the code, but I will register my thought that the gold on Rickie Weeks's card looks weak and is made weaker by not being included on all four corners.

On the other hand, this Logan Schafer autograph is pretty strong. I think Schafer's window of opportunity to be more than a spare part in Milwaukee may have passed him by in 2013 with Khris Davis's emergence -- a fact probably cemented this past year with his .181/.278/.276 slash line in limited playing time and the acquisition (even if only for two years) of Gerardo Parra.

Finally, Julie was very concerned about my well-being when she sent this package. As she knows, life is incomplete if you don't have a Clutterbuck around. I mean, Topps's sets lately have all be Clutterbucks (or something approximately rhyming with that), so the fact that Julie wanted to be sure I have a Clutterbuck shows that she really cares.

Thanks again for all the cards, Julie -- I will be putting a package together for you soon. I feel like I say that a lot and my execution lacks, but I promise I will get to it before the end of the year.

I'm Thankful for a Package from The Home Run Apple

It has been an up-and-down time -- particularly in sports for me -- since I last wrote a blog post here. I watched on Friday as the Arkansas Razorbacks chose a poor time to revert to being Bert [sic] Bielema's little babies in not being able to run the ball and relying on a quarterback who was less mobile than a lamp post trying to scramble around for a comeback against Missouri. Bert's Backs' loss caused Georgia to be shut out of the SEC Championship game.

Then, there was Saturday's debacle against Tech. Despite a first half in which Georgia's two freshman running backs -- the incredible Nick Chubb and the speedy Sony Michel -- both fumbled inside the 5-yard line, Georgia had come back to go ahead of rival Georgia Tech with just 18 seconds to go. It's easy to second guess coaches, even if we all do it, but Mark Richt's decision to squib kick rather than kick it long on the kickoff goes down as one of his dumbest decisions as Georgia coach. It's right up there with his decision in his first year as head coach of running the ball into the middle of the line with no timeouts on the clock against Auburn...no touchdown meant no time left to try another play.  But that was, as I said, in his first year as head coach.

Gack.

From all that ridiculousness came the Packers incredibly impressive victory over the Patriots on Sunday. Aaron Rodgers is playing as well as any quarterback in the game, and it is a joy to watch him run the offense.

Into this roller coaster ride stepped a couple of packages that I got at Thanksgiving time. The first one came from Keith at The Home Run Apple. Keith's blogging has been interfered with by real life imposing itself on him. But, he found the time to send me some cards and a Topps Chip!

Let's start with the Chip -- which looks to be what Keith thought it was...a gold version of a Ryan Braun 2013 Chipzzzzzzzzz.

I have not sought out the Chipz or Ponch and Jon from Chips or any other chips actively at this point, but it is getting to the point that I need to figure out what I have and what I don't. Of course, I've also been lazy lately so I haven't updated my player collection lists for these cards yet, so that's not going to dig me out here.

As Keith said in his note, he also sent me some shiny Chrome surprises. Three of those surprises were Brauns.

You get the X-Fractor on the top right, the die-cut on the bottom, and the pretty black one serial numbered to 100 on the top left. That black-bordered one in particular is just awesome. As much as I get on Topps's case for all the parallels, many of them are very attractive cards. I just don't want (and tend not) to chase 30 or 40 parallels from one set for one player.

I'm a very bad supercollector, I guess.

Wrapping up the Bruans was this Triple Threads Purple Drank parallel serial numbered to 650 and inspired by JaMarcus Russell.

On the whole, I'm not 100% opposed to parallels. The parallels from the 1990s were not all that bad. I mean, two or three parallels are kind of fun. It's when we get to things like the prospects in Bowman, where we get 8 or 10 parallels of the paper card, 8 or 10 parallels of the chrome parallel, 4 or 5 parallels of the mini parallel, 4 or 5 parallels of the autographed parallel, and then some die-cut parallels of the insert parallels of the chrome parallel -- that's where things go off the race track.

Which is a segue, of course:

When I saw this Jaime Navarro card pop out of the team bag, I was starting to wonder if Keith was just reading my mind when I saw this motorcycle card on Dimebox Nick's blog. It's a good thing that is not the case -- no one deserves the misery of reading my mind! -- because Keith simply sent me a number of the 1995 Stadium Club Brewers.

In the past, I have said that Jose Valentin often got the best card photos by virtue of his being a middle infielder. Now I understand that those other cards were making up for what may be one of the least attractive cards I've seen in recent memory.

In keeping with the team-set theme, Keith also sent me a few of the 2009 Topps Allen & Ginter Brewers.

JJ Hardy's card here is apparently an homage to the Jeff Cirillo 1995 Stadium Club from above.

Finally, Keith cleaned out some of his 2009 Topps 206 cards, including a couple of rookies who (in true 1990s Brewers fashion) turned out to be nothing but hype:

Sometimes the throwback cards work, and sometimes they don't.  These don't. But, they are from a major release set from Topps, and, as a result, they are needed for my collection.

After all, I could collect only the sets I really like a lot, but where's the fun in that? Without Topps's decision making process to second guess, the hobby would be a much more boring place!

Keith, thank you very much for this package. It was a surprise and it was and is greatly appreciated.

Thanksgiving Cleaning, Part II: 1990s Nostalgia

I showed off a few items yesterday that I picked up at my mom's house at Thanksgiving. Today, it's all about the early 1990s. 

These items are ones that my younger brother must have gotten when he was a little kid (he is 11-1/2 years younger than me, born in 1983) and kept for the past 20-odd years. I know that to be the case because I stopped buying cards and baseball stuff when I went to college. I needed to pay for food and books more than I needed to buy the Topps Amazing Technicolor Dream Bordered Cards in 1990, so that's where my collecting ceased.

So, coming across the photos and magazine that I decided to bring back early was a pleasant surprise. Each of these will be added eventually to my Robin Yount collection (I haven't done that yet) since he features on each.

First, let's go with the early 1990s Brewers "efforts" at fan appreciation:

Okay, this wasn't the only thing that the team gave away -- indeed, all that is on the back of this 1991 team photo are the Rules and Regulations for Brewers Fan Appreciation Night. My favorite rule listed is that anyone could walk up to Window 17 at the stadium at the beginning of the 7th inning and enter the stadium free of charge. That clearly was a better gift than the "grand prize" of a 1991 Geo Metro LSI convertible.

By 1992, the Brewers had stepped up their game. First off, they picked up a sponsor for the team photo -- Pabst Non-Alcoholic Malt Beverage which, shockingly to me, is apparently still available and being reviewed on Beer Advocate. Second, not only was the photo sponsored, but the team detailed all the giveaways that they would have for Fan Appreciation Day:

Several of these giveaways are intriguing today -- the random "3-pack" of autographed balls of Yount, Canseco, and Puckett, or of Yount, Clemens, and Mattingly would be pretty damn cool to have today. It would have sucked, though, to win all the flashlights, lanterns, and batteries from Rayovac...that must have been really heavy to carry home.

Finally, the magazine I found was just a big surprise to me. It wasn't a surprise that it existed -- just that my brother had bought it at some point 24 years ago:

Even better than finding this magazine -- which is in better shape than you might expect from the scan -- was the fact that the inserted cards in the magazine are both in the magazine and in gem mint condition:

Were these Topps Magazine cards the first attempts that Topps made at printing cards for retired players? I honestly don't know.

And there it is -- still attached to Nuschler the Racist and Nolan the K King: the Robin Yount Topps Magazine card. I bought one of those from COMC earlier this year for under $1, but to have the complete magazine is just cool.

Add in some of the articles in the magazine, and it makes me wonder if perhaps Topps should try bringing the magazine back in some way. In this magazine alone, Topps talked about its Doubleheaders release, its issuance of Topps Coins, and Topps 1990 Football cards as well. 

What I am saying is this: perhaps Topps should try a digital magazine form to draw kids in, provide news and information to older collectors, and then Topps can leverage that by giving subscribers special cards that only they can get. A digital magazine is far less expensive to produce than a paper magazine, and Topps could use it to provide some of its digital checklists, information on new releases, linked advertisements for some of those specials they run, etc.

Finally, also in the magazine, I saw the article that led to a hobby frenzy: when Topps gave President George H.W. Bush his own baseball card:

I have to admit -- I don't recall how all that played out. 

But the magazine really was and is a cool way in my mind for Topps to promote products in a fun way while generating a new revenue stream.

What do you think: would you welcome a Topps (or Panini or Upper Deck) digital magazine? Would it be of interest to you to subscribe if you got subscriber exclusives in card (and not virtual card) form?

Let's hear it.