Howz about an old school Let's Trade post

It's been routinely said that we collect baseball cards to re-connect ourselves to our childhoods.

And few things connect me to my childhood like pawing through a stack of brand-new 'vintage' cardboard baseball cards. And no other types of baseball cards do that as much as these:

I hope you've been involved in 2019 Topps® Baseball Cards enough to know that is a stack of this year's Archives cards. And that perhaps you have your own little stack of these things sitting around with nothing to do but maybe be mailed to my house.

After lo these many years, I am pushing some chips into the center of the table and going for a Completion on a set of Archives. I have several more such efforts on the back 'someday' burner, but I am really looking forward to finishing this one and enjoying it in full 9-card binder page glory. For many years to come. Sort of. The big down-side of finishing this one and imprisoning it in full 9-card binder pages for all eternity is that I could then no longer soothingly paw though such a purdy stack of cardboard. And it will then be a long long time until the year 2023.

But that is what it is. So, here is what I need:

10, 16, 23, 28, 38, 41, 75, 90

108, 113, 119, 120, 121, 122, 127, 133, 156, 180

222, 225, 226, 227, 233, 248, 250, 258, 266, 267, 275, 279, 280, 281, 286, 299

Or, basically, about 25% of the set still. I have a stack of mailing supplies ready to go and would prefer small simple trades of 2 cards each (or 3 of the 93s), done "PWE" style.

What can I offer? I am surrounded by stacks of low-end retail Topps baseball cards as I type, so a little bit of everything. When I finish this post I am going to quite pleasurably rip 2 blasters of 2019 Gallery (& will share those with you soon (and will be kick-starting the Sea Turtle cards blog quite soon too)).

But let's stick to specifics for anyone of my half-dozen readers also busily finishing their Archives set before Santa comes down the chimney. Maybe you only bought a pack or two of Archives this year and don't know what to do with the little stack of cards. Well have I got a deal for you:

Yes you too could own a nice classically classy Bo Jackson baseball card, 1958 style. Or, maybe one fresh from that oh so pretty stack of 2-tone full color baseball picture cards up there at the top, a pretty cool 75er

I mean these are some of the prettiest Football player cards I have pulled in a long time. I was particularly surprised how much I liked some retro repro 93s -

Oh, sorry, Hey-Zeus, I thought you were going to pull devastating offensive lineman secretly eligible for a 2 yard touchdown pass across the goal line plays just a little farther up the lakeshore at Lambeau. I wish you could have survived the Curse of First Base there in Milwaukee, but that particular Curse is just wicked potent. So potent the other hot corner will probably be occupied by one of the most reviled players in the game this coming season. 

Ahh well, I'm not done compiling the 93s yet either, so there is still hope Topps slipped a bad-ass two way player from the 30s in there somehow for a perfect re-issue triumvirate here. If only Tebow-mania had worked out for those hard working sages in Brooklyn, oh the oh so easily composed insert sets that would soon flow.

But all of those cards are from the doubles / dups pile and can soon be yours. Or, even this one, one of my very favorites in this set:

It's almost like a 1951 Bowman beautifully tucked away in a photo album just waiting for you to rescue it some 68 or so years later. Don't worry, when I finish this particular base set, I will call you with all the beautiful scans. But to reach that particular post, well, that is where you come in, dear reader.

Here are the 2019 Archives base duplicates I have available:

5, 11, 13, 18, 21, 35, 37, 39, 44, 46, 48, 50, 50, 58, 71, 76, 82, 85, 93, 96

101, 102, 103, 115, 126, 132, 136, 137, 140, 142, 145, 150, 151, 153, 157, 159, 160, 166, 167, 169, 173, 178, 179, 181, 182, 183, 185, 187, 191, 193, 194, 196

202, 203, 205, 207, 209, 210, 212, 217, 220, 223, 238, 241, 243, 245, 246, 247, 270, 284, 287, 290, 294, 297

Now I discount double checked to make sure I wasn't asking for too many of those uber-valuable Joe Charbonneau RC cards from your precious horde and I found that I did need two such cards: Fernando Tatis, Jr. and newly minted New York Home Run King Pete Alonso (sorry Aaron, I did pull your card already). So if you need a little sweetener to trade away cards worth more than just a quarter or so, well, I guess I could offer up a Mike Trout base card if I have to have to.

I am particularly interested in procuring my own copy of #116 Matt Boyd from the '75 set for a proper scan for a proper blog post soon. And I know hiding in my needs list is Reggie and Hank, too, sigh. But hidden there in my duplicates list is a Shohei Ohtani card, so I got that going for me, which is nice.

And I am not chasing any of the inserts aside from the '75 Highlights cards that have a set card #, but don't seem to be printed in the same totals as the other base cards. Short Prints? Dunno, but I'd figger so. But some of the other inserts in this have that ID style too, and I have a half-dozen or so of each to offer up if you want them.

Thank you and staaaay in touch. Your'ebeautifullet'sdolunch.

For some cards, Bindered is better

I have been looking forward to this day since I first saw these cards.

But I didn't expect this action would become quite so physically imperative.

I knew I would want to see this little set of cards all together on a binder page. But today I was working on my 2017 Archives collecting effort, and this little stack of cards was obviously in need of plastic confinement - despite their quite hardy card stock each one was considerably bowed, inside of it's penny sleeve.

Their compatriots in the base '17 Archives set largely weren't; for the '60 and '82 styles at least. Such a pity Topps had to go cheap-skate on the '92 cards and issue them on junkier stock, just because 1992 already had weakened stock compared to decades earlier. Probably inevitable with a company run by a hedge fund, with customers who buy the products regardless of all their little complaints about it. The Aaron Judge Rookie Card wasn't in the '92 set, and that's what sold a big majority of the product. Not that it wouldn't have sold if the Judge RC _was_ on the thin '92 style cards.

I managed to complete this little set via the simplest method - purchasing retail 'packs' - in this case, mostly the hanger packs, which came with one each of this insert, guaranteed. Luckily I pulled the one key card, which is still a $10 card today. I think collectors are largely happy to have multiple Rookie Card cards to own. The singularity RC proved to be totally wasteful of potential collector cash, in a hobby awash with money looking to be spent. 

If I hadn't pulled the Judge on my own, the following binder page wouldn't exist, in my collection. I doubt if it does in very many other collections, because who would display a 40¢ card right next to an actually valuable baseball card?

I have always admired the Sport Magazine 1960 Rookie Star cards and would like to own some of them. 9 of them even. And particularly the Yastrezemski card, who was a favorite player when I was a little kid just discovering baseball. But I never spend money on vintage, even cheap vintage. I always feel like I will get more enjoyment for my spare 5 bucks added to my grocery bill, with a moderately sized pile of brand new baseball cards, than I will spending 5 bucks on a couple vintage singles, as much as I like those.

So 'retro' sets like Archives and some years of Heritage (I'm picky) are right up my alley. I particularly enjoyed 2017 Archives, except for the way it all disappeared from the stores nearly instantly, thanks to the Judge Effect. I know I will never find any discounted, that is for sure. Ultimately, just today, I decided to complete the 1982 and 1992 style checklists.

But not the 1960 checklist, though I have always enjoyed seeing images of one of the most colorful sets Topps ever made. The hefty card-stock in '17 Archives is completely pleasing to 'collect', at least for the '60s and the '82s. But something happened on the way to the printing plant with the 1960 style cards. Whatever special effects software Topps used to create the faux-painted effect the '60 style cards displays gave many of the players a terrible set of Raccoon Eyes, seen fairly clearly on young Alex up there, as well as the other Alex - Reyes - in this insert set. And also on the Judge card, which is so lit-up wrong I fail to see why his Archives Rookie Card cards are held in such regard. Such is the delight with 1960 Topps, I guess. But the Raccoon Eyes are such a routine occurrence in the #1-100 checklist that I just decided to pick a Nifty Nine from those cards and call it good. I never did pull the Judge base RC anyway, just this insert.

Meanwhile, it is such a pity that Topps will probably never switch to 9 cards x 9 cards printing sheets and make their insert sets in multiples of 9. Sigh. Alex Bregman will just have to be exiled from his checklist mates here, with all the other card #10s, #19s, and #20s I end up with on the Binder Page of Orphaned Inserts that I will fill up, some day.

It is always interesting to me to see Topps' efforts at rounding up a herd of Rookies and corraling them onto a little checklist together, particularly years later. These 10 'rooks are a mix of traditional draft picks from the USA and foreign born 'signings', and all have plentiful MLB service time at this point. My favorite is probably Orlando Arcia, who had that classic, scrappy Infielder ability to occasionally come up with a big game for Milwaukee in 2018, generally when least expected.

Given the design of these cards and how the generally disliked horizontal cards actually work, I knew when I saw the first one 2 summers ago now that this would be how I would want to enjoy them for the long haul in my collection:

Favorite '18 Is-it-a-Parallel-or-is-it-an-Insert?

I dunno what it is, technically. I just know that I like 'em. So my plan is simple - collect 'em, trade 'em, just as Topps has advised all my life.

I am talkin' here 'bout some cards from the brand new for 2018 Topps product "Big League", which I enjoyed. Particularly these, uhh, baseball cards:

The reason I waffle on what to call them is the back:

Which contrasts with the back of Beltre's regular base card in the checklist -

err, uhh, or mostly not. It does have the same card #, so the easy way to 'catalog' this card is as a parallel. But what about the front ?

Just another pretty nice red, white, & blue baseball card of a player playin' baseball. But clearly a different card than the El Koja card up there.

Call it what you will. It is not part of a subset, that I can tell you. Or can I? Call it what you will. Variations?

I like nicknames in baseball. Is there anyone that doesn't? C'mon now. The Nickname parallel-insert are also called the "Player's Weekend" insert-parallel. Oh dear, now we have 2 names for the same subset. Wait, I thought we ruled that out.

Anyhow, these weren't the only Nickname parallel-inserts Topps produced this year. The other day I stumbled across these scans of some 2018 baseball cards:

How much did those baseball cards cost? I went with the tried and true concept of - if you have to ask, you probably can't afford them. (Full disclosure - kind collector allowed me to share the results of his well done collecting effort with us, here).

Although those probably share the nicknames with my kid-price Big League cards, they are not from Player's Weekend, nor do they sport unique images - just alternate (wait, I thought we settled this already) names on the front.

And my allowance-friendly Big League insert-parallel cards are not the only Player's Weekend cards this year; Topps also made a run of special Commemorative MLB Player's Weekend Patch Cards issued in blasters with 2018 Series One, commonly called a 'Manufactured Patch' or a 'Manu-Patch', which always sounds faintly disgusting, but at least we don't have to argue about whether it is an insert or a parallel. Do we? Is it part of any "set" at all? Let's not go down that rabbit hole, I'm already confused enough.

It's not easy to feature the Player's Weekend nicknames on a card. The nickname is on the back of the uniform of course. Do we want a 'set' of cards like this one

I don't. (Full disclosure - not my card; image stolen from online sale site somewhere.) But hey, look, it's "Freddie" Freeman's butt. And Freddie Freeman's nickname is "Freddie" - who knew? Do we need a special card for such an exciting nickname, when most every player in MLB had a 'nick on their uniform, but we only get 25 or so cards in a special checklist for them?

And the Player's Weekend featured special uniforms for the 3 game set - who doesn't like seeing a special uniform on a baseball card? I mean, besides Chris Sale.

But that "Freddie" card doesn't accomplish that very well, now does it? Of course, that never stops Topps from making a Special Uniform card that doesn't really show the Special Uniform. Don't make me show off quite rare and expensive Heritage parallel-insert-variations that I don't actually own, once again.

To show the special uniform, we pretty much need to see the front of the player. But then we don't get to see the nickname on the back, and Topps can't be bothered to print it on the card for us. You already bought the blaster and paid extra for the Special Commemorative Card - what do they care, now?

So naturally, since they already have your money, they can go right ahead and give you a Special Uniform + Nickname card and show you exactly neither one:

And I just wanted to note that I don't really care for the Player's Weekend patch, to start with. Not just the pointless little plastic thing Topps 'manus' for us, but even the actual patch player's wear on their right sleeve, as modeled by Manny here. I just don't get the patch, really. Are we supposed to remember back to the way humans evolved from some other kind of hominid? Why does the player swing backwards as he evolved? Will this be on the test? Did baseball players evolve differently? But then given the model shown here, there might be something to that last question. Is he about to flip the bird to the photog? (Full disclosure: I don't purposely collect Manny Machado cards, except when I want to Complete The Set, and I am left with little choice in the matter. So that last image also came from, somewhere. How about if Topps trades out Manny for Madison Bumgarner? Do we have any objections?)

Fortunately, for big fans of cool baseball cards everywhere, kids are far more discerning customers than high end baseball card collectors. If you promise a kid a special nickname card in his pack of baseball cards, you had better show them the nickname.

And so here in Big League, Topps delivers:

Though probably the kids don't care if they get to see Mr. Miami's special uniform. They already know it's dirty, too. That's what happens when the players splash around in mud puddles, like on these cards.

So yah, eh, I liked these cards when I first found dem, way up dere in da U.P., eh. Even in the back backwoods Topps makes sure the children, the children can get some fun new baseball cards to collect - and trade - I've got just one double so far - the Jansen card shown here. "Kenley" - who knew that one?

Those are the only 6 I have so far; 24 more insert-parallels to go. But fortunately, there seem to be several dozen copies of each for sale online, for just spare nickels, dimes, and quarters from my allowance, but none of them cost an actual paper George Washington. Which for my love of fun little baseball cards, is just exactly perfect.

Binder Worthy

I received some new baseball cards today. Yeah, yeah, what else is new? Well, I hope you picked up some new cards today too.

So tonight I am starting on putting them in binder pages. Which is it's own idiosyncratic topic in this idiosyncratic hobby. I'll get back to that shortly; let's check out my new baseball cards first.

I really like these cards:

The scanner had no trouble at all figuring out the exact 3.5 x 2.5 dimensions of these cards. (Which reminds me to share a link with you - Keith Olbermann's tribute to Sy Berger is clutch).

My second recent Blue Bat card - I might need a double of this one. I also like "Bat Speed" cards that can freeze almost everything in the frame.

Has Topps ever made the player on the box card #1?

I've been eagerly anticipating the backs of these cards:

Hey, nice bonus picture!

What I was anticipating, however, was Topps finally making a saber-metric-centric card back. Not a special variant card back as in 2014 Series 2 and Update, but simply a set of baseball cards with a decided saber-metric theme to the stats on the back. Given the history of their efforts to put unique stats on the back of the original Stadium Club releases, I thought we might see it here. Of course, there's always next year.

And I'm sure plenty of people flipped over their first in-hand Stadium Club card this year to see if the player's Rookie Card would be included on the back. Sadly, I somewhat doubt Topps will ever do this again - which card is the Rookie Card these days, anyway? That question has gone way beyond arguing over XRC cards from Traded sets. Hmm, perhaps Topps could print these with different RC editions on the back, with the same fronts, but one card with the Bowman Chrome, one with the Topps RC, etc. Oh dear. Did I just type that out loud? If that were to happen, I'm sure this would drive some collectors bananas. Personally, I would just laugh.

Speaking of bananas though,

I'm sure this card would immediately drive some collectors bananas. First a vertical card in the set, then a horizontal card. HOW CAN THESE BE PLACED ON A BINDER PAGE?!?!?

This doesn't bother me at all. Just used to it I guess. Sometimes I like to put all the horizontal cards together on pages, and dream of 1956 though. I'll eventually get around to this for 2014 Series 1 & 2. Maybe. The results of that might make me too depressed, however.

Anyhow I love this Matt Holliday card. For a photograph likely shot via recording pixel information on a digital memory storage card, it sure looks pretty analog. Almost painted, even.

Also this card shows me that a team color will be part of the design with that stripe under the name bar there.

And of course, let's check out the back some more:

Another sweet portrait shot on the back! I like pictures of baseball players with clouds behind them. So '51 Bowman Mantle-esque. For once, I hope Topps re-uses that image on a full size card.

It looks like the team color will be featured prominently on the back. The teal on the Griffey card was so stealthy in that regard.

Is that a #2 I see up there, as in card #2? This is the second of my brand new baseball cards?

Yes, it's true. I simply bought this set of baseball cards. I've come a long way on that. I've been mentioning the idea on the blog, and put it to the test with these new Stadium Club cards. I picked up the base set for $40, delivered. About ten bucks less than the price of one box, tonight, on that online greatest baseball card retailer of All-Time site, where I bought these.

In one way, these cards were actually free. Because I recently sold a card for $280. Of course, since I just bought a hand-collated set of 2014 Stadium Club, I threw away my chance to pull a similarly valuable card via "ripping a box," such as the /25 on-card auto version of the Griffey card you just saw.

But as I've written a story about on here before, I learned a long time ago that gambling isn't my thing, and now finally with most baseball cards, I've learned to quit while I'm ahead. And one box wouldn't have got me very close to a set of these wonderful cards, either.

I feel so grown-up now. I'd better get back to some baseball cards:

Babe Ruth, photo-bombed! Not too many photo bombs on baseball cards, Topps usually frowns on that idea and those stay on the cutting-room floor down at 1 Whitehall St.

I like Babe Ruth baseball cards. I know I'll never own an original one, such as either of the Goudeys, though I'm not sure there are any other originals, as in contemporary to his playing days, or close to it. It has always struck me as strange how the Roaring 20s seemed to fail at producing any baseball cards.

But, now, I do have an original Babe Ruth card, in that I'm pretty sure this picture of Babe Ruth has never been on a card before. I have never seen this photograph until I held this baseball card in my hand, and that is what I expect from a baseball card. And that is very well done, Topps, after seeing the same baseball player picture repeated on so many other cards. Thank you.

It looks like Topps has gone with Red as the Yankees team color perhaps? Let's check:

Nope, that would be a little odd for the team with the Blue pin-stripes. Red is just used on the front for a little contrast - classy. I'm not sure we really need the old-school NY logo on the back of the card twice though.

And another nice photo on the back - this looks like it could be a colorized photo, but I like that. Such modern creations would make for an interesting look at the game in the early 20th century. Hint, hint.

Even though Topps didn't go with some unique set of stats on the back and pretty much just kept it classy, the text about Ruth does consider stats newer than this All-Time Great:

Digitally cutting that text out for you revealed the diagonal to essentially the second design on each and every baseball card - the design on the back. This one is pretty strong, overall.

The set is really off to a good start though, I would have to say. Imagine pulling those three cards from a pack sequentially - Griffey, Holliday, Ruth - not a bad run. Of course, in a modern pack of baseball cards, a run like that would soon be interrupted, and this set follows Topps standard checklist guidelines:

A Rookie Card…if you thought Topps might finally release a set without these, well, consider Topps Dynasty, their new ultra-high-end "set" that comes in this mind-bending product configuration - 1 pack per box, 1 card per pack - for $300 per box, or pack, or card, however you like to think about three Benjamins leaving your possession just to pull a Nick Castellanos card. Though they are nice enough to leave the RC logo off those cards once you give up that much of your wallet.

And what's up with this Singleton guy? Does Topps thinks he knows how to play this game? First Topps shows him squatting on first base, now he is holding a glove by the laces? Three Topps cards in and he has two things I've never seen on a baseball card before. (I'm sure the Two Outs symbol has to be on a baseball card somewhere, I hope, at least).

A further mystery - the first Brown card - Orange? Let's ask the back what's going on:

Oh, yeah, man, the Astros, technically an Orange team. A little tough with the dirt around Home Plate being a main design element. But that's OK, this card-back makes me feel nice and relaxed. Yeah, my eyelids are nice and droopy, like Jason Motte cards, that Singleton guy, he's pretty chill, man, yeah. I'd better keep a half-closed eye on his future cards, yeah. There just might even be a touch of red in that photo, man, yeah, you'll just have to look at that one up close on your own card, yeah.

Baseball cards - so relaxing. Even without ripping packs, I'm still chilling out nicely. That's because putting baseball cards in binder pages really connects you to the cards. You have no choice but to handle each one singly, and in the process, you usually slow down and consider each card, one at a time. How much do you consider a card when you rip packs into a stack of cards and then make a pile of #s 1-10 and then get them in sequential order and immediately move on to cards 11-20? And then stick them in a box with a Post-It note for missing card #13, not to be seen again until card #13 finally arrives, giving one last glimpse at #12 and #14… ?

One thing I always watch for on every Topps design in cards from the New York Mets, and here comes one now:

Full-Bleed Action, at last, five cards in. Full bleed designs are great for action shots. I like Curtis Granderson. I hope he finds his power-stroke again next year, somehow.

But Topps let me down just a little here, as quality control on the crucial Mets Orange stripe there slipped and it is the thinnest such stripe so far. I'm sure the back will have plenty of Orange though:

Yes, lots of Mets Orange. But hardly any Mets Blue, which is what always makes the Orange look so nice. My first Mets card on a Topps design I haven't liked in a long time. Like the Astros card, an Orange theme over the dirt of the baseball diamond wasn't just exactly perfect, like using some Mets blue would have been (the Astros would be just straight out of luck, as usual, with no real secondary color these days). Curtis doesn't look all that thrilled with the results either.

Ahh well, you win some, you lose some, but usually on Topps Baseball Cards, you always tend to win:

Hey, who let an Opening Day card in here? Though I do like Koji Uehara cards. And David Ortiz cards. Shane Victorino, not so sure which one that is, so, naturally, let's ask the back:

A Double Dome card! Has a player ever been shown hatless on his baseball card, twice? And re: Red Sox, and beards - I predict there will not be one Boston Red Sox baseball card in 2015 with a player sporting a beard. You heard it here first, or worst, or first, or something.

That's a lot of Red even without a Red ball-cap. Let's go back to a soothing player who plays for Blue:

The sun always shines on Adrian Gonzalez cards. ¡Viva Mexico! There are so many Caribbean players these days, I'm going to have to make more effort to figure out which ones hail from one the land to our south, donde tengo mucho amigos. I also liked the back of this one:

Wherein the Topps photographer coaxed the biggest smile out of Adrian yet. He'll get there, someday. And I can report that while considering Adrian's smile over the years via the cheater technique of typing his name into the search box on COMC, I discovered that his 2014 Bowman card finally shows that he plays in the field too. I'll have to watch for that, though in a repack, some day.

Ahh well, I try to consider binder pages and I end up doing web searches of Adrian Gonzalez baseball cards. I'm pretty sure I will be OK with this complete base set acquisition technique, pretty much because of the process of putting the cards away in binder pages, and because I can now enjoy the mystery of ripping packs of cards via opening cheap repacks. I used the buy-a-set deal for Series One this year and I even saved you, dearest reader, some cards to share as I put that one in it's binder pages. If I don't spend too many days getting lost in these wonderful new Stadium Club cards, you'll see them soon.

The topic I really had on my mind when I wrote the post title a while back now, was the sad fact that a lot of baseball card collectors never see a binder page of 9 baseball cards. Some worry about damaging the cards, which I find, just, sad, considering a base card costs all of, hmmm, twenty cents in this post. But then of course some sad baseball card collectors can only enjoy cards that are worth more money than that. And these few sentences are enough on all that. 

So, let's see page #1 of 2014 Topps Stadium Club:

Now that's Baseball Cards.

Except, wait, wait, there is always a crucial decision to make when assembling a page of baseball cards: 9 cards, or 18?

Let's take a look:

With the secondary photo, team color, and the overall mostly careful design work on the back, well, I have to wonder, has anyone ever scanned the back of a 9 card binder page of baseball cards before?

For 2014 Topps Stadium Club, 9 cards it is.