Topps 206

I finally broke down and bought a few packs of Topps 206 the other day. I was just looking for some cool cards. I didn't really pull any players that I actively collect, but I did pull some cool cards.

I pulled a couple of old dudes.


and a couple of checklists.




Which I really like. This is the first time in a loooong time that I've pulled a checklist that I liked. Probably since I was collecting when I was a kid.


I really like this Ryan Braun Card mainly because of the old school stadium in the background.

I think it's cool that they didn't let the shadow from his hat completely black out his face.


I pulled a couple of horizontal cards. A Furcal and Derek Lowe card, but the favorite
was this Michael Young card.

I don't know why, I just do.

As for the two minis I pulled a Rocco Baldelli Polar Bear ...


... and a Markakis Piedmont back.



All these cards are up for trade if anybody wants them except the ryan braun and the two mantle checklist cards. I don't think I'm going after this set. I might just buy a blaster or two and try and get some Mets cards out of it.

Allen and Ginter Minis for trade

I've been a busy ebay shopper these days and I picked up a few of my needs for the Allen and Ginter minis and the Turkey Reds subset I'm working on. I managed to pick up a few duplicates which I'm now going to share with you guys.



I'm lazy so here is a big scan of all of them.

Here is the breakdown:

HHB3,HHB18

294 black bordered.

2(x2)71,177,260 (A&G back)285,329


I can't leave the post without showing off one of the minis that I want to keep.


I really love this black bordered mini a lot! I've pretty much got half the available parallels of the Van Gogh. I have a felling the no numbered back will be hard to get. I think the Bazooka back will be the next hardest with the A&G back the next to least hardest to pickup. I'm not sure if I'll ever get those cards, but the chase is what it's all about for this particular card.


If anybody is hunting the minis, let me know.

Thanks

Ho Ho Holiday Contest entry

Beardy has the entries for the Ho Ho Holiday Contest posted up and I wanted to try and explain my rationale for why I chose the card I entered for Beardy's Ho Ho Contest.

It wasn't hard for me to use Festivus as inspiration for the contest. I really like the show Seinfeld and I've always liked that episode. I also like that somebody really did invent their own holiday especially one that was against onslaught of consumerism in the celebration of our holidays.

When I thought of "Festivus" as a theme, I immediately plopped in the DVD to watch the episode. Something about the word "Festivus" made me think of colored circles with letters inside them. Sort of like the 2008 Topps baseball and football cards.
I don't really like that design much, so I decided on the Heritage design for a few reasons.

One of the reasons was the episode itself.



When Frank Costanza and Kramer walk into Monk's Diner to confront George about the rebirth of Festivus, Frank tells George it's his "heritage" to celebrate Festivus.


Also in the coffee shop scene George and Jerry are talking about Jerry's new girlfriend who they dub "two face" because she looks completely different depending on the lighting.


Like the Batman villan Harvey Dent aka: "Two Face".



Jerry mentions that she's like a baseball card where the player moves when you turn it a certain way.



George responds: "I see, tilt it one way and the player is on base, turn it another way and advancing the runner."



So those two reasons made me think I was on the right track to do a cool holiday card in the 1960 design.

The fact that they mentioned baseball cards in this episode made me think...


... that maybe it's another Festivus Miracle!!!


Now on with the card:

Here is the front.



I tried doing a Heritage style chrome card. I like the chromes better in real life anyway. (Who doesn't like shiny chrome!?), so I tried deasturating the background in the screen shot and adding a silver color overlay. Neither of them really made it look authentic. I tried a few other filters, but I never could get it to work out right. I did want to make the foreground characters to stand out better so I left them alone and edited the background to my liking.

I also did a slightly different version with a Frank Constanza character pointing upward as he tells Kramer about his creation of Festivus.



I ended up keeping the simpler design of the Festivus Pole instead of a "player" cutout.

Here is the back of the card.

I tried "roughing it up" a little to make it seem like the rough backs like the Heritage cards.

Here is a real Heritage back for comparison.


I'm not sure if the back looks authentic either, but I like it okay. I decided to not include any sort of Topps logo or legal stuff on the back or front. I probably should have to make it look more like a real card, but it looks fine to me.

In retrospect though, I probably should've changed the background of the card back to a light brownish color to make it look a little more like the real card.



I kept referring to my Jose Reyes chrome card as a reference.


I noticed when looking at the card I missed one important thing: I didn't put a silver border around the card. Another strike against me. I'm hoping that I'm not screwing myself by posting up my mistakes.

All in all it was a fun contest to enter. Hopefully I will at least place in the top three or get an honorable mention.

I really do like all the other entries. I had noticed that Mark's Ephemera had already posted up his entry and I was starting to feel a lot less confident in my card entry. Looking at everybody's entries makes me feel a whole lot less confident. Oh well. It was fun to make the card and it'll be fun to see who wins it.

Updates and Highlights for trade

Yeah, that's right I'm still on Topps U&H. While everybody else is all over the T206 and other products I'm still buying boxes of the Update set. I'm on my second and last hobby box. I like to drag out my ripping to make the fun last longer.

The second box wasn't as exciting as the first.


I pulled an Andrew McCutchen Rookie Chrome for my bonus pack. This one scanned really weird.

I'm not quite sure of the odds, but I pulled about another 9 Turkey Reds which is about how they're advertised. 1:4 packs.

I pulled some doubles of the Turkey Reds. Numbers 52,69,75,86,87,94,118,141. Some of those are doubles from my series two packs that I've been ripping. If anybody is needing those they are for trade.

These Legends of the Game don't really do it for me. I still have doubles of all four of these cards.



I guess that second box was a pretty good Boggs box.



I pulled two of his cards in the same box. I already have this one, so I have two up for trade if anybody wants one.

I pulled another short print. This was is not nearly as nice as the Hornsby I pulled last time.


There's something off about this card. It looks colorized or something.


The Ring of Honor subset really is hit or miss with me.



The Garvey card is okay....


...but not nearly as cool as this Campanella card...


... and even the Babe Ruth card is nicer looking. I have a feeling this one was colorized too, but it looks a better job of colorization than other cards.

These cards look so much better than when it is of a current player or depicts something more current.


I pulled a few Propaganda cards.


This was my only (so far) horizontal propaganda card. I thought they all were vertical.

These three are my duplicates for the second box.


After two boxes I'm still shy of 13 base cards: 30,33,37,40,106,125,150,157,169,200,231,238,278


I have a ton of doubles though. Some of them I've set aside for bloggers that I think will like them, but the rest are all for grabs.


I'll put all these up at some point on my other blog for posterity, but for now here they are:

1,3,4,5,7,9,10,11,12,14,16,18,19,20,21,23,25,26,27,28,29,31,32,34,35,36,38,39,
41,42,43,44,45,46,49,51,52,54,56,57,59,60,61,62,64,65,66,67,68,
70,72,73,74,76,78,80,84,87,90,92,93,94,95,96,97,98,99,
102,104,109,112,114,116,117,119,120,126,127,128,129,
130,132,134,136,137,138,139,140,141,143,149,
151,154,155,156,159,161,163,165,166,167,168,
170,171,172,174,175,177,178,181,183,184,185,186,187,
190,192,193,194,195,196,197,199,
201,203,204,205,206,209,210,211,212,213,214,215,216,217,
221,223,225,226,228,229,230,232,233,234,236,239,
241,242,243,245,246,247,248,250,251,254,256,257,258,
260,263,264,265,270,271,273,275,276,279,280,281,283,285,286,288,289,
291,293,294,295,296,297,299,
300,301,302,303,306,310,312,313,314,316,317,320,322,324,330
These are just regular base cards. Again, at some point I'll post up the gold border cards I have available for trade too.

If anybody sees anything that grabs them, let me know and I'll set it aside for you.

Thanks for reading.

play at the plate part two

This is another trade post that I've been procrastinating at posting. I've traded twice now with Brian from Play at the Plate.

He had mentioned that his son is now collecting and likes the Topps flagship and the Texas Longhorns. Whoo hoo! That's good for me as I need to get anything Longhorn related out of my household. Sorry not a big Longhorn fan.

Anyway, here is the original post: A Collector is Born.

If anybody is still looking to get rid of their series one and two cards this would be the place to unload them.

To his credit he sent me a bunch of Topps Mayo. Maybe not a bunch, more like a brick of cards. I'm still undecided about Mayo. I really like the new ones better than the 2008 cards. I think almost everybody does.


This was the first one in the stack. Nice to start off with a Packer.





This was the most awesomeness card he sent over. It looks like a cold day when they took this shot. Groovy hair too.


These posed head shots look pretty forced in Mayo though.


He sent me a bunch of minis too. I don't know why the minis of current players are in black and white and the inserts are all...


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..in color. This David Crocket mini I pulled from a hobby pack is in color. (obviously!)

The scans I've seen of the other minis like the Team Namesake cards are all in color too. I'm not sure if these are parallels, or if they are all like that.




Here is a card I forgot to show off last time. It's a local guy who did pretty good last year in college and was able to go to the pros. Unfortunately he was drafted to the Clippers. At least he's in a warmer place this winter.

Speaking of warm places, here is one heart warming story about one of the best trades Brian has received: unexpected generosity

It's worth a look.

Sorry to keep posting stuff from your blog, but I just feel like shedding some light on some of the cool things I've read from your blog that other people might not have had the chance to see.

Thanks again for the cards. I think you've unwittingly started me on a path to collect the Mayo set. Yikes! I'm not sure I need to start a new set to collect, but It'll be fun to try.

Red Hot Redemption #4

Just wanted to post a quick one about a package I got in the mail

I didn't recognize the address or the company: Tristar Fulfillment Services from New Jersey.


It was the Tommy Hanson Red Hot Rookie card from Topps.

Kind of cool. My scan's a little dark.

When I first started checking out the card blogs I know a lot of bloggers had already pulled some redemptions and were patiently waiting for them to come in the mail. I have pulled two in about the past month I think. That's one of the benefits of getting started collecting later than most, I didn't have as long to wait for the redemptions to be sent out.

If you guys are looking for yours apparently Topps is in the process of mailing them all out. I don't know why it says Tristar though.

Trip to the flea market-Cards-Cameras and an empty wallet

I was good today to get in and out of Walmart without buying anything except a couple of binders, toploaders and binder pages without buying any extraneous junk that I needed. The only problem is that the flea market is in between Walmart and home.




I haven't been since this summer and just wanted to stop in to see if they have any cameras. I'm a sucker for old cameras of any type. I really wasn't going to buy anything, but the guy at the table by the door is the baseball card and toy car dude.

He usually has stacks of binders separated by sport, sometimes by card company. He has weird mixture of new stuff and old. Not too old, and priced too high for me, but I was still able to find some cool stuff for me and maybe others.

First off is this hologram card of Ted Williams.



It's sort of faded. I think the scan of it is better than the actual card.I wish they would do a card of him with his head in cryogenic freeze. Head on. Head off. I think it would make a good idea for a garbage pail kid spin off.



The sad thing is that the back has a better photo than the drawings on the front.


A couple of cards that I'm only mildly interested in, hopefully somebody else down the road will like these.

I don't know what to think of these cards: I'm sort of expecting to include some sort of memorabilia. It's called Absolute Memorabilia with a "Tools of the Trade" slathered all over the front and back of the card. I don't see any relics inserted in the card, just a photo of some pads, helmet and football. It's numbered to 75 and I don't know why.



A floating Shonn Greene. The writing is sort hard for me to make out. It sort of looks like he's listed as playing for the "Jebs". Neat card though.




I pulled one of these inserts in a blaster of chrome. I really like this insert. I had to get it, because it's a Packer and his nickname is "Bloody". Best name for a football player or a pirate.
According to the back of the card, McNally joined the Army after playing football to serve in WWII as a cryptographer in India and China. I only have two of these cards and they are numbered with the prefex "HR". For the life of me I can't figure out what the HR means. I'm assuming it has something to do with military service, but I don't know what. Hero, perhaps?


I'm not sure why they call this an "Artist Proof". I need to do some online searching to look at these cards. I know nothing of Mickey, except that he's from OKC and I covered his son last couple of seasons as a football player. Don't know either of them personally, but I can now check a card off of my "Baseball players with Oklahoma ties" list.


The guy was cool enough to throw in the packs of Stadium Club for free. He had about 6 more priced at either .50 or .25 cents depending on which sticker you look at.

I've heard about these, but never had a chance to buy any. It's nice to see this still in the wrapper. I wonder if there's gum involved? I'm wondering if I'll be brave enough to chew it? I chewed some gum from 2008 Heritage today. A little brittle but still good. Reminded me of those packs of Fortune Gum I used to buy as a kid. I don't know if that was the name of it, but that's what I called it because it had little fortunes wrapped up in the gum wrapper.




These cards are cool!!


I wasn't really following baseball in 1992 so I might not find many players that I recognize, so I'm not sure who I'll post up.



I'm just going to fall back on uploading photos of dudes with funny glasses.


This Mike Jeffcoat card is interesting.

Not so much for the grimace. Even though that is cool too....



.. but because the back of the card has a more recognizable (at least to me) Topps card on the back.


The obligatory posed batting shot.



.. another guy with goofy glasses.

After two packs that's about it for me. Too lazy to upload more, but they all seem to have random Topps cards printed on the back from different years.


It took me a minute to figure out why I liked this card. I think it's because of the sun hitting his face and front of his body really looks cool to me. Also the scoreboard in the background is kind of cool too.

I really think a blog with a "Scoreboards in the Background" sort of theme would be really cool. I'm hoping that if I bring it up enough in my blog posts somebody less lazy than me will actually do it for me. Preferably somebody with a huge inventory with cards. Maybe like a revolving door of dudes posting up their scoreboard in the background cards.

Maybe I should do it as a semi-regular theme on my own blog.

Anyway, that's it for the card part of the day. Later I'm going to post up the two cameras I bought. The only hint is that they're rangefinder cameras. And they're from weird companies I've never heard of.