trade with andrews baseball cards

Lately I have been complaining about the abundance of inserts in the past few years Topps sets. For the most part I like the inserts, I just don't like how there are so many of them in each set. If you're trying to at least get the base set it's going to take buying that much more of the product to finish off the set and you're still left with partially completed inserts and base sets. It's one of the reasons why I got a little bored with A&G last year. Buying some random retail packs didn't do much to chip away at the set and actually completing the set or feeling like I was getting closer makes me want to buy more of it. It feels a little futile to buy up a bunch of packs and not really feel like you're doing much in the way of completing anything. Pulling the cards are fun, grabbing a few inserts or some cool minis is nice too, but ultimately I want to feel like I'm getting closer to the goal of finishing something.

Whew, that was a long winded rant. Sorry. Enough whining, now for the stuff that I do like:


In the past few years of Topps flagship baseball they included at least one insert set if not more that I really liked. The retro themed inserts like Turkey Red and Kimball Champions were really nice looking to me.

I was mainly collecting series one. Occasionally I would buy a series two rack pack or individual packs for fun. I wasn't really that concerned with collecting the series two, but as long as I was buying it I might as well put them in the binder. It's a very lazy way of collecting, but that's how I felt about flagship last year.


I didn't buy much in the way of Updates, mainly one value pack and a loose pack to see what kind of stuff I could pull.

Since I wasn't buying much product it stands to reason I wouldn't get close to finishing up the base set much less my favorite insert set: Kimball Champions.



By not going the Ebay or COMC route, buying packs is pretty much the only way I'll finished

That only leaves one other option which is the trade route. I did pick some singles online, but I was pretty much laying off this set in favor of vintage. I don't know about you guys, but I seem to have a little ADD with my collecting habits. For a few months it's all retro stuff, then it'll be vintage, then it might be football or player collections. Just whatever random stuff I happen to be into at the moment.

Gettting back to the trade topic. Andrew's baseball cards blog offered up a big chunk of Kimballs for trade. I jumped on the offer and he sent over about 29 minis from series one, two and updates.

Here's some visual evidence of the trade.

In series one I only needed one card of Roy Halladay to finish up the first 50.

You can see that their is a missing Halladay at the bottom of the sheet.

Here is the after pic.


I bought a bunch of 20 card pages in addition to the 15 card pages just to see how I like them. It's nice to have a bunch of mini cards on one page. 20 per page looks better, but the top of the card sticks out of the top of the sleeve, so the card isn't completely protected. It bothers me a little, but I'll get over it. 15 card pages protect the card more, but there is a lot of space in between the cards.

While I'm at it, here's the third page. The first ten were already in my collection. the lower five including the Koufax was from Andrew. Pretty nice.


I only bought a couple of packs of Updates last year and I only pulled one Kimball; the one of Ozzie.



As you can see after the trade I have a lot more in the binder.
Ozzie's not so lonely now. I wish I would have remembered to put the blank page on top of the cards when scanning, but at least you get the idea.

Since I needed some photos to break up the monotony of my writing and because I wanted to show off the minis in the binder rather than alone on a scan I just randomly inserted scans of the pages. Hope you all liked it.

Thanks for the cards Andrew and thanks for the cards.

2011 Topps Baseball rack pack

I braved the snow storm today to go over to Target to get some groceries and of course some of the new Topps Flagship brand. I wasn't disappointed as they had blasters, rack packs and single packs. I only bought a rack pack as I have only seen a few of the cards online and I wanted to check out the cards for myself before I bought up a bunch of packs.

Let's look at the base cards first.

I always gravitate towards action photography when I look at cards.

Who doesn't like a guy jumping over a player sliding into second.

Or a cool broken bat shot.

Out of the few action shot cards that I deemed scanworthy only two of them were vertical.


..and only one was horizontal. The blue background makes the gray and red of the uniform stand out more.


I guess the main reason why I like these types of pitching cards is the pose of the pitcher right before he throws his arm forward. This is one of the most aesthetically pleasing of the horizontal shots of pitchers.


It seems like the release and follow through of the pitching motion is usually captured as a vertical card like this one of Jamie Moyer.


It's one of those diamond variation cards. I don't know if it's obvious but the player isn't all diamondy, just the background. I can't get over the blurry figure in the outfield. The diamond treatment doesn't work out well for the background figures.

I'm not wild about the diamond replacing the team logo at the bottom right of the card because mainly I really like the way the team logo is encased in a circle. I'm a little iffy on the arch that contains the players name, but overall I like the base set design a lot better than last years set.


I don't think that I have seen many cards of a pitcher in the beginning of his windup until now.
I think this card is the first one that I have pulled of a rigor mortis impaired pitcher.


In addition to the action shot cards are the ones that I find unusual.
These two cards are what I think are unusual and stand out when I'm going through my cards.

Two different treatments of candid shots. The team card of the Red Sox is a nice candid moment captured on a card, but the Jefferies card is just bizarre. A candid shot gone wrong.



Since I haven't shown off the back I'll use the Jefferies card as my example. I picked this one because of the little confused head in the upper left of the card.



In addition to the diamond card I pulled one of these Topps 60th anniversary thing of Lou Gehrig.


These are pretty nice. I thought at first that these were the CTYMTO cards. I guess in a way it's similar. The Musial is a "lost card": a card that was never made, but should have been.


The 1972 Carew cards is a little different. I know it's a reprint of his card, but I don't know how it fits into that subset. I'm guessing that they have one card that represents each year and they decided on Rod Carew for 1972. Hey that rhymes.

Diamond Duos card of Utley and Rollins. A replacement of Legendary Lineage perhaps?

I was wondering why everybody was mentioning the Toppstown cards online and seeing them in person I now know why; They're pretty nice looking this year. I don't collect or redeem Toppstown so if anybody wants my codes let me know.

I pulled one of these Diamond Giveaway cards that I'll try to redeem at some point in the future.

Lastly the one subset that I really do like.


The Kimball Champions inspired minis.
This card was a bit longer and wider than the other minis that Topps offers like A&G. The border is the difference in sizes. So not as big as Mayo, but still a little bigger than other Topps minis. It could be that it was cut a little bigger, but I compared it to 4 different A&G minis and they were all smaller than the N184 card.

These cards are going to be in each series as well as updates and highlights a la 2009 Turkey Red. Out of all of the cards offered this is the one set that I'm really really interested in. I'm going to try and get as many of these minis as possible.

I realized last year that rack packs were the best at giving me a random assortment of inserts and base cards and I when I go retail I'll probably stick with rack packs. I'm looking forward to seeing what the hobby packs have to offer. I'm still on the fence about getting a box of these cards. I think it might be more fun to try and go for the whole set by getting packs as I feel like purchasing them rather than going all out and trying to finish it as quickly as possible. This base set looks like it will be fun to try and finish.