Why do I still buy this stuff?

From time to time I ask myself this question. Lately I've been asking myself that question a lot while standing in front of the card aisle at Walmart and Target.

I know that I want to buy something, but nothing out there right now really grabs me. So instead of trying to exercise some sort of self-control I pick up something, anything to appease my pack ripping desire.

I grabbed another blaster of Philadelphia. This makes two times I've tricked myself into buying a blaster of this product. It sort of fits into the "stuff I don't really collect and yet I still keep buying it" category. I'm not sure how to explain it. I'm not into it, and yet I still keep buying it hoping for some reason to like it. It helps that it's now discounted 40%.

So far I've pulled two Obamas. Cool. The colors on these cards are pretty nice. If these photos were taken by Pete Souza, he's probably using a 5DmarkII. I'm not sure of the lens. I remember him using a 50 1.2 a lot when I was checking his stuff on flickr.



These two will go nicely in the binder with my political stuff.

Speaking of photographers; the card on the right highlights something else I find cool in these cards and that's the sports photographer in the background.



It also highlights the really cool horizontal shots in Philadelphia. I especially like the fact that there isn't any extra space dedicated to the name, position and team on these horizontal cards.

Here is an excellent shot of Farve in the correct uniform.


I'm so used to seeing Aaron Rodgers as a QB in the Packers uniform, I almost, almost thought this was him instead of Farve. I wasn't prepared for him to be shown in his older uniform.

That shows how disinterested I am in this set.

More historical stuff. As I write this Dwight and Micheal have both shouted "Good Morning Vietnam!" in the TV show the Office. I'm not exactly sure why. Actually I'm not sure why I'm telling you this, but it's interesting to me and it sort of relates to these next two cards.





Kind of sad that I'm only excited about the political figures and historical subjects rather than the sports stars, but I guess that's why they include them in these sets.

Any mini is a good mini in my book.



I liked Kurt a lot when he was in St. Louis. I also liked to watch all those guys around 00 to like 03. Marc Bulger was cool too. I'm hoping my guy Bradford keeps it up. He won't have Holt, Faulk or Bruce to help him out though. I don't watch St. Louis that much anymore, so I really don't know who they have at receiver or running back.


And lastly the saving grace for both blasters:



A Juaquin Iglesias card with him in an OU uniform!! Pulling a former OU player in his college uniform is the best.

Yay!! A nice action shot. He's wearing a home uniform, but there is no brick wall behind him so it's either a bowl which is highly unlikely because bowl games are usually played at night so it must be the OU/Texas game which is held in Dallas.

Their are a ton of photographers on the sidelines in this game so it stands to reason that this photo was taken from that game. Also there's a lot of burnt orange in the stands.

I also broke down and bought a rack pack and single pack of A&G. I also found a 12 card pack of 2009 A&G. I thought why not? Since I'm buying the new stuff I might as well grab an older pack for old times sake.
As far as the Ginter: I didn't pull any base, minis or NP cards that I need, but I still managed to grab a relic.


Pretty nice for retail. I think this makes 2 or 3 relics in the 12 card retail packs and like 5 or 6 overall that I've pulled from retail. Not bad. I have one or possibly two more A&G posts left in me,but I'll save those for later.


Alright. Thanks for staying 'till the end. I wish I had an alarm that I could embed at the end of the post to wake people up so they could go back to reading other peoples' blogs.

Retro football and baseball card round up.

I guess this will be the weekend of the retro card sets.



I started off by signing up for the OPC Old School group break over at Baseball Dad's blog.

There's still a little bit of time left to sign up for the break.

I didn't really mean to buy a bunch of packs, but I had to stop by Walmart for non card stuff and noticed something new in the card aisle. They started stocking 12 packs of Ginter.

I hadn't seen any of these 12 card packs before, so it was something I couldn't resist.

The packs contain 10 base cards, with one mini and one national hero in each pack.

Out of 23 cards I pulled about 13 cards I could use with only a few doubles. So that was nice.

The highlight was this Baldelli bat relic. I was pretty happy to pick it up, I didn't even pack search. (I promise I'm not a searcher).

I'm not going to bore everybody with the rundown, but I only got one SP and my minis were the basic normal type with no excitement on the backs.

As always, if anybody wants to go out and check my want/trade list, please do. I update it somewhat regularly, and I don't mind trading for anything as I'm just trying to get random stuff.

I also wanted to try out the new '09 Philadelphia Football. It's another retro set based on some '50's football cards. I'm not up on my history, so I don't know which year, but I think it was actually from the Philadelphia brand. This new version is released by Upper Deck.

The cards are unique in that they have nice colorful photos with old school borders and backs. The photography is nice, and you would think that the plain borders would make the photography stand out, but for me it seems to be a hindrance. Maybe I'm just looking at it too critically and should just enjoy the cards for what they are.



The backs are in keeping with the retro theme, the have trivia questions like what we had on cards as kids, just like the Magic Football cards.

The good thing about these cards, is that they have the answer printed on the back upside down, instead of the gimic of rubbing them with a coin. I don't mind the gimic, but I don't want to wrestle with the decision of possibly ruining my cards by rubbing them with coins. I'd rather just turn the cards upside down.


It's not completely unrealistic to think that we might damage the cards if we rubbed them to hard.


This is the back of one of those cards. I also picked this up from the hobby shop.


I have no idea who this person is, what company produced the card or what year the card was produced.

From the back it mentions the year 1957 but this could be some sort of reprint, I'm not sure.


Needing to satisfy my curiosity about Magic Football I wanted to get some hobby packs to see how they compare to the retail packs. I really wanted to see if I could get some sort of "hit".



I didn't, but these cards are starting to grow on me a little.

Come to think of it, I'm not even sure which of these packs could be considered "retro". The old packs were state of the art when new, but now they're like 20 years old. A&G and Magic Football are new but a new version on an old theme. Hmm. It's too late for me to think about it.


Hobby shop guy also had a bunch of cheap packs so of course I had to grab a few.

I got 1988 Fleer stickers, 1987 Topps and 1994 Upper Deck Minor League.

I'll start with the minor league pack. I haven't even been out to the park this summer. I really need to go there to take in a game. In OKC we have the Redhawks which is a AAA affiliate of the Rangers.

First card out of the pack is Tulsa Driller Rick Helling.



Funny expression. These are nice cards, but I'm not crazy about the black and white squished photo on the side.



The backs however are pretty nice.

Here's one of Brian Giles. Canton-Akron Indian.



Yeah I don't know either. Maybe an impression of the Crypt Keeper from Tales from the Crypt TV show.



The front is better. Nice posed shot with the bat over the shoulder pose. He probably sauntered over to the railing for this shot. I can see him sauntering.




Some sort of refractor/reflector thingie.



On the back is a really cool action shot on the back complete with the gold chain flying in the wind.


Fleer sticker set.
Everyone loves stickers!



I like these stickers, but I have no interest in these two teams.


Yoinks!!



I didn't even know that Jeff Gillooly played baseball.

1987 Topps



Eddie Murray with some huge yellow sunglasses.



Phil Niekro. I wasn't good at math, but '87 should have been his 22nd year in baseball. He's actually got some gray hair showing under the hat.

That's about it for now. Hopefully there will be some awesome stuff pulled tomorrow at Baseball Dad's.

This may sound weird, but I'm hoping that he has the break sitting on an old sofa laying the cards out on a TV tray. I think that would be the best way to do a retro break.