Last three slots in the contest - get 'em quick

UPDATE: All the slots are taken. I'm waiting on a pack choice from White Sox Cards and a pack and categories from Anthony K. If I don't get them by 6:00pm tomorrow, I'll open those spots up again.

Bo, White Sox Cards and Mark's Ephemera are in. If you want to get in on the action , go bribe Tribe Cards to give you his slot. Incredibly complex calculations shall now take place and I'll start posting once all packs have been chosen.

Last three entries are open starting now. If you don't know what's going on, go here.

If you want in, COME BACK HERE and post in THESE comments that you want a slot in the contest. No more confusion for me, no siree bob.

Remember to post first, pick later and to make sure that you read the rules when you make your choices (for example on the category "Sport other than baseball" don't choose baseball).

Still waiting for a pack choice from Anthony K. The 10th slot in the contest belongs to David from Tribe Cards. Go post that comment quickly now...

1) Pick a random pack.

There are ten random packs, they are differentiated by the stickers David put on them. Pick one and one only. Ones in Bold have already been picked.

1. Hi # - Mark's Ephemera
2. Tigers - Mad Guru
3. Corrected - Bo
4. Rangers - Play At The Plate
5. Brewers - grcl
6. Red Sox
7. Fleer - Tribe Cards
8. Tiny Baseball Glove - Madding
9. Donruss
10. Orioles - NicoLax24

2) Choose your categories:

Make one guess as to what you think is in the pack for each of these categories:

Card Manufacturer: Any card manufacturer ever. Topps, Upper Deck, Donruss, Fleer, Score, Pro Set, Skybox, Inkworks, Leaf, Play Ball, U.S. Caramel, American Tobacco Company, you pick whichever one you want.

Year card was made: This is pretty self explanatory. While it's technically possible that there could be an Allen & Ginter card from 1888 in there, it's not all that likely.

Team: Any team from any sport. Literally any sport. If you want to choose the New Zealand All Blacks or the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, you go for it.

Sport other than baseball : I'll make this easy on you and give you a choice of sports here.Football, Basketball, Hockey, Racing, Wrestling, Boxing, Soccer, Tennis, Poker.That should account for most of the licensed card products out there. Choose one. If you pick anything else, you get zero points.

Individual player: Again, any player, any sport. I'll be up front with you, most of these cards are from baseball junk wax so choose wisely.

Weirdness: Choose from one of these categories:Television, Movies, Music, Comics, History, Checklists, Junk Ads. Some of these will be subjective, In border line cases I am the judge and what I say is final. For example, if there is card of a movie star from the American Heritage set, that card goes in History, not Movies. A card from the Coca-Cola Collection is a Junk Ad as is a Topps ad for a puffy letter sweatshirt. If it's a movie based on a comic book it goes in Movies. Get it? Got it? Good.

One thing to remember here is that there is a prize for the lowest number of points so if you want to try to shoot the moon, go for it. One caveat: if more than one contestant makes some outlandish guesses and ends up with a score of 0, the player with the lowest score greater than zero gets the prize.

3) Send me your choices:

You can post them in the comments or e-mail me, I don't care which. The important thing it so get a slot first, then send me your picks. If you spend a half hour making your picks and three people get the slot before you, better luck next time. If you don't have a slot and make picks anyway I'll delete 'em.

Ok that's everything.

First three to comment on this post are in: Once I get everyone's choices I'll start tallying up scores and posting results.

My project for this week

To take my big box of relic cards, choose the best one from each player and put that card in a PC relic card binder. I've got it completed finally, Here's a filled page from the book:

The selection process was fairly subjective, but more or less followed these rules:

Patch beats crazy color jersey,
Crazy color jersey beats jersey with stripe,
Jersey with stripe beats plain jersey,
Plain jersey beats bat,
Bat beats a piece of a stadium.
If it's something bizarre like a piece of a base or a shoe, it will go in until a nicer card comes along.
A jersey card that looks really good beats a patch card that looks like crap.
Manufactured Patches need not apply.

I separated out the cards of players who were primarily active before the '90s because I'm going to focus on that collection more than the contemporary players.

Braves are an entirely different animal and will get their own binders eventually. I'm happy with the way it turned out and it will be a whole lot easier for me to find a relic card of a player for a post now. Another side benefit is that I now have a big pile of superfluous relic cards since really, one of each player is enough for anyone. Now that I'm back in flesh I'll be able to catch up on my trading next month (just in time for the Christmas post office crazies, hooray) so maybe we'll see a Cards for Clunkers post soon.

Random contest: three more entries

Anthony K., grcl and Mark's Ephemera NicoLax24 are in. check later tonight (probably after 7, but before Sherlock Holmes comes on my local PBS station) for a chance at the last three slots in the contest.

Ok, three more entries up for grabs. If you don't know what's going on, go here, but don't dilly dally because the first three to post that they want an entry are in. Remember to Post first, pick later and to make sure that you read the rules when you make your choices (for example on the category "Sport other than baseball" don't choose baseball).

1) Pick a random pack.

There are ten random packs, they are differentiated by the stickers David put on them. Pick one and one only. Ones in Bold have already been picked.

1. Hi #
2. Tigers - Mad Guru
3. Corrected
4. Rangers - Play At The Plate
5. Brewers - grcl
6. Red Sox
7. Fleer
8. Tiny Baseball Glove - Madding
9. Donruss
10. Orioles

2) Choose your categories:

Make one guess as to what you think is in the pack for each of these categories:

Card Manufacturer: Any card manufacturer ever. Topps, Upper Deck, Donruss, Fleer, Score, Pro Set, Skybox, Inkworks, Leaf, Play Ball, U.S. Caramel, American Tobacco Company, you pick whichever one you want.

Year card was made: This is pretty self explanatory. While it's technically possible that there could be an Allen & Ginter card from 1888 in there, it's not all that likely.

Team: Any team from any sport. Literally any sport. If you want to choose the New Zealand All Blacks or the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, you go for it.

Sport other than baseball : I'll make this easy on you and give you a choice of sports here. Football, Basketball, Hockey, Racing, Wrestling, Boxing, Soccer, Tennis, Poker. That should account for most of the licensed card products out there. Choose one. If you pick anything else, you get zero points.

Individual player: Again, any player, any sport. I'll be up front with you, most of these cards are from baseball junk wax so choose wisely.

Weirdness: Choose from one of these categories: Television, Movies, Music, Comics, History, Checklists, Junk Ads. Some of these will be subjective, In border line cases I am the judge and what I say is final. For example, if there is card of a movie star from the American Heritage set, that card goes in History, not Movies. A card from the Coca-Cola Collection is a Junk Ad as is a Topps ad for a puffy letter sweatshirt. If it's a movie based on a comic book it goes in Movies. Get it? Got it? Good.

One thing to remember here is that there is a prize for the lowest number of points so if you want to try to shoot the moon, go for it. One caveat: if more than one contestant makes some outlandish guesses and ends up with a score of 0, the player with the lowest score greater than zero gets the prize.

3) Send me your choices:

You can post them in the comments or e-mail me, I don't care which. The important thing it so get a slot first, then send me your picks. If you spend a half hour making your picks and three people get the slot before you, better luck next time. If you don't have a slot and make picks anyway I'll delete 'em.

Ok that's everything.

First three to comment on this post are in: Next chance to get a slot in the contest will be sometime before I go to bed.

Random Contest

Why the hell am I up at 3 in the morning...

As long as I'm up I may as well inform you of a contest. Traded Sets is back with another contest where you can win a relic card. Go check it out and win something.

And, oh why not. Let's do one here too.

A long long time ago, Tribe Cards sent out random packs of kindness. I requested a random number of packs and received ten:

I thought I could somehow make a good contest out of all these things but didn't really know how. Then I figured out how, but didn't have the time. Well now I have the knowledge, time and will to make it happen.

The Contest:

There are 10 packs of kindness. That means 10 contestants. Each contestant will choose one pack, then earn points by picking from the following categories:

Card Manufacturer: 1 point each

Year card was made: 5 points each

Team: 10 points each

Sport other than baseball : 15 points each

Individual player: 25 points each

Weirdness: 50 points each

I'll explain all these categories in detail later. Once everyone has made their choices, I'll open up the packs, count up the points and post the really cool cards. Once everyone's pack has been tallied up the winners will be determined by score.

The Prizes:

High score: Grand Prize. A relic or auto from the team of your choice, 50 cards from a wantlist or favorite team, the entire random pack you chose, and every card of your favorite team that were in all the other random packs.

Low Score: The lowest score gets a boobie prize consisting of: One horrible card I recently received that I will show off in a later post, the worst card in every random pack as determined by me, any cards out of the random pack you chose that you might want, and maybe a few cards from a team or wantlist just to be nice.

Everyone else: Goes into Randomizer.com, naturally. I'll get a list of contestants from 1-8, (and here comes the stupid part) then roll an 8 sided die onto my scanner. The number scanned is the winner. You will win: A random relic card (again determined by randomizer), a random card from every random pack, and a random assortment of cards from my doubles box. Random, huh?

What you have to do:

Since there's only 10 slots, I'm going to space out the entries three at a time. Three now, three tomorrow morning and three tomorrow evening. This makes thing fair for the overnight, day and evening shift folks. The 10th spot automatically goes to David of Tribe Cards since he's always sending out cool stuff to people. If you have read this far you need to quit reading, click on the comments right now and QUICKLY try to get one of the first three slots by posting a comment stating that you want in the contest. The fourth person to comment will have to wait 'till morning. Once you've grabbed a slot, come back here for further instructions.

...

Ok, that's long enough. You lucky three, here's what you gotta do:

1) Pick a random pack.

There are ten random packs, they are differentiated by the stickers David put on them. Pick one and one only.

1. Hi #
2. Tigers
3. Corrected
4. Rangers
5. Brewers
6. Red Sox
7. Fleer
8. Tiny Baseball Glove
9. Donruss
10. Orioles

2) Choose your categories:

Make one guess as to what you think is in the pack for each of these categories:

Card Manufacturer: Any card manufacturer ever. Topps, Upper Deck, Donruss, Fleer, Score, Pro Set, Skybox, Inkworks, Leaf, Play Ball, U.S. Caramel, American Tobacco Company, you pick whichever one you want.

Year card was made: This is pretty self explanatory. While it's technically possible that there could be an Allen & Ginter card from 1888 in there, it's not all that likely.

Team: Any team from any sport. Literally any sport. If you want to choose the New Zealand All Blacks or the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, you go for it.

Sport other than baseball : I'll make this easy on you and give you a choice of sports here. Football, Basketball, Hockey, Racing, Wrestling, Boxing, Soccer, Tennis, Poker. That should account for most of the licensed card products out there. Choose one.

Individual player: Again, any player, any sport. I'll be up front with you, most of these cards are from baseball junk wax so choose wisely.

Weirdness: Choose from one of these categories: Television, Movies, Music, Comics, History, Checklists, Junk Ads. Some of these will be subjective, In border line cases I am the judge and what I say is final. For example, if there is card of a movie star from the American Heritage set, that card goes in History, not Movies. A card from the Coca-Cola Collection is a Junk Ad as is a Topps ad for a puffy letter sweatshirt. If it's a movie based on a comic book it goes in Movies. Get it? Got it? Good.

One thing to remember here is that there is a prize for the lowest number of points so if you want to try to shoot the moon, go for it. One caveat: if more than one contestant makes some outlandish guesses and ends up with a score of 0, the player with the lowest score greater than zero gets the prize.

3) Send me your choices:

You can post them in the comments or e-mail me, I don't care which. The important thing it so get a slot first, then send me your picks. If you spend a half hours making your picks and three people get the slot before you, better luck next time. If you don't have a slot and make picks anyway I'll delete 'em. I'm going to bed after I post this, so I expect you all to play nice and not see contest comment anarchy when I wake up.

Ok that's everything.

First three to comment on this post are in: Next chance to get a slot in the contest will be sometime before noon.

Links 11/19/09

A quick linkdump for you all while I suffer through the most interminably boring computer class I've ever taken. Descriptions will be limited as I'm supposed to be paying attention to the many, many flavors of Linux backup utilites at the moment. I have a ton o' linkages for you today so I've grouped them according to theme.

General card blogs:

No One's Going to Read This Blog
Ok people, prove this man wrong. You have to respect someone who forsakes a staple food over a football game.

Hey, That's Mine!
Best title image ever. Other than the ones on Heartbreaking Cards of Staggering Genius.

Legendary Wax
Looky here - contest! also: Drooooooool.

Baseball Card Recollections
This guy wants to give cards away to kids! Back up a U-Haul in my driveway and I can probably get you halfway there...

Set Tribute blogs:

1960's Baseball
1966 Topps Baseball
1967 Topps Baseball
1968 Topps Baseball
Jim from Downingtown is just all over the 60's. Very good stuff here for you vintage lovers.

1969 Topps
Packaddict gets the save by closing out the '60s for Jim.

Grand Slam 1978
This one is pretty fascinating. A blog chronicling a late-'70s oddball set that he got signed. As weird and as cool as the #5 Type Collection blog.

1980 Topps
Can you believe I never noticed Chief Noc-A-Homa's teepee on this card before? I'm ashamed of myself.

My First Cards
Featuring the 1982 Topps "hockey stick" set. I guess I need to post a card of Steve Renko in the next couple of weeks, eh?

Team collectors:

The Phillies Room
Everything Phillies. I'm digging the custom cards.

A Giant Blog
You know what makes me happy? You know what warms my heart? Want lists for cards from the 1930s. Now that's a team collector!

Astros Baseball Cards
Not just Astros, Astro autos.

Roll Out The Barrel
I coulda sworn I linked this Brewer collector before. Also: I'm right there with ya buddy.

Let's Play 2
Yeah, he's a Cubs fan, but he links old obscure Cubs stuff. I'm down with old Cubs. New Cubs, BLECH.

ALL TRIBE BASEBALL
Baseball Dad's blog. Mostly Indians, but the man's not afraid to use a stand up card the way God intended and I respect that.


Hockey Card Heaven
'Cause hockey needs some lovin' too...

And a couple of PSAs for good measure...

Do you know what was awesome about game 7 of the 1979 World Series? This.

Someone e-mailed me about the Card Corner Club. I haven't taken the time to really check it out yet, but from what I've seen it looks nifty.

Blogging Perks

Last week, Mario posted a once coveted Bowman Chrome card of Kerry Wood and asked his readers what card that once topped Beckett's Hot List would we want to pick up now that the bottom has fallen out of the market for older cards. My response was the 1985 Topps Mark McGwire Olympic card. I didn't buy many packs of '85 Topps and never pulled a McGwire. I had a change to buy a rack pack with Mark showing on the front back then, but I passed it up for a rack with Oddibe McDowell on top instead. I regretted my mistake, but passed the card over again in college when a new card store opened up and offered the card for $10. Mark was kind of sucky in the early '90s so I passed again. Then he bulked up and hit almost 300 home runs in 5 years and you couldn't even find a pack of '85 Topps for $10. Now everyone hates McGwire for tainting such a pure and unblemished sport and you can probably find cards of Marky Mark on the cheap.

I posted the comment, promptly forgot about it, and then on Monday I got this note in the mail...

Reader Todd sent me a story:

It's June 1984 and the Mets have the first pick in the draft. They narrow it down to two choices:

A) Mark McGwire - a college first baseman from USC

Or

b) Shawn Abner - Multi-talented outfielder from Mechanicsburg Area Senior High*

They chose B and he goes on to do pretty much nothing. The next spring 13 year old Todd gets these cards in a 500 count vending box where they become part of the collection for 24+ years. Now I can set them free!

Behold:

FREEDOM

FREEDOM

My long national nightmare is over. I finally have a Mac! I needed the Abner card too for the set, interestingly enough. I'm two cards closer to completing a set I can probably find discarded on the side of the road! WOOOOOOO! Hey, it's the journey that's important, not the destination. Thanks Todd! (but seriously, do not send me hundreds more '85 Topps, I'm covered)

*Also from Mechanicsburg: Todd and Bret Michaels from Poison.

Rowr.

I haven't posted a card from my vintage binge in a while so here's an oddbally one:

1951 Topps Animals of the World - Cougar

There was a whole slopload of non-sports cards in the bargain box and I had to pick out a few choice ones, especially if they were an old Topps card. There were a whole bunch of these cards in the box and it took me a while to finally choose a cougar as my Topps type card animal, but I had a really good reason for it.

NO. NO. WRONG. BAD.

Not that kind of cougar and anyways, she's a puma. No, I picked this card because the mascot of my high school was the Henderson Cougars.

Ok, so my high school is now a middle school. Our football team sorta played like a middle school team. True story: the five years I went to that school (grades 8-12, I didn't flunk!) we got massacred on our homecoming game every single year except once. My senior year we beat Druid Hills (traditionally the stoner school who couldn't play football worth a flip) something like 62-7. The kids from Druid Hills made fun of us after that because they actually scored a touchdown. Of course I was in the marching band tooting away on a tuba at the time so it wasn't my fault!

This guy here taught me algebra in the 8th grade. George B. Maloof, one of the few teachers (or people in general, actually) from high school that I miss. Godspeed, George. Interestingly enough, he taught my ungle algebra also. This guy could coach and teach! See his shirt? Henderson Cougars? MY SCHOOL. So I got this card instead of the gorilla or the quagga.

This card set was put out in 1951 as a follow up to their Bring 'em Back Alive set (which you'll see soon enough, muahaha). Since it's a continuation of that first set, the 100 card set is numbered from 101-200. It's a pretty simple set, the front is just a picture of an animal with a small colored background and plenty of white space. The back reads like an encyclopedia summary, with a little bit of horror at the end to give '50s kiddos a thrill. The wrapper seems to be emphasizing the educational aspect of the cards with the Animals of the Zoo theme. No worries, we'll get into lurid sensless violence soon enough (again, muahaha!) This is still a pretty nifty card from Topps that pre-dates their mainstream baseball set. And it's a Cougar! Go Cougars!

Card of the Week - Dodger fans, look away

I would first like to take the time to apologize to this guy, this guy and ESPECIALLY this guy. I'm so, so sorry. you may want to look away at this point, because things get bad.

Everyone else, Check out this sweet card of Steve Garvey!!!

SP Legendary Cuts! Shiny! Foiley! Nice big picture on a relic card!

Wooooooo! Steve Garvey! Dodger legend! NL MVP leads LA to Pennant!

Let's check out the jersey swatch!!!









(seriously, Dodger fans need to leave right now)











(Still here? You brave, brave soul. We'll get through this together.)

BROWN.

A brown Jersey on a Dodger card.

Upper Deck did a relic card in tribute to Garvey's 1974 MVP season and stuck a chunk of a Padres jersey in there. CLASSIC. Richard McWilliam is such a prankster! Maybe they indicate that it's a Pads uniform on the back...

Nope. Certified to them as having been used in an official Major League Game. Dodgers logos plastered all over the card and there's a Padres swatch embedded in the thing. There are several explanations for this odd pairing of jersey and card:

1. It's a jersey that Garvey wore when he was playing for the San Diego Padres from 1983-1987.
2. It's a uniform worn by a member of the San Diego Padres (most likely Gene Locklear or Fred Kendall) in a game against the Dodgers during Steve's tenure with the club.
3. Upper Deck's relic choosing methodology is to place buckets on the floor with a card inside, cut every jersey in the joint up into little swatches and then throw 'em all up in the air like confetti. The swatches that fall into the Upper Deck Player Bucket™ go into that player's card.
4. A curious UPS employee delivering new game-used material to the UD factory got curious and leaned in a little too close to the Jersey Chopper Upper.

I don't mind the brown uniform swatch because my fondest memory of Steve Garvey was when he got thrown out of a Braves - Pads game after mouthing off to Eric Gregg. I don't know what Mr. Clean said to Eric to warrant an ejection, but I'm sure I've yelled worse to Eric, especially during tthe 1997 NLCS. Speaking of Mr. Clean, are people still mad at Steve for having sex? With women? Jeez, he'd win Man of the Year for only doing that with some of the stuff that goes on now.

What a weird year this has been

About to go full circle. This calls for a celebration.

CONTEST IMMINENT.

1957 Topps Football

Set size: 154 plus one unnumbered checklist
Short printed High Series: Cards #89-154
Card Size: Standard 2 1/2" x 3 1/2"
Corrected Errors and Variations: #58 Willard Sherman no team name on front
Best card: Bart Starr RC
Key Rookies: Starr, Johnny Unitas (!!!), Paul Hornung, Raymond Berry, Earl Morrall, Dick "Night Train" Lane
Subsets: None
Gimmick: Cartoon on back
Back ink colors:Red & black
League: NFL
Team Logos? No
Night Owl Style Nickname: The Split Screen set
Teams included in the set: Baltimore Colts, Chicago Bears, Chicago Cardinals, Cleveland Browns, Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers, Los Angeles Rams, New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles, Pittsburgh Steelers, San Francisco 49ers, Washington Redskins
Why I chose this card: Torgy! Also.

Topps followed up their first NFL set with one that had a fairly unusual design. The card is horizontal, but is split into two halves - the left half has a portrait of the player and there is an 'action' shot on the right. The split card somewhat resembles the 1941 Double Play baseball set, only with the same player on both halves of the card. It's almost as if Topps saw the set as two mini cards in one, as the back of the card is also split perfectly down the middle, with stats on the left and a large cartoon on the right. I know for a fact that had I been collecting cards in the '50s, there would be no way I could resist cutting at least a few of these things in half and making little 1950 Bowman sized cards. Other than the odd bifurcation of the card the actual design is extremely similar to the 1956 Topps set. The front is still essentially a picture of the player in front of a solid color background with a box at the bottom with the name. The backs are still red and black with a bio paragraph, stats and a cartoon. Even the card number is on the same top left corner inside a little football.

The first standard sized football card set from Topps also has some of the first really iconic NFL cards. Rookie cards of Johnny Unitas, Bart Starr and Paul Hornung can be found in the '57 Topps high series. I'm sort of assuming that the cards were released in two series, it could simply be that the higher numbers were printed in lesser quantities. At any rate, cards #89-154 will cost you about twice as much as the lower numbers, and of course the three most desirable rookies are in the high numbers. The two keys in the set are Starr and Unitas. Both are rookies, both are legends. Unitas probably has the bigger 'wow' factor of the two cards, but due to a printing quirk Johnny U's card was double printed making the Starr more scarce.

So what do I mean by 'double printed'? Trading cards are printed on large sheets, at least they used to be. I'm not sure what witchcraft goes into printing these newfangled cards nowadays. You may have seen an uncut sheet of cards from a Topps set from the '80s or '90s before. Here's one from 1997. The sheets for the 1957 Topps football set had 88 cards to a sheet. Since there are 66 cards from #89-154 and 88 to a sheet, 22 of the high numbered cards were printed twice on the sheet. Johnny Unitas was one of those 22, making his card a little easier to find than Bart's. Here is the complete list of double printed card numbers:

91 92 93 98 100 103 107 110 111 113 120 122 124 127 129 138 139 140 143 148 149 153

Why those cards were picked, who knows? Johnny U fans were blessed while Packer fans curse Topps to this very day. Topps mostly stuck to set sizes that were some combination of 132 and 88 cards, but they did get a little short print happy in the mid-'60s. More on that later. There are two insanely difficult cards in this set other than the big rookies. The first is one of the very few corrected error cards in an early Topps football set. Card number 58 of Willard Sherman can be found with or without a team name on the front. The variation missing the team name is extremely scarce, although the insane action photo makes the corrected version very desirable as well! The other impossible card is the unnumbered checklist. Like the 1956 set, the checklist is nearly impossible to find in good condition and is easily the most expensive card in the set. Yes, you heard me right, the checklist is more expensive than the Starr and Unitas rookies. A LOT more expensive. To add insult to injury to all the completists out there, the checklist can also be found with a yellow color variation.

1957 Topps Football Card Gallery from www.footballcardgallery.com.

One Pack Review - 2009 Mayo

I finally found a pack of Mayo. Not at Target, but at the local Wally World where it was hidden underneath a big pile of Bowman Chrome. You can't hide retro away from me folks, I've got a Spidey Sense thing going on when it comes to new cards masquerading as old ones. Here's my stream of consciousness thoughts on the latest (and last?) Mayo set from Topps.

Owens - Buffalo

My very first impression of this set:
TO plays for the Bills? WTF??

To all my twenty-something readers out there, that old chestnut about how people get dumber as they get older, it's totally true. I few years ago I would not only have known what team Terrell Owens played for, but the number touchdowns he'd scored this season, the number of catches he has lifetime against Philadelphia, the number of arguments he's had with his head coach on Fridays before a road game and the name of the girl he had sex with the morning before his most recent appearance on Monday Night Football. Now, I see him in a Bills jersey and my mind is blown. THIS WILL HAPPEN TO YOU. Don't think it won't.

As for the cards themselves, even though the design isn't authentic (I looked through my 19th century tobacco card price guide and found nothing remotely like it) it actually looks pretty good. The fancy schmancy border fits in with card designs found in the 19th century and the picture looks better with a little bit of color. Last year's design - while very authentic - got oppressive with the black borders and muted colors after a while. It was like the trading card version of a German Expressionist film. Using gold ink is very 19th century as well, half the old style cards I've seen from that period use metallic ink in the design.

Um.... maybe not THIS much metallic ink. This scans really well, but this back is really hard on the eyes. Especially my old-geezer-haven't-upgraded-my-eyeglass-prescription-in-over-two-years-because-I-lost-my-vision-insurance eyes. Other than the shiny ink, the backs are more or less the same as last year's backs. The name font is differnet, the flourishes at the top are a little more flourishy and there's more legalese at the bottom, but they're the same backs.

Namath - Broadway

This card ensured that I would have at least one good card in the pack. It's number 304, so it might be a short print. Or maybe not. I haven't seen a list of SP's yet and I'm not entirely sure if I care or not. See what happens when you play games with your short print list, Topps? Eventually we stop caring.

Next up is the Mini card. The card back was facing me when I opened the pack and this is what went through my mind when I pulled it:

Huh. They're doing team cards in this set now? A helmet logo is going to look tiny or squashed on a mini card.

WHAT THE FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU????

This is an insert card???

Me:

Great, now I'm going to be obsessively hunting for a 1:48 pack mini insert of a bloody bird that has probably been chucked in the trash by half the case breakers out there who have pulled it.

One other thing on the mini card: When I first looked at it, I thought that they had shrunk it down to Allen & Ginter size from the 'just large enough to not fit properly in any plastic sheet on the market' size used last year. I was wrong, it's the same size as 2008. I guess I'm going to have to pull out my Xacto knife and a one pocket page and get to customizing.

Grant - Green Bay

This is the one-per-pack super thick relic decoy parallel card. I'm not sure if I like this better than last year's Super Bowl logo set that they used for the decoys. One one hand, parallels suck and are boring. On the other hand, it is a card of a player and not a stupid Washington Redskins helmet. The main difference between these and the base cards (other than that they are three times as thick) is the silver ink on the border.

Oh dear Lord, these are even harder to read than the gold backs. The silver backs are glossier than the gold ones so if there is any kind of light source near you the text will immediately become invisible. Man, I miss the black backs from last year.

Bulger - St. Louis

The look on Bulger's face pretty much perfectly sums up the Saint Louis Rams' season.

Hobson - Admiral

I was lucky (?) enough to pull a non-sports character in the pack. According to the back Admiral Richmond Hobson is the "Father of American Prohibition" as he was the first congressman to probose a ban on alcohol. Oh goody. That worked out well, didn't it? He was also captured during the Spanish-American war and held prisoner. Maybe he was denied delicious Cuban rum by the Spanish while he was incarcerated and it made him bitter.

So there's a pack of Mayo. All in all, it looks like Topps gave up on redoing the original Mayo Cut Plug set and just took the "Football A&G" motif to its logical conclusion. It's an ok looking set. Retro doesn't seem to work as well on football though. I think part of it is that when I think old timey football cards, I think 1960's and 1970's, not 1890's. It's not bad though, and I think Topps learned their lesson from the bait & switch nonsense they pulled last year. At least I haven't heard a lot of complaining about the set on other blogs so far. Whether that is due to the fact that the set is better or that everyone already gave up on Mayo, I can't be sure...

Another Public Service Announcement from Cardboard Junkie

If you were planning to read each chapter of Jim Bouton's Ball Four on the corresponding day in the book starting at the point where he signed his contract with the Seattle Pilots, today is the day to start reading.


If you don't have a copy of the book it should be available at your local bookstore, provided the shop is not run by godless communist terrorists who hate America and gleefully kick puppies with malice aforethought. If your book merchant is in fact unpatriotic (or simply sold out of copies due to the incredible demand) you'll just have to order it online and try to catch up.

That is all.

6 in 30 - Basketball edition

The Hawks beat the Celtics! In Boston! Holy crap, the Hawks might actually be good! (Watch them go 2-19 after this post) To commemorate this momentous occasion, here is a 6 in 30 from an ancient basketball binder.

1993 Upper Deck Team MVP box set Dominique Wilkins

This card came out of a small box set Upper Deck put out in 1993. That blurry thing behind 'Nique is a hologram. Can you comprehend how ridiculously amazing this card looked in 1993?

1977-78 Topps Artis Gilmore

Artis Gilmore is probably my all-time favorite non-Hawks basketball player. Include his ABA stats, and he's got 24941 points, 16330 rebounds, 3178 blocks and the highest field goal percentage of all time (.582, .599 in the NBA). Plus, he has the best hair ever in the history of basketball. Yet, he is still not in the Basketball Hall of Fame. Why? Because all Halls of Fame are worthless wastes of space and should be nuked from orbit. Only after packing all Hall of Fame voters into a rocket and shooting it into the sun, of course.

1970-71 Topps Basketball Walt Frazier All-Star

Why? Beause Clyde is the best. And the card is big. If you have big cards, you have an obligation to show 'em off occasionally.

1992-93 Fleer Larry Johnson Rookie of the Year insert

This is a neat card of Grandmama. I have a soft spot for basketball cards, and in the early '90s I was a Hornets fan thanks to LJ and 'Zo. I even have a hideous teal and purple Hornets windbreaker in the back of the closet I plan to bring out of retirement as soon as my kids are old enough to be mortified by the fact that theur father is wearing something so awful in public.

1992-93 Upper Deck Stacey Augmon 6 million point man

Stacey was my favorite Hawk after 'Nique and Doc left the team. It's sort of odd how a player whose greatest strength was his tenacious defence would end up being known for scoring the 6 millionth point in NBA history.

1992-93 Fleer Charles Barkley All-Star insert

Just 'cause Sir Charles is cool.