This trade started a little strangely. I bought a pack of 2008 Topps Baseball Updates & Highlights Presents 2008 Topps Heritage High Numbers Series when it first hit the local hobby store and I ripped it on a A Pack A Day. The big hit was a Jermaine Dye jersey card, but one reader spied a different card out of the pack. Here's the exact comment:
Why do I feel like Charlie Brown and I'm looking at you like you're Lucy, holding my coveted Joe Shlabotnik?
That comment came from morineko of Olagato House and it referred to this guy:
She is a big fan of Seth, who just happens to be a short print in the series. Since it would be extremely difficult to pull this SP out of packs and since I don't care a lick for Seth (or this entire set, for that matter) I offered to send her the card. I identify greatly with Charlie Brown also, and I couldn't live with myself if I was denying someone their Joe Shlabotnik.
So I sent off McClung and some stuff of her want list and got back some goodies in return. The '07 Goudey Ichiro above is one of them. Dang I love that Heads Up set. But wait, there's more...
Morineko is famous for really nifty stationary. I got the fairy paper.
Included were some Braves Timelines cards. The Timeless Teams Smoltz is above, the '95 SP short print of Brandon Jones is below. Both are needed for the set and greatly appreciated. My box is scheduled to arrive on the 5th so get ready for a retro UD gimmicky box break! Also included were the base cards of Smoltzie and Chipper.
There were a bunch of random Braves in there too, including 5 Chippers. This one here is from 2007 Ultra, and it reminds me why I miss the set so much. I had a bit of a Stadium Club mania yesterday, but you know what would be a better deal than Stadium Club right now? Picking up a bunch of boxes of '07 Ultra Hobby. For a little over the price of a pack of Stadium Club, you can get a hobby box of Ultra SE and get more cards and jerseys and autographs than in the Stadium Club. Then, next year when Topps has turned Topps Total into a $1000 a pack high end product that no one can afford, you can go back and scoop up all those unbought Stadium Club packs cheap. Along with this Ultra Chipper there's also an Infield Power insert, a 50th Anniversart Topps insert, a green StarQuest and a Target T205 card.
There's a few other Bravos in there including Smoltz, McCann, Kotchman, Sammons and Nunez.
Wrapping it up is five cards from my 2007 Updates & Highlights want list. I'm pretty sure that list is out of date now. I think I'm going to delete it until I can properly catalog the set again. I know for a fact I need the McCann card though, I'm surprised I didn't have it already.
More cool stuff from a fellow blogger. Thanks again!
Is Matt Ryan. Man, was I so totally wrong. Off to face the Cardinals in the playoffs. How's that for an unlikely playoff matchup, Falcons and Cardinals? Who wins in a matchup of two of the NFL's most hapless franchises? Maybe the Big One will hit California this Sunday and it will drag Phoenix down into the Pacific ocean with the rest of Cali and the sea will swallow up both teams. Any non-baseball Cardinals fans out there? Not Stanford. NFL fans. I'm curious.
One bad thing about getting in the playoffs is that I can't find Jake Plummer's United Way commercial anywhere online and it's driving me crazy. That thing killed me. Cardinals eat Eagles!
All right. Sadly we have come to the end the basketball poetry on Cardboard Junkie. These final two poems were composed by Madding of Cards on Cards. Madding is a huge Blazers fan so it's appropriate he got the pair of Portlanders.
Tom, a tall baller Tough to replace Walton Peak of his career
Brewer was a bust His son should do him proud Too bad the Jazz suck
Two heartfelt haikus from a Blazers fan. that's it for the poetry folks, if you want more then get writing!
If you wish to make a trade: Leave a message on this post and/or send me an e-mail :
dayf13 at gmail dot com
I will get back to you and accept or reject the offer. If you only leave a post and you don't have contact info in four blogger profile, then it willbe ignored until you e-mail me.
Once I see and respond to a comment on this page I will delete the comment.
If I accept, I will post the trade status on this page. I'll include the cards I'm sending and the date and status of the trade. The status will progress as follows:
1) pulled cards 2) packaged cards 3) mailed cards 4) cards are received by the tradee 5) I received my cards. Once all these have been completed, I'll move the trade to the completed page for posterity
If your trade is not on this page, then there is no trade.
Albukwirke recently sent me a few Braves out of his many blasters of Stadium club. Actually he sent me the entire team set except Smoltz. Check 'em out:
23 Tom Glavine
70 Brian McCann
83 Chipper Jones
104 Gregor Blanco
137 Brandon Jones
Kris also sent a second chipper with this odd bit of schmutz on it:
It's a little red blob that looks like it's embedded under the UV coating. Whatever it is, you can see an imprint of the red blotch on the other Chipper. It's a /1 blob card! The newest gimmick!
There are actually three other Braves players featured in Stadium Club, they just don't have base cards. Gregor Blanco and Brent Lillibridge are part of the autographed rookie short prints, and Jair Jurrjens and Mark Kotsay have Beam Team cards. Two of those guys have already been traded. It seems like that's common in smaller sets nowadays, some players aren't good enough to merit a card in the base set, but they'll happily sign a sheet of stickers placed in front of them so they end up in an autograph insert.
Kris also sent aWarren Spahn Donruss Puzzle piece card and an autograph of Lance Niekro that will be up on Auto-Matic for the People either tonight on maybe next week. Thanks Kris!
Ok, I promised myself at the beginning of the year that I wouldn't do this and I did it. I decided to do some research on all new products I was interested in and not go off half cocked and buy a buttload of something without being informed. Well, buying abunch of packs without understanding what the set was all about is just what I did. I got all mesmerized by the cool photography and didn't take the time to figure out the short prints. So now that I have two blasters and a handful of packs opened, I'm utterly bewildered over the strange synchronicity in the weird collation that Night Owl and myself have gotten. That's a lot of doubles.
Now that I've confused myself, I've taken the time to do some research. A month ago, Capewood posted that there were about 30 short prints numbered to 999 and the rookies from 101-150 also had numbered short prints. Why I didn't pay attention to this back then, I don't know. Albuqwirke went nuts and bought fourteen blasters, so he's got a pretty good handle on the set. He found that base cards with a card numer that is a multiple of three just didn't exist unless they were numbered to 999 or had a first day issue stamp on them. His want list is really interesting, check out which cards he needs for the first day issues and the non-first day issues. Albuqwirke just sent me a few out of those 14 blasters, which I'll show off tonight. Finally PAB figured out a neat way to determine if a card is the base or a variation. Look at the photo on the front and compare it to the back. If the photos match it's a base card. If they don't it's the variation.
So here's what I've figured out through my own blaster rips and through looking at other blogs:
Non-numbered base cards divisible by three are impossible to find
All first day issue parallels I've pulled are either a number divisible by three or a rookie.
I've pulled regular and variation 1st day rookies.
I've pulled three cards numbered to 999, two (Dice-K and Ty Cobb) are base cards divisible by three and the other is a rookie variation.
So with that in mind here's my theory on the Stadium Club Short prints, at least for the retail version:
All cards divisible by three are short printed to 999. All the short prints can be found as first day issues in retail packs. The non-short printed set consists of 100 cards and is skip numbered.
The first day issues in hobby packs I'm not so sure about, but I do know they are thicker than normal and are serial numbered to 699. I also haven't figured out if base rookies are any more difficult to find than normal base cards.
So now I feel really stupid for buying two blasters when the odds are against not ending up with a pile of doubles. At first I was mad at Topps for screwing up Stadum Club, but it's actually my fault for not paying attention and figuring out how the short prints work. Lesson learned. Chris Harris has some nice blackmail e-mails from me defending this stuff, let's hope he doesn't demand too much to keep 'em quiet. I wish I'd done this a month ago!
So... to sum up, 2008 Stadium Club looks really good, but if you're a set collector it's a colossal pain in the ass. It's the high-maintenance girlfriend of base sets. Forget about this mess and just work on your Upper Deck base set instead. It looks just as good and isn't nearly as frustrating.
I had a moment of weakness this morning. There was a blaster of Stadium Club that I bought a few weeks ago squirreled away in the trunk of my car that was being saved to do another live rip face off against Hand Collated. After ripping and posting the blaster I got this weekend though, I got it out of the car and opened that sucka. I wasn't planning to post this, but I think it's worthy of examination.
80 Ryan Braun 82 Manny Ramirez 56 Garrett Atkins 119 Jed Lowrie RC 51 Ichiro 1st Day
1 Chase Utley 85 Matt Holliday 50 David Wright 53 Josh Hamilton 93 Ty Cobb 1st Day WTFRC?
133 Chin-Lung Hu RC 125 Josh Banks RC 13 Alex Rodriguez 109 Garrett Mock RC 48 John Lackey 1st Day
23 Tom Glavine 142 Greg Smith RC 74 Rich Harden 38 Hunter Pence 99 Ted Williams 1st Day
41 Adrian Gonzalez 143 Nick Blackburn RC 62 Joba Chamberlain 92 Mickey Mantle 36 Troy Tulowitzki
43 Felix Hernandez 34 Brian Roberts 136 Jay Bruce RC 5 Russ Martin 135 Jeff Niemann RC 1st Day
57 Joe Mauer 28 Ryan Church 35 Ken Griffey Jr 64 Victor Martinez 126 Mitch Boggs RC 1st Day
16 Jake Peavy 145 Clay Buchholz 44 Magglio Ordonez 100 Tom Seaver 147 Radhames Liz RC 1st Day
Notice anything? Any similarities? Here, let me help you out. Here are the contents of the two blasters put together and sorted by numerical order. I have colored box 1's contents red and box 2's contents green to add some Christmassy flavor:
1 Chase Utley 1 Chase Utley 5 Russ Martin 5 Russ Martin 6 Curtis Granderson 1st Day 9 Alfonso Soriano 1st Day 13 Alex Rodriguez13 Alex Rodriguez 14 Prince Fielder 15 Alex Gordon 1st Day 16 Jake Peavy 16 Jake Peavy 23 Tom Glavine 23 Tom Glavine 28 Ryan Church 28 Ryan Church 34 Brian Roberts 34 Brian Roberts 35 Ken Griffey Jr 35 Ken Griffey Jr 36 Troy Tulowitzki 38 Hunter Pence 38 Hunter Pence 41 Adrian Gonzalez 41 Adrian Gonzalez 43 Felix Hernandez 43 Felix Hernandez 44 Magglio Ordonez 48 John Lackey 1st Day 50 David Wright 50 David Wright 51 Ichiro 1st Day 53 Josh Hamilton 53 Josh Hamilton 56 Garrett Atkins 56 Garrett Atkins 57 Joe Mauer 57 Joe Mauer 62 Joba Chamberlain 62 Joba Chamberlain 64 Victor Martinez 64 Victor Martinez 74 Rich Harden 74 Rich Harden 80 Ryan Braun 80 Ryan Braun 82 Manny Ramirez 82 Manny Ramirez 85 Matt Holliday 85 Matt Holliday 87 Jimmy Rollins 1st Day 88 Hideki Matsui 92 Mickey Mantle 92 Mickey Mantle 93 Ty Cobb 1st Day 99 Ted Williams 1st Day 100 Tom Seaver 109 Garrett Mock RC 109 Garrett Mock RC 119 Jed Lowrie RC 119 Jed Lowrie RC 125 Josh Banks RC 125 Josh Banks RC 126 Mitch Boggs RC 1st Day 129 Elliot Johnson RC 1st Day 130 Brian Barton RC 1st Day 131 Sean Rodriguez RC 133 Chin-Lung Hu RC 133 Chin-Lung Hu RC 135 Jeff Niemann RC 1st Day 136 Jay Bruce RC 136 Jay Bruce RC 141 Mike Aviles RC 1st Day 142 Greg Smith RC 142 Greg Smith RC 143 Nick Blackburn RC 143 Nick Blackburn RC 144 Justin Ruggiano RC 1st Day 145 Clay Buchholz 147 Radhames Liz RC 1st Day
So, um... Yeah. Looks like a candy cane. I think this can be accurately described as a blaster disaster. To that guy who stated he needed a lot of cards out of that first box? E-mail me dude... Albuqwirke gets first dibs though, as this isn't the last Stadium Club post for today.
85 Matt Holliday 50 David Wright 53 Josh Hamilton 133 Chin-Lung Hu RC 9 Alfonso Soriano 1st Day
125 Josh Banks RC 13 Alex Rodriguez 109 Garrett Mock RC 23 Tom Glavine 87 Jimmy Rollins 1st Day
142 Greg Smith RC 74 Rich Harden 38 Hunter Pence 41 Adrian Gonzalez 15 Alex Gordon 1st Day
143 Nick Blackburn RC 62 Joba Chamberlain 92 Mickey Mantle 43 Felix Hernandez 129 Elliot Johnson RC 1st Day
34 Brian Roberts 136 Jay Bruce RC 5 Russ Martin 67 Joe Mauer 141 Mike Aviles RC 1st Day
28 Ryan Church 35 Ken Griffey Jr. 64 Victor Martinez 16 Jake Peavy 160 Brian Barton RC 1st Day
Summary: No inserts, at least one rookie per pack, one lonely legends card of Mantle. Not great, but it's a little over a quarter of the set as long as you ignore the parallel stamp (which I do).
I don't want to do a lot of work tonight, so I'm going to finish off this year's Card of the Week with my favorite card of all time. 1956 Topps Hank Aaron.
I love Hank, I love the '56 Topps set. This to me is the pinnacle of all baseball carddom. It's got that classic Aaron portrait that was so good, Topps used it on his '54, '55 and '56 cards. It's got the red and blue team color bars for the name and position. It's got the great photo of Willie Mays sliding into home. Yes, Willie Mays. Topps either goofed or got lazy and painted a Braves uniform on the Say Hey Kid. No word if Mantle forged Hank's facsimile signature.
The back looks great too. Nice, simple 1956 Topps design on light card stock. All the necessary info is efficiently displayed leaving plenty of room for a huge cartoon. The middle toon shows how Hank hit a home run in every NL ballpark as a rookie. Of course there were only 8 at the time, but still. I got this card in a lot on Yahoo! Auctions a while back before they went belly up. This was one of a lot of 18 '56 Topps cards but I didn't even see the other ones when I saw the auction. I saw Hank, then a Buy It Now price and clicked so hard my mouse was wobbly for a week. Luckily I needed most of the other ones in the lot, not that I cared. The card is kind of warped, there's a tear in the bottom edge and someone tried to poke Hank's eye out, but it's my favorite card of all time so it's Gem Mint to me.
Dinged Corners posted an End of the Year collecting questionnaire that is very good for personal growth and introspection for all us card junkies. If you haven't done so, check it out and reflect upon your hobby. Since everyone else is posting their answers, I'm going to do it too. Here are the questions:
2-My baseball heroes include one you probably wouldn't know from my blog or comments, and that person is __________.
3-Every New Years I resolve to __________ my collection.
4-If I could spend a day with one person from baseball history, it would be ________.
Round Two:
1-What is your favorite kind of dog?
2-Who is your favorite baseball player?
3-What is your favorite team?
4-What is your favorite baseball movie?
5-What is your favorite baseball book?
6-What is your favorite card?
My answers:
Round One: 1 - coins One of these days I'm going to get sick and tired of the shenanigans in this hobby and dump it all to work on my Morgan Silver Dollar collection.
2 - Carlton Fisk I'm kind of shocked I haven't really discussed this on the blog yet... Carlton was my first real player collection.
3 - Organize Anyone need some '87 Topps? How about '86? '88? '90? '84? '93? I got Fleer, Donruss, Upper Deck, Score, Pinnacle, Leaf, Ultra, and a bunch of others too. I just need to find 'em...
4 - Babe Ruth
If I could spend one day with Babe Ruth, I know one thing... Even if I didn't see one pitch of baseball, I'd still have a helluva good time.
Round 2: 1 - Pug
Let me start off by stating that I do not like dogs. I grew up with not one, but two completely brain damaged huge slobbery dogs and I'm not interested in any more dogs. However, pugs are just ugly and insane enough to break through my emotional canine defenses. A Boston Terrier is a very close second.
2 - Chipper Jones
This is the Chipper that lives in my wallet.
3 - Braves You knew that already.
4 - The Naked Gun
I know what you're thinking, The Naked Gun isn't a baseball movie. WRONG. The movie has the absolutely best baseball comedy scenes in any movie period. The last third of the movie in Dodger Stadium beats any other baseball comedy out there. I MUST... KILL.. THE QUEEN...
5 - The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book
If I could only have one baseball card book, this would be the one.
6 - 1956 Topps Hank Aaron
I love it so much it's in my Saul Bass parody logo over there!
No team has ever done that in a season. You still need to lose 10 straight next year if you want to suck as bad as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but hey, now you have a goal to shoot for in 2009.
I wanted some football cards to open today while I watched all the games with playoff implications so I got this 4 packs and an auto thing for $9.99. The distributor on the back is MJ Holding company and there's a web address on there too. So, four packs and a draft pick autograph. Looking at what is offered on the front There's about nine bucks full retail value for the packs and a 2008 Hit autograph in there. Let's see what is actually in there...
2008 Hit Draft pick low series 2006 Topps 99¢ pack 2006 Upper Deck WalMart pack 2006 Upper Deck Legends Hobby pack and an autograph to be named later
Swap the Chrome for a Legends pack and that's pretty much what's on the package. I'm happy about the low series pack since that's the one with Matt Ryan. Upper Deck, eh... Topps, eh... Legends is very interesting. There could be another autograph in there and hey, Legendary players. Let's start with the Hit pack and go on to the 2006s from there.
2008 SA*GE Hit Low Series
47 Lavelle Hawkins 12 Matt Ryan 39 Sam Keller 41 Brandon Flowers 27 Alex Brink 17 Kevin O'Connell glossy
W00t! Got the Matt Ryan! The pack is a success! As for the rest: Hawkins was a 4th round pick of the Titans and has 4 catches this year. Sam Keller didn't get drafted and sign with an Arena League team. Too bad they just suspended the 2009 season. Brandon Flowers is a second round pick of the Chiefs and plays cornerback when he's not touring with the Killers. Brink was a 7th round pick who is on the Texan's practice squad.O'Connell was the third round pick of the Patriots who now has to look up at Brady and Cassel. Eh, I got the Ryan. Everything else is packing material. Next.
2006 Topps
7 Chris Gamble 242 Rodney Harrison 214 Ben Roethlisberger 332 Demeco Ryans Special Edition Rookie 373 Laurence Maroney RC 366 Jason Avant RC
The Ryans rookie with the little foil stamp on it confused me. I'd never seen on of them before. They fall 1:10 packs so they can't be that rare. Not a bad pack, Three decent rookies, a couple of defensive backs and the Concussion Queen.
2006 Upper Deck
3KP-BF Brett Favre 3000 Yard Passing Club 146 Brian Westbrook 107 Brad Johnson 159 LaDainian Tomlinson 19 Willis McGahee 77 Domanick Davis 31 Rex Grossman 239 Darrell Hackney Star Rookie
This was an odd pack, all quarterbacks and running backs. Even weirder is half the base cards have the position stamped in capital letters (LT, Johnson and Westbrook) and the others are all in lower cases. I tried to scan the foil, but you see how well that worked. LT's card is cool, but the Rex Grossman card is hideous. He looks like a flailing turkey. The Favre looks good though and Hackney is still hanging around the league holding the clipboard for the Broncos. Ok, now for the pack I'm really looking forward to: 2006 Upper Deck Legends
21 Len Dawson 15 Doug Flutie 72 Charles White 70 Terry Metcalf 78 Steve DeBerg
Steve DeBerg? Steve DeBERG?? STEVE DEBERG?!? Oh my God.....
AND NOW FOR THE AUTOGRAPH:
2008 Hit Angelo Craig
7th round pick of the Bengals (probably simply because he was a Bearcat), cut in training camp, signed by the Panthers for their practice squad, dut again and is now on the Patriots' practice squad. Not quite the McFadden, Flacco and Ryan autos shown on the front. The card was also put in the package with no protection whatsoever, so the top right corner and bottom edge has dings.
Eh, I got Ryan and a couple of other decent cards so it was marginally worth it. The only truly dreadful pack was the Legends oddly enough. Not sure this was $10 good though. It's a repack crapper, what else could I expect?