2007 Baseball Card UnAwards part 1

I tried to do yearly awards like everyone else, I really did. But when I tried to fill out the ballot, I choked. I just couldn't pick just one favorite set or the one worst new hobby innovation and some stuff I didn't mess with at all this year so it was just way too difficult to choose. I always over complicate easy stuff, so forget it. No awards from me, I'll leave that to the less neurotic bloggers out there. Instead, I'm going to do a list of all the stuff I liked and didn't like in 2007. I might still be updating this in May, so don't assume what you see here is everything I liked or hated. This is just what has occurred to me while writing the post.

What I Liked In 2007:

My favorite 2007 cards:

This was actually one category that was easy for me. Hands down my favorite card in '07 was the Allen and Ginter card of Torii Hunter. Every time I see this card I smile. Every time. If I watched my momma get shot point blank in the face by Dick Cheney then sent to a hospital that was operating under Hillary's health care plan, you could show me this card and I'd still smile. I even put it in my title graphic, I like it so much.

Here are other cards I liked this year:

• Upper Deck Basketball Al Horford Santa Hat
• Topps Distinguished Service Warren Spahn
• Upper Deck Legendary Cuts Yogi Berra
• Goudey base cards Johan Santana, Lance Berkman and Yogi Berra
• Goudey Heads up Babe Ruth and Reggie Jackson
• Goudey Jeff Francouer Jersey relic
• Allen & Ginter n43 Bruce Lee and Ryan Howard
• Allen & Ginter National Pride with Webb, Verlander, Maddux and Smoltz
• Allen & Ginter Dick Perez "Tribute to Howard Finster" Jim Edmonds
• Topps Heritage Lew Burdette and Warren Spahn inserts
• Pretty much every David Ortiz card I pulled

Cards I didn't like this year:

Another no-brainer on this one. Topps Chrome Michael Vick. That card single handedly caused me to stop buying 2007 football cards in protest.

Other ones I hated:

• Ubiquitous A-Rod Bullshit Waste of Space
• Topps Updates & Highlights Barry Bonds Home Run King
• Any card from a pack that costs more than my car payment

My Favorite Set:

This one is a virtual tie between Allen & Ginter and Upper Deck Goudey. There's no way I could choose because both changed in some way how I collect. A&G was the first set since Topps205 to get me really focused on building and completing a set with short prints, plus it indirectly caused me to start buying cards from the 1880's. UD Goudey was the set that brought me back to Upper Deck. I hadn't been remotely interested in anything from UD with the exception of Fleer since about 2005. I bought some Goudey in part to help me get a free autograph of Yunel Escobar from my local card shop, and as soon as I ripped it, I was hooked. If you would have told me last year if I would have two UD sets mostly finished and I would be working on a third, I would have thought you were nuts.

Other sets I liked:

• UD Masterpieces
• Bowman Heritage
• Topps Basketball
• Topps Heritage
• Topps Series one and two
• Topps Finest
• Topps Chrome
• Upper Deck Artifacts
• Upper Deck Legendary Cuts
• Upper Deck First Edition

Sets I didn't like:

A lot of these can be lumped into the "expensive pack, ugly card" category. Sport Kings is the most disappointing. It could have been an epic set, but they short printed it to hell so they could charge a fortune, the inserts look ugly and the artwork is brutal. I can't fathom why people are up in arms about sketches Dick Perez drew on tiny pieces of cardboard that had to fit inside a rip card, while paintings done for a pack that costs 300 bucks and up can look like dogshit and mostly get a pass. While I'm not crazy about Turkey Red, Dick Perez did his homework on those paintings and they compare very favorably to original Turkey Reds while still maintaining Dick's style. Sport Kings look like an art student aping the original Goudeys while copying a bad photo of the player and managing to miss on both.

Sets I didn't like with explanations:

• Sport Kings - complete disaster
• Topps Co-Signers - all silver design is ugly
• Upper Deck - a thousand card set packed out at 8 cards for 3 bucks, No thanks
• Topps Updates and Highlights - shoulda bought the factory set
• Topps '52 Rookies - if Topps mails in this set next year and does the exact same design again I'm going to beat Michael Eisner to death with a Mickey Mouse plushie
• Bowman - this set needs an overhaul, stat
• Turkey Red - more disappointed than anything, it could have been a great set, but the checklist is too small and completing the SP's is impossible

That's enough for now, I'll get to inserts, designs and trends later.

Way Overdue Artifacts Box Break

A while back, I ripped a pack of Upper Deck Artifacts and really liked it. The design was really different from everything else out there and it appealed to me. It reminds me of an Indiana Jones movie or something. I picked up a couple of packs here and there and eventually broke down and got a blaster a couple of months ago. At the time I was getting to the nitty gritty on my A&G and Goudey sets and I was looking for a cool, small, easy to complete set to build (and have a few packs to rip) while I looked for those last few cards for my other sets. Artifacts seemed good, it was only 100 cards and did not have the numbered short prints of the other Artifacts sets.

I got this box, was a little put off by it, and then UD Masterpieces came out and I forgot all about Artifacts. Masterpieces turned out to be the set I really wanted, 90 cards, the checklist ranges from stars (or at least top prospects) to eternal all-time Legends and it was gorgeous to boot. Now I have a mostly completed Masterpieces set (working on one last trade!) and 60% of a set I don't know what to do with now. Here's the box break for posterity. There are still a lot of these floating out there (I have a feeling Artifacts will be the packs in repack boxes and Target El-Cheapo bins in a couple of years) and this can serve as a warning, or an encouragement if you like this sort of thing, to anyone out there looking at a box. First, the box:

The box has a rather cool design, it's made to look like an old packing crate, presumably carrying some treasure from the Orient. I'm not exactly sure why they chose a picture of Derek Jeter about to pick his nose to be the cover boy for the product, but archaeologists pick their noses too I suppose. There's also a big day-glo "EXCLUSIVE - Find a memorabilia card in EVERY BOX!!" plastered on the front. Hey, a gamer per box! I've said before they should have been doing this for a while now. Put all the relics in blasters and voilà - no more pack searching. Finally, progress! The sides show a Jeter Divisional Artifacts game-used card (with two pinstripes!) and advertises "Pull Antiquity and Divisional Artifacts memorabilia cards!" in a sort of stencil motif. There's even "FRAGILE" (which I think is Italian for Major Award) stenciled on there as well. So now you're thinking wooooo.... gamers... me want Antiquity and Divisional Artifacts! One Per box! ME BUY!!! So the front says "one memorabilia per box" and the sides say "pull Antiquity and Divisional Artifacts memorabilia cards". Remember that for later. Now to the packs:

2 David Ortiz
51 Derek Lowe
18 Joe Mauer
25 Nick Swisher
65 Adrian Gonzalez

Big Papi is one of my favorite players, so we're off to a good start.

23 Johnny Damon
99 Jose A. Reyes RC
69 David Eckstein
40 Ken Griffey Jr.
85 Jerry Owens RC

Griffey Jr., plus the other Jose Reyes. Jose A. didn't even play this year, but his baseball-reference.com page is sponsored by a cool Braves blog I'd never seen before just right now. This pack just went from meh to Awesome.

45 Hanley Ramirez
80 Fred Lewis RC
8 Travis Hafner
98 Sean Henn RC
35 Stephen Drew

Hanley, Pronk, JD little brother and two Rooks. Fred Lewis is a solid name for a solid 3rd/4th outfielder. I'm rootin' for ya Fred.

* This is where the memorabilia card was located. We'll get to that later.

33 Roy Halladay
47 Lance Berkman
79 Delwyn Young RC
4 Curt Schilling
49 Craig Biggio

Cy, All-Star, blocked prospect (if the Dodgers hesitate to give Kemp a shot, what chance has Delwyn got?), Hall of Famer, Hall of Famer. As far as the packs go, this is a kickin' box so far.

62 Trevor Hoffman
77 Daisuke Matsuzaka RC
32 Vernon Wells
54 Jose Reyes
96 Ryan Braun RC

Dice-Man, the right Jose Reyes and the wrong Ryan Braun. Still groovin along...

46 Dontrelle Willis
31 Mark Teixeira
84 Oswaldo Navarro RC
34 Brandon Webb
65 Matt Cain

W00t! Another Mark Teixeira! Now I have one to put in the set and one to keep in my pants put in my Braves box.

1 Miguel Tejada
76 Cesar Jimenez RC
61 Freddy Sanchez
19 Torii Hunter
93 Mike Rabelo RC

Last pack is a little lackluster but no complaints about the cards. Lots of stars, the Dice-K rookie, no Braves but I got Tex, and no doubles. Not a bad box. Now......... here's the advertised relic card.


That's not a Divisional Artifacts card... Nor is it an Antiquity card (I know, I looked it up on the interweb). That's right, the one-per box card is not from '07 Artifacts, but a card from 2002. Upper Deck Diamond Connection Quads to be exact. It's not exactly a bad card, although it would have been a hell of a lot better back in '02 before all the subjects got really old really quick. Plus the book value is something like 20-25 bucks, but still I felt like the rug was yanked out on me a little here. I didn't expect the "one per box" card to be a refugee from one of the Memorabilia Blister packs you see at Target. Once again I'm bitching about pulling a really neat card, but it still seems like there was a little false advertising here. Of course I already pulled a freaking SWEET Jeter auto from this product, so I can chuck the rest of the cards in the trash and still make out like a bandit even if I never get around to completing the set now. So if you cool kids see one of these mysterious packing crates at the checkout aisle of your local box store, now you know what you're getting into.

I don't wanna, but I gotta - 07 52 SP

I really am not interested at all in posting this because I hate Hate HATE this set for not using the 1953 design, but someone out there might need it so here it is, grudgingly.

The 2007 '52 Topps Rookies shortprint and variation list:


Short Prints:
202 John Nelson St. Louis Cardinals
208 Andy Cannizaro New York Yankees
209 Travis Chick Seattle Mariners
210 Francisco Cruceta Texas Rangers
211 Jose Diaz Kansas City Royals
212 Jeff Fiorentino Baltimore Orioles
213 Tim Gradoville Philadelphia Phillies
214 Kevin Hooper Detroit Tigers
215 Philip Humber New York Mets
216 Juan Lara Cleveland Indians
217 Mitch Maier Kansas City Royals
218 Juan Morillo Colorado Rockies
219 A.J. Murray Texas Rangers
220 Chris Narveson St. Louis Cardinals
221 Oswaldo Navarro Seattle Mariners

Variations:
5 Troy Tulowitzki Colorado Rockies
20 Ryan Braun Milwaukee Brewers
30 Hunter Pence Houston Astros
50 Daisuke Matsuzaka Boston Red Sox
70 Delmon Young Tampa Bay Devil Rays
100 Hideki Okajima Boston Red Sox
130 Tim Lincecum San Francisco Giants
150 Phil Hughes New York Yankees
170 Justin Upton Arizona Diamondbacks
190 Joba Chamberlain New York Yankees

The variation cards are short printed and can be distinguished from the commons by the pose. Common cards are portraits, while the short prints are action poses. You can see a photo of the Hunter Pence short print in the Beckett link above, I have a scan of the Justin Upton common card up in my '52 Rookies pack break from A Pack A Day in case you want to compare.

The short prints are seeded 1:6 packs (I assume that includes variation short prints as well) and there is also a black back variation (also in my A Pack A Day post, click on it already!) that also drops at 1:6. These are both Hobby odds, I'm not sure about retail. 25 short prints in a ~220 card set isn't too bad, it's only 15 if you don't bother with the variations. No short print Braves in there either, now I can pick up a Yunel Escobar rookie and any other Braves in the set cheap.

Why isn't this set using the 1953 design? Seriously, why? Haven't we all had enough of the '52 set for one lifetime? Can't we just dump it in the ocean once and for all like Sy Berger's high series boxes? Is this because Eisner owns the company now and I'm a die hard Looney Tunes fan? Why Topps, why have you hurt me so.....

2007 Most Valuble Players

American League - Alex Rodriguez, New York Yankees

2002 Cracker Jack Take Me Out To The Ball Game Relics TB-AR and TB-AR2

National League - Jimmy Rollins, Philadelphia Phillies

1998 Bowman #181

The Slowest Box Break Ever: Part 4, Packs 9-12

Finding, scanning, editing and posting 100 cards=opening 4 more packs. You didn't believe me when I said slowest box break ever, did you...

Pack 9:
1 Jeff Francouer
251 Joba Chamberlain RC
151 rainbow Orlando Hernandez
BHP66 Steve Singleton
BHP92 Jim Fasano
245 Travis Buck RC
155 Jimmy Rollins
23 Carlos Delgado
No less than three of the cards with gimmick backgrounds in this pack. You'd have to be a baseball historian to know that was Ebbets Field in Delgado's card, you'd have to be blind to miss the Liberty Bell on Jimmy Rollins' card, and you could go blind finding the edit on Joba's card. All but the Joba are doubles from the first pack I opened but who cares, Ill take all the Frenchies I can get. I don't get the whole Joba rules thing. 'Joba Rules' sounds like a bad Disney Channel sitcom to me.

Pack 10:
26 Javier Vazquez
157 Jason Varitek
243 Hideki Okajima no sig RC
135 rainbow Rocco Baldelli
BHP54 Trevor Cahill
BHP96 Gregory Porter
47 Mark Teixeira
71 Gary Matthews

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! The Last Bowman Heritage set ever and Mark Teixeira is in a Rangers uniform! I'm so depressed........ Next pack.

Pack 11:
37 JD Drew
181 Ichiro
67 rainbow Aaron Rowand
BHP38 Jay Garthwaite
BHP46 JR Mathes
244 Adam Lind RC
75 David Ortiz
35 Alfonso Soriano
Two more 'fun' background cards in this pack: Ichiro has the background from Duke Snider's 1952 Bowman card while Big Papi shares his background with Johnny Pesky's '52 card. It would have been nice if Topps had reprinted some of these original cards as an insert so we could compare, because '52 Sniders aren't all that easy to come by. It's still a really cool idea for the set. Another pack loaded with stars, but it's getting a little frustrating pulling two prospect cards I've never heard of in every pack.

Pack12:
45 Grady Sizemore
SG-AF Andrew Fie
59 rainbow Brandon Phillips
BHP64 Jeff Bailey
BHP72 Thomas Hottovy
Checklist 3 of 3
233 Akinori Iwamura RC
237 Kevin Kouzmanoff RC
107 Eric Bedard


Ok, here's the second hit from the box, an auto card of D-Backs prospect Andrew Fie. The Odds on the wrapper are a little screwed up, but this is a card from autograph group G with odds of 1:47 packs. We'll see if this guy pans out or not. A couple of rookies and Grady Sizemore fill out the pack. The checklist card is neat, Topps used the Prospect diamond design on the checklist for the prospect cards. Makes sense. It also has the list of Red Man oversized cards, not a bad lineup there either. The rookies are kind of dicey (Felix Pie? Ugh.) but the veterans don't have a bad card among them. No Braves at all though. Phooey.

Half the box is busted and here's the totals so far:

55 base cards - 22%
4 no sig SP's - 8%
24 Prospects - 24%
11 rainbow foil parallels - 4%
1 Relic - Luis Gonzalez
1 Auto - Andrew Fie
All three checklist cards
no dupes

A few more posts, another A&G card, another 792 gallery and I'll have another 4 packs to post. Stay tuned! This box break can't take much longer can it?

2007 Cy Young Award Winners

American League - C.C. Sabathia, Cleveland Indians

National League - Jake Peavy, San Diego Padres

2007 Rookies of the Year

National League - Ryan Braun, Milwaukee Brewers

American League - Dustin Pedroia, Boston Red Sox

Review - 2007 Turkey Red

The fact that it took me over a month to finally write a review for '07 Turkey Red should immediately give you an idea of what I think about the set. This relic card of Daryle Ward kind of sums up my feelings toward the set. The design is well done, and it's a little refreshing after two years of the original gray borders. The computer enhanced photos are done reasonably well and look good. This card is a bat relic, which is nice to get. The question is, do we really need this card? Just like the rationale for a relic card from a journeyman pinch hitting specialist is somewhat dubious at best, I just don't see why we needed another series of Turkey Red.

Anyone who has paid attention to this blog for any period of time knows I am a slobbering irrational fanboy when it comes to retro style cards. I pretty much love 'em all, from Heritage to Archives to Vintage to all the sets ripping off designs from 80 to 120 years ago. I like the old reprint sets, Upper Deck Heroes of Baseball, Ted Williams company cards, and the black & white Conlon collection. Anything vintage looking, or including old timers (like the ol' perfesser up there) in the checklist is usually something I like. Hell, I even love 2006 Bowman Heritage which is probably the ugliest, most screwed up set of the century. I'm not saying I don't like these cards, it's just I don't see a purpose to them. There are also a lot of details I don't like that will probably prevent me from seriously attempting collect a set.

I'll start off with what I do like about the set before I get into the criticisms. The very first thing I noticed when I opened my first pack was how much better the card stock quality was. I thought they had given up on that weird reverse pebbled texture on the cards until I took a really close look at them. I don't know what they did, but this set does not have the strange plastic pock marked feel as the '06 variety. it's a big improvement and the cards look and feel much better now. The next ting I noticed was the Dick Perez paintings. Dick has caught a lot of flack this year from collectors who don't like his artwork and just don't like paintings on cards at all. I personally think they are brilliant, I love art cards. Perez is best known for his work on Diamond Kings, but these are less stylized than the Diamond Kings and his sketches for Allen & Ginter, and are more reminiscent of his work on the old Donruss Hall of Fame sets from the early 80's. Perez definitely studied the original T3s for inspiration, but adds his own personal style to them. Like the sketches for A&G (which are pretty dang impressive considering the canvas) there are great looking ones and a few clunkers. Yes, the Jeter card looks more like Jim Thome. The Dice-K rookie card looks awful, as Matsuzaka's face looks a bit like a constipated rodent. When you paint a few dozen portraits not all of them will be perfect. Overall they are exremely well done however. The colors are bright and bold and the detail is fantastic. I've posted three of my favorites up above. Big Papi's card looks great with all the details in the grandstands. Griffey Junior is apparently playing in a Roman Coluseum. Verlander's portrait is a little odd looking, but check out the detail in the advertisements! Chew Beeman's Pepsin gum!

The regular base cards look just as good as last year's set. Whatever algorythm the Topps code monkeys put the original photos through give them a good old timey feel although they can be a little dark. Topps also manipulated the backgrounds as they did with the football and basketball sets. Tim Hudson is apparently pitching at Elysian Fields. So the cards look great, so what's the beef? The first complaint I have is about the 'chrome' parallels. They are admittedly an improvement on the red/white/black/gold parallels from the earlier sets. That color scheme wouldn't have worked anyway, Topps would have had to swipe an idea from an old Gallery set and change the picture frames instead. Still, the Chrome just looks really awful to me on these cards. The regular chrome dull the vibrant colors on the Perez paintings and the refractors obscure them altogether. They don't look like chrome cards to me at all, there is no outline on any of the players and they end up looking like a generic foil card. Sure, most normal people love Chrome to death and numbered parallels are popular. I just don't like them.

I'm more interested in the base cards and I'd rather pull an SP than a Chrome. Problem is, when the set first came out I bought 8 packs at the local hobby shop. I had some ridiculous luck and pulled 4 Chrome and 2 refractors out of those 8 packs. Six Chrome in 8 packs! Great for chrome collectors, but I don't collect it. I've bought about a dozen more packs here and there and I've still not pulled a single SP card. I have pulled three variations, so I'm not completely striking out, but this is a pretty tough pill to swallow for a set collector. One in four packs. That ratio right there is the hit rate for short prints, and it's the reason why I won't be trying to complete this set. I can understand a 1:4 ratio for short prints. it does give a little challenge to the collector. I do not understand a 200 card set having one quarter of the cards short printed however. To complete a set you'd have to open about 8 or 9 boxes with great collation, or more likely a case. Meanwhile you'd have about 10 base sets to every 1 short print set. That's a whole lot of doubles folks.

So with this set, Topps has made it completely impractical to open packs and make a set. So why open packs at all? There's some seriously bad timing for Topps here as well. A lot of people like mee who would normally drool over this set are suffering from Allen & Ginter and Goudey burnout. I have a couple of dozen cards to chase for the A&G set (everyone who e-mailed me, I'll get back to you this week, I swear) And I have less than 10 base cards to find for Goudey and then I can start chasing the short prints in earnest. Why should I deal with yet another set full of impossible short prints right now? Maybe in January when there's nothing else to do, but by then who cares. The insert sets are pretty lame as well. Every time I pull an A-Rod bullshit waste of space in a retro set, I get a migraine. The cabinet cards are nice, but I'm not buying hobby boxes of this stuff so I can't find them easily. Why not insert them as a bonus in blaster boxes? Upper Deck does it with their Beehive hockey set. Finally, is anyone else as completely sick of goddamn Presidents as I am? I'm sick of old Presidents, I'm sick of the current President and I'm completely sick of all the potential Presidents. Give us a set of Vice Presidents or Speakers of the House or Chief Justices or American Idol runners up, I don't care. Jut no more freaking presidents. And try to make the set not so butt-ugly. Who wants to see a fat Cleveland or constipated McKinley when they open a pack of cards. Time to retire this set, I hope now that the sale has gone through they can work on something better for next year.

2007 Turkey Red Short Prints, Maybe

Some guy posted a possible SP and variation list for '07 Turkey Red on the Beckett message boards. This is all extremely unconfirmed, but I'm posting it anyway for reference. Take this list with a grain of salt. Like I did with the A&G SP list, I'll add and edit if there are any changes. I don't have a reliable checklist at this time, so only the card numbers for now.

Short Prints:
7 Mickey Mantle
22 Adam Lind
33 Kurt Suzuki
43 Jarrod Saltalamacchia
47 Rich Harden
62 Carlos Lee
63 Carlos Zambrano
66 Chase Utley
71 Mike Piazza
73 Mark Buehrle
74 Torii Hunter
82 Dallas Braden
83 Dan Haren
89 Johnny Damon
94 Josh Fields
101 Orlando Hudson
103 Eric Byrnes
106 Felix Hernandez
121 Hunter Pence
123 Josh Willingham
124 Tom Gordon
128 James Shields
134 Scott Kazmir
135 Jason Isringhausen
136 Jason Marquis
139 Jeff Francoeur
143 Todd Helton
146 Tom Glavine
152 Sammy Sosa
165 Kei Igawa
171 Kelly Johnson
174 Khalil Greene
179 Marcus Giles
182 Mark Teixeira
183 Matt Chico

Variations (have Turkey Red advertising back)
1 Ryan Howard
15 Ichiro
20 Alex Rodriguez
25 Albert Pujols
40 Chipper Jones
56 Chase Utley
95 Derek Jeter
105 Phil Hughes
106 Felix Hernandez
110 Daisuke Matsuzaka
130 David Ortiz
150 Ken Griffey Jr
159 Johan Santana
180 Miguel Cabrera
185 Vladimir Guerrero

Update: Confirmed.