I miss Goudey :(

I still want my 2010 Goudey goddammit.

Sneaky Sigs

So lat week I bought a blaster of Goudey. Not too surprising, I've been snapping up blasters like mad since Allen & Ginter and Goudey hit the shelves. I ripped the thing in my car after a meeting at work, quickly shuffled through the cards and picked out all the minis and short prints to add to the Goudey binder. The rest of the cards ended up getting left in the car for about a week. I left the window open during a rainstorm one of those days, but luckily the cards didn't get soggy. I finally rescued the packs and started sorting the base card so I could fill in the holes in my set and I found this:

THE AUTOGRAPHS IN THIS SET ARE TOO DANG EASY TO MISS

This is the second autograph I've pulled from Goudey this year and both times I sloughed it off like it was a crappy common. I'm not the only one who is not immediately noticing the signature either, but I still feel like I'm slipping. I must give Upper Deck credit though, they have made the autographs search proof at least. If you can't tell that they are an auto when you open the pack and are staring directly at the card, there ain't no way pack searchers will be able to find 'em with the wrapper sealed.

I'm pretty amazed by my luck this year, I only pulled one signature card from last year's Goudey and that was from a hobby pack. I'm having ridiculous luck with Rangers cards too, I've pulled Marlon Byrd and David Murphy from Goudey and Ian Kinsler out of my box of Allen & Ginter. Maybe a Hamilton autograph is in my future... I'm sure there's some jealous collectors in Dallas at any rate. I think I need to make sure I check the backs of all my Goudeys from now on before chucking them in a common pile.

Speaking of autographs, I have a few weeks worth of posts queued up over on Auto-Matic for the People. So if you abandoned it due to my infrequent postings, you'll be pleased to know there will be posts on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at least through September. I might even throw in the occasional post on a Thursday if I'm in a good mood...

A Whole Mess O' Goudey Autos & Relics

And why not?




I didn't realize this was a bat when I bought it, I was kind of hoping it was a snip of one of the Padres' camo unis.







No reason, just felt like showing off a bunch of Braves and Goudeys.

2006 Goudey Greats

I don't have time to do much today on the blog, so I'll just post this insert card from 2006 Fleer Tradition that foreshadowed this year's Goudey set. This was a one per box insert if I'm not mistaken, which cheesed me off since they were pretty hard to find. As you can see it also has the "Griffey Jr. says..." bit on it and it looks like they tacked on the Sports Royalty banner on the top for whatever reason.

Plus, it's Maddog. Gotta love that.

And yes, Upper Deck did own Fleer by this time.

Trade with Thorzul #2

This is one of many trades with Thorzul. He loves trading so send him some cards. I'm winning the contest though so don't get cocky. This trade started off when Thorzul pulled a John Smoltz relic out of 2008 Heritage. I had the card already, and I also had some Brewers cards including a 2007 Topps Updates and Highlights boxtopper refractor of Yovanni Gallardo so we traded anyway. Many Heritage cards were swapped as well to help out on our sets. Here's what I got:

Six 2007 Heritage cards

I'm getting closer and closer to the non-SP base set. I've got this set in sheets too so it's very satisfying knocking out empty spaces here and there.

Four 2007 Topps Heritage inserts

Here's a New Age Performer from the guy who pitched a no hitter for the Fish and immediately wrecked his arm.

Flashback cards are the best. Here's Hall of Famer Richie Ashburn. I also got Warren Spahn from Thorzul. You'll see Braves soon enough, trust me...

Frank Robinson as a Cincinatti Red, Ryan Howard as a red tomato. The perfect card.

One 2008 Heritage insert

Here's a Bob Gibson Highlight from his rookie season. One of these days I either need to buy that third box of Heritage or post my wantlist.

Four 2007 Goudey redbacks

This knocks the number of base cards I need to three. Short prints are another matter... Now onto the random weirdness.

One inexplicable 1990 SportFlix Willie Randolph

I'm not sure what happened here. In addition to the Heritage and Goudey, Thorzul incuded a bunch of Braves players. Well, Braves and a random Willie. It's kind of disturbing to be shuffling through your cards and have a Willie pop out at you. A MOVING Willie at that! The only reason I can see for this to be included is that Randolph had been fired from the Mets so I could finally start liking him again. I cannot in good faith comment on this card without pointing out the lady in the background. Her arms move during the swing so it sort of looks like she's clapping like a seal.

2005 Fleer Tradition Greg Maddux Diamond Tributes

I like this insert set. The background looks like a Van Gogh painting, Maddux looks like a radioactive giant destroying the landscape below, and this is one of the very, very few instances where red foil actually works on a card. It's too bad that '05 Tradition was such a bizarre set. There were also 5 other random Braves included such as a Red Turkey Red card of Tom Glavine, but let's just move on.

STICKERS!!!

Five stickers total including this Hall of Fame relievers sticker from '86 Topps,

and four more from 1987 like this Bob Horner sticker. Now for the big hits...

2004 Chipper Jones Cracker Jack jersey

Since I had the Smoltz card, Thorzul surprised me with this. Surprise! I have three of this card now. It'll go to a good home though.

1990 Dale Murphy Starting Lineup Coin

Now this is cool. Starting Lineups were out of my price range in the 80's and when the market collapsed for them, I slacked on goign back and buying up all the braves for cheap. I don't have the Murphy figure, but I have the coin now at least.

This isn't the last you'll see of Trading with Thorzul... He's probably running low on Braves though.

When you buy cards from "victoryinjesus888" you have to expect this sort of thing

So last week I went on a Goudey eBay binge trying to knock out a few short prints and inserts for my set. To be perfectly frank, I was less than successful. Out of maybe 20 or so auctions I bid on I was successful on three. Two Braves 'hits' that I'll show off soon and a lot that I'm not even sure why I bid on now. Probably because it had an autograph in the lot (not Goudey, I'll show it off on Auto-Matic this week) and because I had deluded myself into thinking I could build the 100-card relic set. There were a bunch of big lots or relics out there and despite my best efforts I got blown out of the water on them. I did win this one though, so there's two more pockets filled in my Goudey binder.

Ok. Not the greatest jersey cards in the world. Bonderman's a middle of the rotation guy who I'm still deluded can be an ace. Bobby Crosby could be a decent player if he could just stay healthy. I got it dirt cheap and the cards look good so not a bad deal overall. The reason I'm posting this though is because of the bonus that was in the pack:

I've gotten lots of extras thrown in eBay packages. Crappy cards, good cards, packs of stickers, catalogs, coupons, newspapers that were interesting to read and a pack of 1978 Grease cards. I've never gotten a Christian tract comparing God's Salvation to Deal or No Deal before though... Apparently when you die, you get to open your briefcase and if you believe in God, Howie Mandel tips you off to the one with a million bucks in it ahead of time. Or something like that.

In college the campus was littered with these things. There were pop-culture tracts like this one, austere FOUR SPIRITUAL LAWS tracts from the young Republican recruiting Campus Crusade, groovy light hearted tracts from Jews for Jesus, the infamous Jack Chick tracts and even a few anti-tracts. My roommate was a member of the Objectivist club and he had a couple that started out "Dear Christian" that processed to explain how big a dumbass you were for believing fairy tales. I was actually in Campus Crusade at the time (don't worry, I regained my sanity) and I messed with him a bit here and there. I really confused the hell out of him by doing all this Bible study stuff then coming back to the room and listening to Frank Zappa. Even so, one of the funniest things I have ever seen and ever will see is when my roomie cornered one of the student leaders in Crusade on the stairs at the Tate center and assaulted him with his Randian tract. Just the look on his face of horror and confusion and the realization that he was as trapped as some of the poor saps he himself had cornered with a tract on those same steps was priceless. Good job Chris, wherever you are.

I almost wish I had gotten a Jack Chick tract, but then again getting a game show tract shows the seller is at least mainstream about his evangelicism. For those not familiar with the Chick, they are little bits of comic book heaven. I've loved Jack Chick tracts ever since I got my first one. It was a vicious screed against all Catholics, stating that Mary was some kind of Mesopotamian demon-goddess or some such twaddle and that all Catholics were going to hell for worshipping the Devil. All lovingly drawn in cartoony style with Demons bellowing HAW! HAW! while poor deluded sinners get chucked into the flames. Really genius stuff, and I'm not kidding about this. Whether you like Jack Chick or hate him, the man is one of the most successful and prolific Underground cartoonists of all time and I'm a big fan of Underground cartoons. Each tract is a little comic book and it always is well drawn, has a solid story and is usually dealing with a controversial subject. They are damn fun to read too as long as you don't get too offended by the more off the wall claims in the tracts. The irony in these right-wing Tijuana Bibles can be absolutely delicious too. That first tract I found in a dining hall that chucked all of Catholicism in the incinerator? It was courtesy of Harmony Baptist Church. Harmony indeed!

Awesome Mail Day

Serious card collectors depend on the mail. From hobby newsletters, trades with fellow collectors and mail order packages back in the olden days, to eBay auctions and redemption cards today, collectors have always been impatiently hovering by the mailbox like Ralphie waiting for his Little Orphan Annie Secret Decoder Ring to arrive. I'm no different, I'll peek out the window every five minutes until the mail truck arrives when I'm expecting something good. Today (well, yesterday now that I've finally finished this ridiculously long post) I received a trifecta of packages that covers the buying, trading and redemption card aspects of the hobby. I know, this blog is narcissistic enough what with all the endless galleries of beat up cards without subjecting the readers to detailed minutia of every single card I get. I won't make this a regular thing, but I thought it was interesting enough to warrant a post.

First up is an eBay auction I just kind of stumbled upon while searching for something else and wasn't really looking for, but bid on anyway because it was cool. Those are often the best finds, the ones where something neat pops up out of the blue. I was looking for a Mark Teixeira Goudey card and this auction for all three of his UD Elements cards came up in the search for some reason. Elements is basically a cross between Upper Deck's old UD3 set with three different technologies featured on the cards, and the Topps Finest mini box concept. Each box of Elements has three mini boxes, each featuring one type of card. One has shiny foil cards, another has plastic cards, and the third contains Light F/X cards. Each mini box has some kind of auto/relic hit in it because they couldn't charge and arm and a leg for it otherwise. I'm not interested at all in the set, but all three cards of Tex is worth the two and a half bucks I paid including shipping. Then again, prices for Elements boxes are dropping like a rock especially now that all the MLB prize redemption cards have expired. I might be able to pick up a complete set for $2.50 soon.

The cards came in one of those super thick toploaders with a nice shiny sticker on top. I always wonder who actually uses those toploaders. You could jam a whole pack in there if you mooshed it a little bit. They're too wide to secure anything other than a bat barrel or some other insanely thick relic card without having the card slide all over the place. If I had a relic card that was big enough to fit in there snugly, I'd probably opt for the screwdown instead. I'm pretty sure there aren't any base cards that are printed on 400 point card stock. Now that I've said this, I'm sure the Upper Deck Marketing department is feverishly working on the 2008 UD Big Ass Hunk 'O Cardboard set, where pack searchers look for the skinny pack to find all the game used cards.

Any of you guys remember when I pulled this redemption way back here? Well I finally redeemed it and it came today. No this isn't another horror story of a redemption card taking forever to process, I'm just real slack about sending the things in. It actually took around two months or so. I'm not sure if Jeff is a decent prospect or not, but the autograph is real nice. It's actually readable and I like how he merges the J in Jeff with the l in Clement. Now that's snazzy. The Clement auto books for 12 bucks in the Beckett with the Turkey Red Pujols painting on the cover. That set hasn't held up too well, it's not a good sign when the non-short printed Mickey Mantle card is the best card in the set. That's what Topps gets for putting out a tribute to an ugly set made uglier by production goofs and stupid design decisions. You coulda done a '53 Bowman set that would be worth more than $40 a box right now, you big dummies!.


The best is saved for last. I got my cards from the Ben Henry Mucho Grande Goudey Trade Off. Yep, now you all know who Dave from Acworth is. Not a bad trade at all, I got the 2007 NL MVP for Marichal and I'm just lucky to get anything for the crappy Buice card. I've been obsessively buying Goudey packs for weeks now and I only need about a dozen cards for the non-short printed set. Even so, Ben (or one of his magical card-elf minions) somehow managed to send me two cards I actually need for the set. How cool is that! Cantu features the only card in the set with the special Linda Blair green background, and the grandstands behind Matt Holliday appear to have been blowed up by irate Diamondback fans. Now I have to decide whether I put them in with the rest of the set, or I put them in with the insert cards as exclusive "Ben Henry touched" relic cards. I wonder if I can play CSI and pull a fingerprint off them. Then I could get all Mission Impossible, create a fake gel Ben fingerprint, frame him for a horrific crime and take over his blogging empire! Muahaha! Wait... I shouldn't really be typing all this out should I... Especially since his elves are apparently spying on my Goudey checklist.

I'm amazed I even got the cards at all, the first time I mailed off my cards and the SASE it came back postage due despite the fact I had the letter weighed at the post office before I sent it. The next time I mailed it, I used up some old useless 33 cent stamps thinking that would cover the extra postage, weighed it again and still came up 9 cents short. I sent it off again and realized after the fact that while the envelope going to Ben had the extra postage, the one coming back didn't. Guuuuh. I saw the post detailing my trade yesterday and resigned myself to the fact I could at least download the images of my cards while the post office dead-lettered the actual ones for being two cents short on postage. Plus Ben dropped a toxic snark bomb on Upper Deck which is always cool. But they showed up today with all my other goodies along with the promised bonus card:

Sweetness. 1982 Fleer Joey McLaughlin. But wait, there's more:


Aww yeah! Now that there is a classy logo. Plus it's on a sticker so when I send this off to PSA, they can't give me the dreaded MK qualifier because it's not actually written on the card. I'm going to go find my official Jerome Walton Fleer Soaring Stars magnet and put this beauty up on the refrigerator.

Yummy Retro Goodness

Dammit, Upper Deck may actually get a good chunk of my money this year.

Via Stale Gum, it looks like Allen & Ginter gets a sequel, Turkey Red will keep on going and Upper Deck will jump into the fray with a Goudey themed set.

Allen & Ginter looks like it will be a winner again, hopefully prices will stay sane long enough for me to have a real shot at a set this time. It killed me last year when my local Target got 5 more Box Blasters in after it had been long gone for a few weeks and I had the proverbial moth flying out of my wallet. Alas, with Official Ken Jennings Costco Shirt Relics, I'm certain we'll be looking at 15 dollar packs within days of release. Turkey Red will probably be the product they ship in late November during the "season's over, but we can't put out a 2008 set till February" dead period. I wonder if it will be the set Topps dumps late season rookies in since it looks like they thoroughly murdered Bowman Heritage last year. I'm rooting for a '53 Rookie set myself.

The Goudey set intrigues me, it looks like UD is going to attempt to make it somewhat affordable for us bottom feeders so it can compete with Topps. Hopefully it will be released in retail boxes as well so it will still be available when the hobby prices go through the roof. I've already seen it online preorder for $150 a box. Ugh! I need to scrounge around for a sell sheet, this could be a truly awesome set if done correctly. Considering butt-ugly Origins in a $90 tin is a big reason why I gave up collecting Upper Deck products, this is a step in the right direction.

Ya see, this is why we need at least two companies fighting it out in the industry. We don't need one giant ToppsUpperFleerDeck crapping out a handful of lame base sets and a dozen $100+ gambler products with a guaranteed snippet of a utility infielder's jersey and the auto of a prospect who will never make it past AA per tin. Hopefully if (when) UD gobbles up Topps into its vortex of suck, Donruss will have time to lobby to get its license back.