I like my cards like I like my women...

36 years old

Been around the block a few times

Known for being fast

Wrinkled all to hell

85% off

and...

Two at the same time...

Pack of Gum

You see, because it's a pack of National Chicle, right? And chicle is gum? Get it? Eh? Uh. *ahem* On a lighter note, I just learned that I've been pronouncing chicle incorrectly for decades. It's supposed to be pronounced chick-ul like tickle and I've been pronouncing it chick-lee like a dumbass. Pretty sure that's how my 9th grade social studies teacher pronounced it though. I'VE BEEN FAILED BY THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM. Jesus, I shoulda just stayed in bed today.

I got eight packs of this stuff because it was SUPPOSED to go live in two weeks and I didn't have enough saved up for a full box. So I overpaid for packs instead of just going to the ATM and taking out another twenty which I have plenty of because I got my tax refund but I was too lazy. Now I'm not even going to bother because honestly I can get real National Chicle cards for the price of a box. AND WHY CAN'T THE BRAVES GET A FREAKING HIT ANYMORE SERIOUSLY WHAT THE F-

Sorry. Having a sub-optimal week here. Let's get to my first pack of Natl. CHICK-LEE. Let's see how many more artists I can piss off with my first review of this set.

NO. 257 Madison Bumgarner

Artist: Monty Sheldon

My first National Chicle card is a rookie card of the infamous Madison Bumgarner. This is a pretty nice looking card to start off my set. Madison is in the middle of his throwing motion with a big orange and brown swoosh in the background. Very Gianty. Madison was very effective in his cup of coffee with the Giants last year but couldn't crack the rotation out of spring training. He looks like a good pitcher and will probably be back up to be bigs before the year is out.

I feel compelled to show off the back on this card. I think I'm going to do a seperate post comparing the old and new Diamond Stars backs in excruciating detail. But that's for later. Check out the bio text on top. Topps went for a formula which mixes a line about the actual player on the front of the card along with a nebulous baseball 'tip'. This matches the original Diamond Stars text very closely. Madison's text mentioning negative body language reminds me too much of a Wax Heaven post that annoyed a family member. I will never be able to look at a card of Madison Bumgarner again without wonder if he and his father might one day plan an ambush at Dolphin Stadium to rape Mario Alajandro.

No. 12 Raul Ibanez

Artist: Chris Henderson

MAN this is a sweet looking card. Raul is rounding the bases after hitting a monster home run against the Braves to give the Phillies an insurmountable 1-0 lead. A slightly messed up flag of Romania is in the background. This card here is a perfect example of why this set rocks.

NO. 130 Elvis Andrus

Artist: Jeff Zachowski

Elvis has left the building. Thanks for the Tex trade John. One of the coolest things about this set is the fact that the different artists each bring a slightly different but recognizable style to the set, but they are all tied together with the art deco backgrounds cribbed from the '30s originals. Three cards in and I'm diggin' it.

NO. 50 David Ortiz

Artist: Brett Farr

Big Papi! This is a slick looking card. I especially like how the color fades out into the white border.

NO.96 Derrek Lee

Artist: ???

Leave it to a Cub to provide the first disappointment of the set. Not the front, the front looks great. I'm talking about this:

The stupid thing is, I bought a bunch of Football National Chicle so I should have been prepared to see Bazooka Joe's dorky grin on the back of these cards. But I wasn't. Yes, this is the bane of all set builders - the completely unnecessary parallel. Topps left out the mini cards, but gave us logo backs. This one is 1:8 packs. There is also a 1:4 National Chicle back which I assume is that NC logo, and there are two flavors of serial numbered Umbrella backs. As far as I'm concerned this is a base card with a printing smudge on the back and it's going straight into the set until I can get an upgrade with words on it.

NO. 79 Russell Branyan

Artist: Paul Lempa

The first anachronistic card I've pulled, as Russell moved on back to Cleveland too late for a uniform change. I don't mind as I like the way this card looks with the blue background and the Seattle uniform. That's a very focused look on Branyan's face.

NO. 154 Derek Lowe

Artist: Chris Henderson

dear god please i promise i will never call derek lowe a lucky bastige ever again and make fun of the run support he gets just please oh please OH PLEASE let the braves please score some freaking runs this is getting ridiculous why cant they score any runs why oh god WHY

NO. 249 Nolan Ryan

Artist: Paul Lempa

The Express as a Met. He wasn't the express back then, more like the 7 line to Flushing. This is a pretty legend-heavy set with players in their original and also new wave ChippeRuth type uniforms. This one is one of the originals. I looked over the checklist

(yep, got one of them too) and Nolan doesn't even have a Retired Stars Revisited card. Sorry Rangers, Angels and Astros fans. Don't blame Topps though, MLB properties now mandates that all sets consist of at least 20% New York teams.

Now wasn't that a nice pack? Aren't you glad you listened to me and didn't panic when those first poorly-chosen sell sheet images came out? Oh wait, everyone did panic. And I was blamed as the ringleader. And everything went all higglety pigglety. Oh bother. Well it's out now and it's nice. JUST LIKE I SAID. And I don't have a box because Topps can't maintain a consistent release schedule even though they are the only game in town. FML

An incredibly interesting day at the card shop

Ever have a gift just fall in your lap? All wrapped up? Could be a golden egg, could be a hand grenade? So, yeah. I got one of those today.

I had to go to work for a meeting. A mandatory meeting. After working last night. And fighting off a cold. So I went. The meeting was long and boring but I learned something and made some face time. Yay for me. Since I was already on the other side of town, I went to a card shop that I don't get to go to very often. Yay for me. I had all the lists of the sets I'm building with me and I was hoping to pick up one of the more expensive cards like the '79 Ozzie or the '84 Strawberry. Or at least pick up a chunk of the stars on the lists, maybe even find that Ripken and Rose to cap off my '83 Topps set. I didn't find a whole lot there unfortunately . At least not a whole lot of cards. I found a whole lot of other things though. Hoo boy, did I.

So, I walk into the shop around 4:00ish. Maybe closer to 4:30. When I walked in some guy behind the counter (the owner maybe? It wasn't the manager who was busy sorting Mayo) was deep in conversation with a couple of guys in the store. They were talking about cards. I mean REALLY talking about cards. They were mostly talking about Upper Deck products. I'm pretty sure the two guys there were either distributors or worked for Upper Deck. The guy behind the counter apparently used to work for Upper Deck as well, as they were both making fun of some guy who worked for Upper Deck then moved to Topps. I didn't catch any names other than the guy they were talking about, but after they left the phrase "#2 after Richard" popped up. This merely confirmed my suspicion that thanks to a boring meeting being scheduled for the one day a week I really have to relax I landed into somthing big by sheer dumb luck.

Man, why didn't I pay attention in Journalism school. Why didn't I have a wire on me so I could listen to what they had to say after the fact and could get exact quotes and maybe even understand some of the stuff they were talking about. Hell, even a good night's sleep would have been nice. Damn, Mario would have given a testicle for this opportunity. He would have come up with a Pulitzer for sure. Ah well. It was unambitious, unassuming little me with my hobby blog in there. I decided early on to keep my ears open and my mouth shut. Just remember that this is a conversation between some one who might be affiliated with Upper Deck and someone who at the very least was trying to butter up the people who might be afilliated with Upper Deck as filtered through ME, so, hell, there's no way I can possibly be objective about this and I'm just going to tell it the best I can. This is going to be more of a column by Rona Barrett than a piece by Bob Woodward, but I'll pass along the gist of the conversation to the best of my ability.

Of the two guys there, only one really did any talking. Apparently the other was from Germany? That's one of the things I caught at the end of the conversation when I was starting to get tired. The other guy was the one who did the talking. I'm not sure which one was #2. Probably 50% of what they were talking about was how awesome Upper Deck was. Man, Upper Deck is awesome. Well, not completely awesome. The topic of Upper Deck X was brought up right after I got there and it was acknowledged that mistakes were made. Basically they admitted it was a retail product with a hobby price point. Counter guy (to make things easy for me 'guy' is maybe Upper Deck #2 and 'counter guy' is the maybe owner dude) agreed it was bad and specifically mentioned the bad hits and the die cut problems. To their credit, they admitted that was a mistake and it would be fixed this year. There were actually a few things that were said that gave me the feeling that, yeah, they 'got it' with some stuff. Other products were talked up and they were confident that they would be better this year. It was hard to tell who was the one promoting Upper Deck products at times. When they asked the guy behind the counter if there were any other products this year that he didn't think were any good, none were mentioned for about five minutes. Meanwhile in my head I was screaming Documentary, Documentary, DOCUMENTARY!!! Finally the guy let me off the hook and mentioned that Documentary wasn't very good, to which the guy behind the counter admitted that he didn't really bother with that product. Still, Upper Deck ROCKS was a major theme of the conversation.

There was a lot of invective thrown out towards Topps, which was not surprising. You wouldn't expect a Pepsi distributer to say nice things about Coke, and the store owner is probably going to go along with it as long as he's selling Pepsi. Much of it was deserved too, they talked about how Topps is just lousy at Football. There were a few cracks about the Letterman set with the stickers stuck to the manufactured patches. They agree with the blogging community's belief that in two or three years those stickers will likely be unstuck. Some of it was sour grapes too. There was a little complaining about how Topps skates on their legacy. The fact that they can make rookies of whoever they want (a statement that was caught and modified to they used to be able to make rookies of whoever they want) and the Legends players they just picked up was grumbled about as well. I don't remember the exact quote but something to the effect that people walk into a Target and buy Topps because that's what their dad collected popped up. The opinion that Upper Deck could make much better use of Topps' legacy was also discussed. Eh, it's rivalry talk. I don't get offended if I overhear two Florida fans talking trash about Georgia. I'd be worried if they didn't.

The NBA was discussed briefly and bitterly. Something to the effect that the NBA thinks their products drive the market because the secondary sales are hot. Of course the secondary sales are hot because everybody under produced this year because the products weren't selling. They got a point there. Razor wasn't treated kindly either. I think the guy was most mad at Donruss though. I'm pretty sure "Every set is the same" popped up. The fact that a $250 Donruss product with four prospect autos would be right next to an $85 Razor product with ten autos of the same guys worried the guy behind the counter. They both agreed one one thing though: even though every Donruss set was the same, they were very good at that one set.

They said a lot of good stuff about the industry and weren't totally negative, but sadly my brain has been trained by the mainstream news media to remember all the bad stuff. If things seem to be going very negative here, it's my imperfect and sleep deprived brain that's at fault, not them. They talked a ton about boring financial stuff like trying to keep product prices from falling under cost and the various hit ratios in products and the fact that the only hits that counted anymore were the BIG ones. There was a very 'high-end" feel to the conversation. Ironically, it seemed like there was no respect for the people they were targeting with those products! The word 'idiot' was thrown about at least once in reference to people busting cases of Goudey looking for a Tiger auto. Also about people busting open high end boxes like a Babe Ruth Sterling box they bought off of eBay for $900 when they could likely get the 'hit' out of the box individually for $250. There wasn't a lot of respect for the gambler types (which I agree with, honestly) when at the same time that seems to be what they think the core of their market is. There was also a discussion about how in order to make money on the product they had to balance out the Ruth hits with people like Paul Molitor. I was thinking to myself of a couple people I know who like Paul Molitor, but hey, I just collect.

A very interesting point about Sterling and Legendary Cuts came up. When Legendary Cuts' new contemporary player format came up due to the new 20% rule the guy behind the counter asked how Sterling got away with all the retired players. Apparently the Players' Union or the MLB (or both) signed off on it as an exemption because of the economy. The guy said that Upper Deck got an exemption too, but did not mention more than that. As for Legendary Cuts, the guy behind the counter said that he was a little concerned about this year's product. The guy must have said don't worry about Legendary Cuts at least five times. This leads me to believe that they are worried about Legendary Cuts. I'm cynical though.

All the set collectors out there are probably thinking "What about us? Did they mention us?" Nope, not really. I think set collectors was briefly mentioned in the aside about people getting packs at Target. There were some things that we gripe about that they really 'got' and were discussing ways to fix, but acknowledging that set collectors exist apparently isn't one of them. Set collectors seemed to be (paraphrased) "Case busters who rip open hundreds of boxes so they can be the first ones on eBay selling complete sets". Oy gevalt. Oh wait it gets better! They were talking about some real high end muckety muck set (not sure which set or even which sport, the conversation moved quickly) where they have over 300 cut autos in the set. Not sure if it was 300 different or three hundred total and "numbered to five" popped up but I can't remember if it was more than five or less than five. Basically there's going to be a set with a crapton of cut autos. The dude actually had the nerve to say that they were hoping that with the cut auto checklist configuration that some of the really big case breakers might be tempted to build a set of the cut autos. Jayzus. This is their concept of set collectors. The guy was also utterly bewildered why Timelines box prices plummeted to way under cost, but the secondary sales of the individual cards was so hot! HELLO... MCFLY... SET COLLECTORS. You accidentally made a really nice looking set and then put a Brandon Boggs auto in every box! OF COURSE all the idiots who bust cases don't want to buy your overpriced boxes now! OF COURSE all the people who like to build good looking sets see a nice product at a cheap price and start buying up individual cards on the secondary market to complete their sets! LEARN SOMETHING. You just made a good product that the whales won't touch but the minnows devour. FIGURE OUT HOW TO MONETIZE THAT. And the case breakers are the idiots?

Ok, so I'm getting a little angry. The anger is why I'm posting this at all. I'm probably going to get at best some compaints over this post and at worst a letter from a lawyer but one quote that is still stuck in my mind pushed me into writing this.

"If you're buying Upper Deck [base] for the content, you're buying the wrong product"

Pretty sure this is from the guy behind the counter this time but I just remember the words, not who said them. Content meaning "big hits" and "big hits" exclusively. You see, once upon a time the damn cards were the content. Before that the GUM was the content! So, yeah. This conversation blabbed blithely in front of some random guy picking through the dollar box with a want list might have touched the wrong nerve.

There were a lot of interesting things in the conversation though. Like spokesmen on the packs. When the guy first started with Upper Deck (he did say he worked for Upper Deck, but I can't say for sure if he still worked there, so I'm being wishy washy about it) all the packs had Jeter on them. Unfortunately, packs with Jeter on them don't sell well in Boston for some reason. Heh. Players with exclusive contracts get on packs a lot of times but sometimes a company specifically pays money to a player just to be on the pack. Apparently Gilbert Arenas got a lot of money from Topps to be on their wrapper a while back even though they had six guys under exclusive contract. What was wrong with those six other guys? They agreed that the best products were the ones without a player on the wrapper. Like Sterling. And Ultimate. And all those high end sets that us peons can't get. Ok, I'm getting bitter again. Moving on.

Towards the end of the converation it took a very odd turn. I had already gone through all the dollar cards looking for a stupid '83 Topps Pete Rose (50 other Roses there but no '83) and was trying to edge my way into looking through the rookie case at this point. I was also getting a little dazed and hungry. Needless to say I didn't follow the thread very well. Basically they started off talking about hockey cards. Solid fan base, great resale value. However, hockey sets don't translate well to baseball. Minor stars are much bigger in hockey than in hardball it seems. They did say how a product like Ballpark would work great in hockey with the multiple swatches. The guy was a bit hesitant to call the baseball version a success but the guy behind the counter seemed to really like it. They then started talking about O-Pee-Chee and how it was underrated and was going to be a success. The boxes were cheap and if you bought one, you bought more. Maybe here they were finally giving some props to the set collector, just not baseball set collectors. Then the conversation got strange. A&G was mentioned. More than once. O-Pee-Chee was mentioned again. Lots of good stuff in O-Pee-Chee. A&G mentioned again. Something to the effect 'were going to go after A&G'. Again, I have no idea what was going on at that point and I didn't feel like popping up and saying "Hay guize, I'm a blogger and I love A&G, wot's all this then about O-Pee-Chee?" One hour less of sleep last night and I might have been loopy enough to do it. Anyway, strange things seem to be afoot at the Circle K. I just don't know what they are.

At this point they left, the one guy came back in for a moment to leave his business card and I started to wrap it up. That's when the "#2" comment popped up as the manager asked what that was all about. I got a few measly cards and four Hobby packs of Topps. the Upper Deck wasn't out on the shelf and I didn't feel like hanging around while they opened it. I'll show off my loot later this week.

I wasn't initially planning to blab what I heard. I'm not interested in having a large manufacturer or even a card shop owner getting pissed off at me. But, if I didn't post it I'd regret it. I might regret it anyway, but it will be an 'oh crap, sorry about that, please don't hurt me' regret instead of a burning 'why am I too chickenshit to ever say anything, boy I suck' regret. And besides, this is the 21st century. We have the interwebs now. If you don't want to lose your advertising sponsors, don't smoke a bong in front of kids with camera phones. If you don't want gossip about your industry posted on a blog, keep your big mouth shut in front of customers.

Sticky Saturday - Cretaceous Edition

Ok, I'm mixing it up this week. Instead of our regularly scheduled Fleer logo sticker, I'm going to show off the best sticker from my wonderfully gruesome Dinosaurs Attack! set I picked up yesterday. If you're jonesing for a Braves sticker, I ripped a pack of '84 Fleer on A Pack A Day and pulled one out of that pack.

The Dinosaur Attacks! set was all about humans becoming lizard food, but Topps managed to justify its existence my filling it full of educational facts about dinosaurs. Little tidbits were sprinkled throughout the text on the cards but the stickers were where the real science was. Oh sure the fronts were full of dripping blood of course* but the backs may as well have been a science book. Here's an example from my favorite sticker, the parasaurolophis.

The TRUTH about pairuhsoralophugus or however that's pronounced. Oh wait, there's a pronunciation guide right there! The back is chock full of facts, an enterprising young collector might be able to cobble together a report for class with a set of these. Thank goodness with all the needless slaughter going on we have a nice gentle creature here. A North American herbivore who plays the trombone! When I was in college, I knew a guy in a band who was just like that and he didn't go on killing sprees much at all. Let's take a look at the front.

Good looking card, this. The orange and yellow borders are attractive, it's very colorful and the art is top notch. It looks like Jurassic Park might have ganked the font too! I'd like to know who did the artwork, it's very good. The gentle plant eater looks positively cute with its crest and little smile and - hey what's it holding?

A baby carriage? What on earth would a dinosaur be doing with a baby carriaOHMYGAWDNO

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

IT ATED TEH BABY!!!!!!!!!!!

BAD PARASAUROLOPHUS!!! VERY VERY BAD! BABIES ARE NOT VEGAN!

I'm so sorry folks....... I... we won't be doing this again. I'm very sorry. Back to Fleer stickers next week I promise. I hope that parasaurolophus gets indigestion.

* Body count on the sticker cards:
2 decapitations
2 impalements
1 bitten in half
1 blunt trauma
1 claw
3 squished
3 devoured
1 dumb trachodon who ate a lamp post

Cardboard Junkie: Embarrasing my Family Since 2006

Ok, I can't just let this Vick craziness go by without trying to cash in on it. Since that 'artist' got 7400 clams for some dog chewed Vick cards, I figure I'd better try to sell off some of mine while I can. Besides, the atmosphere is so toxic around this mess even owning one of his cards might prompt PETA to camp out on my lawn in protest. Maybe I can convince the vegans in the crowd to graze on the overgrown weeds in my back yard. With the mortal fear of angry hippies busting down my door spurring me on I grabbed one of my better Vick cards, a 2001 Fleer Legacy rookie, in the hopes I could sell it.


Ya know, now that I take a closer look at this card, it's really surprising no one saw all these problems coming. I guess everyone was too caught up over the Upper Deck jersey and auto rookies to notice a lowly Fleer product. Just one more example of the evil UD hath wrought upon the world.

The big problem I have is that I don't have - nor do I want - a dog to chew up all the rookie cards so I can make mad cash. Still, there are apparently a lot of dog loving suckers out there willing to throw around a lot of money to protect the puppies. It took me a while to come up with an idea on how to appeal to their tender sensibilities, but I think I have it:

That's right buster, buy that card or the dog gets it. Bidding starts at One MILLION Dollars. And I'm not going through eBay to sell it either because "Dayf Needs a '53 Topps Willie Mays High Number in PSA Mint For His Set" is not listed as a valid charity. So dig deep dog lovers and save that pup. I'm sure if you can get Bob Barker and Betty White to chip in, you'll have a cool mil in no time. Sure you can pass on this once in a lifetime offer, as long as you WANT DOGS TO DIE. Your choice. I'm sure you'll make the right one.

Payment can be sent to:

CARDBOARD JUNKIE
BEHIND THE HOT WATER PIPES
THIRD WASHROOM ALONG
VICTORIA STATION

ABSOLUTELY NO PAYPAL