2008 Stupid Year In Review - Part 9: Upper Deck Series 2

2008 Stupid Year In Review - Part 3: Upper Deck Series 1

I got about 8 of these created so far so all you fans who want more will get more...


(Context: Here, here and here)

Finished with Politics

Just like pretty much everyone else. And I found the last card before the Inauguration! Hooray!


Not bothering with the fights, the pulled Hillary, the veeps, the super duper short prints, the R-rated ones or the phantom Hobby store giveaway card that no one seems to have.

I have a completed page and that's enough candidate cards 'til 2012.

Card Of the Week 11/04/08

If I get this posted quick enough I can coincide it with the first votes cast in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire. (rats, missed it) The subject of this week's COTW is obvious considering what's going on today.

Now anyone who has followed this blog knows I love the HELL out of the Upper Deck Presidential Predictors set. I love it so much I banned the company from the site for a month when they pulled the Hillary/Morganna pulled card/short print shenanigans. While I liked the original set I really liked the Series 2 set. Why? FIGHTS!!!!

Each of the 5 cards in the set (10 with the Hillary variations) depicted a famous baseball fight with the candidates in place of the brawling ballplayers. Here are the five, with corresponding real life girly slapfight.

PP-10 - Barrett vs. Pierzynski

Note the most egrigious example of the rewriting of history here since Greedo shot first. Barrett popped Pierzynski! Not the other way around! Mickeyfickey deserved it from all acounts too...

PP-11 - Varitek vs. A-Rod

I've always liked Varitek since he went to school at Georgia tech, but this image here ensures I'll be a fan forever.

PP-12 - Piniella vs. Ump

This is from his freakout against the Braves. You'll never catch Bobby in ejections Lou, so quit being a baby!

PP-14 Piazza vs. Clemens

Here's the biggie, the World Series moment between roid raging Clemens and Mike Piazza. The Hillary version of this card is my favorite, I absolutely adore the innocent "Who, ME!?!" look on her face.

None of these are the Card of the Week though. That honor goes to card PP-13, this one here:

A big ol' scrum between the Red Sox and Yankees. And it's in black & white too, so it's got to be from a long time ago back when the world was black & white. I'd love to tell you what game this fight was from, but problem is, I don't know. I've looked everywhere for a similar fight between Yankees and Red Sox players but they've been fighting for a long time now. Is it Powell vs. Cronin? Fisk vs. Piniella? Pepitone vs. Petrocelli? Fisk vs. Munson? (Fisk gets in a lot of fights, apparently) Or is it simply the timeless battle of Good vs. Evil? Many would say when talking about The Red Sox & Yankees or Democrats vs. Republicans it's a case of Evil vs. Evil, but that's neither here nor there. At any rate, this is a nice card of a crawling, scratching, shoving baseball sissy fight and it's a pretty good metaphor for the grueling Presidential campaign WHICH IS NOW THANKFULLY MERCIFULLY OVER. We can finally all have panic attacks about other things now. Upper Deck got the back right too:

IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID!!!

Hopefully the credit crunch doesn't completely bork the entire economy no matter which one of these jokers gets into office or we'll all be burning our cards for heat this winter. I'd never burn this card though. Everyone knows Upper Deck is good eatin' cards. Lots of fiber in them suckers.
*burp*

Oh yeah folks, one more thing:

GET YER ASS OUT AND VOTE!!!!!!!!!

UPDATE: Early voting results are in!

Dixville Notch, New Hampshire:
Barack Obama - 15
John McCain - 6
Chipper Jones - 0?!

Hart's Location, New Hampshire:
Barack Obama - 17
John McCain - 10
Ron Paul - 2
Chipper Jones - 0!!!

Not one vote for Chipper Jones! DAMN YOU NEW HAMPSHIRE!!!!!!!!!!

Another Political Post That Will Only Bring Me Trouble And Strife

... but I'm doing it anyway.

Announcing the 2008 Republican Nominee for Vice President of the United States:

Nope.
Sadly, no.
Oh thank the Lord Jesus no.

Yep.

So why am I posting this on a card blog after my last political post caused the closest thing to a flame war there has ever been on this site to break out? Well, equal time for one thing, but mostly because she's a

HOCKEY MOM

And because it gives me an excuse to post an autographed card of one of my favorite players - three time Stanley Cup Champion Joey Mullen, who grew up in New York, which is the state that Hillary Clinton represents as senator, and since Hillary is the reason Sarah Palin was chosen to be the nominee in the first place, the whole thing fits together nicely.

Let the flaming begin.

B-O-R-I-N-G

The Presidential Candidate gimmick insert for Topps Series two will be letter patch cards that spell out the three remaining candidates' names. McCain gets Diamondbacks patches, Steve has 5 more Obama White Sox Patches to chase, and Hillary's team is the Cubs. [insert Cubs Suck joke here]

It's too early in the morning to try to figure out a filthy anagram using the names that will be included, but not too early to say that no one wants this crap. Topps needs to get 'em autographed at least so they might be worth something for cryin' out loud. Also these three are on TV 24 hours a day, so Topps can certainly find some new pictures of them. Thankfully the cards are numbered to 50 each, so the chances of pulling one instead are D-I-D-D-L-E-Y-S-Q-U-A-T.

Who Needs A Gimmick

Remember that Obama autograph I linked to last week? Here's the final tally:


Yikes. There are 14 more of those out there somewhere too. If you don't have three grand lying around, Hillary is also on eBay right now with a high bid of 56 bucks. There's five days left though and she's going to be getting a ton of press coverage this week. Can Hillary's 'graph break 4 figures? Can she beat Obama? According to the checklist there are cut autos from Hillary, Obama, Edwards, McCain and Thompson. I think Huckabee has a sig or a relic in Donruss Americana too. Anyone seen a Big Mac auto out there? AND WHERE THE HECK IS RON PAUL'S AUTOGRAPH?!?! There's a buncha lotta communists up there in Duryea, apparently.

Obama Auto On Ebay

This is the first one of these I've seen in the wild, although I have admittedly not been looking that hard. From the auction listing it looks like these are sweet spot style autos, with the candidates signing on a baseball that is hacked up and put on a card. The card, numbered 6 of 15, has gotten 19 bids and is up to $735 with under 2 days to go. I wonder if eBay will stupidly yank the auction over the authentication or something like they did with the George Washington DNA card last year.

The card looks pretty good and Obama certainly has a unique signature. I wonder how high this thing will go, Obama's got some momentum going on right now, while Hillary's on the schnide. I need to start scoping out these cards... maybe I can get a scrub autograph like Biden or Thompson for a couple bucks.

A winner is not me

Topps declined to bestow an eTopps A&G Presidential Candidate card upon me. No worries. I probably won't be tempted this badly by another eTopps card now for another decade so it's their loss. If it was someone in a Braves jersey I might have been deeply wounded, but then again, there aren't any Georgians currently on the national political radar at the moment. (which is probably a damn good thing considering some of the fruitcakes we have in and out of office down here) Now I can also keep the blog apolitical since I don't have to post a scan of the candidate I voted for. Hopefully Steve has better luck in his search for more Sox.

Could have been the BEST. INSERTS. EVER.

A quick aside before I start posting Topps packs... Since I didn't pony up the extra 40 bucks for the Jumbo box, I figured I may as well spring for another pack of Upper Deck. LOOKIE WHUT I GOT!

Just in time for him to drop out of the race! The Buysner card was crass and unnecessary. These are the best cards ever in the history of anything. All of them are hysterical. The Hillary/Morganna card made me hit the floor laughing. HUGE kudos to Upper Deck to adding a little fun into this campaign season. This is one set I will be completing would have completed had Upper Deck not pulled the Morganna card. Too bad.

More Political Junk

Thanks to Russ at The House of Cardboard for reminding me about this. Over at eTopps today they are running a special set of Presidential Candidates for today only. Including the one I'm voting for today. And in the Allen & Ginter design. You can probably see where I'm going with this.

Now, I have stated in the past that I think that eTopps is a bloody stupid idea. Paying money for cards you can't even have unless you pay again to have them shipped. The cards look nice and they're entombed in a thick plastic case so no harm shall ever befall their refractory surfaces, but overall I think it's a dumb idea and not worth it. That being said, I just spent about 20 minutes of cursing at my computer screen while my old Topps account got locked for eternity because I couldn't remember my password and it wouldn't take the answer to my secret question (seriously, I know the name of my first pet, don't give me that crap Topps) and I ended up registering a new account. Just to buy a card of a scheming politician that will likely disappoint me before it's all said and done.

Yep, I'm a lousy hypocrite and I'm going to have to explain the credit card charge to my wife, but I had to do it. I like the card too much. Assuming I get it (longshot) I'm going to have it delivered and I'll post it here. If I don't get it I might even try to eBay it, I like it that much. So if you want any of those cards, better do it quick because the offer expires at midnight tonight. And please don't buy my card out from under me.

SupaDupa Toosday

Uncle Teddy sez:


WHADDYA DOIN' SITTIN ON YER ASS READING ABOUT BASEBALL CARDS?!?

GO OUT AND VOTE!!!!

Cousin Grover concurs.


Not that one, this one.

So go out and vote! Even if there isn't a caucus or primary in your state today! YOU'RE AN AMERICAN DAMMIT!*

GO VOOOOOOOTE!!!!1

*Readers not actually from America don't have to go out and vote. You can try if you want though, it couldn't hurt.

A few things to get through the day

Between work blowing up, putting together packages to ship and general sleep deprivation, I think I'm just going to find an autograph to post and call it a day. Maybe if I can get a nap in I'll be refreshed later tonight. Meanwhile here's a few things that caught my eye while surfing around this morning.

Here's some pics taken at the Hockey All-Star Fan Fest last weekend. I would have liked to have gotten McFarlane's signature, but I'm glad I didn't blow all my 2008 Topps cash on hockey wax.

Wax Heaven has a great gallery/voter's guide of the 2008 Topps Presidential Candidates set. I hadn't seen any of them besides the Obama and I wondered when Mario had found them. To my surprise a gallery with both fronts and backs can be found at The Smoking Gun. This is actually quite appropriate considering the terrible mugshots that Topps used for some of these cards.

Finally, at The Bench I found this cool thread from Champs96ws about how to mount your favorite cards in a picture frame. I was considering possibly doing this with my Allen & Ginter type set once I was finished with it, but I wasn't really sure how to go about doing it. I have matted pictures in a frame before, it's not that difficult, but I had never thought about using foam board as a way to anchor the cards. I may end up doing this after all, since Tobacco-sized top loaders are easily found nowadays thanks to Topps and their retro sets. Here's a picture of the finished product:



The Smoking Gun celebrity mugshot link alone should keep any of you out there occupied until quitting time, but if you just have to have some more card blogging action, check out Cardboard Mania. I found this while browsing through The Bench and it looks pretty good, give it a shot. Here's a nice catch of some Topps shenanigans I'd never seen before, and I love the enthusiasm he has for old cards.

Why Vote The Lesser Evil

The stuff doesn't even ship for another month and already I am completely sick of the very concept of putting presidential candidates in a baseball card set. I'm sorry now I ever complained about A-Rod Bullshit Waste of Space cards. I'm not going to be happy when I eventually pull one of these things. Hell, my candidate isn't even in the set!

Cthulhu for President! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn! Eat me first! Preferably before the Super Tuesday primary commercials start airing.