You Complete Me

I'm up to my eyeballs in appointments, meetings, reports and other real life nonsense, so posting is going to be spotty or non-existent on here 'till the weekend. In the meantime, here's a little beauty made possible by reader Mike.

The Topps Heritage T205 Target minis set. Finished thanks to a trade offer on the comments from this post, which I'm still working on writing up. There's more from this trade which I'll hopefully show off by this weekend but I thought you'd enjoy a complete set in the meantime. There's a second series of the large sized cards in Target boxes of Topps Series two, maybe we'll get more minis in Heritage Update? We can hope at least.

Oh, one other order of business before I rush off to an appointment... Indian Baseball Cards... Always. has been having a scratch off game card tournament for the past couple of weeks and yours truly has ended up in the championship game. It's the final inning of the final game and I'm up 3-1 and coming to bat in the top of the inning. All kinds of crazy stuff can happen so a victory is not assured. I've already won enough inserts and relic cards to choke a mule though, so I'm destined to be a victor even in defeat. Cool Idea from David on the tourney, it's worth checking out.

We have a winnah!

Steve at White Sox cards correctly identified all 20 cards correctly. The post is updated with the answers. Here's Steve's prize:


Appropriate, I think.

No one guessed something important about two of the cards though... first one who tells me what it is gets a second chance prize. Post it in the comments this time folks.

Also still no one has the ad on the back of the T205 card right yet. Everyone picked the same advertisement except one guy who cheated and picked two.

You can also try to guess my unguessable favorite #1 anime chick if you want, but you'll never ever get it ever. Ever! Ha ha!

2008 Heritage Insert Checklists

I got bored so I cobbled together the Wal-Mart and Target Heritage insert checklists from eBay auctions. Lots of overlap and no Braves. Also, if you see an auction advertising these cards as RARE!!! don't you believe it. One in every four packs, folks. Not rare. Probably easier to get than any given common if I took the time to do the math*. Oh well. I am going to go out on a limb and say that these checklists are good for both the Topps and Heritage versions of these cards. Anyone know if K-Mart has their own inserts? All the K-Marts near me closed down. One turned into a Sears, oddly enough.

Wal-Mart Dick Perez inserts:
HDP1 Manny Ramirez
HDP2 Cameron Maybin
HDP3 Ryan Howard
HDP4 David Ortiz
HDP5 Tim Lincecum
HDP6 David Wright
HDP7 Mickey Mantle
HDP8 Joba Chamberlain
HDP9 Ichiro
HDP10 Prince Fielder


Target T-205 inserts:
HTC1 Albert Pujols
HTC2 Clay Buchholz
HTCP3 Matt Holliday
HTCP4 Luke Hochevar
HTCP5 Alex Rodriguez
HTCP6 Joey Votto
HTCP7 Chin-Lung Hu
HTCP8 Ryan Braun
HTCP9 Joba Chamberlain
HTCP10 Ryan Howard
HTCP11 Ichiro
HTCP12 Steve Pearce
HTCP13 Vladimir Guerrero
HTCP14 Wladimir Balentien
HTCP15 David Ortiz

Oh, never mind on the K-Mart inserts. They have a shiny gold version of some of the rookie cards in the Topps set. Nothing out there for Heritage yet though. K-Mart never gets the good cards.

*Ok, I got bored enough to do the math. Considering the entire print run, these inserts are actually tougher than your basic common. But not a whole lot tougher, especially the Dick Perez cards. There's an average of one set in every 40 packs for the Perez and one in 60 packs for T205. 40 packs will get you about 250 base cards or so. 60 is about 375 base cards. Exclusivity saves them from being dirt common. SP's are still way more RARE!!! than these cards though. Yes, I'm really, really bored.

Heritage Retail Premiums

My second Heritage hobby box was packed full o' doubles, hobby wax got expensive due to stupid gimmick cards, and dayf is in set building despair. Big Box Stores to the rescue! Target and Wal-Mart both have exclusive insert cards in 2008 Topps to help push those packs and blasters out the door. Target has a fifteen card T205 style set, while Wal Mart has a ten card set featuring Dick Perez paintings. Topps had never had bonus cards in their Heritage product before, but apparently the market is so bad that they need a little extra oomph in their retail packs to get them to move off the shelves. Two more insert sets? Groan! Who needs two more insert sets? Well, check them out:

Yep, Target recycled the T205s but these are MINI cards! Joy!!! No, I'm not being sarcastic, I love the hell out of T205s and I REALLY love mini cards. I'd marry them if it wasn't a felony in my home state. Damn blue laws.

I pulled an Ichiro out of some Target packs I bought. It looks like they are inserted 1 in 4 packs. I'm assuming the blasters will have a box topper pack, but I haven't seen any Heritage blasters yet so I don't really know. This card is perfect. It's got the exact design from the T205 set, the card stock looks good, it even kind of smells like stale tobacco. Oh wait, those are the neighbor's kids smoking cigarettes behind the house. At least I hope they are cigarettes... Those kids need some cards. Wally World recycled their Dick Perez cards too, but look at the fantastic result:


Maaaaaaaaan that looks slick. It might just be the black border or the fact that I'm a Howard fan, but that card kicks booty. Bigboote, even. I think I'll have to work out the checklist from eBay auctions because these are a couple of sets I'd like to build. They're a heck of a lot better than the News Flashback set, that's for sure. Anyone want to trade a Penguin card for a T205 mini Vlad? A Clutter Family Shotgun Murder card for a Dick Perez David Wright? Anyone? Beuller?


I sure hope there's bonus packs of this stuff in the blasters. I'd rather build the set through boxes rather than having to deal with loose retail packs. I'll give Topps credit, they sure know how to reel in the suckers like me.

Topps Target Exclusive Inserts

Last year Topps packs at Target had Ted Williams mirror cards that were exclusive to Target packs. The mirrors are gone this year, replaced by a T-205 tribute set. T-205 is a great design and unlike their recent Trading Card History sets, they actually remembered the gold border on these cards. The wrapper extols you to collect the first 15 cards and shows a 1:4 ratio for the cards, with relics dropping at 1:1883 packs. I snagged a handful of packs and ended up pulling one-fifth of the set.

The three I pulled are all rookies from the base set, Wladimir Balentien, Steve Pearce and Chin-Lung Hu. I guess this could mean that the set is focusing on rookies only (Brandon Jones in the set, maybe?) but Mario at Wax Heaven ripped a few packs for Valentine's day and pulled an Albert Pujols. In any case, they are pretty slick. Concidering the Topps205 binder in my bookcase has a complete base, T202 and Polar Bear series 1 set, I'll bet you can guess how I feel about these. One more insert set to chase. Oh bother.