Catching up on trades - Stale Gum

A little while back, Chris Harris of Stale Gum bought twenty packs of junk wax for a buck a pop. Included int he packs were two packs of 2000 Topps Tek. Tek is one of the more obnoxious sets in baseball card history, but I find its plastic holo shinyness irresistible. So I made him an offer: Whatever is in those two packs of Tek in exchange for 40 cards off his wantlists. Chris took me up on the offer and sent the Tek:

Among the many gimmicks in Tek is the background patterns. This one here has Corey Patterson's hometown of Kennesaw featured. Pretty cool, since I live right down the road from Kennesaw. Also included were a pile of random Braves (with two Upper Deck Powerdeck CDs which is a post in and of itself) including a 1/1 autographed* card of Denny Neagle!

Man, these sticker autos are getting crummier every day. This one's got flaps hanging off the sides! It's the autograph version of a maxipad with wings.

As an aside, I mentioned that if he had any T-51 Murad lying around he didn't want I'd be interested in trading for it. So, along with the Tek and the Braves, he sent some T-51.


A WHOLE FRIGGIN BOX WORTH.

Holy bleeping bleepity bleep.

This is why Chris Harris is The Man. And Topps is The Company for sending him the box in the first place. That's one way of building a starter set. Time for me to go look through some more wantlists.

* autographed by Chris Harris, that is. I think this is my third 1/1 auto from Chris. Another 217,000 trades and we'll start to approach Moments & Milestones numbers of 1/1 cards.

Well that was quick

Within hours of posting my 1981 Fleer wantlist, I lined up 3 trades to complete the set. Joe offered to send the cards I needed as well. Talk about speedy service! I guess this proves that people jut want to get rid of their 1981 Fleer cards as fast as they can. I couldn't imagine why...

Thanks to Duane, Jason & Don for knocking this set out for me!

Two more items of interest before I start studying for a test and writing up my Goudey pack rip:

Thanks to Kevin and Thorzul for tipping me off to this awesome Onion article about a Chipper Jones fan. To anyone still bewildered by that young man's choice, think about it:

TWELVE YEAR OLD.

HOOTERS GIRLS.

He's just proud of his hero, man. And he wants to be just like his idol one day.

Finally, to Chris Harris:

I LOVE YOU, MAN.

The reason for my affection shall be posted soon. Time to study right now.

Reconnaissance Report

Ok. I just got back from Target.

They had blasters, but the code on the back was 1-825-50-10-9 and not 1-825-50-12-9. I guessed that meant that they were the normal blasters and not the Throwback ones, so I didn't get one. They also had Cereal boxes there. Same deal as Wal-Mart with the following differences:

Gold refractor instead of Platinum.

The player list was the big three plus:
Bob Gibson
Roy Campanella
Cy Young
Walter Johnson
Jimmie Foxx
Ty Cobb
Roberto Clemente

So when I said I would have replaced Munson and Sisler in the Wal-Mart Boxes with Cobb and Clemente I was sort of half right.

There was also a ton of new Upper Deck stuff in there including:

Blasters

36 Card Fat Packs

And...

Retail packs.

I finally got a pack of UD retail. No one tell Topps though, because if I hadn't known about the code trick for Throwback blasters I would have bought one of the regular ones instead of the pack of Upper Deck. I don't want to discourage them from actually giving us relevant information in the future so shhhhhh. I'll rip this either here or on A Pack A Day this weekend.

I also hit the card shop. Good News, everyone! You're all hearing this post with the voice of Professor Farnsworth in your head now! Oh, Also they finally had T51 Murad!

Apparently they had it a few days ago but some jerk bought it all up. I got a pack of it to check it out. Looks good! I'll post it here soon enough.

But you don't care about that.

You want something else.

The good stuff.

The Really Really GOOOOOOOOD Stuff!

You want...

Chocodiles!

Oh my God, these Chocodiles, oh my God.

Oh yeah, also some of this:

I got the absolute last five packs in the store. They got in four boxes today and vultures gobbled it all up. SQWAWK *ahem*

Bad News, everyone!

I'm meeting my wife to go see Frost/Nixon in about 45 minutes.

So you'll have to wait until this evening to see the goods.

Oh my God, this Heritage, Oh my god.



It's even funnier in Italian!

Heritage is Live, Kinda

Just got back from the hobby shop and a certain mega retailer.

Per the owner, Heritage is delayed but it might be in tomorrow. One dude has a box up on eBay with picture. Forums are starting to pick up on it too. I still don't see a single solitary card on eBay though. Maybe by tonight.

However, it wasn't at my card shop at 3:00pm today so IT'S DEAD TO ME.

The rest of the trip to the card shop was a wash. There was no T51 Murad. They didn have Spectrum, but the price on the box said 7 something a pack. I didn't catch the exact price, because I saw the 7 and my brain started laughing so hard it couldn't process rational thought any more. To provide extra context, the display case the box was sitting on has several 'celebrity' autograph cards from last year's Spectrum deeply discounted on the bottom shelf. So yeah, that wasn't happening. There wasn't a T206 screwdown for Mark either. Today was the first time in forever that I went into a card shop and left with all the money I came in with.

I said I wasn't coming home empty handed though and I meant it.

2009 Topps Wal-Mart Blaster.

Live Break.

6:00pm Eastern.

BE THERE

2009 Topps Heritage and other random stuff for a Wednesday morning

Big day today. Ash Wednesday. Spring Training games kick off. Topps Heritage is scheduled for release. I've been keeping an eye out for singles on the Bay and I have bad news:

No 2009 Topps Heritage singles on eBay yet. This isn't a good sign, as the new products are usually distributed to the big boys a day early and ripping parties ensue. I did some poking around and it does look like it may be delayed until Friday. Also noted here and here. I'll do some recon at the card shop today and file a full report. But wait, there's worser news:

2009 Spectrum is live. I wasn't crazy about this set last year, but I did buy a blaster for the hell of it. Not this year. I have six new sets I'm far more interested in buying instead of this shiny junk (In order: Heritage, Upper Deck, Topps, T51 Murad, American Heritage, and Mayo(and I don't even like Mayo all that much)) and I can't be dropping cash on this stuff anymore. I might pick up a retail pack just to show off the mediocrity, but hobby packs were 6 dollars a pack and up last year and there ain't no chance I'm paying that. You shiny hit chasers can go rip some boxes of that, I'll eagerly await the scan of the Lita Ford auto you pull. But wait, there's gooder news:

T51 Murad is live. If I could get a box for $60, I'd buy one of them tomorrow and wait a few weeks on the Heritage. They will probably be closer to $75-$85 at the card shop so don't worry about that happening. T51 Murad is basically Topps' version of an Allen & Ginter style retro set. They are based on a very colorful Tobacco card set from 1910 that featured college sports subjects. The set had the very first basketball themed card so Topps chose that design to swipe. I have been pestering my card shop for this set for weeks, so hopefully there will be a box there tomorrow as a consolation prize for the delayed Heritage.

Finally, BlackBorderGate is spreading, I found a couple more Wal-Mart blaster breaks on The Bench, both with black borders. Apparently the cards have a Chrome finish to them as well? No chrome finish, that poster ate too many strange mushrooms. I honestly have no freaking clue what the hell is going on with this. I'm torn between avoiding Topps altogether now because of this stupidity and hunting down a blaster just to get some damn information on what the hell this stuff is. We'll see. There might be a box break one way or another tomorrow. It just seems inconceivable that Topps would have all their Wal-Mart blasters have completely different cards in them. If you're going to do a black border early Chrome set, put a big red label on the blaster that says warning! lark's vomit black border Chrome! I've already got about 150-200 cards from the set, if I bought a Wal-Mart blaster in order to work on finishing that set and I got a completely different product I'd be pissed.

As your reward for all that wordiness, here's something very cool I found while working on that 1960 Topps post. Here's the back of that Al Lopez card I showed off:

All cartoons, just like I said. I can't freaking wait for Bobby Cox's cartoons. The toons looked familiar though, so I pulled out a card from 2009 American Heritage:

Hmmm... notice anything similar?

Al Lopez
Gettysburg Address guy

Topps recycled the cartoons! I have half a mind to abandon 2009 sets altogether and search through all my vintage stuff for cartoons. If Topps buggers up their base set anymore, I just might do that...

Topps Keeps Me Up At Night

I love the Mayo set, but Topps really screwed the pooch on the autogamers. I was looking around for an American Heritage box break on YouTube and I stumbled on Topps' official video for Mayo:

For the record, here are the autograph and relic hits shown off in the video:

Adrian Peterson autograph
Joe Paterno autograph
Charlie Sheen autograph
Willie Nelson relic
Vince Lombardi cut sig

Here's the list of cards actually inserted into the set.

Finally, here are those 5 cards with their actual packout status:

Adrian Peterson autograph - not there
Joe Paterno autograph - not there
Charlie Sheen autograph - not there
Willie Nelson relic - not there
Vince Lombardi cut sig - not there

Sorry Topps, but that just ain't right. I sure hope this doesn't bode ill for T51 Murad...

That's another set I was looking forward to... Please don't muck it up Topps!