Top 20 Intermission - YO MOMMA

The next installment of the Card Show Top 20 is going to be image-heavy. Expect a long intermission. Don't like it? YO MOMMA don't like it. She don't like these cards either. That's why she threw out the originals. I got all these out of a quarter box. Quarter boxes are great for finding recent Topps inserts. Wait a few years and you'll find them in the dime boxes. Or maybe the trash. Dangit mom!

Ok, this one wasn't thrown away. Topps just made it up last year. So, forget the fact that Pee Wee is on a 2003 Topps design. Try to look past that. Focus instead on the photo. That photo looks fantastic on first glance. The leaping throw by Pee Wee! Jackie backing up the play! Wow, what a photo! Wait, what the hell is George Shuba doing??? I'm guessing that's #8 lying on the ground. What the hell is he doing down there? Sliding into short? Getting a tan? About to get a kick in the face from Pee Wee?

REGGIE. REGGIE. REGGIE. I don't know what it is with me and Reggie. Hit three home runs in a World Series game and some dumb kid gets obsessed with him forever. I DON'T EVEN LIKE THE FRIGGIN YANKEES.

Ok, this crap drives me crazy. I know, orange and black are the Orioles' colors. Everyone knows that. Anyone who collects 1963 Topps also knows that THERE IS NOT EVEN ONE SINGLE CARD IN THE SET WITH A BLACK BORDER ON THE BOTTOM. Blue, Red, Green, Yellow. THAT'S IT. The font on the name is all jacked up too. It's Eddie though so we'll let it slide this time.

Ok, here are the actual ones that Yo Momma may have had a change to send to the dump to rot for eternity. Your precious cards, in the landfill, mixing with all the other decaying filth, turning to toxic compost not even useful for growing things in.

AAAAAAH ANOTHER REGGIE. This one has the original back too! I don't actually collect those BUT THEY ARE RARE OMG. They are one in a box instead of 6 in a box. I should throw this out just so my kid can bitch at me for destroying his financial independence and well being 30 years from now.

This '83 Wade Boggs rookie is one of the few cards my mom actually had the opportunity to throw out. This card was obtained before I became a card obsessed unstable teenager. She didn't throw any of 'em out though, and now today I am completely addicted to these worthless bits of cardboard ephemera. Thanks, ma! While she didn't throw it out, she did allow me to trade one of mby Boggs doubles to a card shop for a bunch of '87 Fleer rack packs. In one of them was a Barry Bonds rookie. That's some real tough love from ma there. Gotta learn not to trade vintage for wax, kids!

Robin Roberts in an Astros uni?? Hell, I might throw this one out myself.

Finally the Big Kahuna, a 1954 Topps Tommy Lasorda rookie reprint. Note the fact that the top has a white border completely unlike every other real '54 Topps cards in existence. Why does Topps do this? WHY TOPPS WHYYYYYY. My OCD is flaring up big time.  I might have to take a pair of scissors to this one.

The results

Ok I entered my code at 7:34am. I was going to do it last night but people kept guessin' so I let the insomniacs have their fun. Before I show you the final result, here's an important announcement:

Stop making these ludicrous trade offers. The only person who is going to trade a vintage card for a 2000 Todd Greene is a 2 year old, someone with brain damage or Todd's mom. Even if you do manage to pull off this trade, you're a bad, bad person. The other two are acceptable. Try to do that.

I know you're all frothing at the mouth wanting to know if I pulled TEH STRASSBORG ZOMG so I will make you wait no longer.

My card:

(epic fail)

Not sure if I could have thought up a worse card than that, but hey, that's what happens when you gamble. Looking at the guesses and....

No one guessed 2006 or Desi so no winner today. Jonathan @ RGB cards was the closest with a guess of 2005 Gabe Kapler, but close only counts in horseshoes and deep water oil rig inspections. I might have to redeem all my cards this way just so horrible commons that I already have can be made interesting. Stay tuned for more Topps shenanigans!

Guessing time

Ok, I got this here out of a rack pack tonight.

I have amassed a small pile of codes now, enough so that if the '50s switch is ever thrown again I might be able to snag one or two. Since I haven't redeemed a code in months I'm going to redeem this one sometime after midnight and before 8:00am. Depends on when I fall asleep, really.

If anyone can guess which card (year & player) I pull out of the transmogrifier I'll send you a prize. If no one hits it on the nose, I'll consider a lesser prize if someone gets the player or the year. Winner gets a random autograph, a card of the player they picked, a card from the year they picked and some assorted detritus I want out of my house. If no one is even close, you'll get nothing and like it. Start guessing.

A couple from the quarter box

I hit the card shop with the quarter box again today, vintage lists in hand. Unfortunately, I bragged too much about how I found a quarter box with early '70s cards in it.

The '70s cards were almost completely wiped out.

Luckily, I had already gotten all the semi-high numbered cards and as many '72s off my wantlist that I could find before the vintage goodness evaporated. I am nothing if not flexible in my card-scrounging skills and I still managed to walk out of the shop with a large pile of swag. There was quite a bit of 2010 short prints, inserts and parallels in the box and I managed to get some quarter goodies. Here are a couple that fit a theme.

Here's a 1954 Topps Yo Momma of Al Kaline. Al's rookie card is the second best card from the '54 set and is pretty iconic in its own right. I've always liked Al and not just because my nerdy sciencey self snickered a bit at his name when I was a kid. One time when my mom was out on a business trip, she came home with a couple of pages of baseball cards for me that she found at an antique shop. Two pages of vintage Al Kaline cards. The '54 wasn't in there but there was a really nice 1960 card of Al that I still cherish. That card is the exact opposite of a card Yo Momma threw out. I found a nice pile of these in the box and nabbed them all. I also found this:

Here's a National Chicle short print of Reid Gorecki. Reid made his debut with the Braves last year and played in 31 games mostly as a defensive replacement and pinch runner. He was released after the season and is now in the Yankees' minor league system. I'm kind of bummed about that now, after appearing in just about every early 2010 set as a Brave, he finally gets a really cool card and is now a Yankee. Them's the breaks.

What a Hall of Fame Tiger and a journeyman rookie have in common, I don't know. The '54 Topps design ties them together at least on a couple of quarter cards.

Call it the Strasmogrifier

The Topps Yo Momma Code Transmogifier is suffering from mission creep.

Tonight, after Stephen Strasburg's first pitch for the Nats, Topps will be giving away rookie cards of the overhyped phenomenon on toppscards.com. Some poor schlub will enter in a code hoping for a 1987 Wade Boggs and end up with some card from this year. The card will feature the first pitch from Strasburg, which means I have yet another reason to wish for a Dravecky moment for ol' Can't Possibly Miss.

I guess Topps is just taking advantage of two successful moneymakers and combining them into one ("You got Strasburg in my Transmogrifier!" "You got Transmogrifier in my Strasburg!!") ginormous hype machine but I haven't decided whether I'll be burning one of my codes tonight or not. It's obvious that the card redemptions aren't random what with the three straight weeks of mid 70's stuff in the recently unlocked cards section and I'm pretty certain they will be getting rid of a bunch of mid-aughts commons tonight as everyone madly enters codes hoping to win the lottery.

I got two codes and I've grown bored with the site since no one wants to trade me the cards I want and everyone  wants my '87 George Brett and '81 Alan Trammell for some reason. I might burn one for the lulz. Woulda been nice for them to get some series two retail packs out in time to stock up on some codes but timeliness is not a Topps trademark.

Yo Momma Trade of the Month

I had another post lined up for this morning, but my PC had it's daily "Dayf's in a rush, let's lock up hard" moment, so you get this trade I pulled off instead for today's reading pleasure. I guess Steve12 is just a big Larry Walker fan. I don't particularly care about any of the guys I got in return but I couldn't refuse three for one. The Topps Transmogrifier? That's another story...

This is affectionaltely known in the industry as taking a dump. This happened about three times before I finally got the trade to go through. That was a lotta work for cards I didn't care much about. They are all up for trade for just one 1989 Mark Lemke. Or 1995? I'll take 1997. Please?

Transmogrifier Unstuck

Previously, I stated that I was not entering another code into the Topps Yo Momma Transmogrifier until the Recently Unlocked Cards section showed no Hall of Famers from 1986-1989. As a result, I didn't enter in a single code for over a month despite checking the site daily. However, a little over a week ago I saw a breakthrough...

Frankly, this stunned me. After weeks of junk wax HOFers, I finally hit the conditions needed for me to risk one of my three remaining codes. Now, this mix sure wasn't ideal by any means. Three of ten are crap from the past ten years. There was a Hall of Famer that just barely missed my self imposed ban range. Ther was a junk wax '87 Topps card,but Fred Lynn is only getting in the Hall if he buys a ticket. The two cards from the '50s clinched it. After weeks of waiting it was time to redeem a code. This was the result.

Oy Gevalt.

Is Mark Prior completely out of baseball or is he working on another comeback? Wherever he is, this code was a waste of pixels. This combined with my utter failure to trade for a 1989 Mark Lemke gave me Yo Momma Malaise. Every time I checked during the past week I saw bad junkwax and 21st century cards everywhere. Bleargh. Then this morning I got a comment from Play at the Plate informing me that Eisner threw the Late '60s/Early '70s switch on the ol' Mogger. I checked, figuring that this was a 2AM tease that will ultimately go nowhere and I'd see more junk. Instead I saw it spititng out vintage as advertised. I threw caution to the wind and was rewarded.

COOKIE!!! 

OMNOMNOMNOMNOM

My faith in the Transmogrifier has been restored. Actually it hasn't. Now I know for certain that if I wait long enough I'll hit a '50s streak and cash in. But I now have faith that I can cash in if I wait long enough. This is especially important because I only have one code left to tide me over until series two comes out. The '60s run is still in effect as of this posting if you want to go for it.  I had never actually stuck around long enough to see a card I received show up on the recent cards list so I refreshed until I saw this:

Interesting. If I had seen that comment just a little bit later than I did, I might have a '93 Smoltz right now. Nothing wrong with that. A little later still and I could have had a '63 rookie card of Ray Culp. Still, you can't go wrong with Cookie. Especially that one with Cookie leaping to pull off the double play with the scoreboard in the background. The Royals were getting spanked, it appears. Nope, can't complain about this one. Well, other than now I want to get more codes. Dangit, Topps. You win again.

1953 Topps Jackie Robinson Reprint

Card #1
Jackie Robinson
Brooklyn Dodgers
Second Base

• Integrated the Major Leagues on April 15, 1947.
• You know who Jackie is.
• Seriously, people in remote tribes in the Amazon know who Jackie is.
• This isn't even a real 1953 Topps card anyway.

I could have had this card for 25 bucks back in 1987 but I passed it up like a dumbass. Now I have to resort to showing off a Yo Momma card for my 1953 set because my Completeness OCD has taken over. This is a pretty dang Iconic card right here. It's not his rookie, it's not his first Topps card, but it's probably his best looking card put out during his playing days. The smile on Jackie's face, the B logo on the hat, the facade in the background that could be Ebbets field, or maybe the Roman Colosseum, the red (??) Dodgers logo meshing with the black name box at the bottom. It's a very well designed card and a perfect beginning to the '53 set. 

I was originally not going to do reprints in this series, but since it was the anniversary of Integration Day I decided what the heck. Besides, I'm never going to get my hands on the entire set anyway, I'll have to sell both kidneys to be able to afford the Mantle or Mays. Between various reprint sets and Topps Archives I should be able to rustle up images for all 274 cards. If I can't find a reprint, then maybe I'll just have to pony up for the original instead.

Dangit Topps, we do not need to bring book value into this

I've been pretty quiet about the Topps Yo Momma Code Transmogrifier lately. One reason is that after I figured out that Michael Eisner can throw a switch any time he wants that will cause it to spit out all '70s, '60s or even '50s cards I decided there was no reason to enter in all my codes immediately. I pledged to only enter in a new code if there were no late '80s Hall of Famers on the "Recently Unlocked Cards" list. The criteria were very specific - Hall of Famer, 1986-1989. I have checked the site at least twice a day most every day. By strictly following my criteria, I still have not redeemed a code in several weeks.

The other reason is that I am up to some trading shenanigans. I'm working toward a goal and I didn't want to announce it until it was completed. I'm still offering up random trades for players I like though. Today I made an offer for a 1989 Mark Lemke rookie using some cards I picked up from Spastik Mooss in a trade. When I was asked to confirm the trade I saw a very disturbing message:

Topps. Oh Topps, Topps, Topps. I like you Topps. You and I Topps, we're good pals, we are. We've been good pals for a long time, Topps. Since we're such good buddies, I'm willing to overlook some faults. That's what friends do. And since I'm your friend I'm gonna tell you this. Do not try to tell me the value of a Mark Lemke rookie card. That card is valuable to me and I'll trade what I bloody well please for it. We do not need to bring book value into this. The entire concept of 'value' when we're really talking about insubstantial pixels on a computer screen is actually pretty damn silly. Ok, I see why you're putting that warning on there... so n00bs don't end up trading all their really good cards from the '50s and '60s for some junk wax scrub. That's fine. But don't you tall me the value of a Lemmer rookie. That sucker is priceless as far as I'm concerned.

Someone kick the Transmogrifier

The Code Transmogrifier at Toppscards.com got hopelessly stuck on late '80s Hall of Famers yesterday again . Don't believe me?

I have 7 more screencaps of this, don't make me post them all. 


Luckily, Eisner looked up momentarily from counting all his money and gave the machine a swift kick. Perhaps too hard...

It didn't help much, but after a couple of hours a '60's card finally broke through:

Wait a minute... am I reading that right?

I guess I am reading that right. How have I never heard of Dick Lines before?? Someone alert Great Sports Names Hall of Fame. It's back to crap again now though. I guess I'm going to be sitting on these three codes I have for a loooong time at this rate.

More Additions to the Yo Momma Gallery

Ever get so far behind you just sort of give up and blithely let the world collapse around you? Yeah, that's pretty much the past three years for me. Time to pick up another brick from the collapsed castle. Here's some more Yo Momma cards that came through the mail.

These three are from Todd the O's fan. In exchange he'll get the dregs of what I haven't sent to Kevin and Beardy. Enjoy the dregs, Todd!

And these came from the Wax Wombat himself. He has the cutest blog mascot out there. Oooooh! Fuzzy wittle wombat! I want to cuddle and tickale and - AAAAAH THEY BITE THEY BIIIIIITE THE PAIN OH GOD I'M MISSING APPENDAGES NOW

Thanks guys!

Additions to the Yo Momma Gallery

Knockin' Three trade posts out with one stone. Here's a whole bunch of additions to my Yo Momma set. According to the initial sell sheet there's another one in series two. Oh bother.

This pile came from a fellow ATLien, Jim Garrison...

 

 

These are from Rob, who has a blog, but I forgot what it was...

This Nolan Ryan back was in another of  long line of packages from Madding at Cards on Cards.

These I stumbled upon whole tracking down some more Code cards (which I haven't redeemed yet since the Transmogrifier is pritting out junk again)

Thanks to all, your packages are ready and will be in the mail as soon as I can get to a post office. The hunt continues...

Virtual Trading

As opposed to real trading, which I am hopelessly behind in right now. So instead of answering e-mails and getting packages together, I'm trading virtual bits of cardboard over at the Yo Momma Card Code Transmogrifier. This is the oldest card I've gotten out of that one armedbuttoned bandit:

Hooray! 2010 Topps Heritage! I don't mind pulling a '61 Topps card but I think I can flip it for something better.

I made offers to some other folks for some cards off my Braves want list. I targeted one card off my list for each year from 1957 to 1964. What year do you think I'll get? Will I get anything? If you want this card for for very own personal virtual Topps card bit bucket, better make an offer quick. See? it's a ROOKIE. Don't all offer at once, now.