Buncha Lotta Ginter Cards

Now that the marketing push has moved to Chromey Chrome Cards I can show off a rack pack of Geentarz I picked up a while back. Wasn't as good as that blaster I ripped last year but it was nice. Short review of 2015 Ginter: Really dig the understated line art border that kinda looks like an ornamental door hinge. No gigantic team name clogging up the card this year and the Allen & Ginter logo looks classy as fuck. The pictures and card backs look exactly the same as they have since 2006 which is as it should be. There is entirely too much crap clogging up the master set, but the base set, base inserts and minis are all pretty great so who cares. I still hate the full sized Gypsy-Queen style relics but no one cares what I think so you'll get those and like them. The set is pretty much the entire reason I haven't abandoned this rat race of a hobby yet so I better fuckin' like it and howaboutthat I do. Yay Ginterz. Here's a pack of the stuff.

#118 Adam Lind

I've stared at this card for two hours and I still have nothing to say about Adam Lind. I didn't know he was even still in the league, let alone with the Brewers. He's probably been DFA'd or traded since this card was printed. I only noticed the ding on the right edge when I saw it in the scan. That's what I get for buying retail wax.

#263 Pedro Alvarez

My Pedro Alvarez card story: In 2008 or so Upper Deck put out a special retail blaster with Team USA relic cards featuring a bunch of prospects or whatnot. Pedro Alvarez was in the set and was kind of a big deal since he was the #2 overall pick that year by the Pirates. I bought a blaster, pulled a Pedro. Supa big sick mojo. Now 8 years later, he's an All-Star first baseman for a playoff contender and not one single person anywhere gives a single shart about a Team USA relic swatch of anybody, let alone Pedro Alvarez. I had a point when I started writing this but I can't remember what it is anymore so you figure one out and let me know.

#FSRA-VK MOTHERFUCKING BATMAN

Dammit, I got nice and cynical and then a cool card came along to help me remember why I like this hobby in the first place. When the Ginter checklist came out I did what everyone does and opened it up like an old Sears Christmas Catalog and went through and checked off all the cool things I wanted. Val was on my list! Ginter Claus brought me goodies this year! My first Real Genuis relic card!

Also - Obligatory:

#335 Collin Cowgill

I see this dude's name and I think of Colin Cowherd singing Love American Style and I don't want to look at this card anymore

#311 Michael Brantley

Michael's been in the league since 2009 and I didn't know who the heck he was which shows you how much I know. His nickname is Dr. Smooth which is awesome and should be his legal name and he should be allowed to operate on people if he wishes. Also, apparently short prints are no longer A Thing in Ginter, either by design or due to a printing mishap. Either way I'm OK with this.

#225 Thunderlips

Hoo boy. There's too many jokes and none of them are really all that funny so forget it. RIP Rowdy Roddy.

This was a Wal-Mart rack pack so this is the end of pack one. Target's racks squeeze all 14 cards into one brick which is a far better design in my opinion. The dings and dents on the top and bottom cards in the pack prove my correctness.

#141 Justin Upton

First Barve (kinda) of the pack! Justin joins Marquis Grissom, Kenny Lofton and Gary Sheffield in my 'great Braves outfielders who didn't stay here long but I really appreciated them while they were here' list.  

#116 Freddie Freeman

First Barve (actually) of the pack! Kinda rare to see a Braves card of someone who is still on the team these days. Worth mentioning is that the pictures in Ginter this year seem to be a lot more tightly cropped than in years past. Or maybe Freddie just has a big ol' noggin.

#SP-2 Albert Pujols Starting Points

Starting Points is the one-every-other-pack-100-card-insert-set Topps threw into Ginter this year in an attempt to make you rip MOARER PAX because you have to Collect All The Things. Jason Heyward has a Braves card in the set so it is my Insert Set of The Year 2015 winner. Also: Albert Pujols has been around freakin' FOREVER.

#WAS-10 Geocentric Solar System - What Was Once Believed

There are too many inserts in this bloody overstuffed mess of a product but dangit, I like all of the inserts this year. The quirky science sets are interesting even though 2/3rds of them feature bad science. The magical monsters and ancient weaponry inserts feel like a Topps version of Magic:The Gathering. There's also the obligatory cites and landmarks set but that's ok. The non-sports stuff is charming to me. This trading card is referencing Copernicus! How cool is that?

#292 Grant Balfour mini

Has anyone made the Balfour is a terrible name for a pitcher joke? Well I just did. I purposefully avoided the obvious political joke in the previous card's writeup so I deserve one groaner today. I haven't pulled out the binder to check but I'd give this card about a 15% chance of landing in the FrankenSet.

#35 John Singleton mini black border

The purist in me hates to say it, but I actually like the newfangled black border minis with the crazy designs better than the old-school solid black. Having the border design go berserk and overrun the card looks really nifty. This card definitely makes the black border mini FrankenSet because black border parallels are hard.

#43 Adam Jones

I still prefer this Oriole outfielder over the one the Braves poached this offseason. If I ever get back into baseball sims like OOTP I'll probably put Heyward, Adam and J-Up in the Braves outfield just because I can. Nice end to the pack. I didn't mention it before but I am really liking the multi-colored borders in Ginter this year and am looking forward to seeing how it all looks in a binder.

So in conclusion, Ginter is a land of contrasts. Hope you liked my bi-monthly blog post! See you this Halloween!

9 more cards from two more racks

It's going to take me a couple months to figure out the Gint-a-cuffs scoring, so here's the second half of my 'hanging blaster' to tide you over. Extra added bonus: I remembered to check the descreening filter this time while scanning!

MARTEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN 

I don't know what it is, but the full bleed border mini inserts always look friggin fantastic. I'm not even going to attempt to explain Kasper Hauser because it's just too weird. Google him. Nineteenth century con men always did their work with style.

Speaking of looking fantastic, here are some choanoflagellate-type thingys swimmin' around.

Ok, storytime. I'm watching the All-Star game with my son. National League is up, two men are on, Brian McCann is on deck. This dude is at the plate. I'm still mad at him for getting Bobby Cox suspended for a game last year (have I told this story already?) so I start calling him Princess Fielder as is my wont. The kids think this is utterly fantastic and my daughter (who should be in bed by now but refuses since big brother is up) is absolutely fascinated by the ugliest princess ever. So right in the middle of our mocking of the world's fattest vegetarian he has the nerve to hit a home run and steal all of Brian McCann's RBIs. Imagine! Even though he stole B-Mac's glory (especially since he stole B-Mac's glory) I continued to call him Princess which pissed my wife off something fierce so I get yelled at. Ever since then I've been pulling his cards like crazy. Dang Princesses. Moral of the story: If someone you are ragging on suddenly shows you up, double down on the mockery. It's not mature, it won't help anything, and you end up looking really stupid, but damn, it's fun.

Ping pong, man, ping pong.

MOAR PHISHIES. I got two bordering cards now and boy, do they look great. If you think it's odd that I got four Ascent of Man cards in four racks, then also know that I got absolutely NO dang short prints either. Not one. The hell is up with that.

The most powerful warship in the Royal Navy!

Sunk in a storm.

Penultimacy: adjective - The next to the last in a sequence

Antonio Meucci: Invented the telephone twenty years before Alexander Graham Bell. As in, Meuicci was the first man to invent the telephone. First. In a sequence.

Topps needs to invest in a dictionary.

I don't know who this dude is, but this is a bad ass card.

9 cards from two racks

Yay! Target has A&G! Booo! They don't have blasters! Here's 9 cards from the first two racks I snagged. Why 9? That's how many cards fit on the scanner.

Kalamazoo. Just Kalamazoo.

Dude masters fire and he's only 24 out of 26 cards. If card #26 is Michael Eisner, I'm giving up collecting cards as a hobby and taking up cross-stitch instead. That's some mighty fine flocculence there...

Hooray! Retail Checklists! Now I have five more cards to chase for this set. Well, four now.

A card in every garage, a chicken in every pot and a Chipper in every pack.

Topps is really pushing the evolution theme in this product. Two words for ya: BINOMIAL NOMENCLATURE. You have no idea what that is, but you vaguely remember having to memorize it for a biology class in middle school.

Yay! My first double for 2011!

The Ginterization of this photo did a neat thing to the ball Clayton is tossing. I've been stating at it for an hour. It looks like something out of a Rene Magritte painting.

Fuzzy Monkey! It was with this card I realized that Topps put the Ginter football pebbles texture on the Ascent of Man cards. It distracts a bit from the monkey butt, I think.

BIG MAC ATTACK. Two Braves and two cards from insert sets I'm collecting in two racks. Not too bad. Now hurry up and deliver the blasters already. Target still has plenty of 2010 blasters, though. C/MON TARGET, DON'T FORCE ME TO DIG THROUGH LOOSEYS

Rack Pack Madness Part 1 - 2010 Topps Update

Throughout the latter months of 2010, I was compulsively picking up Rack Packs of various Topps products from retail establishments at an alarming rate. There were several reasons for this. Topps' ruination of blasters with patches and parallels, a lack of compelling products worth dropping more than a fiver on, interesting shiny gimmickry on the Chromy packs and my gnawing addiction that precludes me from walking out of a Target without some cardboard. I need to get this all out of my system so as not to ruin another year blowing cash on retail wax so I'm going to showcase some racks this week. Here's a run of consecutive cards out of a rack of 2010 Update that I found interesting.

Adam Wainwright workout joisey Mojo. Former Brave. We got a year out of JD Drew at least.

J-Hey and formed Atlanta Hawk draft pick Dave Winfield.

Spahnnie Tale of the Game.

Stupid Attax card that almost ruins the run. I remembered that Markie Mark played high school ball in Georgia so this tenuous Atlanta connection keeps the streak alive.

Ok, as much as I've bagged on them in the past year it is really cool that they picked the Lou Burdette switcheroo card for the Yo Momma set.

Formeerd Brave pitcher who was traded to the Yankees for Aroldys Vizcaino. Melky was a throw-in, people.

Former Brave first baseman what we should have never gotten rid of in the first place. How nice would it have been to have Roche nailing down first for the past few years?

But at least we got this guy to replace him for a month last year.

Nice little run of locals there if you don't count the Markakis. I see Attax cards like one of those puffy sweatshirt advertisement cards from the '80s so it's easy to pass right over it.

2010 Heritage racks are haunting Targets

I actually went hoping to find a blaster, but these Rack Packs were there instead. No normal packs. just the Racks. Odd, I thought.

I was somewhat peeved to see there were only 14 cards in the rack. I was almost certain there were 15 or 16 last year. This means for pure card bulk, blasters are the way to go. Here's the breakdown of packs/cards/$$$ if you're interested.

7 retail packs - 56 cards - $21+tax

4 Racks - 56 cards - $20+tax

1 blaster - 8 packs - 64 cards - $20+tax

This is assuming that Topps doesn't pull some shenanigans like putting 7 packs plus some ManuPatchFractor Ruth card in the blaster instead of 8 packs.

I got four packs. Two at one Target, two at another. Both times I actually had a legitimate reason for going and wasn't just scrounging for cards. That is, if you consider soap and diapers legitimate. I'm going to show off the four best cards from each of the four packs just because I'm in a four kind of mood. Here's pack one, in order of coolness.

Ryan Howard

The cover model. I'd really like the Phillies if they weren't beating the hell out of my Braves all the time.

Melky Cabrera

Everyone in Atlanta is all like GRAAAAR idiot Frank Wren traded Javy Vazquez for Melky Cabrera. No he didn't. HE traded Javy for Melky, a relief pitcher, the Yankees' best pitching prospect AND enough payroll room to sign Tim Hudson for three more years. Melky ain't a bad player either, he'll do well in his platoon role with Diaz. What I'm tring to say is I got his card in an airbrushed Braves uni and I'm happy about this.

Then & Now Luis Aparicio & Jacoby Ellsbury

A pair of mismatched Sox here. Not totally random though, they both led baseball in stolen bases in their respective year. Historically speaking, throughout the entire Topps Heritage run this is my favorite insert set. Not a bad design this year either.

Shane Victorino All Star SP

Why do I like Shane Victorino? He tried to murder Brian McCann for Pete's sake, normally I'd swear eternal revenge on someone for doing that. I dunno, I guess it's because the guy has impressed me the way he absolutely ruins the Braves every time they face off. I had a Phillies bonanza tosay too, 7 of 56 cards had a Phil on it.

2006 Topps Rack Pack Vintage Cards

For some reason Night Owl and I have been on the same wavelength this week. He did an Upper Deck Post, so I hopped on the UD train.  I had a Yo Momma Alex Gordon post planned, and he scooped me. Today as I was writing up my Topps Million Code predictions, I check my homepage and see he got to that first too. So here's something that Night Owl hasn't done first, plus it may or may not be helpful in preparation for tomorrow's festivities. Here's a list of every vintage Topps card I pulled out of a Rack Pack in 2006. Or most of 'em anyway.

Topps last had a vintage giveaway in 2006 when  they inserted three vintage cards in every rack pack. I bought Rack Packs as if they were about to be declared illegal, and for some strange reason I stored them all in my 2006 Topps box along with the set and all my inserts. There was no reason to do so, they aren't marked or anything, just normal cards. But, since I did so I can now go back and list all of them. Now, the cards they inserted then and the cards they're giving away now are not necessarily the same type of thing, but it's a good data point for you all to maybe temper those thoughts of getting a '50s card with every code. I have a feeling it may be best to set your expectations low so if you do get something other than a 1989 common card you might get excited about it. If you bought your code off of eBay for five bucks, well, I can't do nothing for ya man.

Here's the list of 2006 Rack pack vintagey cards I pulled.

1952-1978: none

1979: 4

379 Lance Rautzhan
393 Scott McGregor
550 Sal Bando
705 Indians Prospects

1980: 0

1981: 2

241 Checkllist
383 Eric Soderholm

1982: 3

225 Mike Torrez
632 Bryan Clark
639 Ken Kravec

1983: 12

37 Darrell Johnson (2)
207 Rick Camp
216 Tony LaRussa
255 Gene Garber
269 Ron Oester
340 Larry Gura
402 Andre Dawson All-Star
495 Warren Cromartie  (2)
594 Eric Rassmussen
671 Lenny Faedo

1984: 18

101 Porfiro Altamirano
103 Dwayne Murphy
177 Jerry Hairston
185 Sixto Lezcano
221 Cliff Johnson
244 Candy Maldonado (2)
282 Jim Barr
473 Jim Dwyer
476 Tom Tellmann
477 Rafael Landestoy
608 Bobby Johnson
651 John MacNamera
744 Jamie Allen
761 John Montefusco
774 Tom Gorman
776 Craig Reynolds
783 Luis Leal

1985: 23

94 Toby Harrah
142 Father * Son - Trout
250 Jesse Orosco
284 Marty Bystrom
312 Marc Hill
313 Dave Schmidt (3)
400 Oddibe McDowell
418 Ken Landreaux
426 Vern Ruhle
452 John Castino
507 Ray Fontenot
527 Checklist
534 Brian Dayett
540 Claudell Washington
554 Doug Flynn
651 Jeff Russell
659 Checklist
720 Rick Sutcliffe All-Star
763 Kiko Garcia
784 Checklist

1986: 13

101 Dave Bergman
207 Fernando Valenzuela Record Breaker
245 Jim Sundberg
253 Dann Bilardello
410 Dave Kingman
541 Jorge Orta
542 Don Schiltze
545 Jimmy Key
584 Brian Fisher
589 Sid Bream
678 Dan Gladden
760 Andre Dawson (2)


1987: 6

405 Brook Jacoby
740 Rich Gedman
746 Bob Ojeda
748 Mike Flanagan
749 Ozzie Smith
751 Garth Iorg


1988: 27

47 Joaquin Anduhar
68 Dave Dravecky
96 Todd Benzinger
162 Mark McLemore
167 Rance Mulliniks
187 Steve Kiefer
208Steve Lake
223 Stan Jefferson
225 Mike Scioscia
299 Steve Crawford
305 Steve Sax
322 Vincente Palacios
309 Bill Long
343 Greg Gagne (2)
436 Mike Bielecki
485 Harold Reynolds
513 Tim Flannery
517 Ron Robinson (2)
524 Gary Lucas
533 John Farrell
571 Mark Williamson
630 Darrell Evans
651 Mike Jackson
662 Turn Back The Clock Jim Rice
728 Andy Allenson

89: 59

38 Paul Runge
56 Pat Tabler
59 Mark Davis
62 Alfredo Griffen
71Mike Boddicker
112 Jim Presley
156 Dave Gallager (2)
158 Mike Aldrete
171 Atlanta Braves
179 Ozzie Virgil
194 Greg Harris
201 Toronto Blue Jays
202 Brad Moore
214 Charlie O'Brien
231 San Diego Padres
232 Ricky Horton
242 Ed Vande Berg
247 Shawn Hillegas
259 Larry McWilliams
306 Tracy Woodson (2)
308 Ron Karkovice
215 Greg Swindell
368 Brian Holton
374 John Wathan
401 Jose Canseco All-Star
409 Ken Dayley
411 Mitch Williams
417 Mike LaCoss
422 Bo Diaz
426 Danny Gladden
433 Albert Hall
434 Ken Patterson
460 Dave Stieb
475 Dave Parker
494 Shane Rawley
498 Dave Valle
551 Randy Ready
565 Jeff Russell
568 Mickey Brantley
577 Randy Bush
597 Terry Taylor
610 Randy Myers
620 Barry Bonds
626 Jeff Reed
646 Kevin Bass
661 Turn Back the Clock Bwight Gooden
676 Ernie Riles
690 Doug Jones
718 Glenn Braggs
750 Brett Saberhagen
752 Jim Gott
766 Cecilio Guante
773 Keith Moreland
775 Jeff Reardon
791 Jim Lindeman
792 Rafael Santana
 
1990: 1

105 Randy Myers

1990 Traded: 14

25T Storm Davis (2)
32T John Franco
42T Sam Horn
61T Jim Leyritz
75T Alan Mills
89T Alejandro Pena
98T Jim Presley
101T Jeff Reardon
106T Scott Ruskin
121T Russ Swan
127T Mitch Webster
130T Dave Winfield
132T Checklist

1991: 0

1992: 2

69 Kenny Lofton
641 David Howard

1993-2005: 0


Like I said, the kinds of cards put in the '06 Rack Packs may very well be completely different from the ones they are giving away in 2010, but just remember to be realistic about the whole thing before you enter that code. Optimists are never pleasantly surprised.