The Greatest

Lee Elia's rant turns 30 today.



Lee is now an assistant to Braves GM Frank Wren and thus no longer needs to rant about shitty ballclubs.

Gotta get this off my chest

I have a routine I follow each morning I manage to wake up early enough. First: go back to sleep. Assuming I don't repeat step one too many times, I then do the whole bathroom ritual, get dressed, grab some breakfast and check out my morning comics. If there's time left I'll check the ever-increasingly FUBARed blogroll and maybe even sneak in a quick post to the blog. This morning I had enough time to check out a couple blog posts. Chris over at Stale Gum had a new one up and his stuff is always Must Read Blogging.

So I read this post from Chris. That led me over here, to a blog I've never heard of before. Why don't you people tell me these things? Chris gets his motion that "2012 Topps Sucks" seconded in that post. I have purposely avoided 2012 products in the blog so far this year by choice. I have challenged myself not to rip a bunch of new wax this year just to see if I can do it, and blogging about the stuff 24-7 will not help me meet that goal. It's not you Topps, it's me. We just can't be together right now until I work out some issues. For the record, I think 2012 Topps isn't too bad a set. The design is a little boring but distinctive and acceptable. The backs are well done. The photos are neither as amazing nor as crappy as some people say they are. Not crazy about the inserts. They remind me of a rehash of the 2001 Topps insert lines designed by Panini. They're not terrible, and the '87 minis look fun, overall I just don't care for them all that much. Maybe that will change once I get one or two in hand as I've been informed that there are some singles heading my way. Some bloggers I trust like it, so I'm ok with the set. While I don't think the set is the Worst. Possible. Thing! for my own sanity and personal financial health, I am still abstaining from Topps this year. Again, Topps, It's not you, it's me.

Up until today I was not even going to post an image of a Topps card. Well not an actual card, at least. I gave myself a loophole that I could draw a facsimile of a 2012 card in case of emergency, such as my depiction of Nutzy the SuperShortPrinted Squirrel. Actually a link in Cee's post referencing the squirrel led to this gigantic mess you're about to read. A link to Keith Olbermann's MLB blog detailing Topps' first Box opening party. It's a pretty good read and you get to see Keith showing off his T206 Wagner. It's when he showed a sneak preview of Topps Heritage that things went south. I've been dreading the Heritage release ever since I vowed not to buy wax this year. I've bought Heritage obsessively ever since 2001, and this year's design is based on one of my favorite sets, 1963 Topps. This stuff will hit right when Spring training gets into full swing and it was gonna be damn hard not to break down and start ripping wax. Not anymore. I saw something that killed my interest. I saw this uncut sheet of 2012 Heritage:

Just seeing that sell sheet threw me into a pit of despair. Seriously, I'm depressed now. To get a idea of how I was feeling watch this video:



Just replace each instance of 'Capitalist' with 'Collector' and 'Broadcast/Show' with 'Blog' and that was my reaction almost verbatim.

Ok, so what the hell. Dayf's blown a gasket again. Gone completely unglued. His increasingly pony-addled brain is now randomly raging at Topps for no good reason. Why on earth would looking at a rather attractive uncut sheet of cards make me flip? 1963 Topps is one of my favorite designs ever too, why would it trigger another episode that will surely be mocked by all reasonable souls? This is why:

That's an original uncut 1963 Topps sheet from a Robert Edwards auction. Note the alignment of the cards. Each alternate row is flipped so the colored bottom border touches. Topps didn't do that for the 2012 sheet. All the cards are aligned to be facing up. Not only that, they have multiple colors in each row instead of doing all red, blue, green or yellow in the same row. Yes, that is why I am frustrated.

Yes, it sounds ridiculous. To get angry over the alignment of an uncut sheet? That's kinda... stupid, no? I mean, there's authentic and then there's just being nitpicky, right? No one's ever going to see an uncut sheet. No one would have seen this one if Olbermann hadn't been at that first box opening shindig. So why get upset? The cards actually look pretty decent. Lots of bright colors and lord knows I like bright colors. The pictures are kind of similar to the original '63s. I prefer the extreme close up shots of the vintage, but the 21st century version has far more hats, which balances things out. It's a good looking set, and Heritage is usually done very well, so why am I irked by the alignment of cards on the sell sheet? This is why:

There is a reason the cards are aligned that way on the '63 sheet. If the cards are cut just slightly off, the border color stays consistent. There's no tiny strip of color on top or small swatch of white on the bottom if the card is slightly miscut. If the card is off slightly side to side, you don't have a two-tone bottom border. Using the examples above, Chuck Cottier may have a tiny sliver of his neighbor's photo on the side of his card, but the bottom border is all yellow. Don Landrum's top border is grazing the edge of the card but the bottom edge doesn't reference a band headed by Jack White. This is the same way they printed 1953 and 1954 Topps to prevent funky border issues and it worked pretty well. Randomly aligning different colors and not taking advantage of the full bleed on the bottom border is just asking for trouble with miscut cards.

But printing technology has advanced so much in 50 years! They don't have to worry about miscutting cards in this day and age! All I can say to that is they BETTER not have any issues with miscut cards in 2012 Heritage, because if they do it's going to stick out like a sore thumb. They sure did have some problems with miscut cards in Topps206. I hope it doesn't happen again, because they left themselves no wiggle room. Yeah, the printing and cutting technology is better, but a simple realignment of the cards gives them that little bit of insurance in case in case everything goes a little wacky in the cutting department.

I know this entire post makes me look like the baseball card version of Jack Nicholson washing his hands 47 times an hour in As Good As It Gets, but it's just bad process. Aligning the page in the '63 style would have cost absolutely nothing extra and could have saved a whole lot of potential quality issues with the product. And it didn't even take a genius to figure it out, it would just take someone who was actually familiar with the history of the original set to copy the idea. If the new photo is actually how the uncut sheets are aligned, then I'll be very interested to see some of the inevitable Heritage ripping posts upcoming in the card blogging community for any weirdly cut cards with little slivers of color where they shouldn't be.

Yes. This complaint is excessive and probably needless and makes me look like a snotty baseball card hipster who hates everything new because it's too mainstream. Fine, I yam what I yam and that's all that I yam. I just think that in a Heritage product celebrating the days of yore, it might be helpful to actually understand how it was done in the olden days when designing the product. They might be cutting these suckers precisely with GPS-guided lasers mounted on the moon to a tolerance of 1 nanometer and each and every card produced could end up absolutely perfect thus making me, once again, look like an idiot. That's fine, I've been wrong so often I take it as a point of pride now. Remember the Great Chipper Ruth Cockup of Aught-Nine? Yeah. I did that. Then again, just because your ship is unsinkable, it doesn't mean that it's a good idea to not bring enough lifeboats on your maiden journey. If you're gonna create a retro-styled set celebrating your Heritage, at least have one freaking person on the design staff, paid or unpaid who actually knows the history of the product and can use that knowledge to improve the new release. Good luck with the cutting, Topps, I'll be watching with popcorn in hand once the packs start-a-ripping.

Random Brave #3

I need to figure out a better title for this series.

Look at this shiny card. The's Dufex right there, baby. Dufex. '90s incarnate. That sucker is so shiny you don't even notice the logo is airbrushed out. That's right, non-licensed '90s. Awwwww yeaaaaah. What the heck is this thing? Look at the logo on the bottom left corner. Church's. back in the day, you got cards with your chicken. And the card is so shiny that even if you grease it all up after eating your delicious chicken you could just wipe it clean.

There oddballs were available as a promotion at Church's Chicken back in 1994. With the purchase of a box of chicken or for 69 cents, you got a pack of 4 Hometown Heroes cards. These Show Stoppers were a one in four packs insert card. Dufex oddballs! Utter madness! These were made by Pinnacle but only had the MLBPA license for some reason. I normally prefer Popeyes, but I'd eat the hellout of some Church's chicken if I could get a pack of cards. For some unexplained reason you never ever see these sort of oddballs nowadays. I wonder why? Oh yeah, it's because the hobby went out of control, jacked up the prices of everything while overproducing the crap out of it, ran off all the kids who took solace in Pokemon, forgot their humble roots as advertising ephemera, and successfully ran off all competition so we're back to a monopoly. Man I wish we could still get cards at fast food joints*. Well, actually we can, they'll just have pictures of You-Gi-Ohs and Pokemons and Twilights on them. Blech. 

* Yes, hosers, we all know you can still get packs of Hockey cards at McDonald's up in the frozen north. I live in Atlanta. We have no hockey down here. 

This is why, Beckett

Wherein dayf drops the first MF-bomb of the new decade in bold large red font... so be warned little children. Here there be Dragons.

Ok, so I'm a day late on the whole National Chicle brouhaha but I'm pretty much late on everything nowadays so no big deal. If this is the only baseball card blog you read (you should really check out some of those guys on the sidebar, but I digress) here's basically what happened over the past 48 hours. On Friday, Beckett posted a preview of 2010 Topps National Chicle. (Political junkies know that bad news is always released on a Friday but once again, I digress). Chris Harris took one look at it, choked down the vomit, and posted this scathing review on Stale Gum. (I rather like the Ichiro with the Pilots uniform, but I'm digressing yet again) All hell breaks loose on the card blogs and Chris Olds (who is secretly a follower of Stale Gum - argh digressing!) (apparently not, who knew?) looks around at the carnage and posts a followup where he basically says "whaaaaaaaaa?" in Jon Stewart's voice. So now all you normal people who only check the card blogs maybe once a week while relaxing on a Sunday morning are caught up. Now, before I discuss Chris Olds' "Why?", I'd first like to discuss the rest of the blogosphere (yes, I'm going to keep using that term, I don't care if everybody else hates it-ACK DIGRESSING AGAIN) *ahem* the rest of the blogosphere's question of "Why??".

As in "Why the hell does this product even exist??"

Beyond the obvious answers of "Retro always sells", "It sticks it to Upper Deck Who already did this set with 2007 Goudey and 2009 Philadelphia" and "Because they Can." here is one other reason why this particular design is being used in this particular set. I'm not talking about card design, I'm talking about art design. This set exists in this form because you all went batshit over Topps Sketch Cards. Here's a few sketch cards that made it out into the wild. Compare the art with some of the art from that preview. I'll bet a binder that this guy did some of the artwork in this set. National Chicle is not just a retro set, it's an ART set.

Topps has a whole stable of artists sketching up 1/1 insert cards for not only baseball, but all their non-sports products too. These sketch cards are WILDLY popular. There is a great history of artistic sets going back through card history: Upper Deck Masterpieces... Upper Deck Checklists... Dick Perez Diamond Kings... 1953 Topps... 1935 National Chicle... Topps has the artists working for them already, why not have them work on a set? Now, the thing with art, see, is that it is usually not exactly photorealistic. It is sort of... well, artsy, and some artyness is better than others. So in the same set you can have some fantastic art, and other art that is not so good. Since that's just the nature of art, I would advise my fellow bloggers not to abandon this set - or indeed the entire hobby itself - over a couple of clunkers in the sell sheet of an art set. Give it some time, let some more images come out, heck, Topps might even be reading all of this stuff and ordering their design team to work weekends for the next month to fix some of these problems, and just wait and see how the final product turns out. You might be pleasantly surprised. Just look at that Jackie Robinson card again and imagine an entire base set that looks like that.

Ok, now onto Chris Olds' question: "Why are people freaking out over these previews??"

The best way to address this is by dissecting the Stale Gum post which was strongly alluded to, if not directly linked, in the Beckett article. Chris Harris has issues with three of the cards in the preview. One, Ichiro in a Pilots uniform is mostly an anachronistic thing. Yeah, the Pilots were based in Seattle, but they eventually moved to Milwaukee, which is a completely different franchise than the Mariners. Ok, so the Pilots are technically not the Mariners, but it's the same city and it's no more odd than Greg Maddux wearing an Atlanta Black Crackers Negro League throwback which he did in real life. Of course, as a dedicated collector, Chris has every right to hate this card. I personally am still so angry with Topps over their Black Border blaster bait & switch that if I was strolling down the street and came upon Michael Eisner on fire, I not only would not piss on him, but I would roast marshmallows and sing campfire songs as he burned to death. Collectors are funny that way.

Now for card #2, the weird Beckham/Konerko/Maybe Even Thome 1990 Frank Thomas No-Name Variation Homage Card Thingy. This card is just so wrong on many different levels. First of all, a 1990 Topps card does not belong anywhere near a 1930's retro set. It just doesn't. Even the Thomas error or the President Bush '90 Topps card is simply not worthy of being in the same binder as any card from the 1930's. I mean, it's cute and all, Beckham was a 1st rounder, Big Hurt was a first rounder... this just isn't the time or place for it. And making it one of the first cards shown of the set just isn't a smart move. Especially when aesthetically speaking it's just a plain butt-ugly card. Even the White Sox fan hates it and that's saying something.

Ok, now for THE card. The card that has made many heads asplode this weekend. I'm talkin' 'bout this:
Hrm. A Chicle card of Chipper Jones. What's the big deal? I mean, the red jersey is ugly as sin, but that's the fault of the Braves' marketing department, not Topps so why are people what WHAT WHAAAAAT???

Babe Ruth? That's Babe Ruth?? Um, if you say so Topps...

Here's Babe Ruth:


And here's Chipper Jones:

And here's that card again:

And here's Babe Ruth in a Braves uniform:

He's the one on the right...

The card again:
Ok, that don't look like Babe Ruth. That looks like Chipper Jones in a red Braves Home Sunday alternate uniform. The nose and mouth especially are all wrong for Babe. Let's be all Mythbusters scientific about this. Here are Babe, Whoever that dude is and Chipper all side by side:

Still looks like Chipper. Wait, unknown dude has eyeblack. Here they are with eyeblack:

Forget for a moment that no ballplayer would be caught dead with eyeblack in 1935. I guess it kiiiinda sorta looks like Ruth if you squint- um, actually no it doesn't. it looks even more like Chipper there. It could be the uniform though. Chipper Jones is Mr. Brave, it's natural that when we look at a painting of a guy in a Braves uniform, that it would look like Chipper. Here's Mr. Generic wearing Yankee Pinstripes.

Now I'm frightened and sad because The Yankees just signed Chipper Jones. Alright, the face isn't really a good indicator, it's too subjective. It can look like who we want it to look. Here's a better test: the three guys' torsos:

Ok, if that card is supposed to be Babe Ruth, then I'M Chipper Jones. Look at how fat Babe is there and that's back when he was a Yankee. He was even fatter as a Brave. Some guy painted Chipper Jones with kind of an odd face and Topps decided they'd be slick and try to pass it off as Babe Ruth. Babe Ruth, probably the most recognizable baseball player that ever lived. Even though it doesn't look a damn thing like Babe Ruth and it's quite blatantly Chipper Jones to anyone who might look at it. Consider this: if you were an artist, and Topps commissioned you to paint a picture of Babe Ruth in a 2009 Braves uniform WOULD YOU PAINT THEM A PICTURE OF CHIPPER JONES? No, you wouldn't. That would be just plain stupid.

This is why everyone hates this card. Because Topps took what was obviously a painting of Chipper Jones and got cute and put Babe Ruth's name on the card just to fuck with us. "Oh, but Babe Ruth played for the Braves in 1935..." yeah, he sure did and that's STILL a painting of Chipper Jones and Topps STILL put Babe Ruth's name next to it. I don't care if it's supposed to be a 'fun' card, two plus two is not five, and Chipper Jones is not Babe Ruth, no matter what Topps says. Newsflash for Topps: collectors are sick and fucking tired of this shit. They are tired of John Smoltz and Tom Glavine's names being spelled Jon Smoltz and Thom Glavine. They are tired of Johan Santana's first Topps cards in a Mets uniform being unobtainable super short prints. They are tired of Rangers logos on Padres cards and photos being flipped both horizontally and vertically on purpose and the names of two marginal Giants outfielders being swapped on each other's cards and an extra unnumbered card of the hottest rookie of the year tacked onto the greatest set building brand Topps has in their entire product line for no other fucking reason than to shove another goddamn gimmick right up our asses in the vain hopes that it will trigger another '06 Alex Gordon feeding frenzy. WE ARE TIRED OF THE BULLSHIT, TOPPS, AND WE WOULD VERY MUCH LIKE IT TO STOP NOW THAT YOU HAVE AN EXCLUSIVE MOTHERFUCKING LICENSE. This, Beckett; this, Topps; this, Chris Olds; this is why people are so irritated by this silly little card that they are threatening to boycott the only licensed manufacturer of friggin' baseball cards over it.

I don't hate it though, I love it. I want this card very badly and I'll gladly take it off the hands of anyone who pulls it and hates it. That's because Chipper Jones is my favorite player and it's quite obviously a Chipper Jones card no matter whose name is on the thing. I will take this card and love it and scan it and post it to Zistle and put it in a top loader and put it with my other thousand Chipper Jones cards because it's a dadgum Chipper Jones card. That card is not why I'm infuriated with 2010 Topps National Chicle. THIS is the reason I'm infuriated with 2010 Topps National Chicle:
Tommy Hanson does NOT have a pedo-stashe!!! Who the hell painted this?? Why would they DO that??? WHY?????

Sometimes a comment just needs to be a post, part 2 - Blaster baiting

Nate explains the Topps Wal-Mart/Target black/throwback blasters (note - link is now broken) in his insider distributor blog today. We figured it out already, but still it's nice to get the inside scoop on these things from someone in the know. Nate explains the idea behind the move in his post, to give a little pick-me-up to the retail sales once they start going flat. Everything was going great and then this happened:

"Unfortunately Topps has helped by letting you know which blasters are which. How stupid! Now instead of multiple purchases to get the cards you know exactly which one."

Coincidentally, my immediate reaction to this statement was the exact same as it was when I first learned about the throwback blasters in the first place. How many times can one head explode, anyway? After reading some of the gobsmacked response in the comments I responded thusly*:

I know! Half the fun of shopping at Wal-Mart is going through the cereal aisle and buying multiple boxes of cereal hoping to get the one with Corn Flakes in it!

I remember one time, it was my Anniversary. I stopped by Target to pick up a bottle of Merlot and some condoms for that evening. The bottle ended up being tequila and the condoms actually turned out to be suppositories. Long story short, the twins are healthy and we've never been more regular! ISN'T SHOPPING FUN!

I mean, it's the same thing right? Cereal is cereal, right? It's all made up of the little curly bits left over in the pencil sharpener right? It's not like there are different flavors of cereal or anything, each with its own development costs and design strategy and marketing campaign that cost millions to differentiate it from all the other boxes of cereal on the shelf, it's all just cereal! And as for my slightly off color Anniversary anecdote, well, I still walked out of that Target with alcohol and a medical device designed to be inserted into an orifice, right? It's all the same thing! Plus little Chipper and Knucksie are really quite sweet when they don't have the colic because that can of baby formula actually had egg nog in it (milk based food product, it's all the same).

Now, Nate defends his statement stating that you're still buying a blaster of Topps series 1 and you're still getting a box of Topps series 1, just with a different border. But is that what we've come to? INSERT BLASTERS?? The product is so shitty, that there has to be an unannounced parallel version of the set to try to drive sales?? But somehow Topps is stupid for 'letting us know' which blaster is which, so we don't just go blindly buying up blasters like sheep.

The thing is that Topps did NOT announce what blasters had what cards in it. As you can see from this post, there is not a single indication at all on the packaging that Black border cards even exist, let alone they are in that box. The first indication that these blasters existed at all is from customers who thought they were buying base Topps and got the black bordered version. If not for some byzantine government UPC labeling regulation, it's doubtful Topps would have even but the tiny bit of differentiation on the blasters at all! End result: card nerds like us know to check the UPC code before buying but THE KIDS get the luck of the draw. Yep, now we're all BLASTER SEARCHERS because Topps and their distributors want to trick us into buying more blasters.

This is shady. It's shady as hell. I called it a gimmick and it's a goddamn gimmick. To Topps' credit, once they were asked about it, they fessed up. I'll even give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they were going to announce the variations, but Wal-Mart screwed the pooch and jumped the gun. So, kudos to Topps for giving their customers the information they need when asked. No kudos for distributors who think it's their birthright that their customers should just blindly buy everything off the shelves.

Now, I realize this is a business and they need to make money. Nate asks the following questions:

1. How do we sell more product of the same stuff (Topps #1)?

2. How do we get multiple purchases?

The answer to #1 is easy. Exactly what they did here. I have to admit, this is brilliant as hell and I didn't see this coming at all. Wait until everyone's had their fill of regular series one (I had already had my fill to be honest and was about to focus on UD and Heritage), then pop up with TWO NEW versions of the set that look even better than the originals and have a second feeding frenzy on the product. It's like three seperate products in one release! Now that the number of sets they can produse are limited, that's genius. Even so, it would have been nice to see an indication on the box at least informing us of what the hell was going on. A label stating black bordered cards inside, a picture of a black bordered card on the box, hell, even a notation in the odds ratios that black border parallels exist. Maybe to get around the MLB License and the limited sets they have to stealth it like this, I don't know. At any rate, just dumping it out there is deceptive. I love the cards, but as it happens so often in this hobby, the idea was great but the execution was lacking.

Ok, now for question #2 - how to get multiple purchases. A cynical rephrasing of this question reads as 'how to get idiots to keep buying the same old crap that they already have multiple sets of'. I get it, you want us to buy your product. The past 25 years of the hobby has already been devoted to asking this question. First it was rack packs with special All-Star inserts on the top. Then it was Fleer All-Star insert cards in the packs. Then it was multiple products on several different levels like Leaf - Donruss - Triple Play. Then more and more inserts and parallels. Relics, Autos, 10+ products per company. Now we've got multiple packaging styles for the same product. Here's a post I did with all the different ways for someone to buy a pack of Topps. Hobby pack, HTA Jumbo pack, retail pack in at least two flavors (Target, Wal-Mart and probably a third generic retail pack), Jumbo retail packs, Cereal Boxes (also in Wal-Mart and Target flavors) and now three different blasters with three completely different kinds of cards in them. That's TEN different ways to buy Topps each with their own slightly different chase cards in them! THE SET AIN'T BUT 330 CARDS, PEOPLE!!! You want to know how to get people to make multiple purchases? Just like this! Give 'em more options!

Some people will only buy Hobby packs, period. Others like the convenience of retail. Some like buying a cheap loose pack for 2 bucks. Others refuse to buy it if it's not in a sealed box. Some like the rack packs that give you more base cards for the money. The exclusive insert in the Cereal boxes is good enough on its own to drive sales of them. Now you have three different blasters in three different flavors. Some will pick the flavor they like, some will collect all of them. Give us options and let us know what we're buying and you'll get more sales!

THERE IS NO NEED TO BE SNEAKY WITH THIS. I know distributors probably still have nightmares about the acres of 2007 Topps Series two blasters they literally couldn't GIVE away, but you don't have to screw over your customers to try to make an extra sale! Let me put it this way: Yes, you might get a few extra sales from people blindly buying blasters to try to find the magic black bordered box, but how many future sales will you lose though dissatisfied customers refusing to buy a blaster again because the wrong cards were in thier blaster? Which is worse, taking back a few blasters that were left on the shelf, or throwing away a shelf of blasters because someone opened them all up and ripped exactly one pack per box looking for the black bordered blaster? Trying to deceive your customers does NOT help you in the long run. It gives you short term profits and long term headaches and in this economy you need to be building up as much goodwill as you possibly can.

These new sets of Topps are awesome. I can't wait for the Target version to hit the shelves. However there is no need to try to cheat your customers, and it is very unwise to openly treat them like sheep ready to be sheared. Not in the 21st century. Not when meddling busybodies like me can spread the word over the blogoweb. To Topps , Upper Deck and all the people who sell these stupid bits of cardboard for our amusement: You treat us right, and we'll treat you right. Deal?

* Note - Night Owl first made the 'bait and switch' point, while Chris Harris and Todd Q beat me to the incredulity. I merely upped the stakes with sarcasm.

Topps enthusiast JayBee weighs in as well.

UPDATE: Nate's post has been pulled, this post shall live on.

I do not want to discourage insiders from talking about their products. That is a good thing. The more information out there, the happier customers are. You gotta watch those Macaca moments though. As an ordinary slob who has absolutely no financial stake in the hobby at all, I am free to run my mouth off. Hopefully this little tempest in a teapot will help explain some of the frustration the customers have been feeling lately. We just want to be treated nicely, guys.

UPDATE 2: Nate just e-mailed me and explained his side of the story. The post was removed because it doesn't put the industry in a good light. Let's face it, what he said makes perfect business sense, but this wasn't the forum to represent those views. Let's just look at this as a learning experience. This is good feedback for the industry to understand what we want. The customers and distributors and manufacturers are all in this together, we want good products and they want to sell them to us. No harm, no foul and I look forward to future posts from Nate.

The rant you've all been waiting to hear

About you know who.

Night Owl was bemoaning the fact he had been suckered into collecting the Stadium Club set and was showing off some cool ones he just got from Albukwirke. He showed the card of ol' whatsisface and commented

But I'll let the Braves fans talk about that.

So I did.

This is the only time I will ever write about this so go check it out if you so desire. If you want to argue about it, don't bother. I'm very stubborn about these things and Bobby himself couldn't get my opinion to change.

Sigh.

Joe Gordon is in the Hall of Fame.

Ron Santo is not.

I've gone through the feelings of confusion, anger and outrage already. It seems like I go through it every single year, to be honest. You know what? I'm not congratulating Joe Gordon on his election. Joe Gordon has been dead for thirty years. Ron Santo is alive, and is already a great baseball ambassador for his play and his broadcasting work. But apparently in order to get recognized nowadays you have to be dead. So in essence, the Hall of Fame Veterans Committee just told Ron Santo, Dick Allen, Tony Oliva, Joe Torre, Al Oliver, Luis Tiant and Maury Wills to drop dead.

Listen.

No player has been elected by the Veterans Committee since Mazeroski. Just executives and managers.

It now seems as if the whole point of this charade is to torment retired ballplayers by getting their hopes up every two years and then dashing it on the rocks. If that's the case, then just fucking dissolve the Veterans Committee altogether. Preferably with sulfuric acid. You've already changed the process three times and it's not working. At all. Maybe the crony system that put in Maz was the system that ACTUALLY WORKED.

Seriously, just stop this bullshit. You're doing nothing but angering your fan base and losing credibility every day.



The Hall of Fame will not be seeing a check from me in 2009. 2010 looks pretty bad too.

Evolution of the Hobby

Ben Henry has a good post (yes, this is build off other people's posts day here at Cardboard Junkie) on the frustrations of card dealers and how winning back the 'lax collector' might help the hobby. It's a good read, but a quote from Ben stuck out at me:

There hasn't been evolution in the hobby since the invention of the relic card.

I disagree with this, I think we are smack in the middle of a new evolution in Baseball card sets. No one will dispute that relic cards have lost their luster. You can find them all over the place, they are inserted in every box (even some blasters!), and you can pick them up for a buck a pop on eBay with no problems. Now that Topps has decided to guarantee a hit per box for Hobby Series Two boxes, relic card are pretty much just another insert at this point and can't be counted on any more to drive sales. Autographs are hot and always will be, but I'm thinking of another gimmick that has crept into the hobby this decade that will end up being the driver of many sets in the near future. I'm going to go out on a limb and say in the next five years the "Big Thing" that will start driving box sales will be the non-mainstream sport/celebrity autographs. Check out my time line and hear me out:

2001 - Topps American Pie
A boomer nostalgia set that included plenty of non-sport subjects plus relics from Elvis and Marilyn Monroe that you could never pull, plus a JFK gravel relic that you could find everywhere.

2003? - Topps
I don't remember exactly when Topps started putting in their Presidents and Founding Fathers insert sets and I'm too lazy to look it up right now. Topps has leaned on these sets for a few years now though, and now we're in the middle of a Presidential Campaign blitz from both manufacturers. The key to this strategy though was the Cut Autos. Remember when you found out there was going to be Cut Autos of Lincoln and Washington in packs on Topps? Sure, you could never get one but it was a really amazing thing to even comprehend.

2003? Upper Deck American History
UD put out this set after Topps started putting Presidents into their packs. I think it was to try to counter Topps, but if I remember the set didn't sell very well and I balked at paying 60 bucks for a box of non-sports cards at the time. I kind of regret it now as it was a fantastic looking set.

2005 Donruss Products Fans of the Game
Donruss added insert cards of people like John C. McGinley, Brandi Chastain and Peter Gammons with the logo of their favorite team. While it pissed me off that Donruss never found one lousy Braves fan in the bunch to go along with the dozens of Yankee, Red Sox, Cubs and Dodger fans, it was a neat idea to insert celebrities into card packs. I didn't' really care for the idea, but even I had to pick up a card of Samwise Gamgee (or Rudy, if you prefer) when I saw it in the cheapo box for a quarter. The really genius thing Donruss did was to offer Autographed versions of the cards as well. These sold well if I recall correctly and consistently sell for higher than all but the biggest baseball stars' autographs.

2005 or so Topps Basketball
Yeah I know, everyone hates basketball cards, but Topps inserted a few celebrities into their hoops sets like Christine Brinkley, Jay-Z and Carmen Electra for a couple of years. Not a bad idea to try to rope in the casual fans who like basketball, hip-hop and good looking women.

2006-2007 Allen & Ginter
Completely ignoring the DNA and doggy autos for a moment, non-baseball athletes and non-athletes are all over this set, many with relics and autographs. The subjects were all over the map from sports legends, to actors, murderers, politicians, inventors, quiz show champs... and many of the cards were really popular. Topps did this to tie in with the subject matter of the original 1887 set, but it also touched on the trend for celebrities sneaking into trading card sets.

2007-8 Co-Signers
Mario at Wax Heaven has explicitly stated that the ad showing a card autographed by Buzz Aldrin and Alex Rodriguez got him back into the hobby after being out for over a decade. That says something. This year there's a boxing theme to the set, so we'll see how that works.

2007 Donruss Americana
We all scoffed at this ploy by Donruss to get back into the the baseball biz with a celebrity themed set (which just happened to have a couple of baseball subjects in there too) but guess what? It worked. Series two is going to be out soon and it will be in retail stores this time as well. Now I could never bring myself to buy a forty dollar pack of cards with no baseball cards in it, but looking over the checklist they put together, there has to be somebody in there you like. Who wouldn't want a Humphrey Bogart or Mae West card? Shatner, Carrie Fisher, Gilbert Gottfried, and Michael Berryman are all actors I'm a fan of as well. Celebrity culture is huge and such a set gets a lot of people who wouldn't care about a trading card at all normally to look at the products that are out there.

2008 Topps, Upper Deck
We all know about the Presidential candidate craziness. It doesn't change the fact that the Upper Deck Hillary gimmick sells for over a grand and a Topps Obama signature sold for even more. Once again, more eyeballs that would never think about trading cards and focused on trading cards.

2007-2008 Goudey
Upper Deck had a few non-baseball autographs in their Sports Royalty set last year and this year they're ramping up the autos and even putting the Sports Royalty set (now focusing more on Olympic athletes, just in time for the controversial Bejing Olympics) into the base set.

There's probably a few instances of celebrity cards or non-"big three" sports athletes creeping into baseball card sets out there, but I'm doing this from memory. One thing I've noticed from checking out eBay auctions is that a lot of times the non-sports/celebrity relics and autos just kill baseball autos and relics. There are a few reasons for this: Baseball is the biggest trading card market other than gaming cards, but there's still a limited audience for the cards. Not everyone is a baseball fan and a large percentage of baseball fans just don't care about cards.. Relics and autos of baseball players have also become far more plentiful, pushing down prices. Celebrity cards have a much wider audience and a larger market. I'm a big Lord of the Rings fan and I bought up a bunch of the relics from the trading card sets a few years ago. Those relic cards are holding their value since they were actually limited in production (You'll see Pujols jerseys every year, but Gandalf will not have any more robes out there until the Hobbit is filmed) and have a large fan base including some hard core rabid fans who will bid on everything. Finally, it's much eaier to get a baseball player's autograph than it is a celebrity's. In addition to the cards in packs and signing opportunities at shows, you can go to the ballpark and spring training and beg for autos. Trying to track down a celebrity is much more difficult and then you have an entourage surrounding them specifically to keep you out. Some sign through the mail and for conventions, sure, but it's still a lot trickier than finding a friendly ballplayer to sign. As a result, prices are a little higher and signatures are a little scarcer.

This is where I see the hobby heading. More and more celebrities signing for trading card sets. It accomplishes a few things that the manufacturers are desperate to have in their new sets. It provides something to promote their product around, something new that hasn't been seen before. The entertainment industry has lots of different avenues to follow and they can hop on new trends as needed. If there's a hot movie, get some movie autographs, if music is big, get some rock stars. in 2012 when we've finally gotten over the glut of politicians from this election, they'll throw a new batch of 'em at us. I'm not saying it won't get tedious, but there's lots of ways to go with this. It also widens the market for their product. There is already a box of Hanna Montana cards right by the register at the local card shop, but a few autographs in packs of Topps and you might see a few tweener girls buying packs of cards. It would make the hard core collectors like us absolutely apoplectic, but they'd increase their sales and the number of people buying the stuff which is what they want. It also provides "Added Value" which they desperately need to move those overpriced boxes. Right now celebrity autographs sell well so inserting them gives you one more chance at a big hit you can sell.

If you think it's daft that a baseball card set should put in something other than baseball cards into their packs, just look at your average cable channels. MTV has replaced videos with reality shows, TV Land has cut TV shows to show movies and Headline News no longer does 24-hour news in favor of crap like Nancy Grace. This is all to get a few more eyes on their channel in hopes of more revenue coming in, and the integrity of the product loses to money every time. Topps, Donruss and Upper Deck just want to make money, not make their loyal customers happy. That's kind of the attitude throughout the hobby nowadays as you can see from Beckett's newfound tendency to mock their loyal customers. As Jeff remarked almost year ago, "You'll get over it". Some of us will get over it and some won't. I'm sure the shenanigans that are being pulled have turned off a lot of collectors that won't come back just as it has attracted some new ones to replace them. The thing to remember is to decide what you like, what you want to buy and to not let the card companies dictate to you how you should collect. There are plenty of options out there for collecting, choose a path that makes you happy.