2012 Varsity Cards Review

A few weeks ago Topher over at Varsity Trading Cards offered me some cards to review. I said OK. He said waddya have? I said Mark Lemke or Ponies plz. He said I gots no MLB, Players Union or MLP license. I said surprise me. So he did. Then I surprised him by not reviewing them for weeks.

But tonight! While desperately trying to procrastinate, Twitter betrayed me:

The horror. THE HORROR.

I guess it's time to review these things after all. BEHOLD: 2012 VARSITY TRADING CARDS!

Here's the front of card S1. Unfortunately while I was trying to write this, Chris Harris sent me this video. If I have to suffer so do you. Watch this before moving on.



Ok, so what we have here is a Varsity card of Seth Kasten of the Warriors. First impression is that the design looks like a pretty good Minor league set design. Since these cards are marketed towards the High School crowd, that's a pretty good look. There's a lot of dipping and swooshing going on, but the pic bleeds over it at the top so the design doesn't get in the way of the photo. The border features the team colors and the text is legible. No foil name here! You can actually read and scan the thing! There's also a space for an autograph at the bottom if you want to go stalk a high school catcher. Or, more likely, if  you're related to that high schooler and are using this as a keepsake. The Varsity logo is fairly unobtrusive up in the top right hand corner. Let's check out the next card.

This one is of Zach Hauer, head coach for the Lions. Same design elements here. Swooshy border with team color and logo. Name and team is legible. Spot for autograph. Decent looking card. The card stock is sturdy on these things. I'm not certain of the number of points on this stock but it's approximately twice as thick as a Topps base card and fairly stiff. I would not recommend trying to bend these cards at all as they might snap in half. The card is somewhat glossy but covered in a matte finish for easy autographing. Everything with a front has a back, right? Except maybe a Möbius strip but I digress.

 Backs are simple and effective. Design swoosh is replicated in the card number. As an old blind geezer, I am very persnickety about card numbering. White text works with a dark background like with card S2, but S1 needs black text or a different background number. Also knock the font up a few points and put that isht in bold. Grandpa's got sets to sort. Numerical nitpick aside, the rest of the back is solid. Full biographical information on the top. Four years of stats. This is a good number for high schoolers, you don't need to see stats for all three Sophomore years for that running back who ended up with a full scholarship to Florida anyway. A career line would be nice. There's also a little Bio write up underneath everything. The very bottom has the company logo and legalese. There's also one of the new-style barcodes that I don't know anything about because I'm old and own a flip phone. I guess scanning that leads to a player page? Maybe an order form? I'd test it but I'm technologically feeble. I'm actually surprised (thankful) these haven't invaded cards from you-know-who yet. Topher be innovatin'! Oh, speaking of Topher...

TOPHER-JO!

Yep, I got a case hit from my preview pack. This card will be displayed proudly next to some of my other blogger autos like the one from Chris Harris and Fuji. Topher was surprisingly thorough on his biography. For one thing I would have bet money he was at least 5 years younger, but his taste in music should have tipped me off. I'm also quite impressed with his taste in movies. Needs more Lebowski, but don't we all. One thing I don't understand...

How in the hell can you be a Twins and a Packers fan at the same time? Isn't that illegal or something?

At any rate, if you're a high school athlete (or related to a high school athlete, or work for a high school, or just want some custom cards) and are looking for some well-made cards to commemorate your career check out Varsity Cards, as these cards look pretty darn good for customs. And no this isn't an ad, Why the hell would I ever shill for a Twins fan?

One Pack Review - 2010 Topps Magic Football

I bought a hobby pack of football cards today. I don't normally do such a thing, but the shop owner told me that it was released this week and the product is kind of in my wheelhouse so I did it. Since I did such a foolish thing, I may as well make the best of it and do a completely unfair review of an entire product based on one inpulse bought pack. Here's my review of 2010 Topps Magic Football.

THE WRAPPER

This may be the greatest card wrapper in history. The color is absolutely fantastic. The blue works wonderfully with the yellow, which complements the red which clashes with the blue oh so nicely. The fifties style Topps logo pops out from the blue background so much that it's practically 3D. The yellow oval leaves no doubt as to what cards you are purchasing in this pack. The blue stripes in the background transforms the wrapper into a magical mystery tour, where the magic of Topps will take you away to a wonderful land of football and retro designs and base sets that people actually give a crap about. All the while, the harsh red border at the bottom grounds you, lets you know that this is a serious set for serious collectors. Pair this magnificent design with the boner-inducing silky texture of Topps Heritage wrappers and you have quite possibly the pinnacle of package design right here. I dare - no, triple dog dare - anyone out there to find a finer trading card wrapper. Go ahead, I'm waiting.

NEVER TELL ME THE ODDS

I'm not scanning this because it's a pain. I'll just list 'em all out.

Short Print 1:3 - typical Heritage odds. I prefer to collect sets with 1:2 short print odds, but Topps doesn't give a shit about what I want. Topps doesn't give a shit if I live or die as long as my heirs spend the inheritance money on cards.

Mini Short Print Parallel 1:12
Mini Black Border Parallel 1:8
Mini Black Border Short Print Parallel 1:24 - Unstated is the 1:1 odds for any sort of mini parallel per pack. Odds for a plain Jane non-SP non black mini would be a bitch to calculate anyway.

Mini Pigskin Parallel 1:37 - I guess these are leather cards? I wonder why PETA doesn't protest these things. Probably because they are a bunch of media whores who care more for attention than animals and no one really cares about football cards anyway. The 1:37 odds amuse me as Pacific used to use these particular odds to avoid having to put one insert in each box.

Gridiron Stamp of Approval 1:950
Historical Stamp of Approval 1:358 - Cards with stamps stuck to them, move along...

Magic Moments 1:4
Rookie Stars 1:6
History's Best 1:12 - base insert crap that was relevant in 1994 but not anymore.

Over 9000 tiers of autos, relics, autorelics, etc that I'm not typing out - I think there are two per box. Might be wrong, I didn't pay enough attention when I was in the store. You'll get a couple of autographs from 7th rounders who are playing in the CFL right now.

THE FIRST CARD - CARD DESIGN

Patrick Willis, a very good linebacker on an average team that was hobbled by a head coach who never quite figured out that his position no longer had "killing quarterbacks" as a job requirement.

As for the design, it's not really based on any historical design. Considering last year's product was very faithful to an extremely boring design, this is probably a good thing. My first impression is that it looks very similar to last year's Upper Deck Philadelphia set. I liked that set a lot, so I'm generally pleased. Upon further review, it kind of looks like Topps' 1961 set with a logo tacked on. The card photo has been Photoshopified to look like a painting or something. It looks not so much bad as just weird. I really wish Topps would realize that they had gotten to the point where they could reproduce photos reasonably well by the early 1960s and would stop screwing up the photo on these retro sets.

THE SECOND CARD - CARD BACK

I keep thinking Braylon Edwards plays for the Browns. Whether that's a reflection on him or me, I don't know.

The card back has an extremely basic design with just a card number, bio stats, a brief highlight from the player and a massive city photo/logo/quiz thing on the back.  No basic stats can be found. Historically, this is nice, it looks similar to the original Magic cards. Realistically, no stats is pretty lame in 2010 and the city photo looks great the first time, but if Topps uses the same photo on every card it will get tedious quick.

WOOOO ROOKIES

They're not short printed! Um... I think?

HOLY CRAP INSERTS

Here is a magical moment commemorating the celebration when Gay Marriage was declared legal in San Francisco. Insert cards in Heritage products basically server as a reminder that, no, you didn't get a short print in this pack and good luck with that set you're building.

OH DEAR HEAVENLY CHRIST MINIS OHMYGODILOVEMINICARDS YAY FOR MINIS

No really, I love mini cards.

THE CARD BACK PART TWO

Yep, same picture. This will get old quick, especially since the picture is 2/3rds of the card back.

THE REST OF THE PACK

Not too bad. The old school posed photo from the rookie is a nice touch. The black bar + logo at the bottom of each card is really growing on me. Especially after the deluge of wiggitywhack Panini designs this year, something this elegant is refreshing.

IN SUMMARY

Basically this is Heritage for Football without calling it that. It's on Heritagey stock with a Heritagey design and Heritagey short prints and has Heritagey inserts and basic Heritagey autos and relics with absolutely no big money MOJO to be found anywhere. If there is a collector out there who both likes collecting Heritage sets and collecting football cards they will likely buy this product. If not, Topps takes a bath, boxes will sell for $30 a pop by Valentine's day and Topps Brass will murder off another set I like. Football collectors loooove their MOJO so I'm thinking the latter occurs.

It's not a perfect set by any means and will likely be forgotten in a few years unless Topps digs in and makes Magic their annual Football retro product. For every plus, there's an accompanying minus. The design it pleasing, but the photos aren't good. The retroization makes many of the players look like zombies. Check out Rashard Mendenhall's arms in that mini card. Ugh. Topps needs to stop messing with the photos on the retro sets. Just stop, please. The backs look good if you know what old football card backs are supposed to look like. If a random kid off the street saw that mess they'd just laugh. Old Timey sets like Magic, Allen & Ginter and T206 tend to have sparse backs, but you really need just a basic line of stats on there for a football product. It does remind me a lot of 2009 Philadelphia though and is probably a much easier set to complete.

The wrapper is just amazing though. You have to make up words to describe that wrapper. Fantabulistic or Fantasmorgasmical might work. I want a poster of that wrapper. Or a beach towel. Or a shirt. Maybe I'll have it tattooed on my dick. My God, that is a wonderful wrapper.

2010 Bowman Review

I calls 'em likes I sees 'em, and this is how I sees 'em.

1909 T206

1934-6 Diamond Stars

1941 Play Ball

1953 Topps

1960 Topps

1972 Topps

1983 Topps

1991 Stadium Club

2001 Topps Heritage

2006 Allen & Ginter

2010 Bowman

This review based upon:

$5.00+ pack prices and rising
Piles and piles of discarded base cards in cheapo boxes
A truckload of new inserts for no goddamn reason
The exact same boring ass black border they've used with slight variations for over a decade
A 220 card set so you get the same 3 players per team (6 for the New York and Boston markets) that's in every single set produced this year
Something like 4 actual base cards per pack so you need two or three boxes to even have a chance at a set
Half the pack chewed up by regular and Chrome prospect/not rookie things that make a travishamockery of the RC rookie logo designation.
Gold parallel cards. NO ONE WANTS THESE
Topps using bootleg crap Chrome stock in the only set where Chrome really matters
The Steven Strasburg card everyone's losing their shit over won't even be considered his 'true' rookie card by the end of summer.

Yeah, there's a good rookie crop in Bowman for the first time in a decade. Oh, and on-card autos. I concede those points.

If you really want the Heyward, or the Chapman, or the Jackson, or even the Strasburg, you'd be FAR better off just buying the damn card instead of rolling the dice and buying overpriced packs hoping to pull one. Or just wait a year and buy a box for under $50. You think box prices for a set with Strasburg autos could never drop that low? Ahem.

Bowman needs to die. Painfully. Bowman Chrome? Good idea. Bowman Draft & Prospects? Good idea. Filler base set that ends up in the bin with the wrappers? Watered down rookie crop put together too early in the season to get a comprehensive rookie class? A bunch of prospect cards that will be hot now and cool off as soon as a 'real' rookie card hits the presses? Oh, and autograph cards that are part of the base set? Die Die Die Die. Yesterday.

Bowman is a useless set and has been for years. Don't get caught up in the perfect storm of a good rookie crop, an exclusive license and collectors driven mad from boredom. You'll regret it later.

For more lovlies like my Bowman representative, check out this wonderful website for hours of amusement.

One Pack Review - 2009 Mayo

I finally found a pack of Mayo. Not at Target, but at the local Wally World where it was hidden underneath a big pile of Bowman Chrome. You can't hide retro away from me folks, I've got a Spidey Sense thing going on when it comes to new cards masquerading as old ones. Here's my stream of consciousness thoughts on the latest (and last?) Mayo set from Topps.

Owens - Buffalo

My very first impression of this set:
TO plays for the Bills? WTF??

To all my twenty-something readers out there, that old chestnut about how people get dumber as they get older, it's totally true. I few years ago I would not only have known what team Terrell Owens played for, but the number touchdowns he'd scored this season, the number of catches he has lifetime against Philadelphia, the number of arguments he's had with his head coach on Fridays before a road game and the name of the girl he had sex with the morning before his most recent appearance on Monday Night Football. Now, I see him in a Bills jersey and my mind is blown. THIS WILL HAPPEN TO YOU. Don't think it won't.

As for the cards themselves, even though the design isn't authentic (I looked through my 19th century tobacco card price guide and found nothing remotely like it) it actually looks pretty good. The fancy schmancy border fits in with card designs found in the 19th century and the picture looks better with a little bit of color. Last year's design - while very authentic - got oppressive with the black borders and muted colors after a while. It was like the trading card version of a German Expressionist film. Using gold ink is very 19th century as well, half the old style cards I've seen from that period use metallic ink in the design.

Um.... maybe not THIS much metallic ink. This scans really well, but this back is really hard on the eyes. Especially my old-geezer-haven't-upgraded-my-eyeglass-prescription-in-over-two-years-because-I-lost-my-vision-insurance eyes. Other than the shiny ink, the backs are more or less the same as last year's backs. The name font is differnet, the flourishes at the top are a little more flourishy and there's more legalese at the bottom, but they're the same backs.

Namath - Broadway

This card ensured that I would have at least one good card in the pack. It's number 304, so it might be a short print. Or maybe not. I haven't seen a list of SP's yet and I'm not entirely sure if I care or not. See what happens when you play games with your short print list, Topps? Eventually we stop caring.

Next up is the Mini card. The card back was facing me when I opened the pack and this is what went through my mind when I pulled it:

Huh. They're doing team cards in this set now? A helmet logo is going to look tiny or squashed on a mini card.

WHAT THE FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU????

This is an insert card???

Me:

Great, now I'm going to be obsessively hunting for a 1:48 pack mini insert of a bloody bird that has probably been chucked in the trash by half the case breakers out there who have pulled it.

One other thing on the mini card: When I first looked at it, I thought that they had shrunk it down to Allen & Ginter size from the 'just large enough to not fit properly in any plastic sheet on the market' size used last year. I was wrong, it's the same size as 2008. I guess I'm going to have to pull out my Xacto knife and a one pocket page and get to customizing.

Grant - Green Bay

This is the one-per-pack super thick relic decoy parallel card. I'm not sure if I like this better than last year's Super Bowl logo set that they used for the decoys. One one hand, parallels suck and are boring. On the other hand, it is a card of a player and not a stupid Washington Redskins helmet. The main difference between these and the base cards (other than that they are three times as thick) is the silver ink on the border.

Oh dear Lord, these are even harder to read than the gold backs. The silver backs are glossier than the gold ones so if there is any kind of light source near you the text will immediately become invisible. Man, I miss the black backs from last year.

Bulger - St. Louis

The look on Bulger's face pretty much perfectly sums up the Saint Louis Rams' season.

Hobson - Admiral

I was lucky (?) enough to pull a non-sports character in the pack. According to the back Admiral Richmond Hobson is the "Father of American Prohibition" as he was the first congressman to probose a ban on alcohol. Oh goody. That worked out well, didn't it? He was also captured during the Spanish-American war and held prisoner. Maybe he was denied delicious Cuban rum by the Spanish while he was incarcerated and it made him bitter.

So there's a pack of Mayo. All in all, it looks like Topps gave up on redoing the original Mayo Cut Plug set and just took the "Football A&G" motif to its logical conclusion. It's an ok looking set. Retro doesn't seem to work as well on football though. I think part of it is that when I think old timey football cards, I think 1960's and 1970's, not 1890's. It's not bad though, and I think Topps learned their lesson from the bait & switch nonsense they pulled last year. At least I haven't heard a lot of complaining about the set on other blogs so far. Whether that is due to the fact that the set is better or that everyone already gave up on Mayo, I can't be sure...

One Card Reviews - 2009 SPX

SHINY

BORING

2009 ALLEN & GINTER CHECKLIST REVIEW - The Minis

Everyone loves Mini cards. Even the people who think parallels are doubles for dummies love mini cards. And that's all the minis are... parallels upon parallels upon parallels upon parallels.

There are no less than EIGHT different flavors of mini cards. I've scanned a few from past years so you can get a feel for what they look like. In cases where I do not have a particular version I have created a mock up as close as possible to the originals.

The different versions are:

REG'LAR OLD MINI CARDS

These are the versions that are simply the size of the old timey Allen & Ginter tobacco cards. And there's nothing wrong with that! But wait, there's more...

ALLEN & GINTER BACKS

These have the Old Planter logo on the back instead of the stats. I like Old Planter so I say: Yay! Old Planter! But wait, there's more...

BLACK BORDER MINIS

According to a scan from Beckett's box break, Topps went and fancied up the black border this year! They look like an actual frame now instead of the awkward and boring black box around the picture used the past few years. But wait, there's more...

NO NUMBER BACKS

AKA: The colossal pain in the ass parallel. These cards look exactly like the regular minis except like the original A&G cards, there is no card number. The problem: They look exactly like the regular minis except there is no card number. It's really easy to miss these little buggers unless you squint at every single card. To make matters worse, they are all limited to fifty copies each... BUT TOPPS DIDN'T SERIAL NUMBER THEM! I hate this version. But wait, there's more...

BAZOOKA GUM BACKS

Old Planter is chewing Bazooka gum and blowing a big bubble on the back of these cards. Thank goodness he was able to kick that smoking habit. These cards are actually serial numbered to 25. The one I have from 2007 is hand numbered. But wait, there's more...

CLOTH CARDS

These are like the silk cards found in Base Topps and a few other Topps sets. The sell sheet states they are made of cloth expressly designed for Ginter. Since Ginter was a planter, maybe they are made out of hemp? Nah, they'd have to have 420 subjects instead of 350 then. That wouldn't work and you should get high on baseball anyway you naughty stoners. These are numbered to 10 copies each. But wait, there's more...

GINTER GOT WOOD

Mini cards. Made out of wood. Hand crafted by Quebecois elves from old growth forest harvested in a magic grove watered by a rolling stream from Lac St-Jean. That's why there's only one of each. Or they were hacked out of one of Arthur Shorin's old coffee tables. Either way works. You'll never see one of these as long as you live anyway. But wait, there's more...

PRESS PLATES

The plates that printed up all those cards got sent out to pasture and encased in a frame for collectors to snap up. There's four colors per card, so four plates each. And that's all folks!

2009 ALLEN & GINTER PRE-SELL CHECKLIST REVIEW - The Boring 'ol Base Cards

Note - this is the first in about 8 zillion Allen & Ginter posts upcoming in the next month or so. First I will be reviewing the pre-sell checklist. You can download it (and the sell sheet) from this site here. Pre-sell information should always be taken with a grain of salt.

Nobody wants to know about the base cards, right? I mean, base cards are for chumps, all we're really interested in is the SUPA MOJO HITZ! Feh, base cards, who needs 'em! Give me a pack of 2 MegaPremiumTripleAutoPressPlatePatch cards that costs $500 a throw and I'm a happy guy! So, no Allen & Ginter post today... I'll save it for the GOOD STUFF like Rip Cards and DNA strands and AutoRelics. So... bye y'all! See you tomorrow!














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Ok, is it safe? Are all the Joe Collector schmucks gone? Can I talk about the base cards now? Great!

Ok, so this is the base design, taken straight from the sell sheet:

As you can see the design is much different from the A&G design from the past few years. In this instance, change is definitely good. The A&G design was virtually identical in 2006 and 2007 and was tweaked slightly in 2008. It's a good design and they mimicked the originals perfectly, don't get me wrong, but it's nice to have a border and a little less white space for a change. The design is also based on an original A&G card (or cards, actually) and in my humble opinion is pretty darned good looking. The basics are still there, a photo manipulated to look more like a lithograph with a cloudy pastel background, just now inside a little frame. At the very least it fixes the problem of some cards having a tiny little picture floating inside a large expanse of white that plagued the last couple of sets. Beckett showed off a horizontally formatted Jimmy Rollins card on their box break and it looked very nice, something I was worried about with the bulky name and logo at the bottom of the card.

So the design is good, what about the checklist? According to the sell sheet it is broken down thusly:
230 Veterans
30 Rookies
25 Historic Figures
And um, some World Champions

That obviously doesn't exactly add up to 350 so I sorted the checklist by the type and got 24 Champions, 25 Historical Figures, 36 Rookies and 263 Veterans. That doesn't add up to 350 either as cards 24 and 228 are missing from the pre-sell checklist. Who knows what the heck they are. I told you these checklists are unreliable. Maybe that phantom Mayo Joe Paterno card will show up here.

So what is actually in that unreliable checklist? Well, veteran cards are pretty much what you'd expect. Here are the Braves I found to give you a feel of how deep into the roster this set might go:
Derek Lowe
Nate McLouth (maybe a Pirate)
Yunel Escobar
Javier Vazquez
Jair Jurrjens
Brian McCann
Tim Hudson
Casey Kotchman
Jeff Francoeur
Chipper Jones

So most of the starters, basically. No Kelly Johnson, no Garrett Anderson, neither closer. But there should be a rookie or two in there maybe... I'm looking at YOU Jordan Schafer and Tommy Hanson! There's no way of telling though as this is the rookie checklist:
Gaby Sanchez
Will Venable
Travis Snider
David Price
Dexter Fowler
A whoooole lotta TBDs

Hanson's been up a month. That's enough time to squeeze him in the set, right Topps? RIGHT??? If he's not in there, he'll have to be created at any rate.

Now for the Champions. Topps digs deep for Champions to include in this set. Sure, there's Michael Phelps, but the rest (except for one that I'll talk about in another post) are, let's say more obscure. Mariel Zagunis. Anna Tunnicliffe. Jason Wong. Clyde Paris. Herb Simpson. I'll figure out who these people are once I open the product. There's quite a few TBDs in there too so there's surprises galore in this set.

The Historic Figures is another subset where Topps plays fast and loose when defining 'figures'. There's a few figures that aren't actually humans like the Alamo and The Suez Canal. As for the people, here are my top 5 'I want those cards":
Ludwig Van Beethoven
Geronimo
Doc Holliday (I'm your huckleberry)
Heinrich Hertz
Vincent Van Gogh

Those aren't the coolest ones though. There's a card of the Milky Way that looks frickin' sweet and the #1 card I want out of this set:

ELECTRON

Some people think a trading card of an electron is stupid. Why would ANYONE want a card of a stupid electron they say.

BECAUSE WITHOUT ELECTRONS YOU WOULDN'T BE READING THIS YOU DOPE!

There is one more thing I am compelled to mention before I close out this post. Hey Mario! Guess who is in this set?

ANDREW MILLER!

I've got the bubble mailer addressed and stamped already in anticipation of being the first to send Mario the latest addition to his Miller collection.

Up next: The mini cards.