All My Heywards - 2013 Panini Hometown Heroes

2013 Panini Hometown Heroes No. 209

Ok so this set is ridiculous. No logos since it's unlicensed. Uniforms have been airbrushed to oblivion and everyone looks generic. The colors are awful. It's got as much yellow as '91 fleer and I hate red borders. The back is busy as hell. Stats are in 4 point type while useless nonsense fills up the card's real estate. And why orange of all colors. The card stock is that weird retro three-ply stuff they used in 2012 Heritage except thinner. There are 40 cards that don't know if they are short prints or variations and they are all diabolically hard to pull. There are too many inserts. And the inserts have PARALLELS. Whyyyyyyyyyyy. This set is horrible. It's beyond horrible. It's terribadly atrociolicious. It's the Plan 9 From Outer Space of trading card sets. So of course I am completely in love with this set. This is the perfect set to sort while drinking a PBR and listening to The Shaggs. Do you know of another set where you can pull Ernie Banks, Oscar Gamble  Yasiel Puig, Ken Griffey Jr., Mookie Wilson, Mike Trout, Bo Jackson and Mark Lemke all out of the same pack? No you don't because it doesn't exist. I loves this set so much I made a wantlist.

2013 Panini Hometown Heroes wantlist because I'm crazy

33 Cole Hamels
59 Wil Myers
122 Tom Seaver
133 Jordan Zimmermann
148 Shawon Dunston164 Alan Trammell
190 Bernie Williams

Base Image Variation SPs whatever

261 Yasiel Puig
262 Jurickson Profar
263 Wil Myers
265 Dylan Bundy
266 Evan Gattis
267 Gerrit Cole
268 Zack Wheeler
269 Manny Machado
270 Shelby Miller
271 Mark Grace
272 Fred McGriff
273 Frank Robinson
274 Curt Schilling
275 Greg Maddux
276 Carlton Fisk
277 John Franco
278 Roberto Alomar
279 Ellis Burks
280 Prince Fielder
281 Nolan Ryan
283 Bo Jackson
284 Dave Stewart
285 Josh Beckett
286 CC Sabathia
287 Jack Morris
288 Dave Kingman
290 Rickey Henderson
291 Pete Rose
292 Neil Walker
293 Steve Garvey
294 Matt Williams
295 Randy Johnson
296 Lee Smith
297 James Loney
298 Will Clark
299 Paul Molitor
300 Andre Dawson

INSERT SETS:

Calling the Shots
(Any)

City Hall
9 Dale Murphy

Curtain Call
14 Reggie Jackson

Defining Moments
got one

Homegrown Heroes
16 Chipper Jones

Hometown Signatures
5 Mark Lemke
7 Steve Avery
16 Evan Gattis
66 Oscar Gamble
92 Terry Pendleton

Left Their Marks Signatures
10 Bob Horner

Nicknames
1 Ryne Sandberg
2 Dwight Gooden
4 Ken Griffey Jr.
5 Mike Trout
6 Felix Hernandez
7 Ron Cey
8 Nolan Ryan
9 Orel Hershiser
10 Lance Berkman
11 Roger Clemens
12 Andre Dawson
13 Fernando Valenzuela
16 Shane Victorino
17 Ozzie Smith
18 Roy Halladay
19 Derek Jeter
20 Rickey Henderson

Rivalry
5 Yogi Berra

SportDiscs
14 Justin Upton

32 Chipper Jones

Top 20 Intermission - What the hell was I thinking

All dedicated dime box scroungers has this happen to them. After spending hours putting together wantlists and vowing to focus only on the cards they actually need, the box diggers frenzy strikes and a whole bunch of weirdness ends up in the shopping cart. Here's some oddball crap that I got from the card show that I really did not need at this point in my life. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing.

I know what I was thinking here, I like Carlton Fisk, and I had just put an Eddie Mathews and Tom Glavine from the same insert set in my stack. Makes sense. The card is damn ugly though.

Well., I am a fan of the WBC. And it is fairly shiny. Why I picked out a card with a Yankee and a Met, I don't rightly know. Maybe I meant to give this Jeter to Sooz but forgot. Man, I really bungled the scans on this lot didn't I. I'm not going to take the time to rescan my dime box Fails, so you'll have to deal.

Ok, I know why on this one. Alex Gonzalez is the Braves' shortstop. So I grabbed a Bowman's best die cut insert of a Florida Marlin with Mark Grudzielanik on the back. There's a dime I'll never see again.

You gotta admit, a card of Bo Jackson and George Brett is pretty kickass, even with the hideous Donruss Design. They're about to beat the crap out of each other with baseball bats!

This card tests the theory that any Ichiro card is a good Ichiro card. This is from a set called Topps Pack Wars. Basically, you and a friend go to a card shop, plop down $20 a throw for a pack of this junk, choose a statistic and whoever has the highest total wins the relic card inserted into the pack. You know, just like if you were playing pack wars with some 50 cent packs of 1988 Topps, except it costs $40, and one of you leaves with nothing and the other gets a relic of Eric Chavez and an auto of Johnny Estrada.

Q: Why did Dayf buy this card?

a) he hates Griffey and wants to voodoo it
b) the busyness of the card hypnotized him
c) he likes old-timey looking cards to have newfangled players on them
d) everyone and their brother collects Reds and Dayf is clean out of Cincinnatians.

If you chose D, congrats! You passed the quiz!

Teddy's my favorite President, sure. This was in the dollar box though, not the dime box. In my defense, it was the 6th card in a 6 for 5 dollar deal. However, the prosecution notes that I went back and bought another dollar card from the box after this one and that I am an inveterate box scrounging collector. The defense agrees wholeheartedly and rests their case. I need a new lawyer.

Another Jeter card! That I don't even want! The hell is wrong with me.

Here's half of a Griffey insert card. Not sure who's on the other half. Probably A-Fraud. Did I mention I don't like Griffey anymore? Maybe I bought this for trading purposes.

I like oddball mini cards, that is not in question. I still am not sure why I got this card of the Father of Texas from a football retro set that I don't have the time or energy to seriously collect anymore. I guess the combination of mini and history grabbed me. Austin is apparently a happenin' little town though. Wasn't Slacker filmed there? That's a good enough reason as any to buy this card.

I DON'T LIKE A-FRAUD EVEN A LITTLE BIT! IT UGLY TOO! Y I BUY THIS CARD??? WHY???