BOUNTIFUL TRIP TO THE LCS

TODAY'S TWEVE DAYS OF DRAFTSMAS RECOUNTS A TRIP TO THE LCS MANY MONTHS AGO. I CHOSE THIS POST BECAUSE I MIGHT END UP AT A CARD SHOW TODAY IF THE UNIVERSE COOPERATES. I DIDN'T GET MUCH BUT WHAT I GOT IS QUALITY. FOR CERTAIN DEFINITIONS OF QUALITY AT LEAST. THE BEST QUALITY IS THE QUALITY YOU FIND IN THE BARGAIN BOX BECAUSE THAT QUALITY IS CHEAP

I'VE BEEN A BIT OBSESSED WITH UPPER DECK SPX RECENTLY AND I LOVE FINDING SOME OUT IN THE WILD. EVEN IF IT IS A SCRATCHES UP CARD OF ONE OF MY NOT-SO-FAVORITE PLAYERS. THIS ONE'S A GOLD CARD AND NOT A BASE CARD AS WELL BUT I DOUBT IF MANY PEOPLE DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN THE TWO ANYMORE. THIS PICTURE IS UGLY, I CAN DO BETTER

THAT'S MUCH BETTER. REAL HOLOGRAPHIC SHINY RIGHT THERE

DID YOU KNOW MICKEY MANTLE HAD A BASEBALL HEROES INSERT SET? IT WAS IN THE 1994 SET AND HAD A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT DESIGN FROM ALL THE OTHER BASEBALL HEROES BUT HE DID. EARLY UPPER DECK INSERTS ARE ANOTHER OF THOSE THINGS THAT HOLDS MY ATTENTION IN THESE DAYS OF CARDBOARD EXCESS AND I WAS THRILLED TO FIND ONE IN THE BARGAIN BOX

I AM NOT AS OBSESSED WITH LEAF LIMITED AS I AM WITH SOME OTHER HIGH-END 90S CARDS BUT IT REALLY IS A DAMN GOOD LOOKING CARD. FOILBOARD WITH SHINY HOLOFOIL IS VERY LEAF RIGHT DOWN TO THE FOIL LOGO, BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE

SERIAL NUMBERS! HELL YEAH. JEFFREY HAMMONDS DIDN'T QUITE  REACH BONDS LEVELS OF STARDOM BUT HE DID PLAY UNTIL 2005. THIS INSERT MISSED ME FOR YEARS BUT ENDED UP IN THE BARGAIN BOX FOR FIFTY CENTS

THE LAST CARD FROM THE BARGAIN BIN WAS THIS 1986 FLEER ALL STAR OF DAN QUISENBERRY. OLD INSERTS JUST HIT DIFFERENT. IT'S GETTING HARD TO FIND THESE THINGS AND EVEN HARDER TO FIND ONE I ACTUALLY NEED. THIS ONE WAS LOOSE IN THE BOX SO I ENDED UP GETTING IT FOUR FOR A BUCK WITH THE NEXT THREE CARDS

THERE'S A COUPLE BOXES FILLED WITH RANDOM BRAVES, FALCONS, HAWKS AND A DEW OTHER ASSORTED ODDS AND ENDS THAT I LIKE TO GO THROUGH WHEN I VISIT THIS SHOP. I KNEW I HAD THIS HEYWARD ALREADY WHEN I SAW IT BECAUSE I BOUGHT THE TARGET EXCLUSIVE BOX OF TOPPS CHROME IN 2010 WITH THIS SET JUST SO I COULD GET MY HANDS ON THE HEYWARD. IT'S SHINY AND PRETTY THOUGH, WHY WOULDN'T I GET A SECOND ONE

SPEAKING OF CHROMEY STUFF I COULDN'T PASS ON THIS 1993 FINEST CARD OF OTIS NIXON. I DON'T HAVE A TON OF FINEST FROM 93 WHICH IS A SHAME SINCE ITS ONE OF THOSE ICONIC FIRST YEAR DESIGNS THAT ARE SO POPULAR TO REPRINT NOWADAYS. EARLY FINEST DESIGNS ARE SO WONDERFULLY STRANGE, IT'S HARD TO PASS THEM UP. THERE WAS ANOTHER FINEST CARD THAT CAUGHT MY EYE IN THE BOX

WHY YES THAT IS A REFRACTOR. I WAS AS SURPRISED AS YOU ARE. THESE THINGS ARE PRETTY SOUGHT AFTER AND THERE'S SUPPOSEDLY ONLY 241 COPIES OF EACH CARD SO IT WAS A BIT OF A SHOCK TO SEE ONE LOOSE IN A BOX OF RANDOM STUFF. MIKE STANTON (AT LEAST NOT THIS ONE) ISN'T REALLY THE KIND OF STAR PLAYER THAT WOULD CAUSE A LOT OF COMMOTION AMONG COLLECTORS BUT A 1993 REFRACTOR IS A 1993 REFRACTOR. I WAS HOPING I COULD GET IT FOR LIKE FIVE BUCKS BUT NAH, 4 FOR A BUCK. IT'S GOOD WHEN THE OWNER OF A SHOP RECOGNIZES YOU AS A REAL COLLECTOR SICKO

SPEAKING OF SICKOS, I LOOKED THROUGH A BINDER OF FALCONS CARDS AND FOUND SEVERAL PAGES OF JESSIE TUGGLE CARDS. WHY, *I* COLLECT JESSIE TUGGLE! I WAS THE #1 JESSIE TUGGLE COLLECTOR ON TCDB FOR A WHILE BUT I GOT PASSED. THIS IS HELPING ME REGAIN MY FOOTING AT LEAST. I WASN'T SURE WHICH ONES I NEEDED AS I FORGOT MY TCDB PASSWORD AND COULDN'T ACCESS IT ON MY PHONE SO I NABBED EVERY ODDBALL I COULD. NO-DISCLAIMER ROOKIES, ACTION PACKED, TOPPS HOLOPARALLEL, SCORE GOLD RUSH, COLOR FOIL IMPACT, FOUR DIFFERENT FLEER GAMEDAYS, A PLAYOFF UNSUNG HEROES INSERT AND ACTUAL FRIDGE MAGNETS. MAN I LOVE OLD ODDBALLS, ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY'RE OF A PLAYER I COLLECT

MY LAST PICKUP WAS 15 PACKS OF 1983 DONRUSS ACTION ALL-STARS. THIS WAS ONE OF MY FAVORITE SETS WHEN I WAS A KID AND I COMPLETED IT WITH A COMC PICKUP I STILL NEED TO SHOW OFF. BUT I COULDN'T PASS UP THESE PACKS FOR A BUCK A POP! WHY SHOULDN'T I HAVE TWO SETS? I WENT THROUGH AND TRIED TO PICK AS MANY DIFFERENT PLAYERS ON THE FRONT AND BACK AS I COULD (EXCEPT FOR TWO RICKEYS, I LIKE RICKEY) AND PLANNED TO SEE IF I COULD BUILD A SET ONLY OUT OF PACKS. I DIDN'T EVEN COME CLOSE, BUT THAT'S OK BECAUSE I REALLY WANTED TO RIP THESE CARDS FOR THE EXCLUSIVE MICKEY MANTLE PUZZLE CARDS SO I COULD TRY TO COMPLET THAT SET. I ALSO DIDN'T COME CLOSE. I HAD FUN THOUGH!

October Card Show - Dime Box

You just knew I had to hit a dime box at the card show. It's something I just can't not do. So I did. Did any of that make sense?

I probably shouldn't have though. I hit these dime boxes on the way out of the show. I spent my last two dollars, and I haven't touched folding money since. Scrounging through these boxes got me home later than I wanted. And the dealer was Freedom Cardboard in Alpharetta, which I could go shop at anytime I please. But I did it! I have no regrets! Ok, maybe a few. But I did it my way. Here's a representative sample of the dime box goodies.

I'm sure glad this isn't a sad post.  Most of the stuff I snagged from the box was Topps Updates parallels and inserts. Mostly parallels, including a few Golds. I spent a good fifteen minutes looking for a Wilson Ramos card at the time of the unfortunate incident and this card was sitting on my desk less than a foot away from me the whole time.

Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiny! I likey teh shiny. Not enough to rotate the image after scanning it though. I kinda rushed on this post. Fun fact: I bought a few packs of Update at the card shop last month and let my son pick out one of the packs. A shinky Ankiel was in the pack. Ok, not that fun, but it was a fact.

LIQUORFRACTORS! I'm not as think as you card I am.

I hate these things (unless they have a Brave on them) but I still snagged 4 of the durn things. Unrotated, this reminds me of the Master Control Program from Tron for some reason*.

Topps 60! Another dumb insert! I think I've pulled/acquired the complete Dodger set from Update somehow.

Ok, enough Topps. I don't know if Chris Masters is any good or not but since I avoid Bowman like the Black Death, I do feel compelled to pick up the prospects when I come across them. Just in case.

I really should have rotated this one. I got this card because: clear plastic card, serial numbered, Real Football, girl on a card, I know at least one Philadelphia Phootball Phan.

Ok, last one. I do not give a Phlying Phook if the NBA cancels their season. The owners are all greedy fools, the players are also overpaid douches. The owners will still make money hand over fist in thier other businesses and the players will go play overseas, often for the same or more money and the NBA will wither and die. Golden Goose in action. That being said, even though I have not missed the NBA one whit, and even if they came back tomorrow I wouldn't watch a single game because I am boycotting them until the goddamn asshole Atlanta Spirit Group no longer owns the Hawks, and the whole friggin league can go right down the toilet for all I care, Al Horford is still my favorite player. And I still like his cards, even if they are ugly Panini cards.

*That reason is that I really am insane. Please send help.

January Card Purchases

Can you believe I did not buy a single pack of cards in January?

Seriously, not one.

No Topps, no Updates, no Chrome, no Platinum, no A&G, no nothin. I don't know how I did it either, but I did. That streak is going to get all blown to hell  in the next few days, but I went a month without buying a pack of baseball cards. I didn't go completely cold turkey however. I did make one trip to the card shop on a lunch break a couple of weeks ago. I spent 15 bucks. For that same 15 bucks I could have gotten a box of 1993 Flair, but I went with this stuff instead. Along with those three Goudey cards that got me all nostalgic, here's what I got for my money.

I freaking love 1951 Red Backs. I'd love the Blue Backs too, but I never see any of them. Wes Westrum looks quite world-weary here. I'm guessing he ran out many a triple back in the day.

Juan Marichal is one of those guys I'd give almost anything to go back in time and see pitch. I'd especially like to see him pitch on August 22, 1965.

A couple of World Series Heroes here! I will always love Pops for his time as a Braves coach under Chuck Tanner. He probably could have started int he outfield back then too.

OFF THE TABLE. No, not McCovey, the cat. GET OFFA THERE.

You're going to see a lot of Giants, Pirates and Orioles in here because those are the teams that I found the most goodies in. Yankees, Sox and Reds were pretty picked over. Here's a couple of All-Star cards of the Robinson Brothers.

There was no interleague play back then so we know Marichal wasn't the one throwing at Brooks. Of course, he could have been throwing on his day off. The '68 game cards is a set that I'm going to go nuts and try to complete one day.

The damn card show tried to hide a Hank Aaron card in the Giants section. I FOUND IT ANYWAY YOU SNEAKS. Thee's some horrible scrungy crud on the top of the card, but Hank is greater than crud.

I didn't realize the Pirates wore their sleeveless jerseys until 1970. I thought Topps had dug up this photo from 1965 or something. That's an odd way to hold a bat.

The main thing I was looking for was some 1972 Topps cards. I've got less than a dozen cards to complete Series One and Two from that set. I didn't manage to find much but I did get these three Hall of Famers:

All three were in the case but I managed to find Palmer and Lou in the dollar box. Sticker price on all of these was $5, but I got cut a deal on the mess of 'em.

I can't pass up Willie Stargell cards. It's just not possible. Pops looked like a hitting beast even as a child.

Here's a high series rookie card I managed to snag. By the seventh series Topps gave up trying to group all the rookies together by team or league. Like the rookies grouped by position in the '73 set, Topps went with the Rookie first baseman angle here.

Last two I picked up were a couple of commoners from the 7th series. Any high numbered '72 is pure gold.

I also got a couple of cards that turned out to be doubles. No too bad considering the only list I brought was my 1972 series 1 and 2 list. One of those doubles was a 1972 Topps Bill Russell high number, the other a 1961 League Leader card. Sometime in the next couple of weeks I'll do a doubles post and see if there is anyone out there who wants some vintage.

Well there's my January 2011 card purchases. Do you think maybe I should have gotten three packs of Update and a rack pack of Platinum for my money instead?

Things I learned at the card shop two days ago

After I struck out at Target yesterday, I drove one shopping center to the west and visited my regular hobby shop, Champion Sports Cards. I really should be spending my card cash there anyway to support them during the downturn, but I was jonesing for some throwback Target Topps cards. It all worked out for the best as I picked up a few goodies and learned a few things besides:

Always bring your wantlists

I picked up this 2008 Timelines die cut Josh Hamliton card out of the 50 cent box. I was positive I needed it for the set as the last card from that subset. Well I did need it, but I had received it in a trade already. Oops. I'm pretty sure someone out there collects Josh Hamilton...

I'm pretty bad about having my wantlists organized. Most of them are scribbled in random notebooks or even worse, on the back of shopping lists and scrap paper. My next project is now to get them online and printed out so I can keep a folder with them in the car so I'm prepared for those spur of the moment card runs. One of these days I'll join the 21st century and get an iPhone or a Blackberry or some kind of small computer gizmo and keep the lists on there for safe keeping, but even though I'm an IT professional I'm somewhat of a Luddite when it comes to gadgets.

Every time the Braves sign or trade for someone, I am compelled to immediately find a card of that player

2006 Bowman Nate McLouth gold parallel MLB logo fake rookie card. Awww yeah. While typing this post he just got his first RBI, driving in McCann on a ground rule double in the 8th to tie the game against the Brewers and get Tommy Hanson off the hook in his first MLB start. Then he immediately scored off a hit by Yunel Escobar to take the lead. Yeah Nate!

Now where in the heck am I going to find a card of this guy??

I like retired players better than current players

As do most collectors apparently. Topps Series Two hobby packs can be found with Jackie, Mickey, David Wright and Ryan Howard on the wrappers. I purposely dug past the Wright packs (which do not seem to be popular in Atlanta for some reason) to find a Mantle and Robinson pack to open. I think I'll battle these packs this week in a cardboard replay of the '55 World Series.

Right now, I prefer Quality over Quantity

Every so often, Champion sells $5 grab boxes of about 400 assorted cards. Most of them are minor stars and commons from recent sets with a few stars and inserts sprinkled in. There's usually a decent amount of higher end base cards in them like SP, Finest, SPX, Chrome, etc. mixed in among the Upper Deck and Topps. They are a cheap and fun way to pick up some cards and I usually pick up a few every time he sells them. I always find at least 30 cards or so I like or need and the rest are great trade fodder. There were a few boxes there but after looking through them I wasn't really interested. I'm not sure why, I just wasn't feeling it that day. I guess with money tight, it's harder to drop a fiver on a grab box. I picked one out anyway, but then found a pile of Finest in the 10 cent box. I picked out 11 (buy 10, get one free) to go along with the grab box but after thinking about it for a few minutes, I put back the box and just cleaned out the Finest instead. I like Finest, I'm not going to be able to afford a mini box any time soon and 37 Finest cards for $3.40 was simply a better value to me. Have I finally learned some collecting focus and restraint? That remains to be seen, but here are the 11 Finest cards I picked out initially:

If I see a Curtis Granderson card I buy it. He's a great player, cornerstone of my fantasy team, I know a half dozen people I can trade this card to in a pinch.

Jim Thome - 550 home runs, lifetime OBP over .400, lifetime OPS over .960, All Star, class act and in about 10 years some stuck up Hall of Fame voter is going to snub him because it's the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Very Good. I hate Hall of Fame voters.

Sheff is kind of the Bizarro version of Jim Thome, isn't he? Despite the probable juicing, temper tantrums and team hopping, the guy is a hell of a hitter.

Roy Oswalt is another of those players I don't actively collect, but I won't turn down any cards of him, either.

Adrian Gonzalez has 22 homers already playing in Petco. That's the equivalent of 147 in Coors Field.

Furcal is a Fink, and I constantly remind readers that Martin is not as good as McCann, but that doesn't mean they're not good players. I need to file away Raffy quickly though, because my gaze keeps drifting over to my paper shredder whenever I look at his card.

Halladay is the better pitcher but Hamels has the ring.

Tho good hitters who will probably be on different teams come September 1st. Since the Braves still need offensive pop and outfield help you never know, I might be scrambling for one of these cards come the trade deadline.

There's my card shop haul, all at a price significantly less than a blaster. Support your local card shops! They might not be there too much longer if you don't.

An incredibly interesting day at the card shop

Ever have a gift just fall in your lap? All wrapped up? Could be a golden egg, could be a hand grenade? So, yeah. I got one of those today.

I had to go to work for a meeting. A mandatory meeting. After working last night. And fighting off a cold. So I went. The meeting was long and boring but I learned something and made some face time. Yay for me. Since I was already on the other side of town, I went to a card shop that I don't get to go to very often. Yay for me. I had all the lists of the sets I'm building with me and I was hoping to pick up one of the more expensive cards like the '79 Ozzie or the '84 Strawberry. Or at least pick up a chunk of the stars on the lists, maybe even find that Ripken and Rose to cap off my '83 Topps set. I didn't find a whole lot there unfortunately . At least not a whole lot of cards. I found a whole lot of other things though. Hoo boy, did I.

So, I walk into the shop around 4:00ish. Maybe closer to 4:30. When I walked in some guy behind the counter (the owner maybe? It wasn't the manager who was busy sorting Mayo) was deep in conversation with a couple of guys in the store. They were talking about cards. I mean REALLY talking about cards. They were mostly talking about Upper Deck products. I'm pretty sure the two guys there were either distributors or worked for Upper Deck. The guy behind the counter apparently used to work for Upper Deck as well, as they were both making fun of some guy who worked for Upper Deck then moved to Topps. I didn't catch any names other than the guy they were talking about, but after they left the phrase "#2 after Richard" popped up. This merely confirmed my suspicion that thanks to a boring meeting being scheduled for the one day a week I really have to relax I landed into somthing big by sheer dumb luck.

Man, why didn't I pay attention in Journalism school. Why didn't I have a wire on me so I could listen to what they had to say after the fact and could get exact quotes and maybe even understand some of the stuff they were talking about. Hell, even a good night's sleep would have been nice. Damn, Mario would have given a testicle for this opportunity. He would have come up with a Pulitzer for sure. Ah well. It was unambitious, unassuming little me with my hobby blog in there. I decided early on to keep my ears open and my mouth shut. Just remember that this is a conversation between some one who might be affiliated with Upper Deck and someone who at the very least was trying to butter up the people who might be afilliated with Upper Deck as filtered through ME, so, hell, there's no way I can possibly be objective about this and I'm just going to tell it the best I can. This is going to be more of a column by Rona Barrett than a piece by Bob Woodward, but I'll pass along the gist of the conversation to the best of my ability.

Of the two guys there, only one really did any talking. Apparently the other was from Germany? That's one of the things I caught at the end of the conversation when I was starting to get tired. The other guy was the one who did the talking. I'm not sure which one was #2. Probably 50% of what they were talking about was how awesome Upper Deck was. Man, Upper Deck is awesome. Well, not completely awesome. The topic of Upper Deck X was brought up right after I got there and it was acknowledged that mistakes were made. Basically they admitted it was a retail product with a hobby price point. Counter guy (to make things easy for me 'guy' is maybe Upper Deck #2 and 'counter guy' is the maybe owner dude) agreed it was bad and specifically mentioned the bad hits and the die cut problems. To their credit, they admitted that was a mistake and it would be fixed this year. There were actually a few things that were said that gave me the feeling that, yeah, they 'got it' with some stuff. Other products were talked up and they were confident that they would be better this year. It was hard to tell who was the one promoting Upper Deck products at times. When they asked the guy behind the counter if there were any other products this year that he didn't think were any good, none were mentioned for about five minutes. Meanwhile in my head I was screaming Documentary, Documentary, DOCUMENTARY!!! Finally the guy let me off the hook and mentioned that Documentary wasn't very good, to which the guy behind the counter admitted that he didn't really bother with that product. Still, Upper Deck ROCKS was a major theme of the conversation.

There was a lot of invective thrown out towards Topps, which was not surprising. You wouldn't expect a Pepsi distributer to say nice things about Coke, and the store owner is probably going to go along with it as long as he's selling Pepsi. Much of it was deserved too, they talked about how Topps is just lousy at Football. There were a few cracks about the Letterman set with the stickers stuck to the manufactured patches. They agree with the blogging community's belief that in two or three years those stickers will likely be unstuck. Some of it was sour grapes too. There was a little complaining about how Topps skates on their legacy. The fact that they can make rookies of whoever they want (a statement that was caught and modified to they used to be able to make rookies of whoever they want) and the Legends players they just picked up was grumbled about as well. I don't remember the exact quote but something to the effect that people walk into a Target and buy Topps because that's what their dad collected popped up. The opinion that Upper Deck could make much better use of Topps' legacy was also discussed. Eh, it's rivalry talk. I don't get offended if I overhear two Florida fans talking trash about Georgia. I'd be worried if they didn't.

The NBA was discussed briefly and bitterly. Something to the effect that the NBA thinks their products drive the market because the secondary sales are hot. Of course the secondary sales are hot because everybody under produced this year because the products weren't selling. They got a point there. Razor wasn't treated kindly either. I think the guy was most mad at Donruss though. I'm pretty sure "Every set is the same" popped up. The fact that a $250 Donruss product with four prospect autos would be right next to an $85 Razor product with ten autos of the same guys worried the guy behind the counter. They both agreed one one thing though: even though every Donruss set was the same, they were very good at that one set.

They said a lot of good stuff about the industry and weren't totally negative, but sadly my brain has been trained by the mainstream news media to remember all the bad stuff. If things seem to be going very negative here, it's my imperfect and sleep deprived brain that's at fault, not them. They talked a ton about boring financial stuff like trying to keep product prices from falling under cost and the various hit ratios in products and the fact that the only hits that counted anymore were the BIG ones. There was a very 'high-end" feel to the conversation. Ironically, it seemed like there was no respect for the people they were targeting with those products! The word 'idiot' was thrown about at least once in reference to people busting cases of Goudey looking for a Tiger auto. Also about people busting open high end boxes like a Babe Ruth Sterling box they bought off of eBay for $900 when they could likely get the 'hit' out of the box individually for $250. There wasn't a lot of respect for the gambler types (which I agree with, honestly) when at the same time that seems to be what they think the core of their market is. There was also a discussion about how in order to make money on the product they had to balance out the Ruth hits with people like Paul Molitor. I was thinking to myself of a couple people I know who like Paul Molitor, but hey, I just collect.

A very interesting point about Sterling and Legendary Cuts came up. When Legendary Cuts' new contemporary player format came up due to the new 20% rule the guy behind the counter asked how Sterling got away with all the retired players. Apparently the Players' Union or the MLB (or both) signed off on it as an exemption because of the economy. The guy said that Upper Deck got an exemption too, but did not mention more than that. As for Legendary Cuts, the guy behind the counter said that he was a little concerned about this year's product. The guy must have said don't worry about Legendary Cuts at least five times. This leads me to believe that they are worried about Legendary Cuts. I'm cynical though.

All the set collectors out there are probably thinking "What about us? Did they mention us?" Nope, not really. I think set collectors was briefly mentioned in the aside about people getting packs at Target. There were some things that we gripe about that they really 'got' and were discussing ways to fix, but acknowledging that set collectors exist apparently isn't one of them. Set collectors seemed to be (paraphrased) "Case busters who rip open hundreds of boxes so they can be the first ones on eBay selling complete sets". Oy gevalt. Oh wait it gets better! They were talking about some real high end muckety muck set (not sure which set or even which sport, the conversation moved quickly) where they have over 300 cut autos in the set. Not sure if it was 300 different or three hundred total and "numbered to five" popped up but I can't remember if it was more than five or less than five. Basically there's going to be a set with a crapton of cut autos. The dude actually had the nerve to say that they were hoping that with the cut auto checklist configuration that some of the really big case breakers might be tempted to build a set of the cut autos. Jayzus. This is their concept of set collectors. The guy was also utterly bewildered why Timelines box prices plummeted to way under cost, but the secondary sales of the individual cards was so hot! HELLO... MCFLY... SET COLLECTORS. You accidentally made a really nice looking set and then put a Brandon Boggs auto in every box! OF COURSE all the idiots who bust cases don't want to buy your overpriced boxes now! OF COURSE all the people who like to build good looking sets see a nice product at a cheap price and start buying up individual cards on the secondary market to complete their sets! LEARN SOMETHING. You just made a good product that the whales won't touch but the minnows devour. FIGURE OUT HOW TO MONETIZE THAT. And the case breakers are the idiots?

Ok, so I'm getting a little angry. The anger is why I'm posting this at all. I'm probably going to get at best some compaints over this post and at worst a letter from a lawyer but one quote that is still stuck in my mind pushed me into writing this.

"If you're buying Upper Deck [base] for the content, you're buying the wrong product"

Pretty sure this is from the guy behind the counter this time but I just remember the words, not who said them. Content meaning "big hits" and "big hits" exclusively. You see, once upon a time the damn cards were the content. Before that the GUM was the content! So, yeah. This conversation blabbed blithely in front of some random guy picking through the dollar box with a want list might have touched the wrong nerve.

There were a lot of interesting things in the conversation though. Like spokesmen on the packs. When the guy first started with Upper Deck (he did say he worked for Upper Deck, but I can't say for sure if he still worked there, so I'm being wishy washy about it) all the packs had Jeter on them. Unfortunately, packs with Jeter on them don't sell well in Boston for some reason. Heh. Players with exclusive contracts get on packs a lot of times but sometimes a company specifically pays money to a player just to be on the pack. Apparently Gilbert Arenas got a lot of money from Topps to be on their wrapper a while back even though they had six guys under exclusive contract. What was wrong with those six other guys? They agreed that the best products were the ones without a player on the wrapper. Like Sterling. And Ultimate. And all those high end sets that us peons can't get. Ok, I'm getting bitter again. Moving on.

Towards the end of the converation it took a very odd turn. I had already gone through all the dollar cards looking for a stupid '83 Topps Pete Rose (50 other Roses there but no '83) and was trying to edge my way into looking through the rookie case at this point. I was also getting a little dazed and hungry. Needless to say I didn't follow the thread very well. Basically they started off talking about hockey cards. Solid fan base, great resale value. However, hockey sets don't translate well to baseball. Minor stars are much bigger in hockey than in hardball it seems. They did say how a product like Ballpark would work great in hockey with the multiple swatches. The guy was a bit hesitant to call the baseball version a success but the guy behind the counter seemed to really like it. They then started talking about O-Pee-Chee and how it was underrated and was going to be a success. The boxes were cheap and if you bought one, you bought more. Maybe here they were finally giving some props to the set collector, just not baseball set collectors. Then the conversation got strange. A&G was mentioned. More than once. O-Pee-Chee was mentioned again. Lots of good stuff in O-Pee-Chee. A&G mentioned again. Something to the effect 'were going to go after A&G'. Again, I have no idea what was going on at that point and I didn't feel like popping up and saying "Hay guize, I'm a blogger and I love A&G, wot's all this then about O-Pee-Chee?" One hour less of sleep last night and I might have been loopy enough to do it. Anyway, strange things seem to be afoot at the Circle K. I just don't know what they are.

At this point they left, the one guy came back in for a moment to leave his business card and I started to wrap it up. That's when the "#2" comment popped up as the manager asked what that was all about. I got a few measly cards and four Hobby packs of Topps. the Upper Deck wasn't out on the shelf and I didn't feel like hanging around while they opened it. I'll show off my loot later this week.

I wasn't initially planning to blab what I heard. I'm not interested in having a large manufacturer or even a card shop owner getting pissed off at me. But, if I didn't post it I'd regret it. I might regret it anyway, but it will be an 'oh crap, sorry about that, please don't hurt me' regret instead of a burning 'why am I too chickenshit to ever say anything, boy I suck' regret. And besides, this is the 21st century. We have the interwebs now. If you don't want to lose your advertising sponsors, don't smoke a bong in front of kids with camera phones. If you don't want gossip about your industry posted on a blog, keep your big mouth shut in front of customers.