Off For A Week Long Trip

I'm doing a stretch of business travel over the next 10 days.

Little bit of DC later today and tomorrow, New York City on Wednesday and Thursday followed by San Francisco next week. Since I can't seem to find any 2010 Topps here in Minneapolis, maybe I'll find some on the road.

And with that, I'm off, but not before showing off a Jake Peavy card I acquired in trade last month.

It's a horizontal Turkey Red to boot! And I love it. This card came from my buddy Brian, along with the entire set of Topps Propaganda cards. Speaking of those propaganda cards, I have an extra Roy Halladay now that I have the entire set if someone was looking to trade for it.



Just to go on record, I'm darn close to finishing Series 2 Topps and I've decided to make a run at U&H. I won't be able to update my U&H needs list until I get back and receive a package in the mail from The Troll - just a little foreshadowing to keep you all in suspense while I take my leave of you.

Topps Legends of the Game Additions

I've frantically been trying to catch up on posting some trades that took place during December and January.

Around the same time, I brought back probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 of those 3,000ish count boxes from my youth. Filled with junk football and baseball wax and other assorted surprises. I've been trying to get some sort of organization system in place, and that's what lead to a downturn in posting around the New Year.

But, I digress. I was able to add two more of the Topps Legends of the Game inserts to my binder over the past couple of months. The first is the Wade Boggs that's shown above. The second is Pee Wee Reese, shown below. I'm still hunting for more of these cards and if you have any to trade, drop me a line. I'm also darn near a completed 2009 Topps Series 2 set. Can you help with the last few?

I Think I Was Nix'd? More Heritage High Number - Details and Scans

No, not Bipped, but Nix'd maybe? I don't know, it all happened so fast - the ripping - that I didn't even notice I pulled three of the same guy in a single blaster.

Regardless, welcome back for a little more 2009 Topps Heritage High Numbers. A scanner full of 9 Heritage cards looks pretty cool, in my opinion. All of these Rookie Stars are still up for grabs via trade if you need any:




572, 523, 647
523, 519, 648
648, 580, 677

I've also got a neat Nolan Reimold Rookie Performer (RP5), if that's more your thing.



I only accumulated 7 AL guys when you include only one of each of the dups.



Here are the NL guys, which to my dismay contained only one possible Dodger for Night Owl (or any other Dodger collector out there). Plenty o' Pirates though! Oh, that's right, the Dodger is up above in the Rookie Stars area.



There was also one Then and Now card featuring Adrian Beltre and Brooks Robinson (TN3). I'll be honest, I've pretty much tuned Beltre out since his roid induced career/contract year and all throughout his tenure with the Mariners. Does he play solid D or something? Or what's the comparison here?



And finally, I'd like to end with the newest Brewer. A guy I used to watch in the Metrodome when I first arrived in Minneapolis. A guy who once gave up something like 200 earned runs in a season. A guy who was clearly horrible until the peak of the roid era when he turned reliever. Makes me wonder about you Mr. LaTroy Hawkins #630. May you not break camp with the Crew in March, I just don't like you.

Birthday Blaster - Heritage High Numbers and U&H

This is what my birthday gift from my close friend Tom showed up in. I expected nothing less than awesome on the inside, and he didn't disappoint.

Within the billowy pink and white tissue paper I found a blaster of Topps Heritage High Numbers and Topps Updates & Highlights. These packs are actually quite fun to rip. You get a couple U&H cards, as well as a bunch of Heritage High numbers.

Now, in theory, I'm not collecting the High Numbers, so if anyone out there needs any, I'll get them up on my For Trade Spreadsheet (Of Doom) sometime tonight.

I say 'in theory' because I might have found something I liked in the High Numbers. And yes, it's Chrome-y.



I came across this Chrome version, numbered 0086/1960, of Trevor Cahill. Up and comer for the Oakland Athletics. These cards in their chrome versions look super cool. I can't emphasize this enough.

This blaster was actually blessed with another Chrome rookie star of Koji Uehara.



And yet another of Brad Mills. This one, while looking a lot like the other two, is actually a slightly different color and numbered to 560 I believe. The color difference really comes through in the scan.



I really dig these cards. Is anyone else collecting the chrome versions of these Rookie Stars? I'd like to get my hands on a few more once I take a look at the checklist. I haven't spent a ton of time with Heritage this summer and I traded most of my base cards to JD late last summer. I'm hoping I'll be able to knock off a few more of his needs.

I do have a question for those of you who are collecting Heritage. Here's a shot of the backsides of a few cards. The third card in the picture is of J.A. Happ, and his card looks like the other 40 or so I pulled out of this blaster.



The other three cards have what looks to be a throwback backside with a more natural cardboard color look to them. Is this purposeful by Topps?

To round out this blaster, which I was very please with, I also found a Matt Holliday Clubhouse Collections jersey card.



As usual, if you've seen anything you like here, I love working out trades. I'm still trying to piece together Topps Series 2, if you can help.

Trade Completed With Carl Crawford Cards

Trade Completed may be a misleading lead-in. Let me double check the definition of the word trade . . .

"An exchange of one thing for another"

Yeah, that's what I thought, this wasn't really a trade. More of a CTBNL type of transaction. Unless of course I sent something and just can't remember.

However, I do want to thank Paul from Carl Crawford Cards for sending over a Phil Hughes Goudey that I can now trade to my card collecting buddy Brian. Probably for another Sports Royalty or Short Print I'm looking for in the Goudey set.



Paul was also kind enough to send along 3 other Crawford cards he had duplicates of. I should explain a little, I'm thinking about adding Crawford to the player binder I've started which now includes Mike Mussina, Jim Palmer, Rickie Weeks, Alex Gordon, Will Clark, Jake Peavy, and Joe Mauer.

Crawford helped my fantasy baseball teams to a couple of titles throughout the 2000s. I have a soft spot for him, and I may have to go re-acquire him for this season.

Here are the 3 other cards that were sent in the package.

My T206 "Review"

T206, you've left me torn. That's where I'll begin.

There are quite a few very cool cards in this set. Take for instance this Jake Peavy card, or the Ryan Braun card in the post directly below. Heck even that mini-Markakis card below. I very much like the cards that have the background broken up by two different colors or an image.

However this is offset, for me, by a variety of nits. Yes, the fake stains are terrible, we know this, but what else? I hate the rookie card logo, for any card, ever, but what I hate more about the T206 is that they replace the team name with "Rookie". Why? I can't find any reason for this especially since every rookie card is emblazoned with that terrible logo.

Next on my list of gripes are the packs. Sure, some of you will just say "don't buy packs". I hear you, but I'm weak. I did take a stand against these cards though.

1 pack = 4 base cards, 1 bronze parallel, and 1 mini. Does anyone collect parallels at all? Anyone? Seriously, a fat bronze parallel. You are guaranteed one card in every pack that you absolutely don't need or want. Topps, it's like you're stealing from me. On top of that, you throw a mini, in every pack. Every single pack. To collect this set would be an exercise in learning to be schizophrenic for me. There's just no value here in the packs. I absolutely detest sets that take one card out of every pack and designate it as possibly worthless. Be it mini or parallel, just randomly seed these things. Please.

I feel like I spent part of December preaching this next thought on the comments of many of the other blogs out there, and I just want to go on record for saying this here.

If you take the concept of Goudey, with a small base set, randomly seeded short prints that don't seem borderline impossible to pull, and use the player pictures from T206 or Allen & Ginter, and sprinkle in some of the well done backgrounds from T206 or possibly even Goodwin Champions, top off with on-card autos that aren't easy to pack search for and I think you've got a heck of a set to collect.

Can't Bear To Be At 3 Weeks

Just knowing I haven't posted a single thing since before Christmas is a bit depressing.

I've done some trading with a few people out there and I need to do some posts about that. I also broke a T206 blaster.

The emotional sports hangover I was left with after the Cardinals-Packers game has left me as one unmotivated sports card collector!

I'll leave you with the highlights from the T206 blaster and a note that my minis are up for trade. I'm a huge fan of the No Number Short Prints like the Cy Young you'll see here. Generally speaking I realized I'm not really interested in this set for a variety of reasons. That should make a good follow-up post.



Oh, I've also found that I scanned the Lincecum No Number.