The best kind of cards I'll see this month...

 This is a post of many thanks. You won't see the newest, shiniest hit product here today. Only a few cards sent to me by some old friends.

Or as I like to call it, the best kind of cards ever.

First up, some Allen & Ginter needs from Chris at Nachos Grande. Chris sent over a few from last year's offering.

The Murph!

My current fave, Freddie

The Greatest, Hank

Mr. One and Done.

Sharon's favourite...

Touki.

I have to admit, I like those better than some of the previous year's efforts.....

and now a couple from gcrl and his current blog, cards as i see them.

two of these were from my dirty dozen want list over there on the right side. the question i have is where the hell are the 37 copies of this card that i know i have somewhere?

but jim was nice enough to send me another just so i could cross it off of my list.

and look! actual cardboard. future hall of famer brian asselstine.

as well as a 2012 chippah! no. wait. a 2020 chippah!

Thanks boys! Much appreciated.

Look what I found! 2018 Donruss Optic Baseball.

Time sure flies when the world is ending. Hopefully we have a bit more time before The End of Days since I haven't watched season 7 of "Castle" yet.
As any baseball fan in Canada knows, finding football or basketball wax is IMPOSSIBLE. (Thanks for nothing Panini.)
Now that has trickled down to baseball. Sure I can go to my local shop and drop $2600 on a single box of 2020 Definitive, but I had left my American Express Centurion card in my other limo that day.
So a blaster of 2018 Donruss Optic baseball it is!

Just the highlights.... this stuff is a bit shiny for me. You could signal aircraft with this stuff.

Okay, okay, it doesn't look that shiny. I was lazy and scanned them with the sleeves still on. You even look at this stuff and it scratches. Sue me.

CHIPPAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So this blaster is an automatic win after the first pack.

Hey look! Another pretty good switch hitter.

The main fish himself. I'm tempted to sell my graded liquorfractor rookie of his... I could use the $3500.

Love the old school Rated Rookies. And it's OZZIE! But pink? Really? Shouldn't the Dodger rookies be pink?

Shohei. From what I hear, he goes both ways.

Five packs, so I show five cards. I was pretty happy with it overall. Especially for an unlicensed product.

I FORGOT TO SHOW YOU THE BACKS!!!!

Damn. Topps should take lessons on how to do a proper card back. They apparently have COMPLETELY forgotten that skill.

Did any of you bust this product? What was your favourite pull?

Cards on Cards for Canuck

Awhile back Kerry from Cards on Cards did a wee breakoff 2019 Topps of the Class.  And he opened it up to anyone to claim a team, for free, because he's like that. Of course, even though I saw his post 0.04056 nanoseconds after he posted it, the Braves were already claimed. It is that way in any and EVERY break online whether it be a generous free break, or a paid one.

This is my life.

So I took the local team. Local if someone in Phoenix considers the Yankees local. I figured the Blue Jays needed to come back to Canada.

I was lucky enough to get a couple of cards too! 

I ended up with two of Lourdes Gurriel Jr. I like watching him play. He's fun. I don't think he's in the Jays long term plans.... but for now he makes the games interesting. And baseball needs more of that. If there's ever baseball again, that is.

 I also received a Marcus Stroman. Marcus is now a Met. Poor Marcus. We should all feel sorry for Marcus.

But here's the best part. Even more than getting into a break for free.
Kerry sent over a few Braves in his PWE!

That's actually a cool pic. I normally don't like those shots where you can't tell who the subject is, but until we start to get team cards again (i.e. NEVER) This isn't bad.

Looks like someone dropped a paint can full of Swansons onto a canvas and ended up with this. It has a nineties vibe to it. I like it. Although it may not age well...

 Great googly moogly! A SMOLTZ! and I don't already have it!!!! WOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for the cards Kerry! One of these days I'll try and return the favour.

He shoots! He Scores!

A quickie post this evening. I wasn't able to find too many needs for my Score Braves team sets.
But I did come away with two.
Both from the 1990 Score Update set.

Franky Cabrera.
You've heard me freak about When Sid Slid a lot on this blog.... Well Franky here is the one who was called on to pinch hit and drove the grounder to right that allowed Sid to slide.
That makes him an All Time Brave.
Come at me.

Ernie Whitt??? A Brave? Blink and you'll miss it. Ernie played 15 seasons in baseball. 14 in the American League, and 1 with ATL. He didn't do so well in the N.L. One last hurrah for Baltimore in '91 and he hung up his mask for good.

Now we'll see who's been paying attention.
This post featured 1990 Score Update. My last post was about 1990 Fleer Update. Both sets had two Braves catchers in them. But they were different catchers. How many did the Braves use that year??

Seven. Not shown are Kelly Mann, Tyler Houston Jody Davis.

Kelly, along with Tyler Houston and Jody Davis were the catchers in the Score regular set.
Kelly and Jody Davis made the cut for Fleer.

It was Jody's last season in baseball. Kelly played 18 games as a rookie, and then never played again. Tyler didn't make The Show until '96. Played a handful of games for the Braves and was shipped to the Cubs.

As much as I love Fleer and Donruss.... I think Score may be my favourite. The '91 set is one of my faves of all time. (In spite of all the black and white photos of shirtless dudes.)

Any of you have favourite Score cards?


Oh, by the way, Nacho is having a Ginter contest. It's rather complicated, but hey, what else have you got to do? Go and enter. Tell him I sent you. You'll get a discount.  Nacho Grande

Fe-Fi-Fo-Fleer

Let's talk about Fleer baby, let's talk about you and me...… Hopefully you  now have that song in your head for the rest f the day.

In my never ending quests to finish up these Braves team sets, today we tackle early 90's Fleer. Fleer update specifically.

First, 1990.

Nick Esasky, who looks like an undercover police officer.

Jim Kremers! Now I am a HUGE Braves fan. But wo the hell is Jim Kremers? And what does he want?
A quick google search shows that he's actually known as Jimmy. And that his career lasted 29 games in 1990. He batted a whopping .110 with a homer and two RBI's.
Atlanta then shipped him to Montreal for Otis Nixon.

Greg Olson. Not the pitcher, the catcher. Unlike Jimmy, Greg lasted a bit more in the Bigs.

Jim Presley! HEY! My name's Jim Presley and I'm the new third baseman for the freaking Atlanta Braves!!!! Wait. Who's that rookie shortstop over there practicing at third??? He has a funny name too. Chipper??? Who calls their kid Chipper?

Then 1991. For those who thought the 1990 set was too bland, Fleer listened and gave you this for 1991. Hey, it is substantially better than 1991 Donruss. The worst set ever made.

Kent Mercker! One of my faves. Great career.

And Otis!!! We now know how Otis got here. See? You learn something new every day.

Terry Pendleton. Great at the beginning, but cost the Braves so many games near the end. Bobby Cox was loyal to his players though and kept putting him out there. Almost caused me to throw my TV through the window many times watching him "pinch hit"
More like "pinch strike out" Am I right?!!

Raffy!!!

I don't remember Juan too much. Although he pitched fairly well in the season and a half he was with Atlanta.

SID!!!!!!! YOU BIG BEAUTIFUL BASTARD!!!!!
Oh...… when Sid slid. It was magical.

This must be Freddie's older brother.

Gotta say, I have a soft spot in my heart for Fleer.

Do any of you have any Fleer fvourites?

2020 Insanity! (Also known as Bowman baseball)

We still don't have a season. Judging by the behavior and greed of MLB and the MLBPA, we may not get one.

But, we still have baseball cards. 2020 Bowman came out recently here. There was a wee delay in getting it across the border. But it's here.

Or at least it is in some shops. The complete insanity over it has caused many shops to sell their allocations to dealers in the U.S. at absurd prices.

My local shop kept theirs. I did not buy a box. $750 for a jumbo box and $385 for a hobby box is out of my league. Those prices did not stop anyone else as they sold out of their cases of jumbos within a couple of hours....

I did manage to scrounge up a few Braves from the scrap pile as wrappers and boxes flew everywhere.

Here is my first, and quite possibly last, taste of 2020 Bowman.

Acuna Jr. is from the veterans part of the set.

 Young Jasseel here made it as high as 'AA' Mississippi last season. He started 16 games, going 4-7 with a 3.83 ERA.

My man Drew made it to 'AAA' Gwinnett last year, getting into 26 games. Smacking 2 homers with 11 RBI's and hitting .271
He also managed to hit .167 in 15 games during Spring Training before the world ended.

This is the Chrome version of the previously shown paper Jasseel. But this is NOT Bowman Chrome. Or Bowman Draft, or Bowman Draft Chrome. It's just chrome in Bowman. Not Bowman Chrome.

Here we have another chrome in Bowman that isn't Bowman Chrome. This one featuring Shea Langeliers. This Baylor grad made his debut in 'A' ball last season for Rome.
During Spring Training, he got into 8 games, batting .429 with a homer and 5 RBI's.

So there it is. I'm not seeing the fuss. But I like pulling cards out of packs of players that I know and can see on TV. The youngin's aren't really my thing until they've made it.

Did any of you jump on Bowman?

Remember Upper Deck Baseball?

Back in the day, before the Player's Associations, Lawyers, Agents, and all of the other slimy people who don't collect sports cards decided they should be in charge of sports cards, Upper Deck made baseball cards.

They started out amazing. But from that peak, they went into a decline until the license was pulled out from under them like a cheap area rug.

The late nineties was a shrine to gold and bronze foil. Upper Deck must have bought in bulk. They used it excessively. 

In my recent return to paying attention to want lists long ignored, I purchased around forty of these. Here are a few faves.

Probably my favourite all time pitcher.

John Smoltz. I really like the pose on this one. Not a common photo choice. Not too sure about shrinking it out of ratio in black and white right beside the colour version though.

Mad Dog. Greg Maddux. Trapped in green foil hell.

Andruw Freaking Jones. The best center fielder of my generation. The man won 73 consecutive Gold Gloves. 73!!! Go ahead. Look it up. I'll wait.

Crime Dog! For some reason out of the over forty UD cards I bought, only three were duplicates that I already had. All three were of Fred McGriff from different years.
Odd.

Javy Lopez! Again, more hideous brassy gold foil. Yuck. Love the action shot of him pulling off that mask and fielding that bunt? Getting ready for the throw home?

One of my favourite Bravos of all time. The Lemmer. This time with brassy gold foil woodgrain! Way to mix it up Upper Deck!

My list has dwindled, but is still in need..... Upper Deck Baseball Want List

Do you miss Upper Deck baseball cards? What was your favourite set from them?

Ginter madness!!!

Ah, Allen & Ginter. Every year it causes baseball card collectors to froth from the mouth. Or at least it used to. I've been away for awhile. Does it still have that effect?

Anyway. I recently have started to go back through my binders and update my want lists. Seriously, it's been years since I've done so. Neglect, malaise, and of course, laziness have all contributed. So I started with Ginter. I figured that would be a nice easy transition than Topps' base stes with their bajillion inserts, parallels and variations. And short print variations with coloured borders and different backs. With serial numbers.

Ugh.

I purchased a few new cards online to fill in some holes in my binder. Still a ways to go. I thought I'd share a few here.

2006 Mike Kelly. Looking at my lists all these years, I thought it was this Mike Kelly. Imagine my surprise.

 2017 - Mr. Aaron. An outstanding looking card.

 2012 - Mr. Aaron again. You may be asking why, if I'm only showing a few cards, would I show Hank Aaron twice? Because he's the Hammer. Silly question.

 2017 Bartolo Colon. Great googily moogily. Look at the gloriousness of that card! Who doesn't want to see that bust in Cooperstown? (Yeah, I know, busts are in Canton for the NFL. But Bartolo here gets special dispensation.)

 2014 Crimedog!!!! One of my all time underrated players. The man needs some respect.

 2007 Big Bad Bob Wickman.

When he was acquired by the Braves in the late summer of '06, Bobby Cox nearly pitched his arm off. (Wickman was 37 at the time) Bobby went to him and apologized and told Wickman he could have the day off. Wickman told Bobby, I'm 37 years old and don't have a lot of time left. I'll rest when I'm dead.
That's my kind of ball player.

Should any of you have any Ginter lying around that I might need, throw me a line. I probably won't have much to swap back... but you never know.

Allen & Ginter want lists

Who's in for Ginter this year???????????? July is coming fast!

My take on 2020 Topps Heritage

Ah... the sweet smell of vintage baseball cards. Well, modern vintage. I'm talking about 2020 Topps Heritage baseball of course. Doing their version of 1971 Topps. Those glorious black borders. Made all the more tremendous after the horridly dull grey borders or the previous year.

As with any new release, I'm sure the blogging world has dissected this set to death already. However, I wasn't around then, so I'll just pretend I'm breaking new, never talked about before, ground. (Never talked about before ground??? Hmmm... I've been away too long) 

I opened a box, and was disappointed in what I found.... but I'll talk about that at the end. First, pictures!

Here we go … A Brave! Mr. Jackson showing how to throw a fastball. Grip it and rip it Luke.

Vlad Jr. The savior. According to the national sports networks here in Canada, they should be holding his enshrinement ceremonies in Cooperstown as soon as the lock down is over. Love that rookie trophy though.

A parking lot background! Wait. Wasn't that in 1973? Did Topps pull a boo boo here? I don't remember a parking lot background in the original set... Anyone care to corrext me on that one?

I do like the rookie cards set up like this.... A nice bold design with no annoying rookie logo disrupting the card front.

I've always loved leader cards. It's a great way to be able to acquire superstar Hall of Famer cards from their playing days at a somewhat affordable price compared to their regular base card.
(anyone of you familiar with Verlander's wife knows why he's always smiling)

YES! Horrible photoshop on a 2020 card. I hope Topps did a horrible job on purpose because they were trying to remind everyone of back in the day... They did... I'm sure.... Right?

Speaking of photoshop.... Yikes. Since when has Topps just cut ballplayers out of their existing surroundings and layered them over a new background???? Card after card after card I found where it was a cut and paste job. They haven't always done that with Heritage, have they? Yeeesh.

A DeGrom sighting on Tatooine. Who was it that collected Tatooine cards? Someone did. GCRL maybe? I dunno.

But I do know that it's not quite as epic as this......

Do they still make Royal Crown ????

By the way, that is my Ryan from my set. Only my set is of course, O-Pee-Chee. Which, as any card collector knows, is far superior to the Topps version because of this....

Oh! The backs! The great OPC backs! Whether it's 1971 or 1991.... OPC card backs were fantastically greater. Not too mention, readable.

Overall I really like the cards. They look good and a nice feel.  It was a fun opening, looking at the pictures, trying to figure out which one was an homage to anything in the '71 set. Decent player selection.
What I didn't love was the collation. Close to thirty duplicates. When you cannot get a base set out of one box, receiving duplicates is a sin. It's not that difficult to have an algorithm set to prevent this. It is already an overpriced product. No way you should have to pay $115 a box for this when Series 1 can be had for $89. Especially considering chasing down the 100 short print high number cards seeded at only 8-9 per box.

But, we're suckers. Topps knows this and doesn't care. Thankfully after a couple of swaps over the last week or so I think I'm damn close to having the base set. Still sitting at 9 of the high numbers though. It's tough to swap for those when you don't get duplicates.
Oh well... it's not a race, right?

What say you? Heritage, Hell Yeah or Nah? Did you open any? Who's chasing the set?