Return to Card Land

Things have been busy. The blog has been quiet since late-August and, until last weekend, I hadn't purchased, looked at, or even thought about cards all that much since that last post. It's just been that busy. 

Work got crazy as fall began and then I found myself interviewing for a new job (a process that lasted a few months). I got the job in late-October and it's been even busier since. But the job came with a company car and a sizeable pay raise, so it's not all bad. 

Anyway, I was back in California visiting family last week for Thanksgiving and made a stop at my former LCS. Perhaps it was the lack of cardboard in my life over the last few months, but I quickly found myself opening up several hobby boxes, including a box of 2019 Stadium Club, two mini boxes of 2019 High Tek, and a box of 2019 Allen & Ginter. 

I'm still trying to go through all of the cards, but I wanted to get back into blogging and thought I'd show off some of the hits, including a few big ones. 

High Tek

 

A decent pair of autos in Corbin and McCullers. Really great looking cards. 

A couple of Springers. Green and Purple parallels numbered to 150 and 99, respectively. 

Stadium Club

The Poncedeleon and Santana are meh hits, but the box also included a pretty sweet Big Mac boxloader. The bottom bent a bit during my travels back to NY, so that's a bummer. 

Allen and Ginter

This box alone was worth the price of the rest of the cards. Upon cracking the box open, this Goldschmidt was sitting at the top as the box topper. It's an N43 auto, so it's a bit oversized, but it's certainly one of the coolest cards I've ever pulled. 

As if the Goldschmidt wasn't enough, this Darryl Strawberry 1/1 mini black printing plate fell out of the very first pack I opened. The cards in that pack were all gold-bordered (sorry I don't have any images), so we quickly figured out that this was a hot box. Hot damn. 

Next up was another mini, this time a framed relic of the Hall-of-Famer, Roberto Alomar. 

Though I already hit the three hits each box contains, two more relics found their way into my hands. Not bad. 

All in all, it was a pretty successful day and a welcome return back to card land. Hopefully, I'll be back soon with the rest of the cool stuff I pulled from these boxes. 

A Pair of A&G Blasters

Several months back, my girlfriend and I were apartment hunting and found ourselves in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. We were a bit early for an apartment viewing, so we decided to take a stroll around the area to get a better sense of what the new neighborhood might be like. We passed by several pizza shops (all claiming "The Best Slice in NY"), a Dunkin', and far too many empty storefronts. 

We were about to turn around and head back for our appointment, when I happened to read the sign in front of an absurdly large collection of buildings: "EBBETS FIELD."

Wait a minute. Ebbets Field?!? Of course, I know the Dodgers spent the first half of their existence in Brooklyn, but I never thought about where in Brooklyn they used to play. 

We didn't end up taking that apartment, instead opting for a much spacier place in Kensington, but it was certainly quite the find on that pleasant Sunday evening. 

As was the above Pee Wee Reese card that slid out of a pack of A&G a couple of weeks back. I didn't look at the A&G checklist (and still haven't) before picking up a pair of blasters at Target, so it was cool to add another Pee Wee to my Dodgers Legends binder. 

Speaking of legends, The Left Arm of God. Koufax is probably in most Topps releases nowadays, and though the photos sometimes get repetitive, I won't ever compain about adding more Koufax to my collection. Plus, is there a better combination of colors on these cards than red, white, and Dodger blue? I don't think so. 

My girlfriend and I ended up doing a "blaster box war," if you will, taking turns opening packs one by one and comparing cards to see who had the better box. She has very little baseball knowledge and resists my attempts to convert her into a Dodgers fan--she's from just outside of Cleveland and roots for the Indians--so there were many discussions to be had about the who pulled better players, celebs, and eggs. Of course, she ended up pulling the doozy of a card above--a Casey Stangel Brooklyn-back mini #'d 16/25--surpassing my blaster by far. Not bad. This went to eBay shortly after pulling it, and it just about paid for the blaster it came from.

The real draw of Allen and Ginter for me this year is the Mares and Stallions set. The checklist contains only 15 cards, but I'm making a concerted effort to track them all down as quickly as possible. The "Horse in the Race" 25-card mini set from '17 A&G still haunts me--I only have 2 of the 25 cards. 

I think I've mentioned this before, but my girlfriend is a life-long equestrian (hence the horse card collection I'm working on), so chasing these cards together has been quite fun. Though Topps found a way to mess that up. I'll let her explain...

"I was so excited to have found a few horse cards in the packs I opened, but as soon as I saw the Appaloosa card, my excitement dwindled. The Appaloosa is a breed characterized by its spotted coat. While the card above does show a bicolored coat, it is most certainly a paint (or at least pinto)--it's cowlike markings are nothing like those that characterize an Appaloosa. Appaloosas come in a variety of patterns, but to see a bit of the spectrum of an Appaloosa coat, take a look at the images below:

from https://www.saddleupcolorado.net/blog/appaloosa-horses/

from http://www.appaloosamuseum.org/

That said, it was still great to see a few horse cards, the incorrect picture notwithstanding."

Yep, so a bit of a disappointment when all is said and done, but it's still nice to move closer to the complete set. 

The fun didn't stop with the Mares and Stallions, however. In an attempt to match the other blaster, I pulled a pretty cool relic of Yadier Molina. I'm not at all a Cardinals fan (I dislike their devil magic), but there are enough Cardinals bloggers out there that this should have no difficulty finding a new home. 

All in all, we had a great time breaking open some boxes and ripping packs. I've always enjoyed doing this solo, but it's great to have someone to crack some packs with, and even more fun to chase a set together. 

Opening Up Some 2019 Allen & Ginter

Allen and Ginter is one of my favorite releases of the year. It often takes a lot of slack for the inclusion of non-sports-related cards, but I find that quite fun. There aren't any other sets that combine baseball, canines, trains, flowers, horses, and lost languages. And that's just the 2019 release alone. I doubt those reading a baseball card blog (or running their own) are one-hobby types of folks--I'm certain our interests stretch far and wide beyond baseball--so seeing subsets of things like The History of Flight, subjects that likely don't get any representation anywhere else on cardboard, has the potential to be quite fun. 

Of course, baseball is still the primary draw for me. The design and photography in this year's set is the sharpest it's been in years. I feel Topps got out of its own way this year and opted for a minimul design, similar to the 2010 set. The "framed" sets of the last few years tended to feel closed off and the cards blended too closely together, creating a sort of indistinguisable set of cards. Each of these cards from 2019, however, seems to have its own personality, with the design tying the cards together. 

That said, I'm intrigued by the the background imagery used in the Piazza, Pollock, and Buehler cards above. It seems to be of an old-timey, fictional stadium (a pretty cool touch), though considering the backdrop in all three cards is nearly identical, I wonder if it was used too much throughout the set. Regardless, I'm happy to add a new Buehler to the PC. 

Along with those Dodgers base cards above, I also managed to land a pretty cool Kershaw insert. This cancer isn't into astrology, zodiacs, or star signs, but it's still a pretty cool lense from which to approach a card set. I mean, where else would you find a comparsion likening Kershaw to an "enchanting fish"?

I ended up purchasing three hanging value packs, another cheaper value pack, and a single pack, and I managed to pull the relic below, but it was the two cards from the 15-card Mares and Stallions subset that I was most excited about. As I described in this post several months ago, I decided to start a mini-collection of horse cards. That post featured two minis from the Horse in the Race miniset from 2017 A&G, and until I pulled the two cards above, they were the only cards in that mini-collection. Not a bad day when a couple of packs doubles your PC. 

I'm hunting the cards from this Mares and Stallions set, so please let me know if you have any dupes. You can find my want list here. I'd love to take them off your hands. 

Finally, here is that relic I alluded to above. I don't watch a ton of television, and I certainly never watch American Pickers, so this card didn't do much for me. Still, it's never a bad thing to pull a relic. It's another card to add to the trade bait, for those interested. 

Overall, A&G has definitely been one of my favorite products of the year (as it always is). I got a nice start on that Mares and Stallions set, though I'll still have to chase that elusive Jeopardy James autograph....