I'm not so sure I will ever run across a 25¢ Box, or a legendary Dime Box. Such is life in the 21st Century.
Just home from a quick supplies mission down at the LCS, so I figured I would scan/share some cards with you now rather than letting them gather dust for 21 months first. This way I can sharpen/conclude my thoughts on just why I placed each card in my To Go pile today. So, Freshies, 23 cards, one Ten spot:
2022 Gallery
I've been thinking for a while to continue increasing my small-ish amount of 22 Gallery cards by building a page of the "key" RCs in the set, or, just the ones I like to look at the most, however the page fills up first. This is one of the better RC logo placements one could ask for on Baseball Cards though I'm not sure that little gold polygon bed for it is really necessary. Sneaky appearance by the Guardians great shoulder patch sailing in from the side, though not quite in its full glory.
Steven Kwan is a very under-rated Baseball player, in my opinion, though his peers noticed him onto the AL All-Star Team this year. He seems particularly under-the-radar in the ever myopic "Hobby" - a word to me which means "prices." I was hoping he would destroy the Yankees in the ALCS in the same way he helped demolish the Tigers in their ALDS this year, and how he looked in Cleveland's ALDS vs. the Yanks last year. Alas his luck bubble popped a little bit in yet another no-soup-for-you run for the AL Central. 3 seasons to go in Cleveland for Kwan - Free Agent in 2028 - which is probably before a seemingly coming-soon great reset of Baseball TV packages maybe finally reaches a competitive balance reckoning for our beloved sport.
2015 "1st Home Run" Topps Baseball insert
This is the first Ichiro card I have ever purchased, as I have been having trouble finalizing my first page of Ichiro cards. The as usual poorly scanning foil printing is actually a gold foil, which is better than a silver foil, imo. So a new round of competition might help me break the logjam. There can be only Nine.
2022 Topps Chrome Prism refractor
I like Bubble Gum cards. I like Chrome Prisms. I will not be collecting mass quantities of that latter item; as I have too many collections already. These random finds from the several little round Presidents box, which I sometimes just can't resist, like this one, did finally land on a way to "collect" them, which is utterly simple: one Prism, per year, starting with the first year they appeared, in 2015 Topps Chrome.
The boring old regular paper version of this card will appear in another collection, that of Bubble Gum cards. I know I will never approach the depth of The Best Bubble's collection of those, but in analyzing my own little pile of Bubble Gum cards and beginning to tease out ways to assemble them, thematically, I realized that my favorites are the ones that capture a player blowing a bubble — while he is also busy playing a Major League Baseball game. Bubble Gum, In Action.
Plus I imagine that the amount of players havin' a Bubble Gum Rookie Card card is quite short. Which just adds more to makin' this card frickin' cool.
2022 Topps
Another of my permanent collections that runs basically parallel to my every RC logo / every First Topps Card is one that starts in 2014, when Topps brought back the "Future Stars" designations for young players. I like that this gives me a way to hold a few more cards from sets I don't (can't, really) decide to keep completed, in a binder. And for an extra rare Tigers Future Star card, I will of course need 2 copies.
It is also a fun way to see how things looked for a player's career arc, at a minorly nebulous point in time somewhere after their Rookie Card card. How good were the prognostications?
On this one, Topps certainly got it right. Skubal was selected to the Player's Union Executive Committee the other day, a spot from which Max Scherzer used to lead the charge for as uber-maximum player salaries as possible. Given that Skubal is also a Boras client, it appears to me he will be reaching for his own uber-contract soon, too. Sigh.
2022 Topps Update
A nice In Action fielding shot where it appears the Baseball has already been hit. I picked this one not to invest in a CJ Abrams base Rookie Card card (the "base rookie" concept sailed many years ago now), but rather just another attempt to capture the Swingin' Friar on cardboard. He is a bit elusive, it seems, compared to say the camera-loved Cub in Chicago, and even here is a touch distant but still more visible than on many cards.
2017 Topps Chrome Prism refractor
I like Chrome Prisms. So saving just one/year of them is not enough. Soooo, another page of them in the All Horizontal binder will sure look nicely prism-y, too.
I forgot what set this extra-thick card is from. 2022.
My LCS routinely has singles from this product in their generic cheapie boxes. I never recognize these extra thick cards, and have asked the proprietor too many times where these come from without remembering again the next time, so I stopped. I suppose the understated "MC" logo on it should help me figure that it is probably Museum Collection, the way the way too big "BL" does on Big League brand cards. I wonder how many people assemble a set of Museum Collection base cards; they do seem to have their niceties I guess. Mostly though I think of Museum Collection as a product for people who really do really really want uniform swatches and things like that, i.e. "hits," like every other product. But, maybe I am underestimating just what might be inside a box of Museum Collection, something I know I will never buy. A single for 46¢ though, okie-doke.
I guess I like how the card effectively says MC Derek Jeter. MC DJ. Derek should do a DJ set somewhere, that would be fun. Basically every card on this checklist would then probably say MC whoever. Works better, one at a time.
But that's not why I bought this card. It seems like it might be the most memorial laden uniform, ever. Not just 2 memorial patches, but also a black armband, a long-standing Yankee tradition when necessary. There are plenty of examples of teams needing to memorialize two figures from club history simultaneously. But 3? Let's take a closer look:
This card is from the 2nd half of the 2010 season, after George Steinbrenner's death the day of the 2010 All-Star Game, when Yankee participants, such as Jeter, put on a black armband. The patch above the NY logo, i.e. above the heart, is for him; the circular text is his full name + the III on the top side, and "THE BOSS" on the lower side.
The other patch is quite a bit more mysterious and would be impossible to figure out without Google, or being a regular Yankees fan in 2010. It is a patch honoring Bob Shepherd, the long-time announcer at Yankee Stadium. Here is a better view of it, courtesy of a detailed look at "microphone patches" at Uni Watch -
All very nice, but probably impossible to capture on a Baseball Card without doing it via deliberate planning.
Remaining online coverage ot this (Internet content is not actually always forever and ever) suggests the black armband was only to be for the All-Star game but from it's appearances on various 2011 cards one can see that did not become the case.
I keep a page of each of these memorials I come across, on-card, a collecting concept I learned from the Garvey Cey Russel Lopes blog quite some time ago. A worthy tradition I decided to pursue in my own collection.
I have started that by preferring to use whichever card from the Topps Baseball set best captures one of the memorials; in fact just the other day I picked up a single card just for this effort, the 2011 "Team Set" card for Ivan Nova, which uses a better/closer cropping to get a view of "The Boss" patch than on his regular 2011 Topps card. But unfortunately without a good image of the Shepherd patch, which can't be seen well on any other 2011 cards I have seen; 2011 was a fairly un-cropped / zoomed out imagery set in comparison to many sets the last 20 years.
So when I saw this Jeter card this afternoon, I decided to upgrade to whichever Baseball Card best captures the memorial, rather than chaining the concept to Topps Baseball cards only.
Plus this Jeter card has a unique feature - more Michael Jordan embroideries than any other Baseball Card I have ever seen.
2022 Topps Chrome X-Fractor
What's better than a nice trippy Empty Seats card? An overly wigged Chrome trippy Empty Seats card. Trouble here is, X-Fractors make for amusing enough trippy scans, but said scan also obliterates whatever was previously under the X-Fractor pattern. I suspect this is the same photo as used on Roansy's RC in 2022 Gallery. Let's take a quick look back in the Base Set Archives to test this supposition:
OK, so not an exact match but likely the Gallery is the next shutter click after the picture used in 2022 Chrome. I think Topps does this a fair amount — use images from the same photographer and same inning of an MLB game that are technically different images on 2 cards. But, not really by much.
When I first saw the X-Fractor today I thought it might be fun to assemble some multiples of the, to me, always alluring looking Empty Seats card, via all the sonic lava waves possible in 2022 Chrome products. And, dirt cheap too as subsequently from these cards even the poor old Pirates couldn't get a 9th-ish Round PTBNL in trade for Contreras (now just a 0-ish WAR, League-average middle reliever, ho-hum) and they just simply sold his contract to the Angels. A remaining mystery is why "PIRATES" is in green on the uniform here. Maybe one of the Military Appreciation days, dunno.
Anyhow the X-Fractor in-hand is also remarkably like as it is seen in-scan, quite unusual for X-Fractors, which often scan like this but usually refract or whatever more than enough in-hand to make the printing trick disappear more. Maybe the Empty Seats pattern just fights back hard vs. the X-Fractor pattern. So, just an experimental card for now; maybe I will take a peak at the logo maxi diamond tourmaline fractor version to see if that might create my next Psychedelic masterpiece keeper.
2022 Bowman Chrome
Rodolfo Castro has what is likely to be a permanently remembered beginning to an MLB career, even though he will also be a permanently forgotten player. There may come a day when his name appears on the back of someone else's Baseball Card. It is near certain that web-scraping AI content creator packages will harvest his name routinely for a striking MLB trivia question:
Which player began his career by hitting 5 Home Runs as his first 5 Hits?
I just tested the proposition by pasting that sentence into Google and it instantly affirmed my suspicions here.
A hidden but key factoid there, that AI Supremo will likely miss, but Bowman Card Back Writer did not, is that it took him 9 MLB games to accomplish the feat. Which seems fairly predictive (9 games, 5 Hits) of how his career turned out. For once the Pirates sold high, receiving a 2 WAR Pitcher from Baseball wizard Dave Dombrowski no less. The Phillies received....somewhat less in the trade as Castro did not make it to The Show in 2024.
To memorialize all these intriguing achievements - I figure that's worth a binder page.
2016 Finest
2017 Finest
I thought both of these cards were some type of insert, until I got home. Shows how much I know about Finest. I mean, I thought these cards were supposed to have a Do Not Remove removable plastic protection device which made them unviewable but in perfectly Mint+ condition, forever and ever after. Where did that go? I have never worried I have been missing too much there, though the obvious potential for a triptastic card lurks in the brand at basically all times.
Still, one doesn't find too many cards showing Miggy wearing shades, nor that he has two different team color matching sets of batting gloves, for home and away. Some day in the 2030s maybe I will figure out a way to get these Miggy cards together with some other Miggy cards, somehow.
2021 Topps Update
I continue to dabble in Jazz Chisholm cards after getting a quite memorable start to a Player Collection for him. Simultaneously, I seem to have misplaced a pair of card tombs, errr, storage boxes, for 2021 Topps Baseball cards, including Update. This would normally cause a "conniption," whatever that is. But since it's 2021 Topps, this hasn't bothered me all that much yet. So maybe I have this card already, maybe I don't. Maybe I will figure out how to include this with other way more fun Jazz cards (how could a "Jazz card" not be fun?) but it seems unlikely. Unless, maybe, I flip it over first:
"Replaced Miguel Rojas at shortstop" — well there was quite a feat of predictive trouble-in-the-clubhouse foreshadowing by Topps Card Back Writer. But really though, how many non-happening MLB Debuts like this one get their own Baseball Card? Don't answer that because at one time Topps made a product consisting of nothing but Debut cards largely like this one. Authenticity to the max though. Just filler, yes, though Jazz quickly made an All-Star team and thus more checklist spot worthy than some RD cards, something never known when most RD cards are created. Plus, his name is Jazz. Is your name that cool?
2022 Bowman Chrome .... ???
I knew this card was in my future; I have been waiting for its arrival. A Powder Blue Parallel, at last. Maybe. You think I can keep track of Bowman parallels? I no longer know even half of the Topps parallels every year at this point.
This card fails somewhat, in-scan, and is much better in-hand. That is not a Topps fail mis-match of a road-grey uni to a fun card color; rather that really is the Rays' Powder Blue uniform -maybe- as seen during a night game at the ever dreary indoors-lit-by-worn-out-flourescents "Trop," where it often looks like the Rays have a "Home Grey" uniform. Just one of the 29 reasons I dislike Tampa Bay Rays Baseball Cards. That's counter-balanced by the often fun appearance of the Ray sailing along on the left shoulder patch. I first thought this card might finally be a needed final cool showing of that Ray to complete a fun page of their cards.
But Tampa can just never be nailed down on anything that simple and fun. The way they "churn" through players is just plain boring, when it comes to endless streams of Baseball Cards full of forgettable players (kinda like Pirates Rookie Card cards) — particularly when they are cards of players who barely or, never, appeared in one of the various cool Rays uniforms. Which is the case with Kyle Manzardo, who debuted 2 years after this card, in Cleveland. So this is effectively a Fake Powder Blue card and likely unworthy of taking a place in the Powder Blue Collection, debuting on a blog runway near here, eventually. The quest for a perfect Powder Blue Parallel will continue.
This win some, lost one card did reveal another future collecting angle - Baseball Reference tonight informs me that Manzardo achieved that rare feat of a "perfect" 0.0 WAR season there in Cleveland this year. Another future collection project that will answer - just who is a "Replacement" level player, anyway?
2022 Topps Chrome Pink parallel
I seem to have mostly been rooting around in the 2022 section of the 50¢ box today. I like Empty Seat cards. I like Pink cards. I thought this was a sure-fire combo to hold down the 2022 spot in a page of Pink Chrome cards, one per year. But now I see the chroming takes some of the pizazz out of all those perpetually empty seats in Cincinnati (the source of many of the cards with this me-selected trope), though the scan brings quite a bit of that pizazz back. But that can't save it from breaking a prime directive of the 1/year Pink project - no red logo teams on a red derived color project. So a Cincinnati Reds card is like a divide by zero concept here that I should have recognized immediately. Ooops.
2022 Topps Rainbow Foil parallel
I think this card has finally, after Lo these many years of these appearing in my packs, now shown me The Way to collect these goofy parallels. I drafted this one for a bit of Oooohhh, Shiny in the Powder Blue collection. And that's where this card will likely love you, long time. But where it will definitely shine is in my screen saver type rotating collection of "keeper" scans, as this one has brilliantly created Power Blue - Empty Seats! Didn't see that one coming. It's the scans, stupid, it's the scans. I truly learn something new every day with these insanely great objects.
2022 Stadium Club Chrome Refractor
Quick, which City Connect uniform first showed off Powder Blue accessories? The answer is right there. "First" is a sneaky key part of the question as more of these efforts are on the way, both on this blog and in MLB itself as not every team has completed the connection, yet. I'm not sure any other team has gone to Powder Blue belts though I will be watching my Baseball Cards, closely.
Maybe however another Wrigleyville card will supply the best example in the Powder Blue collection and this is just an initial research effort, like a few other swing, miss picks today. I might could try just looking at Patrick Wisdom's regular 2022 Stadium Club card maybe? Probably not; this isn't the Chrome parallel but rather a card from Stadium Club Chrome, a product I have zero interest in as it takes the best part of Stadium Club cards — backgrounds actually making the sports picture cards interesting — and Chromes that away.
Unless, that is, you start with the "Refractor" version, a Chrome-conceit I have never understood very well, and then scan it, and then, vóila, the photo backdrop comes back a fair bit. I already just contemplated extra scans of goofily pointless Rainbow Foil Baseball Cards and since I don't like SC Chrome to start with, there ain't not no way I won't nope out on that idea. Yet another product that made me ask Why, Topps, Why? And is gone now, so.
2018 Topps Chrome Prism
Remember Skinny Miggy? 2018 Topps does. 2017 must have been the year Miggy famously declared that he was finally going to give up donuts; I will have to Google the press coverage on that. Probably the day a bunch of other 2018 Miggy Baseball Cards arrive. I'm not sure if the 1/year Chrome Prism page has a 2018 rep on it, even though the draft process started just a few days ago. If it does, it might get bumped.
1985 Topps All-Star
I thought this 50¢ box was never going to get me back to the much more calming and less shiny 20th century. And then it suddenly coughs up a Black & White card no less. I guess when your team wins the World Series, your Hall-of-Famer gets to be the Captain of the made-up All-Star checklist the next year. Might be an interesting research project for anyone with a large collection of these cards, which I do not. But, you gotta start somewhere.
2021 Topps 1986 Silver Pack Mojo
These 2 cards jumped up out of the box and hovered before me, with a small green creature that looked like a really old man shimmering between them. This apparition then said "Powder Blue parallels you seek, thus a visit to 1986 Topps, you must."
These are each almost contenders for the Cool Rays page; Honeywell's Special Cap day picture shows off the Ray but in yet another photo that just doesn't quite reveal it plainly. Meanwhile Patiño's blue Ray nearly invisibly slides along the Powder Blue. Both, almost keepers for the Ray page, but 100% definite keepers on the Ooooohhh, Shiny Powder Blue page.
These also each show off the futility of Tampa Bay Rays Rookie Card cards, particularly the ones for Pitchers. Honeywell Jr. played in a whole 3 games for the Rays before their data miners churned him out to float around a variety of other MLB bullpens, though maybe the Dodgers finally dialed him in just this year.
Meanwhile Patiño actually debuted with the Padres, making this another perplexing "Rookie" card on a Rookie's 2nd Major League team. He too was churned out of Tampa soon enough to journey around in a few other bullpens before the data mining ended his career recently too, like an increasingly countless amount of young Pitchers. To which the data miners just reply: "Next." To which Topps answered that for Patiño's 17 innings of career ending middle relief work for the White Sox in 2023, he was given a non-RC checklist spot in the long awaited 2024 Heritage "product." I'm not sure if that indicates the woes of the White Sox, or the woes of the Heritage production team lately.
2022 Topps Update All-Star insert
I wonder, since the debut of the Star patch on the shoulders of the All-Stars, what is the highest # seen on one? Maybe, "10." I will be watching, to be sure, though now that these are just inserts, I see many fewer of them than I used to. But that's not totally why I selected this one, which will be back on this here blog again, some day.
2022 Finest
It was just a 2022 day there in that fiddy cent box. I'm likin' 22 Finest more each time I see it and I'm feelin' its binder page worthy at least. You don't see many Red, White, & Blue Dodger cards despite the obvious utitlity of such a color combo for the team. I had a few more 22 Finest singles to pick from in the box, but they were of boring players doing boring things. Not like this card.
Super bonus points in the base 22 Finest pattern: those areas of etched silver with red thingies inside. Those are the insides of the little anti-theft protection devices that makes the Security Alert! Security Alert! walk-through thing at the exit to the Grocery Store go WHOMPWHOMPWHOMP when the greying Middle Aged dude tries to buy some Baseball Cards, so everyone can see. Whoever designed 2022 Topps Finest, yeah, they Baseball Card, routinely.
2022 Topps Baseball STARS OF MLB insert
Oh, happy day. A happy Baseball Card for less than 2 Quarters. Complete with a Star, and even exploding shooting stars, too. How freakin' cool is that? Way.
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