Then when you hit the ball, run!

Gazing around the card desk for a card to scan and I find this one. 'cuz I haven't figured out where to put it yet. Two catchers gazing up into the night sky at the same pop-up. It's a play at the plate, sort-of, technically. All that, and can I get a bag of chips with this? It might be a while before the ball comes down, I might need a snack.

I'm mostly divesting the random amounts of 2012 parallels I have. But I do really like the Surfin' Purple Teals. Where does that team play, you ask? That would be in Seattle. And here I thought it was too cold to surf in Seattle.

No point in going for a Team Set of them, as they only exist for Series One last year unfortunately. One of these days I have to figure out if 9 of them exist to make a pretty binder page. I also have Steve Delabar, possible All-Star from the Surfin' Purple Teals. Doubles, even.

And I'm mostly investing my time in organizing the Parallel Project. Using the Opening Day Blue-Foil cards, which look really good, is numerically challenging to cross-reference. Without lots of cross-referencing, I buy a parallel color I already have on that page. Twice so far.

But don't worry, my gaze takes in stacks of cards attached to probable blog stories. Base Set might have to call you back however, as I am about to head out to yet another underpopulated area of the United States to bid on some work for a week. This will involve some bits of prospecting I expect.

No, no, I won't be haunting Instructional League ball-parks with my secret stash of back-door superfractors and a fine-point sharpie, sweet-talking all those future first ballot hall-of-famers into making me rich before they get on the bus to Rancho Cucamonga.

When I travel I go spelunking for dusty gold in the form of old baseball card products that have been stuck in out-of-the-way little box stores for far too long. Which hopefully leads to unexpected card discoveries like that Miguel Olivio up there, who was rescued from a particularly dusty Toys-R-Us, a chain that never seems to take cards off their shelves not matter what. Though I would like to discover I'm wrong on that, and find the link to Geoffrey's secret clearance website with all his unsold baseball card blister packs. I mean, they gotta end up somewhere...

This time I will leave home with a stash of scanned cards ready for some babble-head action. And a wireless keyboard. Now if I just have a bit of cell service, though I might likely be just a bit outside...

I just can't buy a Complete Set

It just goes against all that is baseball cards. To me at least.

When I was a kid, buying a Complete Set of cards was an unreal proposition. Surely, it was something only this kid could do:

I mean, I would have to save up all year long to buy a Complete Set of baseball cards. That kid could just buy one whenever he wanted. And if I spent all year saving for a Compete Set, how could I enjoy baseball cards all summer long? I would have to be stashing money away to buy the Complete Set....when? By the time I had that much money, the World Series would be over. What good would baseball cards be then?

And now, nothing has changed. Well, wait, everything has changed. I could walk in my nearest un-friendly big-box 'mart and buy a Complete Set whenever I want. It would even certainly be way, way cheaper than buying fat packs, blasters, rack packs, and plain ole regular packs and ending up with piles of extra baseball cards and all those usually silly inserts and dastardly parallels.

I still can't buy a Complete Set.

But I think I will.

It seems to be the only way to acquire the card pictured on the header for this post. And I want that card. I love the idea of owning a tiny smidgen of dirt from Fenway Park. I trust Topps actually got the dirt from there. Maybe I shouldn't, but I do. I'm not at all interested in relic cards and could care less where they come from and will most likely use any I happen to acquire to just trade for the cards I do want.

But I like Dirt Cards. You know, like this one:

I'll have lots more to babble about Dirt in the future. I would post a more favorite selection, but my baseball cards are a few miles away right now, and Theriot's is the only one from 2013 Series One that I can remember right now (it is a pretty good one actually). I also know I will probably develop a desire to own some of the old Stadium Club cards that feature actual Dirt. In the meantime, I want to own some dirt from Fenway Park.

I have never visited Fenway Park, though I have wanted to since I was 8 years old. I got close once, and I thought I would be ticking that box on the checklist. A college buddy was renting a place right across the street from the Green Monster. How freaking cool is that? I was in Boston in late September 1991, for a series of events that also featured difficult to acquire tickets, but those were in the evenings. The Red Sox had some day games. I was so excited - I had built the Topps set that year for the first time in a long time. I love that set.

Let's go, right? Nope. All sold out, way in advance, I was told. I figured it would be just like the old Tiger Stadium - always some bleacher seats sold every Game Day. If you wanted to go to the game, you just went down to the stadium real early and got in line. But the Red Sox sold all their tickets in advance, and though I can't recall the exact baseball details, I believe Boston was still in it that third week of September, so the price for a scalped ticket was way out of my sorta post-college student range. Besides I needed the money for the night time.

So visiting Fenway Park is still very high on my wish list of things to do in life. In the meantime, I can somehow vicariously enjoy the thrill of the Park by owning that card. And it seems I have to buy a Complete Factory Set of 2012 Topps to do it.

And that will work out, because how else can I know which cards I need for my weirdo Frankensets, if I don't have a Complete Set of them to look at?

So now I have two reasons to buy a Complete Set. Though since this is baseball, I guess I should need three reasons to break such a solid long-standing tradition. I'll try and think of another one. I'll have to. It might help ease the pain of buying my first Complete Set. Did I just type that?

Why didn't I just collect The Topps Set in 2012? Well that is a story for another night. I will need more internet time to find all the right images to explain why not.