Merry Christmas, to Me

And - You! Merry Christmas everyone, thanks for stopping by.

The Holidays are a great thing for me and one of the great things is a nice (eventual) surplus of Free Time, which for me sometimes means: Baseball Cards. The perpetual To Do list is at a somewhat low point right now so I can hang out with y'all some this afternoon.

This was a pretty good year at the Base. After almost 20 years of being 100% Self-Employed, I took a job with my #1 customer over the last decade or so. I have been kidding my friends that in the long run, I will finally be able to work only 40 hours a week. But in the short run, time requirements went way up as I am still wrapping up some previously agreed upon jobs with my customers, which will have positive benefits for us, meaning my new employer, in the future. All while prioritizing their needs. I am now a full time Seed Collector (woody plants only), and without seeds, my employer doesn't have a product. Meanwhile, seeds don't just sit around and wait for you to come get them. They fly away, or get eaten. The result was basically zero time to attend to the stacks of cards on my desk.

But a wonderful other result is a better income that I can discretionarily apply to, you guessed it: Baseball Cards. And as a result I had a wonderful Mail Day just 2 days ago, a bit surprisingly given the shipping season. Maybe with so much material moving as packages, one still arriving with the little envelopes in old time "snail mail" is actually a bit more fleet of foot these days, I guess. We'll get to the wonderful new card in just a bit...it is not the card at the top of this post.

The problem began at the very genesis of my thought to create an "all-parallel" set of 2013 Topps. That flowed from backing off from an original thought of attempting to collect a set of the "Blue Sparkle" / "Wrapper Redemption" cards. (Sadly, my own attempt at receiving some by sending in wrappers Back in The Day was sunk by mailing them too late, sigh, work.) I quickly realized that I just wasn't that into the "Blue Team" Blue Sparkle cards, like this one:

Even though I am quite amused by players in the background of the various "Sparkle" parallels, as on this card - "Beam up the Catcher, Scotty, I don't think he's gonna make it." A pity the Umps didn't really sparkle; must be Klingons or something.

But given the 2013 Topps design, a blue-on-blue-card just washes out the key "Team Color" design element. The Blue Team Blue Sparkles just don't offer much, especially compared to all the other possible color combinations.

Now I know a lot of people like team color parallels; for example-

Overall still an enjoyable concept on scores of other Baseball Card designs, but on 2013 Topps, a bit not so much. The same thing happens with the Blue Team Emerald parallels such as the card at the top of this post; on those, the effect is more pronounced in-hand and in indoor, less-than-sunlit conditions; scanning a blue team Emerald improves the situation at least a little.

So right from the start of creating the all-parallel set of 2013 Topps, I ruled out certain color combinations, such as no "Red Team" Target Red parallels, as well as the ones shown above, and a few others, some more absolutist than others I must confess.

This can make for pretty tricky binder pages to complete — my color combo rules for the set are used on a one page basis. These painted-myself-into-corner rules are a huge problem on one page in particular:

Gah! 7 Blue Team cards.

Sticking to the construction rules, the Blue Team cards have the fewest possible choices to pick from. Target Red, Topps Gold, Pink, Factory Set Orange are the four best; easy choices. Topps Black and ToysRUs Purple are less desirable (not much "pop" contrast) but still necessary sometimes as there are more than a few pages with 5 Blue Team cards. The blue "Sea Turtle" pattern is the most common, used for 12 teams.

What's going on with the Sea Turtle blog linked all around you? That one is in the shop for a re-build. But it shall return; it is essentially my own little book about the 2013 Topps set and I very much look forward to working on it, someday, when I do work only 40 hours a week.

So, 7 Blue Team cards, uggh. What to do? A ToysRUs Purple or Topps Black looks best with a team color icon that is not blue, such as the Justin Heyward card here. That takes care of one slot, 6 to go. The 4 usual go-to patterns, check. But, still 2 cards left!

Some very rare options exist: the "Silver Slate" parallel that came mixed in with the "Blue Sparkle" wrapper redemption packages; those were printed in an edition of /10. Not fun to track down, but not impossible. A deeper problem is: very boring. The Sea Turtle pattern becomes a foil with no more Team Color, on a thick grey cardboard frame. I had a few of the cards from a trade and initially used them on a few pages for variety, but since the point of the project is Full Color, a monochromatic parallel eliminating color seemed kind of pointless. Still it seems best to include at least one representative of the type in the project, and this is the perfect page for that.

However, I need 7 acceptable combos on this page. Irresistible Force vs. Immovable Object! I have not attempted to purchase cards for this page yet, beyond designating the Heath Bell card for Blue Sparkle and the Jon Jay card as a WalMart Blue. That's because there is one remaining solution: the Platinum:

I never thought this would happen. I was hoping to find any one of 7 1/1 Platinums of 2013 Topps Series One, and I had never seen one for sale, ever. If I had started this project in the actual year of 2013, I might have had a chance, I thought.

Instead I just always let this page languish in my way convoluted "want list" for this project. That one is also in the shop for a thorough tear-down as several dozen new parallel Sea Turtles are due to arrive soon, courtesy of the COMC Black Friday sale, so don't bother clicking on that link right now.

Well over a year ago now, the above card appeared for sale on eBay. Hooray!

Nope. It was listed with a price about a full TWELVE TIMES what I estimated the card would sell for if allowed to "let it ride" via auction, though I was prepared to, maybe, go to about 2x that guesstimate, and I was very nervous about that desire and what I would do, if I could.

Trying to make realistic offers to the seller became pointless. Every offer would be met by a counter-offer; one reason I don't wish to collect even "two digit" Baseball Cards is I just want to buy cards, not endlessly haggle over them. And then in the end, ultimately haggling with yourself — a routine part of "collecting," of course, but I would rather be content with just collecting worthless Baseball Cards, which arrive much more free of inner conflict.

Finally the seller gave up, and simply offered the card for about 3x my view of a likely auction price. How many Yonder Alonso Player Collectors are there in the world? Probably, none.

But given the odds of ever seeing another one of those particular other 6 2013 Topps Baseball Platinum 1/1 parallels, which are very, very near to zero, I pulled the trigger. I am both happy, and a bit disappointed, in that I paid for something to own at a price I could never possibly attain for the same object, ever again, which is not the norm with purchasing Baseball Cards that are actually worth money, unless you are "prospecting," a gambling activity I don't partake in. 

I will, however, thoroughly enjoy this one, a bit more so once it is freed from it's plastic grading prison, but most especially once it anchors down a beautiful page of all-colors 2013 Topps Baseball. 

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!