The craziest thing happened today: there was a flaming ball of fire up in the sky! I could see things without a flashlight even! This meant I could get out in the woods, and Work. It was great. However I spent a big chunk of the time thinking about, Baseball Cards. Let's see some:
Why I selected it: Now there's a Christmas Tree card for ya! I didn't buy this during the holiday season but I had to have this one as soon as I saw it in early-ish 2024. I am not an actual "Lumberjack" but I do work in the woods running a chainsaw a fair bit. Thus a Baseball Card this "woodsy" has to come join my collection. Plus it has an excellent feature that can only be experienced in-hand: an embossed wood grain pattern on the surface of the card. I know I won't want to keep these cards imprisoned in a binder page but the hunt for 8 more of these little beauties is soon to commence.
This card is an insert originally found in a 2019 Panini product I had never heard of, called "Leather & Lumber." That is printed in foil there above Schwarber's head and well obscured by the scan, his head, and the little price sticker my LCS insists on putting on every card in the Dollar Box, to differentiate them from the ones in the 50¢ box.
It is a perfect example of why I try my best to ignore Panini cards. That only partially flows from the lack of licensing, even though that will always be a big deal on their Baseball cards. The deeper problem I fear is very occasionally stumbling into cards like this — cards I want to own, immediately.
Art by Mayumi Seto
Why I selected it: I truly wish I felt I could afford to collect the Topps Living Set. I sort of could, if I simply didn't collect so many other Baseball Cards. But that wouldn't work, to collect just one set.
I do quite like the illustrations by Mayumi Seto that are used in Living Set. She got her start with Topps creating the artwork for the 2017 Gallery release. So I collect that, instead.
Why I selected it: I like Pink Topps Chrome parallels. They remind me of the pink Bubble Gum I used to enjoy with my Baseball Cards.
Previously I have assembled 9 card collections of these. I have been wanting to switch that out to just owning 1 of these for each year they are made. I'm not sure I will be able to meet that goal when I just put these in the "want it" pile immediately upon first glance. Collecting.
Why I selected it: I collect Hank Aaron cards. But, not every Hank Aaron card I ever did see. This one, I probably wanted for the excellent example of an old Braves shoulder patch.
But this one was likely also snagged as a "motivational" card in that I have been wanting some simple sets of simple 20th Century Baseball Cards. This is a 1990 Pacific "Baseball Legends" card, it informs me. I don't know if it was an insert in another product, or just how these arrived into the hands of collectors. It would seem to me likely that this was very early in the history of Pacific Trading Cards, Inc. but there too I am lacking in knowledge.
For a while now I have been thinking about purchasing a set of Swell cards from this time period, but I have been unwilling to pay $13 shipping. The other day I bought a card I absolutely had to have to help complete a much desired checklist. I paid an $8 shipping fee and when it arrived, the postage on the front was $3.20 — thus I get a little over-stubborn on high shipping prices sometimes. I will pull that trigger on the Swell set eventually; the more I gaze upon this card, the sooner that day will arrive.
Why I selected it: I have mixed feelings about this card, but I wanted to explore it a bit more by taking it home with me. It is almost certainly the same photo as used on the Jackie Robinson card 2 years later, in Topps Lineage. This card is a "Legends of the Game" (no-scan foil printing) from 2009 Topps Baseball.
This photo is zoomed in a whole lot, compared to the Lineage card, but is then cropped quite poorly given the design frame, which has those totally superfluous black bars at the top and bottom of the card, achieving nothing except making the card as a whole far more dark, overall. This isn't something you want with very old photographs, particularly artificially colorized photos.
Nevertheless it is a much better view of Jackie's face that way, and that's a plus. The far more "zoomed out" Lineage card using this photo has other pluses though.
Why I selected these: Once I had the Jackie Robinson card in my keeper stack, it felt natural to add these, despite my misgivings about the design.
You just don't come across Cy Young cards very often; he has always fascinated me after I was amazed for years and years in my youth by a Laughlin "Baseball's Famous Feats" backing card from a Fleer stickers set, which told me that Cy Young won 511 Baseball games as a Starting Pitcher. A feat which will obviously never be equaled.
I'm not sure if this photograph of him is the same as the few other Cy Young cards I have; if it isn't then it is the same pose, which is also the one copied by Laughlin for his simple illustration.
The Cobb photograph I am quite sure is used on several other cards. But since I had never seen these inserts before this Dollar Box excursion, I just grabbed all 3. Still unsure if I will examine this checklist. Maybe.
Why I selected these: More Pink Chrome. Scanning them and blurbing about them a little will help with the struggle. I have to kick this habit. This is the first time I noticed that the player's last name on the 2019 design is printed in Pink on these parallels. Uhhh-oh.
Why I selected these: Ohhhh, how I would like love to collect 1953 Topps. The corners and edges of these cards are completely unimportant to my enjoyment of them. If only I could find more magical boxes of Baseball Cards that serve up 1953 Topps for just one buck, each. Quite the ride, these boxes.
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