It's that time again ... that time when I didn't have time to document some individual topic for a post today, and that time I need to put in to wipe out the stack of $ Box cards from the LCS, which sometimes lately grows taller, faster than it grows shorter. Let the scanning commence
Why I selected it: I really thought this one would scan better. And, I thought I would join up with the high-rollers, who can only collect ultra limited edition cards such as the ones found in "Sapphire" products. My plan is simple enough - accumulate just one Sapphire card, from each year it has been available. I won't really care whether the card came from Topps Chrome Sapphire, or Topps Chrome Update Sapphire; I find them both equally farcical. Bowman anything Sapphire is right out.
I also want to shade things toward picking a card not from a "blue" team, cuz the last thing one of these cards needs is more blue on it. The Guardians logo comes off better than most in the 23 design, and it looks like there is a lot of the green, green grass of a ballfield in the original image. So I was hoping for some more "Atomic" like refractor-ing, since the Sapphire pattern is just the older Atomic pattern but with a bucket of dark blue paint slopped over almost everything.
Which is why - I don't get it. These are just ... dark blue Baseball Cards. There is hardly any "pop" or razzle-dazzle at all here. The Oooohhhh, Shiny quotient is just - weak. 'course all anyone really wants from a Sapphire product is the Rookie of the Year vote-getters, and pretty much nothing else, so all of my complaints here are totally irrelevant, to anyone. The product sells out, reliably, every time it is produced, so it will be with us for a long time to come, I expect.
I even tried examining this card under the lights of the Christmas Tree. No improvement. I don't get it. Maybe I should try a Sapphire Rookie Card card instead, that might help. I guess.
Why I selected it: I love Pink Baseball Cards. They remind me of Bubble Gum. I somehow started liking this design too; it looks like the Baseball player inside of the keyhole is going to unlock a World Series Championship for the team lucky enough to enjoy his services. Or something.
Sadly, another key element disappears in the scan: this is card # 001/299. After all these years of basically ignoring serial #d cards (except of course for the ones in 2013 Topps), I thought it would be fun to finally own a card #1.
So how'd that work out for me? Not too good. It seems these aren't actually the simple Pink parallel, these are technically the "Fuschia" parallel. Oh, I see. Did the whole Bowman universe have a Fuschia-Pink parallel in 2023? Maybe. I look at all Bowman cards as all part of the same exact set, the Bowman set. I don't care if they say Platinum or Strata or Invincible or Volcanic or whatever, it's all Bowman to me, but with an incredibly difficult time sorting out just what subset is what, because there are countless separate checklists running inside of each Bowman box, anyway. And in the end, old-timey just, paper Bowman cards have both a /299 Fuschia parallel, and a /175 Pink parallel too. But only these "Prospect" subset cards, with their own run of card numbers, have this cool keyhole design.
Maybe I would enjoy owning 9 of these still-Pink-to-me Prospect cards? I looked through the checklist just now and that looks tough. I only knew roughly 10% of the players (of the "Tigers" I only knew 1 of 4, and I do generally know who they draft each year). Even after 2 full seasons of play should have brought all the hot Prospects to the Big Leagues, right? No. The vast majority of prospects fail, and thus the vast majority of Bowman cards are just money-lit-on-fire, by someone. The players I had heard of, all had stupid high prices on them. Every time I ever try and Bowman just a little tiny bit (one pack every 6 years or so, though they are no longer sold in packs anyway, just blasters and bigger boxe$), this is the result.
I only managed to burn about 3 quarters and a dime; it was surprisingly easy to get them to ignite. What has happened to Vincent Perozo? Not much. He didn't have any cards produced in 2024, an almost certain death knell to his Baseball Card oeuvre, and likely an end of his journey to The Show. No large ladies have sung on his career, and he might still end up on a Minor League card somewhere, maybe, possibly, perhaps. Or the Mets might have 4 Catchers injured in 4 days, Perozo is rushed to Queens to play for 3 days, and then Fanatics will put him in a half-dozen Topps products.
However although this same image is used in no less than 4 separate Bowman "products," it is still the only image used for a Baseball Card of Vincent Perozo. Ever. Across those 4 products I estimate there are at least 50 (technically) different versions of this card. Amazingly, he does not appear in any Leaf products, probably because Leaf employees are afraid to walk around teenager Baseball diamonds in Venezuela with cash in their pockets.
Thus it looks there might be a silver lining for me here in the end in that this card could well turn out to be a "One & Done," and I do like those. Normally that phrase only applies to Major League Baseball Cards, with MiLB and prospect cards sometimes conveniently ignored for the concept. To have only one pre-MLB Baseball Card here in the 2020s must be incredibly rare, or maybe isn't at all but is just completely unknown, because these hard working young Baseball players are completely unknown to everyone anyway. Could go either way. I will be stashing this card for a rainy day. Best of luck, Vincent.
Why I selected it: I am always hyp-mo-tized by a Baseball about to be caught on Baseball Card, when one is arriving @ glove horizontally, in the infield. I always like how the player is still focused on a point outside of the image frame, because Baseballs are thrown very fast by Professionals. I also like the lurking Umpire.
Why I selected it: This is a Short Print. So, I wanted to increase my bottom line by a profit of a couple three quarters, err Dolla Bills. Holla.
Why I selected it: I collect Manager cards. Sort of. When I see a Manager on a Baseball Card, I stick it in a box, one I haven't started pulling cards out of, yet. But I figured I should for once get with the in-crowd and collect Manager Rookie Card cards, like everyone else does, maybe.
Many a Tiger fan wished Francona had been available when Jim Leyland retired, alas. I am surprised / not-surprised that Francona's "health issues" were completely temporary. He is clearly a Lifer. The surprising part is he seems to be thinking he will see any different result in Cincinnati than most any other famous Manager has been able to achieve in the Central Division, ever since he lost the 2016 World Series. He must relish Challenge. I already root for essentially every team in the NL Central; 2025 will be even more challenging, for me, in that regard.
Why I selected it: I loved Bazooka comics too, surprise, surprise. Those are still made, I think. I guess seeing this "card" up on a screen now will make me a little more cognizant of my next sighting of Bazooka gum. I think it only comes in a box with 2 dozen or so pieces; a bit more than I would want.
Oh well. I have another mid-00s Bazooka comic-card for Ichiro also. I bought this one hoping there might be a 3rd one kicking around the few years of Bazooka brand Baseball Card checklists. That would make a nice 3 "card" row on a 2nd page of Ichiro cards.
So, close. There are actually 2 more of these comic-cards for Ichiro. But, they are each horizontals. So, I can't make a row of them on either a page of verticals, or a page of horizontals. Back to the, yup, drawing board, I guess.
Why I selected it: Because it will look nice on a page in a flip-through binder of Baseball Cards. For that, 100% authenticity is not required. And for the price of an original, I could have a good 3-4 full binders of Baseball Cards to enjoy.
This is I think the 3rd card from this reprint set I have picked up from these $ boxes; they aren't perfectly identified on the back in terms of year of creation. So just now I un-lazied into figuring it out (why I write these posts) finally and that reveals this is a, surprise, 1994 Topps production. And a pretty well done attempt at this. The brightness of the yellow background might betray it's inauthenticity a bit more than some of the other colors in the 54 set. It is definitely better than some 21st century Topps attempts at 1950s reprints.
A particular charm of these 54 reprints though, is a sharp reproduction of the back of the card, on the same white base stock. This makes it very easy to enjoy the creative work that went into the backs of the cards.
Why I selected it: This is an insert set from 2020 Topps Baseball, called "Topps 2030," which was supposed to be an imagination of what Topps cards _might_ look like in the year.... The next year they did essentially the same thing by anointing some design Topps 2091 in 2021 Archives and I thought there are/were at least one more attempt at such a thematic "future" motif. I guess it can't be any easier to dream up new names for insert sets than it is to create new insert designs, this deep into the thing called Baseball Cards.
So I got confused and then it took me a fair long while to ever figure out where these cards came from (hint: the weirder the card #, the easier it is to find on COMC, something I often struggle to remember), or to remember that I had a couple straight pack fresh, from all the way back in 2020. I thought they were all a part of Archives.
But I like the Ooohhh, Shiny here and once I started using a thumbprint on my phone I got the reference on the front of this card, though it is now dated already too. Kind of an inherent risk for such an idea I guess.
The checklist proves to be 20 cards, with 3 Rookies now already looking just, ordinary. So I might make 2 full pages of this and delete a couple of the 3; but then there are also some failed Free Agent Stars as the Data Mining Era of Baseball relentlessly tarnishes Stars faster than ever before. The cards are cheap at least, except there is of course also a Judge & an Ohtani on the checklist. That is a +/- in that Superstars are great but after a while it gets old contemplating needing a $5 card on every single checklist ever made for a year, or 7. So maybe I just need 8 more of these after Bryce, we'll see.
And Ooohhh, Shiny.
Why I selected it: 1972 Topps is the best design to mess around with, I think. I am collecting a "Day-Glo" orange version of a 50 card Archives take on it, which looks just hideously purdy. And though I don't generally ooohhh and ahhh over Purple Baseball Cards like I do over Pink Baseball Cards, I had to have at least one Purple Refractor Psychedelic Tombstone. Is this the best possible Purple '72? I dunno. But I also want 9 cards of any player cheeky enough to wear Uni # Zero, so here I go.
Bonus Round
Why I selected these: It is so nice to see the 1988 design printed accurately, for one. And I like something about each of these cards. The Turner has a nifty stealth Logoman on it; I can't get enough Riley Greene Rookie Cards (this photo should have been his Topps Baseball issue, in a better world).
There are 150 subjects on the 2023-1988 checklist so it looks likely that my first constructed page of these will have to expand. Darn.
Bonus Bonus Round
Why I selected it: Johnny Bench always looks good on Baseball Cards.
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