More fun times with my friend, fiddy

I can't always tell what makes one Baseball Card land in the Dollar Box, while another lands in the 50¢ Box. Of course I wish they all landed in the cheapie option, oh well. Let's examine another expedition to the land of spare change Baseball Cards:

Why I selected it: I already essentially "collected" the cards from the 2021 Topps Update 1992 Redux insert checklist in that I assembled 9 of them and passed on collecting the rest.

But when I saw this one I knew it could liven up that page of cards a little and I had a card to replace in mind, instantly, when I saw this Judge card. That would be the Nolan Arenado card bringing up the end of the parade in binder slot #9. Arenado is exhibiting strong symptoms of wanting to play on a "Super Team" and get the heck out of St. Louis now. Which is partially understandable, but, for me, only partially acceptable.

Why I selected it: Staying with the negative waves, I guess I wanted a card to dislike. Or, more accurately, one to help me to remember to tread carefully with these Leaders cards. I do prefer a vertical Leaders card. I had presumed they automatically indicate just exactly who Lead the League right there on the top of the card.

But what if - there's a tie? That's what happened here. Bummer.

I confess I would be a lot less displeased if my man Salvy had been on the top of the card. Cynicism can come easily here in presuming hot young Star VG Jr. gets top billing on a Youth-before-Vets basis, but my guess is alphabetical order would have been the tie-breaker.

Still, couldn't the mold be broken by putting Perez and Guerrero Jr. together on the top line?

Some day, in my infinite amounts of spare time, I will examine how Topps handled this on Leader cards of the past. But today is not that day.

Why I selected it:                             Boom!

First, let's review:

That card is from 2021 Topps Opening Day, arriving publicly in the early spring of 2021. This wasn't the first time "Bomb Squad" had been used on a Baseball Card though. As near as I can tell, Donruss was the first to give the term a try in the mid-90s. These 2021 card from Topps are just off in a league of their own. A very, very sleepy one.

These days, Panini owns the rights to the Donruss brand. And so a year later, their first "Bomb Squad" cards appeared; these are from the 2nd iteration, in 2023.

I had to have one of these, as soon as I saw one. And there proved to be more of them in the ever friendly fiddy cent box. The card number is a hoot - this Alex Rodriguez card is # "BS1," I kid you not.

These cards are almost too fun to put in a binder page; that's because this is the "Pink Fireworks" parallel which are "exclusives" in the "Mega" boxes (think $50, "Retail" stores only) of this product. Though I'm not sure anyone can easily keep track of which cards are Panini Donruss and which are Panini Donruss Optic.

Anyhow when you have one of these cards in-hand, the Fireworks pattern essentially explodes whenever you move the card a little bit. This, I like.

I'm not sure how I feel about classier "vintage" players appearing on the crazier Ooooohhhhh, Shiny parallels of the 21st Century though.

And right there is another reason I gravitated to negative sampling these: Panini is as unable to resist randomly mashing Minor Leaguers together with Hall of Famers on checklists as Topps is.

Orelvis Martinez is currently a highly rated prospect in the Toronto system who should see some more time in the Bigs in 2025. This is a card from 2023 though.

This 10 card 2023 checklist also features respectable enough brand new 2024 Los Angeles Dodger Andy Pages though I can't say I have yet particularly associated his name with hitting Bombs. 

Panini has recognized the popular reaction to these cards and they also now produce Bomb Squad cards in their Football and Basketball sets, somewhat like their "Kaboom!" cards which are similarly popular although there that is an odd term to apply as Kaboom!s are printed in strictly limited tiny quantities. So with Kaboom!s lots of people want to find one in a pack but few people can actually afford to buy one, quite unlike these much, much higher print run Bomb Squads.

The initial Baseball Bomb Squad effort in 2022 included a Shohei Ohtani card; fortunately and a little surprisingly Ohtani did not make the 2023 checklist. Instead it does feature Ken Griffey Jr., a fitting "Bomb" subject I guess, but one who is nearly as massively collected as Ohtani is. I like my Miggy cards, but I have no plans to continue obsessively purchasing all the new ones ever made, for the rest of my life.

So, maybe someday I will spring the real money for a KG Jr. card and complete this set, or maybe I will wait and see if O. Martinez or Andy Pages can ever hit many Bombs, in the real deal Major Leagues, rather than just on the screens in Panini offices. Although that waffly conclusion would normally mean these cards will be sentenced to life in a small cardboard casket for a few months or years, these things almost audibly go "Pop" when you handle them, so I will probably let them swim around on my card desk near that Panini "Lubmerjacks" card I bought, which has a textured surface that also refuses to be imprisoned in plastic.

Why I selected it: This is my 2nd-favorite City Connect uniform and I am quite simply going to collect all of the cards it appears on. I don't know why Topps went with a Powder Blue team name for the Rockies though; I think that was a composition error on this card.

Why I selected it: This is my favorite City Connect uniform and I am quite simply going to collect all of the cards it appears on. Overall it is however a rather unfortunate image to pick for a player's Rookie Card logo card but since these are technically inserts in Topps Baseball releases, they don't count as Rookie Card cards to the cognoscenti. Unless of course, the player on such a card has "Cooperstown" whispered anywhere within 162 meters of the card, and then all of a sudden it is an expensive Baseball Card.

Anyhow I expect the Brew Crew collection to be fantastic. And am quite looking forward to seeing the little charcoal grill shoulder patch being recreated by Topps.

Why I selected it: I can't say I have ever understood the point of the title of the "Beam Team" inserts in Stadium Club. I mean I would doubt Miggy is very good on the balance beam in Gymnastics contests. 

But here he is definitely beaming, so this card could make it into some Nifty Nine pages in the future I guess, in a variety of ways.

Bonus Round

Why I Selected these: More of my fascination with Gold facsimile signatures, held on to as a needed Baseball Card motif by Bowman all the way to these 2011 cards.

That Logan kid was lazy with his signature so I doubt that one will be a keeper. I did look up this checklist and the fancy Gold sig is haphazardly applied; there are a mix of famous names and never-heard-ofs on the checklist. So for example the Manny Machado card has this Gold flourish on it but the Christian Yelich card does not.

Of these 3 players, Kevin Keyes never reached MLB; Logan Darnell did manage 24 Innings Pitched with the Twins in 2014 while Cody Stanley received 10 At Bats from the Cardinals in 2015. Neither Darnell nor Stanley were memorialized by Topps for those achievements, amazingly enough.

I do like the kitsch of those Gold sigs, so just another shopping project for every collector's favorite day, "Some," though I expect for me that one will be sometime in the last week of November, 2025. I'm sure by then we will see plenty more odd Baseball Cards, right, here.