Shopping with the window closed

One of today's goals was to buy two new tires for the truck. Instead, I bought, and if I type on long enough here, I can get the not very surprising reveal all the way off the teaser part of the blogroll, and yeah, you are already guessing what I bought … a repack.

The tire store was across the parking lot from a K-Mart. A K-Mart I hadn't previously pillaged for any possible remaining Mike Trout rookies. And the tire clerk had forgotten my truck has a diesel engine = I needed a higher load range tire than they had in the shop.

So off to K-Mart for a little Trout fishing. Early to bed / early to rise / fish all day / make up lies. I'll be honest here though - there were no 2011 Update packs to be had, which wasn't too surprising.

But the baseball card jones had to be sated. I selected this:

I have been skeptical of these. I like repacks. But a big reason I like them is I at least get to know one of the cards I am buying. Yes, I am a box searcher. I look through all of the packs to figure out which one has some goofy card I like, before you get a chance to pick one blindly, without even looking.

But I can't do that with these obviously. Here is the rest of what this pack promises, hidden behind the ugly green plastic:

Well that's good, of course I want to collect my Favorite Stars from a Championship Collection of Trading Cards. Who wouldn't?

And though I keep wanting to work on another post unrelated to repacks, well, this repack might have a card that I can use in that post, so, just to be sure, I'll open this repack first.

But first, let's inquire a little more skeptically. Where did this repack come from? As always on this blog, let's check the back:

Hmmm, I thought you could get in big, big trouble for being an MJ Holding Company. And I'm pretty sure Michael Jordan might enjoy a few recreational sports cards in his spare time, but I'm also pretty sure he's got bigger companies to run than a used sports cards repacking company. I have seen this name before somewhere, I will have to look into this mystery company sometime. This was part of my goal of buying this pack. Journalism. Serious, heavy-hitting, data-driven, well-researched Journalism. Yeah, that's the ticket. I was going to get real with these repacks, and count the cards inside. But there's 100 cheap-ass baseball cards inside, we already know that, silly!

No, I was going to help educate just what my loyal blog readers should expect for their hard-earned five spot from those 100 baseball cards. How much junk wax? How many cards from last year? Which manufacturers paid off this repacker the most? How many "hits"? Would I break even buying this pack, or could I turn a profit flipping repacks? (You'll be surprised….)

But then, this happened:

WHAT! Repackers can't do this! Sure, they can cruelly Bip you with multiple copies of the same card, but they are not supposed to just put stacks of cards all from the same junk set in there like they didn't even care about the product they so lovingly distribute to baseball card addicts like me. I mean, if I wanted cards all from the same set, I'd buy one of those repacks full of actual junk packs of baseball cards.

So much for my serious research. Ruined by bad data before I even start. There is only one solution — I'll have to buy another one of these repacks to see if MJ Holding Company has formed a habit with this practice. Darn.

OK, OK, let's look at some baseball cards already. Here is that crucial tone-setting first card:

Hey, a Manager card. I like Manager cards. In fact, that will be the title of an upcoming post. I knew this repack would help me be a good blogger. And if you love baseball cards, you have to have lots of Alou cards. We'll save this one for further consideration some day in 2017, at this rate. But 2003 Topps? There are reasons I drift away from baseball cards once in a while. I like colorful cards. I like strong primary colors. But I think this set puts me to sleep, and it's already late.

What's the next card?

Hmmm, that MJ Holding Company repacker person is more sly than I thought. The second card is the famous baseball player replaced by the first card! Maybe MJ can help you understand the game of baseball after all.

I'll have to blame these poor scans on the beer though. I ran a chainsaw a bunch today, and to try and get the taste of gasoline off the tip of my tongue, I went with a heavily hopped beverage - 2014 Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale - and forgot to check how the scanner was registering the cards before I scanned them all for you. Sorry about cutting off the tops of the cards there. Bad blogger, bad. This will be a problem for the whole post, oops.

That's sure a lot of blue on that card though. I like it though. Nicknames make for better baseball cards. I'll read the back later, let's keep flipping through these blue cards:

It's a Manger Hot Pack! Yippee! This is a very rare "In Action" Manager card, though you can't really expect a 72 year old baseball lifer to challenge the photographer to stay in focus.

But this was my first clue these cards came from an actual baseball card collection. Luckily for me, that collector who sold their collection to MJ Holdings Corporation - hmmm, I wonder what you could get back in trade for baseball cards from them? - well, they picked up the Traded set from Topps in 2003, which is where Topps put all the Manager cards that year. Which is a pretty good idea Topps could use when they have a hard time filling out all 330 cards in the Update set these days. BRING BACK THE MANAGER CARDS! please.

But I couldn't be that lucky to purchase 100 Manager cards at once. I also found this card:

Nice palm trees! I think this card might hold down the Twins shoulder patch binder page slot for a while. Me likey.

So much blue though, isn't there some other set of cards in this repack?

A blue bat! Blue empty seats! Blue alternate uniform! There is no escape from the blues, every grown-up knows that. I'm pretty sure I've never seen a blue bat on a baseball card before though. I'm also pretty sure 1989 Donruss is going to have a tough time convincing me to keep any of their other 659 cards with a design that boring. But of course, with baseball cards, there's always the next pack…

This pack was pretty loaded with those cheap flimsy cards though. That portion of it did have one other surprise:

So for you lazy types that couldn't be bothered to figure out how to put the challenging jigsaw puzzle together even though you already owned hundreds and hundreds of the baseball cards that came out of the same packs, they gave you a cheater card showing you what the puzzle looked like? I did not know that. I'll use this to my advantage. Clearly, the one cool piece of this puzzle would be the one with the Brave on it. Sorry, Warren, this puzzle just doesn't do it for me, and nether does this set of baseball cards.

But that's the beauty of a repack - there are always other sets to check out:

Back to the blues. Does this pack have a theme or what? And What IS That in Tony's uniform there? A Saturday Night Special to really put the fear in base runners thinking about stealing one? Never trust a Pirate. And those fore-arm bands? What's up with that?

Even beer can't help you escape from the blues, trust me:

Something doesn't seem right about that card. Those pesky red Empty Seats? You thought I liked these cards. I do, I do, that's not it. That Espy card is a classic. No, no, it's something else...

There, that's better. Whatever possessed the Mariners to switch to teal anyway? Teal is pretty classy, sure, but the ocean is blue, everybody knows that.

And what about collecting my Favorite Stars like I was promised?

Everybody likes an Eddie Murray card. But wasn't there some of those chippy black border cards everyone hates in here somewhere?

And wasn't I complaining just yesterday about lackadaisical baseball card editors carelessly dropping graphical elements on the cards? Yes, yes I was. But I dig that Win! Twins! logo. Looks like I'll have more Twins patch cards to be looking for.

I'm not sure what to make of 1987 Donruss. I mean, it's like every card got run over by one of those old-time bullpen buggies I discovered while wasting time on the Internet, like you are right now:

Which are pretty cool. I hope that idea has been factored into a nickname for this set. I mean, I do like black border baseball cards, they make the colors in the image just pop oh so well. I wonder what else I can find in 1987 Donruss?

Shazam! Now there is a puzzle I would like to complete! And they call this stuff junk. At least that means it will be cheap!

There was quite a stack of these cards in the pack, but sadly no puzzle pieces. Were there any more good cards?

All-right all-right, another cool Mark Langston card. His binder page will be filling up before I know it. That star sure does look pointy, Mark, good thing you usually have a great leg kick going on your cards.

I think there were a lot of famous baseball players in 1987 sets. I sure hope so, because they sure printed a lot of their cards, which is good for me, so I can find sweet Hall of Famer cards like this one:

Nice. Though again I wish I could re-assemble the card and put that old school Sox logo over in the left corner, a little more outta the way.

Yes, 1987 Donruss seems like it could be enjoyable to assemble, particularly since I won't let 1987 Topps grow into very big piles. And I'll need some 1987 cards to keep up with my baseball history:

Why there's Johnny Football of his day. Quarterback of the Michigan Wolverines but made Pro in Major League Baseball instead. I doubt you'll ever see his like again. He was pretty famous in Michigan when I was growing up, but I never knew he was also born right there in Ann Arbor - what a storybook baseball card, thanks Donruss. I'll have to keep an eye out for more of his cards and see how his total career turned out, I forget these things. Here he is in 1987 already a DH though, hmmmm…

Well, so much for my repack with a very low score on the variety index. Let's hope the repacker tried a little harder putting the second stack of cards together:

Sweet. A baseball player from the very first set of baseball cards I ever collected, still going strong on cardboard in 1991. This would be Frank's final of 3 Upper Deck cards, but is better than his 91 Topps. This pack is off to a good start!

Though this is a rather routine action in game - the runner is already safe on a pick-off attempt - I always like a card where the fielder hasn't closed his glove on the ball yet. Hey man, nice shot. Upper Deck was also known for intriguing photos on the back of course:

I think this might have been one of Bryce Harper's favorite cards when he was a little boy. 

It was nice to see a short run of 1991 Upper Deck to start the next portion of 50 cards, because that set is full of these types of cards:

Now there's a Pitcher In Action card. Repacks usually have a generous helping of early Upper Deck issues, quite probably because the print runs of those cards are pretty high I imagine. This will work out well for me, because I think I will just keep an occasional UD '91 until I have 9 really good ones. They are not all fabulous action shots though, Upper Deck also liked to have fun posing the players:

Another great Empty Seats card, naturally in this pack with blue seats. Yes, all four of those cards are keepers. That card has some potential for use in the post I try to keep working on, if I didn't keep buying new repacks lately. Once the card designer puts a team logo on the card, you can quickly get triple logo cards. Unlike this set:

Perhaps Leaf was just practicing here for their unlicensed future. With no logo or even team name, the photo selection doesn't come through to support that design decision. And I have never liked the main element here, recalling the little sticky-back thingies you would use on each corner of a photo to affix it to a page in an album, you know, when people kept their photographs without using electronics, back when we had to walk 3 miles through the snow, each way, to get to the one room school house, sonny. 1991 Leaf will be a one-and-done set in my binders - I will probably just keep one card from it, when and ever I find a really, really good one.

Perhaps someday Leaf will hook me up with a card from my oddball personal baseball card memes like this Stadium Club does:

This card could read Louisville Slugger for the name and I would be happy to accept it as a Lurking Catcher card. That bat looks like it's up to something…I'm always on the look-out for Floating Bat cards now. 

With a hit of Stadium Club, this repack is finally starting to behave like a repack. And nothing says repack like a shiny 90s insert:

I might scan that one again to see how it turns out a second time. Or, I might have a Shiny 90s scan-off contest - wait till you see a 95 or 96 Pacific Oooooh, Shiny I pulled from my extra repack the other night; just ridiculous. I'll give you a heads-up in advance so you can have shades handy that night.

Did I just type the word night here in the middle of the night? Did I find a night card? Yep.

A pitcher-at-the-plate insert night card no less, probably; you can't always tell if any Diamaondbacks card is actually from a night game. Like most inserts in the 21st century this one too, from 2002, is mostly designed for a relic version. I think bat relic cards for pitchers are about the only such cards I would enjoy owning.

Once you start pulling inserts in a repack, the cards from sets you've never seen before won't be far behind:

This is actually a 3-D card, in that you would need a 3-D scanner to capture the embossed faux-baseball stitches on the top right of the card; also the surface of the card is also a nice faux-leather, though you'll not often see leather that glossy. Still a fun go at something a little different from Upper Deck in the 2001 Ovation set. There were a couple more of these in the repack, gave it a little heft. I think I will enjoy owing some of these for the tactile experience. Much better than 1995's Topps Embossed. You missed Topps Embossed? Don't worry, they're easy to find, and real, real cheap too.

You never know what those non-Topps baseball card companies would try next:

Here Fleer tries a hand at a retro issue in 2001 for it's 20th Anniversary. I hadn't seen one of these before; I'll be keeping an eye out for more. The back of it is pretty interesting:

This is actually a nod to sets in the later 80s, rather than 1981 Fleer, which wasn't all that adventurous on the back. I like this kind of baseball data a lot better than new composite statistics I haven't had time to figure out yet. My usual radio announcer, Dan Dickerson for the Tigers, uses some of these #s occasionally. For several minutes I had to wonder how Wilson's 1st Pitch On-Base Percentage could be higher than his Batting Average — he must have been hit by a 1st Pitch in an At Bat or two.

This is another card I can use in a future post, and in future collecting, but it came near the end of the pack, which closed with another several 1991 Upper Deck. This repacker also thinks I should have a certain wonderful baseball card, that I didn't have to scan for you tonight:

…because I scanned it for you the other day; this is the third copy of this card I have pulled lately.

I thought I had probably seen another of my newly repacked 91 UD cards online before, but it turned out that had only been the back of the card. So this was another fun find in my retro repack of bewitching baseball cards:

New Pack!

So I bought a pack of baseball cards. Yeah, yeah, so did you, and you, and you, but not Nǐ over there in China, that one is just a web crawler trolling for - ? I wonder what I would have to type to generate a bookmark over there in the People's Republic?

Anyhow, see if you notice anything new about this pack:

Yes, I thought some blogger somewhere should report the demise of the 2 panel "rack" / "fat" / "jumbo" pack. Maybe that will get the attention of the Chinese - ace Japanese pitcher moves to America, triggers savings in plastic wrapping material. That would probably need to happen with basketball cards for anyone in China to notice, actually.

But this does mark a certain end of a long tradition - the long pack of baseball cards hanging on a peg. It has of course been a long time since we could see the cards inside, but those long packs were a certain tiny part of the traditions of baseball cards.

Personally, I'm OK with this, less packaging material is a good thing. I really sometimes wonder why Topps sticks with the "packs" in a blaster box, and I hope that is the next place they look to save a few pennies. And yes, I will still be buying new packs of cards in the future, as I love ripping packs and I will have to get a chance at the random cards I put on my idiosyncratic binder pages somewhere. And it  is still the very best way to keep an eye on what Topps is doing with all those baseball cards.

Though the minimal color cards this year made me so sleepy a very strange thing happened to this pack of baseball cards in my possession - I bought it 3 weeks ago, and never opened it! What the hell? Not to worry, my friends, baseball card collecting has gone on as usual here at the Base Set base, I was just too busy dealing with old base cards to look at the new base cards. What the hell?

So even though I haven't made it as far as blogging about my Series One cards this year (I did get them all bindered up, and I recently picked up the bulk of Series Two to start on those - I'll post some of each soon I hope), let's see what I found in this new-ish pack of baseball cards.

First card:

And, yawn.

Though I must say here I find it odd that with Topps designating blue as the Yankees color, the red of their iconic icon logo really stands out, and though I've never been a fan of the Yankees, I much prefer this logo on my baseball cards rather than the blue NY used last year (Topps seems to agree as this red logo is much more common on their cards than the NY). It also works well because the Yankees never place this logo on any uniform, so when Topps uses logos on the cards, the Yankees never have those overly busy cards that result from multiple logos, a topic I've been working on for an upcoming post.

So here I am with a brand new baseball card, and I'm not yawning. Thanks, Topps. I won't even ding you heavily for lopping off Francisco's elbow, as on this card:

Yes, his elbow is complete — but why just slice the baseball in half with the photo software? It would change little of the live game portrait style the set editor goes for on every card Topps issues these days, to just include his complete hand and the baseball by decreasing the zoom % just a single point or two.

I complain about the zoom choices of new cards fairly often (best fortune cookie ever says: "Human invent language to satisfy need to complain.") That doesn't mean I don't like all live-action close-ups, or that every last body part absolutely must be visible on the card:

This card works very well without Brignac's left elbow being visible, as the photo has captured the intensity of waiting for a Major League pitch, and the lines of the image converge nicely on the intensity of Reid's grip on the bat - your eyes are led to the batting gloves, not off the card, as on this shot:

That is another classic still image for a baseball card, but leaving Santana's thumb sticking back into the frame kind of makes for a whole that is less than the sum of the parts. I think the focus is again on the hitter's eyes, which is kind of interesting here as well, probably more so on-card than on-screen. Maybe Santana will go on to multiple fan-ballot All-Star appearances and this card will become an iconic RC on it's own, though that mess on the left edge will certainly detract from that.

The Santana card contrasted nicely with this one:

I did not know that the Twins sport two different left shoulder patches these days. I've always liked that big Minnesota patch on the Burton card; the patch on the Santana card is a new one for me. Maybe if I could watch baseball on TV all the time, I would know these things.

But I always like looking through the Update cards to find all the new-this-season patches, and this pack didn't disappoint:

Though you have to squint a little to see the Mother's Day patch there on Tyler's left breast. I believe this was new this year; here is a nice downloaded-from-web-somewhere view:

With all the zooming going on with the cards these days, that might look nice with a little bit more zoom, actually. Never thought I would see a pink LogoMan.

Update is a quirky set of baseball cards for many reasons, including the way it is now frequently the home of "sunset" cards:

And that seems like a nice one for probably the only card in this set that has a first stat line that starts with "95" in the YR column. I've never been a fan of Giambi, nor a hater, but by the time any player has made it to 20 issues in the base set of Topps cards, I always like their final cards. There are several such in Update this year, also including Daisuke Matsuzaka and Bobby Abreu. All 3 players got photo variations in the set - a nice touch by Topps. 

This could be a sunset card for Chief Wahoo there, unless he pops up on a Fan Favorite type retro card in some future set, but I'm good with that.

So I was reading the back of the Giambi card, and in fact read most of the cards in this pack. That's a main reason I buy them. The unique feature of this year's card back is the "Rookie Fact," like this one:

Usually the Rookie Facts are totally forgettable, but if you squint at them long enough, you find a few kinda interesting ones. Pitchers hitting the ball is probably an easy go-to for the writers as they skim a player bio:

I'm pretty sure I set that one aside to share with you as I read through Series One, when Arroyo had a Reds card. 

And there is always the hope that the baseball card back will connect you to the history of the game:

Here I am in 2014 still discovering things about a favorite player of my youth, Carl Yastrzemski. Again, thanks Topps.

Another neat thing about the card backs in Update is they sometimes discuss the just-completed season:

But not many people buy baseball cards for the backs. Actually, zero people buy them for the backs, unless I go out and break my long-standing aversion to Bowman products and pick up some 2014 Bowman Chrome mostly for the interesting card backs I've seen on the blogs lately.

So let's get back to the fronts of the cards. This one caught my eye:

Check it out - a baseball player's knee! There were only 4 cards of 36 in this pack wherein that body part could be seen, if you don't count a pitcher's leg kick (always a sure bet to see on any of Bronson Arroyo's cards).

That card also certainly made me notice a card later in the pack:

I'm not sure I've ever pulled two cards from the same team in the same pack for the same individual position on the field. Perhaps I have in the several dozen other fat/rack/jumbo packs I've picked up the last several years, or whether you count the 72 card "hanger box" as a "pack." It just seems like for the last four years or so, I am always pulling cards of S.F. Giants infielders named Brandon, and just tons of S.F. Giant infielders in general. It's like they have a special infielder bullpen full of almost-could-be guys out there. At least that's what I glean from Topps anyway, who has yet to issue a Joe Panik card outside of Bowman or Minor League products.

So anyhow, what about those other cards in the pack, that might actually feature a famous baseball player instead of all these Update back-ups? 

Let's take a look:

POW! That one's going on the "None" page - as in "None More Red", a page I dreamed up just tonight when I opened this pack. It will only have one other card so far, though I will probably put other colors on the page so I have some chance to make it to 9 cards some day. I certainly never expected an Oakland A's card would end up a contestant in the reddest card of all time. This card is so red, it takes the viewer quite some time to even notice the All-Star Game logo there in the corner - even though it is mostly red!

Maybe if I can find the Red Foil parallel of this card, Sean and Ted can have some company:

A pity the Cardinals can't really put red birds on a red alternate jersey. Maybe if we ever get a little bit of a "loose" photo selection out of Topps again, with a player wearing their warm-up jacket. I think it's been awhile for one of those cards. Don't even get me started on the fact that all the All-Star cards feature the special warm-up uniforms as on the Doolittle card - I pulled 5 other such boring cards.

I did promise to detour from those base cards, so here ya go:

Is there any more useless card back than the back of an insert? The story of a home run in a Gulf Coast League (high or low A league, I forget, and absolutely don't care)….yawnzzzerz.

The front of this card is quite strange and I will have to compare it to the few other examples I have from Series 1 & 2; I'm not sure if it is an example of Topps checking out what some menu option in their photo software does, or this is just a warm fuzzy analog photo somehow. I'll return to this another time.

I was really surprised to find this card:

I really like it when I get a card of an All-Time Great in a new pack of baseball cards. Especially when they play for my favorite team. Though Kaline (name in foil = Boo) retired when I was 7, I have grown to be a fan through his post-playing work in the broadcast booth and his continuing work in scouting and development for the Tigers. I even saw him give a short speech at Comerica Park on Ernie Harwell day some ten years ago. I will never forget it.

I'll never be a fan of insert designs really intended to be a base for "Relics", but I would say these are unique in that the team logo is all in foil, including the Tiger graphic. Though I don't care for foil, I kind of like it's use here. I've already been on the lookout for the Stargell card on this insert checklist; it should be interesting to see some of the others.

So being not quite old enough to know the details of Kaline's Farewell, I eagerly flipped this card over:

I knew he hit his 3,000th hit in Baltimore, his hometown, and the 399 Home Runs, but did not know that about announcing his retirement. For a second time in a brand new pack of baseball cards I'm picking up information tidbits about long retired Hall of Famers. Another Well Done, Topps.

The inserts and parallels always fall just past the middle of a pack of course, so this means I have a few more cards to check out:

It's always cool to pull the player on the wrapper, though the Rookie Debut cards are a slightly dubious proposition. But when they are a horizontal card this nice, complete with lurking fielder in the set position, they are A-OK with me.

The 2014 design probably works best on the horizontal cards; there is a better supply of color from the design. This set would have been very nice in a radical all horizontal issue not seen since 1956 (it's time, Topps!). I will be assembling these all together for some interesting pages, probably. 

Quite often these days, the zoom fetish just wastes the always big potential of the horizontal format:

Though I am always a sucker for the cards with the colorful gloves. There are plenty of those; I can never decide if I actually want to make a special page of them. Probably not - just not enough going on, usually, on those cards. At least the baseball doesn't get sliced off on these cards; even a careless photo editor can figure that out in the horizontal format.

One feature of the 2014 set that surprised me is a return to documenting the 2013 Highlights:

Though all we get is a number, and one word: "500 Homers", as this is actually a checklist card with no further elucidation, not even the date, of this feat for Albert Pujols. And it would not have surprised me at all to see the Checklist cards somehow be connected to Rookie accomplishments, to go with the Rookie Facts and the Rookie, Rookie, Rookie theme of all the insert sets particularly in Series 1 & 2.

But a nice baseball card for one of the Hall of Fame statistical points. Nice touch by Topps to use a photo featuring a fan wearing a vintage St. Louis uniform for this one.

One probably-not-collected-by-anyone-else meme I like on cards is Empty Seats. And 2014 Update has a doozy of a card for that page:

Empty Seats at Night! Oh yes. So many neat image components here, many working very well with the swoop of the card design. A first mystery is the blurry red-white&blue bunting = Opening Night? No, there wouldn't be empty seats on Opening Night. But the bunting might stay up for the whole Opening Series, and Pomeranz pitched an inning in the third game this year,  a night game of a day-night doubleheader after a rain-out I guess; a 4-6 A's loss to the Indians). The line of the script Athletics on the uniform works tremendously setting up a second main horizontal line image, just as the bill of the cap goes with the other line to the left - really quite a photograph here. The cropping/zoom is perfect again on a horizontal card, and I even like the Nike swoosh this time in an upside-down appearance.

So though the 2014 Topps Baseball Cards didn't grab me as much as their 2013 models did, I know I will probably always find some enjoyable baseball cards in every new pack of baseball cards. I hope.