maths

 

1975 Topps, man. The Minis.

Baseball is a game with a fair bit of mathematics involved. And there is yet more math involved in Baseball Cards. That's just the way it is, and that's not a big deal.

But that last word I just wrote - "deal" - is a big part of Baseball Card math. Because that revolves around dollar$. And that is the hardest part of Baseball Card collecting - you are never going to own a T206 Honus Wagner. If you are reading this and you do own a T206 Wagner, I'd love to shoot the breeze sometime. I could probably help you with the Timber out on the Estate you must surely own as well, for example - I work for wealthy landowners all the time. We never discuss Baseball Cards.

And the whole Hobby just cascades on down from that particular root level Baseball Card. How much will you really spend on this particular recreational activity?

That is not always a pleasant question to ponder. I generally don't ponder it often, nor do I become particularly unhappy knowing I will never own that Wagner card. That's because I know I will someday own a nice little reprint of it that I will enjoy a whole lot, with no cares at all that is not an original copy. I spend most of my Baseball Card collecting time enjoying Baseball Cards that are worth precisely $0.00, something a whole lot of people can't seem to do, from what I continually read on this here Internet. I feel sorry for them.

But I am far from immune from desiring expensive Baseball Cards; I am just lucky that there aren't a whole lot of such cards I truly desire. The greatest exception to that in my trading card dreamscape is most certainly 1975 Topps Baseball, man, though there are a few others bobbing around in my noggin from time to time.

Unfortunately such concerns were foremost in my mind back on May 1st, when I set out to simply enjoy opening some packs of 2024 Heritage in the historical "mini" format launched way back in 1975 - something I never saw until the summer of 1978, in the "trade it" boxes of the other kids on my street, after a family move during my childhood. Nevertheless I knew I would quite enjoy opening some such packs, maybe even a whole box, seeing as they were appropriately even "mini" priced at exactly half of what I paid for a full box of regular sized Heritage back in March.

Within about 60 minutes of opening that box, I found myself owning a whopping 8 more boxes of the product, after pulling the trigger on the highest amount of money I have spent on Baseball Cards in a single transaction in my entire life.

What was I going to do with such a seemingly gi-normous purchase? I wasn't really sure.

I did know what the online chatter about this product was like - I was reading some of it simultaneously with opening it, and also simultaneously with reading the checklist for it, all in the last hour or so before it went on-sale on this here Internet.

I fully expected it would sell out fairly quickly; most "on-line" Topps releases do. If this one hadn't also been offered to Friendly Local Card Shops (the friendly part does now seem to be a requirement, on the part of Topps/Fanatics, which seems a good thing, to me), well then I doubt I would have ever ended up owning more than 9 or 18 cards from this product, some day. That's because I'm just not into competitive online shopping and expensive merchandise sitting around on a porch later. And I didn't know if the whole thing wouldn't be just co-opted by "bots" anyway, as was the case with on-line sales of sports cards a few years ago.

Turned out, most anyone who knew these cards were going to be sold could have purchased excellent amounts of them, from 3 possible options, though for only about a half hour or so in each case. For whatever reason, Topps Baseball Cards are sold on the Fanatics website separately from the Topps.com website. And more understandably, Topps products are also sold on a Topps UK website. 

So a small upside to this experience I am re-living for you (and, me, as I write it down) is I am now a bit less pessimistic on buying these special "on-line" Baseball Cards. But I am also more determined than ever to stay with collecting those wonderful 100% worthless Baseball Cards, because that is a much more low-key activity — and that's important, to me, in a recreational activity.

My first thought on buying 9 whole boxes of Baseball Cards (at the same time!) was that it was highly likely I could later sell a few boxes and make the cards I kept a bit cheaper that way.

I did not at all expect for just one Baseball Card product to so thoroughly illustrate the contemporary Baseball Card Hobby and lead me to carefully re-consider my participation in it. But with these 2024 Topps Heritage Minis, that's what happened. After all, it's 1975 Topps, man. The Minis. 

We are getting pretty far from that delightful Reese Olson /15 Purple RC up there at the top of the post. That is one of 5 parallels in the Minis, after the regular sized Heritage release basically punted on the concept, in my opinon. White border cards of the most colorful set of Baseball Cards ever made? Really?

Yes, really.

The parallels I ended up owning treated me OK, I guess. Reese Olson currently has the 5th best ERA in Major League Baseball though he only picked up his first "W" just this afternoon as the Tigers seem as lackluster as ever this year. But we do got Olson going for us, and I have an extremely rare - only 15 copies made! - Rookie Card card of the young phenom. Which is nice.

And that Jasson guy there, that's a card with some actual buzz, unlike that around brilliant Tigers rookies, which are exceedingly rare. The 5 parallels in the Minis are Black at /50, White at /32 although without a stamped s/n proof of that, Blue at /25, Purple at /15, Orange at /5, and of course a /1, of Pink. And without any Chromes or other "gimmicks" as Baseballcardpedia snidely (and, correctly) labels them, so no Superfractors. Just 5 color parallels, 3 per box.

Which does make this product seem exciting - every Baseball Card product absolutely must have a card that might be somehow more valuable than all the other cards, or no one would want the product. But these products with a long checklist and s/n stamped cards of players you have never heard of, which are chock-a-block in 2024 Heritage Baseball Cards, aren't ultimately that exciting, as you realize later.

I basically understood that ahead of time; I had a different goal in mind. I simply wanted to see what parallels could be created with the 1975 Topps design. All of them. While held in my hand. Buying some whole boxes of the product should certainly help reach that goal.

There is an odd result with all those parallels in this product - all those limited edition, stamped serial #'d, hard-to-get Baseball Cards worth just a couple or maybe even a few dozens of dollars, each - are almost all universally: not "Gem Mint." Worthless. 

That's because the "special" card in 9 of the 12 packs in each box is always the last card in the pack. In a tightly wrapped pack, in a box that feels just a touch too small to hold the packs without, well, bad things happening, like this:

once you see it

in case you can't see it, let's zoom in:

Horrors.

I think I quite like this turn of affairs, actually. It will likely make these parallels far more easily collectable, for people, like me, who don't care one whit whether a card will "grade." Condition freaks best stay far, far away from these cards.

Which is especially delicious because all of this terrible damage - is on the back of the card. Let's review:

purdy

but in the interest of fairness, -that- corner, again

Horrors.

This situation on parallel after parallel probably leads to lots of strife on the ole ebay, where plenty of listings for 2024 Heritage Minis include the "*READ" note in the keywords as sellers attempt to get buyers to understand that these cards are not Gem Mint, before they purchase them.

Thus if you'd like a colorful miniature parallel of your favorite player in the 2024 Topps Heritage 1975 Topps Baseball design, they might not be as pricey as you might expect, if you can manage to avert your eyes from that horrible damage to each corner. Good luck.

So how did my quest conclude, to see one of each of the 5 parallels? Fairly well. I will be working up a just exactly perfect collection of a set of 9 fine examples of the concept; I will wait until that's complete to show off my nifty picks to represent the black and the blue parallel in my special binder of 2024/1975 Topps Baseball, forever and ever.

And I did luck into "pulling" one of the more difficult parallels, the /5 Orange. That happened in box #5, and overall wasn't a remarkably "tough pull" as only 16,000 boxes of this product were made, and with 500 oranges or 2,500 cards, that's 1-in-6 boxes, I think. Maths. Uggh. 

Anyhow, my Orange experience went like this:

Hmmm.

I've never owned a /5 Baseball Card, ever before. I can't say I plan to own any more of them, either. So it seems just exactly perfect for a collector of usually totally worthless Baseball Cards to end up with a quite rare version of what is effectively an "Error Card" of a Baseball Player that history is quite unlikely to ever remember.

Devin Sweet has never in any way been connected to the San Diego Padres organization. Kind of amazing really, considering how much that club wheels and deals players, much like I did with Baseball Cards in my Topps childhood. 

Sweet pitched exactly 2.0 innings in just 2 games for Seattle last year before being waived; so an authentic picture of him in Mariners garb is itself a pretty rare thing. Maybe there are only 5 of them in existence.

After that teaspoon of coffee he did get a further try-out down in Oakland (still a real MLB team, I think) in 5 more relief outings last September, before technically joining a "San -" team, as in Francisco, not Diego. Maybe that confused those hard working Topps Baseball Card miners, down in the mines. But that was in December 2023; within a month the Giants had cut Devin and he has currently "latched on" with my very favorite team, the Detroit Tigers. And despite listening to more pointless innings of Spring Training Baseball than I could ever be able to remember, I have never yet heard anyone discussing Tigers baseball in minute detail ever mention Devin Sweet to me. He currently works in the bullpen at their AAA affiliate in Toledo, so I guess I might hear his name again, some day. Thanks, Topps.

That incredible "pull" did make for an easy decision regarding a small disappointment with these minis - I did not luck into even one of the 1/1 Pink ones. (I saw a card numbered 11/11 at my LCS this morning; I should probably purchase it for an upcoming 1-1 project). 

I had a particular plan for the Pink card - I wanted to obtain one with a blue team name. Because I am now certain that my favorite color combo in 1975 Topps is the pink-yellow - but mostly for when the blue is added, as on the delightful World Series cards. Which in turn probably explains falling for the pink parallels in 2013 Topps.

My plan was to lay in wait for a 1/1 Pink of the scrubbiest scrub player with a blue ink team name, and then pounce. This plan faced an immediate challenge when the 1/1 Pink with the correct blue top was posted, fairly cheaply — of George Springer. Ugggh. 2019 Astros, cya. Easy pass, even at only $30. That cost me some money, a few days later.

Once I had that sweet Sweet card, the appearance of this next card was an instant must-have, as soon as I saw it, despite being twice as expensive as the Pink Springer. This will be the centerpiece in my eventual Nifty Nine of 2024 Topps Heritage Minis parallels:

1975 Topps, man. The Minis.

My 2nd new favorite who-are-you-talking-about footnote-of-a-footnote MLB reliever has, like Sweet, never ever been connected to the team name printed at the top of his parallel 2024 Heritage Baseball Card. It's hard work, down in those Baseball Card mines.

Felipe has almost twice as much MLB experience as Sweet - 15.0 IP! And is also no longer with the AAAA team called the Athletics. He owns a delightful 4.20 ERA so I somewhat hope that remains his career mark at the, yes, highest level. But really I do wish him well and a potential return to The Game as he is now in the Angels organization so some Angel Felipe Angels Baseball Cards would be kinda neat, don'tchathink? Until then, I own his #1/1 very best ever Rookie Card card. And you, don't.

We'll see that Sweet, and Angel card again here someday. That about covers the 3-per-box #'d cards, which every collector dreams about. But that's not all that is in this product.

In each box you also get 2 inserts. That means there aren't very many of these little doo-hickeys, either. 320 of each, to be exact, although they aren't stamped with proof of that, but it is in the maths, trust me. 

At first it seems the mini inserts are just re-runs from regular Heritage:

You rang?

That one is certainly a best-of-24 pick for my collection, although I wish they would have used this photo in Big League somehow instead.

But upon further review, the insert checklists have been expanded in the Minis, I think by 10 cards in the New Age Performers. Also appearing are the "75 Baseball Sensations" which are only in retail versions of regular sized Heritage, and again with an expanded checklist as compared to their bigger brothers, with some more 1975 stars on the Mini checklist that don't appear on the regular sizes.

One altogether new insert appears, the "1975 Fall Classic." I just had to buy this one:

I had a minor reservation here - it feels near certain that this card will appear as a regular sized insert in the Heritage High Numbers release, which has recently featured a Playoffs themed insert. And it would surely help out those hard-working Baseball Card miners to simply re-run these.

But, what if they don't? I saw that game live. It was the first time I ever got to watch a night-time Baseball game all the way to the very end. I was rooting for the Red Sox. I will never forget it. I can't pass up a Carlton Fisk Game 6 Baseball Card, ever. 

Almost. I do have no particular interest in the Fisk Baseball Flashbacks card in regular sized 24 Heritage, which titles itself "Waves Home Run Fair" and then uses a picture of Fisk batting in the daytime. Wrong.

Which might help explain another checklist anomaly in the Minis, amongst the Baseball Flashbacks. The Mini checklist is both 5 #s longer, but actually 7 cards are different. Two of the regular sized BFs are not miniaturized, including the Fisk card. (You'll have to figure out the other one as a homework assignment.) Maybe the baseball card miners were horrified to notice that picture and caption anomaly on 1975's most iconic Baseball moment. I somewhat doubt that, but nevertheless the Minis have more Flashbacks than the bigger cards.

Including, this one:

None more 70s?

I already went ahead and used a bit of my trading stock to pick up an extra one of these for Mr. Night Owl, don't worry.

This is another one I absolutely had to have for my modest Bob Gibson collection. There is a tiny chance I saw Bob Gibson pitch on a Saturday afternoon Kubek/Garagiola Game of the Week in 1975, but my memory is not quite -that- good, sigh. What really got me into setting aside my Bob Gibson cards was this book, which I quite recommend:

Every time I find a new Bob Gibson or Reggie Jackson Baseball Card, I want to read it again.

Once again these Minis delivered another just-had-to-have Baseball Card there in the inserts.

But those discoveries are somewhat jumping the tale of base_set vs. maths that is my 2024 Topps Heritage Minis experience. That's because the key part of any Heritage adventure is of course, the Short Prints, uggh. Particularly, this one, a single card (with all the just exactly perfect colors I could ever want) which will have an extensive blog post dedicated mostly to it, coming soon, right here:

This is now a > $100 Baseball Card.

1975 Topps, man. The Minis.

...To Be Continued

A "fun rip"

 

I didn't really know what I was in for, ahead of time, back on May 1st. That lovely morning I rambled on down to my Friendly Local Card Shop to purchase a box of 2024 Topps Heritage Minis. 

The owner had told me previously they would have just a single "case" (10 boxes) coming in. He had also passed along that they had a customer come in back in March to purchase and rip a whole case of regular 2024 Heritage on the day it was released, something I had considered doing, to finally have a chance at maybe seeing some of the "cool cards" in the product that I have otherwise never seen. Ultimately I passed on the idea in favor of enjoyably collecting 2024 Heritage all baseball season long.

My LCS further informed me they had recently finished selling out of a "case" (40 boxes) of 2024 Topps Heritage "Megas" or whatever they call those things.

And this was all taking place in the state of Michigan, where 1975 Topps Minis have the most, yes, heritage, after all. So I expected I wouldn't be the only 1975 Topps Baseball devotee arriving at the LCS that sweet spring morning.

I was wrong.

I had the product almost all to myself - the LCS owner(s) had ripped one of the 10 boxes themselves, the night before, and then placed the other 9 boxes available for sale that morning. I was definitely in for a single $55 box - but I could purchase 8 more, if I wished.

So I had to rip, right away. The actual online on-sale time of the boxes was still a couple hours away. And there was no official checklist yet released by Topps. Some confusion surrounded the whole product concept. Should I buy more than one box? They were all there, just waiting for me to insert my VISA card. No one else was coming in the door.

I was quite looking forward to having a second "first card" for the 2024 Topps Heritage season. I already forgot what it was, sigh.

The first pack had my first "color" - a serial numbered parallel. Most often a black border card numbered to /50. I already forgot what that one was, too.

On my 3rd pack I "hit." That was the autographed card shown above. I love it so much, let's look at it again:

I am fully aware of the major change at the top of the card. I like it. It seems like it would be a good way to make some Baseball Cards - lead with the city name in the design. Has that ever been done, in the long history of Baseball Cards? I doubt it but possibly/probably.

It would make for a neat way to make some parallels; a concept I will explore in a future post.

And here I was, ripping a box of cards and right away I hit a cool - ON-CARD - autographed card. With one helluva very real Signature.

I like Dennis Eckersley. I am also fully aware that his Rookie Card card is in the 1976 Topps Baseball set. But until I came to possess this awesome Topps Baseball Card, I did not know that his actual Major League Debut came in 1975.

And how about that photo? Is there a better Pitcher Face card than this one? Show me.

Later on I realized this photo is the same one used on the Baseball Flashbacks insert in 2024 Heritage. But on the "auto," it is zoomed in, far more wonderfully.

I kept ripping - of course.

In the next pack, I "hit" this card:

Throwback!

This was so exciting the LCS owner asked to snap a picture.

I 100% definitely have a new favorite Riley Greene Baseball Card. Perhaps the best current Tiger, fully decked out in a Detroit Stars Negro Leagues Appreciation Day uniform, likely from his Rookie Debut day, with a great focus on that great single Star on the cap - I need one of these caps, methinks. I seriously doubt Topps has any chance to supply me with a better 2024 Detroit Tigers Baseball Card than this one. 

I also quite like that the orange&blue color combo, from the 1975 Topps palette options, is basically as close as one can get to a "team color match" for the Detroit Tigers, a distinctly monochromatic team in most respects.

I never dreamed I would ever possibly own a Heritage "Throwback" - they are insanely not great "tough pulls" in regular Heritage, which is just one of many things I dislike about the whole product. I have seen pictures of the creatures some over the years, and many of them are the typical lazy Topps creation - the player is technically wearing a Throwback uniform, but on many of them, that can just barely be discerned. But, nobody cares. All that matters in modern Baseball Card collecting is the number of cards printed, not the overall quality of the Baseball Card. Never would I ever desire to attempt to complete a set of Heritage "Throwbacks."

But suddenly, I owned one. Of the best player on my favorite team. And I was only 4 packs into a box of 12 packs.

The rest of the box held the requisite / pre-announced ratio of "hits," including one "white" parallel, two more "color" cards, two (just 2) inserts, and two (just 2) "Short Prints."

On that last portion of the contents, there was some confusion. The day before, the LCS owner had passed along that there was some speculation about the checklist - maybe there wouldn't be the same 100 card checklist for the Short Prints.

But that very morning, the Official Checklist finally appeared on the ever handy Internet. And some realities began clicking into place. There really were just 2 Short Prints, per box of 120 cards, of the full checklist as prepared for regular sized 2024 Topps Heritage. With the announced and remarkably consistent insertion ratios in the product, there were 110 or 111 base cards in each box of 12 packs of 10 cards. And just those 2 "SP" cards.

That meant: for each forgettable "base card" Nobody really wants, the ratio of Base:SP was .... get ready for this one: 55, to One. I thought.

I looked this up later on Basebaballcardpedia.com, something I have wondered for a long time about Heritage - how many regular sized cards exist, for each "short print?" The answer: about 7.

Later I realized my minis math was wrong. Each box had 110 or 111 base cards (110 if an "auto" was included), and the 2 "SPs." But the 55 base came from the 400 card checklist while the 1 SP came from a 100 chard checklist. So the real ratio is 13.75 base : 1 Short Print, or roughly twice as few as in regular Heritage.

I am drawn to Heritage Baseball Cards like a moth to a flame, particularly this year. But I have a general distaste for the product. The Short Prints are just the tip of a substantial iceberg of complaints, for me, a boring old collector of usually, yes, base sets.

Here I was, now also owning 111 fun little "mini" 2024 Heritage 1975 Topps Baseball Cards - & also two of the infernal "Short Prints" - while 16 more of them were perched on the shelf just above me.

I did some thinking about what -might- be in those other 8 boxes. Aside from a delightful little set of 2024/1975 Topps Heritage Baseball Cards. The online sale was still an hour away, a process I had zero desire to participate in. I could simply purchase 8 more boxes of these wonderful little Baseball Cards, with one swipe of the credit card.

I looked down at my sweet new Dennis Eckersley & Riley Greene Baseball Cards, surrounded by the piles of brand new 1975 Topps Baseball cards. I pushed the chips in to the center of the table. I'm in.

"Give me the other 8 boxes, too..."

...To Be Continued

'twas another (Minis!) Baseball Card Christmas Eve

...and here and there on the old time Internet, the sentimental Baseball Card collectors with their solid touch of grey noggins were wistfully pondering that fateful year of 1975, all over again....

...because that year was not just the birth of the most gloriously colorful set of Baseball Cards ever made, but it was also the birth of:

MINIS!

kinda like this one:

Which is of course a selection from the 2011 Topps Lineage set.

It is the big year for the 1975 Topps Baseball set, and a celebration of it wouldn't be complete without a set of Minis! to go with. 

The last I-don't-know-how-many-years the Heritage set has included Minis! but I think in /100 editions in a set that is effectively a "High End" set when it comes to the limited print run cards, given the financial firepower of so many collectors with a strong interest in 50 year old Topps designs. I love all kinds of Topps designs, new and old, but I don't love buying pretty expensive Baseball Cards like all the baubles in each and every set of Heritage.

So I have never even seen one of those Heritage Minis! in three dimensional Life. The last time Topps made a decent sized run of 1975 style cards, the 2019 Archives set, there too the Minis! were printed in a very small amount so small I had zero ability to really consider collecting those, either.

This year, things are different for me, financially. I even had a job offer from a competitor just this very afternoon - I might soon need to hire Scott Boras to really get a couple three businesses into a bidding war, so I can finally blow tons of cash on ridiculously priced little pieces of cardboard. 

So to celebrate, come tomorrow morning, I am going to purchase some 1975 Topps Baseball Minis! !!

A fairly limited edition print run (16,000 boxes, I read) of the concept releases tomorrow as an almost-exclusive online sale, currently on offer via Lottery on the Fanatics website but also on the Topps website tomorrow morning at I believe Noon Eastern and 9am Pacific. Kinda easier than driving to Michigan (one main original home of the Minis!) on time to buy some cards, but also kinda not, in the 21st Century world of "bots."

Fortunately, there is one far more convenient backdoor into this product - some shops were offered small amounts of this product, and my (I-still-can't-believe-this-exists-in-my-little-Mayberry-town) Friendly Local Card Store will have a case, or maybe 2, available when they open in the morning.

I expect a Good Time. Ain't we lucky we got 'em? Minis!

As I write I'm not really sure what I will do with these Minis! Although the run of the yes, base set, will be obtainable enough, I expect the Short Prints in this might well be yet another example of my perpetual Baseball Card enemy - Unobtainium. As in, very expensive to complete those.

But perhaps, not impossible. We shall see.

One thing that might decidedly pull me into attempting this set is a key piece of technology that would be essential to owning it, in my opinion, and one that I luckily happen to already own. 

What's so special about a box of 9 pocket Baseball Card binder pages? This:

I never thought my usual lazy style of Baseball Card collecting would for once be a good thing. Usually I take too long on completing some colleting goal and while I dawdle along not buying the cards fast enough, they increase in price faster than I really want to pay those prices as some player involved starts getting promoted straight to Cooperstown in everyone's imagination.

I bought that box of binder pages a few years ago now, in anticipation of competing the Lineage 1975 Minis! 

And that hasn't happened yet. In the mean, meany time Ultra•Pro has quit making those Minis! pages once again, after Night Owl so helpfully showed them the Way several years ago now.

But I did realize this year will be 1975 all over again, and I had better get moving before too many other people just like me decide to go start collecting 1975 Minis! all over again. So I got in gear and started ponying up the cash necessary to get the 2011 set close to the goal line.

Six cards to go:

60 Reggie Jackson 

81 Andruw Jones (Yankees)

108 Hank Aaron

161 Luis Aparicio

171 Ryne Sandberg

200 Tom Seaver (Mets)

Though as I write tonight a bid is on the Ryne Sandberg card and I should have that one crossed off very soon. Five cards to go. Hank Aaron and Reggie Jackson however, oh boy.

That's where those Minis! pages might first come to the rescue - I will offer up a nice stack of them, maybe enough to hold a full 2024 Heritage 1975 Minis! set to anyone who can help me track down those 5 cards. I don't expect it will be easy, now that 1975 Minis! are a collecting item all over again this year. There are no copies of those for sale on the two obvious places to look (how long till they are just one place?) - eBay and COMC. 

But they are the type of cards that might show up at an LCS, or a Baseball Card show, the latter of which I have never seen and can only imagine the infinite riches on offer at such a fantastic event. Perhaps, including a 2011 Lineage 1975 Mini! of Reggie Jackson or Hank Aaron? Keep an eye out, for me, pretty please. I can also trade lots and lots of 2011 Minis! including a good amount of Hall of Famers if anyone else out there is working on this set.

A second thing that might lead me to attempting to complete tomorrow's new 2024 set of 1975 Minis! could be the backs. Ironically, they might turn out to be easier to read than regulation size 2024 Heritage 1975 Topps cards, which have card backs best described flatly as a: "disaster."

Could Topps have noticed that and fixed in the Minis!? Is possible. But I'm not holding my breath.

So I have a few other strategeries in mind for the - one box? two? - will there be a line down the sidewalk? - Minis! I will soon own. 

I am looking forward to seeing the parallels in this, which will be different than the Chrome cards in 2024 Heritage. Colors will be involved, and that could be kinda cool. I picked up my first 24 Heritage Chrome the other day at my LCS -

It's tough to notice in the scan, but this regular Heritage feature of the Purple Chrome card is actually an apropos '75-esque two-tone Purple card that I quite like, the more I look at it, in hand. 

I doubt I will collect those but do plan to assemble a 9 card page of representatives of the different Chromes and maybe some other 2024 Heritage oddities, like this one that caught my eye basically instantaneously:

Despite random guesses that the sad status of the Oakland Baseball Club precluded Topps from printing "A's" on the top of their brand new 1975 style Baseball Cards, this "white border" parallel illustrates that they well could have, if they tried. As far as I can tell this is the only card that says "A's" on the top, and only in this white border parallel, the /50 Black version, and a Red Target parallel (hopefully 2 tone).

But perhaps we will get authentic "A's" cards in these new Minis! tomorrow. Is possible.

The set will also include a range of serial numbered parallels based on colors, including a 1/1 Pink parallel. A double Pink 1975 Topps Baseball Card design. Boggles - I have to see one of those, in-hand. Wish me luck.

While I am on the subject of Minis! I want to pass along another trade request, one I have been able to arrange via the Baseball Card blogoshpere once before. A binder page trade.

If you need just a few Minis! pages for a Team Set or any ole collecting project, I need a couple binder pages for a different Minis! design, a "cigarette card" set I have fallen in love with -

These lovelies from 2022 Topps Rip! are slowly starting to accumulate here at Base Set HQ, and I need a binder page to keep them in. It will define this little collecting effort - yet another Nifty one page goal, though in this case, a 15 card page instead of a 9 card page. 

As illustrated by this slow motion collecting project, also from back in 2011:

Minis!

I'm not too worried about filling in 4 more cards there; I just have to click-click-click on COMC for that one, some fine future day of Baseball Carding. However I don't really want to buy a box of those 15 card pages and I have fears that those pages too might be "out of print" perhaps, though I haven't checked. But if you have a couple of those pages you could trade for some 1975 sized pages, get in touch.

Now though, I have to try and get some sleep, with visions of Sugar Plums, err, Minis! dancing in my head. Good Luck!

A 23 year wait...

Opening Day had nothing on today. I have been waiting for this day since I first discovered the Baseball Card product known as "Heritage," the very first year it existed. It took me all of about ten minutes, way back then, to start thinking about today.

That's because, like so many of this day's very happy 50-something Baseball Card collectors, the very first complete pack of Baseball Cards I ever purchased was a pack of 1975 Topps. 

I often wonder that if I had first opened a pack of 1974 Topps, or 1976 Topps, would I love Baseball Cards quite as much? I will never be sure. I just know that 1975 Topps is my favorite set of Baseball Cards and always will be.

The big day started with the appearance of this nifty graphic on MLB.com -

Coincidence? I think not.

I have never written very much about 1975 Topps, nor can I often spend a few delightful minutes perusing the ever fabulous 1975 Topps blog --- the web creation which first led me to this wonderful world of Baseball Card blogs, for which I am forever grateful.

The reason I can't read or write that much about my favorite set of Baseball Cards is that I'm not sure if I still own my 2/3 complete original collection of 1975 Topps. It might still exist, or it might have been stolen. It's a bit of a long story that I have occasionally "written" in my head, but have never committed it to pixels. If it wasn't stolen, it is in my father's basement, which looks like that shot at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie, where the Ark of the Covenant is wheeled into a random spot in a huge government warehouse.

That warehouse known as my Dad's basement does need to be cleaned out, but it is not a task I can really begin, just yet. If I attempt to move an item from that basement basically way, way over-full of near worthless junk, it sparks an argument - with an ever-so-slowly-spiraling-into-Goodbye dementia patient.

Which is just not something I am going to interject into an already plenty difficult process. The whole situation was of course heavy on my mind today, as it often is, with an extra emphasis on the Schrödinger's-Cat-like status of my beloved 1975 Topps. But I have known all my life that writing about things that wander around in my brain is one of my best ways to get them to slowly stop wandering. So, today is the day to get that started. I will work on the catharsis again later this year and maybe sneak into that basement, finally. There will be cards involved, I promise.

Hopefully, like this one:

Upon entering the Baseball Card store where I am still working away from home, I was quickly at ease when I saw the small stack of 2024 Heritage boxes still available. I was nervous about a potential sellout of these all day long while working, which just dragged and dragged, as I'm sure it did for all 1975 Topps enthusiasts.

I was also happy to discover I had time to shop, so I decided to celebrate this wonderful day  by picking up some original 1975 Topps. Just in case? With the Leflore card, I know I have never owned one before as my family moved to Michigan 2 years after 1975 and I then became a Tigers fan and very familiar with Ron LeFlore. There is quite an intriguing backdrop on that otherwise classic Topps photo location - hopefully this new 1975 process will make it a little easier for me to go to the just exactly perfect place to learn all about that one.

Next I worked on a brand new super slo-mo collecting effort - 

My 2nd 1956. What a great day!

And after a while I was able to remember a player that has a slowly growing stack of $1 box cards somewhere on my ever distant Baseball Card desk:

An impulse purchase all the way; he gets nice cards even on that brand I don't even collect. And it is nice to see the Pirates (a big favorite of 8 year old Base Set) finally have an every day starter in their middle infield.

Then I fell into a big 1975 flashback -

This is a must have 1975 Topps card, of course. I did own one of these when I was a kid and it was a very memorable acquistion - it arrived in the mail, not in a pack. Somehow back then I discovered a pen pal service in some sort of small print b&w ad, probably in the Sporting News. That first pen pal contact sent me a little flip book of people with their addresses and the teams they collected, which you could add to and then send it along to someone else. The little flip book led me to a wonderful pen pal in northern California who was collecting the Giants while divesting the A's; a bit of jealousy there, perhaps. She was a fun pen pal for a while; she sent me a fat envelope of Oakland A's cards, including that Reggie Jackson.

1970s Social Media was so kind and sweet - have long wondered if any card bloggers have memories of those Baseball Card themed circulating flip books?

So, yeah, the Maguffin in my Baseball Card dreams these last 23 years was finally mine:

I did already know the cover "star" - the first change from the original I guess, in that the player on the original box wasn't selected for his star quality but rather the great quality of the photograph used for it. Of course I like the photo recreation as I have loved that image all my life. 

I am just decidedly not a fan of Gerrit Cole. Sure it wasn't his fault he couldn't stay in Pittsburgh, but afterwards he has just never seemed, Nice. I could be wrong. Maybe we could be bros out Steelhead fishing and he would be wonderful company, I dunno. I have just never warmed up to his vibe. And now I have to live with a Yankees cap on my most anticipated box of Baseball Cards in, like, forever, basically. Let's open it up -

sad trombone

Man I hated to see this. Example # I-can't-count-that-high of Topps being 100% completely oblivious to the simplest things about Baseball Card esthetics. I'm referring of course to that stamp. I have long concluded that Topps probably doesn't actually control where the stamps go - some rando at the printing plant does it. One who could obviously care not a whit (nor have any wits) about the 2.5"x3.5" works of Art that I love so much.

And just wait till you see where they put the serial # stamping on the serial #'d cards...something I accidentally saw a few days ago when I wasn't being careful enough about my long-time aversion to seeing Baseball Cards from someone else's packs before I can open mine. After all I was fully aware of what these cards would look like - but once I saw the x/xyz stamp on one, online, I shut down online Baseball Carding until I could finally open this 23 years of Treasure and find my first 1975 Topps Baseball Card, all over again:

Who?

This created a reaction that was the complete opposite of what I was thinking about all those years: I reached for an electronic device. Was this going to be a Rookie who never breaks double digits in any baseball stat, like the RC I pulled from Series One who has 0 AB in MLB and now looks unlikely to ever get an official At Bat? After 23 years?

This instant need for an electronic device was because of the back -

Which is both strangely authentic - a wax stain card! Just like in 1975! And completely useless - I can't read this. The photograph improves this tremendously, compared to in-hand. And the entire box of cards is like this. Maybe an upside down picture of the back of the pack illustrates this a little better:

Maybe tomorrow in full sunshine, or, err, after a big 3 day rain blows past us, eventually I might be able to read these card backs. Or maybe my next box of these cards won't be so frustrating in this regard - I watched my regular LCS break a whole case tonight, and from what I could tell the cards in that case weren't this crazy dark. Neither are most of my low # short prints; I can read those OK.

As it turns out, Kyle Harrison is an actual every day Baseball player for the Giants this year - a Starting Pitcher, even. Which is kind of above average for the dizzying blur of RC logo cards that appear in my hands whenever I open a pack of 21st Century Baseball Cards. And he appears to be standing in some authentic San Francisco fog - neat. I will now be noticing his name whenever he appears in MLB, so, pitch long, and prosper, Kyle Harrison. Please.

My next card was a big part of my 1975/2024 dreams - an All-Star card with the correct big fat Star on it. But I am not going to post any more cards from this set, tonight. Later this year I'm sure I will assemble some delightful 9 card detour side collections in this, and all kinds of neat gimcrackery I can bloggle about with you. For now, though, I want you to discover what these cards look like, the old fashioned way - by ripping a pack!

It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Christmas is great and all, but if you collect Baseball Cards, then, nomsayn?

Am working out on the road again but fortunately today finds me in a town with a Baseball Card store. And although they had already sold "several cases" of boxes before I arrived earlier this evening, I was the first purchaser of a regular ole pack of Baseball Cards.

I resisted temptation to rip the pack in the store, somehow, for some reason. Maybe I wanted a more comfortable chair before I discovered what random scrub, errr, uhh "common" I would forever connect to the 2024 Topps Baseball set and then have to follow around in my packs of cards for 2-3 more years until their inevitable unknown card in Update, letting you know that their career had fizzled but not before one more try with their 2nd or 3rd team you never knew they had been traded to. I always just hope it is a player from a Central Division team, in either League, so there would be some better than even chance I hear their name called on my old time old guy radio broadcast some random evening this coming summer.

Every year I attempt one singular goal with the Topps Baseball set: I try diligently to not see an image of the cards until — Today. This year was a partial FAIL in that a banner ad on the Internet suggested I would enjoy the "Neon" as seen on the top of the card. So that probably definitive feature was known to me already, but the rest of the card was not, so I had just, some, design anticipation left for First Card, 2024 Topps Baseball:

Heckz Yeahz!!

A memorable set of Baseball Cards to be sure.

One that is rapidly making me forget several recent sets - well done! And I type that after opening just one whole pack of Baseball Cards - 12 cards, this year, at least in Hobby boxes.

I like basically everything, here. Clean, elegant, no frilly stuff thrown on there just because frilly stuff can always be thrown onto a Baseball Card design, whether that is well advised, or not. And usually, it is not. 

The Neon. Yes. 

Team logo, player name, and thankfully a readable Position indicator, all crisp and to the point, but without any pointy bits pointlessly pointing at things. Player Name in Italics, it appears. Nice. A partial black border, so card quality nutz can have their fun hunting up cards with absolutely positively no hint of chipping. But also a mostly white border, so color parallels will look purdy, too. And the image wrapped in a perfectly minimalist inner-frame adding team color to The Neon. 

This pack of Baseball Cards will have to be served up to your eyes via iPhone camera. Best I can do. Hope it works ok for the back, man, we gotta see the back -

Another quality effort. A nice looking stat bar, with a little segmentation-innovation. A nod to the front of the card with the circle element around the team icon. Many elements that are centered - pleasing. 

One demerit on this particular card: Topps can never figure out that white-on-yellow just doesn't usually work, and this one struggles, in-hand, but is improved by taking a picture of it. Nor does yellow-on-white. A topic of a future post. But I don't expect there will be too many cards with yellow on the back, as few teams ever have that selected as their Team Color by Topps.

One amusing feature of this card back: somehow, Topps still knows which side of the plate each Pitcher will bat from. Just in case, I guess, so you can be prepared for the possibility. Devin Williams Bats: Right. Anything can happen, in the game of Baseball.

One sad demerit on this particular card back: Topps quotes "teammate" Corbin Burnes on this one, who will be pitching for the Orioles in 2024. Rebuild time in Milwaukee, which will probably make this extra-memorable First Card yet more memorable at the Trade Deadline in 2025. Probably for the best, methinks, but never a fun process to start, particularly for the fans who are fans every year. Onwards:

A 'dandruff' card. One of those cards where the digital photography capturing on-field dirt flying around makes you wonder if your shampoo is actually working as advertised. 

And how about that compression sleeve? A super early contestant for Most Style on Baseball Card, 2024. 

No yellow on the back of this card, sensibly enough; everything in yellow on the Devin Williams card is blue on this one. And it only took 2 cards to find a classic Topps compound stat: "In 2023, CJ became just the 10th shortstop to post a season with at least 15 homers and 40 steals." I know you can't wait to discover who will become SS #11 to accomplish this, even though you already forgot who the 9th one was. Let's learn more Baseball -

Ahh, only took till my 3rd card of the year to get a Rookie Card card. What a relief. And surprise, surprise, it's another Rookie Middle Infielder for the Pirates. I think Pittsburgh must have a rule lately that only Rookies can play 2B or SS, at least according to my Baseball Cards the last so many years. It also sometimes seems to be a rule that Topps does not like to buy photographs from the dale of Pittsburgh; I think the Pirates might easily lead the leagues in players shown in their road uniforms on Topps products. Topps does, however, still like Throwbacks:

Not the most memorable look at Atlanta's classic 70s garb but quite apropos for 2023's National League Leader in Home Runs; yes League Leaders are still in Italics (and red ink). This is card #350 by the way, the final card in Series One and a first indicator that maybe Hero #s are in use this year. And here comes another Topps like -

If a player has long hair, they will get a base-running card more seasons than not. And what's up with "Reds" not being printed in the color red? Buckle up kids, The Neon is full of surprises:

Blue Phillies? It is their secondary color, usually. This card is just making me want to rip some more packs, cuz this electric blue will look so coool with Philadelphia's Powder Blue uniforms. And that's what Baseball Card design is supposed to do: make you want more Baseball Cards. Like this one -

When these bold prediction cards work out in terms of the player truly becoming a Star, in the Future, these 2024 Future Stars cards will be the Shizzle. And ooooohhh, Shiny might be even more dazzling in 2024 Topps Neon Chrome. They already make pretty darn nice Rookie Cards:

What's not to like? I feel so modern. There could be some dots that could be connected to the font selected for The Neon, and what decade that might bring to mind, but I pretty much can't think of the dots. I am just living in the year 2024 on these cards, not the past. And that's a great thing. Even the players seem happy with The Neon up there, right Andy -

First Tigers Card!

This was a sweet pull - this is also Ibáñez' First Tigers Card after a tough career in Topps Baseball so far. He started out with the Rangers, and in typical Topps Texas coverage, they forgot to grant Andy the coveted RC logo on his First Topps Card in 2022 Series Two. He then moved on to the Tigers, where in typical Topps Detroit coverage, he didn't receive a card despite a 2.0 WAR season in over 100 games for the Tigs last year. 

I don't know just what the heck that thing is hanging from his thumb there, but I am glad to get a new Tiger's new Tiger Baseball Card, every time. Go, Neon!

Or, something. That there is a 2024 Rainbow Foil card. Seems like a great concept, Neon + Foil, but methinks this one needs some good ole time Summer sunshine to really shine. And is my official one-per-pack "insert" I guess, in this Hobby pack. 

This may or may not be Joey Votto's last Topps Baseball card; at press time Votto had just invoked a classic Dylan Thomas poem on the X/Twitter to indicate his desire to play, somewhere, in 2024. Could go either way, I suppose. This is, however, quite certainly Votto's last Topps Baseball Reds card, so is a "Team Sunset" card if you wish. Fittingly, it is card #19 — are we headed towards Uniform Hero #s, a la 2013 Topps Baseball? Let's flip another card over:

Who is Enmanuel Valdez? Not even Topps Card Back Writer seems to know much.

And why is he card #300? The mysteries, the mysteries. I do like one thing I see on this card back: Valdez achieved a perfect 0.0 WAR figure for the 2023 season. I have been thinking about making up a set of, naturally, 9 such perfect players - the WAR Heroes. Neither good, nor bad. These 2024 cards look so nice on the fronts...

...that I think this is the year I will finally do it. Welcome to The Show, Enmanuel.

Sometimes, a First Pack is as memorable for the last card as the first. This was one of those packs -

A worthy entry in my very modest Salvador Perez collection, which is probably already too large for just one Nifty Nine page, so I likely need a 2nd copy of this one. Cuz it looks like this set will be going into some binder pages, and I'm thinking I need some more groceries, tomorrow night, so....

You need old Jazz to make new Jazz

 

I love listening to Jazz. Much like enjoying Baseball Cards, I figure Jazz will reliably entertain me basically forever. And as with the subject of this blog, an essential part of enjoying it is knowing the history of the art form. If you find Jazz a little perplexing but you would like to figure it out a little better, I can definitely recommend a sort-of local radio station where I live, which broadcasts Jazz every day after 10 pm Eastern, with live human DJ Lazaro Vega explaining all the new and old Jazz for you on: "Blue Lake Public Radio."

As with music history being the essential building block for musicians to make new music, the same is true in graphic design in a general sense but also on Baseball Cards in a specific sense. Recently I stumbled (my previous post here) across a new-ish Baseball Card that clearly borrowed inspiration from a famous graphic of the past. I knew I had to haves an example of it, and one arrived recently, as seen above in "extra large" detail. 

That is not the card I saw first, which was a 2022 Topps Rip mini (i.e. the cards that come out of the Ripped card) /25 Orange card featuring Derek Jeter, with a price in the high 2 figure range, iirc. Leaving aside my lack of desire to own Derek Jeter Baseball Cards, especially expensive ones, the card I saw first with this design had a different, very problematic flaw - in my opinion: the serial number was stamped on the front of the card. I have never liked seeing this on numbered cards, which seems to arrive just, occasionally, at random. I suspect a random employee at the printing plant determines when this will happen, randomly - who knows?

When I went to the ever useful resource that knows Everything® to figure out what set the Jeter card was from, I made the unhappy discovery that every single version of the card, across 7 or 8 different colors of parallels, all had the serial number stamped on the front. 

But I also made a happy discovery: every card on the checklist has an "image variation" without any color parallel, and no serial number stamped on the front, or the back. A strategy by Topps to make the short printed variations more mysterious, I guess?

So when I continued on down this particular rabbit hole, the natural next step was checking eBay, which illuminated another handy thing about these cards: not all of them are for superstars. And thus, some of them are quite affordable - just a couple-three dollars and one could be mine. 

Even better, one of the cards available that day was for a player for whom I now have a modest Player Collection: Jazz Chisholm Jr.

Now collectors never know which Topps employee designs which card, but I wouldn't be surprised if the same Card Designer first tried out this inspiration-theme in 2021 Gallery:

This was an insert set I admired in a basic sense for "going-for-it" somewhat with a simple colorful design, though it never quite inspired me to put together even 9 of them. I liked the more pleasingly colorful Bo Bichette card from the checklist much better than this Soto card that I pulled first and have a digi image more quickly available. This design also seems to have a further descendent in Topps Cosmic Chrome sets, perhaps. Those have eluded my collecting effort, so far, or I would comparison one up for you right here.

That Soto card there has the key word clue for where that Jazz Chisholm mini clearly pays homage:

Which of course has been heavily re-used by graphic designers for many decades, though I can't recall any nods to it in the world of Baseball Cards, before this one; here is the Chisholm card again -

That's the mini version of the scan, I guess. Back up at the top of this post on the extra large version you can clearly see how Jazz' left shoe says "Road" on it, probably a handy aid for the team's equipment manager; have never seen that on a Baseball Card before. Of course I also quite like that it is almost a Powder Blue shoe; the Marlins have some stealthy connections to that soothing 70s Baseball paint scheme we might see here on the blog some future day.

Now of course I have a new challenge with this beautiful little Baseball Card: where do I keep it? I doubt Jazz even has 9 different mini/"cigarette" size cards yet though perhaps he is getting close. But binder pages for these cards hold 15 entries so a mini-Jazz collection probably won't work out. 

Collecting 14 more from this 100 card checklist certainly will, though; I see many more of these little Great Waves in my future.