I’ve got a few hundred 2012 Topps baseball commons sitting here on the desk and they need to go. Working on a set? Let me help you finish that!
Leave a comment below, shoot me an e-mail at cardboardicons(@)yahoo.com, or contact me on twitter.
What am I seeking in return?
Any extra sparkle parallels or 1987 Minis.
Way back in 1995, Roy Halladay was an 18-year-old pitching stud that only a few people knew about. He was not featured on his first Major League card until 1997 (Bowman, Bowman Chrome, and Bowman’s Best). But when he was just a teen, he had a few cards featuring him in his minor league uniform. One of them just so happened to have his signature.
It was found in a product called Signature Rookies Tetrad 95. The product was an “off” brand, but offered the first signatures of top athletes in four different sports — baseball, basketball, football and hockey. Kind of like the old Classic Four Sport sets.
The product was one that was not cheap in 1995, and even if you can find it these days, it still costs some decent coin.
But before you go running to eBay to buy some … I have some words for you to heed:
DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU.
I’m a dumbass sometimes. Not a lot, but on occasion. I did exactly what I told you not to. I went to eBay. And I bought some. Four boxes actually. I wanted Halladay’s first autograph, too! I sunk $40 into this 15-year-old product.
I believed that I was getting one autograph per pack. That’s the way I remembered the product when it was new, and that’s what I was reading when I looked at the boxes in the picture.
What I had forgotten — and what didn’t register in my brain — was that you got a redemption per pack, which can be exchanged for an autograph. The whole hook behind this product was that “You Make The Call” — you choose who will be featured on your signed card.
Needless to say the moment I opened the first pack and found the redemption card in the middle, my heart sank and I got an empty feeling in my stomach. I knew at that moment that my $40 had essentially gone to waste.
The one bright side though is that I did pull a Halladay base card in each of my four boxes. So I guess not all was wasted. This was issued two full years before his Bowman, Bowman Chrome and Bowman’s Best rookies.
There is something I simply do not understand about the current state of the hobby. The notion that things some how were better before than they are now.
It’s simply not true.
I’ve heard people bash 2012 Topps for the last week or so, citing the recently released Skip Shumaker/Rally Squirrel short print as the latest example of “what has ruined the hobby.”
Seriously? A card of a squirrel that actually captivated the country during the 2011 World Series is the reason this hobby has fallen into shambles? The reason you are so upset about your hobby that you’re willing to spend time bitching about it in public forums? The reason that at least one collector has decided to boycott 2012 Topps?
The Rally Squirrel is a short printed card. It did not replace anything in the set. It did not keep you from completing your set. It’s not like Topps took the card #93 slot, removed Skip Shumaker all together and left us only with a card that would render most sets an incomplete project.
It’s a bonus. If you pull the card and don’t want it, you sell it on eBay and take the profit to … buy more cards. What is so hard to understand about that?
But what about the bigger picture?
Again, people cite the Squirrel’s release as an example of Topps, the only licensed manufacturer of Major League Baseball cards, not giving collector’s what they really want.
Well, what DO collector’s really want?
The basic Topps brand has been the same for years — a set released in three series and composed of more than 700 cards when completed. It documents the happenings of the previous season in Series One, some of the current season in Series Two, and then even more current season events (trades, all star game, rookie call ups, etc.) in the Update Series. I think collector’s want that.
They also want autos, relics and rookies. Topps has all three of those, too.
And believe it or not, collector’s also want the “Golden Ticket.” Like in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
Whether it be in the form of the Rally Squirrel, a Pie in the Face, a Gatorade Bath or literally gold, collector’s want something to chase. Something that when they pull it, they know they’ve hit the jackpot.
What most collector’s DO NOT want is a release void of all frills. They do NOT want to go back to the “junk wax” era and feel like they are buying 1988 Donruss, 1989 Score, 1990 Topps or 1991 Fleer.
The time for that stuff has come and gone. Can collecting those sets be fun? Absolutely. But in moderation.
This hobby has moved so far forward that you’re only going to drive yourself nuts if you keep harping on the “good ol’ days.”
The hobby’s evolution has not ruined card collecting per se. What’s harmed this hobby is the collector himself. The one’s whose greed and lust for the glory cards has ruined his or her personal experience, causing them to piss and moan about how bad things have gotten.
If you buy what you like and do it in moderation, and ENJOY what you possess, then you can’t lose in this hobby. The minute you stop enjoying it, you need to take a break or change your focus.
1933 Goudey Babe Ruth rookie card
For about as long as I can remember, there has been a story of Babe Ruth calling his shot during Game 3 of the 1932 World Series.
We’ve all seen the questionable grainy black and white footage, game film that has been debated for years.
Some say Ruth was merely pointing to the Cubs bench after jawing with opposing players, while the legend has it that he actually called his shot — he predicted hitting a home run. (Wikipedia entry)
I believe reporters actually asked Ruth about this some 79 years ago, and even then the answer was not a simple yes or no. Ruth pussy footed around the giving something vague. And then in the video shown below we hear Ruth stating that he did indeed call his shot, a statement that even those in and around the game at the time were not completely sold on.
But I ask this: If Babe Ruth has called his shot during the World Series of 1932, don’t you think Goudey would have depicted Ruth doing such on one of his FOUR 1933 Goudey “rookie” cards?
The one shown above, from my personal collection, is the closest that any of his rookie cards gets to conveying this tale … and clearly it’s just a basic follow through pose.
Somewhere in the history of card collecting, a great myth arose: The harder the case, the better protection for your cards.
It’s a simplistic way to look at things. I mean in theory it sounds like it should work. A 1-inch thick lucite case should better protect you against common dropage than a card saver or top loader. And surely a plastic box would provide more protection than your mother’s shoe box, right?
But things are not always as they appear.
Thick screw down cases often put too much pressure on a card, causing the surface and corners to be damaged over the years. And plastic boxes mass generated for a novice collector surely are no way to protect your cardboard icons. They wind up being plastic card coffins.
The beauty, though, is that these coffins can sometimes turn out some nice treasures when they are excavated from the depths of the lowly thrift stores.
At first glance you probably see a bunch of crap. You’ve got a 1993 Score card on the left, a John Kruk 1994 Triple Play base card in the center, a few game cards that most of us don’t care.
But if that is all you see, then you lack vision.
The box has a $5 price tag, and there are roughly 700 cards in the box, so surely there has to be that much fun in here. Plus, the amount of game cards here make it worth while because … people actually do buy these things in bulk lots.
And so for $5, the coffin came with me and I became a tomb raider.
As it turned out, of the 700 cards in the box, there were FIVE HUNDRED MLB Showdown cards from years 2000-2003. Yeah, 500.
And then there were a few pretty neat 2003 Upper Deck Vintage cards. I was never a huge fan of this set — which is a total rip-off of the 1965 Topps design by the way — but I always found the retired stars in the set interesting. Yogi is a classic.
But that was not all. Here is where my location — the San Francisco Bay Area — paid off. There was 80 percent of a 2010 Topps Emerald Nuts San Francisco Giants stadium giveaway team set.
And amazingly the key card to this set was still here and not badly damaged.
That’s World Champion Catcher Buster Posey. Love it.
You can see additional Thrift Treasures posts HERE.
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