Trade Post.... One deal and three sets are completed

I primarily consider  myself a set collector. The only problem with that - I'm horrible at actually finishing off sets. My attention is usually diverted by something else roughly 85% of the way through any given set. One of my goals this year is to clean some sets up and finish them off, especially any set that I'm at least 90% of the way through.

With that in mind I made an offer on TCDB to user mfeik for a 2003 Topps Ichiro Award Winner card which was the last one I needed to complete that wonderfully blue-bordered set. While building the trade I noticed he also had the one last 1990 Donruss card (it's always been one more card with that damn set).  I had some random Tigers cards he needed so we worked out a deal.

Yesterday they showed up in the mail.

I appreciate any Ichiro card that I can add to my collection. He may not have been the best baseball player I've ever watched live, but he is definitely the most graceful. Everything he did had a casual elegant smoothness to it. He never seemed hurried or our of sorts. God damn, he was fun to watch.

A card I didn't even know I didn't have until I started paging up The Red Menace. That was not a great collecting day. There are over 2500 1990 Donruss cards under my roof right now and not one of them was of the first (only?) man to strike out 5,000 major league hitters. It's quite satisfying to finally put that set to rest.

Wait...the title said three sets were completed? Which one was the third?

Well, mfeik was gracious enough to throw in a few extras. Along with three 2006 Topps cards I needed he knocked off the last three 1988 Topps cards I needed. Yup, that one only took 32 years to finish/ Along with Julio Franco (#683) and Jim Acker (#678) came this card:

The Bash Brothers in their prime bashing years. Twelve-year-old Justin would have been stoked to pull this card out off a pack. 

Thank you mfeik for helping out. According to TCDB I have 17 more sets that are over 90% complete.  Hopefully I can focus on them for a bit and knock that list down a bit more.

Orioles Victory Card Number 38

Orioles Victory Number 38: 7-0 over the Toronto Blue Jays

1976 Topps Mark Belanger

Whew. That win was a long time coming. After losing their previous 8 games (in which they gave up 5 or more runs in all of them) the Orioles beat their AL East counterparts 7-0 on the back of 6 strong innings from rookie David Hess and a 5 RBI night from Trey Mancini. They postpone their 95th loss of the season (and 9600th in franchise history) to another day.

I didn't watch most of the game, preferring a night out with The Duchess instead of the drudgery of a mid-August contest between two teams that had nothing to play for this season. Toronto is 29 games out of first place and focused on the future with young prospects Danny Jansen and Billy McKinney playing and phenom Vlad Guerrero Jr. set to make his debut sometime over the next month or so.

The Orioles are already starting to filter in some of their young players that may be around for the next competitive team as well. Cedric Mullins has made his debut and performed well in his first 16 games. He's taken over centerfield and made a few highlight reel catches already and held his own at the plate with a .305/.379/.402 slash line. He's riding a bit of a high BAbip right now (.348) so I expect his average to come down a little bit before the season is over, but he hasn't been overwhelmed by major league pitching (only 16% strike out rate) and it looks like he can be penciled in as next year's starting centerfielder.

Another young player that has kind of come out of nowhere is Renato Nunez. He's been handed the thirdbase job since the Manny Machado deal and has performed with the best stretch of hitting in his major league career. Over the month of August he's slashing .284/.370/.420 which way more production then the team was getting out of Danny Valencia and Tim Beckham. While his defense isn't going to remind anyone of Brooks Robinson anytime soon, his glovework is about even with Valencia and miles ahead of Beckham.  

Nunez is a nice find in a lost season. Had the Orioles been better he might not have received any playing time. But since they aren't, he was given a chance and has performed well enough to earn a contract for next season. He could be a nice, cheap stop-gap player until Ryan Mountcastle is ready for the big leagues. The Orioles control Nunez through 2024 and he could stick around as a utility infielder even after Mountcastle takes over the hot corner.

It's sometimes easy to forget that Trey Mancini is only in his second full season as a major leaguer. He played so well as a rookie last season that it just seems like he's an established veteran. Yet, he still has a lot of room for improvement. Other than Chris Davis' first half, Mancini's was the most disappointing.  There were times it seemed like he was lost at the plate and scuffling just to make contact. Some of that could be tied to the knee injury he suffered early in the season, but it also looked like he was trying too hard to pick up the slack left by the rest of the struggling offense.

His second half improvement is showing that last season was not a fluke. In the first half of the season he struggled to a .216/.292/.363 line with 12 home runs in 328 at-bats. In the second half he's upped his line to .292/.329/.496 with 7 home runs in only 137 at-bats.

The Orioles are going to be a mess for quite awhile while they try and find the pieces for their next contending team. The next year and a half is going to be spent plugging in players to see if they fit. It looks like, based on a small sample size, that they at least have 2/3 of their outfield taken care of with Mullins and Mancini. Hopefully, as the months wear on, they find a couple of more pieces.

So why a Mark Belanger 1976 Topps? Well, after completing a couple of sets this year (1983 and 2017) I felt it was time to start chasing another one before 2019 drops in January. This set just happens to coincide with the year I was born and it a relatively cheap set to put together as there aren't any major rookie cards that will seriously dent my wallet. The two key rookie cards are Dennis Eckersley and Willie Randolph while Robin Yount and George Brett have second-year cards.  So, it's doable.

One of the main challenges I'm facing is that I don't have a large collection of duplicates to trade from. Having only chased sets from recent years, I've been able to swing a lot of deals with dupes. With the 76 set I started with exactly four duplicates and have already traded them out. That means I'm going to have to hope collectors and traders are willing to part with their dupes in exchange for newer cards.

Also, I'm starting with the fewest cards I've ever started with (89) so I have a long way to go to finish it off. Still, it just takes one card at a time and that first card came in a trade just last week: 

If you have a stash of 1976 you're looking to get rid of, feel free to hit me up in the comments or check out my trading card database profile (Lightningfan7609). Hopefully, it won't take another 40 years to complete this one.

Oh Precious Cardboard! A Review of 2012-13 O-Pee-Chee

It’s getting close to that time of year.  Everyone has a favorite month of the year (yes EVERYONE). Mine is right around the corner.  The month when the leaves change and the nights start to cool off.  Weekends are consumed with football and a little thing called hockey training camp fires up. It’s almost September - a.k.a. my birthday month. And if all goes well, there will be an added surprise to this month as well.  More on that in future posts (I swear there will be future posts!)

For now, however, we’re still in the dog days of summer. After a brief dalliance with cooler weather, Mother Nature has revealed her ornery side once again and slammed Chicago with three straight +90 degree days.  If I had wanted this kind of weather I would have stayed in the TBA (plus I could have bitched about the problems caused by the RNC even if I didn’t set foot in Tampa all week).

So what’s the best way to overcome the lingering heat wave that has the windows closed and the poor, beleaguered AC unit running 24/7 (actually more like 4/7 – electricity ain’t cheap folks!)?  How about a review of this year’s Hopeful Chase Hopeless Set Completion Chase of The Year (Hockey Edition)?  This year’s set is the 2012-13 O-Pee-Chee flagship product. It consists of 600 cards, bunch of short prints, no big hits, random “who the hell is this guy” rookie cards and some shiny, chrome-y, parallels.

Thanks to a $5.00 coupon I saw on the back of a Beckett magazine I placed my order with Dave and Adam’s and received a decent deal on a hobby box ($53.95 after the coupon).  Even with the $9.00 in shipping it was cheaper than the local card shop so I added a few small things to the order and then sat around waiting for UPS to deliver.  Is there anything worse than expecting a package one day and missing the delivery so you have to wait a whole extra day?  Probably things like war, mass mall shootings, unemployment, stepping in a puddle and getting your socks wet, but in the context of the card world, not much.

So after a day’s delay I received the delivery and went to busting some wax.  Here are the results:

Base cards

Sigh. Another box and another whiff on Lecavalier cards. 

The reason I went with O-Pee-Chee instead of Score this year is because of the base design.  The cards are clean with a retro feel to them and Upper Deck finally stopped making the O-Pee-Chee logo so damn big. 

The cards are boarded with a yellowish, cream border AND a thin, white border at the very edge.  It’s not super noticeable upon first glance, but I think they would have been better off removing the white border all together.

There is a nice big photo of the player, the names are easy to read and I’m always a fan of generic silhouettes by the positions. There are no super exciting action shots or unique angles, but that’s not what this set is all about.  It’s mostly about representing a solid portion of each team and driving collectors nuts trying to complete the short print side of the set.

The backs are ho-hum.  Dark grey cardboard and complete career stats.

Short Prints

I forgot to scan them and am too lazy to go back and do it. So you get JesusCat in a box.

 As usual for this set, the last 100 cards are made up of rookies and “Marquee” retired players.  The Marquee legends cards feature the usual crop of stars from the past, along with their career stats on the back.  Always a good way to get younger players in touch with the past.

Having to fill up 50 slots for rookies can lead to the inclusion of a lot of players. This year O-Pee-Chee filled some slots by posting “rookie” cards of some of the players mentioned in the Marquee Legends section.  Therefore you get to see cards showing a young Mario Lemiux or Patrick Roy (quick sidenote – the Duchess opened one pack with a mocking, “if you were on a podcast you’d do this” voice and managed to handle all the other names correctly, but she did refer to St. Patrick as a “good American boy named Patrick ROY” instead of the “WaH” pronunciation.  When I huffily corrected her pronunciation she called me a dork and launched into a fit of giggles that left her crying.  After 8 years I think she finally snapped and temporarily lost her mind).

Stickers!

Can you please get out of Mr. Halak's way? He has a game to  play!

As much as I hate minis (and I DO hate me some minis) I love me some stickers.  Following on the retro theme, this year’s crop of stickers really stand out from the muted base set with the vibrant color scheme.  My only regret, not getting any Blackhawk stickers to stick on newspaper machines downtown.  Odds 1:3 packs. Number of stickers received: 11

Retro

Mario in the six seconds he wasn't scoring a point during his younger days.

A parallel set (because, I’m not really sure why they have to do one, but they do) that’s a one per pack insert.  If I did any research at all I would tell you what set these cards are based on.  We don’t do research here at the Hopeful Chase studios.  If you want actual, real hockey card knowledge go to Sal’s place on the web.

What I can say is that I really like these cards for the purpose of Through The Mail or in-person autographs.  The cardboard stock with a clean, white background should let the Sharpie show up nicely on the card.  Since the players are going to be locked out maybe they’ll have more time to sign things. To The Post Office! Odds 1:1 pack. Number received 32.

Shiny

What is Carey Price thinking about? I bet it's pancakes. Pancakes. Bathgate is thinking about nailing your mom.

Officially I believe these are called “Rainbow Parallel” cards.  To me they’re chrome.  Not much to say about them as they’re just shiner versions of the base cards. I’m sure someone collects them, but not me. Odds 1:4 packs Number Received 8

Different Shiny

I don't even have anything to say about these cards. Yea, serial numbered?

Because collectors like shiny cards that are serial numbered there is also the “Black Border Rainbow Parallel” cards.  Great, another ploy to get me to go on eBay to track down and overpay for Vinny Lecavalier cards.  They are numbered out of 100 with the numbers printed on the back instead of stamped.  No odds on this one, but I did get two in this box.

Pop Ups

OMG PK still doesn't have a contract!!!!

I think these are supposed to resemble the pop up portion of the box that you see in hobby shops selling packs of cards.  They are die-cut inserts with just the name of the player on the back.  No extra information there folks! Odds 1:16 packs.  Number received: 2

Super Extra Case Hit!

Getting a case hit is always exciting.  You feel like you beat the odds and have a card that is really worth something. That worth can be monetary (eBay) or sentimental (something rare of a team or player you collect) or tradable (more better stuff for something you don’t really want).

Getting a case hit in the first pack you open, kind of anti-climatic.  Here it is…..

It doesn't come in a tamper-proof holder. It's just the only one  I had.

Manufactured patch of the Eastern Conference logo.  Umm.  Yea? It’s cool to get a path (even if it’s manufactured specifically for the card), but of a conference logo?  Yeah, that’s not exactly in my wheelhouse. I’ll probably put it up on eBay and see what it fetches just because I don’t think they’ll be a lot of folks clamoring on my door to trade for it.

Wrap up

O-Pee-Chee meets expectations (oooh does that remind you of a work evaluation?) It’s a set designed for set builders and team collectors.  Lots of cards, no big chase cards to drive up the price or endless parallels to drive you insane.

It’s always nice to see a set that includes some extra defensemen or third line centers (Dominic Moore, FTW!) and this product delivers that. The stickers are fun inserts that provides some color in a set that is quite monochromatic.

All in all a solid product at a good price point.

Once I pick up a few more packs (or another box) I’ll post my want list.  The trade bait list will go up shortly (FYI the pop ups are already spoken for).