Topps Heritage - I Have No Clever Title

As 2011 turned into 2012 I made a resolution, no a declaration, that I would only chase two sets this year.  No longer would I waste money that I don’t have on packs at Target on sets that I’m not going to complete.  Nope, I would be strong, I would be resolute and stick to my guns.  So far I’ve done that. 

To reward myself for my self-control I went to the Local Card Store and bought myself a box of 2012 Topps Heritage.  That’s right, why chase a base set when I can chase a more expensive one with a ton of short prints?  My parents would agree that common sense was never my strong point (much like the proper use of commas).

John at Elite Sports Cards got his shipment of Heritage in on Wednesday and promised to hold a box for me till Thursday.  So, I jumped on the El and headed up to his shop (by the way if you’re on the North Side, check his shop out.  He has a pretty decent selection of boxes and packs for sale and his prices are reasonable. I walked out paying a fair price (cheaper than online when you factor in shipping costs) and headed home to rip some wax, paper, whatever they’re sealed in these days.

Here’s what I pulled in.  First up the regular base cards:

Mirrored on the 1963 Topps set, this year’s Heritage features a nice use of bold colors on the bottom edge. Several cards have funky backgrounds that off-set the mostly posed pictures of the players.  The images have that nice faux-painted look that collectors seem to enjoy.  Jeff Samardzija is going for which look:

A.      Swashbuckler

B.      Tow-Truck Driver

C.      Guy bumming a cigarette at the bus stop

D.      Over-rated middle reliever

Players on new teams do get the airbrush treatment as new Oriole DH Endy Chavez shows:

Look at the hat!  So glad it’s back!

Everyone loves floating heads for rookies:

As you notice, Wasteland Hall of Famer Michael Taylor is featured on two different cards.  Apparently, this is a nod to the original 1963 set.  It’s cool with me, I guess.

Some rookies got their own card and the big All-Star Rookie Trophey is back:

I have at least four cards in the set with Jared Hughes on them.  I have no idea who he is.  On the other hand big trophies are awesome.

I have no problem with manager cards and team cards, either:

Now we move on to the inserts.  Most Heritage collectors don’t bust boxes looking for hits.  Sure, they have some nice on-card autographs (spoiler I didn’t get any), but they are rather hard to pull compared to other sets and it’s hard enough to put together just the base set.  I couldn’t imagine someone wanting to do a master set.

First up News Flashes and Baseball Flashes:

JFK cards usually move well on the secondary market and who doesn’t smile when they pull an Ernie Banks card.

There is shiny:

I pulled two Chromes (numbered to 1963) and one Refractor (the unflattering portrait of Zach Greinke) which was numbered to 563.

There is the “meh”

Two New Age Performers and a Then and Now.  Not really feeling those inserts.

Stickers:

I pulled three of these and have resisted the urge to stick them on anything so far.

The “Hit”

A grey swatch of Nick Swisher’s jersey.  A certain editor for a certain Collectibles magazine may be interested in this card.  Twitter-negotiations are underway.

Oh and then there was this.

At first I thought it was just another base card, it would have been my only duplicate, and kept sorting.  Something in the back of my mind made me look closer.  Let’s compare the two.

Regular Base

Eh?

Hey wait, they have different color schemes.  Did I just pull a super short print color swap of the Yankees captain?  As Lana Kane would say, “Yuuup”.

I did what any unemployed blogger would do - post it on eBay as fast as possible.  Then I went shopping with the Duchess.  By the time I got back my “Buy it Now” price had been met. The final price easily covered what I paid for the box with a little left over to spend how I feel fit (totally spending it on cards). So I would say it was a decent box.

Even without the Jeter short print I would have been happy with this break (which is what everyone says when they actually make back their investment).  People who collect Heritage will be happy with it even with all of the variations and “error” cards.  I’ll probably throw some more money at it in the form of jumbo packs, but one hobby box is enough for me. Much like the 2009 set I’m sure I’ll be chasing this until I die.  For those other unfortunate souls chasing this one I’ll have a “wants/haves” list posted sometime soon.

A Card Showin' I Went

Before the holiday weekend I attended the Sun Times Sports Collectibles show.  There wasn't really a good reason for me to go since no vendors accept PayPal in person and that's where my card budget is located.  But I knew Sal and Tim would be there and they lured me in with the promise of free cards. 

So I went.  I browsed, but did not buy.  Finally I met up with my fellow bloggers - and blogger aficionado Nick B. and swapped out some cards.  I had one card for Sal and about 15 commons for Tim....I left with 52 new cards. 

I was also able to live vicariously through those two and watched them bust a couple of boxes of product I won't be buying this year (Upper Deck Base and Parkhurst Champions).  It's fun to rip packs even if I'm not keeping the cards.

Here is a sample of the cards that have been added to the collection:

From Sal - An ITG redemption from the National earlier this year and an Emerald Parallel of Steven Stamkos from Artifacts.  It's numbered 35/50 and is the lowest numbered card in my Stamkos collection.



Some more Sal cardboard goodness.  A Cedrick Desjardins Luxury Suite Rookie numbered72/899.  Sadly, Desjardins is no longer in the Lightning organization.  He could have helped out with their current goaltender conundrum.   Next to him is a Victor Hedman Rookie Materials card from Upper Deck.  The back of the card swears that he wore the jersey - at a rookie photo shoot. Big Vic is having a rough year so far, the Bolts need him to improve to have any chance of making the playoffs.



Just a small sample of the goodies that Tim provided.  First up is a retro-parallel of Dwayne Roloson from this year's O-Pee-Chee set. Next to Father Time is a card that Tim thought was just a base set at first.  Instead, it's an unannounced parallel version.  It's the playoff beard variant.  That's not a joke, the first 50 cards in the set have a variation featuring the player rocking his best facial hair.  Seeded at 1:9 packs it won't be easy to complete, but not impossible either.

Finally, a Jimmy Wright Young Guns card.  He made the team in his rookie year, but has yet to crack the line-up since.  Hopefully, after a solid season in Norfolk he'll be back up on the roster soon.

The generosity of fellow collectors never ceased to amaze me.  Thanks, guys!

The National

Yeah, I broke down and bought my ticket this afternoon. Looks like I'll be rolling up there on Wednesday and Saturday...now if I can just find a printer to actually print them out on.

Ticket bought - check
Ticket printed - working on it.
Want Lists created - check
Loaded onto iPad - check
Budget set in my mind - check
Realization that I will exceed said budget - check.
Disapproving eye roll and deep sigh from significant other - check.

Will this guy be at the National this year? Who know? Check out hiscolumn on the 2009 National ......

Mail Day! Cards Older Than Me! And I'm Old!

After successfully unloading some cards on the ‘bay the other day I figured it was time to invest my proceeds into some new cards for the ol’ personal collection. I wasn’t thrilled with the prices I was seeing on the Murrays and the Lecavaliers so I didn’t get to knock down those want lists (actually I did end up bidding on a Murray, but as usual I was sniped at the end).

With money burning a hole in my Paypal account I decided to take another approach. I put the iPad down and picked up the notebook. I fired up my Card Collector program and did a quick summary inventory. I quickly discovered that the oldest card I have in my collection is a 1957 Topps Stan Lopata, a card I believe I picked up at a flea market, or in a trade, or off the street, or at gunpoint. Actually, I have no idea how I got it come to think of it.

Anyway, I figured it was time to rectify the situation. Time to get some older cards into the house, at a reasonable cost, of course. So doing my due diligence (5 minutes of searching) I settled on a 3 card lot of 1956 Topps. The cards were a little beat up, but most importantly they were cheap. With shipping (and $.03 in eBay bucks!) I think my total was less than $5.00.

The three cards didn’t depict any stars so I’m not going to be able to flip them for a profit. As a matter of fact the only thing I knew about them (to paraphrase the great Cliff Claven) is that they are three men who have never been in my kitchen. So with the help of Wikipedia and Baseball Reference.com I decided to learn a little bit more about some former players.

I received the package in the mail on Wednesday - lets see the newest (oldest) members of the collection!




133 - Ray Narleski. A reliever for the Indians in the 50’s he was a two time all-star and named as one of the Indians top 100 players of all time.




45 - Gus Zernial - “Ozark Ike” what a fantastic nickname. Looks like he beat he throw, but the catcher is doing an excellent job of blocking the plate. According to the back of the card he won the home run and RBI crowns in 1951. According to Wikipedia he has the second most career home runs hit by a player whose last name starts with a “Z”. He finished his 10 year career with 237. Former Orioles Todd Zeile is the leader with 253. Victor Zambrano - 1834th on the list.




60 - Mayo Smith - The card that sold me on the auction. Smith only played a couple of seasons and wasn’t particularly outstanding. He turned to managing and coached in Philly, Cincinnati, and Detroit (where he took them to the World Series in 1968). But look at this card, what is he doing? Holding up a runner? Surrendering to unseen police officer? Playing defense for John Thompson?

There ya go. My latest mail day. Will I collect the rest of the cards in this set? Probably not, after all it’s taking me forever to finish the couple of sets that I’m working on right now (and they’re not even vintage!)

Still it’s always nice to own a couple of pieces of cardboard that are almost as old as my dad.

Please note that the photos posted are not of the actual cards. With no scanners I had to “borrow” some images.

Look Who Went Shopping

So I haven't found a decent post office yet (i.e. one that's open when I'm not at work), but I did manage to find myself a card shop. Last month I stumbled across a post from SewingMachine Guy asking for some help finding a card shop in Chicago. Knowing I was moving to the city I bookmarked it.

Everyone's favorite Canadian Superhero Captin Canuck mentioned Tim's Baseball Cardshop . Since I trust all Canadians implicitly I decided to check it out. On a dreary Sunday morning I dragged my roommate Hamel onto the Northbound Western bus and after approximately 75 stops (do they really need to have a stop at EVERY corner?) I found myself in front of the small shop.

Tim was there and apologized about the messiness of the shop, it appeared as if a customer had just dropped off a bunch of merchandise and it was spread out in the small front showroom.

I looked around a bit, he had some decent pricing on boxes that until I have a couple of paychecks under my belt I'll have to wait to purchase. He also had several glass cases with singles divided by sport. Compared to what I used to see in my old shop his prices seemed pretty reasonable.

There were a couple of nice O's cards (Ripken auto, Brooks rookie, etc), but my eye kept getting drawn back to one card in particular.




A Sports Illustrated Autograph Collection of Earl Weaver.

Let's see:

1. An Oriole Legend
2. A Hall of Famer
3. On Card Autograph (and it's legible to boot!)
4. The subject of one of the best YouTube rants ever (caution foul language).

It was a no-brainer. It was a little out of my price range (i.e. cash I had on me) so I asked Tim if he could sell it for what I had in my pocket. He said yes and the card was mine!

I'll be heading back to the shop as soon as the cash flow opens up. He has tons of singles that I need to go through for player and set needs, and like I said - good prices on boxes. If you're in town give him a look!