2014 Topps Adhesive Minis (a.k.a. “Stickers”)

My week at work was so frustrating and depressing…

(This is where you say “How frustrating was it?”)

…It was so frustrating that I feel the need to repeat it in Spanish, or at least Google Translate’s version of Spanish:

¡Una semana muy frustrante y deprimente!

As soon as I got out of work, I went straight to Target in hopes of finding something from the card aisle to compensate myself for my pain and suffering.

…And that’s when I found the Adhesive Minis.

Honestly, with all the minis flying out of the Topps factory these days, I don’t know why “Adhesive Minis” hasn’t occurred to Topps yet.

I’ve gone back and forth with Adhesive Minis since they were revived a couple of years ago. On the plus side, they’re usually appealing in a “less is more” sort of way, and they’re a cheap way to get a pack-opening fix. On the minus side, I never could bring myself to actually put them in an album, so what I do get ends up sitting in a stack while I wonder what the heck to do with them.

Before we get going, does anybody know of a place to get an online copy of a checklist for this set? I’d like to include it in my database, but even Topps’ website doesn’t include a checklist.

OK, enough of that.  Let’s open the pack!

Incidentally, having David Wright on the wrapper of this and other packs makes me wonder… As a Mets fan, should I save at least one of these wrappers for my collection?

Naaaaaaah.

OK, here we go, first sticker:

Not bad. Interesting how the first name is larger than the surname.

Oooooh! Photoshop action!

Have they photoshopped before for the Adhesive Mini set?  I don’t remember it happening before, but my memory’s never been all that great.

Here’s a question for Red Sox fans: How far back does one have to go to find a photo of a beardless Ellsbury?  Is it the beginning of 2013, or does it go back further?

Shiny, shiny logos which don’t look shiny, shiny in a scan.

GAAAH! Billy The Marlin!

I appreciate the wordplay involved in the name, but jeez, this photo is the stuff of nightmares!

Nick Castellanos! Earlier this week, I saw this guy on a custom card which was much better looking than this… where was that… Hmmmm….

Shhhhh… You hear that? That’s the sound of me patting myself on the back.

Movin’ along…

Mike Trout!

Trouty McTroutster! The Troutmeister! Trout-a-palooza! Trouty-trouty-trout-trout-trout!

Dayan Viciedo. I can’t think of anything to say about him.

I sort of miss the days when Jerry Reinsdorf was the biggest schmuck in MLB… Something else ruined by Jeff Loria.

Action Jackson!

OK, that’s the end of pack #1. I bought a second pack, but I’ll share just the highlights of that one…

More photoshopping! I’ll miss JJ in Baltimore this year. Hopefully I won’t miss him TOO much… Like in the 9th inning… or even worse, when the O’s play the A’s…

I’m pretty sure I saw Raymond on an episode of Doctor Who…  Maybe in that 9th Doctor episode where The Doctor and Rose went to what was literally the end of the world.  I wish we had more than one season of Chris Eccleston…

…but I digress…

Here’s one for my Ryan Zimmerman PC…

¡Espectacular!
¡Bartolo Colon con los Metropolitanos de Nueva York!

(Hey, I went through the trouble of getting the upside-down exclamation mark for the beginning of this post… Dammit, I’m gonna use it!)
…Un otra foto alterada con Photoshop…

Never taken a single class in Spanish, ladies and gentlemen! Thanks, I’ll be here all week…

And finally, because it seems appropriate for this post:

Roberto Clemente!

Overall, not at all bad. I’ll probably buy more of these when I feel the need to rip something different… And maybe now with UltraPro coming out with mini-sized sheets, I can store these as cards and actually do something with them instead of leaving them laying about in small stacks.

1976 SSPC #72 – Rick Rhoden (Dodgers)

Rick Rhoden… Is not just a former MLB pitcher, he’s also a top celebrity golfer.

He played for 16 years with the Dodgers, Pirates, Yankees and Astros, compiling a 151-125 record with a 3.59 ERA and 1,419 K’s.  He was named to two All-Star teams and played in the 1977 World Series with the Dodgers.

He was one of the best-hitting pitchers of the time;  he won three Silver Slugger awards, has a .238 career batting average and had 3 seasons where he batted over .300.

Rhoden has won over 50 celebrity golf tournaments, and has three career top 10 finishes in the PGA Champions tour.

In 1976, Rick Rhoden… had a breakout season as a starting pitcher, going 12-3 with a 2.98 ERA and making the All-Star team.  This came during a season where the Dodgers won 92 games and finished 10 games behind the Reds.

Rhoden also batted .308 in 65 AB’s.

This card is… a fine example of the long-lost art of the fake follow-through.

Shea-o-meter:  Is it Shea? Yessiree, Bob.
Shea:  36
Pretty sure it’s Shea:  7
Can’t tell:  6
Not Shea:  5

Picking nits: “Albuquerque” is misspelled on the back of the card.

Cardboard History: His rookie card came the previous year, on a “Rookie Pitchers” card he shared with Scott McGregor and two others.

SSPC vs. Topps: Rhoden’s 1976 Topps card has a similar pose, but Rhoden’s attempt to look bad-ass on the Topps card ends up looking more like he has agita.

My “20 packs For $20″ Repack: How I Done Did

Last week I broke from my usual repack-buying habits and bought one of those “20 packs for $19.99″ boxes.  Now that I’ve opened all the packs, I figured some of you might be interested in how it worked out.

Before assessing my final haul, I’ll remind you that the box came with a “Hit”, and that hit was an Alex Rodriguez relic:

OK, so from the start it was really “14 packs for $20″ because I expected the 6 packs of 2008 UD First Edition Update to be complete rubbish, and they were exactly that.

The 2013 Opening Day packs resulted in some decent inserts, the best of which was this David Wright Play Hard insert, which I would’ve attempted to get at some point, but now I don’t have to:

Running a close second was this Yadi Molina:

I don’t have any huge feelings either way towards Molina or the Cardinals, but it’s 3-D!!! Anything 3-D gets added to my collection.  If there were an Allen & Ginter insert set featuring the Attorneys General of all 50 states, but it were in 3-D, I’d be there.

Getting back to the Opening Day inserts…

Is it me or does Alex Gordon look somewhat “George Brett-y” on this card?

Is it me or does Crisp look somewhat creamy on this card?

I’m hoping that Brewers fans can find it in their hearts to forgive Ryan Braun… and then buy this card from me after I send it in to COMC.

All of the Opening Day base cards went into the box of cards to be given out a Halloween.  I don’t collect Opening Day, but if I come across a card where the photo had been photoshopped in between Topps Series One and Opening Day, I’ll often hang on to that card.  I didn’t find any cards like that, and I’m not even sure that Topps did that with 2013 Opening Day.

I hadn’t recalled seeing 2003 Flair before I opened this pack, and now I know why.  I’m a base card collector far more than an insert collector, and I can’t imagine many people bought this set for the base cards.

I don’t see the point of cards like this where you have this dominating design with a leetle tiny picture in there.

The two 1990 Upper Deck packs filled out a couple of cards on my wantlist, and got me a Cal.

I also got this Darrell Evans card which surprised me; I don’t remember Evans finishing out his career in Atlanta. I can easily picture him in a Braves uni, but not this one, but rather the 1970′s version.

I tend to forget that the Braves have had this uniform design since the late 1980′s; I also tend to forget that the “softball” uniform that I think of as being “1970′s Braves” only lasted four years.

This next card threw me for a largely non-obvious reason…

Dave Gallagher without a mustache? What madness is this????

The 2012 Heritage cards were surprisingly – and yet not surprisingly – a complete washout.  I have just over half the base cards from this set, and yet I managed to get absolutely nothing I needed out of the two packs.  Neither pack had any high numbers, and the only insert I got was a Tim Lincecum “New Age Performers”.  Whoopee.

In the original post about this repack, I mentioned that the Heritage packs weren’t obviously opened and resealed, but I’m thinking that this doesn’t mean that they hadn’t been opened and resealed.  Shouldn’t two packs of Heritage contain more than one insert between them?  I would think I’d get a News Flashback or a “Then And Now” or something.

I don’t know for sure that there’s something screwy going on here, but it makes me wonder.

The 2012 Topps packs got me a handful of the 90-or-so cards I needed to complete the set… and that’s all I really have to say about those.

The 2013 Topps rack pack had originally been sold in a Target store, as evidenced by the red parallels:

I guess it’s not a surprise considering that the repack was bought in Target.

I also got a couple of Chasing History Holofoil cards… I didn’t even know there were Holofoil versions of these cards until I saw that Buster Posey was slightly shimmery.

What’s the deal with these holofoil cards? Did they come only in rack packs or something? I don’t remember having seen one before, and I suddenly had two.

Before I started thumbing through the cards from this rack pack, I could see a little bit of a die cut “Cut To The Case” card sticking out. I don’t really like these cards, but I figured I might be able to sell it on COMC… Then I saw who it was:

…At which point I said something along the lines of “Dagnabbit!” I don’t know what it is about A-Rod inserts that they seem to gravitate towards me.

So, was it worth my $20?

On the plus side, I got some decent inserts and had some fun opening the packs.

On the negative side, I added just 22 cards to my collection.  A lot of that was just bad luck or bad collation, because I didn’t put as much of a dent into some of these sets as I’d hoped to.

When all was said and done, the box left me feeling a bit like Jeff Wetherby here:

I look to repacks for some cheap entertainment, but this wasn’t all that cheap.  It probably worked out OK for me – just barely – but I’m not sure it’s something I’d do again.

2014 TSR is LIVE! Let’s Open A Virtual Wax Pack!

When I was a kid, we never had a clue what the year’s new cards would look like until you or someone you knew had bought some.

If you were lucky enough to find them first, you’d buy some packs and as soon as you were outside the store you’d open them and gaze upon the cards which would become the primary drain on many months’ worth of allowance.

These days I get tired of images that are tweeted months in advance.  It was a lot more fun when I didn’t know in advance.

So with that in mind I figured it would be fun to handle the premiere of my custom 2014 set in the same way, as if –

Hey!

Look over there by the cash register…  Are those baseball cards?

They are!  Hey, check out this pack!

I’m definitely buying these — aw, crap, I already spent my allowance… You got a buck I can borrow?

C’mon, let’s open ‘em up….

First card is a Cardinal.  I remember this guy from the World Series last year.

Jimmy in my math class is a Tigers fan. I think he said that this guy was gonna get to play at third, after they move Cabrera over to first. Maaaaaaaaan, was he pissed off when they traded Prince Fielder. He’s like Jimmy’s favorite.

Cool, got a Met! I think this guy got hurt last year.

…and I got a Phillie. I don’t know much about this guy, though.

My big brother said that this is just the first series… There’s gonna be six series in the whole set.

Man, those Marlins uniforms suck. That big “M” on the cap is dorky.

Here’s one of those Asian guys. I never know how to say their names.  “High-un Jin Ry-ooo?”  Is that right?  I dunno.

Hey, check out the gum…

I heard about this;  serially-numbered, die-cut team logo bubble gum.  Why would anybody put numbers on gum?  It’s not like anyone’s gonna collect it.

What?  No, it’s my pack, I get to chew the gum.  I don’t care if you loaned me the money, it’s still my pack.

Mmmmm, this is good gum!  It tastes like roast beef and a baked potato!

Now it’s dessert… Blueberries and cream!

Hey, why am I turning violet?

…one short trip to the Wonka Emergency Room later…

Sorry about that, dude.  I didn’t know that would happen.  Wanna see the rest of the pack?

You know one thing that makes these better than Topps? There’s nobody in this pack that’s already on another team. I always wonder why anyone would put a free agent into the first series.

Votto! He’s real good. Card number 50, I like when they give the good guys numbers like that.

I like Flaherty, but it’s gonna be weird without B-Rob on the Orioles. Whaddaya mean, “Who’s B-Rob?” B-Rob! Brian Roberts! My dad says he’s a bum for going to the Yankees.

This one’s a manager. Hey, this one’s different from the others. Instead of a regular card number, it’s numbered MC-2. I guess it’s not part of the regular set… I know Luke will like that, he hates manager cards.

I remember this guy, he used to play for the Orioles. He was supposed to be good, but he wasn’t.

“Lonnie”? You ever met anybody named Lonnie? Wonder where he’s from. Huh. North Carolina. Maybe there are more Lonnie’s down there.

It’s kind of weird that they used Brown and tan for the Padres cards. It’s not like the Padres are brown.

I like these cards, I’m gonna buy more after I get my allowance.

Yeah, yeah, after I give you your dollar back.

Show & Tell: Washington Capitals from the 1977/78 O-Pee-Chee “High Numbers”

Over on The Five Tool Collector, a commenter recently lamented the lack of hockey card blogs out there.

I’m not about to start a blog devoted to hockey, but I’ve got a number of hockey posts I’ve been meaning to do… And being the public-service-oriented guy that I am, I figured I should get one of those posts out there.

Although baseball has always been the main focus of my collecting activities, I used to collect hockey back in the 1970′s and 1980′s, and to a lesser degree in the 1990′s.  I’d lost interest for a number of years, but lately I’ve been getting back into filling out some of my older sets.

One of the surprises I had when getting back into hockey was a discovery about O-Pee-Chee hockey.  I’d known for a long time that the OPC hockey sets were bigger than their Topps counterparts, but I never really thought about the implications of that not-insignificant bit of information.  For instance, I kinda sorta knew that 1977/78 Topps has 264 cards and OPC has 396 cards, but it only recently dawned on me that this meant that OPC has 132 cards that I’d never seen before.  More Capitals (my favorite team back in the day)!  More rookies!  More hockey players!

Garsh!

From comparing the O-Pee-Chee and Topps checklists, it looks like there are at least two cards in the “lower 264″ that differ between the two sets.  Double garsh!

A couple of months ago, I began my assault on 1977/78 OPC with these four cards…

Gord Lane played for the Capitals and Islanders, and won four Stanley Cups with the Isles.

I’ve always liked the 1977/78 hockey design, even if it is sort of a warmed-over version of 1977 Baseball… or maybe because it’s a warmed-over version of 1977 Baseball, I’m never quite sure.

Ron Lalonde appeared in 397 NHL games, mostly with the Capitals.

Incidentally, I grew up on Long Island and didn’t have a natural connection to the Caps. This is one of those cases where my love for underdogs and an innate desire to march to a different drum coalesced into a situation that brought me a lot of pain for a number of years. The Capitals teams of the 1970′s were pretty darn bad.

This next card is notable if only because it shows the Caps’ road uniforms. During the 1970′s, Topps & O-Pee-Chee relied heavily on a photographer based out of Washington’s Cap Center, so most hockey cards feature the Caps in their home attire (and in “cameo appearances” on other player’s cards, a subject for another day).

Bob Sirois played for the Caps for the better part of 5 seasons, and played in the 1977/78 All-Star Game.

This last card features a Hockey Hall-Of-Famer, but that’s an honor he earned off the ice…

Craig Patrick’s achievements came as the Assistant Coach and Assistant GM of the 1980 US “Miracle On Ice” hockey team, and as the GM of the Rangers and Penguins. Stanley Cups, and all that. He’s also a Patrick, a name that carries a considerable amount of weight in hockey circles.

I suppose I should mention that I’m not currently a Capitals fan… Despite the Caps’ making it to the 1998 Stanley Cup finals (and getting swept by the Red Wings), the Nineties were a rough decade for me as a hockey fan and I drifted away from the Caps and the NHL in general.  Over the past couple of years, I’ve drifted back towards hockey, but I’m quite content to collect older hockey cards and watch college hockey.

Curling Dervishes: The Rest Of My Virtual Curling Set

About a week ago, I shared a number of Olympics-inspired, virtual curling trading cards I’d made while watching the curling matches in Sochi.

Again, I should point out to anyone coming here through a search engine or otherwise that these are not actual and/or commercially available trading cards… they’re just cards I made up on my computer.

I have to admit, I’m undergoing something of an Olympic withdrawal. Over the past couple of weeks, I got used to having curling or hockey on while I was getting ready in the morning, or trying to catch up in the evenings so that our DVR didn’t run out of space (it’s always on the edge).

Now, it just seems like I should be watching something, but hockey is back to the NHL (pause while I spit on the ground) and because I live in the U.S., curling just vanishes into the ether for another four years.

So, to postpone my curling withdrawal a little bit, here are more of my curling cards based on the 1973 Topps Baseball set.

The Norwegians weren’t the only ones with funky pants…

…although the Russians only had one pair of funky pants, and they didn’t wear them all the time. I do like these, though.

…Not that I would wear such a thing, but I like them.

After it became clear that the U.S. Curling teams weren’t going to have an impact, I started switching over to Canada and Great Britain.

I’ll admit to one thing with the Great Britain teams: I loved listening to their Scottish accents.

As a curling novice, I always pick up a few bits of knowledge whenever I watch a match. One thing I learned this time around is that the vice-skip and skip do not always throw third and fourth. The Swedish women are among those who shuffle their “throwing order”.  Their skip was the lead, and the vice-skip threw fourth.

…So even though Christina Bertrup is third, she’s not the vice-skip.  The main reason she ends up representing the team here is simply because I like the way her card turned out.

…and now, on to the Gold Medal-winning Canadian teams… First the men.

The Canadian team did a number on the team from Great Britain, winning 9-3 when Team GB conceded after 8 ends.

I enjoyed watching Ryan Fry during the Gold Medal game; his accuracy was 81%, 85% overall, but he delivered a lot of the important take-outs.

Brad Jacobs had an impressive 95% going in the gold medal game.

The Canadian women’s team, lead by skip Jennifer Jones, went undefeated on their way to a well-earned Gold Medal.

Vice-Skip Kaitlyn Lawes had a rough Gold Medal game – so I’ve been told, I haven’t watched it yet.  Since I got spoiled on the result, I decided to save the recording for when I need a “fix”.

Lawes reminds me of someone, but I haven’t figured out who.  It could be someone I’ve known personally, in which case none of you would care.

And now, because HockeyKazi requested it, here’s Canadian skip and one of the world’s best woman curlers, Jennifer Jones!

(Pssst… Don’t tell him I was going to feature this card anyway).

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So, lemme ask ya somethin’… Aside from the handful of cards in the US Olympic set that Topps put out towards the end of 2013, does anybody know of any real curling cards? So far all I’ve been able to find is a German 1932 Sanella card, a 1970′s Sportscaster card, and a Garbage Pail Kid sticker for “Curling Sterling”.

There are a few Sochi-related cards on eBay, but I think they might be as legitimate as my cards here.

Everything’s Coming Up Repacks!!! (As Sung By Ethel Merman)

This past weekend I was looking to buy something repack-y and decided to shake things up… Instead of my usual 100-card repacks, I bought a “20 packs for $20″ repack, half-expecting that the 19 unseen packs in the box would be 1989 Fleer and Upper Deck Documentary.

I got home, opened it up and much to my surprise, my packs did not suck… In fact, they were quite nice (except for the fact that they’ve undoubtedly been felt and searched a hundred times over).

Here’s the breakdown from least interesting to most interesting:

• 6 packs of 2008 UD First Edition Update (almost completely useless to me;  I don’t want them, and they’re too old to give to the neighborhood kids at Halloween).
• 4 packs of 2013 Topps Opening Day (Hopefully some inserts and/or mascots for me;  everything else goes in the “Halloween box”)
• 1 pack of 2003 Flair (I don’t even know what to expect of this, I have absolutely no memory nor knowledge of this set)
• 2 packs of 1990 Upper Deck (At the very least, a fun open)
• 2 packs of 2012 Heritage (which are not as obviously resealed as some repacked Heritage I’ve gotten in my day)
• 3 packs of 2012 Topps Series One. (Welcome as I’m still working on the set)
• 1 rack pack of 2012 Topps Series Two. (ditto)
• 1 rack pack of 2013 Topps Series Two. (ditto)

So not a bad little haul…  I may not get $20 worth of value, but there is stuff of some value, and I’ll have some fun with it.  I’ll share the more interesting cards with you at some later time.

Oh, one other thing…  For my $20 I was promised 20 packs and one “hit”.

I was expecting a signature from some failed prospect, but instead I got this:

No, I didn’t use the wrong image by mistake, I got an Alex Rodriguez relic card… and it was loose between two packs, without so much as a penny sleeve to protect it.

I know A-Rod’s stock has fallen tremendously, and I know that this piece of “bat” could conceivably be a small piece of a broken chair retrieved from Richard McWilliams’ parents’ basement, but still…

An A-Rod relic.

…as a repack bonus.

That’s just sad.

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And now, for your listening pleasure, here’s Ethel Merman singing “Everything’s Coming Up Roses”!

…or for somebody’s listening pleasure… Certainly not mine, I don’t care for Ethel Merman or for the song.  But here it is anyway!