Highly Subjective Definition of "Vintage" with Completely Arbitrary Collation

Ok, what do you consider to be "vintage" baseball cards? Pre-war/pre-Topps? 1960s/70s? 1995? I was curious about Rollie Fingers' definition of vintage when he put his name on this box in 2004, promising "7 Vintage Cards Per Pack."

A Brief Video Interlude of the first 2 packs...

This was an impulse purchase - I wanted to bust open some packs and I was looking at a wall of uninspiring 80's and early 90's offerings when I spotted this box all alone for $10. 

This is a typical pack - there's no vintage there, at least based on most accepted definitions. I would say "vintage" should be 15 - 20 years old, at least. Technically 2003 to 1983 works, but to me that should be the most recent card. The definition of vintage today is generally 1979 or older-- the offerings from the 1980's and 1990's are rarely placed in vintage bins or boxes at card shows.

The "vintage" definition aside, after opening a few packs, patterns began to emerge.

It was borderline comical! P.S. there were no Rollie Fingers cards in the box, though he was still in the league in the early 80's.

Ha, joke's on you, Rollie! Technically those two shades of red on the '91 Topps logo represent variations! So you didn't give me 6 identical Tom Glavines, instead there were 3 each of the two variations. Don't know if it counts, but half of the Kent Hrbeks had printing smears on the front, the other half did not...

The oldest card in the whole box? 1980 Topps Hosken Powell. The newest? 1995 Pacific Omar Olivares. 1995?!?! Less than 10 years old when it was placed in the box. C'mon, man!

The best thing in the box was in the very first pack (I'm thinking this is by design?) - a 1983 Starline Sticker of Mickey Mantle. You can find a copy on COMC for around $5, so I can say that I spent $5 to get this sticker, and I paid another $5 for some very elaborate packing material.

Donruss To Judgement

Ok, we all know the drill by now. Donruss is terrible -- no logos, boring photos, repetitive and sloppy. But it's a new year, and just like your favorite team, everyone starts in first place. Nimmo's not about to hit, so already that's some variety from Panini for a position player. And hey, check out his socks! Is Donruss allowing some personality to break through this year?

Well, the backs are still nothing special. I would love it so much if one year Panini would make an effort to be bold. Honestly, what do they have to lose?

The main card types - Rated Rookies (different colors on the back!), Diamond Kings (not to be confused with the Diamond Kings set), an ode to the 1985 Donruss set (mostly rookies and 2nd year players here), and base cards / base card variations (Yeli is short for Yelich-- get it?). Do they think about the details? Like, what's the method for selecting Rated Rookies? Why not add the player's position on that blank banner? I think that if they don't have the logos, they could ditch in uniform poses altogether for the portrait section. Catchers generally get a pass because there's no logo on the chest protector / shin guards / etc. Does Panini pay for photos from Getty like Topps, or do they have photographers? If they have photographers, they must be restricted to a very small part of the field... way too many shots from the same angle continues to be a problem. The name variation thing is fun, I just think they could benefit from being more creative with their gimmicks.

Here are the "inserts" - four position players, all at the plate, never more than 50% of their face is showing... like, you have the player's association license, you can show what they look like. It makes even more sense on the rare chance that you can show the logo that you'd get a more interesting photo, but hey, why strain yourselves? With Soto, why not a bat flip? Or any different angle at all? The Franchise Features insert is a good concept - established guy on the front, prospect on the back. (Estevan Florial is on the back of the Springer card). But again, essentially the same photo on both sides - without the name I'd just have to take your word for it about which player it is.

Twins! The blaster I purchased had some purple refractors in it, was happy to have found a Twin inside. Psst, if you pull any Willians Astudillo cards in your Donruss packs, send them to me. He's the best. YOU are the best for sending them to me.

Here are the most interesting cards I pulled. Catchers get to have a little personality - and hey, funky socks on the bottom row! Panini/Donruss, take some risks in 2020, please!

2019 Topps Series I First Impressions

I bought a blaster of 2019 Series I on the way home from lunch with my dad today - first card out of the first pack is Pedro Strop.

Here's a look back at the first packs from 2018, 2017, 2016, and 2015.

I would rank the 2019 design ahead of the last three - flagship should have a border!

The backs are great - full career stats, some nice colors, easy to read! I like that the twitter and instagram handles are now small enough that only people young enough to read them without squinting can see them. You don't have to follow me back, Pedro, it's cool.

Rookie Cups are back! They should probably be a little bigger, though? The scale of the cup is always changing from year to year. I feel like Topps doesn't want to do the extra logo anymore - maybe the solution is to change it up in future years - maybe a banner like Future Stars? Rookie All-Star? Should fit just fine.

Inserts! Grapefruit League greats focuses on players that did well in Spring Training. My criticism on this would be the photo choice - it's possible the pic was taken in Spring Training, but it doesn't look like Spring Training. Shouldn't be hard to find pics from Spring games, Topps was taking a ton of photos in Spring Training throughout the decades. Also, it's kind of like hearing people claim that they are the re-incarnation of some famous person from the past - it's not shocking to hear that Mattingly or Bob Gibson had a great Spring Training... This would be an opportunity to include some forgotten players of the past, maybe even guys that barely made it to The Show. Gleyber Torres has an insert set. I forgot that he won the Rookie of the Year last year. Oh, he didn't? Huh.
No complaints about the 1984 inserts, it's fun to see modern players in older designs.
Once again, with the ad / insert for Topps Now... Get over yourself. Gross.

On a much more positive note, the Team / Stadium cards are fantastic. The horizontal cards look great as well, and the border breaking shots are a nice change of pace. I'm a fan of the base cards.

Minnesota Twins! Joe Mauer does not get a base card in Series 1, I'm hoping to see him in Heritage or maybe a special card in Series 2 (along with Beltre and V-Mart).

Some more good ones - Daniel Poncedeleon has a great name! Overall, Topps flagship lives and dies on the base cards, and I think this year they've done a great job. The Inserts always feel like halfway completed ideas- concepts are nice, execution often feels lazy. I would still like to see first pitch again, and personal bias means I want more Twins in the insert sets. The inserts, actually, are bad enough again this year, that I am reluctant to buy more packs, and instead I will probably pick up base cards I like later on from card shows, card shops, and online.

Have you found any packs yet? What are your first impressions? Thanks for reading

Just One Pack of . . . 1976 Topps!

I found this on eBay and while I am skeptical, the price was too hard to ignore. I purchased two packs, and I don't know, I think this is legit, but maybe a trained eye can tell me if it wasn't / isn't. I recorded a cell phone video of opening the pack, but I can't get it to upload to blogger, which is why this is post #702 instead of #700 - the technical difficulties with it forced me to punt the post down a couple slots.

Update - video is now available, embedded at the bottom of this post

If I do get the video up (I might have to upload to YouTube then link it), you'll hear that I noticed Yogi Berra sitting in the center right away, but I missed Willie Mays on the bottom right. I'm guessing this team photo wasn't taken in 1975.

Supporting the theory that this is not a truly sealed unsearched pack -- Vic Correll was on the wax side, but has no discernable wax stains on the surface. Ron Schueler was next to the gum, and similarly, the back of the card touching the gum seems like it survived without any staining.

Here's the back of the Schueler card, which has a delightful cartoon about young Robin Yount being born after teammate Hank Aaron's MLB debut.

It was a Brewers' Hot Pack! In favor of this being a legit pack, the cards are all in excellent condition, the most wear was on the Scheuler card with a rough edge, and what little imperfections there were seemed to be on one same corner for all of the cards. It's possible it was searched and replaced with the same cards?

There was one Hall of Famer as well. I think this also is a point for a real pack. It's not his rookie card, but I suspect that this card would have been replaced if the pack had been tampered with. There were a total of 10 cards, typical for 1976 Topps. 1976 Topps packs came in 7-card dime packs and 10-card 15 cent packs.

There's the back of the Goose. 

I don't know! 

The Pros - The seal seemed tight on the pack, the cards were all in essentially the same condition, there was a Hall of Fame player in the pack.

The Cons - it was a lot cheaper than I thought it should be (based on what I've paid for '78 and '79 packs in the past), the top and bottom cards weren't damaged by wax or gum, the gum was broken (though it did make a full piece). 

Here's the video - 

What do you think? If you opened 1976 packs before, does it seem reasonable to get 4 Brewers in one pack? Possibly too good to be true.

2018 Topps, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Building Other Sets

There it is - the first card from the first pack I opened of 2018 Topps. I've decided to keep the 1st card pulled in a separate spot.

Here's the last two years of first cards, just to give a sense of the evolution of the borderless design.

Here's the back - the trade with the Rangers looks like it worked decently well for both teams. The Rangers don't have Fielder anymore due to his retirement, and Kinsler is moving on to the Angels this year, but both teams ended up with several seasons of production from their player.

I purchased a blaster and 2 loose packs - and I ended up with just two Twins. The lens flare effect on the team logo doesn't really do much for me. It just gets in the way - might be better if the light source was behind the logo instead of in front.

Some nice action shots for the young guns.

The veterans are all brooding and intense. They've been through some things.

The horizontal shots are back again, which is usually a good idea. Overall, I thought there was a nice selection of photos for Series 1.

Here's where everything comes off the rails. The inserts have been getting more generic looking and unnecessary. I'd much rather have more base cards than these. The 1983 Salute is a head scratcher - the design was just recently used for Archives, and while I will be the first to admit is one of the better Topps designs of the junk wax era, it still seems like a slot that could have been used for something else.

The Derek Jeter set... I get it, that's fine, but I will just be trying to get rid of them. Opening Day... Why? Topps has a whole set dedicated to Opening Day, we don't need an insert set on top of it. Then there's the Home Run Challenge card.

Check out the website. This "card" is just an ad for the promotion, not the actual Home Run Challenge insert. You can't even use this card to enter the contest! Wasting space in the pack.

Ugh. Get over yourself, Topps. This is masturbatory.

This is the manufactured Relic, Royals fans, hit me up... Overall, the base set is fine - I'd prefer borders, but the photo choices are good and there's a variety of rookies and veterans. No Bartolo Colon? That's a bummer. The inserts are terrible, I would have preferred bringing back First Pitch and/or adding National Anthem singers or something. The inserts also seem position player heavy - would have been nice to throw the pitchers a bone too.

The blaster came with a bunch of coupons, and this last one caught my eye. What set is this? I checked Topps website and Cardboard Connection but I didn't see any upcoming releases for Topps with "BL" initials. The coupon is good from May to August, so I'm guessing this is a product coming out in the summer sometime.

Winter is Cold.

I have made very few purchases this winter, I've been staying inside. The last few weeks have been especially cold in the Twin Cities. Today the high temp will be around 10 degrees, which is actually an improvement over the last week or so. That also means that my basement, where I keep my scanner / computer, is super cold. I probably would be posting more if I didn't have to bundle up to do it!

I bought a box of the Topps Holiday cards online. The Inciarte and Myers cards are the special Metallic Snowflake variation, which I will say is easy to see in person, but doesn't show up on the scan at all.

Adding the snow made this group of shots more fun, as all the players are looking up to the sky with various degrees of wonderment and terror.

I don't remember this photo from the flagship set - but it was just my memory failing me. It's not a variation or anything, just a cool card.

A Quick Update

I went into Target this morning after VOTING (if you live in the United States, there's probably an election in your area today, so think about VOTING), and as is my way, I was drawn to the card aisle.

One Blaster of Topps Chrome Update was casually strewn atop the now dusty boxes of Topps Series 1 and 2 and the other sports like Racing, Football, and Basketball.

I was not a big fan of Topps Update this year, but who doesn't love Chrome! And I am a sucker for Topps Rookie All-Star inserts. Hey look, Yoan Moncada as a Red Sox infielder.

Both Rookie of the Year winners are represented, along with plenty more rookies from 2016 and 2017.

Ngeope had the best photo on the cards I pulled, and there was a decent percentage of cards I will actually keep.

Finally, this card means I will not buy another pack in 2017, because my luck has already hit its peak-

Neat! I will hold onto this one for a while.

Going Out on a High Note

It took a couple weeks, but I finally found some of the Heritage High Numbers. The Force is strong with Hector.

Two current and two former Twins. Turner was a Rule V draftee, and Danny Santana was traded over to Atlanta back in May.

Found both of these Now and Then inserts, and they look almost identical. Fernando Rodney is the king of cool and Zimmer is rocking the shades.

Despite the rivalry with the Twins, I can honestly say that Cleveland had some of the better cards this time around. I am a big fan of the Reds mascot, Mr. Redlegs. He looks psychotic.

The "best" pull in the packs - a Cody Bellinger insert. I think I'll hold onto this one for a little while.