Post-Holiday Shopping Spree

I had some cash burning a hole in my wallet, so I wandered on down to the local card shop, where the owner was trying to clear out some older packs so he wouldn't have to inventory them come the first of the year. Just my luck! Lots of stuff half-price!

Here's a sampling of what I came up with.

2009 Sweet Spot Sweet Beginnings Gold Tommy Hanson auto 135/199 (this was the only full-price stuff I bought - $18 per pack - I'm hooked on it!)

2008 SPX Carlos Zambrano patch 17/50 - $10/pack (usually $20)

2009 UD Icons Everth Cabrera Rookie Signature 293/600 - $5/pack (usually $10)

2009 UD Icons Letterman Joe Nathan 03/45

2009 UD Icons Letterman Kent Hrbek 50/50

2008 SPX Ken Griffey American Hero #KG91 1/1!

Nice take for only a few packs. OK, so there were more than a few packs, but not a case. Busting packs and getting this many things is not normal, at least not for me.

I also ended up taking the last five packs of 2009 Goudey at $2.50 per pack. Great price! Better than Tar-zhay and Wally World. And what do you know, I ended up getting three SP's and one 4-in-1 that I needed, on top of the base. Plus two blue-back minis. I'm very happy with the SP's on those packs. I would normally pay $3 for each of those short prints, so this was a great deal.

There are a few other things I got that will all being going on my Picasa trade page (see the links to the right, under "Give & Take"). If you want something, make me an offer. My email address is also in the right-hand column.

More Holiday Thanks

When of the best parts of running a blog is the semi-unsolicited offers from readers to send cards from my wantlist. Everyone who does this turns out to be good traders, people who are in it to help others finish their sets and fill out their collections. That is why I am in it, too, so it there is a connection immediately to these friends who I would not otherwise meet. (It's almost like eHarmony for baseball card collectors!)

So it was no surprise when I received a nice package from Scott in Croton-on-Hudson, NY. I mention the location because it is one of the oddest names of a town that I've ever heard. Why not just call it Croton? Was there another Croton nearby that it had to be differentiated from? Interesting!

Anyway, Scott runs the newer blog Mr. Scott's Baseball Cards, and has made few trades already with the likes of Sooz and Play at the Plate. He sent me a stack of '09 A&G minis which I need, a Thome bat relic, a 2004 Donruss autograph of a long-lost Indians prospect and some Indians cards from 2009.

The A&G's still really interest me. Did you know that Beardy's idol Burke Kenny is a member of Beard Team USA? Did you know there actually IS a Beard Team USA?!!?! Jason Motte, who I just pulled a Sweet Spot Rookie auto of that is on my trade page if you are interested, pitched 164.2 innings, struck out 217, walked only 56, but still had enough time to let up 153 hits? That's a busy 2008 minor league season!

He also sent a stack of those weird 2008 UD Documentary cards. Looking at them, I understand why they are so reviled in the Hobby. They are boring, have the same picture on various cards of different games, and don't feature a picture of the player being highlighted in the blurb. I don't want to encourage it by even showing the pictures. Let's hope it dies a quick death and goes the way of some of the other Frankenstein products that have been put out over the last ten years.

Thanks, Scott, for all the great cards. Yours are on the way.

Mood Swing!

My A-N-G-E-R at A-G is partially assuaged tonight by an unlikely candidate.

Upper Deck, thank you.

I know, it is difficult to hear someone utter those words, but they have certainly outshined Topps today, and from reading many other blogs, many other days as well, when it comes to redemptions and customer service.

Let me set up the story.

I received in a box break at Jawdy's Basement a Victor Martinez / Travis Hafner dual relic from Sweet Spot. It came very quickly, and is a beautiful card, but it suffers from the disease afflicting many cards from 2007, Signaturus Fadus. I also happened to trade for a Ken Griffey Sweet Spot autograph from 2007 (which I thought was Jr., however it was Sr., but that's a different story entirely) with the same malady.

I emailed Upper Deck with scans of the cards. No response. Here is where I have to thank uber-collector Joe P. from Rochester, one of my Trade Day friends. He buys enough stuff to make a shoe-hog blush, and does extremely well. In fact, I watched him pull a Ken Griffey JR. autographed bat out of two randomly picked packs of '08 Sweet Spot last week. (mumble under breath, "lucky bastard!")

Anyway, Joe suggested I call Upper Deck and discuss it directly with a rep. They were very helpful, tracked down the images from their email server, and said they would take care of it. I didn't know what that would mean at the time.

Fast forward 3 weeks. I received a package from UD with a nice letter saying how committed Upper Deck is to producing high-quality blah blah blah, and at the bottom, "As a courtesy, we have assisted you with your situation to the best of our ability. Please accept the enclosed complementary product." Inside the nice manilla mailer were these two Sweet Spot Signatures:

I'm pretty sure that these will not suffer from SigFadus, as my other cards did. These are certainly able replacements for the Griffey, Sr. and the Hafner/Martinez. Not only are they lower numbered, they are the rarer colored stitching. I'm not sure I would have picked the Quentin/Jackson from the lineup of cards, given the choice (why couldn't they send the Jeter/Ripken versions?!?!?!), but the Rodriguez is fantastic, numbered out of 45, signed in ball point pen, and he is a possible, maybe probable, Hall of Famer.

Not that I care (yeah, right!), but Beckett lists the Rodriguez at $100, which might be a bit high, but I would bet that it would go for at least $40. As for the Quentin/Jackson, there is no value listed as it is too scarce to put a value on. A completed auction for a Verlander gold stitch #'d 4/5 is the closest I can find to this one, and it sold for $46.

So, I'd say that Upper Deck certainly made my day and made up for the unsatisfactory box break and poor customer support from Topps. Thanks, UD.

Cards from Oregon

Mike from Beaverton, Oregon (that's or-ggin to you easterners, not or-eh-gahn) got in touch with me, cooing over a Yovani Gallardo card from the Topps 52 Rookies that I showed off a few posts ago. In order to coerce me to send it to him, he offered up some cards that I could use. He got a few Gallardo's and a couple Felix Hernandez cards, and I got an Omar and a Grady I didn't have before.

A nice purple Jim Thome from this year's Legendary Cuts, and Omar from the 2002 Upper Deck Vintage repro of the 1971 Topps set. I don't want to collect the SPLC set, but I really like the design this year. This is one of the few products from UD this year that stands out. They also did a very good job on the Vintage. The original was a classic design, and this one mimics it well, but UD abandoned it then and again this year, choosing a non-lawsuit-raising design instead of the original intended design.

Mike was also the one who sent me the O-Pee-Chee card I posted recently of Cleveland Stadium where I railed about UD's lame effort on it. On second thought, I still believe that it is a cheap product with lousy photography on skimpy paper. But maybe that is their target audience - 12 year olds who can't afford their Legendary Cuts, SP Authentic, SPx, Black, etc., etc., etc. So it hits the mark in that respect.

Thanks, Mike.

Disappointment with Upper Deck

Upper Deck has been a strong competitor for Topps, and has been good for the baseball card industry in general, pushing boundaries and forcing other companies to work harder and make better products. For twenty years, UD has been innovative and creative. Their photography has always been regarded as the best in the business.

Lately, however, something has gone wrong with UD. Very wrong.

Take this card, as Exhibit A.

As I understand it, this isn't even the design that Upper Deck had advertised. I believe everyone expected the famous 1971 black Topps design to be the standard for this product, like they did for the 2001 UD Vintage. Strike 1.

This is the first O-Pee-Chee card from 2009 that I've held and seen, and I am thoroughly underwhelmed by it. The card stock is very thin so that the card feels extremely flimsy, especially for a card-stock baseball card. Strike 2.

The photography, long the strong point on UD's resume, is terrible. Look closely at this picture. Overcast day. Low-lying clouds. Stands half-empty. No game going on, just warm-ups in the outfield. I get the impression that the UD staff photographer was in a rush to catch the next flight out of town and didn't want to hang around or come back to get a good picture.

Strike 3. Yer out.

(I haven't even mentioned the collation issues which plagued Goudey this year. I never seem to have that problem with Topps, in any of their products. Strike 4.)

Upper Deck has lost all of its competitive edge to the top dog, Topps, who is beating them in all phases of the game now. Topps design and product line are far more interesting and nicely varied. The products complement each other, not fight and diminish each other.

It puts out too many products, thinning its resources and losing focus on what it did best. How can a company, especially in strapped financial times like these, keep producing that many lines of cards while still keeping the photography stunning, the design interesting, and the features alluring? It can't.

I will, however, concede that I like the 2009 SP Legendary Cuts product, but that is certainly not due to the photography. I think the design is beautiful and interesting, and wouldn't mind collecting this set, but it is a specialty subset of the flagship product, and I've heard that the cut autos are few and far between.

In the end, I must say that this is the card that disappointed me and led me to hesitate when thinking about which product to collect. It is emblematic of all that has gone wrong with Upper Deck. I hope they can fix the problems, and I will be watching for a change, but watching from the Cheap Seats.

More Omar (and Thome to boot)

What happens when you make a trade with madding over at Cards on Cards? You get exactly what you want. In my case, that is cards of Omar, Thome and stuff for my sets.

First we have four Omar cards that I didn't have before, including the 1990 Leaf that is from one of the only great sets of the early 90's. So much bad sets were produced then that it is really hard to pick the wheat from the chafe, but this is one of those sets. The Donruss Elite is a nice shiny addition to the set, but it doesn't scan well, so it looks all black when it is really silver. And the UD Heroes charcoal makes a foursome of the Omar cards from that set, including a grey, a light blue relic and a gold. The other Omar came with a twin:

These are the 1994 Pinnacle Select, and I love the fact that they have excellent pictures on both sides of the cards. In fact, they have three photos, so you get to see Omar hitting, fielding and throwing, all on one card. That solves the problem of which photo to highlight.

Dan also sent a few other Thomes:

Two of the three the bare-bones Opening Day/First Pitch series, and one base series Topps. Great selection, nice photos of Thome fielding, which he did passably well with the Indians. Thome came up as a clumsy third baseman, and struggled his way into a average first baseman. But that, of course, is not what he is known for. It is those massive swings he takes, sometimes hitting the ball into the stratosphere, sometimes not. I miss him in a Tribe uniform.

A few set-collecting cards, including an early-years 1987 Donruss David Cone on the Royals, a Rick Aguilera on the Mets, both with teams with which they are not normally associated anymore. Aguilera will always be a Twin to me, Cone a Yankee/Red Sox/Blue Jay. I only need two or three more from that set, so go on over to my wantlist and check it out. PLEASE! And a 2007 Topps 52 short print of Kevin Hooper. (Who?) Oh well, need it for the set, ya know.

One Lofton for the road:

Thanks for all the great cards.

Indi-relics from Padrographs

I recently contacted Rod at Padrographs regarding a couple of auto cards I had that he may have wanted. I sent him a Bowman's Best Kouzmanoff auto (sorry, Sooz) and an Adrian Gonzalez auto from this year's Goudey.

I wasn't expecting what I got in return. I am WAY happy with them. Thanks, Rod.

First, a few 2009 cards. The Bowman reminds me more of the famed 1971 Topps set than the infamous O-Pee-Chee set that is just being released as I write this. As much as that is a disappointment, the Bowman looks very nice. So nice that, in fact, Joshua, my #2, is collecting the set. (It also helps that he won the raffle at this month's Trade Days and received a box of '09 Bowman!) That's Victor Martinez spotting the ball, which he is doing a much better job of this year than last. He was hovering around .400 a month into the season, but is now down to .340-something, good for second in the league.

The obverse has only the 2008 stat line, though. That's just lazy, Bowman. And the Bowman Briefing could be reduced or eliminated to upsize the stats. Better luck next time.

Next up are two versions of the 2009 Upper Deck product. I have one word to say about the base cards.

BLECH!!!!!

I think the photography is not very good this year, and the design is even worse. These are extremely boring cards. Even the Award Winners insert card is so boring that even Grady can't save it!

Then Rod hit a home run with the next card: a Splendid Splinter Home Run Club bat relic card of Jim Thome who hit 52 in 2002 for the Indians. Too bad they couldn't show him in his Indians uniform. Laziness rules in the hobby these days. But this card is very cool, despite the mistake.

And lastly, an awesome card of Early Wynn from Flair Greats A Cut of History. The relics from these old-timers uniforms amaze me that these guys would play all summer in the heat and humidity in these heavy woolen uniforms. Not like today's wimps who have to have breathable pajamas. Give me a good ole' wool uni with stirrups, high socks, button-down jersey, and woolen cap to top it off. Those were real men.

Don't you just hate that Indians logo? It's so bad, it's good!

2009 Goudey Box Break - Second Impressions

I bought another box, figuring that I could get a good jump on most everyone by nearly finishing off the base set, and then spend my doubles and trade bait on the SP's. Boy, was I in for a surprise. 

Not only did the second box have five doubles in and of itself, I ended up with a whopping 85 doubles in total! And that leaves me with 65 more base to go! 

Nice collation job, Up My Deck!

That really sucks. And to pour salt in the wound, I got an auto of Adrian Gonzalez. I guess I got enticed by the autograph list that UD put out, showing so many stars of today and yesterday who signed all these cards in the set, figuring, well, maybe I could get a mid-level star, at least, since I did get a "common" autograph in the previous box. Heh, fat chance. 

Even the relic I am not happy with. I know someone will tell me that a Kosuke Fukudome jersey is a pretty good one to get, but I don't like relics in the first place, and if I had to get one it should be of a star or an Indian, or both! The second coming of Ichiro (i.e., Fukudome) has turned into the second coming of name-your-average-outfielder.

At least I got a couple of Grady Sizemore cards. 

My rating on this product just went down a couple of notches. Not only is it boring and stale, but it is also poorly collated and distributed enevenly. Avoid this product until the prices come down, which they should if there is any justice in the world.  

3 out of 10

2009 Goudey Box Break - First Impressions

I was surprised yesterday when I went to my local shop and found the 2009 Goudey on the shelf, staring me in the eye, daring me to buy it.

"C'mon, Dan, you know you want me! I'm irresistable!"

"I just bought some cards at the card show on Sunday, and I need to spend some money on some sleeves. How can I afford to buy you?!!?"

"It doesn't matter. Look at me! I'm new! I'm fresh! I'm unopened! Take me home."

"Willpower . . . draining . . . feel . . . weak . . . can't . . . resist!"

"Resistance is futile, silly human."

Yeah, I bought a box. $75, plus tax. After seeing the prices around for this online, I really appreciate my local store all that much more.

So, I opened all the packs while I was sitting there. I had some time to kill, waiting to pick the kids up. My hands were shaking - would this be the day I pull the Derek Jeter autograph? Or a Grady Sizemore? (Who knows if Grady is even on the UD payroll. I can hope, can't I?)

I start ripping the waxy wrappers, which are much better than those hermetically sealed things that so many cards come in these days, and much easier to open, and perusing the base and inserts. Hmmm, looks a lot like last year's Goudey. Standard size, though. Same color schemes. No Derek Jeter Says or Ken Griffey Says, though. Good. It was intrusive, and didn't contribute to the card, really.

The pictures are kinda funny, though. Look at this Teixeira. It breaks Mario's Baseball Card Commandment #2: Thou Shall Not Make Baseball Cards From Press Conferences.

 

OK, what is this junk? Upper Deck 20th Anniversary Retrospective of the Pope?!?!! Geez, I wish they would stop putting this stuff in all their products, taking away a card from the set I'm trying to collect. They did that with the "Yankee Stadium Legacy" last year, and it annoyed me then, too.

(I love the fact that my scanner, which auto-splits images and justifies them, thought the slanted stripes on the back of the card indicated the correct orientation!)

Great! The first of hopefully two hits. Trevor Hoffman jersey. Hmmm. Well . . . boring. No pinstripe, really small jersey. The only saving grace on this card is Trevor's face. Looks like he just ate a lemon.

Why couldn't they put him in a Brewers uniform, just like they did for C.C. in New York?!? Oh, wait, they didn't, did they?

Hey, I like this 4-in-1 cards. They are interesting, and at least they coordinate the players on the card by team or by position. Nice work on these.

Sports Royalty. Again. (Yawwwwwwwwwwwwnnnnnnnn)

Heads Up. Again. (Yawwwwwwwwwwwwwwnnnnnnnn)

Multi-colored-back minis. (Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz)

Down to my last pack. No buyback or autograph yet. And look at that! They fill half the box with some styrofoam! What the . . . ! Talk about a waste of . . . hey! What's that? Goudey Graph!

It looks like a Yankee!

It looks like a Jeter!

It looks like . . . like . . . Francisco Cervelli. Damn.

Well, let's see what the overall totals are:

• 1 box, 18 packs, 8 cards per pack, 145 cards total, 13 RC
  
• 106 Base
• 1 SP (!)
  
• 4 Sport Royalty SP (Carlton, Wang, Upton, Peterson)
  
• 1 Goudey Graph (Cervelli)
  
• 1 Goudey Memorabilia (Hoffman)
• 4 Heads Up SP (Berra, Berkman, Beckett, Soriano)
• 12 4-in-1: 9 red, 2 blue, 1 green
  
• 7 Mini: 3 green-back, 2 blue-back, 1 black back (#/21), 1 Heads Up SP (Beckett)
• 9 20th Anniversary Retrospective
  

My Opinion If you could not tell already, this is a tired design that needs to be re-tired for a few years, just as Hand Collated suggests. I love the old-style cards, with the real cardboard and thicker appearance, but this one has run its course. A few more suggestions:

• Get rid of the extraneous stuff, like 20th Anniv. Retro. and YSL
• Keep the nice set size, 200 base and only 20 regular SPs
• Mix up the other SPs, such as replace the Heads Up with the 4-in-1, and switch around in every release
• PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE stop putting wasted autos in these packs; no one wants a Francisco Cervelli except for the ultra-minor-leaguer-obscure collector
  

Overall I would give this release a 6 out of 10. Nice effort, good quality, but boring and stale.