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As most of my regular readers know, I don't watch a lot of baseball.  Mostly because my local teams don't allow their channel on streaming services.  And since COVID, I haven't really watched hockey either.  And I've never been a basketball fan.  So I'm a bit behind when it comes to the details of current sports.

Something I noticed when I happened upon some playoff baseball last season: the ad patches on the shoulders - and now even the batting helmets - of the players.  It's been my opinion that team wordmarks on baseball jerseys have been diluted and limited to plain cursive, which is boring.  But the uniform has never been invaded by corporate logos until now.

I mean, there's plenty of advertising in the ballparks as it is...

And the arenas and venues have been corrupted with company names for years.  

From Wikipedia:

Rate Field (formerly named Comiskey Park II, U.S. Cellular Field and Guaranteed Rate Field ... the park opened as Comiskey Park on April 18, 1991, taking its name from the original Comiskey Park, the team's home since 1910.

Originally called Comiskey Park, the stadium was renamed U.S. Cellular Field in 2003, after Chicago-based telecommunications company U.S. Cellular purchased the naming rights at US$68 million for 20 years. U.S. Cellular would later pay $13 million to end the agreement seven years early, saving an estimated $10.8 million.

The stadium's next name, Guaranteed Rate Field, was announced on October 31, 2016, after the Chicago-based private residential mortgage company Guaranteed Rate purchased the naming rights in a 13-year deal. It was later revealed that Guaranteed Rate would pay $20.4 million over ten years for the 13-year agreement. This translates to an average payment of $2.4 million, less than U.S. Cellular's yearly payment of $3.4 million as well as below the average MLB naming rights payment of $3.6 million at the time of the deal's signing.

Coinciding with Guaranteed Rate's rebranding as Rate, the Sox announced the ballpark would henceforth be known as Rate Field on December 17, 2024.

So there are already millions of dollars being spent on just the names of the places.  And some of the sources are rather bizarre.  Why do these high powered finance companies and obscure firms advertise to the general public anyway?  Most of us have to look up who the heck the company is anyway, so how is that advantageous?

The Phoenix Suns' arena became Footprint Center in the summer of 2021. It has previously been known as Talking Stick Resort Arena, U.S. Airways Center and America West Arena. It is now called PHX Arena.

Glad that didn't last long...at least it's sorta relevant to the actual place now.

But all that isn't enough.  Now the ads are infecting uniforms.  

Soccer has been doing this for years.

So has international hockey...

As has international and minor league baseball...

It's creeping into the American pro level sports, like the NBA.

And now baseball is heading down the road from this:

to this:

But is this what the teams really want?  Not only is it hideous and disgusting, but it's blasphemous to the history of the sport.  Is this kind of marketing even effective?  I would be inclined to say that I would hold a much less positive opinion of any company that would participate in the defacing of pro sports like this.

What are your thoughts?  Has it gone too far?  Aren't all the billboards, venue names, redundant ad announcements on TV, and corporate influence on the sports just a bit too much?

Bonus points for anyone who knows the company references in the post title.

State Of The Collective Part 1: 2024 In Review, Sort Of...

At this point on the calendar, it's customary to do a review of the past year either in terms of the products that came out, or the sets/collections/projects that were started/progressed/finished that year.

I am limited to the latter, since the only new product I buy now is Allen & Ginter.  Stuart (of SR75 Cards) and I also broke a case of 2024 Heritage, but I've already documented that in detail.  So I'll give you bit of my take on the year, and then what I'm working on bringing in to my collection and what I'm trying to move out.

Thanks to Cardboard Catastrophes for the inspiration for this series of posts.

For a few consecutive years, I posted annual Collective Awards, but since my collecting has narrowed from (or never been) what's popular, they would look something like this now:

Favorite new product:  Ginter.  Heritage was fun, but didn't have retired players except for some of the inserts.  Didn't like Stadium Club.  Don't buy anything else.

Favorite thing about '24 Topps flagship: N/A - I stopped doing flagship in 2020.  Though I did like the design.

Favorite prospect set: Don't like prospects.  Don't even really like current players that much, except for my local NFL team.

Favorite shiny set:  Don't like shiny either, especially in things like Ginter and Heritage.  Got a hot box of the silver A&Gs though, and found a source for more, so I decided to go for it.

Favorite on-demand set:  Bleah.  I will go back and find my player collection guys when they appear, but won't pay more than a couple bucks for one.

Favorite high-end product:  Don't do those either. There have been a few years of Dynasty that look nice, but I don't collect anyone that appears in it.

Maybe, if I was into current/rookies

Favorite innovation from Fanatics or exclusive contracts:  Haven't seen any.  Have you?  Zebra-striped short print inserts are not an innovation.

Favorite grading company:  If I had to pick, it would be SGC, but only because I like the dark backgrounds in their slabs.  I own less than 20 graded cards total - most of those are T205 Giants - and a few more "formerly" graded cards.  Grading is also not a major factor in my hobby.

Favorite source for advice on what to collect:  I watch a few YouTubers, but they're mostly concerned with pre-war and/or HOF'er graded cards, which is fine, but not what I do.  I would think there are channels for set builders and "raw" bulk collectors like me, but I haven't found them yet.  The platforms like the "influencers" (read: investors) and company sites that hype up what to collect based on value are completely irrelevant.  I don't collect for the resale/flip value, I like what I like and collect it for nostalgia or connection reasons.

Apologies if a lot of that is the same old thing that I put in every other post or comment.  My tastes and criticisms haven't changed much over the years.

In general, I'd say 2024 was an OK year for my hobby.  I made a lot of progress on a couple vintage sets (Thanks Marv!), built several more through TCDB trades, and got a lot of player collection cards that way and by swapping from COMC sales.  Those sales and trades were the bulk of my activity on a daily and weekly basis.  Some of it was from the Storage Hoard that I mentioned in a March post.  I've recently added another vastly different batch that I've started to move through eBay too.  More on all that in the next couple posts.

Real Value

This card could be priceless!

At least every couple weeks, I go back and read my blog posts from past years.  Or I'll check the stats page and see which posts people have read in the past week.  It's always a very random sampling - I'm guessing it's what people are Googling and being led to, I'm not sure.  But anyway, today this post was in the list.

It was the last part of a list of items that originated in this post from Off Hiatus Baseball.  It's an adaptation of a 30 day music challenge that appeared on Twitter.  I completed my list in three posts.  And then I put this at the end:

That's what the most important thing about this hobby is - the connections we make.  The searching, finding, obtaining, cataloging, storing, admiring, and completing are all fun, but the trading, buying and selling, and discussing cards with other people, plus meeting the players depicted [on them] is the time to be valued most.  That personal value of a card is what drives the hobby.  It's not the dollar value, it's that it reminds you of a time with your Dad, or your friends, or witnessing a great ball game at the stadium, or home on TV.  That real-life experience of family, friends, and heroes is the actual benefit of hoarding these little cardboard slices.  They are merely colored and pressed paper, but what they can represent to an individual is a wide range of memories, feelings, and happiness.  And there's no such thing as too much of that!

Keep in mind that this was three years before the COVID boom.  I don't remember writing this specifically, but I think it sums up why I love these little slabs of cardboard so much. 

(The other reason has to do with the psychology of addiction to some degree, I'm sure.)

Let me know what you think....

Why I Am Not Into Grading

I've been thinking about this post for a long time, probably since I re-entered the hobby in the early 2000's, or at least since the Boom after the pandemic.  Mike from the Junk Wax Hero YouTube channel inspired me to write it after his video asking if grading was a scam.  I actually wrote this post a long time ago, but never published it apparently.  Might post that as a follow up.

My collecting style doesn't lend itself to grading in the first place.  I'm an old school set builder with tons of player collections and miscellaneous pursuits that all tend to pull in tons of bulk cards that are generally cheap.  I do have vintage sets, including the superstars, and the most expensive ones are kept in [the wrong kind of] holders separate from the binders or boxes containing the rest of the set.  The only ones that I've bought graded specimens of are my T205's.  (I did pick up a '57 Willie Mays this year, but only because the price was too good to pass up.)

I do think grading is useful for buying a card that you can't look at in person, and for authentication purposes (like my T205's), but that has it's flaws too.

So I won't say I'm totally against grading.  I actually submitted my first card for grading through COMC.  (It's one I was selling for a friend.)  But I have some major problems with many of the facets of that part of the hobby.  I'll try to illustrate them here.

Free The Prisoners - Slabs

Every graded card is imprisoned in a plastic shell, never to be touched, held, or smelled again.  At least with vintage cards, the smell is part of the appeal!  Plus, now you have to get a whole new set of storage supplies - bags, boxes and rubber bumpers.  And you can't put them in binders [very well], which is my favorite way to see them.

Say No To Crack - Inconsistency

The fact that someone can submit a card, get it back, be unsatisfied with the grade, and crack it out of the slab and send it back in (and sometimes get a much different grade), from the same company or a different one - kinda invalidates the authority of the grading companies.  If grading is supposed to be the final answer, then the answer should be the same.  But it isn't.  And it can be many reasons:  The amount of submissions someone makes, the mood of the grader that particular day, and simply the subjectivity of the human who's determining the grade.

And they should require that any card removed from a slab be un-registered!  They're not, so that means the population reports are inaccurate.  Speaking of which...

It Doesn't Add Up - Population Reports

The idea that the current number of a certain card that has been graded affects the value is ludicrous to me.  Now, if it's some pre-war scarce vintage issue then maybe.  But to say that something like a regular Topps issue card jumps in value because there have only been 12 of them that got a certain grade is ignoring so many factors.  My idea of the population report is that it's the count of people who decided to grade that card, with that particular company, and got that particular grade.  There are too many almost arbitrary decisions involved there.  It is NOT an indication of how many cards exist in the world in that condition - just how many that company has slabbed so far, which should have nothing to do with the value.  

Pump It Up - The Inflated Prices

This is the most illogical part of it for me.  Let me try to explain how I think about it.

This is a "raw" 1975 Topps Nolan Ryan.  Card number 500.  It is well centered, has sharp corners, and has nice color and eye appeal.  Without subjecting it to extreme magnification, or really anything more than casual scrutiny, I would say this was almost mint condition.

If you look at current copies for sale in similar condition on COMC, you see that the best ones are running about $40 to $50.

The left and center ones are on sale from $40+, and are better looking than the highest priced one on the right (at least the scans are better - an extra service by the site).  But in general, the going price for a great condition '75 Ryan is around the $50 range.  

Now, at least in my mind, the purpose of grading is to "certify" that the card is in that particular condition.  Mint, NrMt/Mt, Near-Mint, ExMt, Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair, and Poor.  Numeric values are assigned to the different condition levels - some of which are expanded to fill a ten point scale, or even farther to fill a twenty point scale (with .5 scores in between).  

"Raw" cards have always been priced by condition - all the way back since the days when the Beckett book was still the authority on card values.  (Some people still do, but they're living in the past.)  The book listed two or three price values, but always had the chart to calculate the values for the conditions in between.  The High book column was the full retail price.  The Low column was the lowest price one could find if they dug deep and shopped around.  Most dealers quoted the High book price when selling a card - usually without much modification.

Essentially, the High book price was the value of a specimen of that card in the nicest condition.

Therefore, I think it is logical to say, (and I always have), that the value of a "10" should be no more than the high book value of the raw card.  Translated to today, that would be the average eBay or COMC sale price of the ungraded card in similar condition.

Lately, I've considered backing that down slightly to maybe a 9, since the companies are far stricter in giving 10's.  (At least PSA is.)

Because, what is really happening here?  

The card starts in a certain condition.

Bet you thought is was an 8-ish

The card is graded and therefore "certified" to be in that condition.  Then it is encased to prevent damage and handling to change that condition.  

Has the piece of cardboard actually changed?  No.

It's the same thing - just now it's "officially" that condition.  

What is the value?  

To me, it should be the same as the raw value, plus maybe the cost of grading, if it's being sold.

But is this what happens?  No.

Here is PSA's chart for graded '75 Ryans.  You can see that a 6 is close to the real raw value of the card today.  But the grades above that take massive leaps.  

Now, I would concede that a 10 is probably a rarity, so that would be worth a bit more, but not OVER 500 TIMES MORE!

Even the expected 8 score is valued at TEN TIMES the value of a similar raw card as shown in the COMC listings.  It makes no sense to me whatsoever.

It's a Near Mint card - officially.  So the value of a Near Mint card is $__.  Maybe plus the $35 for grading and if it's a 10, then what?  25% more?  Where do you get the other $400 from?  The prestige of PSA grading?  

Let's look at a couple other examples....

Low and High prices of 2006 Topps Derek Jeter on COMC - from $1 to $6.23.  28 of them.

Now modern cards should basically be almost perfect, right?  So 10's shouldn't be that much higher....

Well, they're charging $90 above the price of the card itself.  Or, let's do the math to add the grading cost and Gem 10 premium.  ($6 + $35) * 1.25 = $51.25.  Still just half...

And on to the ridiculous:

1987 Topps Mark McGwire - COMC starts just over a dollar.  There are over 1000 listings.  Highest is $21.  (Wish that guy luck).  Junk wax star - Nobody should price this over three to five bucks, right?

Survey said .... Bzzzzt!

Two hundred and twenty something more?  Child Please.  They are nowhere near rare.  And 10's can't be that tough to find.

But maybe there is hope....

I think these people are starting to figure it out...

I used to think (and see) that every graded card was inflated to several times the price of the ungraded card no matter what the score.  Lately, I have observed that there are slabbed copies available for about the same as a decent copy of the unburdened one.  So hopefully, we are seeing the end of these massively boosted price tags.  But it might put the auction houses out of business. 

In conclusion, grading isn't going anywhere.  There are too many collectors who only do high end cards and want them all graded.  And that's OK.  I will never be one of them.  There's room for everyone in the hobby.  And I'm not such a puritan that I won't take advantage of an increased price on the rare occasion that I'm trying to sell a card.

I do believe that there is a faction of people out there who are sickeningly rich who manipulate these prices among themselves.  The prices aren't real.  But the Gem 10's keep selling.  

I'll stick with raw cards in quarter and dollar boxes and stars at reasonable prices, thanks.  Collect what you like.

Just don't grade ALL the cards, please....

Too Much "Hoozat Dude"?

Was browsing blogs today and saw the first post about the new 2023 Topps Flagship cards.  I really haven't read very many posts about them, but a couple other people said there had been a whole lot of hype around the new issues.  I guess it's all on social media now instead of across dozens of blogs, so that's why I haven't encountered any.

I've said it a lot - I stopped caring about the flagship set after 2020.  When the pandemic messed up the season, and then even when they could play, there were no fans, I really lost interest in watching baseball.  It just got weird.

Another contributing factor was that my two local teams weren't very good.  The Orioles did make impressive progress this past year, but I still didn't keep up with them.  And the Nationals have purged all but a couple players from their championship season, so I couldn't tell you who plays for them now.

That statement is true for the rest of the league as well.  Since I don't watch, I don't know the players very well anywhere.  Except for the stars and some of the regular starters.  

 Got me to thinking - How many players in Series 1 do I recognize by name?  

Not bad, they are getting closer to real LL cards

So I found a checklist that I could paste into a spreadsheet and then went through and separated the team cards, the league leaders, and the special combo cards.  Those account for 35 cards of the 330 in Series 1.

Of the 295 players that are left, I kept the ones I knew well - the stars like Juan Soto, Bryce Harper, Kris Bryant, etc.

And the names that I recognize from years before, either watching games or on the cards.  The Marcus Stromans, Darin Rufs, Alex Verdugos of the world.  Guys I recall names, but might not be able to pick out of a lineup.

I made a third column of names that were sort of familiar, but I wasn't positive.  Guys I may have heard of, but have no clue about otherwise.  Tyler Stephenson, Kendall Graveman, Matt Chapman, and three guys named Duran.  (Only one of which I probably have heard of - most likely via rookie hype in cards.)

The rest I deleted from the list.  Sorry, never heard of you...

My totals look like this:

Known players = 105

Unsure players = 31

Team/LL/Special cards = 35

So basically, the conclusion is that I only know about 30% of Series 1.  Maybe 40% if you fudge the numbers for the uncertain ones.  Now I do understand that Series 1 is only half the set.  And they sometimes keep the bigger names for Series 2.

But in the end, it's still way too few to be spending time & money chasing their cards.  And I even like the design for once.  Guess that's why I can't relate to collecting stuff like Bowman.

It was even more pathetic for my favorite teams.  I recognize four guys (out of 11 + team card) from the Orioles and a whole ONE guy from the Nationals (out of 10+ team card).  Sheesh!   I kept seeing O's & Nats as I was deleting a lot of the rookies.  I killed almost all the listings with "RC" next to them.

How many of the players in Series 1 do you recognize?  And does it affect your enthusiasm for the cards?  

2022 A&G Final Review

Got my base cards sorted Friday.  Ended up with about 37% duplicates from three hobby boxes.  Seemed a bit much since I need 88 to complete my set and had triples of several.  But, I'm much happier that the inserts really didn't duplicate.  I can live with having to find base cards.

I find it amusing but somewhat disappointing that Topps skipped two numbers in the base set (167 and 181) and then duplicated two numbers in the short print range (337 Juan Gonzalez/ Manny Ramirez and 344 Lou Piniella / Luis Castillo - the latter two are not marked as SPs).  Who knows if this is a gimmick or just incompetence? 

Other than the high base double rate, I didn't end up with many SP or insert dupes.  Had ten extra SPs (that inludes two Manny's) and five inserts - three Pitching a Gems (Verlander, Greinke and Berrios), a Nurses' Day, and Joe Morgan Banner Season.  

Like I mentioned, all my player minis are available.  As are the two box loader jumbos I got that you might not have caught on the last post.  Vlad Jr. and deGrom were the ones I pulled.  I might try to do the N43s, since I blew away the odds and pulled a Jeter!  If I can find Judge, Trout etc. for cheap, I'll go for it.  

There are a lot of food-themed inserts this year.  I'll finish them, but they don't excite me as much as the Baseball Lexicon and Time Out! minis.  The Famous Rivals, like the above Jersey vs. Everyone (now that's funny) even included two of the Get That Bread sandwiches in the list.  Which I would say was a bit much.  They got Yankees/Red Sox, but didn't include Dallas/Washington (or any of the other NFL matchups), Republican/Democrat, USA/USSR Cold War, Notre Dame/USC, Duke/UNC, Ford vs. Chevy, Coke/Pepsi (ok, trademarks), or any of the other hundreds of college, soccer, political, social faceoffs that are recalled much more than many of their choices.  

And I won't even speculate on the Special Days they appear to have made up in their offices.  There are only about four of those that seem legit actual holidays.

These Inside The Park minis are nice looking, but most of them look the same - a landscape with mountains and trees, so they're rather indistinguishable without squinting to read the names.  And there are 32 of them, which I think lends to the theme this year of baseball terms in real life - there are 32 ballparks, (Editor's note - hmmm, there are only 30 - never mind).  That feels like too many.  Unless I find most of them really cheap, I'm on the fence on completing them.  I only got four of them out of all three hobby boxes.

Didn't get any Still Searching's - mystery creatures of lore, or What A Steal!'s - famous theft attempts.  These could be retail exclusives.  I won't know unless they sell blasters for $20.

Hit me up if you need some base or player minis.  I still have some from the last couple years A&G sets too.

More Rescues From Among The Commons

As I've probably stated before in a number of ways, I'm not a rookie collector.

I can't wrap my head around the idea that a rookie card of a guy who only has a lot of potential is worth way more than (even the rookie sometimes) of a player who actually accomplished a HOF worthy career.  

But that's a whole other post...

One of the things that comes out of all the rookie hype is when you're building sets, you better hope you pulled the big rookie cards when you opened your boxes, or got them in trade before they took off.  Luckily, I had all the ones I was looking for.

On the flip side, since I don't pay so much attention to modern rookies, I will often leave them in the set boxes with all the rest of the base cards.  I will have finished the set, so they are in there somewhere, but as you saw with the Mike Trout post, I recently figured out it's probably better to pull them out and preserve on them at least a little bit.  

I intend to put them in the binder where all my major star cards are that aren't with their respective sets.  I have heard YouTubers say that binders and pages aren't good protection.  Aside from slabbing them, which will never happen, are top loaders or one-touches generally considered much better options than pages?  I don't have the storage space for many more top loaders.  Let me know in the comments...

So I went on COMC (This is generally how I figure out dollar values for stuff.)  and pulled up most of the current major stars (that I could think of - your comments helped a lot) and looked to see what their base Topps rookie cards were selling for, since those seem to be highly sought after lately.  I made a list of all the ones that were around $8 and over.  Nobody is close to Trout at four digits, but a few were more than I expected.  And since you can't really separate regular base cards in a COMC search for "topps base <player name>", I ran across a few others that I hunted down too, like A&G or Heritage high numbers.

Here is the group after I pulled them out:

I put them in top loaders for the time being, but like I said, they'll end up in a binder unless several of you leave screaming comments that I'm an idiot...Though I have put certain singles in top loaders and filed them back with the sets before too...

The down side of set building sometimes is that you amass the whole thing with most or all the inserts, sort it into a box, and then it goes on the shelf and sits for a very long time.  A few of these cards were in boxes that were way down on the bottom of stacks or deep in cabinets.

Like Altuve's 2011 Topps ($18) ~ that set was on the very bottom of the rack. 

Trout was in that bottom box too.  I just realized I forgot Goldschmidt ($35)...dangit!  Gotta pull that one back out again!

Had to think about where my 2013 Update set was.  I have a factory base set, and couldn't recall how I got the Update.  It was lurking in the cabinet.

 

...with the Opening Day set.

Yelich's Topps base is on the border of $7-8 like Posey's, so I haven't pulled it yet.  Arenado is $20+ and this Heritage High Number is selling for $68 right now.  Not sure if that's a fluke...

He was up on the cabinet shelf with the old school Update sets (lower right).  Mine isn't sorted, but he popped right up when I pulled out the first few cards.

2014 starts a run of Topps sets that fit into two row shoe boxes with Series 1, 2 & Update.  My run from 2014 to 2018 are all stored this way.  These guys are about $40-50 each for their regular rookies right now.  This is about when they started with the regular+rookie debut cards since just making one of a guy isn't nearly enough any more...

Lindor ($12) is the only one from 2015 or '16 that I pulled.  

Then we get to the guys that are still way up on the hot list.  Judge has one base ($41) and three Update cards ($8, $13, $20), plus I yanked his Bunt blue ($21) that I happened to pull and his '87 ($29) from my set.

And for Ohtani, almost nothing of his is registering below $10, so they all came out...even some Stadium Club inserts.  The one with Ichiro is only marked $4, so I might throw that one back...

If I was a good fan of the Nats, I should have a lot more Soto ($25) stuff, but he was in such high demand right from the jump that I never had any real opportunities to get anything exotic.

And I still need Tatis' RC from Stadium Club to finish that set....his are all about $10.

I did pull an Acuña auto from the previous Stadium Club and sold it on eBay.  Still have most of the others in that post.  His Update is going for around $20.

I was glad to pull the Vlad no-number at the time.  Of course, it's only like $17 now.  When those come out you think you might have hit a super rare short print, but the ones I find mellow out quickly.

So if you're a set builder, what do you do with the big name rookie cards?  (Guess it depends on how you store your sets too).  What is your value threshold to separate them from the set?  Or do you?  Bleep bloop it below, thanks!