Semi-Grey Saturday Blowout Deals

Could have made it really click-bait if I'd have written this yesterday - Black Friday - but this is how it works out.

Anyway, I do have some more basically free stuff to offer.  It's a mixture of oddball items from the National that might have value to someone out there. The majority are marketing items from companies who cater to a different type of collector than me.  Links are to the company sites.

I should never take tall, slim pictures for the blog.  They don't fit well.

Anyway, these are the items up for grabs.  I guess I'm taking the first comment to claim an item.

First up, a (Gary) VeeFriends Super Sticker of Bullish Bull.  Um...I got nothin'...

Also a stack of the annual Heritage Auctions cards - still sealed.  

You can have either or both.

A Piece Of The Game commemorative coin with red felt pouch.  This version limited to 5000 copies.  My fellow convention-goer Stuart got one of a smaller production number (gold version?).  The back is just their contact info and a QR code.  They're a memorabilia company.

BCW card frame with the National 2023 label.  Insert your favorite card from the show or scratch off the lettering(?) and enjoy a nice blue frame to show off your favorite cardboard.  There are four big screws in the back to split the frame into front and back halves.

Voucher and sticker, plus information about the TAG grading company.  Voucher is contained in a black framed top loader.  Oh shoot, it says the offer for the free additional grading is only until the end of the show (July '23).  Sorry about that.  But if you're into them, you can have the sticker....

 

Finkelmeier Insurance ad card disguised as a Michael Jordan Fleer rookie. 
I could keep this next to my fake Wayne Gretzky rookie and bogus Jackie Robinson card, but if you're a Jordan hoops collector, this is more for you.

And finally...

Oh never mind.  This $10 discount coupon for the eBay Vault expired in October.  My bad.

And I guess I didn't take a separate pic of the Pristine Auctions can cozy, but that's available too.

If I get a few requests (or even comments at this point) for this stuff, I'll put up some other actual cards to give away before Christmas.

"Redskins" - Not Offensive - They Asked

Here we go again the the DC Metro area - another wave of controversy about the nickname of the football team.  This time, it's not the Native Americans protesting (because it never is), it's the multimillion dollar sponsors trying to score points on their PR by jumping on the media bandwagon generated by the anti-racism protests.

In 2014, former Redskins players wanted to know what Native Americans thought of the name "Redskins".  So they did the responsible thing.  THEY ASKED THEM.  And what they found was that the word was created by the Native Americans themselves.  And isn't a slur at all.

The Redskins logo was designed by a tribal chief from Montana in the early 1970s.

"He helped create that logo that we all love, and that is one example of just the facts and the truth and the things that a lot of people ignore," said team owner Dan Snyder. "And I think it's time that people look at the truth and the history and real meanings and look at us for what we are. We are a historical football team that is very proud and that has a great legacy and honors and respects people."

“What the Redskins name means now is awareness for the plight some Native Americans are going through,” former WR Gary Clark said. “All the people saying the name is racist, I see them doing nothing to support the Native Americans whatsoever.”

“Once you come to one reservation, you realize that none of this is about the name”

Some critics of the name, Moseley said, “don’t know what they’re talking about. They’ve done no research. They’ve never talked to an Indian. They have no knowledge of what Redskins really stands for. They just heard someone say this is like the N-word, and all of a sudden people jumped on the bandwagon and said it’s racist, and that’s ridiculous.

“We know it’s not a racist word,” Moseley said. “It’s not something they’re ashamed of. And at the same time, while doing this we found this need which is out there that we can help with, and so that’s what we’re doing.”

Cleveland's Chief Wahoo was a caricature of a Native American.  No Native Americans have ever said that they look like or aspire to look like that.  So they got rid of it.

Atlanta thought better of the "screaming Indian" logo and retired it in 1989.  (But almost brought it back in 2013).  It was a stereotypical image of an Indian, and did not portray Native Americans as they actually are.

Washington Bullets changed to the Wizards in the late 90's.  There is only one meaning to the word bullet.  It's the projectile fired from a gun.  There was a lot of gun violence and people dying in DC, so they got rid of it.

George Preston Marshall was the last team owner to integrate his team with African Americans.  He fought against the idea.  So they took his statue down.  OK fine.  But the original team that became the Redskins was coached by a Native American, and had six players of indian descent on the roster.  Marshall's prejudice didn't include Native Americans.

Redskins is the term that a lot of Native Americans use to describe Native Americans as a whole.  Otherwise, they describe themselves by the particular tribes they come from.  The only people who think it's 100% offensive are not Native Americans.  Another race has raised a fuss (justifiably so), so now these sponsor companies think that Native Americans have the exact same problems, so let's change NFL marketing.  What will this do to help Native Americans?  Nothing.

But money rules everything, so I guess we'll have to get used to the Washington football team being called the Capitalists.  Because that's all that seems to matter.  Native American issues will go unresolved and now be ignored even more.  But the corporations will be able to sleep at night, even though they're taking away an avenue to improve the lives of the people they think are being affected by the name.

The Perfect Product

There's a lot of hype in advertising.  There's a lot of hype in the marketing of sports cards.  But if you step back and think about it, cards live up to a lot of the hype.  They're practically the perfect product.  If there weren't all those league and player association logos on the back, and all that fine print, they might have room for stuff that means a lot to other products.  Look at all these features!

Even the Kellogg's cards - which came inside cereal made from wheat and other grains - have never contained a smidgen of gluten.  There's no gluten in trees or plastic.

Well, maybe the card that was packed up against the stick of gum might technically have some residue, but it wasn't an ingredient of the cardboard, right?

From the beginning, it's been all about plant products.  Tobacco leaves and wood pulp for card board.  What could be more natural?  Ok, maybe the occasional acetate card is an exception...

As Nick of Dime Boxes... fame found out first hand, cards may be tasty to the dog, but probably hold no nutritional value at all.  Maybe there's a little fiber in older cards...?

Some of the players depicted have been under suspicion of modifying their chemical constitutions, enhancing their hormone and endurance levels, but even they haven't genetically modified themselves.  Some custom cards are modifications of real ones, but that doesn't count either...

Not only are cards dolphin safe, but there are actually cards of Dolphins!

Dozens of designer colors!

Thin & Compact for easy storage!

Reminds me of an old George Carlin bit:

Get some now! Everybody has one! They're almost gone! They're portable, lightweight, easy to use, collapsible, convenient and guaranteed! Get some now! The new Super Jumbo Deluxe! Handy, pre-wrapped, designer colors and available in all sizes! Get some now! They won't rust, tarnish, blister, crack or peel....

Things (Most Collectors) Like That I Don't

Nick from Dime Boxes started what is evolving into a Bat Around about your top ten things about the hobby or the game of baseball that most people like, but you don't.

This was interesting in that it is definitely easy to confuse it with things I hate that everyone else complains about too, or things I like that no one bothers with (though it wasn't as easy to come up with as much on that list as originally theorized).   And I'll expand the concept slightly into "things that collectors that believe the hype like" vs. some of us old-school bloggers who don't necessarily follow the trends.  I also tacked on a couple things about the game in real life when I ran out of card concepts toward the end.


#1 - Rookies

Yes, I call myself the "Anti-Collector" sometimes because the hobby is driven by the latest "Hot Rookie", and I could care less.  Star rookies are generally the last few base cards I need to complete a current set, and when (not if) I don't pull them, I count on generous traders to send them to me so I don't have to pay $3 each otherwise.  When I sorted my sets in the 80's, the rookie cards went in the back of each team.  Makes no sense to me that a base card of some young dude with potential can be valued at ten times that of an accomplished veteran player who has broken records or been on multiple All-Star teams.

This also strikes down the appeal of several other things:

• most high end product (rookie saturated hits)
• short prints at the end of sets (rookies you'll almost never find cheap)
• many insert sets
• Buying things from dealers at shows who cater to the masses

#2 - Bowman

You could say this was #1a, since they go hand in hand.  But Bowman cards aren't just players I've never heard of, they're also a confusing mixture of what should be different products.  There are veteran cards, and then there are "1st Bowman cards", which would be OK, but then there are also Prospects, and (or?) Draft Prospects.  And then, mixed among all that is Chrome Prospects, which are not inserts in the Chrome set, but in the regular set!  And there is a separate Draft product, which also has Chrome inserts, but they're all autographs. And the Chrome set has Elite inserts, and ... Oh I give up.


#3 - Shiny

It would probably help if Chrome wasn't so dang expensive.  Some designs lend themselves to shiny, but not all of them.  But you can probably find them that way somewhere.  Shiny is just not that much of a selling point to me.  And retro shiny is just the dumbest thing ever.  It's such a contradiction ~ let's take an old school design and apply a new-fangled technology on it as part of a tribute set.  Uh....Why?

This also kinda ties into glossy parallels, especially those in football sets like Score or Donruss Classics.  They're just one more card you have to hunt for while at the same time finding some ambitious collector who wants the glossy versions.  No thanks.  Instant trade bait.


#4 - Online Exclusives

Most of the lists that I've seen so far on this Bat Around agree that online exclusive cards have no appeal, but someone keeps buying enough of them to sell out immediately all the time.  Shops and dealers are falling by the wayside, and meanwhile, you companies keep pushing stuff that has to be bought direct.  Most of it is the same Hype Machine players in recycled designs, or oversize copies of other stuff for way too much money.  I'm just glad my player collections don't show up too often.  Not that I check much anyway.


#5 - Social Media Trading

OK, maybe Blogger is considered social media?  So I'm not trying to be hypocritical by disparaging social media on a form of social media.  But since I'm not on any other form of it (except Instagram, but not for cards), I can claim no participation otherwise.  I've asked many time before whether I'm missing out of great trading and exchange of information abuot the hobby from Facebook, Twitter, and the like, but I've never had a satisfactory answer that would lead me to want to join any of them.


#6 - Book Value

 

I still deal with the occasional trader or dealer that continue to validate "book value".  I understand if you want to make a trade more or less equal, so you use the book as a far-reaching reference for everything.  But there are also still dealers who consult Beckett to set pricing at their show tables.  Now if they look up a price and then quote me 60% off or more, than I'm OK with it.  When I'm quoting current cash value, however, I prefer to see what COMC and SportLots or eBay have to say.  A collector friend still subscribes (mostly to keep his consecutive streak going, even though he's lost a few to natural disaster) and likes to read the high values of stuff we've pulled from the latest packs.  I always tell him to check the low column and take a discount from there, because that's about what I can probably find it for.


#7 - Grading

Why??

"Mojo".  That's what I say to myself when I walk by a table full of graded card slabs with the usual young dudes wheeling and dealing the current Hype Machine fodder to willing buyers.  I've said it many times.

A Gem mint 10 Graded card should not be worth any more than High raw value.  (Though see #6 above.)

Grading is a mechanism where buyers can get an idea about the condition of a card that they can't hold in their hands.  They are allegedly measured against universal standards and rated according to objective interpretation of those standards.   Now whether that happens in real life without influence from how much volume an individual submits etc. is another debate.

Also, it is completely irrelevant to me how many people have arbitrarily decided to send in the same card for grading.  Therefore "low population" should have no bearing on value either.


#8 - Basketball

Hoops is low on this list.  I don't hate it.  I just don't follow it.  I recognize most of the names that are mentioned on the ESPN shows (while I'm waiting for them to talk about football).  But basketball is the one sport that I don't even completely understand.  Still can't get my head around what a "foul to give" is, or what the "possession arrow" means.  Nor do I know what the different positions are, or who plays what, except maybe Center.  Can't even tell you many of the teams that the stars play for.  You know, LeBron, Curry, and Jordan were easy, but these other guys, I got nothing.  It's just not my thing.


#9 - The Strikeout K

This one's from a bit deeper.  But my conviction is strong.  When scoring a baseball game.  The symbol for a strikeout is a letter "K".  But there are two possibilities - a batter can swing and miss - moving the bat in an arc through the strike zone.  That symbol is a regular letter K.  When the batter does nothing - does not move at all - the symbol is the backwards K.

This is totally contradictory to logic.

When there is movement - the symbol is normal (doesn't change).  When there is not movement, the symbol changes to backward.  Now do you see?

I say a swinging strike should be signified by a swinging K.  And a batter caught looking - still standing there normally, should be recorded by a normal K.  Therefore the "swinging K" is for a "swinging strike".  The K is like a gate, and swings around the vertical post when the bat does.  Seems perfectly logical to me.  Don't know how they've gone so long with it wrong.


#10 - Pitcher's Intimidating(?) Mannerisms

Scraping the bottom with this one.  There aren't many guys that do this, but these two are famous for it.  Jonathan "Pucker Boy" Papelbon always looked in for the signs with his face clenched in what I can only describe as an expression like he was going to spit out an egg at any moment.  Craig Kimbrel poses in this "flapping vulture" configuration to get his instructions.  I guess they think they're intimidating batters or something with their intensity, but to me it's just ego-driven theatrics.  And they look stupid.  Kids, don't try this at home.


To each his own.  The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of anyone else in authority in this hobby or any sport in general.  My apologies to Jay Bell and basketball fans everywhere.

Rookie Saturation - One More

A little add-on to my last post, or encore, if you will.  Keeping it short so I can go root for Fuji's Sharks to close out the Avalanche and advance to round 3 against the Blues.  Going to be tough to decide who I like there...but I digress.

Here is the complete count graph of all Topps sets from 1955 to 2018.  It's a combination of Topps flagship and Topps Update/Rookie & Traded etc. sets.  The blue line is physical cards produced each year.  The orange line is total players depicted on those cards.  There are many years where these two are the same number.

You'll probably have to click on the chart to see it very well since it's so long.

But what you can tell is that while the number of rookie cards fluctuates between seasons, the trend isn't really an incline one way or the other.  Rather, it's just kinda up and down around the 100 count mark (highlighted in yellow).

If you shave the peaks and low valleys, you can see a general flat-ish trend.  The actual range is something like 60-100 cards, or 100-150 players, and only falls outside of that a couple times over the 63 year span.  When I started this little study, I expected the left end to start around a few dozen and the right side be way up off the chart, but that isn't what happened.

Anyway, other suggestions for different analysis of this data (or any other, really) is welcome in the comments.

Rookie Card Saturation ... Fact Or Fiction?

As I've said many times before, I'm an old-school collector.  I don't really care or prioritize rookie cards in my cardboard pursuits.  When I started in the 80's, the most visible rookie cards were multi-player issues that I put at the end of team sets.  A lot of them were even numbered to show up in the end of sets too.  These days, rookies are the most popular and sought after things that the producers make and market.  It seems like most products are made to promote them, whether the player shown is the new phenom who is playing at the big league level, or the future prospect.  Either way, at least to me, the card market is all about the rookie player.

Sometimes I feel like the hobby is one big propaganda machine geared to force everyone to believe that rookies are the only worthwhile cards to collect.

I have been under the impression that the flagship sets issued in the last several years have been more saturated with rookie cards than ever.  Since the RC logo was developed in 2006, rookie cards have been more visible.  But I still thought that they put more younger players into the most recent sets compared to years past. And that Bowman became the most rookie-centric product of all, so the numbers of Bowman rookies must be huge. 

But is this really true?

I decided to go through and chart out the number of rookie cards issued in the major flaship sets.  Topps, of course was the only manufacturer until 1981, and then Donruss and Fleer joined.  Bowman (a sub-label of Topps) and Upper Deck appeared around 1989.  Then the other companies came and went a couple times and now we're basically left with Topps and Bowman again.  Topps issued Traded or Update sets under various names for most years.  The point of those being to catch up with more new rookies as well as the players that changed teams.  The Fleer name appeared under Fleer Tradition in the late 90's as well, and also issued some update sets.

So let's look at the numbers.  I went through the Trading Card Database and looked at the section on each set lableled Rookies.  Lucky for me, they already did most of the leg work.  Each Rookie list has all the cards issued for that set that qualify as rookie cards.  And they post a count above each list.  Now, any variations would add to that count, so I had to be on the lookout for those (I may have missed a few).  It also includes manager rookies, but they aren't in such significant numbers to make the counts much different.

I'm going to show these in reverse order, starting with the most recent years.  As you can see, the Topps numbers have been the largest for the last decade plus, especially in the Update set.  The biggest spike is 2015, with Topps issuing 179 rookie cards (with 192 different players depicted).  The little black numbers are the total player counts which take into account multi-player cards in Update.
Bowman, on the other hand, only puts about 30 rookie cards in it's flagship set, which is smaller than Topps.  I checked to see if Chrome or Draft Picks & Prospects had way more, but they really didn't.  You can see in 2012 that the counts for those two only nearly matched (not surpassing) flagship Topps.   The one glitch in this chart is that the database had no RC's designated for Donruss products from 2015-2017.  I'm not sure if that really means there aren't any, or they just didn't get listed on the site.

The graph shows it better.  except for spikes in 2006 by UD, and 2015 by Topps Update, the numbers have been fairly consistent.  No steady increase from left to right like I figured.

I suppose there is some effect from the number and quality of the actual rookie classes from year to year, but I don't know what the trends would be.  I'll just stick with counting cards.

OK, so lets look at the previous decades.  More companies and more cards, right?

So there are some differences.  Topps averaged in the 60's for the recent years, and now they drop to the 30's or 40's except for a few bigger numbers early.  The "Total Players" line is again, the total number of players depicted on the counted cards in Update.  From 1992 til 2001, there were a lot of 2-, 3-, and 4-player rookie cards put into those Update or Traded sets.  This makes a difference especially when you look at 1994 for example.  Topps created 66 cards with rookies on them, but there were 109 players on those 66 cards.

The most glaring part of this chart (not only because I highlighted the overall high - and low - numbers in yellow) is the Bowman numbers.  Peaking at an overall high of 202 in '93, Bowman's numbers blew up after their first year, and then cooled a bit until 2002.  There is your evidence that Bowman is the rookie-centric product, though I though it continued until now.  For some reason, it stopped dead after 2005.  Bowman went from 162 RC's to a stunning 10.  That may be because of the RC logo regulations, I'm not sure.

Click on the chart to see it full size.  Rookie saturation reached its highest levels in the early 1990's.  And except for the spikes in 2002-05, they haven't reached the 140 mark for a single set since.  Even if I were to combine the Topps and Update numbers together, they still wouldn't rival the Bowman numbers of the 90's.  Topps & Update would just about match the Bowman figures for the early 2000's.

So it had to start in the late 80's right?  None of the vintage sets before that probably had nearly that many rookies, did they?

Au contraire!

I went back to 1955 - mostly because it was a nice even number (and I had initially just done every five years to get a ballpark idea of the counts).  I listed out the counts for multi-player cards that appeared much more often back then in Flagship than they do now.  But there were almost just as many single player cards that were rookies along with the multi's.  So the counts were astonishingly high to me.

Remember I said that no set had hit the 140 mark except for '91-'94 and '02-'05 (plus a few in between)?  Check out the vintage levels!  '64, '65, '69, and '71 all surpass that mark, and several others come close!  The lowest number is 53 cards / 82 players. By just eyeballing it, the average is somewhere around 70 cards or over 100 players!  That means the average is well above most of the 2000's and a lot of the non-Topps sets of any decade!  Take out the Bowman bars on the previous graph, and vintage sets might double up most of the others!

So it is basically true that Topps + Topps Update has been issuing the highest numbers of rookie cards, but not just in the last few years.  It's been doing so since the turn of the century, and the numbers haven't moved much.  And you could even say that those numbers only ticked up a little since Topps started making cards in the first place.

Ironically, the conclusion I draw from this is that most collectors who get frustrated from the over-emphasis of rookie cards and the resulting concepts (like super short prints, mojo-centric products full of rookies, and other pitfalls of modern issues), go back to building vintage sets instead - where there are actually just as many, if not more rookies per capita!

Bonus Packs!

2018 Gypsy Queen comes in a "monster box" package.

The front of the box reads "10 packs plus 2 bonus packs"

Now it's not two "extra packs" like on blasters, but at least the two packs have something special in them worth mentioning on the box.

This is how you do "bonus packs", Topps!

This is NOT.

Which one is the extra pack?

Just say the total number of packs and be done with it.  This is stupid.  Stop it.

Rant over.

2017 Update Box #1 (of 2)

Even though I've read nothing but lukewarm reviews of Topps Series 3 for 2017, I went ahead and ordered two regular hobby boxes.  I've heard a couple collectors have finished their sets with only one box, but I'm not sure if that was a Jumbo or a Regular.  We'll see.

First off, I'll get right to the part you guys like - the trade bait.  Got an All-Star jersey of McCullers, who I took note of in his last couple postseason appearances.  I had a feeling I'd hear his name for something significant again.  Hopefully, a Game 7 win.  (Sorry Night Owl, gotta let the new guys win.)

Also got a pink parallel Reddick, and the usual amount of gold and foil parallels.  Some blogger favorite teams and players in there.  The Salute inserts are available too.

Here too, are my buybacks.  Nothing major here.  Contents of both the above pics are available.

Keep in mind, I'll probably have another set of these two pics after I rip the second box.  I had half a mind to sort what I got in the first box and leave it at that, returning the second box as unnecessary.  But since the hit I pulled doesn't have any weight with me, I can't send the other box back without knowing that I wouldn't have pulled something incredible.  If I keep it, I'll get something OK, but probably not awesome (though from this vendor I actually have pulled a few Machados, etc.) but if I send it back, it would have a 1/1 super case hit inside, I'm sure.


After I opened the whole box, I sorted them into stacks of regular players (who have allegedly moved teams recently), rookies, All-Stars, and other team and event cards.  I separated the inserts, and then sifted through each pile to remove doubles.  Only got a few dupes, so at least that's nice.

So here's what I found.  There were a lot more "moving" players than I originally thought.  Now I didn't go so far as to print out the list of every player that was involved in a trade or free agent transaction during the 2017 season, but that wouldn't have been beyond my scope.  What I relied on instead, was the notation on the back of each card that I can barely see, but it's easy enough to read the last numbers.  So I sorted out the players whose transactions occurred in 2016 and 2017.  What we're after in Update is players who changed teams in 2017.  2016 moves should have been covered last year, right?

Well, apparently not.  Click on picture for better view:

The stack of 2017 players is smaller than the 2016s.  and those stacks are of course dwarfed by the stack of rookies, and rookies debuts (which are redundant and only exist because of the hype machine), and the additional few Rookie Combos.

Why so many?  Well you know by now.  It's the card company poilcy...

YOU MUST COLLECT ROOKIES!

But I digress.  I haven't counted the stacks, but just eyeballin' it, it seems that rookies (and their redundant counterparts and Debuts) account for almost three times the "updated" players from 2017.  With so many significant traded players missing, there are still at least twice as many rookies. 

If I can figure out an effiicient way of researching it, I'm going to see if I can find out if this has been a trend over the last several years/sets, or if they really ramped it up for 2017.  Stay tuned for that and box #2.