Case Closed

Well, now that I've wasted three weeks and a lot of you have probably forgotten about it, and that Heritage is now past and largely irrelevant, here is my case break recap.

Here's what a whole case looks like sorted by card type and stacked up together.  12 piles of base on the right and all the inserts, short prints, hits, parallels and shiny things.

All the base fit neatly into a four row box that Stuart brought.  We sorted it all into sets later.  That was an interesting exercise - as we were making six sets at the same time.  Keeping the wants for each one straight was challenging, but we did it.

There were about 96 short prints, as we had calculated.  But since we wanted two full sets, we had to decide how to split them up.  We ended up putting them in order and then dealing them into two piles - first card on the left, second one on the right, third on the left, and so on.  We did have a few dupes that we split first, including the Ohtani Highlight, which was nice.

I'm gonna torture you (or at least make you scroll to the end) by leaving the mojo for last.

Three buyback box toppers.  Larry went to Night Owl.  Astros hot case....

Rounding out the other nine box toppers - the jumbos.  These are really nice.

News Flashback inserts.  Probably the flashiest design these have ever had.  Didn't get two of them and had a double and a triple.  The triple was handy since I needed another one of those for my space binder.

Baseball Flashbacks - again with a dupe and two no-shows.  The downside of these is that we needed two full sets since we each build them all.  So basically I let Stuart take the majority of the inserts in general and I traded for what I needed.  That way neither of us spent money on them after all this.  I had dibs on my player guys, but didn't get too many others.  But since trading on the TCDB is what it is, it was fine.

Same collation with the Then & Nows.  I got dibs on the Palmers since he's a PC.

The Nappy's (New Age Performers) were much more plentiful than the rest.  Stuart got 'em all and my missing count was a single digit number.  Nice design too.

All but one purple was from the "hot box".  A few of these have been traded away.  Elly looks different because he's in a toploader.  Should have sold him quickly after the break, he was going for $100.  Now he's around $30-40...

Only got one black chrome refractor /75.

One silver refractor /375...

And one missing signature.

 Oops, found another one later when we were sorting the base...

A single black & white image as well.

Three chrome refractors /575...

Four (different) image swaps - one twice.  Matos hot box.

Only three regular black bordered ones.  Seemed like there were more...

Three color swaps - Owen's base on the left

Nick's base on the right....

And Curtis' base (chrome) on the right.  It was easier to find than digging for a regular base card.  

There were more than one regular Chrome, but I've traded away all but Max Scherzer, so I don't have an image of them.  There were Mead, Scherzer (in the purple hot box), Lindor, Evan Carter, and Gavin Williams.

And the white borders - minus a couple Orioles that went to my set.  Which is sitting here too, but I already took the picture and uploaded it.  I really do like the way the MVP's look in white.

OK without further delay,

The relics.  Nice mix of colors and bat pieces at least.  A nice, clean design with great colors.  These would have fit right in if they'd have done relics in '75.  Good job, Topps!

Not in order of pull, but here are the autographs!

I kept Fisk & Oliver.  Stuart took Simmons, Blomberg & Volpe.  I told him he should sell Volpe right away since he was going for three digits.  But he said no, he'll keep him in his "PC".  He's a Tigers fan who likes older players, so I don't see the point, but to each his own.

And finally, the location of each pull - now listed in order.

(left to right - first, second, third, fourth stack)

Box 1 - Jose Ramirez bat - (location not recorded).

Box 2 - Fisk auto - Top pack on third stack

Box 3 - Cousin Bryan Reynolds bat - Top pack of fourth stack

Box 4 - Eloy Jimenez relic - Bottom of fourth stack (Last Pack Mojo)

Box 5 - Al Oliver auto - Top pack of second stack

Box 6 - Charlie Blackmon bat - Top pack of second stack

Box 7 - Sandy Alcantara jsy - Top pack of fourth stack

Box 8 - Zeke Tovar jsy - Top pack of fourth stack

Box 9 - Ted Simmons auto - Bottom pack of first stack

Box 10 - Anthony Volpe auto - Third pack of fourth stack

Box 11 - JT Realmuto jsy - Bottom of fourth stack (Last Pack Mojo)

Box 12 - Ron Blomberg auto - Third pack of third stack

So the most frequent position of hits seems to be the fourth stack, or the one all the way to the right.  I'm guessing that the first pull was in the first stack just going by the law of averages.  There were two hits in the second stack and two in the third, so it's a logical assumption that there would be two in the first as well.

Not sure that gives any insight on where to fish for hits now, since Heritage is probably sold out of all the shops anyway.  But it was an interesting investigation.

Hope you enjoyed us playing Deal Or No Deal - Heritage edition and following the order to "Open The Case!"

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.

2021 Is Over. What Did I Learn?

For a year that promised recovery from the pandemic, and a return to normal life.  I think 2021 was a bit of a disappointment.  

I will say that we were able to return to card shows and shops for the most part, and there were signs that it was again possible to buy cards in retail stores.  But that may change again with the possible reinstatement of mask requirements and schools and businesses returning to restricted capacities because of the new variant virus.

So where am I as a collector now and what have I learned about collecting and buying?

1. Prices are still inflated.

Boxes of new cards are still often double or triple the normal prices from a couple years past.  The influx of new flippers and "investors" seems to have leveled off - many of them saying the market has collapsed.  Which doesn't bother me a bit.  I'm not in it for the money. But there are several big money cards that I need to finish sets that I don't think I'll be able to touch any time soon.  

2. Topps is on its way out

Fanatics has wrangled the exclusive MLB license for cards starting in 2025.  Ever since exclusive licenses became a thing, the new products have generally become stagnant or lost variety and creativity.  If you've read any of my posts or comments elsewhere this year, you know I stopped collecting Topps flagship after 2020.  And it was a good place to stop.  2021 Flagship is nothing but recycled designs.  I did a post about it already, but here's a good illustration...

Here are Mike Trout's inserts from 2021 Series 1, 2 and Update.

There are only three typical inserts.  They're stat heavy and all are just groups of star players, but at least they are new designs. 

These are inserts that recycle old designs.  The first one might be an online exclusive, I wasn't sure.  The rest are all from 2021 Topps flagship.  The last two are regular cards with images of autos & relics.  This group doesn't even count Archives or Heritage, which would add at least two or three more to these fifteen.  FIFTEEN recycled designs!  Before 2019, you could hardly amass this many cards of one player in old designs in the whole decade.  This is from ONE YEAR!  OK, I've ranted about this enough.  Let's see if they come up with something different in 2022.

3. I'm a minority

I've known for some time that old school set building and the values and practices that come with it are not what the hobby caters to.  And I was OK with that.  With the stampede of new people in the hobby the last couple years, that separation has increased dramatically.  Before, there were almost as many tables at the average show that dealt in vintage, or new base and inserts, or just regular cards from older sets in between versus the "mojo tables" of nothing but the current rookies and superstars trapped in plastic slabs and marked with artificially inflated prices.  Now, the balance has tipped, and the percentage of new crazy stuff I don't need is about two or three to one against the things I'm looking for, instead of 50/50.  

The last show I went to down in Virginia had about 40 tables I'm guessing (it was all in a regulation basketball court), and only about five or six had dime boxes, vintage (mostly overpriced), or current-ish base and inserts (and a lot of those were Bowman).  There were a few tables with superhero statues or Pokemon type items, which I don't usually see at regular card shows.  Almost everything else was Bowman singles, graded mojo hits, or gamers and autos sorted by player or team.  All of which I will walk right by.

I'm also stuck in the mindset that hobby boxes of regular sets should be $50-$80 and blasters of anything should be $20.  Rookies of guys like Clemente and Jim Brown should maybe reach three digits, (for a nice raw card - I still don't deal in graded) but common singles should be about a dollar each for the 60's and about 50¢ for the 70's and 80's.  New singles should be no more than a dime and inserts should be 25 or 50 cents.  Current rookie base cards should be a buck or less and never even sniff the thousands, even if they are low numbered parallels.  Nobody is actually paying that in real life except for a few fratboy millionaires, are they?  When all the flipper bro's get bored and move on to something else and the prices come back to what they were in the mid 2010's, call me.  I'll be here sorting my latest SportLots order of obscure oddballs for my player collections and the last few 80's Fleer team football sets.

4. I'll Be Fine

If current cards degenerate into digital rookie mojo limited editions, then it'll allow more time, money and room for older and more interesting cards.  I've still got plenty of sets to complete, discover and enjoy, in several sports and a few other subjects.  Should current cards stop completely in the 2020s, then I won't have to figure out where to store them once I run out of space here.  Which may have happened already.  (You can't see the dozen monster boxes on the floor and couch in these shots).

I plan to move at some point next year into a single family house so I can have all my automobiles within reach as well as more space for all my other junk.  Then I could buy more hoards of bulk cards that no one wants and knock out my older wants and trade or sell in big batches again.  (I still have to do that with the stack of monster boxes of football cards I have now).

I'm still going to shows when I can, though in the spring and summer, I may skip them once or twice in lieu of a car show.  Gotta keep the ol' Buick out there.  I'm putting another SportLots order together right now, and just got a COMC order about a month ago.  I said I was gonna post them here, but I never did.  Some of my old Yahoo group have reached out for trades recently, and I've had a couple on the Database as well.  

My blogging has dropped off to about nothing this past year.  I went from just under 140 posts in 2019 to 88 last year and only 21 in '21 (counting this one).  Hopefully, that number will rebound, but being that I'm not the typical collector, I just don't have as much to say about what's going on in the hobby (except that I'm not a big fan of most of it).  I get tired of ranting about the same things, but have trouble finding new and interesting facets of my collecting to share.  We've still got a few years to wait for Fanatics' "innovations", but we heard that from Topps and you know what we got (see above).  If working from home comes back, maybe it'll give me time to come up with new ideas.

Anyway, let's keep trading, blogging and collecting.  I'll still be cruising this star system.

2021 Topps - Send In The Clones

What's up guys?  How is everyone doing?  

Very quickly, I've still been buying cards online and making a few trades here and there.  I managed to put away about half the huge pile of incoming pasteboard I had on my desk in the last couple weeks.  I've slacked off reading blogs too.  Starting to catch up a little...

Unfortunately, it seems that the romance I was anticipating has fizzled like Oriole playoff hopes.  It's fine though.  Guess ghosting is better than outright rejection...

But anyway, so I saw a two blaster break of 2021 Topps on the IFSportsCards YouTube channel.  Watched a few of Ian's videos, and he's a cool dude.  His tastes are very rookie centric, but that's typical these days.  He's lucky enough to have an adorable wife to share his hobby with, too.  Check them out.

What I saw from the cards 100% confirmed my commitment to cease the collection of the Topps flagship set and switch over to something like Allen & Ginter instead.  I've repeatedly pointed out that the creativity in flagship has been dwindling for years, and all the original ideas show up in the other sets.  That is more evident in 2021 Topps than ever.

Of the ten or so inserts in this set, seven of them are either reprints of particular cards of the past, or use the same design as a previous issue.  That leaves three.  One of those is just big stars in an insert. The other is a blatant repeat of an insert from ten years ago.  The remaining one is the lone original idea.

That lone insert is called Stars In Service.  It highlights the charity work that players do for their communities and humankind.  Trade me for these, please!

The theme this year is 70 Years of Topps.  (Still remember the 65th anniversary foil stamping on buybacks?  Topps 60?  Yeah, anniversaries are fine, but it's almost too easy to do it every five years or so.)  The "here's another card of your favorite big stars" insert is Topps Platinum Players Die Cuts.  25 (hey kudos for keeping it under 100) superstars against a vaguely number shaped cutout.  The photos are cut off by the die cut edges.  Woo...

The only other "non-player" insert set is The History of Topps.  Which is not to be confused with the "History of Topps" from 2011.  Or actually, it is, because five out of the ten cards in each set are the EXACT SAME.  Here are the checklists:

2011 Topps - History of Topps
HOT-1 Topps Is Founded By The Shorin Family          
HOT-2 1951 - First Cards Are Sold          
HOT-3 1952 - Sy Berger Creates The First Complete Set          
HOT-4 1957 - Topps Sets The Card Size Standard          
HOT-5 1972 - Topps Goes Public          
HOT-6 1974 - First Topps Traded Set          
HOT-7 1989 - Topps Reintroduces Bowman          
HOT-8 1994 - Topps Moves From Brooklyn to NYC          
HOT-9 2007 - Eisner & Co. Buy In To Topps          
HOT-10 2009 - Topps Receives MLB Exclusive 

2021 Topps - The History of Topps
HOT-1 Topps is Founded by the Shorin Family          
HOT-2 First Baseball Playing Cards Are Sold          
HOT-3 Sy Berger Creates the First Complete Set          
HOT-4 First Topps All-Rookie Team          
HOT-5 Garbage Pail Kids Introduced          
HOT-6 Topps Re-Introduces Bowman          
HOT-7 Topps receives MLB exclusive          
HOT-8 Topps Digital Apps Launched          
HOT-9 Topps Now Introduced          
HOT-10 Project 2020 Takes Off 

Updated for Garbage Pail Kids (???), Topps BUNT (dead), Topps Now (which was it's own insert set already), and Project 2020.

EVERYTHING ELSE that isn't a relic or autograph is a repeat of a past design or a chronicle of past cards - mostly rookie cards that you've seen a million times.  And yes, according to the Database, they are going to do Archives and Heritage again this year!  These inserts could make up half of those two sets, which would make room for some of that "innovation" that Topps promised would come with their exclusive contracts. 

1951 box toppers - (Archives)  Today's stars in the '51 Current All-Stars design

1952 redux - (Heritage)  Today's stars in the '52 design (again)

1986 anniv. tribute - (Archives)  Today's stars in the '86 design on it's 35th anniversary.

70 Years Of Topps Baseball - (Archives)  Today's stars in each of Topps designs from '51 to 2021 that will dilute Archives for years to come.  At least they put Robin Yount in the '72 design so they wouldn't duplicate one current guy in this year's Heritage.  There will still be three or four of the same ones used in Archives.   *Sigh*.

Iconic Card manu patches - Reprints of the same old rookie cards in fabric patches with blank backs.  (Dangit, I guess I want this Palmer (Update: got Heem) and Bo Jackson.)

Topps Double Headers - Reprints the fronts of the first and last card of star players on the same card.  And they have the 70th logo on the front too.  So you better hope your dealers sort their inserts, because unless you're holding the checklists, you'll have to check the backs of all the 70 Years stamped reprints and these to make sure which set they go with.  (Got the Palmer.)  Most of the rookie cards are also among the patches above.

Topps Through The Years - Reprints base up to high end cards of star players.  Well, this is kinda new - not only reprinting the regular ones you see like Cal Ripken, whose '82 Traded makes its third appearance as an insert in 2021, but now reprinting autographed mojo hits so you poor people can see what they looked like since you can't afford the real thing. 

That's it.  There are no other insert offerings to Topps Flagship.  They're all reproductions or used designs.

Oh and as for the base design....

There's a border....ok....the 70th logo, like on most of the inserts too....team logos are always good....Totally unreadable name and position in a bar that's way too small....the honeycomb pattern from 2016 parallels.....and these multi-tone blue hockey sticks that protrude into the heads of the players in horizontal photos.....

Yeah, I'm out...