What I Collect

I'll be honest ... I haven't spent money on baseball cards since Thanksgiving last year.

Since I put my old blog, Cardboard Clubhouse, on ice last fall due to family reasons (aka new baby), baseball cards were the last thing on my mind. I did, however, purchase quite a few cards during the annual COMC Black Friday sale last fall.

Over the past few months while my collection grew dust, I could count on one hand the number of times I thought about these cards I'd ordered. Now, since I'm getting re-acquainted with everything and getting this organized again, I thought I'd start with these since that's about where I left off last year.

Along with the super shiny Hank Aaron card above, I purchased a number of other baseball cards, along with miscellaneous cards for my other collections. Seeing as I'm trying to keep this blog (and my collection) limited to just baseball, that's all that I'm planning on covering.

My collecting interests are really varied. I don't really focus on one thing in general when it comes to baseball cards as I'd get pretty bored of that pretty quick. I'm not really a team collector either. I mean, if I had to pick one team to collect, it'd be the Reds. I had a lot of fun watching Nick Senzel play center field last year and that's why I nabbed this Donruss Rated Rookie card. I can't really say that the Donruss designs this year and last year are all that enticing but I felt this was worth picking up.

Another thing that I like collecting are "unfamiliar uniform" cards as I call them. These typically fall into one of two categories ... "short-term stops" or "zero year" (trademark to Dime Box Nick) but on this blog they'll be referred to as "unfamiliar uniforms" because that's what they are. Take Steve Carlton here for example. Most everyone will think of him as a Cardinal or a Phillie but I'll bet you didn't know he pitched for the White Sox as well. The South-Siders were one of three stops of a whirlwind tour Lefty had in 1986. 

I know I mentioned that the non-baseball content will be next to nothing. I intend on sticking to that but it's cards like this from Allen & Ginter that fall into that grey area. Technically, this is a baseball card as it came from a baseball product but obviously Tiger Mask is not a baseball player. Along with baseball, pro wrestling is another big interest of mine and to see the legendary Tiger Mask featured on a card is pretty cool. On this card, it says "1st Tiger Mask" and that would be Satoru Sayama who portrayed the character until 1983 when he left New Japan Pro Wresting. Since then, several other wrestlers have portrayed the character, the most notable being the legendary Mitsuharu Misawa.

This card certainly checks off several things I like to collect ... oddball? Yes. Defunct retail? Yes. Defunct team? Yes. Hall of Famer? Yes. There's just something about these types of cards which is just fun. Maybe in the future I'll do a blog post on cards from defunct retail chains. Not sure yet but it's an idea I'm kicking around. 

Here's another card that would qualify as an "unfamiliar uniform" card. When I first got into collecting as a kid, I always thought it was weird to see former Reds players in a different uniform. That's exactly what's happening here as Hal Morris is shown in a Royals uniform. Despite being the first baseman for the Reds from 1990-1997, Morris left as a free agent and signed with the Royals for the 1998 season. He would return to the Reds the next season (1999) and stayed with the team until midway through the 2000 season when he was purchased by Detroit. I'd always found that one year in Kansas City a curiosity and now I finally have a card to document it.

Another big thing I like to collect is vintage cards. Typically if I'm at a show or browsing online, if I can find cool vintage cards for a reasonable price, I'll jump on it. This 1961 Topps card shows the Reds outfield trio of Vada Pinson, Gus Bell (grandfather of current Reds manager David Bell), and Frank Robinson. That trio, along with fellow outfielder Wally Post (shown in the 1962 Topps card), would help the "Ragamuffin Reds" get to the World Series in 1961 where they lost to the Yankees in five games.

One of the last big things I enjoy are cheap relic cards. I'll be honest, I'm not a the kind of person who would buy packs of cards and get disappointed there was no relic or anything. If I get one, great! If not, fine too. Products like Topps Tribute, Museum Collection, and all that are way out of my price range and I'm fine with that. It's not like I'm exactly their target audience anyway. That being said, if I come across cheap relic cards from those sets or just cool looking ones in general, I tend to jump on them. Take this Bruce Sutter card for example, it's a dual-jersey card of him with both the Cubs and Cardinals and it was a steal at under five bucks. 

I'm in the process of updating my want list to be posted on the blog soon after I update my lists for Pilots cards and 1984 Topps along with several other random things. 

2018 Topps Big League Box Break - Part 1

Before I dive into this, I want to take just a quick moment to thank everyone for congratulatory comments and kind words on the Year 3 post I put up over the weekend. I really appreciate everyone taking the time to read my ramblings on cards. Now, on with the show ....

Recently, my aunt was in town doing her yearly summer visit from Tulsa and as is tradition, I tend to get some cards as a late Father's Day present. I went for a box of the new Topps Big League and I also opted for a box of Series 2.

Since Big League is new, I opted to bust into it first. I had intended on doing six packs at a time but my five year old and I went a little crazy the other day and tore open 11 packs, which is more than I intended. So, I'll show off the highlights of those 11 packs here and the remainder here shortly.

Here's the first card from the first pack I opened. Remember back in the spring I said I was going to show the first card of a product I opened? Well, I'm continuing that trend here.

Here's a sampling of random base cards I liked. I really like the design on these. It's got a tiny bit of an old school feel with some really great photography and a big team logo at the bottom left. Also, I tried to not show cards of the major stars, I went for cards that I thought stood out to me in general. Probably my favorite of these is Clayton Richard with the 90s throwback Padres uniform on.

These black and white parallels are pretty cool and they're numbered out of 50. 

Legends cards are always fun. I really like the Hank Aaron card as the uniform looks like it's from the 70s.

Some Reds cards, including my favorite Reds player right now, Scooter Gennett!

Really cool horizontal cards but that Ichiro card ... just wow. That's gotta be in the running for my favorite cards of the year so far.

These may look like inserts but they're part of the base set actually. Can't say I'm a big fan of the caricature cards. The players weekend cards look like an insert set that could be in flagship or something, I really like them though. 

My favorite cards from the set by far are these ballpark landmark cards. These cards just scream fun and cool and unique. They're the Topps Big League version of the mascot cards in Opening Day.

In every pack you get a gold parallel card. That's both a good thing and a bad thing. I think it's good because you're guaranteed a unique card per pack. On the flip side, getting one in every pack comes across as too much of a good thing, maybe every other pack would be a happy medium? My favorite of these is the Zack Cozart card since it's my first card of him in an Angels uniform (I don't count the Cozart card from Donruss as he's in a Reds uniform but is listed as with the Angels).

Anyway, that's about half the box. So far, I've enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of the box includes.