Single Card Post - 2001 Topps #732

Pardon the poor picture on this. I took this over a year ago to be used in a post I never ended up writing. I attempted to clean it up but no dice. So, in order to actually see who's on this card, here it is properly scanned and everything from COMC:

Much better.

I don't know how I acquired this card ... maybe a repack? Maybe a trade? Not sure. Anyway, I thought I'd pull out something I've done in the past with multi-player cards and see how each guy on this card fared in their career.

Gookie Dawkins - At one time the Reds middle infield consisted of guys named Gookie and Pokey, and that's honestly about all can be said about Gookie Dawkins in MLB. In 52 games over parts of three seasons with the Reds (1999, 2000, 2002), he hit a low .167/.238/.208 with exactly zero homers and only 3 RBIs. In 2003, he resurfaced with Kansas City appearing in only 3 games. After his 2003 cameo, he stayed in the minors with various organizations until 2011.

Erick Almonte - Almonte's stay in the majors was nearly as brief as Gookie Dawkins. Almonte only appeared in 55 games total in MLB, mostly for the Yankees (2001, 2003) but also a quick 16-game cup of coffee with the Brewers in 2011. Seems he'd bounced around with a lot of different organizations in the minors before having one last hurrah with the Brewers. At the very least, his MLB career stats show he had two homers with 14 RBIs and a .233 average.

Felipe Lopez - Lopez was a solid middle infielder who debuted with the Blue Jays in 2001 and had a good run with the Reds from 2003-2006. His best season was was 2005 where is made the All-Star team for the only time and finished with a .291 average, 23 homers, and 85 RBIs in 148 games. After the Reds shipped him to the Nationals in July 2006, in what turned out to be a pretty controversial trade as the Reds claimed "damaged goods" on one of the pitchers they got in return, he bounced around to seven different teams from 2008 to 2011. As recently as 2015 though, he made a comeback of sorts with Carolina in the Puerto Rican Winter League.

Of these three, I'd definitely say that Lopez had the best career by far. Do you remember any of these players?

Chasing Down Heritage

I have a love/hate relationship with Topps Heritage. I love it because it's a fun set with classic designs and fun inserts. I hate it because it's always so blasted hard to find, especially when there's a hot rookie like Aaron Judge last year or Shohei Otani this year. Sure, I could go the easy route and go to the card shop and pay $4.79 a pack or I could just check out Target to see what they have. I chose Target (but I did stop at the card shop for an unrelated matter and bought some Donruss packs, more on those to come in a future post).

Since we were out and about by the local mega-mall, we had to stop at Target next door to it while we were there anyway. I peeked at the card section. Nothing, zilch, zero in the way of Heritage. As fate would have it, though, we actually had to stop at our local Target on the way home to pick-up an online order that was ready sooner than expected. Before picking up the order, I just had to look at the cards. They had a huge display of Heritage hanger boxes, but no loose packs or blasters. I bought two hanger boxes (as two of those pretty much equates to a blaster in terms of quantity and price) along with a blaster of Opening Day.

My first Heritage card of the year, Jean Segura of the Seattle Mariners. I'm making it a point to show off the first card of every 2018 product I open, be it baseball or otherwise, so I can do a fun little 2018 wrap-up post with them at the end of the year (that's if I remember to do so). Anyway, I like these cards ... a lot. The pictures are nice and crisp, it's a fun design just like the 1969 set, and the backs are super fun too. I'm definitely going to get more of this as I see fit.

Here's a pair of Dodgers pitchers that I know Night Owl is probably fond of. I think my first Maeda card from last year came from Heritage as well. 

Here's a trio of players I tend to enjoy collecting. The Carlos Beltran card is a nice sunset card as I don't think he had a card in Series 1, but I could be wrong. Alonso is a former Reds prospect who's finally broken out and shown the power that everyone knew he had. This past offseason, he signed with Cleveland and joined Edwin Encarnacion to form a nice power hitting duo up on the shores of Lake Erie.

Two of the biggest names in the game and the Giancarlo Stanton Yankees card that everyone is talking about. I found this to be a bit interesting as well and I'll explain why shortly.

Four Reds cards between the two boxes. Iggy's glove looks bigger than it should be.

I like this card simply because of the colorfulness of the Washington uniform. I've found that most of the uniforms featured on these cards are the regular home whites, not that that's a bad thing, so when an alternate top sneaks in, it's a welcome sight.

Each hanger box also provided one short print card. I think Kenley Jansen was a short print last year as well. I checked the microscopic code numbers on the backs of the cards as well and I didn't get any action variations, color swaps, or anything like that. 

I was absolutely thrilled when I saw these checklists because, honestly, when was the last time you saw an honest, old-school style checklist? These are just things of beauty.

Of course, there are the multi-player rookie cards. I find it curious that Topps gave Rafael Devers the rookie cup and stuffed it onto a multi-player card. Why not just give him a card all to himself with the rookie cup?

I always like the flashbacks inserts in Heritage, both the baseball and the news ones. The New Age Performers inserts never really did much for me, but this year's design is kind of fun and funky.

Remember what I mentioned earlier about the Yankees Stanton card being a curiosity? Well, here's my point. The All-Star card shown here of Stanton uses the exact same picture (minus the airbrushed uniform) and proclaims him as a Marlin, not a Yankee. While I see the point to doing this because it's an All-Star card, Topps maybe should have tried to keep him listed with one team or the other.

This picture is the stack of cards that came out of the second hanger box, and look, what's that I spy in the middle there?

Why it's a Giancarlo Stanton relic card! Again, as with the All-Star card, this card proclaims him as a member of the Marlins and we have the exact same photo as the base card. Hey, I'm not complaining. It's a hit from a retail hanger box and I never ... repeat, never ... have that kind of luck and if I do, it's usually not a name of this caliber.

So, overall, do I like 2018 Topps Heritage? Yes. As with any product, there's good and there's bad but so far, I haven't really found much to complain about. The 1969 design is a fun design, the pictures are much better and don't look as grainy as some past issues, and there are full-fledged, honest-to-God checklists! So far, this is my favorite product of the year.

Retail Repack Adventures #1

The family and I had to pick up a few things from Walgreens the weekend before Halloween. We went there mainly for the giant sale on trick-or-treat candy ($1.75 a bag!) and few odds and ends. While we were there, I decided to grab one of the $4.99 repacks that have been hanging on the shelf since we moved back to town in the spring of 2014.

The best card in the box, this 2014 Topps Chrome orange parallel of Carlos Beltran. Not really big Beltran or Yankees collector but this is a really nice card and it'll be kept with my stash of "good stuff".

This repack had a little bit of everything. This was some of the cool junk wax, an Electric Diamond Marquis Grissom and a weird Dave Hollins card that resembles a credit card.

More late 80s/early 90s stuff. I don't care much for the term "junk wax" as it makes cards like these sound as if they are just useless. I believe the Gary Carter could be a sunset card but I'm not sure.

There was also some new stuff. That Jeremy Moore card is really neat, especially with the retro uniform. I always get 2013 and 2014 Topps mixed up as they look pretty similar to me.

Can't forget about these old-timers. I'd forgotten how awesome the Colon collection cards are.

A pair of Padres.

And the obligatory Reds to finish it off. I'm thinking the Griffey might be a sunset card as well.

Busting this was pretty fun, if nothing else for the randomness that was contained within. I might pick up more of these on occasion just for the heck of it.

The Mystery Box!

Last weekend, I posted about my visit to Mavericks Cards and Comics. As I mentioned in that post, the shop owner was generous enough to let me have this box of extra cards he was trying to get rid of for his friend for free. Included in the box were a bunch of singles from 2014 Topps football, 2015 Allen & Ginter, and 2015 Topps Series 2.

Random football singles are fine, but considering I didn't know half the players in there it was what it was for a box of free cards. I picked out cards of guys I know and scanned in a few below.

These and the other commons I pulled out are going into my football binder. Not a big fan of these in general since you really have to work to read the name and position on the bottom of the card. I'm working on a trade list for the rest and I'll have them posted up shortly.

Moving on, there was a good batch of stuff from Topps Series 2. Here are a few highlights:

Carlos Martinez and Dellin Betances. Martinez just had a season-ending injury but it looks like he'll be OK for the post-season. Betances has had a good season for the Yankees as well.

A few more "future stars" cards here. To me, Betts is the highlight of this bunch.

Finally, two former Reds that are still kicking around the league.

The rest of the Series 2 batch was mainly commons but with a few stars such as Verlander, Cano, etc. but nothing overly exciting. There were some duplicates as well, so look for those on the trade list that should be up hopefully in the next few days.

Finally, the cards that turned this into a great haul ... 2015 Topps Allen & Ginter! I'll admit, I wasn't a fan of Allen & Ginter when I first saw it this year as I felt it was overhyped from the start. However, the saying "don't knock it 'til you try it" definitely applies in this situation as these cards are great! As with the rest of the box, there were some commons but there were also a bunch of short prints ... as in 18 of them!

I was wanting the Val Kilmer card anyway as he is probably one of the best parts of the movie Tombstone so that's a win for me.

There were also some minis in the box, three different kinds of minis to be exact ...

As you can see, the Tanaka is a no-numbered Ginter back, the Cuddyer seems to be the standard backed mini card, and the Puig is a Ginter back.

I'd say my tune has definitely changed on Allen & Ginter so if I see anymore singles anywhere for cheap or if any of my local shops have some decent prices on packs, then I think I'll definitely pick up some. 

This was a fun box to dig through. For a free box, I wasn't expecting much but with the Allen & Ginter, I feel like I got more than I bargained for. As I mentioned in my Mavericks article, I did offer to purchase these instead of just taking them, but the owner insisted they were free. So, to Jack at Mavericks, thank you for the cards. I appreciate it very much.