Can't stop giving Topps my $$$

 So I got sucked into the trap of getting more cards today. Probably cards I didn’t need, seeing as I plan on purchasing the complete 2023 Topps complete set whenever it is released. Jim from Downingtown commented on my last post something to the effect of me enabling Topps to continue doing things I don’t like by buying from them and flippers. I guess I don’t have the right to complain, and I will try to tone it down until I can curb my penchant for buying new product. 

This latest purchase was 2 hanging packs of 2023 Topps from Target. Karen picked them out as she went there after joining me for my lunch break, and I met up with her after I got off an hour or so after coming back from lunch. Apparently those were the last 2 hanging packs of 2023 Topps as I checked out the card aisle before finding her. The aisle was stocked pretty well with 2022 Allen/Ginter, Stadium Club, Mozaic, and a few random other products. I would've probably picked a Panini product if I had been shopping myself, but as always, Karen always is a good picker with the cards as we shall see later.

The collation wasn't good with the 2 hanging packs, with a few pairs of doubles, and combined with some of the '23 cards I've purchased earlier this year, I think it's time to switch to a new product as I've pulled triples of 1 or 2. 

I did pretty good with the Tigers. Pulled a Harold Castro, 2 Rony Garcia's and 2 Austin Meadows's. The Yandy Diaz is a new Ray, and I will take it and the Tigers I pulled with me to Opening Day in 12 days in hopes of getting them signed. The Max Scherzer is my first look at one of those new Aces inserts, and it reminds me of a printing plate with the shape and the silver color. I don't know if these cards come as printing plates, but if they do, I'm sure there wouldn't be too much of a difference.

Here's where the Karen luck showed up (besides for all of the Tigers and the Ray). I pulled a few promising rookies in Cade Cavali, Audley Rutschman, and that Peraza guy for the Bankee$, but the one that jumped out to me when I pulled it was an autographed 1988 Topps insert of Tyler Freeman. He's not the biggest name, but I beat the flippers as the pack was clearly searched (as you unfortunately can expect from any kind of retail pack). 

I've almost finished pulling out all of my current Rays and Tigers from binders to bring to the game in a week or so. It's been a little bit tricky as I expect the team to do something special involving the 1998 team for the 25th anniversary that afternoon, and you never know who will show up. I have a hunch that Wilson Alvarez (who threw the first pitch in their first game), maybe Fred McGriff (a new Hall of Famer and Tampa native), and maybe Wade Boggs (another Tampa native) will show up and throw a first pitch. Other people could be Larry Rothschild (their first manager), and Florida governor Ron DeSantis (who I will boo mercilessly). I hope to get some autographs and maybe make some memories of doing so with Kyler. We have seats by the bullpen, so I've stocked up my box with Rays relievers, and hopefully we'll get lucky. 

I'm glad that Karen can pick such good boxes and I've got some 2023 cards to bring to the Rays game on the 30th. Even if I can't stop giving Topps my money.

Thanks for checking out my latest post.

-Jeremy

What about the kids, Topps?

 I was reading about Corbin Carroll’s extension and decided to see if he had a card in 2022 Topps. He didn’t, but when I was googling it, I stumbled upon a sell sheet for 2023 Topps Big League. Apparently they skipped the 2022 version. 

It was my understanding that the Big League set was a kid-targeted set. With the news on the sell sheet, Topps may claim that the set is for kids, but this set, along with the news that Opening Day is being shelved proves that it doesn’t. If you don’t want to look at the sell sheet, I’ll cut to the chase. 

The base set is broken down into tiers, 200 ‘common’ cards, 50 ‘uncommon’ foil cards coming at 1 per pack, 25 ‘rare’ blue foil cards falling at 1 in 18 packs, 25 ‘super rare’ red foil cards which are 1 in 90 packs, and 10 ‘legendary rare’ gold foil cards which fall 1 per case, which is 1 in 360 packs. 

I do applaud the company for putting mascots in as inserts (1 in 9 packs), but how do you make 10 cards in the set fall 1 in 360 packs and call it a ‘kids set’?!!  If Kyler wanted to put this set together, let’s imagine the blue and red cards don’t exist. Maybe a box or two and I can pull most of the foil cards. I’m either going to have to buy 10 cases, and have perfect collation in order to complete the set, or spend 20-50 bucks (I’m estimating) for 10 cards in order to complete the set. Not kid (or parent or low-budget collector) friendly!!!  I’m assuming since they are legends that I might not have Rays I have to chase from those 10 cards, but half a chance that one may be a Tiger. You can count this as another blow to team collectors as well. How do you basically put SSP’s in a kids set?!!!  I don’t mind if there are super rare parallels, but don’t put the case hit as a card in the regular set!!! Nobody is going to have the patience to build a set of you keep doing this, especially to the bottom rung sets. I swear if you don’t leave flagship alone and start putting SPs as part of the regular set, I’m done. This set is a kick in the gonads to kids who need a cheap product that they can spend money on that has a good number of players to get them familiar with them and no SPs so they can try to complete the set. It’s a kick in the gonads to team collectors because of the case hit cards and mid tier SPs have a good chance of knocking 15-20 teams out and people who collect those teams will either have to pony up the dough and get the cards they need  from flippers, or just have another uncompleted set to deal with. It’s a kick to the player collectors because you know Trout, Machado, and Judge are going to be SPs and they have to make a choice. This set is really a total win for the f-ing flippers since they control the market because they get the cards first and buy the majority of the boxes because of it. They will buy enough product to pull the SPs everyone wants and will be able to set the price as high as the feel they can get away with and just sit back and wait for bids. Way to appeal to all collectors Fanatics Topps!

With that being said, I’ll probably get a few packs in order to get some of the mascot cards since 2023 Topps Opening Day is not going to be happening. 2023 is a weird year in baseball cards with all of the late releases, no news on when products are going to be released, products being released at unusual times, a number of sets getting scrapped, and things being added or taken away from sets, but maybe if we endure a weird 2023, we will get some of the scrapped sets back (even if we might have to have them released at unusual times).  I just hope for the sake of the kids and team, player, set collectors, and average Joe collectors will have a set they can afford, have access to, and be able to complete without having SPs. Is that too much to ask, Topps?

Some cards in the midst of chaos

 For a month or two, it’s just been feeling hectic and chaotic in my life. Kind of like I have a ton of things I want to do but not enough time to do them, even when I have a day off. I think some of this is due to the fact of me trying to input cards into TCDB and getting a list of all of my Topps needs, and I think I’m ok with that. All of the NL teams are finished as far as Topps entering. I still need to put in the Topps cards I have for all of the AL teams, and favorite player, Rays, Tigers, rookies, etc, but the project is basically almost halfway done. When that’s finished I’ll have to basically start over from scratch, this time imputing all of the non-Topps cards in. Maybe I’ll be finished by this time next year. 

I have a few people I’m kind of actively working trades with, and I feel like I need to put that near the top of my list on my days off, and I have made some progress going through binders looking for stuff, mainly some 1997 Collectors Choice needs for a Tigers fan that emailed me, and some ‘97 Collectors Choice team set and 1997 Fleer Ultra cards for reader Poison 75 who has commented on many bloggers posts. I also have someone on FB looking through their stuff and getting me some Rays and Tigers. Good thing about that is I will just input those after the AL is done, so no need to add another thing to my plate. Really, anything after 2019 is fine to add to my collection, as I have complete Topps sets from 2019-2022, so any stuff I add will be non-Topps or just inserts or non-flagship and can be entered at the end of this whole TCDB project. 

I feel like work is stressing me more lately. I bake mostly at work. We bake donuts, breakfast pastries, more cookies than you can shake a stick at, pies, regular pastries, rolls, and about 20 different varieties of breads. On a Saturday (our busiest day) before the pandemic, I would bake 18-20 packs of regular 2 dozen chocolate chip cookies. Post pandemic, more like 23-24. We had some apartments go up by the store, and now a Friday it wants like 25-30. ITS LIKE THAT WITH EVERYTHING!!!  The store is making record profits!  A wise person once told me profits are just unpaid labor. I could really use a baking assistant just to help set things up for me while I throw stuff in an oven and take it out. I go in at 4:30, take an hour lunch, and most days get out between 1:30 and 2. I feel stressed because I have to pick up Kyler from school at 2:30, and I have about a 15 minute drive and on bad weeks where cookies or some other time consuming product is on sale, I barely make it. I’m getting to bed at 10, 10:30, and I just don’t have enough time to cook dinner, make my lunch, do dishes, to a little light housework, shower every once in a while, and have time for myself. Karen gets home between 5-6, and on days when she is actually feeling well (not many lately), there’s not much she can get done in the few hours before bed. Wish I could get to bed a little earlier, but it’s just not in the cards most days. 

There is a little light in the tunnel as we’ve been planning a vacation, and I’m going to opening day. It comes with a little extra work as I’m trying to get cards out of all the Rays and Tigers to try to get signed, and there is the packing and planning involved with the vacation. 

We decided to tentatively hit up Niagara Falls and Washington DC (are you close to Niagara Falls, Night Owl?  Maybe a blogger meetup?). We are planning sometime in June, and although the Nats don’t have a game on my 40th birthday (June 14), they are in town later in the week, so we might have to plan the trip to fit a Nats game in as well. Not sure where else we will go, other than probably the historic stuff in DC and see some people my wife knows from when she lived there in high school. Maybe hit up North Carolina and see some relatives on the way down. 

The trip was kind of in jeopardy as of yesterday. As if we didn’t have enough going on, we got up on Sunday to go to church, go outside, and Karens van isn’t there. We got ahold of the cops after going to church in my car and then coming back home. Both of us have Kia’s, and hers has the push button start. Apparently idiots can break into a Kia, pop something open in the front, use an app on their phone and a usb cord to turn the car on and just drive off with it. It’s a Tik Toc trend and everything. How these apps aren’t banned and videos shut down is beyond me. Should Kia be held liable for a design flaw?  Perhaps. We are fortunate (I think), and the cops called this afternoon and said that the car popped up in Apopka, about an hour and 15 minutes away. The touch screen monitor was smashed in, but other than that, they said it looks normal. Tomorrow we will figure out towing it, getting it evaluated, and hopefully be able to fix anything thats messed up. If you own a Kia, lock it up, maybe get some extra security feature, because these crooks are getting high tech. 

Enough of my whining. You read this blog for cards and I won’t disappoint. I got a hanging box of ‘23 Topps and hanging packs of Prism and Mosaic this afternoon, and here is what I got (minus some stuff I’ll probably send out to some bloggers when I can catch my breath). 

Just your NL base cards. Too many Padre$, but what can you do?

2 too many Yankee$, but that’s not bad with the amount of cards I got. I may be unpopular for it, but those Stars of MLB inserts are beautiful. Even the regular Topps ones just look elegant with the Diamond/jewel and rainbow foil board. Have you pulled a Chrome one yet?  If you think it doesn’t get better, it does. 

I finally pulled a Jonathan Aranda card, and it will be going to the Rays game with me. I’m surprised that’s my first card of him when Im basically known as the ‘Rays guy’. I pulled 2 nice looking Akil Baddoo Prizm cards, got some rookies I never heard of, some snazzy Prizm cards, and a Rainbow of a checklist. Thanks, Topps!  I’ve also been pulling multiplayer cards and putting them in a box, and once I update my Topps lists (and perhaps stop by John’s house again, I’ll put those cards in the binders I want them in and put all of my loose cards (almost 3 4,000 ct boxes full now) in binders. 

Most of the stuff in the pictures is up for trade, so if something looks good, hit me up. 

Hopefully I’ll get a few days off with nothing to do in the future, and I can get my cards input to the database, and the car/insurance stuff gets straightened out pretty quick. The plate will eventually get less full, I’ll see the Rays Opening Day game, get through the next 2-3 months, and be on another fun road trip while on vacation, and get to see some beautiful scenery, get some good food, and make some good memories. 

Thanks for checking out my latest post. 

-Jeremy 

Meet up with Johnny’s Trading Spot

 My oh my, where do I start?  A few Saturdays ago, I met up with John from Johnny’s Trading Spot, and had the chance to dig though his trade boxes. It was neat getting to finally see in person where he stores all of his collection right now (I was expecting a huge warehouse), and hearing him talk about his plan to put up a shed and place some bookshelves. 

Before I started with the digging for gold, John presented me with my prize for getting a question right in his 2022 Finest Flashbacks post. 

A Rays lamp!  Actually 2 of them. Turns out he knows the other Rays fan in the world and got the 2 lamps and now I have a lamp to put in Kylers room and one to put in my man cave eventually when I get a room for it. 

As for the cards, John was right in his post the other day, I went home with around 4,000 cards, mostly my known weaknesses, Rays, Tigers, favorite players, and highlight cards. I also tried to get Topps cards from sets that I knew I haven’t completed and that I knew weren’t doubles. Trying to complete every Topps set means I have a ton of needs now and that I was able to take a decent amount of stuff off of John’s hands (don’t worry. There is plenty left over).  

I don’t know how to even start, so I figured I would post just the Tigers, favorite players, highlight cards, a few rookies, and some parallels, as it gives a pretty good sample view of what I was able to find. 

While not actual 1953 Topps cards, these reprints will serve as 1953 cards in my Topps quest. There were a number of these cards for each team, and serve as an inexpensive alternative to getting a real 1953 Topps set. 

While a 1987 Donruss Highlights card, a 1987 Fleer card, and a mini Alan Trammell  snuck in, the main highlight of this photo are the Fleer Box set cards. I got 5 different sets, 3 from 1987, 1 from 1988 and 1989. 

The best part?  All of the sets came with team logo stickers!  

A number of sections of the boxes contained cards that got me close to finishing some sets. There were a few 1992 ToppsGold cards, some 1995 Collectors Choice cards, and 1997 Coklectirs Choice cards. I know someone who is collecting ‘97 Collectors Choice, and I was able to almost knock their wantlist down to single digits. 

These cards spoke to my heart. I had many of these cards and got them signed at spring training games over the years, but lost them after selling my signed cards 10 years ago. Now I got them back. I remember getting the Cody Ross card, the Bobby Higginson, and the Chad Petty signed pretty vividly. Ross was always recognizable because of his shaved head. I had a game used bat card of Higginson, and got it signed along with the Bowman as he was walking to his car after a game. Petty was involved in one of the best pitching matchups I’ve ever seen. Petty and the Lakeland Tigers faced Matt Smith, a lefty, and the Tampa Yankees. Petty pitched 6 no-hit innings, while Smith pitched 7. I think the Yankees won it, but I got Petty to sign his Bowman card, and Smith to sign a foul ball that I caught during the game (you would be lucky if 300 people showed up to Lakeland Tigers games back then, so the chance at catching a ball was pretty good). 

The 2015 Topps cards were a highlight of the boxes for me. I stuck a Buck Farmer Prism card in just because it looked so cool. There were a number of regular, Gold, Purple, and Opening Day Blue cards in the boxes. I think what I am going to do with the 2015 Topps set (and any other one with parallels) is take any version of a card that I need (whether I have it in base, parallel, Chrome, or even Opening Day version), and use it for the set of I have it. Sort of like a frankenset, or to use another bloggers idea, what Gavin from Baseball Card Breakdown is doing with the 2011 Topps parallel set. 

A number of favorite players were represented, from more recognizable beamed like Corey Kluber and Dee Gordon to lesser know guys like Rolando Arrojo and John Axford. A recent addition to my collection is Daron Kirkreit. My friend Jim lives about a mile away from my house and collects St. Louis Cardinals cards and is a big autograph collector. He is trying to get an autographed card of every St. Louis Cardinal possible and is only missing like 5% of them. He was getting his knee rehab after having an operation, and the therapist was none other than Mr. Kirkreit. Jim got a few cards signed by Daron, and let me know about him, so I made a custom 1994 Topps Draft Pick card, and gave it to Jim, as well as the minor league card of Daron that I had. Daron signed the cards for us, and was really impressed with the customs I made. I might try to see if he’s still working in Daytona and make him a few more. 

Pat Neshek is a favorite of mine just because of how fan friendly and happy to sign autographs he is. Kind of the opposite of Zack Greinke. I found a cool 13 cards of homer machine Richie Sexson, and a nice first year Bowman Platinum of Jamison Taillon, a guy from my hometown, Lakeland,FL. 

Onto some of the rookie and shiny/special cards, I originally picked up the Astros rookies card because I know I needed it, but if I’m not mistaken, I believe it is the rookie card of potential Hall of Fame manager and new Rangers skipper Bruce Bochy. The ‘93 ToppsGold Tim Wakefield rookie would’ve been so hot in 1993, as the Matt Harvey rookie debut would’ve been in 2012-13. I’ve always liked Trevor Story, so I was happy to find a 2016 rookie of him, and although I’m not a fan of the White Sox or bat flippers, you can’t deny the greatness of Tim Anderson. 

I found a low numbered Ryan Howard, a Bowman Ice Chris Davis, and a Topps Gold Tim Beckham. I found a few refractors, including a sweet ‘98 Finest (the 2nd best Finest set besides 1994) one of John Burkett, 2014 Purple ones of Mets Wilmer Flores and Curtis Granderson, a 2015 Sepia one of Troy Tulowitzki, and a 2018 one of Lewis Brinson. Last was a Gallery parallel of Sean Doolittle. 

Last up are a spattering of highlights cards. 

John also sent me these for winning one of the daily contests a few days ago. I would’ve been floored by that ‘72 League Leaders card and the ‘74 Kaline, but check out that 3rd card. Yep. That’s a ‘78 Topps Lou Whitaker rookie!  How amazing is that?  If you don’t follow John’s blog by now, definitely do so. He is a great guy who tells interesting stories and always has a huge selection of cards to show off and has one of the biggest card collections I’ve ever seen. Thank you so much John for letting me dig through some of your cards and for the prizes you’ve hooked me up with. I can’t wait to come over to your place again. 

Before I finish, just had to show a bad choice I made the other day. Walmart had 2023 Topps blasters and 2022 Topps Chrome blasters. Guess which one I chose. Guess who didn’t get an Aaron Judge or Nolan Arrenado. Guess who didn’t get a Wander Franco. 4 boxes and nothing. I need to just pay the 5-10 bucks for the Franco and be done with it. I did pull a few Tigers and a Javier Baez refractor, but this is what I get for not getting the 2023 Topps that my gut told me to get. I got a few rookies and a few sunset cards, but I was a tad disappointed with the box. Most of these are up for trade if you like anything. 

I did get 1 other Sepia refractor, and I thought it gave me a shot at a rainbow, but unfortunately, it was a dupe. 

Along with the other inserts I pulled, check out my 2023 Topps Chrome Jarren Duran collection. 1 base, 2 Sepia refractors, and 1 Blue Wave refractor. The extra Sepia Duran is up for trade as well. 

Thanks for checking out my latest post. 

-Jeremy

I’m gonna need some more pages

 If things keep shaping up the way they have lately, I’m probably going to need a bunch of more pages. 

First off, thanks John from Johnny’s Trading Spot for letting me come over and dig through some of your trade boxes this past Friday. While I haven’t taken pictures yet (and plan to do a full post), I came back home with 5 800 ct boxes full of cards and still haven’t finished sorting them into teams. What I went through wasn’t even a 10th of what he had there, so I imagine a number of trips to Ocala are in my future. 

We all know that 2023 Topps is out, and after I got off work today, I was able to get my hands on some. I stopped by Target to look for some, and while the card aisle was packed to the brim, it was just mostly basketball and football. Only worthwhile thing I found was a hanging pack of Chronicles that I snagged. An associate later told me some idiot came there first thing and snagged like 50 packs of 2023 Topps that day while I was slaving away at work. I hope that a$$hole gets a flat tire. I got some groceries we needed while at Target, then called the card shop in between there and home and they said it was coming on the truck within the hour, so I went there next. I dig through some loose cards they had, got a pack of 2021 Heritage Minors, and a jumbo pack of 2023 Topps. I probably overpaid for everything, but I got the 2023 set and a few cool cards. Let’s take a look at everything. 

These came from the loose cards in the shop. Yeah, the ‘75 is miscut, but it is a ‘75 card, and has Mantle on it, so why not get a need for an almost 50 year old set. The Balkovec card would’ve been a good candidate to get placed in my highlights binder, but it doesn’t have a date on the top. Still, it’s a cool card of a barrier breaker and a potential card to get signed ttm. 

Who was my first 2023 Topps card, you ask? Josh Naylor. Never been an Indians Guardians fan as they are an AL Central team competing against my Tigers, but at least it wasn’t a Yankee. 

Those are some of the sunsets as well as a view of the back. I wish the team cards didn’t say ‘Team card’ on it. Maybe pic of the NL logo, or have ‘Arizona’ or ‘Diamondbacks’ spelled out like it is on the uniform. They could’ve also put 2022 in the home plate instead of AZ.  The League Leaders card is ok. They are really throwing the angles and slashes at us this year. The backs are ok with me. Glad they have career stats. While I’m not sure if the regular SPs are marked, I am very happy that SSPs are marked right there by the card number, but in order to do that, it kind of makes the regular cards that don’t need to be marked seem like the space is wasted. 

I pulled a ton of rookies in the packs I got, and I figured I would just show the hot guys and the one ‘88 redux card I got. Don’t know if the Vaughn Grissom card will be the hot card of 2023, but there’s a shot. The Rodriguez card was a good pull. 

I got a few parallels from the packs. They are shown with 2 highlights cards I got from the shop, an insert from the ‘23 pack,and a mascot I got from the shop. Don’t ask me to tell you what the Chronicles parallels are called. I got 2 Luis’s from the ‘23 Topps pack, a gold Robert, and a rainbow Garcia. 

I got 2 favorite players from the Topps pack, Jacob deGrom, and Kenkey Jansen. The Todd Greene card looks pretty cool in hand. I may already have the same Ortiz card, but I’m pretty sure it’s a rookie, and it’s numbered, and if I already have it, I’ll just put it in my Twins binder. The Expos card just is a tribute to me for the 1994 team. Had the ‘94 strike not happened, this card would’ve been redeemable for a 1995 Stadium Club complete set with a special logo, depending on if the Expos made the playoffs, won the Division Series, NLCS, or World Series. When the strike happened, the Super Team cards applied to the 1995 season and 1996 Stadium Club set. I have a feeling that the Expos Super Team card would’ve got me at least as far as the Division Series winner prize had the strike not happened. 

The Tigers and Rays were represented pretty well. I only pulled the Franco and Kiermaier from the Topps pack, but got 2 Wander Franco’s from the Chronicles ones. All of the other cards I got from the card shop. 

That about does it for the cards I got today. 

I almost forgot that I got some cards for Valentines Day yesterday. Karen got me a blaster of ‘22 Heritage High Number, a hanging pack of ‘22 Optic, and a pack of ‘22 Studio (?) football that I think she must’ve thought was baseball. I opened the football pack and knew I should’ve just left it. Out of like 12 cards, I pulled 2 Bammers and no Auburn guys. Add in criminals Ray Lewis (annoying loudmouth) and Jaemis Winston (crook who should’ve been behind bars and not allowed to play against Auburn in the 2013 National Championship game), and this pack was almost worse than a kick in the groin. If not for a guy from the University of Michigan (which will be headed to Dennis at Too Many Verlanders), this could’ve gone down as the worst pack ever. It still was great because Karen thought of me, though. 

Now the baseball packs were where they really shined. Of course I forgot to take pictures and I put them in my loose card box so you’ll have to take my word. The Optic pack made Kylers day as it had a Green Ohtani (who he likes), and a Matt Olson Splash insert (he thought it was funny that the card said splash). I opened the Optic pack while waiting in line to pick him of from school, and the Heritage packs at 4:15 AM at the parking lot at work while waiting for 4:30 to get there so I could clock in. Karen had the packs by my lunchbox so I took them to work hoping I could open them before work and finish off any remaining at lunch, but I got a phone call at lunch, so I got the Optic pack in the pick up line. I wasn’t able to see the Heritage cards that well and look at the backs until later but I still knew I had some good stuff by pack #3 of the Heritage ones. The first pack had a Wander Franco/Brandon Lowe combo insert and a Purple refractor. The 2nd pack had a Julio Rodriguez and a Purple refractor. The 3rd pack had a Corey Kluber and a Purple refractor. At this point, I figured maybe they had ‘hot boxes’ or something and figured the next 5 packs would contain Purple refractors, and they did. The best one was probably a McKenzie Gore rookie. I pulled 1 or 2 SPs, a regular Chrome, and a Kevin Cash Award Winner insert if memory serves me correctly. Probably pulled another Ray or 2 as well. With the Kevin Cash card (and a Terry Francona insert I pulled in 2018 or so), it leads me to believe that Topps can indeed make cards of managers if they wanted to, they just don’t because they don’t sell cards. I would love to see Manager cards in 2023 Heritage, but I’m not counting on it. I would also love to see a 2023 Topps Opening Day set (where else am I going to find mascot cards?), but with no mention of it online, I don’t know if we’re getting one or not. With 2023 Topps getting a design picture released on September 5, nothing until the sell sheets went live mid January, and then the set coming out surprisingly on schedule on February 15 (early for Topps), these lack of details on new sets might not be anything to worry about. Anyone heard anything about 2023 Bowman?  Heritage?  I guess we’ll know in. a few weeks if Heritage and Opening Day will be out at the normal times.  Even if they don’t come out at the normal times (or at all), I think I’ll have enough cards to last for a while. I may even need more pages. 

Thanks for checking out my latest post. 

-Jeremy

I got that Tork power

 It’s not often that us collectors pull cards of our favorite team or players nowdays, unless you are a Yankee$ or Padre$ fan. It's even rarer when you kind of go on a good streak of having a run of like 3 or 4 blasters or packs where your favorite team ends up being one of the ones with the most cards. When something like that happens, it's only natural to want to brag post about it, so that's what I'm gonna do.

A few weeks ago, I got a value box of 2022 Topps Chrome. I took a picture of the reciept, the box, and e-mailed everything to Topps in order to get in the drawing for the Silver Pack. A week or so later, I got a package from Topps containing a 2022 Topps Chrome Spencer Torkelson refractor. A nice card of a guy on my favorite team who I hope will turn into a stud. 

A week or so after that, my wife got me a blaster of 2022 Topps Heritage High Number, and I pulled a few Tigers, including another Torkelson card. With the Rays and Tigers being tied as my favorite teams, I was pretty stoked. 

Then this past weekend, while at Target, my wife got me another blaster of Heritage and a hanging pack of 2022 Donruss Optic. I got a couple of Tigers in the Heritage box, including another Torkelson, and the Optic pack contained not only the Torkelson rookie from that set, but a Green parallel of the hobby golden boy of the present, Julio Rodriguez.  

Needless to say, I have been pretty stoked with the past 2-3 times I've opened cards (I also got a few Rays in each!), and I almost don't want to open any 2023 products and jinx my luck. 

While I'm not actively collecting Torkelson, I have acquired a bunch of his cards just being a Tigers fan, and I figured I would get them out and post them for the heck of it. 

His Bowman rookie was from a COMC purchase a while back.  I got the Leaf one from one of the card shops near me. The 2020 Topps is a custom that I made and printed out shortly after the Tigers drafted him. The jersey card is from the same COMC order. The Topps ones are a little confusing. The first one only comes in the complete set. The second base card is from Topps Update, and the last one is of course, the Rookie Debut card. Lastly are the Refractor that Topps sent me, and the 2 Heritage High Numbers (one will be going off to Ben, a Tigers fan I've been working on building a trade stack for). 

I finished putting my Phillies Topps cards into TCDB today. I was really hoping to have a few more teams done by now, but I ended up taking our Christmas tree down finally yesterday afternoon, and today I could've probably done another team (next up is the Pirates), but I think I nodded off once or twice, and had MLB Network on and got distracted a little. Maybe I'll get the Pirates in tomorrow after work. Just have the Pirates, Cardinals, Padre$, Giants, and Nationals to log, and the NL Topps cards will be entered into the site. I still haven't come across the missing 1993 Topps Traded cards, but I think after everything is entered, I will go through the 700 ct boxes I have in a few different areas of my card space and just make sure they didn't slip through the cracks and land amongst any doubles in them. 

We've been planning our vacation this year, and after driving across the US the last few years (and seeing Wrigley Field, Comerica Park, and Minute Maid Park), we decided to maybe do a cruise this year. We still might get to see a game, as we'll either go in March during Spring Training and could see a game in one of the southern cities on the way down, or we would go in the summer and could probably hit up a Marlins game if we picked the right week. If not, we'll still have the Opening Day Rays game (where I might get to see Torkelson) and that should be a great experience. I'd just like to cross another park off of our list, and Miami would do it. 

Lastly, I've been working on customs a little bit, just to kind of have something to post of customs since that has been a driving force of this blog (and will continue to be). I am close to finishing all of the missing Rockies cards from the 1996 Topps set, and once I finish them, I'll probably post them and write a little bit about the 1995 team that played the Braves in the playoffs. 

Thanks for checking out my latest post.

-Jeremy

How do you store you cards with multiple players?

 I'm working on a big project of inputting all of my Topps cards into TCDB so I can get wantlists for each set, as I attempt to get every Topps/Topps Traded base card from 1951 to the present. This has presented some unforseen extra tasks for me to accomplish along the way.

I purchased a number of Topps complete sets from the '90's to help me out with that decade, and I have come across a number of multi-player cards while sorting them. Many of them are duplicates. This isn't a problem, as I can put them with the team of a different player. The trouble is, many times, I don't exactly remember which team I put the original card with. Here’s an example. 

I have at least 1 copy of the 1997 Topps Derrek Lee/Paul Konerko/Ron Wright card. I thought I may have stored the card with the Padres and showcased Derrek Lee on the card. While inputting the Dodgers Topps cards into TCDB, I found the card with the Dodgers, highlighting Konerko. There are many other multi-player cards where I just can't remember which team they are stored with, so that led me to the idea of just pulling out every multi-player cards with more than 1 team represented as I put all of my Topps cards into TCDB, and then seeing which cards I have doubles of, and finally putting each card with the player/team I want it with, and then putting all of my loose cards into my binders. Sounds like a pain, but I think in the end, it will be worth it. 

That led me to wonder how my readers store their multi-player/multi-team cards. I have a few ways I figure it out for my collection. 

For a card like this one, it's just 2 guys who never amounted to anything. They didn't hurt any of my favorite teams, and I have nothing against them. I tend to look at the back, and whichever player did the most in the Majors, they get the card. For this one, Savage wins by 3.1 Innings. 

Next up, it's probably the easiest card to store. Mann never amounted to much, and Hansen set some pinch-hitting records. It goes to Hansen and the Dodgers. 

This one if you really split hairs, you could make a case for Delgado, but for me, it easily goes with Piazza. If I happened to get a double (which I have), I would put it with Delgado, then Fordyce if I had a triple, and finally with Leshnock if I happened to have 4 of this card. If I have 5, into the doubles box to maybe trade.

League Leader cards are somewhat easy. I generally put them with the player who led the league in whatever stat. This one goes to Beltre and the Dodgers, although I would be tempted to put it with the Cardinals and Pujols just because he was such a great player. Many times with if I have a multi-player card with Ken Griffey, Jr., it automatically goes to Griffey.

This card, although you might think it would go to Greinke, it would not. Greinke has always came off as a jerk to me, acting all moody with fans and refusing to autograph a card for Pat Neshek. I would avoid putting it with Grienke at all costs, and it would go to Kershaw (cause he's a great guy), and then Arrieta if I got doubles. I also avoid putting cards in my Yankee$ binder at all costs as well. A number of recent Gerrit Cole league leader cards are stored with the other players on it. Also, guys I just don't care for (Jeter, Yadier Molina, Fernando Tatis, Jr., Manny Machado, Justin Turner, Pete Rose, etc.) usually don't get any of their cards unless it's a last resort. 

How do you do it? Do you just put them with the first guy on the card? Do you put them in a special binder? Do you just throw them out and line your birdcage with them? 

I have also been picking out reprint cards with the original backs on them to use in place of older, more expensive cards. I've found a handfull in my Dodgers binder, and hopefully can get a good pile of them in order to save money on older cards. 

For anyone who wants to make trades, be patient. I will have all of these cards uploaded towards the last half of the year, and then it will be time to get crankin. I have a feeling I will be able to find cards for sets a lot easier once everything is logged into TCDB. That was a big problem for me previously. If someone wanted to see all of my 1995 Score cards, I could go through my 30 team binders and take a few hours, but if I have them all logged into the database, it will take minutes. I'll still have to pull them from the binders, but at least I will know which ones to look in. For anyone wanting to add me on TCDB, here is my profile. I am still learning on the site, but it is getting easier, so thanks to everyone who has helped me and given me advice. 

I'm off to put in the Brewers in TCDB. Thanks for checking out my latest post.

-Jeremy