Topps commons questions

 I’ve been rapidly trying to make pages on here for each Topps set with my needs on them. It turns out generating wantlists on TCDB is very easy as long as you have all of your ‘haves’ put into the site, which I do. While I probably don’t need to have wantlists on here, I feel it makes it easier for guys who don’t use TCDB. I have 15-20 sets that I’ve finished the wantlists for, and it’s going to be a slow and arduous process in getting the rest up on here, as many sets I have have are probably 500-600 cards away from being complete. I will still keep plugging away at making the blog pages and posting them to my main Ultimate Topps Project page. 

I don’t know how long it will take to finish adding the wantlists to the page, but adding cards to my project is essentially doable now because I have all of the wantlists on my TCDB profile. In a few weeks, Ill be getting a nice check from work, basically 2 weeks worth of pay, and while we’ll probably use some of it for Christmas, bills, and the like, I’m hoping to knock some commons and maybe a few key rookies off of some of the lists. That leaves some questions which I need answers to. 

I plan to meet up with my friend Jim who collect Cardinals and autographs in the next few weeks. He had a slew of doubles, and now that I have some wantlists, I’ll happily try to take some off of his hands. He also will probably have a Logan Gilbert autograph for me as he will be trying to get  an autograph for me at a Stetson University baseball banquet near the end of this month. I’ve went to games in the past and got him stuff signed and it’s fun helping him get cards done and having him help me as well. A few weeks ago, one of my coworkers purchased a new car, and the guy doing the finance actually played in the minors in the 2000’s. I didn’t have any cards of him, but I let Jim know, and sure enough, he had one of his cards and actually had an appointment to get his car serviced there soon. He was able to get the card signed, which was cool. A few months before that, Jim was getting some rehab done on his knee, and the guy at the rehab place was a #1 draft pick for the Indians in 1993, and was on a 1992 Topps Traded team USA card. Jim was able to get him to sign a minor league card for me. It’s kind of funny the former pros you run into and I feel like autograph collectors just have a knack for it. However, that’s a topic for another post. It will be nice to see Jim and hook him up with some Cardinals and seeing what I can find in his dupes box. Perhaps I’ll take a trip to Ocala and do some trading with John as well in the coming weeks. 

I’ll probably update TCDB and my list after that and then look at doing some purchases. My question is what is the best site to purchase commons on?  I knew of Just Commons (which I believe is CardBarrel now) and Sport Lots, but are there any other sites where you can buy commons for nickels and dimes?  Is it just a pipe dream?  I grew up in the ‘90’s and most commons were a nickel or dime, and while inflation has raised prices, I just don’t get how some of these newer base Topps commons are going for 50 cents to a dollar. There are jokers on a junk era FB page trying to sell lots of stars with their basic Topps cards and junk era rookie cards for a dollar or two each. I just don’t get who is paying that kind of money for the cards. 

I’m trying to make a trade with a guy on the group. He sounds like your typical ‘collected in the late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s, quit, and came back during Covid’ guy. He sounds like he’s going after current rookies and I think he’s into grading, which is fine if that’s your thing.  He has a ‘20 Topps Gold Randy Arozarena (Cardinals uni), a 2019 Topps Chrome x-fractor autograph of Brandon Lowe, and 38 or so commons off of my lists from 1987-1990 Topps. He’s asking for current rookies. I have an extra ‘18 Topps Update Ronald Acuna card, so I offered it but asked if there are any Tigers or a few more commons to sweeten up the deal. 

I feel like Acuna could be a once in a generation player who had a historic season, and has the potential to be in the HOF. Lowe is a streaky hitter who has been injured the past 2 years, and while Arozarena has had some good seasons, both aren’t on the level of Acuna. I’m pretty sure he’s going to grade the Acuna, and even if it is an 8 it’s going to increase the value. I’m not going to grade the Acuna, or the Lowe or Arozarena if I get them. It’s just not me. Bottom line, Acuna isn’t worth less than a stack of commons and the Gold Randy and Lowe autographed xfractor no matter how low they are numbered.

 I offered a ‘18 Topps Update Juan Soto rookie which I think is more of the level of a fair trade, but he declined. Now he wants me to throw in some parallels with the Acuna, but I still think he’s getting the better end of the deal and doesn’t have a real grasp on the value of any of the cards involved. Perhaps I don’t, but I think the stats and injury history back up my reasoning. 

So my questions. What’s a fair trade for the Gold Randy, Lowe auto, and stack of commons?  What sites can I get cheap commons from?  Any other sites besides Card Barrel or Sport Lots?  Do I scour eBay for starter sets and hope for no dupes? 

I’ll probably make some trades on TCDB once I get more and more of my stuff in the site, and maybe that’s the best move. Slowly but surely I will get this project rolling and knock cards/sets off of my list. Thanks in advance for the help. 

Thanks for taking the time to check out my latest post and answer my common questions. 

-Jeremy

All of my Topps are logged into TCDB

This afternoon, I was able to finish logging in the final Topps card of the evil Yankee$ into TCDB and finally get a grasp on how many complete Topps sets I have. The results were a tad surprising. 

The site shows I am between 50-100 cards short of a few sets, which I figured. Other ones surprised me and showed I was a handful short. A few are probably just due to missing a checkbox or two, and I expect to remedy that soon as I will be jotting down a list of a few cards that I think I have and going through boxes/binders in search of them. Others show that I purchased sets that I hoped were complete but were 1-10 cards short. No big deal, I will just have to find those cards in a dime box, get through trades, or purchase online somewhere. 

The next part will be going through each Topps and Topps Traded/Update set that is not complete and marking each one I don’t have so it will go on my wantlist. From there, I’ll make a page for each set on here, and type out a wantlist, as well as providing a link to TCDB on each page. 

 

I have started a PAGE with each Topps set listed. Each set will eventually have a link to its own page on my blog with needed cards listed and the aforementioned TCDB wantlist link. Hope that’s not to confusing to follow, but just visit the page and click on a few links and see what I mean. 

While not earth shattering, TCDB says I have completed the 1985-1989 Topps Traded sets, the 1991-1993 Topps base sets (including the 1991 and 1992 Traded sets), 1995 Topps, and the 2019-2023 Topps base sets (including the 2019-2022 Update sets). Those were sets I hoped would be complete since I purchased them completed, but as this exercise has taught me, you can’t take that for granted. 

I’ll start getting some of these wantlists for Topps sets finished and posted to the main page, and get more non-Topps (meaning probably cards I’m willing to trade) uploaded to TCDB. It’s going to be fun to be able to bring wantlists to card shops and the like and be able to easily see what I need. Might be time for a trip to the LCS in a few weeks. It’s also going to be fun to input non-Topps stuff into the site. In a year or so it’s really going to pay off and I will be able to see how many junk wax sets I actually have completed or very close to complete. Thanks for following this project so far. 

-Jeremy

Same stuff, different day

 It seems like while waiting for the final baseball card products to hit the shelves in retail stores that the same products are being stocked at Wal-Mart, Target, and the like. For me, it generally means ‘23 Allen & Ginter, ‘23 Topps Chrome, and discounted blasters of ‘22 Bowman Platinum, ‘22 Topps Heritage High Number, and ‘22 Topps Gallery. With the itch to open packs being great sometimes, that means that I’ve opened some of the same products multiple times recently. Since I don’t really care for Ginter, I’ve opened a good amount of ‘22 Heritage High Number, and don’t think there will be many Rays or Tigers in ‘22 Gallery, that means you’ve been getting many posts about ‘22 Bowman Platinum and ‘23 Topps Chrome. And you’ll be getting more today….

We recently made 2 trips to Wally World, and I picked up blasters of both of them. While not earth shattering, I think each blaster delivered in different ways. Let’s start with the ‘22 Bowman Platinum. 

A few of the base cards have already been pulled in previous blasters, but I won’t know for sure until I put these in my monster boxes of cards to be put in binders. 

Where this box really hit for me was the Rays and Tigers. Shane Baz will be back for 2024, and there’s still hope for him to become the ace that he was becoming in 2022. His card could come in handy then. I feel Brujan is just going to be a bench guy bouncing from team to team, and the last guy may not be in MLB much longer. Should the worst happen, I’m probably not going to go out of the way to acquire his cards, but if they come to me via trades I probably won’t pitch them. Yankee fans still accept cards of John Wetteland, Mel Hall, and Chad Curtis, right?  Not that the Rays have much room to talk. I think when the final verdict comes out on Franco, I’m going to do a post about the Rays and some of the questionable players they have employed and ask the question why. 

Back to the cards, the Torkelson and Jobe cards are nice ones that will go to my rookie card binders since I already have copies for my Tiger ones. I also pulled nice rookies of CJ Abrams, annoying Phillie Brandon Marsh and his teammate Bryson Stott. I was hoping Marsh would be able to afford a beard cut and haircut with the NL Champion prize money, but I guess not. Only 4 Ice Parallels and no numbered parallels today, but it was an ‘A’ last name hot box with Alonso, Alvarez, and Aguilar being 3 last names of the 4 that I pulled. 

The Chrome box was less of a box that catered to my collection needs, but it still had some good cards. I only got 2 Rat-Bird cards out of the blasters, but their Game 1 loss and 9-2 score presently in the top of the 4th makes that all better. Won’t make the Rays loss better, but if the AL playoffs go the way they have this round, I’d be fine. I’d love to see the Rangers, Astros, Braves, and Diamondbacks advance with the Rangers winning it all, but mark my words, the Rangers, Astros, Braves and Dodgers will advance with the Braves beating the Astros 4 games to 2. It would be nice to see new blood win it all, and everyone besides Texas has won a title, and all but Arizona, Philly, Baltimore, Minnesota, and Texas have won in the past 3 seasons. With Philly, Baltimore, and LA on my crap list for beating Tampa in the World Series or this year’s playoffs, and Minnesota being on it for being a thorn in Detroit’s side, it doesn’t leave too many teams to root for even if I don’t care about having a new team winning. 

No really big name rookies, although Bello seems like he could be good for Boston and I like Montero for Arizona. Grissom could be a fixture for Atlanta, although he disappointed this season. Alvarez also seems like he is a nice hitter for New York, so his might be a good pull as well. The refractors were generally a disappointment, with an unknown rookie for the A’s, a sepia refractor of Michael Massey that is somehow a double after only 3 blasters (!!!), a Tatis (Padre$ suck!), and a Twin. The pink ones are fine with me. I was really hoping Seattle would get in the playoffs this year, and they would’ve been my dark horse to win it all this year. They’ll be in it the next few years. Raleigh looks like he’ll be a nice catcher for them. Marte wasn’t a bad pull either, just never been a fan/hater of either the Mets or Marte, but I’ll take it over a Yankee/Padre/Rat-Bird/Twin/Guardian any day. 

The other card that intrigues me some is the Ohtani card. I’ve busted a few Chrome blasters the last 2 years, but haven’t pulled any guys for the MVP promotion, but Ohtani might have a chance to win the award this year. Maybe Seager has a chance or maybe one of the Rat-Bird guys, but I think only Seager has a shot at beating Ohtani, and with his dual-position and putting up those numbers in an injury shortened season, I think I have a good shot. Now I’ll have to decide whether to redeem it or keep it. Do I go after another blaster to try to get an Olson or Acuna for the NL award? 

I’m almost done with my Topps card logging. I’m halfway done with the Rangers, then just have the Jays and Yankee$, and USA and a few smaller defunct teams, which should only take a few hours total. Just a few more weeks and I should have some lists appearing on here. 

Whenever the final checklists from’23 Topps Update make their appearance, I’ll get to updating the ‘23 Topps page of my Topps missing players pages. I may be concentrating on the baseball card portion of the blog but I’m still going to do the customs. I just want to get need lists up at least so I can work on completing some physical sets. 

While I’m on the subject of customs, I got one set printed for my big project and I’m in the process of printing more, cutting them out, and I’ll mail some out to the customer this week for a small event related to the subjects. From there, we’ll see how many sets I need to make, and I’ll try to finish those soon and expect a post on the whole thing when I get clearance. 

2023 Topps Update should be out in a week or so, and while that might be a good choice to get packs of besides the 2 products I’ve been blasting lately, I plan on just purchasing a hand collated set, so buying packs probably won’t be a good idea. I figure ‘23 Heritage High Number, ‘23 Bowman Platinum, ‘23 Topps Gallery, ‘23 Mozaic, and ‘23 Archives will be out soon enough, so we might get a chance of pace finally. I’m sure some of you guys sure hope so. 

Thanks for checking out my latest post. 

-Jeremy

Playoff predictions

 I figured I would get this post done before the playoffs start. Here are my predictions for the playoffs this year. 

Rays vs. Rangers

I think the Rays can win this one in 3 games. They will probably have a game with no offense (probably Glasnow’s start), but Eflin will be money, and they will walk off the other game. 

Blue Jays vs. Twins

Jays have more offense and better pitching. 2 game sweep. 

Brewers vs. D-Backs

Brewers will lose the game Gallen starts against them, but Arizona is young and Milwaukee has playoff experience. 

Marlins vs. Phillies

Phillies are winning this one in a sweep, but only because it’s against the Marlins. They are still a fluke team. 

Rays vs. Orioles

The Rat-Birds pitching will finally be exposed as overrated and Playoff Randy comes out. Rays in 5 in a blowout final game. 

Jays vs. Astros

Astros bats come alive and Toronto shows how they still need starting pitching. Astros in 4. 

Dodgers vs. Brewers

Dodgers sweep this one easy. If Burnes weren’t pitching for Milwaukee, they would’ve knocked out all 3 Brewers starters before 4 innings

Braves vs. Phillies

Braves blow out Phillies in 3 with Acuna hitting 3 Bombs in Game 2

Rays vs. Astros

The Rays carriage finally turns into a pumpkin as the Astros win in 5. 

Dodgers vs. Braves

Braves win a tight series in 6 games but it will feel like it was a lot closer and should’ve went 7. 

Braves vs. Astros

The Braves win the World Series over the Astros and we’re actually the better team this time around. In a 5 game series, Olson will hit 4 HRs and in the MVP. 

There you go. Just keep in mind, had the Rays not lost 3/5 of their rotation and guys like Franco for the season, Tampa Bay would’ve taken the AL for a spin and given the Bravos a run for their money and it would’ve probably been a 7 game World Series that could’ve swung either way. 

Thanks for checking out my latest post. 

-Jeremy

2023 Yankee Elimination Day and 2023 Topps Chrome

 First off, happy Yankee Elimination Day!!!  I believe it was 3 days ago that they were officially eliminated at the hands of the Diamondbacks. Somewhere in Arizona, Luis Gonzalez is smiling. I’ll try to make a custom celebrating the event soon. I’ll be working on printing a bunch of customs tomorrow and I should be able to squeeze out one celebrating the team I dislike the most getting eliminated from postseason contention. Hopefully I can top it off with a card of the Rat-Birds getting ousted and one of the first of many Rays World Series titles. 

Earlier today, the family went to Daytona and got our eyes looked at. I got some new contacts and all of our visits showed our eyes were working pretty well and any issues we have weren’t getting worse.  On the way home, we stopped at Target for some food, and I picked up a blaster of 2023 Topps Chrome. 

The base cards weren’t too bad, with this being a Mackenzie Gore hot blaster. I believe I already have one of that ‘88 Topps Luis Castillo card. There’s an DJ Lemahieu card, reminding me of the beautiful 2023 Yankee$ season. If only they can finish below .500 and behind the Red Sox. 

No Rays or Tigers, but I got a few cool refractors, including a nice Purple speckle? one. Another DJ card and one of DeJong household favorite Kyle Tucker. We saw Kyle play in the minors at Corpus Christi in 2017 and got his autograph, and he’s a Florida boy, so why not root for him? 

That’s the Castillo refractor. The Purple isn’t the first numbered parallel of of Castillo that I’ve pulled, as I got either a 2021 or 2022 Topps Green parallel of him. This 2023 card is a nice looking one, and I hope I can hold onto it for a while. 

Thanks for checking out my latest post. 

-Jeremy

2023 Prizm Blaster

 We ended up going to Target after I got off work today, and while there wasn’t much to offer in terms of baseball cards, they did have 2023 Prizm. While it probably wouldn’t be my first choice if other options were there, I was willing to take a flyer on a blaster, especially with shiny cards inside. 

It took about 15 minutes after I opened them for me to remember that Panini had lost their license. The retired ‘90’s guys and prospects didn’t clue me in, it was more the guys from the early 20th century and Negro League guys that did. When is the last time you got a Joe Tinker card?

I couldn’t tell you if any of these prospects are rookies or not, can you?

I believe 3 different Cleveland team names are represented with the Naps, Indians, and Guardians. 

I pulled a Green Ice of Tigers prospect Luke Gold and a 3-Hole of former Rays prospect Kyle Manzaedo. Hope Civale can make this trade worth it and pitch Tampa to a title this year. A nice pull out of the ‘90’s guys was Cecil Fielder, a guy I collect. The Chipper is another guy I collect, but according to TCDB, I have 144/1,670 Fielder cards for 8.6% of all of his cards. I have 229/18,839 cards for 1.2% of his cards. There are just so many Chipper cards out there and not enough Fielder cards. The Ice Blue cards are kind of cool, but I just have issues with some of the older guys as well as newer guys being in the set that keeps me from being excited from getting the shiny cards of them. I’ve just never been a fan of older baseball. Really anything pre-Topps. I can listen to stories of Aaron, Mantle, Brock, Mays, and guys who were pretty old, and I feel like I can relate some just because I know the cards. The closer to the present, the better, and the more players I have actually heard of. I just don’t get that excited about guys who played in the ‘40’s and earlier (even Tigers guys) because there weren’t many power hitters, not many different photos to choose from, and it just feels like it was a different game than what I grew up on in the ‘90’s. 

To be honest, even the guys I grew up watching that I pulled like Maddux, Chipper, Vizquel, Edmonds, Big Frank, and Nomar just didn’t do it for me because I’ve pulled hundreds of their cards growing up. While I feel like I’ve pulled a ton of Alomar cards as well, it hasn’t been near the amount of the other guys. Put some guys in sets like Rich Gedman instead of Carlton Fisk, Tom Herr instead of Ozzie Smith, Marquis Grissom instead of Andruw Jones, Chris Sabo instead of Barry Larkin, and Ron Darling instead of Tom Seaver. Guys you weren’t bombarded with cards of in the ‘80’s, ‘90’s, and ‘00’s, but guys who are enough of fan favorites and recognizable names that they have a shot at getting into a teams Hall of Fame. 

All in all, I thought the box was decent with the Tiger hit and a Ray and 2 guys I collect, but I might pump the brakes if it’s the only thing left on the shelves. Hopefully it won’t be too long before Update hits the shelves. 

Thanks for checking out my latest post. 

-Jeremy

More ‘22 Bowman Platinum

 Yesterday we went to Wal-Mart, and I got, you guessed it, a blaster of 2022 Bowman Platinum. 

Even though there weren’t any numbered cards, autographs, or very big names, this was a decent blaster for me, with 4 Rays, 2 Tigers, and a Julio Rodriguez rookie. The Franco may or may not be a good card, I’ll probably find out after the season. I’ve heard good things about Basabe and Pie, and I felt like Josh Lowe would break out maybe in 2024, but he has put up almost breakoutish numbers in 2023 with almost 20 HRs and 75 RBIs up to this point. Torkelson is also doing better for my Tigers. I also got a base and Ice parallel of Jake Burger. 

For the ‘guys who I can’t tell if they are rookies or not because Bowman Platinum doesn’t have a 1st Bowman Platinum card logo’, there is Robert Gasser (hope he has a nice fastball), Andrew Painter, Kahlil Watson, and Tyler Black (with an Ice parallel). I think all of these guys would have to be rookies because they were all 2021 draft picks, and I pulled a Kahlil Watson rookie from ‘22 Bowman. It is confusing with draft picks though, because with the Bowman Draft set, many guys get drafted and get a Bowman Draft card in the same year. This is the kind of thing MLB needs to be inserting their hands into and making rules on, not on making one company hold an exclusive license or putting MLB debut patches on jerseys and then on rookie cards. The last 2 cards were my last 2 Ice parallels. 

These were the regular cards I pulled. A few might be dupes, but I won’t know for sure until I add them to my monster boxes, which I might just hold off on until I get a bigger stack of cards. I’m on day 5 of an 8 day stretch of work, but good news is I’ll have Tuesday and Wednesday off, and I’ll be able to do something card-related, whether that be entering Topps cards from the few remaining teams into TCDB or working on the big custom project. Either way, it will be a nice relaxing time. By then, the Yankee$ may be eliminated from playoff contention, so I might have a new Yankee Elimination Day card to print, as well as a post on the topic to work on. Currently, I am on 1985 in my Twins binder and I’ll get back to entering that Topps set in the DB on Monday afternoon probably. I probably won’t get the rest of my teams finished by Wednesday, but maybe 2-3 teams, so just leaving me with the Rangers, Blue Jays, Yankee$, Team USA/Olympic team, and random cards like St. Louis Browns, commissioners, etc. Getting excited to be so close to be end and be able to conjure up some need lists for my Topps sets. 

I’m hoping to make some kind of notebook or folder that I can put all of my need lists in so I can easily look through and mark them off. I want to make something that will hold paper but keep the paper from tearing but makes it easy to cross off cards while at shops or shows. I’ll either type or write out the lists, with card #, player name, and perhaps a team name. I want the font to be as small as possible so I can keep the page numbers down to a minimum. 

Plastic sleeves would be great to keep the papers from coming out of the binder, but I couldn’t mark off cards quickly, as I anticipate having to flip through multiple sets as dime/quarter/whatever boxes generally aren’t very organized by years. Perhaps doing a stronger paper or a putting something strong around the holes and just hole punching through it will work. I want to use some kind of highlighting system to mark off cards I purchase or acquire. Someday it will all be more than an idea and I’ll be marking off cards and hopefully finishing sets and reliving great baseball seasons and history through completed sets. 

Thanks for checking out my latest post. 

-Jeremy