My first baseball cut!

I think my interest in type sets comes from my enjoyment in organization. It goes all the way back to my childhood, when I'd sort my skittles out by color, shelve my books by type (still do), and sort my pantry by type of food. Breakfast items on this shelf, soups over here... I look over my stock and try to be sure I have a little bit of every type of food I might want to eat. I love sampler platters and buffets at restaurants, so I can have one of everything. Yes, some of my dinners end up as type collections. (Why can't I find any Chinese buffets in San Francisco?)

One of the "type" collections I thought of putting together but never really started was a relic set. The list is fairly massive - jersey, pants, shin guards, chest protectors, hats, helmets, gloves, batting gloves, shoes, bats, patches, laundry tags, buttons, MLB logos, balls, bases, bat barrels, bat knobs, warning track, wall padding, and so on. At the end of the list was a cut autograph. Now, there are plenty of cuts, mainly of modern players who have no business having a cut, but I still wouldn't mind getting a real cut autograph of some 1920s player.

Well, I still don't have my cut autograph (I have a football one, cut from a Swell 1990s card), but I do have a different kind of cut (and a different kind of relic): a ticket stub.

This isn't an expensive set to assemble, as far as manufacturing goes. I'm sure game tickets can be bought pretty cheap on the secondary market. Topps could send a representative to the various stadiums and ask people for their stubs as they exit the game, use some free/corporate tickets, or just ask the teams for some fake season tickets from the year before.

As for this stub, the Rangers lost the home opener 8-1, putting their record at 3-4 on the season (the Orioles went to 6-1). Salty didn't even play in the game. Aubrey Huff, with the Orioles, went 4-4 with 4 RBI, a double and a walk. Milton Bradley and Ben Broussard would have been the best choices for the Rangers on this card, as they both got two hits in the game; Ian Kinsler and Josh Hamilton both got hits as well (and are bigger, but shorter, names than Saltalamacchia).

I like the set idea, though. It would be cool to have a card like this for every game played in a season. Arrange to get a set of 50 bleacher tickets or something for each game, and put them in cards. Sure, a full set would then be over 2400 cards (with 50 of each), but that would make pulling one fairly easy. Imagine, owning a Topps card for the games you went to last year, with the player of the game (for whichever team) shown like Jarrod here. Then, on the back, you put the full box score! Make them a reverse book card, even, with the box score in the book part and the ticket on the outside, and you'll have a little room for a short game summary on the back. Put them as box toppers in a larger issue. Maybe they could be the bonus cards in blasters. I'd buy a blaster to get one of these cards.

So that's another "type" of relic card in my collection! This card was added to my collection via the great blog party held over at Jaybarkerfan's Junk!