Let me restate the obvious at this point: I got cards from Tom (of Angels In Order) in a trade at some point. I can't find any details about this so I have no idea when it arrived, what I sent (if anything?! - probably some Angels CardGen), or... well... anything. It was only recently that I was able to open the envelope, scan the cards, and enjoy their awesomeness. And I can't find any correspondence about this.
But let's see the coolness that was in the envelope!
These are one card - a double-sided card for charity. I gather Tom had a few of these, as they've shown up on at least one other blog (hello, PATP!). I'm a Gwynn fan, and PATP is a Rangers fan, so it's only natural that we both would end up with one of these cards. They must be fairly rare though, because I didn't find very much about them out there on the InterWebs. I did find out there are multiple years of them.
Now, the majority of the package was from one set. And while he sent me 18 cards from an insert set, that is still less than 1% of the total set's cards. Yup, I'm talking about the Upper Deck 20th Anniversary Retrospective set from 2009. 2500 cards in all. Insanity... and I'm trying to complete it. Well, not aggressively - it's been out for six years and I haven't even got half of the cards yet. But I do pick them up when I find them inexpensively at card shows. My want list for this set is here.
O-BA-MA! O-BA-MA! Sorry, I watched a lot of South Park recently.
Cool, an award trophy on a card!
My, Mozart really had a big head.
More basketball than baseball?
There were some really big names from this set in the lot: multiple Tigers, Griffey, and Obama especially.
It's cool to see Expos logos on cards now that the team has disappeared.
So, thank you Tom for pushing me a little closer to the finish line... or at least the first quarter of completion for this set.
And tomorrow, I'll have more cards from Tom, received in a completely separate package, for a completely separate reason (I think!).
Donruss/Playoff's downfall in 2005 was probably at least partly due to the insane number of parallels. When all the parallels are added in, 2005 Diamond Kings had 211 different sets in its release - Beckett's database identifies 102 of them as parallels and 83 as insert parallels. Topps probably used that example for its "confusion in the marketplace" argument.
Upper Deck had a lot of problems, too. And in the last couple years of its MLB licensing agreement, it inserted some massive sets into its packs. There was Yankee Stadium Legacy, and then the 20th Anniversary Retrospective. With 2500 cards, it's the largest set I'm trying to complete, and I've written about it several times. Because each card front is repeated on five cards, it's quite irritating - the five short blurbs on the back of the cards could have been combined into one card, and only a 500-card set could have been issued. But, then, Upper Deck wanted an insane set.
I've contemplated collecting 1/5th of the set - one card from each "series" - but regardless of how I do it collecting this set is really slow going.
At this point I don't know how many cards I have. I changed the format of my want list for the set so I don't have a count, though I am guessing I'm around 10-15%. The cards you see above came from The Baseball Card Snob, in exchange for some Japanese Yankees cards. If any of you have cards from this set you want to dump on me, I won't turn them down!
The 2009 Upper Deck 20th Anniversary Retrospective set is a behemoth, with 2500 total cards in the checklist. I doubt I'll ever be serious enough about finding cards to finish it, but if you have a bunch of these just laying around I'll be glad to take them off your hands!
Note that cards with a strikethrough are ones I already have.
Let's get this out of the way first. You love seeing vintage cards. You love 1952 Topps. You hate the Cardinals. Or maybe not. But you came here to stare at two pretty 1952 Topps cards, so why should I deny you the pleasure?
My aunt and uncle are in town for the rest of my American life, and on (do you know) the way to San Jose, I made a couple card store stops.
First was Peninsula Sports Cards, the store I love to visit most often. There are cases of great cards (remember that 2011 Allen & Ginter State Relic?) and value binders ($5 relics, 5/$20). Sure, $5 relics here are usually $1-2 at a card show, but sometimes I find some nice stuff. I didn't look through those binders that afternoon, just the 50%-off-book relic and autograph case. I came away with two cards, one of which is seen here:
For $4, I now have a Tier One hit. Gaby Sanchez may not be as popular Ryan Braun or even a Pablo Sandoval, but he was fourth in Rookie of the Year voting last year and an All-Star this year. Now, I just need base cards, parallels, relics, etc, etc...
Skip to 2:10, and then 3:08. Or watch the whole thing. I've never seen the movie, but Billy Crystal did a spoof of this with Yul Brynner as Babe Ruth. Funny stuff.
What's the other card? Oh, I can't tell you, since it's a gift. It's a nice card, though!
From Peninsula, I drove down to Stevens Creek Sports Cards, which I've told you was my childhood card store. It was time to get some set singles!
While I had no luck with the Javier Lopez single I needed for my Update set, I pulled 2009 Upper Deck singles to get me down to two left on my want list.
I also dug for the rest of the 2011 award winners - Wieters with his Gold Glove, Maddon as Manager of the Year, Kottaras for hittin the cycle, and Isringhausen for joining the 300 Saves Club.
What about the '52 Topps seen at the beginning of the post? Both of those are headed to the projects. And by that I mean crafty projects. The projects won't look like this (totally cool):
Kennedy's going to Japan, so you'll see him again in a couple months when I've settled into my apartment; Rojek's off to my cousin in Chicago for a crafty Christmas/birthday/whatever present she'll put together for me by next year. I wish I could say my project needs are now complete, but after resorting the cards, I've discovered three more needs - a '61 Topps, and '97 and '00 Upper Deck. At least it's an excuse to get back to Stevens Creek one last time!
I picked two packs of 2009 Goudey out of the "Value Pack" box at Target, just for the fun of it. What did I get?
Pack one: Max Scherzer and Kevin Kouzmanoff may not be big names, but that's more than made up by Prince Fielder's big belly and upper arms and Jose Reyes' big head. If you're wondering, the Reyes is a short print. All four are for trade.
"But wait," you say, "I opened several of those retail packs and I know for a fact there are five cards in the pack." And you're right! Here's the fifth card, a 4-in-1 of Southern California superstars. It, too, is for trade.
Pack two: This is a much-less exciting pack, as far as the base cards are concerned. However, there may be a couple Dodger fans out there who will be interested in the blue parallel of the 4-in-1 Dodgers card. All these cards are for trade, but the 4-in-1 comes with a stipulation - it must be replaced by another blue (or black, but those are serial numbered to 21) 2009 Goudey 4-in-1.
Not that there is much interest in the 20th Anniversary Retrospective set (I think one other blogger is collecting the set), but this took the "place" of a short print in the second pack. I'm putting the set together, with a planned completion date of 2034.
