It's just as the title implies: I picked up three hobby packs (the only kind!) of the new Heritage Minor League release. Here are my findings:
The first pack was quite boring. I recognize Yasmani Grandal from my spring trip to the LA area, but not James Jones.It's fun pulling cards of players I recognize in these minor league packs.
Nine more base cards, and again two southern California League players - Reymond Fuentes sounds somewhat familiar, but Jonathan Villar is a name I recall well. He played alongside Jose Altuve in Lancaster, and I was fairly impressed by his fielding abilities. He didn't turn out too great by the end of the year as far as statistics go, but that never really matters to me.
Yes, you see that correctly, I pulled a jersey hit. It's a dark shade of green that reminds me of a late summer thunderstorm moving through Georgia. Maybe that's the team's intention? The jersey card meant one less card in the pack, so you get to see the pack in the middle of the scan! I have a feeling Liriano is on his way out. He's been playing since 2008 and can't get past single-A; at the rate he's going he'll make the majors some time around his 26th birthday.
I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't get a tint parallel, but I was pleasantly surprised to pull a jersey! This set is exactly what I expected it to be. It's exactly the same as Heritage, except with minor league players. Is that good? I don't think so. As I've said before, purposefully decreasing the quality of the photo detracts from the design of the card. I'd rather see a quality photo - at least flagship brand quality - on the old design. The low quality makes every single one of these cards look like they're supposed to be some sort of tint variation.
The Liriano and Gary Brown cards are being kept but all the rest are for trade!
About 10 years ago, Big Fat Liar came out. It's a fun family movie in which Frankie Muniz and Amanda Bynes do mean things to Paul Giamatti to try to get him to admit to stealing Muniz's English paper - Giamatti is turning it into a summer blockbuster movie. The plot of the paper (and thus, movie) is about a kid who lies so much that things get way out of hand.
And that is where my story begins! In April, I decided to add just a little bit more to my collection. Sure, I already had Diamond Kings, Baseball Heroes, Team USA, Women in sports, non-sport sets, base sets, 125+ incomplete insert sets, award winners, statistical leaders, Hall of Fame members, and club members (like 3000 hits, 500 home runs, etc). There was a personal collection of baseball autographs and entertainment autographs and memorabilia. And of course, the 30,000+ card type collection.
But for some reason, maybe because I felt left out, I wanted to start a small player collection. I was reasonable with the plan, though, stickin with Topps flagship cards for each player.
Flash forward to last month, where I picked up about 200 cards to add to my player collections. Did I luck into a major stack of flagship Topps cards I needed? Certainly not! Out of those 200 cards, I believe only one - a 2003 Topps Frank Thomas - was on the list. All the rest were inserts and base set cards from a whole selection of releases I thought were fun and shiny.
Looking at that stack of cards, I realize that at even 10 cents a card, I spent at least $20 last month outside of the bounds of that collection. So I have to refocus, and remind myself what that collection is supposed to contain.
So more as a reminder to myself, I'm writing this to say: my player collections have a focus, and I need to stick with it. That $20+ I spent could have been used to buy Marquee, Chrome, Bowman Platinum, or any number of other cards for the type collection. Or saved for this month, or the big November show that I'm really looking forward to.
The updated, correct Player Collection page is located at this address. Each player is listed across the top.
Lesson learned before it got really bad.
(And speaking of player collection, I'm sticking this image here for Greg Z.)
I don't know what's going on with the color or lines, other than my scanner isn't great with foil.
After six years, I picked up my first Allen & Ginter rip card this summer, seen towards the bottom of this post. I remember when A&G first hit in 2006, there was a great deal of discussion about whether it was worth ripping the card. Along the same lines are the discussions on whether to peel protective coatings, open sealed vintage packs, or (for two years in the 1990s) open the cans.
But you may not be familiar with another "rip" card that came out nearly a decade before the first Allen and Ginter issue: Zenith's 5x7 cards. This set came three per pack of 1998 Zenith, with the regular-sized cards inside the 5x7s.
Of course, the Ginter rip cards are much more limited than these 5x7 cards, adding to their scarcity. And much like the Ginter cards, most collectors chose to slit the back to obtain the card inside.
Because this set was issued towards the end of the junk wax era (and just before the Donruss/Playoff bankruptcy), they're kind of tough to find, but when available they should be picked up for very little money. I theoretically overpaid for this card by handing over $1, even though it's intact. Will I open it? Most likely, the answer is no. But it's tempting!
