Baseball Season Is Here! 2020 Topps Series 1 is Out!

The first baseball cards of 2020 have hit the shelves in the US. Topps Series 1 is out, and people on Reddit are talking. Because that's what people on Reddit do.

If I'm lucky, I'll get my hands on a few cards at the end of the month. There's a card show in Nagoya that I'm hoping to attend as a part of an overnight trip, and it's possible that someone will have the new hotness. 

Perhaps I'll revisit these thoughts in the future, but my first impression is a lack of impression. I'm not impressed.

The Fox Sports Infographic design is constrictive, making the image area too narrow on vertical cards. Horizontal cards still have the design on the vertical size, making the area more like an old TV than a widevision movie screen. I'm glad that player images go over the design. I can handle the sideways player names, but when the name is on the right, it really feels like the card should be sideways.

I think the Topps Now year in review cards are a waste of cardboard and more of a shameless marketing ploy. Really, most of Topps' cards showing images of cards in the past few years have been tacky. Decade's Next is very boring. Turkey Red, a set I've collected many times in the past, is just tired now. Based on the images I've seen, they just don't look impressive. I have nothing nice to say about the Home Run Challenge cards, and are the 1985-style inserts any different from what we'd expect?

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The Rookie Card logo medallion cards are odd because of the placement of the medallions. They're not in the place where the original cards had the logos, or would have the logos in the case of rookie cards of days yore. Stephen Strasburg's 2010 Topps card has the RC logo right over the Nationals logo, with the medallion above that, right next to his chest. This might be because of how they have to assemble these kinds of cards. But no sir, I don't like it.

Baseball Stars reminds me of 20-year old Bowman. Decades of Dominance only has one active player (to be expected, I suppose) but has a modern design. With a more "classic" feel I think I could have been behind this set from the beginning, though after seeing them in person I might change my mind. Why does Topps have 30-card sets for Hoskins and Guerrero other than a cash-grab? 

After all this old-man-complaining, what is good about Series 1?

The Global Game Medallion set looks interesting. I won't be chasing the set, but it's got a nice idea and the horizontal design suits big manupatches and medallions. Usually, I am happy with the medallion sets Topps creates. The manufactured sleeve patch cards are neat as well, though I think the vertical design makes the photo seem squished. Furthermore, I actually like the triangle/pyramid/up-arrow design of the Postseason and World Series hits.

And Decades Best is my favorite. I probably won't go after the 100-card set; it's just too big. I could be interested in one card from every decade (it's a shame they only seem to go back to the '40s or '50s - surprisingly there's no Ruth, Wagner, Cobb, or Gehrig). The team cards might fit somewhere in my collection, too. Honestly, if I could built this set for about 25 cents a card, I'd be interested. (I could do without the Chrome parallel. Unless it's a full set that can be had for $25... then I'm in.)

As always, I pick up a full flagship set once Series 2 hits shelves. But beyond my type collection, I think my want list will remain safe for a few more weeks.

How tired is Turkey Red? Did you notice that the card above is really from the 2006 set? Here's some 2020:

By the way, if you didn't infer it from my earlier comment (I don't have any 2020 Topps yet), none of these cards are mine, and many are promotional images.

Have you picked up any 2020 Topps Series 1? What are your thoughts?

Sew What? Going Wild. Confusing Movie. Double-Triple.

So many bad puns, so little post titles. More thick cards from the card show today.

 I'm not sure why my scanner decided to chop the top of the image off, but these two parallels from Topps Inception utilize the Official Panini Diamond Kings Artification Filter to make the photos look... arty. Honestly, I don't like the over-HDRization of images.

 Here's a card from Triple Threads. It features three pieces of jersey, which is obvious because the middle one is a different color. Some would have you believe this is a 7-piece relic card. But it ain't. It's numbered out of 36.

 Here's another card from the same year of Triple Threads. It may only have one giant piece of jersey inside, though the angle of the mesh indicates there are probably three separate pieces... which almost certainly came from the same jersey anyway. This card is numbered out of 27, and as such is a parallel. How else do I know it's a parallel? Seriously, I can't tell the difference beyond the serial number.

But Verlander and Scherzer are great pitchers, and Verlander was a 20-game winner last year. If (and it's a big if) Verlander can have four more seasons like last year, he could be a 300-game winner. And he reached the 3000-strikeout milestone last year as well. And he got 300 strikeouts last year alone. Again, four more seasons, and he could pass 4000 strikeouts.

 Speaking of animals, this manupatch is pretty cool...

But I think the water buffalo is cooler. All of the cards in this post have been funneled into my type collection but these patches might do well on display somewhere. I'd love a complete set of either of these series, but that's beyond my budget, and do I really need another impossible set to collect?

Since today is Groundhog Day, I guess it makes sense that today is the day I post these scans.

So let's close out this post with the thought that I might chase after a Max Scherzer autograph, inspired by this purchase.

Until next time...

There's no K in Thigpen

One of the best things about the Tokyo Collector's Card Show is the selection of cheap hits. While there is a lot (A LOT) of basketball there, there are plenty of baseball cards to flip through. Some of the regular dealers have some good "dime" and "dollar" boxes (really, 10 yen, 50 yen, and 100 yen boxes or stacks) which give me some fun cards and hidden gems, and the non-regular sellers often price their cards to move. Sometimes, there are so many cards that I just grab what I can and sort it all out later. That does result in some extras or cards that just have no good place in my collection, but in the end I've never had buyer's remorse after the show.

Here are four cards that I definitely found homes for in my collections.

 One slow-moving project I have is collection a full alphabet of letter patches. I'm perfectly comfortable getting manupatches, though most of those end up being these autographed rookie cards. I now have I, K, O, P, and R. I'm pretty sure that the I, K, O, and R are all from the "ROOKIE" word sets. I have a feeling Q and X will be the most difficult to find.

 For the first time, I tried using my scanner for regular-sized cards. It seems that my scanner just flat-out ignores a good part of the edge of the glass. I'll have to keep that in mind next time I scan with it.

I should probably note that my scanner/printer isn't hooked up to anything right now - I have to put an SD card into it, scan everything to the card, and then import and crop the images on the computer. So the entire batch of cards I scanned last weekend suffer from this problem; that really only affects about half a dozen cards in the end.

I already have a relic card for Will Ferrell, which is a six-swatch six-star card from 2018 Pop Century, and Sacha Baron Cohen isn't a favorite. But this was one of those "I'll buy that for a dollar" purchases.

 I also already have two Scarlett Johansson relic cards from 2008 Upper Deck A Piece of History; one swatch is black and the other is white. But this card is worth far more than I paid for it, and I won't turn away a Scarlett Johansson hit. It took a little bit of research, but this is from her tan jacket in Captain America: Civil War. I wouldn't mind one more relic featuring her black costume, but I'm not searching for it.

Another scan with a cropped image. Why on Earth do I have this card? I have a few political autographs already: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton. (Maybe I should get Hilary Clinton's autograph to complete the family set.) Gingrich represented Georgia for a long time, and I lived in Georgia for almost 20 years - in fact, in his district, for a large part of that. And he is an influential part of America's political history. In addition to serving as Speaker of the House, many people (see his Wikipedia article) believe he was a major contributor to the changes that brought the polarization and partisanship we see in Washington today. (Not that I like that. Like Hitler being the Time Magazine Person of the Year, importance equals neither popularity nor righteousness.) But this was sitting in a 100-yen box, and I can't let this card get away for that price. So now, I have a Newt Gingrich card.

That's all for now. Do you deliberately have any autographs of people you don't necessarily like?

Until next time...