A&G Hater

Posted by cardboard hogs on August 18, 2013

Alright, just as a fair warning to anyone reading. I’m not a fan of Allen & Ginter. In fact, I don’t like the A&G set…but, i always buy a couple of packs each season with the hopes that my interest will be peaked. This year i splurged and dropped $12 on 3 packs from Hoopla Sports, another LCS in good ol’ Beaverton. Twelve dollars bought me a whole lotta nothingness and left an empty place in my soul.

My problem isn’t with the base cards, the photos or the card stock. I think all three of those things are great! Especially when you can pull a card of Werth’s sweet ass beard AND Hammerin’ Hank in those sweet 70’s Braves unis. The power of that beard and the flowing locks adjacent to the the iconic humility of the true home run king is priceless, especially as part of a base set.

You also get some great action photos of superbly talented young shortstops making nice plays going to their left…with a soccer haircut. You also get a base landscape. LOVE.

But here is where the wheels fall off for me as i roll down this steep hill to hell. I get cards like this. Tommy Lee…seems to me like this should have been a landscape card, eh?

For me though, this is the ultimate reason i ~~hate~~ strongly dislike the A&G set. Miss Universe and some dude with a paintball gun. What The F**K!! A Russian paintballer that has the ability to never forget the amazing people he has met…that’s what the back of the card told me. Well, that’s great. I googled him and could only find information on a Matthias Blonski that is an apparently highly motivated and creative graphic designer. Good for him. Now, Ms. Olivia Culpo. Although she is quite stunning and appears to be talented as well as intelligent, i don’t want her rookie card. To me this is a waste of card stock. It has no place in my collection. Maybe one of you kids out there have a Miss Universe PC you’re working on, but i don’t.

My rants are almost over…only three cards left.

The subsets, oh the subsets. These are just a couple of the subsets i pulled a card from. Martial Mastery, Knights and Civilizations of Ages Past, Vikings. Knights and Vikings. Again, don’t have a place for these guys. My PC consists of baseball and football players, not nordic pagans or dudes from the Cantebury Tales. I guess i can start a Chaucer or Marauders PC? Thoughts?

Ok, last card. Just like any good American, I love a good manmade canal. Anything to facilitate the trafficking of goods from east to west…and definitely anything to avoid Cape Horn! I’m being a little sarcastic here if you can’t tell, but i would actually love to visit the Panama Canal at some point in my life…not really sure why, but it’s one of those things I would love to see in action. Maybe i can take my card with me?

So, i vented a little. I know a lot of you guys love the Allen & Ginter and I think that’s great…it’s just not a set for me. But hey, I absolutely love Heritage and will continue to collect that set each year. I will also continue to buy a pack or two of Allen & Ginter and feel empty inside…if any of the card above interest you, please let me know. Send me your address and they will be yours for free! I have the remainders of the three packs as well.

At the end of the day, I guess that’s what makes collecting these pieces of card stock so great. We can have things we love that no one else does, and vice versa. Good night and good luck with that Gint-a-Cuffs thing everyone is doing.

2013 Topps S2 – Packs 5 and 6

Posted by cardboard hogs on July 20, 2013

The last couple of posts have been about celebrations. This post is going to be about great plays and faces…as in the faces of men celebrating something or working very hard at doing something.

The first pair of cards feature a very smooth and shaded Jackie Bradley Jr. gliding in to make a very nonchalant catch. Jackie has a great name and also had a wonderful spring training rendering him the next superstar phenom…unfortunately, spring ended and so did his hot run. He’s a great young player and is in that always awkward transition of being a major leaguer and a AAA player…he’s too young to say he’s a AAAA guy, plus I think he has a ton of talent. One thing I can’t seem to understand is that the Red Sox always seem to have a great farm system and the Yankees continue to ignore theirs…or at least the Yanks don’t seem to be able to develop enough major league talent. The other card is of Andy Dirks and he appears to have made the catch, good for him and better for the photographer for making this photograph. This is one of the things I love about sports cards. They can capture a singular moment in time and become eternal images on cardboard (card stock) forever.

The intensity of these next two faces is both fascinating and extremely disturbing. Not sure what the expression being exhibited by Adam Dunn is about, but if I had a daughter I would keep her away from him…based on this one photo of him. I know it’s judgmental, but sometimes you just have to go with your gut. James Loney. This is the face I make when i’ve become irregular and having a tough time with my situation. Both intense faces, both disturbing faces.

These next two cards are the epitome and possibly a little over the top of facial enthusiasm. The Papelbon card is out of control, but so is Papelbon…this was probably a 38 pitch save in May, and this is how he’s reacting. So Intense! The Trouty card is kind of cool. You have to love this kid. He doesn’t get the fanfare that Bryce Harper does, for some odd reason? Both are equally talented and are going to be a whole lotta fun to watch the next 12-15 years. Wonder if Trout was in DC and Harper was in LA if Trout would get more love? Harper would get attention regardless due to polarizing personality…just wondering.

I’m not a Giants fan, I don’t hate them or even dislike them, I just don’t like them like them. You know what I mean? They are a solid team and should be successful for a very long time, or at least as long as this kid is healthy. I have a feeling that this kid’s baby face isn’t going to age much, so I guess that would make him the Dick Clarke of baseball…no?

I’m gonna end it with some mini action. The Kid and a guy named BJ. Why a guy would want to go by BJ is beyond me…but maybe that’s just my issue or maybe it’s because his name is Melvin Emanuel. (ps. yes that is a hair…from my head linking the Kid and Melvin…i’m receding)

Box Break: 2013 Bowman

Posted by cardboard hogs on June 1, 2013

Bowman is one of those in between sets for me. Do I buy packs? A box and build the set? Pull my favorites out and part ways with the rest of them?

I’m not a prospector, but I love to pull some of the great rookies that I read about.

I don’t put together too many sets, but I love to buy packs and sometimes a box of cards that I enjoy openings packs of.

I like inserts, but too many of them become overwhelming.

Bowman has a way of providing a response to each of these contradictions in my collecting habits. When Topps brought back the Bowman cards in 1989, my friend Alex and I were all in. The cards were weird and big and didn’t fit well anywhere, but they were cool and had a Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card. Griff was the man in 1989 and his rookie cards were something every kid in America that collected cards wanted. I had them all, and loved the oversized Bowman version (after the Upper Deck version of course…) Although the cards weren’t that great. The photography was a little grainy at times and the overall design was weak…plus the stat on the back were quite confusing and took some getting used to. Either way I was going to collect this set…and all other versions that would come out in the future. That was, until 1992 rolled around. The card quality became significantly better and the rookie class was pretty stellar at the time (I still have my Raul Mondesi in a screw down holder, iknowright!). 1992 was also the time I began to realize I can’t collect everything…because I couldn’t afford it. So I never completed the set and ended up getting rid of my other sets from the previous years.

Fast forward to the future that is today. The card quality has improved exponentially and in relation to the other stuff that’s being issued, Bowman is quite affordable. I’ve purchased a box of these the past three years and took a bigger step this year and bought the jumbo pack box from Dave and Adam’s card world. Here is my review.

Card Design – 3 of 5

The overall design of the cards is quite simple, which I love.

No extra weird things going on here, just some simple graphics and all the basic information you need on a baseball card. I do like the subtle variation on the front of the card that differentiates the Bowman Prospects from the Major Leaguers. Bowman also carried this through as they do on the back of the card with the numbering and color of the card stock.

Photography – 3 of 5

The photographs are your typical action photos mixed in with awkwardly posed for photos of young men in uniforms. There are a lot of beards and facial hair in general around the world these days and the major league baseball franchise is no different. I’m thinking Panini needs to do a facial hair card set. Maybe Josh Reddick get the coveted #1 card?

Hits – 4 of 5

Like I said before, I’m no prospector. I simply don’t have the patience or wherewithal to invest in people I don’t know and Bowman counts on people doing this. That’s what makes this set so wonderful though. If you do pull a great auto of a young talented player or a refractor you have a nice piece of cardboard. If you don’t, well, you have something shiny to look at i guess. Another thing with the hits is that you have to wait a couple of years for these guys to pan out and get a year or two under their belts. Just because you are a top 100 prospect doesn’t mean you are going to be a star in the bigs. All that said, It’s nice to get the ‘First Bowman card’ of a potential star.

Another thing that i really enjoy about the Bowman cards and the young stars is the names of these kids. Damn.

Review

Bowman is always fun to open and the cards are always a very solid quality. I’m not sure if I will buy a jumbo box next year unless i plan to start building the sets again…but getting 32 cards in a pack is pretty cool.

The overall look and feel of the cards is great, nothing to complain about here, plus the price is right with Bowman, especially for what you get.

Mini’s are cool.

So are Flags…

and blue or maybe purple cards?

$13 BB Brett Gerritse Blue Refractor 60:250$ and who doesn’t love them some autographs!

$13 BB Yordano Ventura Refractor Auto 79:500$

Heritage Box Break Update

Posted by cardboard hogs on March 24, 2013

So I finished breaking the boxes of Heritage last night while watching ESPN’s 30 for 30 on Jimmy V and the 1983 NC State team. If you haven’t watched it yet, you really should. I’m one of those people that can’t get in to much of what ESPN does and haven’t watched Sportscenter since Olbermann was pushed out. I feel like their programming is only slightly above MTV these days. The guys at Grantland and Bill Simmons have done a phenomenal job on the 30 for 30 series though and i never miss an episode, including the shorts on the Grantland site. Opening packs of cards and watching sports on TV way past your bedtime is a little treat for me these days. Our 6 month old boy is really moving around a lot these days and requires a ton of attention and love during the daytime hours. I have no problem doing, but it’s nice to have a break at night. PLUS i have an amazing wife who gives our son tons of love and unfortunately is tasked with the onerous responsibility of getting him to sleep at night.

As i mentioned in the initial review post of this years Heritage, i am a big fan of this set and love putting it together each year. In the past couple of years, Heritage has fallen out of favor due overproduction and too many SP’s which makes getting the base cards somewhat easy but difficult to complete the whole set. The boxes i opened were pretty nice and i noticed quite a bit of SP’s that i may post in the future, but i wanted to show off the hits that really caught my eye. I’ve heard that Heritage was going to add more autograph hits this year and i was lucky enough to pull 4 in the boxes i had. Not only did i get 4 cards, but i got a good haul of quality players. Nothing jaw dropping, but nice cards no less.

And there they are…

The first one is David Freese, and he looks as if he is about to get his DMV photo taken.

Next, Mr. Paul Goldschmidt of the Arizona Diamondbacks. When i was looking at graduate schools i was trying to decide between the University of Oregon and Arizona State. This was around the time the D’backs won the World Series and i thought it would be great to live in a major league city, but just couldn’t deal with living in a dessert since i grew up in hot, humid San Antonio for so many years. So i chose Oregon. Had i chosen ASU, i would probably be a D’backs fan and be super excited about this card. But, i am only excited. He is one of the young up and coming stars and could be a big home run guy in the future.

Next was Lance Lynn. My second Cardinal. Honestly, i would have missed this card were it not for the hand numbered 43/64 in the top right. The red ink auto pretty much disappears into his glove and with my color deficiencies, i can barely make out the Topps Certified Autograph Issue on the name stripe at the bottom. This could have been done better Topps.

The last autograph is pretty awesome. Maury Wills. The auto is nice and placed in a great spot on the card. You can tell this was done by a professional, someone who has signed a million autos in his lifetime. This autograph is actually a long time coming for me. I believe in 1989 i went to a show in Austin, TX where he was supposed to be signing autographs for a small fee. This was around the same time when i was doing the through the mail autos and thought it would be great to get a veteran player added to my collection…but he never showed up. I was pretty upset, not Sheldon Cooper vs. Wil Wheaton upset, but upset no less. I had an 8×10 and baseball all ready for him to sign. I never found out why he didn’t show up, but attempted to mail the baseball to him a few months later and never recieved anything. Chalked to experience up as a failure and moved on with my life. Now we have come full circle.

The next few cards are the annual jersey cards from the Clubhouse Collection series. There were significantly less cards that i pulled than in years past. Which i am ok with as these cards seem to be uninspired and a little boring. Here’s hoping Topps does something different with these next year and maybe does larger swatches or better photos? I don’t know, but something different would be great.