Seeking Redemption 13: My 2015 Topps Babe Ruth Call Your Shot "Prize"

At some point in the past few months I won a Tier C autograph from the Babe Ruth Call Your Shot Game that serves as Topps' promotion for 2015 Topps Baseball. The 'Call Your Shot' part of the game consists of determining which of the three blocks you will scratch off on the game card. I have chosen to use the Autograph code on all of my contest cards. When you enter a winning code, you get a notification that you have won a prize along with a list of player names and a link to the longer list for that tier. There are three lists; labeled A, B, and C. A-listers are all the big names and hot prospects, B-listers are the every day guys, and C list is whatever is left over. There is not a specific set of cards made for this promotion. Instead, Topps seems to just send out whatever they have on-hand in the redemption center. I've seen Bowman stuff, base Topps stuff, and premium brands like Five Star and Museum Collection sent to people as prizes.

The main sticking point with this promotion is that you have to pay $4.95 in shipping to claim your prize. I contemplated just not claiming my C-list prize, but curiosity got the best of me and a couple of weeks ago I went ahead and paid up. A while later I got an envelope in the mail that looked like it had been run over 5 or 6 times by a truck. Inside was my 'prize:'

I won a Jeff Kobernus base autograph from 2014 Topps Chrome. Jeff Kobernus is currently in the San Francisco Giants system, having made it into 28 games with the Nationals during his career. He's already 27 years old, and is unlikely to ever make much of an impact at all in the major leagues. I estimate that $4.95 was 2-3 times more than I should have paid for this card. I still have a B-list autograph on the way, so maybe that one will turn out better for me than this one did.

Some Recent R.A. Dickey Pickups

I haven't posted for a little more than a week now, so I am trying to get things started back up by featuring a couple of R.A. Dickey cards I've picked up over the last couple of months. Dickey pitched today, throwing 7.0 innings and giving up 4 runs to the Braves on 4 hits and 4 walks while striking out 6 on the way to a no-decision in a game the Blue Jays eventually won in the 10th inning on a Josh Donaldson home run. I didn't watch that game, but I did get to watch the last half of the Mets-Marlins game, where the Mets bullpen nearly gave up a 5-0 lead in the 8th and 9th innings, barely holding on to take the game at 5-4.

This first card is an auto-relic from 2014 Topps Triple Threads, numbered # 02 / 25. I thought the black relic swatch was pretty cool. It's not something you see too often on baseball cards.

Prices on Dickey's cards have come down a lot in the last couple of years. That would be a good thing, but in spite of the favorable market for buyers I haven't really taken advantage of it. I've been a little distracted from the hobby lately, I guess, and I pass over a lot of stuff because of parallel fatigue. But that hasn't stopped me completely from picking up parallels...

...like this black-bordered card from 2015 Topps Series 1. It looks a lot like the base version of the card, except without all the colors on the edges. I probably picked it up because it had a cheap shipping cost or something. One thing that has been preventing me from bidding on a lot of cards lately is what seems like a universal $3.00 shipping fee in addition to whatever the auction price is. The $0.99 starting bid makes a $4.00 base price for just about any card you look at, and that is just too much.

This card is # 42 / 64, making it just one number away from being a jersey number eBay 1 / 1. Hopefully the Blue Jays can make a decent run this year and at least get into the postseason. But right now I hope even more that the Houston Rockets can hold on for one more quarter and beat the Dallas Mavericks in their first-round NBA Playoffs match-up.

Stealing Wheels from the Van Man: R.A. Dickey has a Laugh at Spring Training

After seeing some tweets about R.A. Dickey stealing Daniel Norris' VW van and driving it around on the infield, I decided I needed to feature a Dickey card on my blog so I could talk about it. Norris is one of the Blue Jays' hot prospects, and he actually lives in the van behind a Wal-Mart store. It's his way of balancing out the millions of dollars and the fame. I hope he is able to keep whatever balance he needs to be successful. With Marcus Stroman's season-ending injury, their rotation will probably need the help. 

Stole Daniel norris' van and drove it on the infield.... Smooth ride but I need some power steering. #vwvansaresweet pic.twitter.com/9Xn7NjIhhg
— R.A. Dickey (@RADickey43) March 12, 2015

Yes. That's @RADickey43 whippin' the VW. pic.twitter.com/aCKt9kYKef
— Daniel Norris (@DanielNorris18) March 12, 2015

I feel like kind of a bandwagon guy, jumping on the Daniel Norris train now that he's got an ESPN article and a bunch of publicity. I guess every fandom has a start somewhere. He's got a few cards out there, mostly in the Bowman and Elite Extra Edition sets of the world. I imagine right now is the worst possible time to jump in on the guy, since the publicity is likely to have all the card-flippers coming out of the woodwork with their prospecting hats on.

At the other end of the career scale from Norris is R.A. Dickey, who has probably already had his best career year, a Cy Young-winning campaign in 2012. With him declining a bit since then and other players on his team rising, he hasn't been getting many slots in insert sets lately. From a budget standpoint that is good, but it certainly cuts down on the variety of Dickey cards out there to collect. I hadn't picked up one of these Silver Framed parallels yet when I snagged this one for a pretty decent price a while back. Then I pulled another one from a pack I bought at the LCS, so I went from 0 to 2 in a matter of weeks. This parallel from 2015 Topps Series 1 is numbered 15 / 20 and features what appears to be the front and back of a base card with the edges cut off and then glued into each side of a heavy silver frame. I like this photo because you can clearly see Dickey's grip on the pitch.

I usually run out of stuff to say by the time I get to this point. I root for a number of teams and the Blue Jays are one of them, along with the Astros and Athletics and a few others. I guess the Astros are my default favorite team, but I probably like more of the roster on the Blue Jays from an individual player perspective. I hope I am able to catch a few Dickey and Norris outings on TV this season. I am going to end up with that MLB.tv subscription. The only question is when I will break down and sign up.

Workin' at the Card Shop 6: Another Year of Spring Fever

A week or so ago I went in to the local card shop to redeem the Spring Fever coupons I received when I purchased my Hobby box of 2015 Topps Series 1. When all was said and done I got 5 Spring Fever packs, each containing 5 cards. I didn't pull any autographs or anything out of the packs, but I also didn't pull any doubles. I chose nine notable cards to scan for this post, either PC guys or guys who are popular among the bloggers. I was surprised to find myself including two San Francisco Giants among the chosen, as I find that fans of San Francisco teams are largely insufferable. But I consider Bumgarner and Pence to be faces of baseball, as in 'guys who make amazing faces on their baseball cards.' Bumgarner's Ugly Pitching Face (UPF) is legendary, and Pence is an All-Out Effort Guy who sticks his tongue out and pops his eyes so you know he's turning it up to 11.

I don't like this year's Spring Fever set as much as I liked the 2014 incarnation, as that set was LOUD. The colors on the 2015 set are darker and more muted, and the foil isn't as rainbow-laced either. Maybe the Atlanta Braves called Topps and demanded a more reserved set that respected the traditions of the game. Or maybe Cal Ripken Jr. tore up the Topps employees' new suits and beat them up a bit to teach them respect for veteran players. Either way, the cards are subdued this year and that makes me like them a little bit less. I still grabbed a full set of them anyway. I do still want them in my collection.

While I was in the shop I decided I ought to actually purchase something. I had intended to try out a pack of Panini's Country Music release to see if I could pull a Joe Diffie auto/relic, but in a surprise development the stuff had sold out. I panicked and asked to instead grab a couple Jumbo packs of Series 1 Baseball. The box he had open had three packs remaining, so I grabbed them all. This Manny Machado MLB Silhouette Logo Pin manu-relic (Manny-relic?) was inside one of the packs. I believe all the manu-relics combine to fall one per box, so this qualifies as a box hit. It's a fairly sharp-looking card.

Here's the back of the card, with the usual praise of Machado's superstar potential. We'll see if he can live up to it and put up a few healthy and productive seasons.

One of the other packs contained this heavy card, a Silver-Framed Parallel of David Murphy, numbered # 17 / 20. The Silver-Framed cards are base cards with their edges cut off that are then pasted into thick metal frames. They are pretty hefty cards and make for a nice novelty item.

I believe the Silver-Framed cards are seeded about one per case, so it was pretty lucky to buy three packs and pull a box hit as well as a case hit. I hope that next year Topps brings back the wilder colors on their Spring Fever cards. I need that splash of color to help me get through February.

Pack of the Day 86: 2015 Topps Series 1 Hobby Box: The Inserts

In my last post I showed the base cards and parallels I pulled from my Hobby box of 2015 Topps Series 1. This will probably be about all the packs I buy from Series 1, as I have a base set and a First Pitch insert set on the way from eBay-land. I may still pick up a few parallels of players I collect, but that's about it for me. Most of my PC guys have fallen out of favor with the masses, so they don't show up in insert sets anymore.

The Highlight of the Year set features various individual highlights by year. I don't know how big the checklist is, but I pulled more cards from this one than any other. I guess the card that really stands out from this group for me is the Verlander, featuring him with his No-Hitter newspaper in-hand.

I got six of these Archetypes inserts, featuring star players from various eras. I guess for me the highlights here are the Griffey and the Trout. If you like Catchers there are a couple of stars up there.

I also got six Inspired Play inserts which, as many have mentioned, is Topps' 'old guy-new guy' set for 2015. I guess that McGwire-Musial card is more of an 'old guy-older guy' card. Nothing here really does anything for me, ecept maybe for Smoltz' nasty Mustache Starter Kit.

I pulled five of the First Pitch cards. I already have a set of these on the way, but it was cool to see some of them first-hand. Biz Markie has got some good Ugly Pitching Face (UPF) going on here. He's halfway to being a Major League hurler. The Jeff Bridges card has been getting a lot of play on the blogs. I have a confession to make. I have never actually watch The Big Lebowski. I've almost watched it a few times and even quote it from time to time, but I've never seen the movie.

I also got Tom Morello and 50 Cent in this box. The back of 50 Cent's card stops short of calling his First Pitch the worst of all time, but it does mention that it went astray and nearly hit a photographer. Good thing Vladimir Guerrero was there to track it down. That dude could hit anything.

I am not sure that video will ever stop being funny to me. I guess I should thank Topps for giving me an excuse to use it again.

This set pairs up moments in world history that match up approximately from moments in baseball history. I went back to look at the pack odds, and apparently the set is called Baseball History. The cards I got didn't match up with each other, but in the scan you can see how they are in matched pairs so the design forms a butt-ugly two-card puzzle.

I like the Free Agent 40 set a little bit. My opinion is probably swayed by the fact that I pulled a Nolan Ryan in an Astros rainbow uniform. Dawson looks like a beast in that picture. I think his quads are about to rip his pants.

I pulled two Gallery of Greats inserts and one Gallery of Greats Gold parallel. The Gold parallels are a 1:974 pack hit, or about 1 in 2.25 Hobby cases. That makes this a pretty decent box, especially after pulling a 1 per case card in the Pink parallel I posted about yesterday. The Cal Ripken Jr. is numbered # 98 / 99. Rivera and Clemens are good players, too, but I do like that Ripken card. I might know of someone who is collecting this set, so I will probably be shipping the base cards out at some point.

I thought I did all right with the buyback cards. Fred Whitfield comes from 1966 Topps, the set design that will be highlighted in this year's Heritage set. I am not sure, but it might be my oldest sports card, although technically with that stamp on it the card has been reborn as a 2015 issue. I love getting cards featuring the Astros' rainbow uniforms, and this 1977 Ken Forsch is certainly quite colorful. These cards were in much better shape than the buybacks I've pulled from previous years. They weren't Gem Mint, but the corners were pretty sharp and the cards were free of massive defects. I guess the Forsch card has some pretty bad centering, but that's about it.

The final card from the box is a Career High relic card of Josh Donaldson. There's not a lot to say about it, I guess. He's a pretty good player who was traded from a team I like to another team I like, so at least I got a card that fits pretty well in my collection. I also got a couple of those Babe Ruth Call Your Shot scratch-off code cards, but I didn't win anything when I put the codes into the site.

And that's it for the box. I did pretty well odds-wise, so as far as flagship Topps boxes go it was a pretty good box. I would have liked to pull something epic like one of those Coin & Stamp cards or an autograph, but if all I wanted were hits I'd go and buy Topps Dynasty. I got a pretty good overview of this year's design and scratched the pack-busting itch for a while. If I do wind up putting together a Master Set of something this year it will probably be Opening Day.

Pack of the Day 85: 2015 Topps Series 1 Hobby Box: Base Cards and Parallels

I am ending my streak of non-sports posts, mostly because I ran out of stuff to post. I've also got a huge backlog of sports stuff in my post queue and my scan folder, even stuff going back to November. Just about anyone who blogs about baseball cards knows that 2015 Topps Series 1 came out last week. I bought a base set and the First Pitch insert from an eBay seller, and so I don't really 'need' anything else from Series 1. I considered going out and buying some retail packs from Target, but I got to thinking that by the time I buy three blasters at retail I might as well buy a Hobby box. So that's what I did. After work on Thursday I went over to the local card shop and grabbed a Hobby box. I considered a Jumbo box, but I couldn't justify the extra $30 it would have cost me just to get a manu-relic and an extra autograph or relic card. Most of the relics and autos I've seen coming out of this stuff aren't worth $15 apiece.

This post takes a look at some of the base cards and parallels I pulled from this box. In all I pulled 305 base cards, with 9 of those being doubles. So I got 296 different base cards, or 84.6% of the set.

I like the card design well enough. My main complaint is that the photographs chosen are largely generic torso shots, and even a lot of the action shots are zoomed-in too close. I feel like the 2014 set was a little more open to using dugout shots, silly shots, celebration photos, and things of that nature. I chose some of my PC players and a few cards featuring better photos to show here. I omitted some of the cards that I know everyone has already seen, like the Jeter card that leads the set off.

The group features a few beards, PC guy Josh Reddick, a couple of camo uniforms, and a couple of decent fielding shots (I'd like that Pearce card 5x more if it showed his feet).

I've seen a couple of mentions already of the Navarro card, which might achieve cult favorite status like Coco Crisp's afro card last year. It just looks like something bad is about to happen. Also the guy in the background might be scratching his junk. R.A. Dickey gets the nod because he's a PC guy. Arias gets into this post because he's got a case of extreme Ugly Pitching Face (UPF) going on. I think he might have learned that trick from Madison Bumgarner.

A couple of horizontal A's cards made the cut, although I'd like both of those cards better if I could just see the players' feet. Ethier and Kipnis have better cards because they are mostly all within the frame (Ethier is missing part of his hand). I especially like how the ball is hanging out in the background of Ethier's card.

Here are a few more horizontal cards that stood out to me while sorting through the stacks. I guess I don't have anything more to say about these. They're nice photos, but I wish Topps had included the whole picture.

I got four Gold parallels and four Rainbow Foil parallels. Both of these are seeded 1:10 packs, which I believe is more rare than last year's equivalent Gold and Red Hot Foil cards. People on the forums are saying that means there is a much bigger print run of 2015 Topps than there was in 2013 and 2014. I guess I can believe that. Arias and his UPF make another appearance. The Baez card would have got a spot in the base card group if he didn't appear here. On the parallels Topps should have used blue for the Dodgers logo, as on Puig's Gold card here you can't even see the logo in the corner. I imagine the Yankees and Padres might have the same problem.

In addition to the more common parallels I pulled an elusive Pink parallel of Dilson Herrera, numbered # 30 / 50. These cards fall only 1:527 Hobby packs, if the odds on the pack are to be believed. Again, it seems like these colored parallels are extremely rare this year, pointing to a much larger print run this year than in years past. I actually just went back and checked the odds for 2014's set, and Pink parallels numbered out of # / 50 fell at a 1:501 rate, which means they were more common, but not by a gigantic margin. I guess if you're opening 25 cases or something it would matter to you, but when you're just opening a box or so it doesn't change your odds of pulling one by that much.

And that's it for the base cards and parallels I pulled from my Hobby box of 2015 Topps Series 1. I'll post about the inserts soon.