I Hate Waiting

I've got a few things on order right now, and it seems like they are taking forever to get here. One is from Blowout, a couple are from Topps, and at any given time I've usually got something coming in from eBay Shipments from Topps are notoriously slow, as they use some FedEx/USPS hybrid that bounces around the East coast for a week before finally beginning to move west. My Blowout order was placed over the weekend, so it sat for a couple of days before they even started the process, and now I'm not sure if it will get here on Saturday or if I'll have to wait through another weekend to get it. Stuff from eBay can arrive quickly or slowly, depending on a variety of factors.

The other part of waiting that I hate is the draft queue on my blog. It is nice to have a lot of draft posts in the folder, but it gets complicated if I get something scanned in that is more relevant or exciting to me than the currently-planned post for a given day. I wind up rescheduling things and sometimes even rewriting posts that have fallen out of date. And after shuffling things around I will wind up with a list of filler posts that I just don't have a lot to say about. They might be cards that fit my collection well, but I find that I don't have much to say about them. I will usually write the posts anyway to keep the blog fresh, but there have been a few times that I just deleted a post entirely due to lack of interest.

But my current struggle is one of waiting for some inbound mail that I am excited about. It makes me wonder how I handled being a kid. When I was young I would always be sending off for stuff from cereal boxes or the back of magazines. I'd order stamps, toys, and all kinds of other junk. Most of the order forms and advertisements for those things said that delivery could take 6-12 weeks, and much of it did actually take that long. How on earth did I manage to wait 2-3 months for those things? I can barely wait a week these days without going nuts.

None of that has anything to do with today's card, a 2016 Allen & Ginter Black-Framed Autograph of Jen Welter, whose stint as an assistant linebackers coach with the Arizona Cardinals during the 2015 preseason made her the first female NFL coach. I got her relic card a while back, but her autograph eluded me. This parallel card came up and I won it at a lower price than the base version usually goes for, so that was pretty cool. It is numbered # 23 / 25. There are still a few autographs I am chasing from this set, but I don't know if I will track them down before I get distracted and move on to other things.

Contested Shots 16: A Guessing Game at Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary

Back in early October there was a contest on the Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary blog. The task was to make some guesses about the game between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Baltimore Orioles, like which team would hit the most home runs, how many total home runs would be hit in the game, and which player would hit the first home run of the game. I got enough answers right to be considered a winner, and the other day a PWE stuffed with cards arrived in the mailbox as my prize.

Up first we have a few cards for various teams that I follow/collect. The Blue Jays, Astros, and Athletics are all represented here. I am torn on whether that Jose Canseco card shows him as a Ranger or a Blue Jay. I am leaning toward Rangers, though, as the pinstripes seem to be the right colors. Someone with more baseball smarts than me could probably tell right away, but my cursory image search didn't turn up much outside of a lot of people wearing pajamas. Either way, I find Canseco's post-baseball antics to be much more entertaining than his on-field exploits.

I had to scan the horizontal cards separately. I don't know how Brian got 12 cards into one PWE. There were extra stamps on it, though, so that probably helped to grease the wheels of post office bureaucracy. My wife and I are currently trying to get our hands on a package that a substitute mail carrier dropped off at a house with the same number on the wrong street. It is not a fast process. I hope the person who got the box is enjoying our bottle of dog mouthwash. I personally don't think mouthwash is going to improve the freshness of my wife's dog's breath anyway, but it's not worth it to me to fight that battle.

If this were a box break, these would be the hits. That shiny card in the upper left is a Gold parallel from 2016 Topps of Athletics pitcher Ryan Madson. He had 30 saves this year, although he wasn't one of those sub-2.00 ERA knockout closers. Carlos Gomez didn't fit well with the Astros and spent the last bit of 2016 playing much better for the Rangers than he did in Houston. It looks like the card is a Platinum parallel from the 2016 Topps Bunt product. I like the design and price point on Bunt, but for whatever reason I didn't pick up any of it this year. I've purchased a lot less baseball stuff this year than in years past. I don't know if that's a permanent change or just how things played out in 2016. Tyler White is a retail-exclusive Black parallel from 2016 Topps Heritage High Number, and George Springer is from one of the cooler releases this year, the Topps Marketside cards that were packaged with Wal-Mart's Marketside pizza and breadsticks for a couple of months.

All around this was a very cool prize package, and I was pretty happy to be a winner, especially in a contest that required guesses. I am going to go ahead and say that it was a contest of skills, and that my skills and training were good enough to propel my guesses to the top of the heap. Thanks, Brian!

2016 Topps Allen & Ginter Relics

The baseball relics and autographs in Allen & Ginter don't usually capture much of my attention, but most years there are a few non-baseball subjects I will try to track down. Some years I am more successful at it than others. My collecting attention span can only stay in one place for so long, so I am often on to the next thing before I gather all of the things on a checklist that catch my eye. Here are a few of the cards I picked up from the 2016 Topps Allen & Ginter set.

I can't say I like George Lopez' acting, but he's done a few movies that my kids enjoy watching (The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D, Beverly Hills Chihuahua 1 and 2, Rio 1 and 2) and my wife and I kind of have a running joke about how his show was one big dad joke. But I still have a weird affinity for the guy, and that made me seek out his relic card. I'd like to get his autograph from the set, but the prices are higher than what I want to pay for one. For now the relic will have to do.

Missy Franklin's star dimmed a little in Rio, but she's still a world-class swimmer. Swimming is probably my favorite Olympic sport to watch, probably because it's easy to follow and moves pretty quickly. Some of the more subjective stuff is hard for me to follow (gymnastics, diving) and other events just take too much time (volleyball, basketball). Hers is another autograph I would like to get from this set, but again, it's a little out of my price range. Don't be fooled by the cheap listings on eBay. They are all digital cards from the Bunt app.

Finally, this is a relic from Jen Welter, who is probably most famous for being hired on as an assistant coach for the NFL's Arizona Cardinals for their 2015 training camp and preseason. As far as anyone can tell, she was the first female coach on an NFL team. She also played and coached for a men's indoor football team, in addition to having success on women's teams. Like the other folks in this post, she has an autograph out there but I haven't managed to get that yet.

I haven't been very active on my blog this week. I've been meaning to finish this post for a few days now. I think I mentioned that I took a 5-day weekend last weekend. I had plenty of good intentions, like scanning a bunch of cards and doing some work around the house and yard.

Unfortunately, I opened up the computer game Out of the Park 17 and got sucked into the black hole that is simulating life as an MLB GM. I started with the 2016 Houston Astros roster, but I was never able to gather enough talent to advance past the ALCS. The team was good enough each year for the first few seasons to get to the playoffs, but they couldn't quite close series' out. Then I reached a period where key players would go on the DL just long enough for the team to drop out of the playoff race. After a couple years of missing the playoffs, the team owner would start cutting the budget and I'd be trying to add enough cheap young talent to shore up a couple of overpaid veterans I'd signed to long-term deal because the owner made signing them to an extension part of my goals. It's an incredibly engaging game, but I never made the World Series and I will never get that weekend back.

I did manage to get some good yard work in, but not as much as I'd planned. The rest of the week has been largely uneventful for me, although the Denver Broncos have now lost two in a row and look like they just won't get it going on offense any time soon. Topps did what I was afraid of and released a UFC NOW card that is not attached to a numbered event. It's a card commemorating the recent announcement that Ronda Rousey will be coming back at UFC 207. I hope they don't make this kind of thing a habit, especially since a lot of things can happen between now and then. Fighters fail drug tests and get injured all the time, so there is a chance the fight doesn't even happen.

What's in the Box 4: August 2016 Baseball Loot Locker

I've been watching The Loot Locker on Facebook and Twitter for a while, and in August I finally went ahead and ordered one. For $20 + $5 shipping, you get 3-6 Hobby packs of cards and some hobby supplies shipped to you in a 400-count card storage box. They offer Loot Lockers for Baseball, Football, Hockey, and Basketball. One in every 25 Loot Lockers comes with a bonus of $10+ in extra packs, and 1 in every 250 Loot Lockers contains some sort of high-end bonus product. 

Loot Locker has some kind of partnership with Ultra-Pro, so they feature their logo on the box label. Other than the label, it's a pretty standard 400-count card box.

Here is what I received in my Locker. The Ultra-Pro baggie contains some top loaders, some team bags, and some card sleeves. I got 2 packs of 2016 Allen & Ginter, 2 packs of 2016 Topps Chrome, and 1 pack of 2016 Panini Diamond Kings. I guess my Loot Locker was one of the randomly-seeded bonus lockers, as I also got a box of 2016 Onyx Authenticated Platinum Elite, which is admittedly a product and company I wasn't familiar with.

Not much came out of the Allen & Ginter packs. These are the most interesting cards that came out of them. Most of the Allen & Ginter cards in the two packs had that ding in the upper right corner that you can see on the Rollie Fingers card. It's impossible to know if that came from the manufacturer or the shipping process.

The Topps Chrome was a Nick Markakis hot lot, as I pulled the base and the Prism Refractor versions of his card. Outside of that, Max Scherzer was the most interesting base card.

Diamond Kings featured a couple of familiar faces in Luis Severino and George Springer. 

It also contained this Alex Bregman Diamond Kings Materials Framed dual relic card, numbered # 71 / 99. It's a pretty cool card and features a player on my favorite team, the Houston Astros Baseball Club. That's about it for the regular stuff you can expect from a Loot Locker.

I was kind of interested to see what this Onyx Authenticated Platinum Elite stuff was all about. I have to admit that I am pretty skeptical about 'off-brand' cardboard. This isn't something I would go out and purchase on my own. The front of the box promised four cards total, with two autographs. The base cards (Alex Reyes, Yeudy Garcia) look pretty much like the autograph cards, but without colored foil. Both of my autographs were the basic Blue Foil variety, which supposedly are limited to a print run of 200. There are other colors of parallel with different print runs.

My autographs were Alec Mills and Anderson Espinoza. I had to look them up. Both are promising players, I guess. Prospecting isn't really something I do, so these aren't names I am familiar with. This was a nice bonus, but I'm not really in the right demographic for this product. None of the autographs or base cards feature much information about the player, just an advertisement for the various colored parallels you can pull.

Obviously the cards you wind up pulling have a big impact on how much you like a Loot Locker or similar product. After accounting for my state's tax and a couple dollars in hobby supplies, I wound up spending about $4.25 per pack for the Allen & Ginter, Chrome, and Diamond Kings. I guess that's all right for Hobby packs. I am not accounting for the Onyx box in those numbers, but the chance at getting something extra in your Loot Locker probably plays into the decision to buy it.

I would probably buy another Loot Locker, but it's not an every-month purchase for me yet. My collecting habits these days don't leave a lot of room for opening random wax. At the moment I find better value for myself chasing singles and collated sets over opening packs and hoping for big hits. Every month Loot Locker posts a list of the packs that will ship out that month, so you can pick and choose based on the products you like. They also let customers vote on what packs might appear, so you can campaign for a product you want to try out.

Gint-a-Cuffs VIII: Pack 24 and Final Box Score

Well, I just barely got to 80 (107 after a rules update) points for this box. I don't think that will be enough to win it this year. It was fun to participate again, though, and my big hit of the box turned out to be a lot better than I thought it would be. I sold the Gennady Golovkin Black-Bordered autograph for north of $250, so I got my money back on this box x2 after accounting for eBay fees, Paypal fees, and shipping expenses. It will be interesting to see how other bloggers' boxes score out.

Carlos Gomez: +1 (My Favorite Team Base +1)

Eduardo Rodriguez: +2 (A&G Back Mini +2)

Willie McCovey: +2 (The Numbers Game +2)

Pack Total: 5.00
Final Box Total: 107.00

Average Per Pack: 4.28

Gint-a-Cuffs VIII: Pack 23

Gary Sanchez: -1 (Yankees Base -1)

Michael Pineda: -1 (Yankees Base -1)

Ngorongoro Crater: +2 (Natural Wonders +2)

Pack Total: 0.00

Running Total: 102.00

Average Per Pack: 4.25

Box Pace: 106.25

Gint-a-Cuffs VIII: Pack 22

Yasiel Puig: +2 (The Numbers Game +2)

Pack Total: 2.00
Running Total: 102.00

Average Per Pack: 4.43
Box Pace: 110.87

Gint-a-Cuffs VIII: Pack 21

I couldn't help thinking that I'd seen that Ted Williams card previously, and sure enough, I pulled the same one from Pack 7. While looking into that, I also saw that the Bob Feller Baseball Legends card from the previous post was another double from the Baseball Legends insert. I haven't noticed any other doubles yet, but they could be there.

Ted Williams: +2 (Baseball Legends +2)
Dallas Keuchel: +6 (My Favorite Player Mini +5, My Favorite Team Mini +1)

Pack Total: 8.00
Running Total: 100.00

Average Per Pack: 4.55
Box Pace: 113.64

Gint-a-Cuffs VIII: Pack 20

Bob Feller: +2 (Baseball Legends +2)
Andy Pettitte: +4 (Yankees -1, Short Print A&G Back +5)
Matt Harvey: +2 (The Numbers Game +2)

Pack Total: 8.00
Running Total: 92.00

Average Per Pack: 4.38
Box Pace: 109.52

Gint-a-Cuffs VIII: Pack 19

Carlos Correa: +1 (My Favorite Team Base +1)
Matt Duffy: +1 (My Favorite Team Base +1)
Andy Pettitte: -1 (Yankees Base -1)

Pack Total: 1.00
Running Total: 84.00

Average Per Pack: 4.20
Box Pace: 105.00

Gint-a-Cuffs VIII: Pack 18

David Ortiz: +3 (Black-Bordered Mini +3)

Jon Lester: +2 (The Numbers Game +2)

Pack Total: 5.00
Running Total: 83.00

Average Per Pack: 4.37
Box Pace: 109.21

Gint-a-Cuffs VIII: Pack 17

Anthony Rizzo: +2 (Other Favorite Player Base +2)
Mike Breed: +5 (Full-Size Relics Version B +5)
Patrick Corbin: +3 (Mini Short Print +3)

Pack Total: 10.00
Running Total: 78.00

Average Per Pack: 4.33
Box Pace: 108.33

Gint-a-Cuffs VIII: Pack 16

Paul O'Neill: -1 (Yankees Base -1)
Alex Rodriguez: -1 (Yankees Base -1)
Ocelot: +2 (Ferocious Felines +2)
Kris Bryant: +2 (The Numbers Game +2)

Pack Total: 2.00
Running Total: 68.00

Average Per Pack: 4.00
Box Pace: 100.00

Gint-a-Cuffs VIII: Pack 15

Jim Palmer: +2 (Baseball Legends +2)
Monica Abbott: +1 (Bonus Base +1)
Don Mattingly: -1 (Yankees -1)

Pack Total: 2.00
Running Total: 66.00

Average Per Pack: 4.13
Box Pace: 103.13

Gint-a-Cuffs VIII: Pack 14

Roger Clemens: -1 (Yankees Base -1)

Babe Ruth: +1 (Yankees Insert -1, The Numbers Game +2)

Henry Owens: +3 (Black-Bordered Mini +3)

Pack Total: 3.00

Running Total: 64.00

Average Per Pack: 4.27

Box Pace: 106.67

Gint-a-Cuffs VIII: Pack 13

Freddie Freeman: +2 (Other Favorite Player +2)
Kenta Maeda: +2 (Other Favorite Player +2)
Natural Bridge: +2 (Natural Wonders +2)
Greg Stanton: +2 (U.S. Mayors +2)

Pack Total: 8.00
Running Total: 61.00

Average Per Pack: 4.36
Box Pace: 108.93

Gint-a-Cuffs VIII: Pack 12

Funalu'u Beach: +2 (Natural Wonders +2)
Jimmy Carter: +2 (Laureates of Peace +2)
Giancarlo Stanton: +2 (The Numbers Game +2)

Pack Total: 6.00
Running Total: 53.00

Average Per Pack: 4.08
Box Pace: 101.92

Gint-a-Cuffs VIII: Pack 11

Andrew Miller: -1 (Yankees Base -1)
Maikel Franco: +2 (Other Favorite Player Base +2)
Tomas Regalado: +2 (U.S. Mayors +2)

Pack Total: 3.00
Running Total: 47.00

Average Per Pack: 3.92
Box Pace: 97.92

Gint-a-Cuffs VIII: Pack 10

Joey Votto appears on the Favorite Players list, but there is no entry in the rules for dealing with The Numbers Game inserts or how they might interact with the Favorite Player bonuses. Update 20 AUG 2016: There was an update. I am going through and re-scoring these.

Joey Votto: +4 (The Numbers Game +2, Other Favorite Player +2)

Pack Total: 4.00
Running Total: 44.00

Average Per Pack: 4.00
Box Pace: 100.00

Gint-a-Cuffs VIII: Pack 9

My second hit of the box barely moves the needle on my points per pack, and I am pretty sure there is nothing else coming that will change that story. Even my current pace of 80 points seems like a stretch at this point. It will be interesting to see how the other contestants' breaks go.

Kole Calhoun: +5 (Full-Size Relics Version A +5)

Pack Total: 5.00
Running Total: 40.00

Average Per Pack: 4.00
Box Pace: 100.00