Topps Mini Baseball Scan Clear-Out, Post 4 of 4: The Relics

Now that I've showcased all the colored parallels from my boxes of 2013 and 2014 Top Mini Baseball, here are the relics from those boxes. Each box promised one relic or autograph, but out of the many (many, many) boxes of both years I opened I only ever pulled one autograph. The autographs in this stuff were hard to find. Kicking things off is this PWS (Plain White Swatch) of Albert Pujols from the 2014 set. I like the design on these cards. It's pretty simple but I think it looks good.

It was pretty nice to pull this Hyun-Jin Ryu card, as he is a guy I kind of PC. I don't know if I have ever gone out of my way to pick up his cards, but I like pulling them from packs. Hopefully he comes back healthy next year, as he missed the 2015 season and had shoulder surgery.

This is my representative from the 2013 set, a pinstriped relic of famed pitcher Kerry Wood. Unfortunately this card came out of the pack with heavy damage on the bottom edge, as you can see in the scan on the right. whole layers of the card were peeled back and torn. I assume the collation machine is responsible for the damage. It's kind of disappointing for the one hit in the box to be damaged, especially a nice relic with a stripe and a good photo on the front.

Most of these relics are jersey pieces, but I did get one bat relic in this Ian Kinsler card. The main thing that sticks out in my mind about Kinsler as I write this up is that he had some pretty negative stuff to say about the Rangers after they moved him to Detroit. I think the young kids these days call it throwing shade when you badmouth a person or organization like that.

Keeping things in Detroit, here is a PGS (Plain Grey Swatch) relic of Miguel Cabrera, This dude has put up numbers all over the place.during his career. I imagine he might find himself in the Hall of Fame one day.

That does it for this group of posts. I got a pretty good batch of relics in this bunch of boxes, especially compared to breaks I've done in the past where I got a bunch of relics of lower-tier guys. In these boxes every relic was a famous name.

2014 Topps Stadium Club Box Break - A Case Hit and a Redemption Card

I am trying to clear out my folder of card scans, and there is some old stuff in there. This is a box of 2014 Topps Stadium Club that I opened last year, probably in November or December. I vaguely remember some of the cards in this box.

These were the eight most interesting horizontal base cards I found in the box. Actually, the Hyun-Jin Ryu and Jeff Samardzija cards probably weren't the most interesting in the box. They are (kind of) PC guys for me. I like that Todd Helton farewell card. Tim Lincecum looks a lot like Mario's brother Luigi, and also like a guy I knew in one of my Army units. I don't remember that guy's name, but I remember he was kind of a funny dude. Adam Eaton got his own post a while back, and I think Jose Bautista did too (I guess Bautista had to share his post with three other guys).

These Rainbow Foil parallels came one per mini-box, or three per Hobby box. This is kind of a tragic group, as both Oscar Taveras (DUI car wreck) and Tony Gwynn (cancer) died during 2014.

That Gold Victor Martinez is a one-per-box parallel, and the Matt Carpenter Members Only card is a one-per-case hit. Martinez is having a terrible season after a massive 2014. Some people (like me) drafted him in fantasy baseball this year and are also having very bad years. Matt Carpenter is having a very good year for the Cardinals, helping to fill the void left by several key injuries. The Cardinals have signed some dark pact that keeps them consistently winning games from year to year.

These are all of the inserts that fall one per Hobby box. My Triumvirate card is Masahiro Tanaka, which was a pretty good pull at the time. He's been pretty good this year, too, but the big crop of hot rookies this season has kind of pushed him and Jose Abreu to the back burner as far as hype is concerned. Jose Fernandez is my Beam Team insert. Speedster Billy Hamilton is my Future Stars card. He's on the DL right now. Imagine how many bases he would steal if he got on base a little more. My favorite of this bunch is the Randy Johnson Legends die-cut.

These Field Access inserts come one per mini-box. If I remember right, that Randy Johnson card is a parallel insert numbered out of # / 99. I guess I could go look it up, but I'd have to dig through some boxes to find it and I don't want to. McCutchen, Jeter, and Mays are all good pulls, too, but I like the Johnson card best. Update: I did not remember correctly. In looking through my scans I found the actual Randy Johnson parallel I pulled in the photos for another box break. This one is probably the base version. I still like it.

Each box of Stadium Club promised three autographs, but the relatively weak checklist helped boxes to stay affordable for people like me. There were sales last year where you could get boxes for less than 50% of the original MSRP. One of my autographs was a redemption for a Chris Owings base autograph. James Jones has been in the minors for most of 2015. Yangervis Solarte has been toiling away with pretty good success for the Padres this year. Unfortunately for his collecting value, he is having success with the Padres and not the Yankees. Chris Owing has been playing all season for the Diamondbacks, but he hasn't found a lot of success with a negative WAR so far this season.

Sometime between then and now the redemption was filled and I got this card in the mail, signed by Owings with a nice big pair of initials. Overall this was a pretty good box as I pulled a case hit with the Matt Carpenter parallel and a couple of nice Randy Johnson inserts.

Contested Shots 10: Prize Set from Bubba's Bangin' Batch of Baseball Bits

There were a series of Allen & Ginter-related contests over at Bubba's Bangin' Batch of Baseball Bits to celebrate the arrival of the new set, and I won one of them. For my prize I chose a complete base set of 2015 Allen & Ginter. Along with the base set, Matt included a short-printed mini of R.A. Dickey from last year's set. Who knows if I already have this card? I sure don't know as I am way behind on cataloging my collection, so as far as I can tell it's new to me!

Since I had all of the cards in the set sitting in a box right in front of me, I was able to flip through is and see what all there was to see. LaTroy Hawkins looks like he wants to start a relationship with that baseball in his hand. I've talked plenty about Jon Singleton on this blog, as he is the main guy whose cards I've been chasing lately. Max Scherzer's close-ups are always striking because of his different-colored eyes. And Billy 'Country Breakfast' Butler is another favorite slugger of mine, although he hasn't been doing a lot of slugging since his All-Star 2012 season. It'll be interesting to see what the A's do with him after 2015.

Mr. T aka B.A. Baracus aka Clubber Lang makes an appearance in the set since the Rocky films are featured as a big component in the product this year. I have to admit that I may have seen part or all of the first Rocky movie, but I know I haven't seen any of the others. Maybe I am missing out? I don't know. A couple of other PC guys make it into this group, R.A. Dickey and Josh Reddick, who gace up his jersey number to Billy Butler after the move that brought Butler to Oakland. Both players are featured pretty heavily in this editorial piece on why it's good that the A's will not make the playoffs this season WARNING: THE HEADLINE PHOTO IS A PICTURE OF BILLY BUTLER THAT BRINGS THE TRUFFLE SHUFFLE TO MIND. And last in the group is Jose Altuve, who is one of the key guys on a team that is trending strongly in the right direction, if they could just give their pitchers some run support every once in a while. They lost one to the Yankees tonight after sweeping the Dodgers over the weekend, a set that included a no-hitter thrown by trade deadline acquisition Mike Fiers.

I liked Derek Norris a lot as an A, but when he went to the Padres he did what players who go to the Padres do: he disappeared. That's not really true. He's put together some pretty good numbers again this year. Hulk Hogan as Thunderlips had to make this post, although he has been weathering some self-inflicted negative press lately. He said some racist things on a video that was leaked, and I hope that he has changed his mind since the video was made or maybe that the camera just caught him during a really low point in his life. The Hulkster was a figure that loomed large over the world I grew up in that Hulkamania is woven into who I am. Hyun-Jin Ryu gets into the post because I like him. It seems like every card he's on features this same pose. I wonder if the photographers set it up, or if it's his default pose for getting his picture taken? Like maybe the photographers are like, 'Hey, maybe we should mix it up a little this time,' but he just stubbornly stands in that pose until they give up and take the picture. Some people do look the same in every picture. There's even 'documented' 'proof' of it on the internet.

George Springer is injured, but the Astros are hoping that he comes back and helps them boost their offense a bit for the race to the playoffs.

Jose Bautista is a key component on the Blue Jays offense, which is a machine built solely for destroying baseballs by knocking them into low orbit. I think they've scored like 850 runs in their last ten games, with back-to-back-to-back-to-back grand slams which are technically impossible but the balls travel so far and stay in the air for so long that four batters can come up to the plate and run around the bases before they land. Can you imagine this roster playing full-time in Colorado? Hunter Pence gets included for making a Ryan Braun face. He doesn't just see the baseball, he sees the baseball's soul and finds it wanting. Ichiro just looks weird in a Miami uniform. He belongs in a Mariners or (I can't believe I'm typing this) Yankees uniform. Evan Gattis is my current favorite Astro, even though he played for the Braves at one point.

Dallas Keuchel is the Astros' ace pitcher, although I think Scott Kazmir and company would argue that point. It's a good problem for the team to have. Val Kilmer was pretty huge in the 80's and 90's, and his portrayal of Doc Holliday in Tombstone is one of my favorite performances of all time, but it seems like it's been a long time since he was super relevant. Topps did a good job including Malala Yousafzai in the set, as she has done a lot to promote education opportunities for youth and women in the world after gunmen attempted to end her life. There are many political figures who stand for controversial causes and might not be good choices for a card set, but it is hard to advocate convincingly against the right to pursue an education. Closing out this post is Josh Donaldson, who is another key component in that powerful Blue Jays offense.

Thank you for the cool price, Matt! I was super excited to get the full Allen & Ginter set, even if you did send me one of those dang Card Savers! 

Gint-a-Cuffs VII: Pack 4

+2 Great Scott!

+2 First Ladies

Pack 4 Points: 4.00
Box Running Total: 24.00
Per Pack Average: 6.00

Box Pace: 150.00

Pack of the Day 82: A Second Box of 2014 Topps Stadium Club

Shortly after I purchased my previous box of 2014 Stadium Club at what seemed like a pretty good price, Dave and Adam's made it one of their Daily Deals for $10 less per box. I was weak and ordered some more. These cards are beautiful, and they have a good feel to them when shuffling through a stack. I have most of a base set now, with just about 30 cards missing. There were some Black Friday deals on Stadium Club, but I couldn't justify spending more than I already had on Black Friday. There will be other discounts later. At $55 or less I like this stuff. At $65 and up it seems like less of a deal. I picked a few of my favorite base cards to show off first:

My player collections have seen a bit of a shake-up this offseason, but for the most part everyone's been shuffled to other teams I collect. I call myself an Astros fan and I do collect some specific Houston players, but most of the players I collect are Blue Jays, Athletics, and Royals. I guess that means I am lucky that Billy Butler went to the A's and Josh Donaldson went to the Blue Jays. Even though I like the guy, I don't know how good of a deal Butler is for Oakland. Maybe he'll find himself down there, or the roster shuffling they do will mask some of his weaknesses, It also seems a lot like Toronto won the Donaldson trade, but we won't know for sure until the season plays out. Alex Gordon tends to make some great faces on his cards. I wanted at least one older player for the scan, and Dawson was the best photo in the bunch. I showed off the Wilin Rosario Members Only card a little while ago, and I finally pulled the base card to go with it. I'm not a Boston Red Sox fan, but that celebration shot was too good to pass up, and I wanted to close things out with a couple of fielding shots.

Two of the three Rainbow Foil parallels from this box fit into my player collections. Max Scherzer is getting offers from the New York Yankees, and most folks seem to think he'll be in pinstripes before too long. I guess I'll still set his cards aside for my player collection. I got a Billy Butler parallel to go along with the base card. I'm not a Cubs fan, but that Castro card looks nice enough.

My Gold parallel for this box was CC Sabathia. This would have been a much better pull a couple of years ago.

I got three Field Access cards in this box. I got four in the last box because I got a parallel of the Joe Mauer card. Now I have the base insert to go with it. The Trout and Bench cards have decent photos on them, so no complaints there. I guess the Trout would fit into Dime Box Nick's Awards Show mini collection, while the Mauer would go well in the Kids on Cards mini collection.

My Beam Team for the box is Andrew McCutchen, which means I am having pretty good luck on the player collection front. I like the Beam Team The George Brett Legends insert is another double from the first box. I got one of the better Future Stars cards in Yasiel Puig. Stadium Club would be a fun set to collect all the inserts for, but I don't know if I have it in me to make that a collecting priority.

I pulled two Triumvirate cards, both featuring Dodgers pitchers. The Hyun-Jin Ryu card is another PC card, and is the base Luminous version that comes one per box. The Clayton Kershaw is the Illuminator version, which comes one per case and is made of transparent acetate. I tried interlocking them along the edge where they are supposed to match. They fit together along the bottom half, but up high the die-cuts fall out of alignment.

Here is how they look on the back. The base Triumvirate cards are blank on the back, with the player name and team down with the legal information at the bottom of the card. The acetate cards show the player's silhouette in white.

Closing things out is the three guaranteed autographs in the box. Charlie Blackmon is someone I've actually heard of, as he came seemingly out of nowhere to post an All-Star season. I was able to get in on some of his early big numbers in fantasy baseball. If I recall right, he tailed off at the end of the year, but those first couple of months he was on fire. I don't know much about Luis Sardinas. He played part of the season for the Rangers and may make the roster next year, depending on what happens with Elvis Andrus and Jurickson Profar. Andrew Heaney didn't have a great performance during his audition with the Marlins this year. I don't know anything else about him except that he is on the trade block. His autograph is the Rainbow Foil version and is numbered # 22 / 50. The Rainbow Foil autographs fall about 2 per case.

So I pulled a case hit in the Clayton Kershaw and a half-case hit in Andrew Heaney, as well as an autograph of a guy I've heard of and a few player collection cards from the base and inserts. Stadium Club isn't about the big money hits, so I'd say I did pretty well on this box. I would like to complete the base set eventually, and it would be fun to collect the full Triumvirate base insert set. I wouldn't want to chase down the Illuminator acetate set, but the Luminous base set wouldn't be too awful.

Pack of the Day 79: A Box of 2014 Topps Mini Baseball

I opened up some 2014 Topps Mini Baseball recently. There is a discount code out there, MINISALE, that will allow you to get 35% off boxes of 2014 Topps Mini Baseball. So if you wanted to get some of this, don't pay full price. I am short on time, so I didn't scan any of the base cards. There were 225 base cards in the box, with 5 of them being doubles. Since the set reprints all of Series' 1 and 2, that's about 1/3 of the set from a box. You can expect to get doubles and triples if you open more than one box, though. Last year I opened 6 boxes of 2013 Topps Mini Baseball and still had not completed one whole base set. After Box 6 I had 95% of one base set and enough doubles for 80% of a second base set. The base cards look like their full-sized counterparts from the flagship set.

Topps continued their tradition of rehashing one insert set from the original release in mini form. This year that insert is The Future is Now. You get six of these per box, and the set has 50 cards in the checklist. I never got around to finishing last year's Chasing History set, and I don't know if I will try to finish this one either. It's not very compelling. Billy Hamilton is so fast, he started to take off from the group before the scan was done.

There are a few levels of parallel, with a pretty fair guarantee that you're going to see 3-4 Gold and 1-2 Pink per box. The Gold are # / 63 and the Pink are numbered # / 25. Odds on the Black # / 5 are about 1 in 3 boxes, Platinum 1 / 1 are 1 in 16 boxes, and Printing Plates fall about every 4 boxes. In this box I got 4 Gold and 1 Pink, including Greg Holland here. All of the parallels I have seen so far suffer from really bad edges. They look like they were cut out by kindergartners wielding safety scissors.

They are chipped and ragged all around, and I would be hesitant to try to trade them or sell them to other people because they just don't look good. I sent complaints in via their web form and social media, but I imagine I will be met with the same wall of silence I always get. 

The Holland card is # 36 / 63. Last night's game really got away from the Royals, so now the World Series is even again. I wonder if they've got it in them to get back out there and win tonight? If so, they'll probably be relying on the regular bullpen guys and not the dudes they trotted out yesterday.

Roger Kieschnick played with the Diamondbacks in 2014 and was picked up off waivers by the Angels. Alex Rios had a passable year for the Texas Train Wreck, and Ian Kinsler was an All-Star with the Detroit Tigers. Taijuan Walker was injured for much of the year, but had a few good starts near the end of the season.

Serial numbers! Kieschnick is # 25 / 63, Rios is # 06 / 63, Kinsler gets # 34 / 63, and Walker is # 19 / 25. Everyone except Rios gets room on their card for a little snippet about their career. I don't think any of the text changed from the main set to the mini set, but I could be wrong.

And finally, we get to the promised hit! Each box promises either an autograph or a relic card. The relics are 1 in every 1.21 boxes and the autographs are 1 in every 5.92 boxes. Those numbers seem pretty consistent with last year, when I got 1 autograph in 6 boxes. The relic selection seems a lot better this year. Last year I got Brandon Beachy, some Astros relief pitcher (Jordan Lyles), a decent Fred McGriff relic with a pinstripe, and 2 Hank Congers. This box featured Masahiro Tanaka, which seems like a pretty big jump from last year's checklist. I may be able to recoup half the cost of the box from this card, which is pretty good for this product.

Overall I feel kind of neutral on 2014 Topps Mini Baseball. I like the set-building aspect of it, as not many products today seem built for a person to track down a rather large checklist without a ton of fluff. The large number of doubles this tends to generate aren't a huge deal, as people on Zistle seem eager to trade for cards from the Mini brand, as not a lot of people open this stuff and traders will offer stuff I need in exchange for team sets or cards of favorite players. The small-format cards are fun to flip through and sort. The relics are well-designed and the checklist has improved over past iterations.

On the bad side, it will probably take quite a few boxes to complete a set. The terrible quality control on the parallels is extremely disappointing. Topps switched from a smooth paper stock last year to something with some texture to it this year, and it just doesn't cut well. The chipping and bad corners make the cards un-presentable, un-tradeable, and un-salable. The reuse of the Future is Now design is kind of boring and uninspired. It's just an insert that I don't care much about. With so much of this product being a reprint, it would be nice if Topps came up with a new insert set for it.

I wouldn't pay full price for this product, and even with the 35% off coupon code the problems with the colored parallels have me on the fence. It's cheap enough that you could have fun building the set as long as you don't expect a whole lot else out of your packs.

Pack of the Day 68: Hobby Box of 2014 Bowman

I busted open a Hobby box of 2014 Bowman to see what it was all about. My initial impressions of the product seemed fairly negative, and I think I still feel that way for the most part. But ultimately it is just pictures of ball-players on cardboard. I think the best thing about this product is the way the Chrome cards smell, especially just as they come out of the pack. I guess it's weird to sniff your cards, and that smell is probably just an indicator of the presence of some cancer-causing chemical residue, but I can't help it. It's better than being out there huffing gasoline in the lawnmower shed.

There are essentially three different base sets in this product, which makes things interesting when breaking down a box. The base set contains 220 cards and features Veterans and Rookies. Then there is a Prospects set made up of 110 cards and features your minor league guys. Then there are Prospect Chrome cards which are essentially a parallel of the Prospect cards but feature their own complement of parallels.

In my box I pulled 127 / 220 cards from the base set with no doubles, or 57.73% of the cards in the set. If you got two boxes with pretty good collation you could complete the base set, but more than likely you'd need three boxes to be sure.

One thing that continues to irk me about Topps products is the company's habit of reusing photos of players across multiple products. The first card I noticed right away was the Craig Kimbrel card in the first scan, which is the same as his SP card in 2014 Topps Series 1 with a slightly different crop. And I am pretty sure that Josh Reddick and Fernando Rodney's photos are the same ones that appear on their 2014 Gypsy Queen cards. Those are the images that jumped out at me right away as being reused. I imagine there are plenty of others in the set. Why can't Topps find more photos of players to show off from product to product. Does the company think we don't notice? Do they save that much money by reusing the same photo several times over? Once a Cub is pretty good at finding alternate images of players during his research on the 2014 Topps Blog, so it can't be that difficult to find photos to use on the fronts of trading cards. So I have to assume it is either too expensive to get reprints rights and pay graphic designers to process new photos, or Topps hates collectors and trolls us by reusing images because they know we'll buy the cards anyway.

Continuing with the 220-card base set, I got three of the State & Hometown parallel cards. The three players depicted were Starling Marte, Jose Iglesias, and David Price. There is not much surprising here, as this is a parallel that's been around for a while in Bowman. Marte is a player collection guy, but the others are just trade fodder or will spend the next few decades sitting in my box of extras.

The Silver Ice parallels come one per box and I got another player collection guy, with a copy of Max Scherzer's card. I really felt like this was a reused photo, too, but the only similar picture I found featured some slightly different angles on Scherzer's arms and his belt buckle was slid around to the other side. I don't know. These inserts are not serially-numbered, although the other Ice Parallels are (Red to 25, Purple to 10, and White to 1).

I got three different colored-border parallels from the base set. These are the three most common colors. The Green have a print run of 150, the Orange have 250 copies, and 500 of each Blue card are inserted into packs. There are also Yellow (99), Silver (75), Gold (50), Black (25), Purple (10), Red (1), and Printing Plate parallels for each card in the set. I don't have much use for the Enny Romero # 072 / 150 or the Matt Davidson # 018 / 250 cards, but the Joey Votto # 192 / 500 might stick around in my collection for a while.

And that about does it for the veteran side of the set. With Bowman being 'The First Place to Find the Game's Future Stars!" the emphasis of most of the inserts is on the prospects.

This box delivered 48 / 110 of the base prospect cards, or 43.64 % of a set. At that rate it would take about three boxes of cards to make a complete set, although you'd probably have quite a few doubles left over at the end. I don't know much about any of these guys. I recognize Appel's name as one of Houston's bigger prospects, but I don't know who the other guys are. Tapia's photo makes his neck look about twice as long as it ought to, but I can't find any evidence online that suggests he actually has a giraffe neck. It's probably just an unflattering angle. I chose to include the Mookie Betts card in the scan because his name is Mookie and it looks like he's got the start to a pretty nasty thin mustache growing on his lip.

For Chrome prospects I pulled 45 / 110 cards in the set, or 40.91% of the set. The best thing about these cards is their sweet chemical Chrome smell. There isn't much rhyme or reason to the cards I selected for this scan. I don't really know who any of these guys are.

I got three of the State & Hometown parallels on the prospect side of things, with Kris Bryant, Daniel Robertson, and Tim Cooney. I hear that Kris Bryant is a pretty big deal. The rumor is that he and Javier Baez might be ready to turn the Cubs upside down in the next couple of years.

You can't really tell it from the scan, but these four cards are the Bowman Scout Top 5 Chrome Mini cards, which feature one guy on the front and a list of the organization's top five prospects on the back. I've heard of Alen Hanson, mostly because I pulled some of his cards from last year's Bowman products.Tyler Naquin's name sounds familiar, too, but I don't know why.

This is an insert set that I liked last year and still like this year. It's the Top 100 Prospects set, and pretty much what you see is what you get. There are 100 players in the set, with their individual rank on the Top 100 list in big numerals at the bottom of the card. Raul Mondesi I again recognize because I got some of his cards last year. Gallo is another big-time prospect. It looks like the top portion of this checklist features a number of guys who already have some service time with their respective big-league teams. I wish Topps had seeded these at a little better than 2 per box, because this is one set I would have fun putting together if they were a little more common.

I am kind of jumping around here with the cards. I really should have done parallels first, then inserts, but I didn't. It bugs me a little, but not enough to go to the hassle of rearranging the photos and text. This is a Chrome Refractor of Tim Cooney numbered # 253 / 500. I also got his State & Hometown parallel in this box. Tim Cooney Hot Box!

This is another of the Bowman Scout Top 5 mini cards, this time a Black Refractor parallel of Courtney Hawkins. It is relatively rare, numbered # 08 / 15. Of course, the White Sox player that you would want featured on this card is Jose Abreu. Going by eBay auction results, you'd be lucky to get $5 from this card. But it's cool to pull something rare from a box anyway, even if it isn't worth the Chromey cardstock it's printed on.

This Francisco Lindor card is from the 1989 Bowman is Back Silver Diamond Refractor set, which are packed out one per box. This is one of those few cards that looks better in the scan than it does in person. Or maybe I've just been looking at it under poor lighting.

And finally, here is the box's promised autograph, from a guy named Seth Mejias-Brean. Who? I don't know. He is sporting a pretty slick mustache, but he's apparently buried pretty deep in the minors. I couldn't find a lot of information on the guy. This is the Black parallel of the autograph, which is numbered # 58 / 99.

And that does it for the box. For what it is I guess it was a pretty good break. I got a decent number of low print run cards, even though they weren't necessarily the big money guys in the set. I'd like to get the complete base set, but I don't know if I will be buying another couple of boxes in order to do it.