Blog Bat-Around: What I Collect

I don't think I've ever participated in a Blog Bat-Around before. I tend to do things on my own schedule, and by the time I am ready to participate in something like this, everyone else has moved on. I think most people have already moved on from this one, too, but I'm posting about it anyway. I think credit goes to Night Owl for starting/inspiring this one, entitled 'What I Collect.' It's basically an excuse to list your various projects and collecting interests. Some people listed theirs in order of preference, but my collecting habits are too random for me to do that.

I'll start off with baseball. I mainly focus on player collections, although there are some other things I chase. I would say the primary player I collect is R.A. Dickey, but Jon Singleton is up there and I also have tried to put together a decent Josh Reddick collection. Evan Gattis is a guy I've tried to start an accumulation for, but I get distracted from that one too easily. He's probably one of my favorite players to watch, though, outside of Jose Altuve. Singleton's available cardboard seems to be drying up, as it doesn't look like he's going to pan out anytime soon. Maybe I'll change my focus to Gattis or someone else once I feel like I'm done getting Singleton cards. I also pick up Munenori Kawasaki cards when I can, but I think he announced his retirement in the last few days, and he doesn't really have a lot of cardboard out there anyhow.

Because I can't reasonably expect to get all of the cards of any given player, I just try to get the ones I like best, and the ones that are available at a reasonable price. I will grab random hits and cards featuring other players I like, such as Max Scherzer, but when it comes to single cards I am usually pretty focused on a handful of guys. I did pick up a whole lot of Topps Now cards from last season, mostly the ones featuring Astros. I also like to get some of the oddball cards that Topps prints for the Now program, like the card that talked about the Royals' Rally Mantis. I will generally grab any that include a donation to charity. A couple that come to mind are one Topps did for Hurricane Harvey relief and another donating to veteran's charities for Memorial Day.

I usually buy a factory set of Topps and a set of Update from eBay. In most years I collect the blue foil parallel set out of Opening Day. Sometimes I buy a set of Heritage after busting enough of it to realize that I can't possibly build a set without spending a whole lot of money on packs full of doubles. I typically buy a box of Allen & Ginter for Gint-a-Cuffs. Usually I find one other product that I buy a bunch of. Last year it was Bowman Platinum. There are other collections that I sometimes add to, like Wally Moon, Rollie Fingers, Nolan Ryan, Randy Johnson, vintage sets, Fan Favorites autographs from Topps Archives, and oddball releases.

One big focus of mine has been sketch cards and full-size artwork. I have a few main character collections. The primary ones are DC Comics' Power Girl and Leia from Star Wars. I also have small collections of Marvel characters She-Hulk, Squirrel Girl, and Scarlet Witch. I've accumulated quite a few Captain America sketches, as well as a small number of M.O.D.O.K. sketch cards. I will pick up sketches of other subjects, too, if they catch my eye.

I also collect Star Wars cards, but not all that obsessively. I just get what interests me. Topps puts out a lot of Star Wars products, and keeping up with them all would be a full-time collection. I don't have that kind of focus. I gather cards featuring Leia, interesting relics, and autographs from other characters that I like.

I like wrestling cards. They are a lot of fun. Again, I collect just about anything that catches my eye. I don't try to get all of the Topps Now WWE cards, but I get one or two every few months if a wrestler I like is featured. I like autographs of classic guys like Sergeant Slaughter. I also have collections for Nia Jax and Bayley. I started a Charlotte Flair collection after I met her last year at a book signing, but I don't have an autographed card from her yet. John Cena is too popular for me to collect, but I should really track down an autograph of his.

I've gathered a couple of Iron Sheik hits over time, and I went out and got that Trish Stratus autograph recently. Most of my collections are grab bags of single cards that I pick up on eBay, with the occasional box break or group break thrown in.

I also collect trading cards of Japanese women wrestlers. BBM puts out an annual set that covers a wide range of promotions, and the Stardom promotion puts out their own card set every so often. The Stardom packs are really hard to get, so usually I am limited to whatever singles pop up on eBay. I have a pretty good source for unopened BBM True Heart cards, though, and between eBay and Yahoo! Auctions in Japan I am able to get most of the cards I want. I have a full run of Command Bolshoi (the masked wrestler up top) autographs dating back to 2003. That's my best Japanese wrestler collection, but there are several other wrestlers that I collect. I am currently waiting on a large shipment out of Japan, which includes the complete 2004 set, which almost never comes up for sale. A couple of high-level Japanese wrestlers have transferred to the WWE recently, and that has driven up interest a little bit in these cards. 

I collect UFC cards, too. I have a couple of fighter collections. Neil Magny is one of the primary ones, and Randa Markos is one of the others. I really just like to collect a little of everything, though. I will usually grab just about any relic or autograph if it is cheap enough, and especially if I don't already have something featuring that fighter. I gather up low-numbered parallels if I can, from just about any product. It seems like every year I go pretty hard on at least one product. Last year it was Museum Collection and Chrome. This year I might go after those same products.

I chase NASCAR cards, mostly focusing on a handful of drivers. Most of my favorite drivers have retired, so I am looking for new people to collect. I haven't settled on anyone yet. In reality most of my racing card money goes to Danica Patrick cards and the occasional box break. I am thinking about starting a Darrell 'Bubba' Wallace collection, or maybe collecting one of the Busch brothers. Other racers I collect are Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and Josh Wise. I also have a small collection of drag racing stuff, with the main focus of that collection being the Force family (John, Courtney, and Brittany). 

I guess this scan represents pop culture celebrities and other sports. I gather autographs, relics, and other cards featuring people that I've heard of from outside of mainstream sports. Goodwin Champions is a good source for those, as are Panini's various celebrity offerings. I've got a fair number of cards featuring Olympic gymnasts, a decent Felicia Day collection, some singers, some authors, and some people who are mostly famous for being famous or being related to someone famous.

Basketball cards were the main thing I collected during my teen years in the 90's. It is mostly a fringe collection now, but I still gather cards for my main player collections (Hakeem Olajuwon, Gheorghe Muresan, Manute Bol). I will also pick up any Houston Rockets cards I can find, but I don't often go out of my way to track them down. 

Football cards are pretty far down my list, but I still have a couple of NFL collections. Most of the cards I add picture former Broncos' tight end Shannon Sharpe. I like getting Terrell Davis and John Elway cards. I will collect just about anything with Tim Tebow on it. I also recently started a Jake Butt collection, because how often does someone named Butt play for your favorite team? I've picked up one or two Von Miller cards over the last couple of years, too, but I have a hard time focusing on football. The careers are so short, and the sport just hasn't been as exciting for me as it was previously.

That's a quick rundown of my collecting world. I am not a very focused guy, so I bounce around from thing to thing as new products release and my interests change.

Pack of the Day 185: Two Blasters of 2018 Topps Heritage

Since my 2018 BBM True Heart Japanese Women's Wrestling post isn't getting written as fast as I anticipated, here's something else I got recently. Like many card collectors, I've been visiting the local retail establishments, hoping for a taste of 2018 Topps Heritage. Unfortunately, there hasn't been much stock at all in my local stores. There were a few rack packs and hanger boxes in my local Target for a day or two, but I haven't seen a blaster box in the wild yet. I finally resorted to searching online for them. I happened to check eBay on a day when there was a coupon for 20% off any purchase of $25 or more, so I ordered a couple of blasters from a reseller. After the coupon, the total cost was under the retail price, including shipping. I have also been watching this Wal-Mart link, as you can order them from the big box store and they will ship for free as long as you order two or more blasters. I ordered three that way, but they haven't arrived yet. They go in and out of stock all the time, though, so you just have to keep looking. I figure retail is gonna be the only way to build this set for most of us, as hobby boxes have been selling in the $120-125 range lately. That's close to double what I'd want to spend on one. So that's my philosophy on Heritage at the moment. Here are some of the highlights from my two eBay blasters of the product.

I'll start things off with a nice sunset card of Carlos Beltran, who retired on top as a World Series Champion.

I photographed a selection of base cards that I liked. You'll obviously see a lot of Astros here, as well as some notable names or (subjectively) cool pictures. I included Carlos Asuaje because I saw him play in person several times while I was in San Diego for work last year.

Here are some more nice base cards from the blasters. Some years I don't like Heritage as much as others, but 2018 is a year that I enjoy. I'll be trying to build the full base set this year, although I am going to go the easy route and buy the short-prints outright.

Speaking of short-prints, I pulled five of them between the two blasters. The Chris Davis card is a Chrome parallel, numbered # 588 / 999. Blasters contain 8 packs, and the Chrome cards are a 1:35 pack pull, or about one in every 4-5 blasters. Short-prints are 1:3 packs, so 5 is about what you'd expect from 16 packs.

These decals are the Wal-Mart exclusive for this year, and I got a couple of decent names for mine. It looks like you get one of these per blaster.

Here are all the vertical inserts I pulled. They've got varying pull ratios. I think I like the New Age Performers best. I'd probably like the Deckle-Edge inserts better, but they've been done many times over the last few years.

I also got a horizontal insert, with this Then & Now card featuring a couple of all-time great pitchers.

I even lucked out and pulled a hit from this break, an autograph of Cardinals outfielder Harrison Bader, who is one of the guys contending for the team's last bench spot this season. Heritage has nice-looking autographs, and at 1:375 packs they are hard to find in retail. They're hard to find in Hobby boxes, too, so I still think retail is the better bet for set collectors unless Hobby prices drop a whole bunch.

Pack of the Day 180: 2017 Topps Holiday Box

I was at Wal-Mart last night, looking at Collector's Boxes of Topps Gallery but unable to justify $70 for one of them, when I saw some Topps Baseball Holiday Boxes next to the Gallery display. They had a more reasonable price tag, and I grabbed one of them along with a hanger pack of Topps Gallery.

Each box advertises that it has 10 packs of 10 cards each, with one relic, autograph, or autographed relic card per box. Maybe not quite as enticing as the two promised autographs in a Collector's Box of Topps Gallery, but quite a few of the Gallery box breaks I've seen haven't had autographs worth writing home about anyway.

Here are the pack odds. You are likely to find 5 snowflake parallels and a relic card in each box. Autographs fall about once every 27 boxes, and every other hit has pretty astronomical odds. There is also some No Purchase Necessary information on here for those who are into that.

The product is basically the same as the 2016 version. It takes the current year's basic Topps design and adds a snowflake pattern to the upper right corner. The card backs have different numbering. I think the checklist has 200 cards, so it's pretty much a stars and rookies kind of product. I haven't checked to see if the card backs contain different write-ups or if they are the same as the base product.

Here are a few of the standout base cards. I was lucky enough to pull a few Houston Astros from this box. I also pulled a few stars from the teams that the Astros vanquished on their way to the championship this year. Max Scherzer got included because I like him and Ben Zobrist got included because Astro Evan Gattis makes a cameo on his card.

I got the expected 5 snowflake parallels, which are just like the base cards except that they have glitter affixed to the snowflake portion of the card. I guess Yu Darvish is the best pull I had on that front. In the bottom right is my relic card, featuring World Series MVP George Springer. Not a bad box for an Astros fan. The only disappointment with the relic card is that the relic doesn't fill the window. There is a distinct gap at the bottom of the window where the fabric doesn't reach the edge. I'll probably wind up buying another box or two of this in an attempt to complete the base set.

Pack of the Day 179: A Blaster of 2017 Topps Archives

Well, the Astros pulled it off and put the Dodgers away in Game 7 of a tight World Series. I was able to watch the game since I didn't have to be up all that early this morning, and it was really nice to see my favorite team celebrate their franchise's first title. 

I picked up this blaster of 2017 Topps Archives several months ago, probably soon after the product released. I don't even really remember what I pulled from it at this point, so it's like I get to break it open again!

The side of the box has all of the odds on it. The NPN contest expired a couple of months ago, so that information isn't of much use to anyone. 

I pulled a couple of Astros among the base cards, Evan Gattis and Ken Giles. I also got Frank Thomas showing off the 'big body-little head' look and Johnny Cueto showing his bubble gum bubble skills. 

My horizontal pulls included two of the Astros' playoff heroes, Alex Bregman and Jose Altuve. I also got some nice-looking cards of pitchers and a manager. I wish today's card sets included more manager cards. 

Among my inserts there was another Astro hero, wearing the uniform if his previous team. Justin Verlander was a huge part of the Astros' playoff run, and I don't think they would have won the title without making the move to acquire him.

My other inserts included some other guys, too. I don't really care one way or the other about Jeter, so the whole insert set devoted to him doesn't do anything for me. 

The final scan from this blaster break shows the blaster-exclusive coins I pulled. I did all right on them, getting Bryce Harper and Aaron Judge. At the time I opened this blaster, I looked up the Judge coin on eBay and it was selling for about half the price of a blaster.

I like the idea of the Archives product, but nearly every time I open some of it, I come away wishing there was a little more in each box. 

Max Scherzer Members Only

It's finally the weekend here in San Diego, so I am trying to get in some sight-seeing before class starts again on Monday. My wife drove down from Idaho to visit me for the weekend, so we're having a bit of a mini-vacation. It's a pretty long drive for her, but it allowed her to drop off the kids at her brother's house in Utah, and she loves long road trips anyway, so really it was a positive thing overall.

After she got her yesterday evening, we walked across the street from the base to go to dinner. We were just going to grab something quick at one of the chain restaurants there, but I saw a sign for the Corvette Diner, which is a place I remembered from my time here fifteen years ago. We decided to go there instead, and it was a lot of fun. It's a themed diner, so they play oldies music, all the waitstaff has big hair or big-hair wigs, and they do all sorts of crazy stuff like throw handfuls of straws at you, make necklaces and big hair bows out of straws, and there is a big choreographed dance every hour or so. The burgers and shakes were excellent, too, and pricewise were comparable to a couple of combo meals you'd find locally. Well worth the visit if you're in the area, in my opinion.

I continue to be surprised at the number of Members Only parallels I've been able to pick up from 2014 Topps Stadium Club. This is my latest addition, a Max Scherzer card from the set. This parallel isn't serially-numbered, but the print run on these was supposedly less than ten, and you only got one Members Only card per case. I got this for pocket change on eBay.

The seller also included the base card in the package. I really like the Stadium Club reboots of the last few years. The formula is pretty simple, based around great photographs, but since the photo is a primary piece of the card it makes for a quality set.

Pack of the Day 169: Blasters of 2017 Bowman Platinum

My wife and I got away on Friday and went to dinner at a Hawaiian place that opened up recently near our house. The food was pretty good, and it was fun to hang out with her for a while without our kids whining at us the whole time. After that I mentioned that I wanted to check out a Walmart nearby, as I hadn't checked it for Bowman Platinum yet and I'd seen a post somewhere about some stores seeing restocks on the product.

They had three blaster boxes on the shelf, and I grabbed them up. I found some more blasters at our 'home' Walmart on Saturday. I didn't take all of them, though, I just grabbed a couple and left a few on the shelf for the next guy. You can see the pack odds above for these.

Here are some of the notable base cards I pulled from the break. No Aaron Judge this time, but I did get two Cody Bellinger base cards, as well as some of the guys who have driven the hobby in recent years.

This Josh Hader Green parallel was the only colorful base card parallel I found in the break. This one is numbered # 09 / 99.

Each blaster contained a pack with four of these special foil parallels. I grabbed a handful of them to scan. I guess maybe Andrew Benintendi, Dansby Swanson, and Gleybar Torres are the hot pulls here.

These are the Bowman's Next Generation inserts I got from the break. The Nick Senzel is a Green parallel, numbered # / 99. They are seeded at 1:263 packs, so a fairly tough one to get.

I think I did all right with my Platinum Presence inserts, with plenty of big names like Trout, Seager, and Bryant. That Anderson Espinoza card in the lower right is an Orange pull, numbered # 21 / 25. Platinum Presence Orange parallels are seeded 1:1,040 packs, so this is again a pretty tough card to get. Hopefully Espinoza develops into a big-time player.

Aaron Judge didn't completely escape my grasp in this break, as I pulled his Rookie Radar insert, along with a couple of Astros and a couple copies of Christian Arroyo's card. I am probably done with Bowman Platinum for good now. I am disappointed that I didn't pull a single autograph out of any of my rack packs and blasters, but other than that I pulled some colorful parallels, some nice inserts, and rookie cards of some of the hottest players in baseball.