Man Crush

Despite what the Mrs. thinks, I would not be star struck if I ever met a Major League player, unless it was Cliff Lee.  Or Tony Gwynn.  Maybe Mike Piazza.  Probably Darryl Strawberry.  Nelson Cruz?  Yeah, ok him too.  And yeah, definitely Michael Young and Josh Hamilton and Ian Kinsler and Elvis Andrus.  Of course, Stan Musial.  Willie Mays?  Who wouldn't.  It goes without saying, Albert Pujols and Ichiro and Derek Jeter.  But no one else.  Except David Wright.  And Bob Gibson. 

I will concede however, I might get a little giddy if I ever ran into Brett Eibner.  Not only is he a highly rated prospect, he is the author of one of the great Razorback baseball moments of all time.  I vividly remember jumping off the couch when he hit the above home run a few years ago in the College World Series. 

I was also excited he was drafted by the Royals, meaning he will likely come through the AA affiliate in NW Arkansas at some point.  From what I hear, that may come sooner rather than later.  I wonder if we'll become friends and hang out...

So when his first trading cards came out I spied one I couldn't do without:

My wife asked if I was going to sleep with this card under my pillow.  I couldn't believe the gall.  Like I would do that...  Not until I get that sucker tucked away in a 130 pt. magnetic snap case, baby doll.  Remember the name baseball fans.  I think this guy is going to be a star.  And my future buddy.

Napkin Doon Tip of the Hat: Society for American Baseball Research

My wife noses around my blog quite often and gives me her feedback whether I want it or not.  She is begging to post comments on this blog(undeniably to make fun of me) , but I won’t let her.  She has her own blog that covers our family, and I don’t want my baseball card life and regular life to mix.   I am trying to maintain a secret identity.  Like Batman.  But I digress…

So my wife reads my succinct, yet informative post about Etopps.  “Don’t you think these people know about Etopps already?  Do they need a lesson from you?” were her eyebrows-raised rhetorical questions to me. 

“Probably they are aware, but I never see posts about Etopps, and one can never assume,” was my patient response.   So using that logic, let me give a nod to one of my favorite websites:  www.SABR.org  I assume readers are familiar with this organization, but I wanted to give them a shout anyways.  Like the guys over at Baseball Time In Arlington, I concede that these folks are way out of my league in terms of intelligence and understanding of the game.   But I like to visit the site and see some of the innovative thinking going on over there.    They even have a yearly convention that I am much too intimidated to attend, but hope to one day. 

Is anyone reading this a member of SABR?  Have you been to a convention?  How was it?

Wax Wednesday- Confession Time

To no suprise to anyone who knows me, I caved on my vow to give up buying cards for lent. It didn't take much temptation either I have to say:

I didn't purchase any wax, which I suppose is something, but these cards out of the local dealers bargain box were too tough for me to refuse.   I am a sucker for hologram and motion cards, so I am digging the Denny's Jackie Robinson and the 2 Holoview cards of Ripken and Gwynn.  I don't collect Tulowitzki, but this refractor was begging me to buy it.  I guess I could get back on the wagon, but I don't really want to.

Cyber Monday: E-Shopping Arrivals

Even though I gave up purchasing cards for lent, thankfully, I had ordered enough product online before this ridiculous promise went into place.  I would like to pat myself on the back for being so disciplined so far.    I did put in a couple of low-ball bids for some items on eBay that I don’t expect to get, but if I do, I will have to fess up about breaking my vow.  Placing a bid doesn’t count does it?  Here are some of the goodies I got last week:

I don’t know how I managed to get that Pujols SPX card, #’d to 50 by the way!  No way did I think I would win that auction, but I am thrilled I did.  I am very slowly trying to complete this wonderful set, and that one was one I assumed I would have trouble getting.  I’m also thrilled with the 2 Sterling Base cards, as I am now about 75% through building this set.  I’ve listed the cards I am still lacking at the top of my blog.  I will post the few doubles I have for trade if anyone is interested in trading.

This was a small lot from http://www.sportsbuy.com/  It knocked out a little from my monster checklist, including a nice 2003 DK auto of Joe Borchard.  I picked up a couple of cheapies of two of my favorite Rangers as well.

Cyber Monday- Etopps

After reading many of the wonderful baseball card blogs out there, I detect a similar collecting pattern history from many bloggers:   Heavy collecting in the 80s and 90s, a drop off in the early 2000’s, and a recent re-entry to the hobby with gusto.    That’s pretty much my story, except from 2004-2009, while I didn’t really collect much cardboard, there was one product that I paid a lot of attention to:  Etopps.com.  I thought then and now that this was an exceptional evolution of the hobby, and could be enjoyed with limited resources.  I assume most of you are familiar with Etopps, but for those not in the know, here is a quick overview:

·         Every Monday at 1 p.m. eastern, Etopps.com posts a handful of new card “IPOs.”  They list the cost per card and the maximum print run.   Right now, Etopps is offering Minor League Baseball, and in a few weeks will start the 2011 Baseball offering.

·       Once the offerings go online, Etopps members can select which cards they would like to purchase and place  order requests.  The sooner you enter your order, the better your chance of getting a card.

·         The following Monday, Etopps allocates the cards (and lists a new offering).  If the card has a maximum print run of 799 cards, the first 799 people who ordered get one card each.  The folks in line after that do not get a card, but can try to acquire one later through various means.  If say, only 350 people order cards, then the print run will be only 350.  However, if cards are still available, Etopps will snake around again to the front of the queue and start fulfilling orders for people who requested multiple copies of a card.  Typically, cards are sellouts, and each person only gets one card.  The folks who order latest are the ones who get left out.

·         Once your card is in your portfolio, you have several options:  sell it on Ebay, cardtarget.com, put it up on the trade market, or take the card for delivery.  Or you can just keep it in your portfolio.  It usually takes several months before a new card is actually printed and ready for delivery.

·         All cards are sealed in a thick plastic card holder and kept in the Etopps warehouse until the buyer requests delivery.

There are a lot of other nuances with Etopps.  There is a “point” system where you can obtain points from players performances over the course of the season, daily jackpots (for example, if a player in your portfolio from the current season offering hits a grand slam, you receive 5 points for each card you have), or you can trade cards for points .   These points can be traded for other cards, used in a weekly merchandise catalog (I have purchased several factory baseball sets, additional Etopps cards, and wax boxes with my points), or used to pay for deliveries of cards.     

This past year,  I gutted my Etopps collection pretty hard to give my self funds for getting back into cardboard.  But I still have a decent portfolio.  I also have taken a lot of these cards in hand.  They are pretty slick cards.

If you read the message boards on Etopps.com , there seems to be a lot of negativity toward the Etopps program.  For all of its flaws, I am still a big fan.  So each week, I will post the upcoming offering as soon as I can before the IPO begins.  A rule of thumb:  most of the IPOs can be purchased later on Ebay or Cardtarget.com for less than IPO price.... eventually.   But sometimes, it’s best to get in at IPO to take advantage of the points opportunities. 

Here are this week’s offerings:
Gary Sanchez

Jonathan Singleton

Trade Post: 1st Trade!

I was thrilled to execute my first trade as a blogger last week.  Big thanks to Nachos Grande for helping out with a big missing piece to my Topps HD 2001 set:

I love the HD set, and I wish Topps would reprise the offering.   I look forward to many more trades!

Booknotes: The Universal Baseball Association, Inc, J. Henry Waugh, Prop.

Robert Coover, 1968

If CSPAN can dedicate its weekends to books and literature, so can this blog.  I’ll kick off this what- I- plan- to- be-weekly-category with what I think is one of my favorite books ever (Blood Meridian will always be number one, with no close second,) but am certain is my favorite baseball themed work of fiction:  The Universal Baseball Association, Inc, J. Henry Waugh, Prop.

In brief, it’s the story of 56 year old accountant, Henry Waugh, who has developed a table top baseball dice game, (think Strat-O-Matic).  He’s expanded the game to include a fully realized fictional world enveloping the games that are played out nightly on his kitchen table.    The players are all creations of Henry’s imagination, and each has their own backgrounds, stories and nuances.   From the beginning, the reader understands that Henry is having more and more trouble separating his banal, but real life from the fantasy world he has created.   Written in 1968, the book is relevant today.  It is darkly funny, sad and at times, frightening as the lines blur between fantasy and reality for Henry.    

I read this book about 10 years ago, and recently re-read it with a whole new understanding of the story.  You could easily equate the dice game Henry created with so much of the modern technology that gives us the chance to be a god controlling our own little worlds.     There is a lot of scholarship about this book out in cyberspace that can break the book down more eloquently than I can, so I won’t try to write an essay about it.  But I do highly recommend the book. 

T206 Goodness: Napoleon Lajoie

I have a small handful of vintage T206 cards.  For those of you who have printed and studied the Napkin Doon Baseball Card Solar System, you know that my T206 Ty Cobb card is the center and focal point of my baseball card collection.    Not sure why-  the more I read about Cobb, the more I can’t stand him. 

If someone was to force me to limit my collecting to one, and only one set, I would stick to the T206 cards.  They can be expensive, but these are the cards that are the most interesting, and can be shown off with pride to anyone, even non collectors.  In fact, my Chick Gandil (1919 Black Sox fame) card was the first card I showed my wife (then girlfriend).  I told her about his involvement in the scandal, and how these cards were packaged in cigarettes 100 years ago.  She probably doesn’t even remember it now, but I assume that was the moment she fell in love with me.  Or took pity on me and didn’t have the heart to dump me.  Either way, I credit that card to helping me snag her.

So when I come across a player of that era with an interesting story, I try to find a way to get a card on the cheap off eBay.  Trust me, the Cobb card was not cheap, and I had no business buying that thing.   But that was years ago, and I’m glad I have it now.  

Less painful a purchase was this Napoleon Lajoie card, although it dented my wallet as well.  Like the Cobb card, I bought this one several years ago.

Napoleon was a superstar of the era.  So much so, that when he was sent to the fledgling Cleveland franchise, he gave them instant credibility to the point where fans voted to change their team name to the Cleveland Naps.   I also picked this card up because of his rivalry with Ty Cobb.  If you aren’t familiar of the story of the famous “Chalmers” batting title race of 1909, here’s are some links:

Long Version

Short Version

“I’m a fan, not an expert” Tip of the Hat To: Baseball Time in Arlington

“I’m a fan, not an expert.”   This quote is in my profile, and it’s my motto, credo and mission statement when it comes to baseball and baseball cards.  I have friends who are casual followers of baseball who tell me I know more about baseball than anyone they know.  They mistake my passion for the game and its culture for knowledge.  Same goes for colleting.    People that don’t know anything about baseball cards think I have the largest collection in the world.  The other day my sister- in- law saw about 30 cards of mine spread out on a table and said “Are these all of your cards?  Oh my God you have so many!”  And she was not being sarcastic.  My collection is peanuts compared to big time collectors, and that’s fine with me. 

I was at a card show a month ago with my typical $20 budget, looking through a 3,200 count box of cards.  It was nice box that had a lot of game used items.  There were probably 500-800 cards in the box (all of them were in plastic screw down holders).  I thought I might find one or two to add to my collection, when this young guys skims over the box and tells the dealer: “I’ll give you $2,000 for the whole box.”  The dealer thinks about it and agrees.  The buyer pulls out a fat wad of cash, gives it to the dealer and walks out with the box like nothing happened.  The dealer pulls out another huge box of game used merchandise and puts in one the table like nothing happened.  Whatever the baseball card equivalent of “wiener envy” is, I had it, and slunk away from the table with my sad $20.

I get the same sense of sheepishness when I read “Baseball Time in Arlington.”  Man, those guys are smart.  Napkin Doon feel stupid after reading Baseball Time In Arlington.  But I get over it and keep reading.  It is my favorite baseball blog out there, and one of the first things a look at daily.  Of course I am a Rangers fan, so it probably has more interest to me than it might you.  Nonetheless, a tip of the hat to : “Baseball Time In Arlington.”

Wax Wednesday... late again

Yet another business trip interferes with my favorite thing to do in life: opening baseball cards….. I MEAN HANGING OUT WITH MY FAMILY!   Even a short overnight trip leaves me homesick for the Mrs. and the babies.   I think I’m done with travel for a short while now thankfully.     

Recently, before my stupid decision to give up buying cards for Lent, I opened two rack packs of 2011 Heritage, and 1 of the $10 special boxes of Topps 2011 from Wal-Mart.  I don’t know what they are called, but they have 72 cards and a special “Blue Sapphire” insert.  Here are the highlights:

No hits on the Heritage, but I’m happy with the Strasburg, Hellickson, Posey and Pujols.  I’m leaning toward not building this set and using these as trade bait.    Of course, by now I have about 1/3 of the set, so maybe I’ll trudge through it.  I’m sure everyone is dying to know what I’ll do.

Nice box on the 2011 Topps:   Matt Holiday bat card, Heyward Sapphire insert and Pujols, Stanton and Chapman base cards.    Plus a card of Cliff Lee (Razorbacks) in Rangers uniform.  

Bad Timing..

On my decision to "abstain" from buying cards for Lent.  I came across a deal that might be too hard to pass up on topps.com. 

http://www.toppsonlinestore.com/servlet/the-cds3489/Categories

Has anyone else seen this?  Is there a catch?  Do I need some more Topps 2010 updates and Allen & Ginter?  Chicle didn't really interest me, but at half off, shouldn't I get a box just to have something to blog about?

There is no way that deal is still on by the time lent is over.   CRAP.

Cyber Monday

Mondays will be my day to post about purchases I have made and received via cyberspace (ebay, sportsbuy.com, sportlots.com and COMC) and whatever the new etopps offering is for the week.  Etopps is off this week, so I'll pick up with them next week and dedicate a little time to that wonderful little website.

Not sure what I was thinking, but I let my mouth get away from me tonight and told my wife that I would give up purchasing cards for lent.  I think I have enough in the mail queue coming to hold me over for a couple of weeks and allow me to keep up a Cyber Monday regular posting.  I've also got enough wax to open over the next month or so to cover Wax Wednesday.  We'll see how disciplined I can be...

Who am I kidding?  I'll fail in this endeavor by Wednesday, if not tomorrow.  Especially after getting my hands on the sweet sh%&! I got in the mail this week:

 I've heard some moans about the 2011 manu-leather patch cards, but I gotta say they are cool to me.  I got these Nelson Cruz "glove" cards pretty cheap, and they will make nice additions to my Rangers/Cruz collection.  I also picked up a cheap 2005 Marcus Giles Gallery jersey, and UD Game Face Gear jersey of Jorge Posada.  The price was great on both, and they both help whittle away at my monster checklist.  The Damian Williams Auto/Gear card is out of my collecting range, except I'm a big Arkansas Razorback fan (and alum) and he was at the U of A for one year before transferring to USC.  And the scan does not do this card justice.  Very, very shiny.  Finally, I got a nice Nelson Cruz 2011 silk card #d to 50.  Is it cool to like silk cards?... 'cause I do, baby!

Bandai Coins

During the late 80s and 90s I bought any and everything I could find that even remotely fit under the baseball card category.  Now that I have got back into collecting, it's been fun to dig out the old stuff and take a new look at it.  It's also fun to scan through back issues of Beckett and look not only at old pricing (more on that later), but the ads for products like this one:

I don't remember these coins, but of course I wanted to be a winner too.  At some point I guess I picked up a few:

These are pretty nice, heavy coins with some good detail.  At the time I was a big Mets fan, as well as Andy Van Slyke, so those must have been the coins that were visible in the pack.  Each pack also had a bonus coin you couldn't see, which is the only explanation for me having a Von Hayes coin (I hated the Phillies).  I've become more and more of a Robin Yount fan over the years, so I was glad to see that one in the group.  I would guess I could find some good storage pages from a coin shop.  I also am not seeing much of this on the net (ebay, sportlots, sportsbuy etc.) so maybe these have some value to them.  If anyone knows anything interesting about them let me know.

Wax Wednes...er Weekend

My travel schedule last week threw a wrench into my intended Wax Wednesday column, so I'll make it up here.  I was very excited to see the 2011 Heritage at my local Wal-Mart and picked up a blaster.  I like the design, and the cards are very nice quality.  I'm getting cold cards though lately, and didn't have the greatest results with this box either.  Here are some highlights:

The Santana hit was great, and I collect Michael Young so that was a plus.  The Millwood is the Chrome refractor, and in hand it is a pretty sharp card.  Jeter is always a good one to get.   The Brian Wilson pre-beard card is pretty cool too.   The insert sets don't do much for me.  Can't decide if this will go into my set builder spreadsheet, or if I will use these as trade bait once I get my want/have lists up.  Anyone else faring well with Heritage 2011?

Potty humor

I've been at the International Housewares Show in Chicago this week and have tried to find something to tie into baseball.  Not much luck.  I did see these folks hanging out by the watercooler though.   Not the best place for them...

Come on Spring

I'll be away from home for a few days on business, which kind of hurts my blogging momentum.  Today I'm in lovely Chicago, and it's 30 and snowing, but this is still a great town.  I think I'll get some authentic Chicago pizza tonight.  I saw a S'barro down the street...(Michael Scott).

My Significant Other … (other than my wife)

I planned on waiting to unveil this until a later date, but thought it might be better to show it now while I only have a handful of followers.   And even though I only have 4 followers, let me say it is quite a thrill to know that there are actually some people in the world who have looked at my little blog.  I don’t have a catchy nickname for this… thing.., but I spend a LOT of time working, updating and just plain staring at this worksheet every day.   It is so lovely to me. 

Basically, it is a ranking system for any and all sets I am working to complete.  It gives a set a ranking by among other things:  % completion, # of remaining cards, estimated cost per card, age of set, etc.  There are checklist tabs in the background that I update when I get new cards.  The worksheet then takes all of the rankings, weighs some categories rankings higher than others, and calculates a “score” per set.  The very first column is a rank by score.  Right now, as has been the case since I started this thing, 1999 Flair Row 1 is the top ranked set to complete.  In other words, it should be, according to my spreadsheet, my top priority.  There is only one card remaining, and I have not been able to find anywhere:  Card 42, Warren Morris #d to 1,500.  Actually, I take that back-  I did find it on Sportsbuy.com, and have come very close to pulling the trigger and ordering it many times.  However, since it has taken me so long to find this card, part of me wants to hold off and try to find it at a show or in an eBay lot or something more exciting.    By the way, this is a beautiful set, and the first “premium” set I ever put together.   The scan below is not mine; I took this image of the Piazza card from a Google image search (much easier than digging mine out and scanning it). 

As I become more comfortable and competent at this blogging stuff, I would like to start getting into trades with other bloggers, and hopefully I can find an easy way to incorporate this worksheet into my blog and keep up with my want and have to trade lists.

I am interested in how everyone else keeps up with their collection.  Any best practices out there?

Wax Wednesday:

I’ve been trying to think of some consistent topics for regular posting.  To me, one of the more entertaining aspects of reading some of the baseball card blogs out there is seeing results of a pack or box break.  I don’t know why I think it’s interesting and I’ll spare you any hypothesis on the matter.  So I’ll create “Wax Wednesday” and open up something each week.  This will help justify my purchases to the Mrs.  “Honey, I have to do it… for the readers.”

So I started humbly and bought a rack pack of 2011 Topps.  Eh...  Here are the highlights.  No Diamond Giveaway card, but a nice Gehrig reprint.   Being a Rangers fan (more on my switch from the Mets to the Rangers another time), I was happy with the Felix 60 Card and the Andrus/Kinsler Card...

I was excited about the diamond parallel Jeter.  Until I noticed….

Notice the mis-printed Topps Logo in the upper corner.  &*$#(@!  I don’t want to keep it, and I don’t want to sell it.  First one to comment gets it if they want it.  Just send me your address via PM.. Hey, my first giveaway!

Mobile Test

I'm going to be out of town next week and discovered I could post mobily through my phone.  I can't let down my zero readers!  Let's see if this works....

There’s a lot of stuff out there…

Which is why when I started coming back in the hobby, I needed to find a way to get a handle on what I was going to collect, and how I was going to do it.  I had bought a lot (I thought) of product from 86 to 03, but when I recently got back into the hobby I realized  a) how disorganized and incomplete my collection was and b)  there was a nearly infinite amount of products available and my time and resources to chase them were not so infinite.   I needed to focus on a few players and sets and stay disciplined.  I needed to figure out what I wanted my collection to look like.    So I mapped out the “solar system” of my collection:

And I defined a sorting process as well:

Ok, so I pretty much failed miserably to limit my targets.  But when all was said and done, I didn’t really want to anyway.   I did, however, succeed in organizing my collection, at least on paper.  I am now able to see what I need and want.  I also developed a detailed ranking system for the card sets I am trying to complete.      I’ll post a picture of this worksheet later, but I am not ready to humiliate myself beyond what I’ve already managed to do.  

When I sit back and take a moment to look at the pictures above, I can honestly admit one thing:  My God, I am a dork.

1st Post- It’s Spring Training For Me, Too

Let’s see if this thing goes anywhere.  Please allow me to introduce myself, or at least what is important about me for this blog:  I am a baseball nut.  And just as much, I am a baseball card nut.  I’d describe myself as a cardboard junkie, but that’s already been claimed.  I think I have an idea of what this little blog will be, but just like preseason predictions, you never know things will play out.   I’m going to talk on this blog as if I were talking to my wife, if I were to subject her to my obsession with baseball and baseball cards.   Mostly I’ll post about baseball cards (which have been a nice, relatively safe and cheap release for my hoarding tendencies), but I’ll likely veer off every now again into some of the other wonderful aspects of baseball and its culture.   

There surely is a fine line of how much information folks in the blogosphere want about why you do what you do, so I’ll relay in a nutshell when and how my passion for baseball cards began.  About 25 years about, I was hanging out with my family at my Pastor’s house and the subject of baseball came up.  Turns out, he was a baseball fanatic, and had been his whole life.  I only had a mild interest in the game.  I was in the 8^th grade and more interested video games and loitering than anything.    He talked about living in San Diego, going to Padres games and getting baseball cards autographed from the Padres as well as the visiting players.  To demonstrate the fruits of his labor, he pulled out an album of cards- a complete 1975 Topps Set.  At least 20% of the cards sported autographs he had personally obtained.  I was fascinated.  Page after page of colorful cards sitting in slick plastic pages…  (This is the part of the story where my wife rolls her eyes and turns on Jersey Shore.    You fellow card dorks know what I’m talking about though.)  Then he opened a wooden crate that had dozens of 800 count card boxes containing sets from the 60s to the present.  It was magnificent.  In fact, I must have really freaked out about his collection because the next day in my mailbox was a 1968 Topps Tom Seaver card, courtesy of my Pastor.  It was my first baseball card of any significance:  

The next week, I bought several packs of 1986 Topps (didn’t even know about Fleer and Donruss).   I don’t know if I would have latched on the first star I got from those packs anyway, but I came across a card that grabbed my attention:

Long story short, I hopped right on the Mets bandwagon.  It was great timing too, because the ’86 Mets were a blast to follow, and pretty much started the snowball of my mania for baseball.  I’ve stayed a baseball fanatic this whole time, but there was about an 8 year window that I kind of lost interest in cards for various reasons.  About a year ago, I jumped back in the hobby head first, and don’t see it slowing down anytime soon.  Then, about 6 months ago, I came across a bunch of fantastic blogs about the hobby and thought that looked like a fun thing to do, so here I am. 

I hope that was an acceptable first post.  I can’t wait to do it again.  In fact, I’ll probably post the next few topics all at the same time.  Let me leave the one or two of you actually reading this with my first blog question:

Do you remember your first card of significance, and what was it?