First 2021s Have Arrived

Took the family down to Santa Barbara, CA this weekend for the first true vacation we've had since 2019. Lots of eating in the Airbnb apartment; walking, hiking and a little bit of socially-distanced shopping. 'Twas whilst doing the latter that I stumbled upon a comics/games/cards store just off of State Street that happened to have 2021 Topps Series 1 in stock - and what do you know, I bought three packs!

I wasn't necessarily looking for any "major gains" with this buy - and I didn't really get any - just hoping for some fun pack ripping. I didn't get any autographs nor parallels, unless that silver Shane Bieber you see below counts as a parallel (it might; I haven't done my research). But I did grab a few dudes. I got a Tatis. That made me happy. I got my guy Jo Adell. That made me even happier. I grabbed a couple of San Francisco Giants. I got both Luis Patino and Blake Snell, who were essentially traded for each other just a few weeks ago.

I got a Rickey Henderson buyback insert card. There were some journeymen that went straight into the trade box. There were some other guys. Hey, it was only three packs. But let me say this - like Nick at Dime Boxes, I'm really excited that these have borders; perhaps that's why they're the first Topps flagship design I've enjoyed in years. Also, like Nick, I don't like how tough it is to read the player's name.....but overall, I dig this design. I'm not going to collect it or anything, but it is absolutely passable. Extra points for advanced sabermetric stats on the back of the cards.

Here are a few of the other ringers that I rung up.

Some 1990s Cards From Japan

I'd really been wanting some Japanese baseball cards to ogle and then slot away into the collection, and Dave S, a new trading partner, totally stepped up and then some. He sent me a batch of 1994 "Baseball Magazine" cards featuring Japanese league players, along with a few 2012s as well - including this guy, Hideki Matsui, of the Yomiuri Giants, aka Tokyo Giants. Yeah, that Hideki Matsui, "Godzilla" of the 2000s New York Yankees. 

Check out his stat line in 1993: .223 average, 11 homers, 27 RBIs. I believe, given the year, that this would be Matsui's rookie card - and checking his stats on Baseball Reference, he never again hit that low in MLB until his final year in the bigs. There were a number of other fantastic cards in the batch as well, but no weird Ichiros or Kaz Sasakis or any of the other dudes who were part of the big Japanese wave of the late 90s/early 2000s - at least no guys I can remember. 

Thanks so much to Dave for sending these - they're a blast.

New Player Collection Underway: Max Fried

Every year I unearth a few new heroes from all my hours of watching postseason baseball. This past bizarre, pandemic-shortened year, I watched a ton of the NLCS, ALCS and World Series. The three guys that "popped" for me as new faves were Randy Arozarena of the Rays - me and everyone else, that is; Brusdar Graterol of the Dodgers (yeah, a Dodger!), and especially pitcher Max Fried of the Braves. The latter has absolutely electrifying stuff, and I have a feeling he's got a Cy Young and a World Series title in his immediate future. I decided to collect the guy.

I like that he's a disciple of Sandy Koufax, and grew up in LA worshipping the (legend of) the guy. I like that he went Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles, where he wore uniform # 32 in honor of Koufax and played with fellow MLB pitchers Lucas Giolito and Jack Flaherty - on his high school team...! I like that he was drafted by the Padres out of high school way back in 2012, and that he looks like a high school kid on all his early cards.

I like that he now plays for the Braves, a team I've always cottoned to since the days of WTBS being a cable station we got at home, and watching Bob Hoerner and Dale Murphy on the late 70s Atlanta Braves every late afternoon - a team that I often got to see on TV more than my own San Francisco Giants. I like that he missed the entire 2015 season recovering from Tommy John, and now he's totally dealing.

I also dig Max Fried's cards, at least some of the ones I've been accumulating. Thought you might want to check a few of them out.

Filling in Some Kellogg's Needs

My favorite online card emporium CardBarrel announced the other day that they'd restocked a bunch of Kellogg's cards, circa 1978-83, which of course made me more than ready to jump at the chance to load up on some favorite players at a good price. I'd imagine you can do the same, if you haven't already. 

Some of mine have cracks in them; some don't. I'm pretty indifferent either way. These are nice to haves, and they're well-done cards with stats and info on the back. I already have any & all Jack Clark cards done in these series, but I was definitely missing my McCoveys, my Vida Blues, a bunch of George Fosters, a Willie Wilson and some Bob Kneppers. I didn't totally mean to grab Knepper in a Houston uniform, but now that he's here, he's welcome to stick around. 

By the time these cards were coming out, my mom had stopped buying us Kellogg's cereals like she used to, and we were pretty much only eating Cheerios and "Kix". General Mills had obviously done a superior job of marketing the quote-unquote health benefits of their cereals to choosy 1970s moms, and thus, I missed out on all these cards in real time.

A Few Things That Rolled In Last Week

Last week I was making lists of things I did and didn't like in the hobby, so didn't really get to documenting the ongoing incoming card onslaught. 'Twas a good week! I made incredible headway on my Topps Heritage SF Giants team set project, to the point where I'm only down a small handful of cards before I've got all of the 2001-2020 base, including the short prints. I locked down the 2004 set with this Jerome Williams card - a low number, #46, but which was the last one I needed. You guys remember the enormous puka shell necklace that Williams would sometimes wear on the mound? Good times.

I've noticed, as many of you have, that there's some incredible price inflation going on on eBay right now, as new folks rush into the hobby (which is great!) and bid up the prices of prospect cards (which is fine as well, just not for my wallet). So I made an effort to bid on something like 6 or 7 different Jo Adell cards last week; drew my price line in the sand; and lost all but one of the auctions. Some cards - even those numbered /50 or /99 - were popping for $45 at the end of the auction, all for a few who's done nothing the majors just yet. The one I did get was the 2020 Panini Prospect Materials you see here....Panini definitely sells for the lowest prices on eBay, I guess because they're "unauthorized"? What's the story there?

Another prospect I decided to grab a few cards of is a young pitcher named Seth Corry in the Giants' organization. He was barely on my radar, but then Keith Law put him on his Top 100 prospects list, and I thought, well, I'd better be a step ahead on this fella, right? This first Bowman card is from 2017, and it lists his high school numbers on the back (!).

One of my very favorite players in the 2000s was Brian McCann of the Atlanta Braves. I didn't have a single card of his, and hadn't started a player collection for him at all. Now I have a single card of his.

Here are some of the other randoms that rolled in last week, keepers every one of 'em.

2021's First Free Card Friday

It's 2021, and time for another simple giveaway. 

I've got 18 cards laid out here. Any one or more of them could be yours. That's right - they're free. There's a two-step process: Alls you have to do is leave a comment saying "I want this one" or "I want that one", and let me which one or ones you want, of course. If you're the first one to drop in that comment, then it's yours! However, I also need you to send me an email to thejayhinman@gmail.com and tell me the card(s) you requested and give me your mailing address so I can send it to you. Also, let me know if you like trading, because if I'm going to send you 1, 2 or 3 cards, I might as well send over a few more.

Ten Things I Really Like In This Hobby

Earlier this week I had some yuks and garnered some good comments with a post called Ten Things I Don't Like In This Hobby. As promised, here's the flip side to all that bellyaching and whinging. Turns out the hobby's actually pretty great, which is why I'm still here. Here are ten reasons why.

Blind Envelopes Arriving in the Mail

I had to ask other bloggers a year ago what a "PWE" was. No one laughed in my (digital) face, and within a month or two of the start of this blog, I was regularly trading plain white envelopes of cards with fellow bloggers and collectors. The generosity and willingness out there to "help a brother or sister out" is totally off the charts, and it's listed first here because it's absolutely my favorite thing about card collecting right now, aside from the cards themselves.

Let me give you an illustrative story. Last year I bought a small batch of the Onyx 2020 Vintage Baseball cards, and one of the cards I pulled was an autographed card of the San Diego Padres' top prospect MacKenzie Gore. I'd just agreed to do a PWE swap with Rod at Padrographs, so I sent him this one along with a few others, figuring that I was mighty generous of me, and that I'd maybe even get something better in return. Our envelopes crossed in the mail, so he didn't know what I'd sent, and he'd sent me some very serviceable San Francisco Giants cards.

A few months passed. Then in October, out of the blue I got a monster card package from Rod, totally checking all sorts of want list needs - a bunch of 1971 and 1972 Topps; some awesome Giants cards he had; and 53 (!) of the 2020 Topps Heritage Minors cards I needed, allowing me to complete the set almost overnight. I'd never seen anything like it, until two additional similar examples happened right after that. Um, totally worth that MacKenzie Gore card, I think! 

Again, this is an illustrative example to show the generosity and large-heartedness of the card ecosystem. There are several of you reading this post whom I very easily could have named instead.

Topps Heritage Baseball

I know my love for these Heritage sets probably marks me as an older fella, and listen, Topps knew exactly what they were doing with these. Fine. If the shoe fits etc. I have decided to hone my set collecting in on Heritage, and I'm just about done with my 2020/2021 project of grabbing every SF Giants card in the sets from their debut in 2001 to the set that came out last year. 

I love the throwback/tribute designs; many of the inserts are fantastic; the cards - like most cards these days - are crisp, sharp and durable - and, well, they remind me of the vintage cards I worshipped in my youth and still worship now. That's what they're supposed to do. I'm all-in. 

Both Allen & Ginter + Gypsy Queen Cards

Controversial sets for many, but not for me. I don't like the olde-tyme cigarette card thing when it's overdone - like on Topps T206 and similar sets - but these sets look really cool to me, just about every year they've come out. I only really buy my guys from them, but I think they're fun and worth accumulating. Allen & Ginter sets are particularly wacky, with cards of rocks, cities, celebrities and other miscellaneous weirdness thrown in each year. Someone's having a ball over there at Topps.

Minor League Cards

This is probably as speculative as I'm willing to get, but as I'm the sort of guy who religiously ingests Keith Law's Top 100 Prospects or Baseball America's Top 100 every year, I'm also keeping a close eye on these prospects as they rise through the minor leagues. The explosion in minor league cards means that long before anyone reaches the majors, it's easy to build up a great collection of certain prospects that just might become stars one day.

It's not really about the eventual worth of some of the cards, because that's not really how I roll - but I'd be lying if I didn't admit to some hope that the guys I'm collecting now - Joey Bart, Jo Adell, Heliot Ramos and a couple others - don't make me a bazillionaire three times over during the next decade. 

Local Card Shops

As a longtime music-buyer and record collector (and childhood comic nerd), I've been attracted to obsessive collecting-type behavior my whole life. I'm always excited to meet someone who's even more off the deep end than myself. In the card-collecting world, just as in the record collecting world, it's the dudes - and it's almost always dudes - who run the shops who are among the most interesting folks to talk to about their hobby. 

We don't even have a local card shop in San Francisco - a city of nearly a million people - but there are shops in Burlingame, Belmont and Sunnyvale not all that far from my house. All of them are operated by real menschen who'll talk your ear off about 1975 Topps Minis or the deficiencies in Allen & Ginter or about that Mother's Cookies Giants set from 1993. (All real conversations I've had at these stores in the last 18 months). 

Food-Issued Cards

Pretty simple, actually. It's more fun to get a card made by Wonder Bread or some regional Milwaukee cookie brand than all the Score, Leaf and Donruss cards ever made. I want and need more food cards in my life, and by gum, I'm determined to get them. 

Hobby Boxes That Don't Contain Any Doubles

I didn't even know that was a thing when I returned to card collecting early last year. I know that when I used to buy boxes of hockey and baseball cards in the early/mid 2010s - you know, a box with 12-15 packs in it - those packs would be stuffed with doubles, and I'd find myself with 3 Rougned Odors or doubles of Milan Michalek. No one's ever actually explained to me why that's not a thing any longer. I buy these boxes now, and even though the packs are all sealed, there's no doubles. I love that. How do they know?

Topps 2021 Flagship Series 1

Hey, these aren't even out yet, but last time I complained about Topps' flagship baseball designs over the last five years. They're totally awful, right? Check out 2021. They look fantastic! Welcome back, Topps flagship!

Beckett's Digital-Only Magazines

I'd bought some Beckett baseball magazines every now and again the past few years, but they're enormous and about two-thirds filled up with price guides. Then I discovered Beckett Vintage Collector magazine - there was a Night Owl Cards article about 1972 Topps I totally had to read in there - and realized that this is the best of the mags they put out; not filled with speculative pricing info but just articles about the hobby, filled with great photos and artwork. Then this past holiday season, Beckett was running a promotion where you could get a year's subscription to any of their magazines for $7.99 if you bought them digitally as opposed to print.

I do a bunch of reading on an iPad anyway, so it was a hell of a deal. Now I get the baseball and hockey mags plus Vintage Collector for a big $24 a year. I'll make that sorta deal every year.

Card Blogs

Yeah, I know. Of course. Yet what other corner of the internet is still run and defined by blogs in 2021? "Mommy blogs"? Are those still a thing? While everyone else is off and running on social media, the most interesting card-focused content (and photos, scans, and advice) is all sitting right there on free platforms like Blogger. It's very 2006, and yet it's the first place I go to see what's happening in the hobby. It's truly grass-roots, people-centered, honest and unpretentious content that reflects the real personalities and foibles of those of us who collect cards. There are even interesting tics of this particular community, such as the trading posts as well as those who comment on every blogger's individual posts, that make it different than any other blogging community I've seen before.

Granted, it's nice when someone other than a fellow card blogger makes it known that they read your blog, but even if it's just the 50 or so other card bloggers out there each time I post, I gotta say that is absolutely satisfying enough. 

So that's it - that's what I like in this hobby, among many other things. Thanks to everyone who's traded, encouraged me, read my blather etc. Hey - maybe it's not really about the cards, but instead it's all about the friends we made along the way?

Ten Things I Don't Like In This Hobby

I guess the Super Bowl is coming up one of these days, which in my head sort of marks my 1 year anniversary of being a true head-over-heels obsessed collector of sports cards (at least for the first time since my youth). That exact day in early 2020, I blew $70 at my local card shop and reckoned that I'd sort of entered a new phase in card accumulation, which I clearly had. Rather than occasionally buying the odd hobby box or online single here and there, I went all-in. Then the pandemic kicked up; I started this blog in March - and well, here we are...!

I've had a good amount of time to navel-gaze and consider my burgeoning collection this year. At some points early in the year, a lot of card bloggers were doing this thing on their blogs, something along the lines of "Ten Things You Like But I Don't" and/or "Ten Things I Like But You Don't". For a relative newbie like myself, it was card collectin' catnip. 

Now I'm going to tell you just what I've observed about the hobby this past year. I've certainly been able to shape and mold my personal tastes during this time, and I've learned from the best card bloggers and collectors on the planet how it all works. I'll start this time with some things I don't like - many of which are either unique to me or just my personal peeves. Next time I'll post ten things I do tend to like. 

Odd-Sized Cards

This is my personal foible, but one I know I share with a bunch of you out there. I truly dislike minis, but I really dislike cards that are larger than the standard 2.5" x 3.5": "box loaders", postcards, circular cards and what have you. When I was trying to figure all of this out, I'd order bunches of some player I collected - like Johnny Antonelli or Rennie Stennett - and get these strangely-shaped large things in the mail that I wasn't expecting. Where the hell am I supposed to put this thing? Not in a binder. Not in a standard card box. How about on eBay, right now?

Baseball Cards, 1982-1999

It's actually very refreshing for me to just totally ignore the "junk wax era". This was the time when I was least interested in cards, in my late teens and 20s. I don't tend to like many of the designs - want list stuff excepted! - and I dislike the utter ubiquity of so many of these cards. Cheap, flimsy garbage from Score and Leaf and Donruss and...ugh. No thanks. Skip. (by the way, folks, I'm pretending to be an uncompromising curmudgeon here; I don't mean to actually disparage stuff you really like.....I'm just havin' a laff). 

Breaks Run By Bros

Actually, not pretending here. There's this real aggro bro culture on Twitter that's constantly pimping new "breaks" and contests and bids and whatnot, making the hobby seem like one big casino game. It's about as far away from what I came here to do as it gets. On Twitter I get the sense there are hundreds of lonely "Rocko from Jersey" types looking for ways to rip you and me off. I know it's not just on Twitter, either, but there's something about social media in general that brings out the worst in all of us. Trying to stay away from this side of the hobby as best I can.

Topps Flagship Cards, 2016-Present

Other than the guys I collect, I've decided I have no need for any Topps baseball flagship from 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020. Heritage, sure. I love Heritage (we'll talk about that next time). Topps flagship from the last five years are as ugly as modern cards get, and then you insult me with Opening Day versions? And Christmas versions? And an increasing number of other versions, all in the same gross style as the base cards? Who's in charge over there, Topps? Get me the manager on the phone right now. 

Scotch Tape on Toploaders

You're going to make me cut this tape and possibly my finger, aren't you? I just want to get the friggin' card out of this thing so I can put it into the binder! I can't even get the tape off of the toploader. Now I have to throw it away. Honestly, do these things really even need any tape at all, even that blue masking tape everyone seems to have laying around?

Toploaders in General

I have way too many of these that I'll never use and don't need. Anyone wants to Paypal me $3 for shipping for a big fat envelope full of these - clean ones, without scotch tape on them - let me know, and they're yours.

Single-Card eBay Shipping Prices

So many times I'll find a card I'm excited about, and the seller wants $4 or $4.50 to ship the card. One lonely card. Folks - you do know how much it costs to ship a single baseball card, right? In a toploader. with a piece of paper wrapped around it, we're talking about 75 cents. How about we all start charging a dollar for shipping from now on?

Brandon Crawford and Buster Posey

As you may know, I'm a San Francisco Giants fan. As such, these two players, particularly the latter, have been very important to me as a fan during a decade in which my team won three World Series. For whatever reason, I don't like their baseball cards. I have a ton of them. I don't want (most of) them, unless they're part of team sets I'm collecting. I don't really know why. These gentlemen have done nothing to me except win my team many baseball games and keep me highly entertained over the years. Yet I get one of their cards in a trade, I'm like....ok. I get a Pablo Sandoval, a Hunter Pence or a Tim Lincecum and I'm psyched beyond belief. Go figure. Plus Crawford is a wet guy.

Custom Cards

No offense at all, but the only 1/1s I really want are those made by card companies, not someone with an exacto knife and a printer. There's a lot of creativity and energy going on with these, but I just don't think this strange corner of the hobby connects with me all that much. Or at all.

Graded Cards

Finally, I can certainly do without all the hoo-hah that comes from graded cards. That's for a different level of collector, someone who cares about the difference between an 8 and a 7.5, and who's maybe just kind of sorta looking at cards as an investment vehicle rather than the exciting time-waster and community-builder they actually are. Listen, if I ever have a card truly worth grading, because I need to sell it for some fast cash or something, I'll absolutely get it graded. But this whole world of card grading exists on a different plane than the one I happen to be collecting on. 

So what do you think, folks? Did I sacrifice some of your sacred cows? Apologies! The next post will be a lot more friendly, promise!