More Favorite 2018s

Best Classic Baseball Card

I should have mentioned in my Card of the Year Post preceding this one, I picked a card somewhat the way Time Magazine picks the Person of the Year. That Angels Future Stars blast from the past Ohtani rookie is not my favorite card of 2018, not even close. I enjoyed pulling it and the thoughts it lead me to, in the 2018 baseball card hobby. But I enjoyed many 2018 baseball cards, as I always do. So here comes a whole bunch of them, and since I picked a Big League card to start, I'll roll some other faves from there first. I haven't finished that set (nor, with the abysmal state of retail collation, am I closer than about 85% on S1/S2/Update) yet, so I still might luck into some more choice ones if I can luck into some discounted packs as 2019 rolls along. I also didn't finish a set of the green bordered parallels that one could cut from the blaster boxes, so I might end up buying one online and ponying up for larger item shipping, which I hate - but I also appreciate, cuz it helps keep my baseball card spending under control, bigly. So here we go ->

Best Socks

Favorite Celebration Card

Normally, 'celebration' cards feature a bunch of team-mates on the card. They were a steady running insert set in Opening Day for several years as well. There is also no shortage of 'main set' (I will never warm to the term 'Flagship') Topps cards featuring a Pitcher celebrating a Win, usually a Closer, often with his Catcher.

This card is more of a brief, in-game vignette, most likely of Velasquez celebrating a single out as he returns to the top of the mound. This may or may not even be seen while watching a TV broadcast of a game. Since I rarely have a chance to do that, I depend on my baseball cards to help me "watch" baseball, and this card comes through for me.

Best Frame Break

It's a 'pizza cake', as my Spanglish speaking friends say, to have the bat break the frame. I like more creative efforts at such.

Favorite Bubble Gum Card

Salvy is one of those players who always seems to get good cards. And one of those players I probably follow and root for a little bit more largely because of that. Each passing window of likely trading in MLB, I am increasingly amazed that the Royals don't join the Rebuild Parade and flip him for 3 cards just released in Bowman Draft Picks and Prospects. I somewhat hope they do, largely because he has already achieved what he can achieve in Kansas City, as a perpetual All-Star and the 1-1 record in the World Series, with the heartbreaking loss and the perfect, there's-always-next-year redemption victory. Though perhaps his final achievement will be as a beloved, single franchise player that is so incredibly rare in the 21st century MLB. Let's just hope that if that becomes true, and it does seem likely sometimes, he doesn't fall off the cliff as sadly as his teammate out there in left field.

I think I have now probably definitely accumulated a permanent set of 9 Salvador Perez cards to keep in a binder page, if I could only find time to assemble them altogether (y'all will be the first to know). But this card makes me feel like it might have to be the first such true "Player Collection" page that will have to feature 2 cards in every slot, for a more robust 18 cards. And I was darn glad to find this card, because the only other Bubble Gum Card I can recall this year was for Manny Machado, who will make it onto the Bubble Gum Card binder page, again, but I hardly want one of his cards to make a 'Best Of' anything.

Favorite Card From Another Sport

You didn't think I would really stray from my love of baseball cards, did you?

Other Most Hated Card

No, I really do love that Mookie Betts card up there - 'Other' is cuz I also had to go negative in that Rookies post just previous to this one. There are probably other cards I really really didn't like this year, but not too many. And I would hardly want to rank them.

But this card seriously made me mad. I like 1977 Topps. That was the first year I started to pay attention to cards from the Detroit Tigers, because that was the first summer I lived in Michigan. This should be the perfect combo of retro design and team fandom, just for ... me.

And not only had I never even seen _any_ Hal Newhouser card before, nor even knew any even existed, this is a pretty darn good color photograph of a 1940s baseball player - you don't see those very much.

I will be keeping this card, and putting it in my Tigers binder. I might even pick up extra copies of it, given that any random "base" card now is considered to have essentially zero value, and nearly only one cost, really - shipping. And with those extra copies I will practice and practice my horrifying baseball card altering skills and color in that insanely stupid use of the color white in that yellow pennant, where we are supposed to read the word "Pitcher", but of course, we can't. And eventually some certain pen and some certain careful bit of penmanship will fix this card right up to be just exactly perfect, and the original, un-altered white-on-yellow FAIL of a baseball card will go straight into the circular file.

Most Puzzling Photo Selection

Maybe it is a good thing that A.J. Minter has a couple other 'base' RC logo cards to call his "Rookie" home later in his career, which looks promising. And maybe his seeming antagonistic pose on his '18 Heritage High Numbers RC explains this photo selection - perhaps he fought with the Topps photog that day in late February last year.

But I can't recall a live MLB action photo baseball card quite like this one. I never care for a picture of a player's butt, save for _maybe_some of the most dramatic action shots. This shot, snapped near the end of A.J.'s delivery of a pitch, somehow conveys the opposite of impending baseball action motion. It is weirdly sleepy. 

At least we do get to see his face in profile, not totally uncommon on an action shot from live baseball. And I do think there has probably been a baseball card printed in the past featuring a player with his eyes closed. But I can't say I can specifically recall one.

Ahh well, I'll knock off the negative waves now. Let's dig how beautiful these Rolling Stones water slide baseball cards can be, and check out some righteous and hopeful ones...

Best Home Run Card

We always gets lots of Home Run cards. Hitters admiring their latest moon shot is common. Hitters clearly on a Home Run trot can be seen on baseball cards. Hitters mobbed at Home Plate after a walk-off Homer are not unknown. Topps even immortalized one of the more immortal Bat Flips of all-time in 2016 Series One. I'm not sure if that one was previously against the Unwritten Rules of Baseball Cards. And this card makes me wonder along those lines too. Is this against the Unwritten Rules? I know if this particular bit of live game action was shown on replay, I would be cracking up. And maybe if Brian McCann played on the other team, trouble would be a-brewing by the time Khris rounded 3rd base. I mean, it's like you can almost hear him thinking here - "Man, did I hit that thing a mile, or what?"

Light, Camera, Action

This card speaks to me to. It sounds just like one of the sound effects on the near-30 year old Pinball machine 'Comet' - except it says "Ride the Water Slide" instead of the ferris wheel. That's because all the lines on this dramatic (to me) card lead me to a quick trip down the slide with my inflated Blue Jay water toy and it's sidekick the Canadian maple leaf. Or something.

Normally I would prefer lines that all converge up to the top of the card, or the side. But this card is not a downer. It is a Twilight card, from a late afternoon game, with the crowd now in shadow but the players still lit up. I always like those, though some sets never even cough one up these days. And nearly every strong line in the image is parallel, or close to it. The uniform leg stripe, the shadow line on the cap, Louie Saints' arms, a key bit of the RC logo, even what we can see of the overly lit player behind Mr. Saints ... all those lines lead us right to the iconic slide with it's pleasing cool blue on a warm sunny day, down the little dip, and boop, on to the next one -

Favorite Team Card

Favorite Team Card? Who does that? This card is, lighting wise, the near opposite of the previous card, even though they both include a section of the stadium now fading into shadow. I don't know who the main player is who seems to have just done some kind of Walk-Off magic. Nor do I care.

But somehow, the photographer managed to make this look like a live action shot from the 1960s, with a basic warmth captured even while the players are well-lit. It looks Analog, rather than Digital, like so many cards do these days; almost painterly-esque, even. 

And you can tell the Real Fans, the ones who come see a losing team, anyway, and sit in a sea of empty seats, like on so many cards these days - the Real Fans came to the game that day, and they are standing, and cheering, even way up there in the cheap seats! Baseball!

Favorite Yankees Card

Favorite Yankees Card? Who does _that_? I don't even like the Yankees. But I like this card. It probably looks best, in-hand, if you can bring yourself to hold onto something that has no monetary value, and is connected to the New York Yankees. Maybe I should have called it my Favorite Pinstripes Card. Oh dear, I feel a new side-collection trope coming, we'd best move along.

Favorite Tigers Card

Perhaps baseball cards are a touch less fun when your team is going for the League Lead in losses, lately. Or, perhaps they actually help ameliorate all the blah-blahs that come with losing 4 days a week. This year there were only a handful of cards of Tigers who will actually still be around the next time they have a chance at posting a winning season, which definitely is highly unlikely for 2019. I will be taking a look, right here with you, at the Tigers Topps results for 2018 soon. Jeimer Candelario will probably never be an All-Star, but it does look like at least there will be one corner on the field with a little continuity for a couple seasons, unlike most of the other 7 fielding positions.

Best Card Back

Now, another endearing Tigers blog selected this card as their 2018 Card of the Year, so you can check out the front over there. Hicks hadn't even reached 100 AB in MLB and was back in the minors  in July of 2017, so it wasn't surprising he didn't make the cut for '17 Update. But this year, he did.

And though I often think Topps is barely paying attention to the Detroit Tigers, this card back shows me they were. Because in a long long season of lowlights for my favorite team, John Hicks supplied my favorite Tigers play of 2018. Oh, Kevin Cash, you want to play some Nu Baseball and shift hard against this sluggish Catcher/FirstBaseman? Ok, says Ron Gardenhire, hold my iPad and watch this. Here is a Fan Shot view of the action, from the stands:

And here is a full game re-cap with the key details leading off to this fun play from Fox Sports Detroit, with the radio call from Dan Dickerson and Jim Price nicely subbed in for the critical moment (the way I heard it live); 1:25 is a good starting point for the tl;dw generation:

Apologies on the blockage there, though it can be watched on any other webpage, but not this one. Brilliant customer relations here, MLB. :(

Favorite Unknown Rookie to root for in 2019

In baseball, everyone likes the players with 3 names. Usually. And in baseball cards, everyone likes the players with 3 positions. Because you just don't see that on baseball cards. So this was a no-brainer selection. Now if only there was anywhere within an hour's drive that would fix me some falafel for dinner. Sorry, Isiah, I just couldn't resist. Bring your promising 1.6 Rookie WAR on out of spring training this year, and make us some glorious new 3B/2B/C baseball cards.

Best Rookie Card

Though I am nowhere close to owning all of the "Key Rookie Cards" of 2018, as if an entire season of baseball cards revolved around just 10 cards, nor will I ever be, most likely, I knew when I pulled this one it would be the Best of 2018. And everyone likes a Pitcher who can hit a Home Run. In the playoffs.

I like the Woodruff card because of the photo used on this object -

which obviously was the gensis of this iconic part of my life -

So whenever I pull a card that comes pretty darn close to this image, it's a keeper. I set them aside, and someday I will run a little side-by-side comparison on which card comes the closest to it. Brandon Woodruff 2018 Topps #179 RC could well be among the leaders, at this point.

Look Ma, No Feet!

Ahh, just chillin' after servin' up my latest meatball. Nah, I don't need the pitching mound, I'ma goin' for a ride on the water slide here.

Most Focused Card

I first pulled this card in Opening Day, and liked it then. It stayed the same in Series 2, but Thames appears ready to slug another Homer in Topps Chrome.

Thames is not looking at the photographer. He is not looking at you. He is focused on the incoming ball, which just landed in his glove - but before he has been able to re-focus his eyes to his next body motions needed to play the game of baseball. There are probably lots of cards in the 2010s that well capture a baseball player intent on his craft. But few of them can match this intriguing photo of a split second that has only just now flown past us.

Best Stadium Card

Best Stadium Lights Card

Only Stadium Lights card? Possibly. Probably.

Whoever shoots photos from the field in Atlanta, well, Topps needs to buy more photos from them. It's the 70s now Topps, it's time. Put the Stadium back on the baseball cards. Pretty please?

Most Revealing Card

You try plying your trade outdoors nearly year-round all your life. You carry a franchise on your back and generate most of it's All-Time leader statistics, all while all the retired people you live amidst would rather root for their old team, back up north, and paid attendance makes the construction of a 2nd level of seating in your stadium nearly superfluous. You try fighting the 2 titans of the AL East for your whole career, watching any talented teammate inevitably leave your clubhouse in hopes that they bring back in exchange a perfect combo of hot young players who can knock one of the titans off the top spot, someday, but inevitably also have to be traded to just try, try again. You gaze into the future of five more years of the baseball standings equivalent of Groundhog Day, and wonder if your career will always be this way. You, too, would end up with some well earned Crows Feet around your eyes, and the first hints of grey in your hair, in your early 30s.

Topps could have easily made this decidedly non-action shot another one of their unique short, or super-short printed 'Photo Variations'. The vast bulk of these sets are composed of true action shots, snapped during live baseball play. But some of the photos are not. Only some, in a given set, and I think a few more of them may have crept in to my 2018 baseball cards than normal. And I think they are mainly given to long-time Veterans, and in the Complete Set now, a bit of a true Topps salute in solid baseball card tradition, rather than yet another insert card not everyone really wants. 

The last card I set aside from 2018, which will surely make my annual Nicest Nine for 2018 Topps, or whatever I finally nickname the series for blog posting use, well this card and player needs no introduction, once again, as in a previous post.

Pawing through a stack of 2018 Topps Series One, any true baseball fan will stop, and reflect a little, and remember, when they see all the action on every card suddenly come to a stop, on this card. And that is what baseball cards are all about. 

Closing Day(s)

It was a simple plan. After coming home from about 7 months on the road, I would sort all the 2018 Opening Day I had accumulated, find the handful of cards with a different photo than the player's Series 1 or 2 card, and put the fun little set to bed.

Sometimes, the light's all shining on me and my baseball card plans. And sometimes, there is a bit too much light - though I am not sure there could be too much light on a baseball card - a sport for a nice sunny day -

That is my second favorite card from the set. It has that just perfect (estimatedly prophetic?) shaft of light, lots of strong lines, a nice mix of sharp and soft colors, and a nice trippy empty seats section. It is a bit of a 'farewell' card - Cole's final card as a Pirate, and a card I like so much I have now scanned and posted it twice in my sadly now nearly bi-annual posts. He was due to appear in Series 2, wherein he appears in his new Astros duds, thus making this a unique card in Opening Day.

This has generally been the only way an Opening Day card differs from it's S1/S2 counterpart over the years. He was traded to Houston on Jan. 13th - too late to change this card. And usually, only players changing teams in a certain segment of the off-season end up with a distinct card in this set.

Not this year.

By my count, some 65 cards in 2018 Opening Day sport a photo not used in the 700 card "Flagship" set. That's nearly a clean 1/3 of the 200 card set and a large break from how this set is usually produced. Topps promised something to do with "Base Card Veterans" on the 'sell sheet' for this set oh so long ago now, and they delivered. It is easy to rip (wait, I thought that was a positive word in this hobby) on Topps for their little boo-boos here there and seemingly everywhere. It is far more satisfying to use that verb 'delivered' with the word "Topps" as the subject.

This is pretty good news for me, a collector of those worthless "low end" baseball cards. I have always enjoyed Opening Day despite the cruelly repetitive cards from _the_ Topps set of the year. Usually an insert set or three appeals to me, the price is right, and the "hits" are tough pulls - but that gives them excellent re-sale value, like this one:

That isn't true across the board; although the product is not blaring a "Scrub Auto in every Box" tagline on every packaging surface, the sometimes quirky hits that do appear can also have a scrub-like essentially randomly dubious value like cards in other products, too...

I mean, the good pull there would be a Mr. Met or Wally the Green Monster "Auto" that I am sure someone would want a bit more than this one, from the franchise with the lowest attendance in Baseball. Though why anyone would pay real cash money for one of these totally eludes me. Can I sign the Mascot autos next year, Topps? I am so old I learned cursive in grade school and I know I could handle the assignment. Maybe I should reach out to Marlins Man on the Twitter somehow, though I don't know if he has kissed and made up with Derek yet. I suspect not.

But that's how baseball cards work - there is not a $20 bill in every pack. If you buy some at about every trip one makes to the grocery store, like I do, what is in the retail packs lately is a whole lot of repeats. And even the 6 card, 1 insert packs of Opening Day have very funky collation these days.

That Cole card pretty much always appeared in a pack with a nice enough card in the exact same position in the Topps universe: the final card as a Pittsburgh Pirate for Andrew McCutchen. Ripping these packs over the course of the season elicited groan after groan as same-same pairs of cards appeared time and time again. 

It wasn't until I had some nice indoors time to sort these cards, using the #s on the back, that I found the most clear evidence I have ever seen of how the fairly not-magical Topps collation machine works.

2018 Topps Update Gerrit Cole is card #183.

2018 Topps Update Andrew McCutchen, it's steady pack-mate every time I pulled the Cole card, is card #83.

Many other cards appeared in my stupidly large stack of these things with the same sequence of #xx and #1xx. I knew I would have 7-8x of some cards, and 2-3x of many others, as so often is the case lately for dumb retail Topps addicts like me.

But I had randomly pulled cards (RC fever) aside all through the creation of that big pile of cards over many months of 'collecting', so I couldn't be sure just how this nutso numerology appeared in the packs, originally. So I ran back to my local Big Box store and scooped up their very last 3-pack blister pack of Opening Day packs that I was hoping was still there - a whole 'Tree-Fiddy' (yes, really, $3.50) of research expense for my devoted blog readers. I had purchased the next-to-last such blister the day after Christmas and I was praying it was still there, to get an accurate look at the actual pack packing of these cards. (I got a big hit from that next-to-last pack; you'll see that card here in my next post, very soon.) So much for the simple plan of just sorting a big stack of cards.

This is what I found:

Pack #1

Marcus Stroman #108 (unique to Opening Day)

Adam Jones #15

Ryan McMahon #115 RC (unique)

insert - YMCA Dance @ Yankee Stadium (dumb worthless card I have 5x)

Jon Lester #25

Austin Hays #125 RC (unique)

Ozzie Albies #13 RC (NOT unique)

(Most of the Blue Jays cards are unique in Opening Day; more on that in a bit.)

Pack 2

Carlos Rodon #25

Francisco Mejia #125 RC (unique)

Jon Gray #42

insert - Rockies Opening Day (yawn)

Stephen Strasburg #113 (unique)

Rafael Devers #2 RC (unique, sorta)

Adrian Beltre #102 (unique)

Pack 3

Xander Bogaerts #149

Miguel Cabrera #46

Chris Davis #146

insert - Cubs Mascot "Clark"

Jose Quintana #199 (unique)

Danny Salazar #38

Luiz Gohara #138 RC (unique)

Every pack held 2 "pairs" of cards. A lot of things clicked into place in my mind over how a "pack" of Topps baseball cards is assembled.

In my experience, collation slipped a fair bit down the hill a few years ago, and has stayed horribly bad ever since, across all of the flaggy-shippy sets I like to rip (this one, S1/S2/Update, a little Chrome now and again). I do not recall precisely which year this was, but I suspect it was 2015, when Opening Day went from a 220 card set to a 200 card set. I am pretty sure this also heralded a change in the basic design of a printing sheet, going from 110 card sheets to 100 card sheets.

And it seems obvious that in this release, the cards may have been placed on the sheet in sequential order, which is not the normal practice. But to get these #xx, #1xx pairs, I suspect they were; and then a card is cut from the 1-100 sheet followed immediately by a card from the 101-200 sheet - the same 2 spots on each sheet being then stacked together.

Now, I don't know the rest of the mysteries of the collating technology. I do think these card #s explain it some, and also explain those excrutiating runs of 9 identically sequenced cards that come out of all sorts of different pack configurations of the other retail flagship releases. Except those sheets are probably assembled without card #1 adjacent to card #2, like these Opening Day sheets probably were.

Or, I could be wrong, and there are still 110 card sheets with 10 cards simply "Double Printed' - it used to be a little sideline on checklists, to identify "DP" cards. But really I don't think those exist any more. Though my brand new 100-sheet theories leave a hole in how all the printing plant gadgets handle creating cards #301-350 in S1 & S2.

Unfortunately, it has been a long time since an uncut sheet of Topps baseball cards has escaped into the wild for Topps nutz like me to get their grubby paws on.

Ahh well, I bet you are starting to pick up some more of those little letter zzzzzzzs by now. Let's look at some cards already!

This card has the blah blahs; a card of a decidedly middling middle infielder in his magical 'new' road grey duds. Not up to my usual standards of showing you the good stuff and nothing but the good stuff. But it is actually one of the 2 most unique unique cards in the set - Solarte's only 2018 'Flagship' card as a Blue Jay. In Series One he was still a Padre, and he didn't make the cut for a brand new card in Update. (Gerrit Cole, conversely, got a new Astros card for himself in both Series 2 _and_ Update). 

Yawn. I just report the esoteric, not exciting, checklist news; probably the little z key is still chasin' yas. So how about this card:

Bazinga! I think if you are a Blue Jays collector, yas gottas get your mitts on deeze cards dere, eh? Here I am even subtly advertising the source in the photo, which I cribbed from eBay as I do not own any of these. I somewhat wish I did, but I also somewhat understand that I already have way too many baseball cards, anyway.

That is a "Blue Jays Canada Parallel" seeded one per blister pack at Wal-Marts in Canada, only. The Morales card is a unique Opening Day card; the Jays have 5 cards in the set and 4 of them are nique-sters (Josh Donaldson's is not). All 5 have a parallel like this, north of the border.

Whew. The things you discover when you set out to sort a stack of baseball cards. So, since I found all this cheap thrill baseball card treasure, let's see it already!

The Dodgers were the biggest winner of new cards in '18 Opening Day, so I had to keep them all together for ya, and for me, and my 2018 baseball card binder - the point of this 'simple' plan. That will probably be my only Yu Darvish Dodger card, ever.

As befits an NLCS winner, the Dodgers have 11 cards in this set. 8 of them get sui generis (haven't you, too, always wanted to use that in a sentence?) efforts. The ALCS winner, the Houston Astros, get only 8 cards. Exactly Zero of them vary from S1/S2. Conversely, their cross-state rivals up in Arlington or wherever, receive 7 cards, with 5 of them being these nifty extra work tasks carried out by the Topps card creator, who works for the Topps Chewing Gum Company --- Brooklyn.

That page includes the first of a bit of a gusher of nu-RC in this set -- 25 of them. I like them. Some day, collectors might start to value these Opening Day cards because of their unique content. In the Rookie Card Flood era, there are so many of the darn things for most Rookies, especially the hawt ones like Buehler & Verdugo out there in a pretty darn good baseball card market, some collectors are finally starting to collect cards to collect based on "eye appeal", from what I read on the Internets lately.

And that's a good thing. Though I don't want, need, or plan to own multiple Rookie Card cards, I do like the idea that I can end up holding a cheap little Opening Day card that someone else might want, some sunny day. And that other collectors have little choice but to start considering esthetics - that will lead to better baseball cards, for all of us.

Rookies Rookies Rookies, moar Rookies

Only thing to really note here is that one of the more anticipated RCs this spring, Rhys Hoskins, who has a multitude of RC logo cards in all sorts of inserts and retro insert subsets and autos (nifty sig, too) and every other kind of gimcrack Topps can think of you to get you to buy still more Rookie Cards - well, he does not get a special card in base Opening Day. Neither do some of the other S1 Rookies falling out of every other set of 2018 baseball cards in all directions, like Ozzie Albies and Amed Rosario.

Is this an example of Topps just really starting to dive into the little things, the itty-bitty things, like the way all us bloggers constantly try and whine them into doing? I would say, somewhat. These 'extra' cards of just ordinary not-hot Rookies are very welcome in my collection, and I don't miss having an extra Rhys Hoskins card as "hot" rookies get too many cards, in total, to want to keep them all anyway. I think the real reason Hoskins doesn't have a special card on that NL East RC page there is that Topps probably made so many other cards of him, they needed all the other photo rights they purchased for those other cards.

One "top" Rookie did get a hey, look, it's different card here -

I get a kick out of a "Rookie Card" for players that have already been placed on the Topps All-Rookie Cup team based on performance in their "Rookie" year. How did that happen? Eventually, I will have 9 of these things to amuse you with, all together on their special 2nd Year Rookie Card All-Rookie Team.

The actual photo on this ¿different? card for Devers is the same photo as his regular Series One card, which will always be worth infinitely more than a card from the red-headed little stepkid set called Opening Day, because the Series One card is a traditional vertical card, and the bulk of hilariously OC baseball card collectors hate horizontal cards. And particularly, horizontal Rookie Cards, like those.

OK, just a few more Rookies to go...

Yankees Rookies! I'm rich! Is anything better in baseball cards than a Yankees scout finding the next true Natural, nursing him up through the Yankees farm clubs until he is elected to the Hall of Fame part-way through his incredible Rookie season in Yankee Stadium? Oh, wait, that was last year. These guys are more ordinary Rookies, with questions on their defense and questions on whether they will be able to re-write "The Book" that all the veteran MLB pitchers will write about them, once they see them for a few more series, and a more than passing chance they will get traded to some sad sack team that lives in baseball card purgatory, like my beloved Detroit Tigers, who have a whopping 2 whole cards in this set - the same # of just Rookies that the Yankees have.

OK, now we can plumb the mysteries of just what is a "Base Card Veteran", per Toppseses very own advertising for these cards. Does that mean a baseball player who has already been on soooo many baseball cards in their career that Topps felt they should have an extra base card this year? I'm down with that.

Ooops, forgot, more Rookies. Dang things are as bad as Tribbles - keep an eye out around your card desk, in case they start to multiply.

Now, I wish I could ponder each and every special card in Opening Day, and how it compares to the counterpart card in Series 1 or 2. Sometimes these are better, other times S1/S2 is superior. Alas, I have already spent way toooo much time on this post and I still have a few more scans to upload. I will include an actual checklist of these cards in the Comments down below here, eventually.

I can recommend this nifty blog - the 2018 Topps Opening Day Blog. I hope it returns to action; it features an awesome breakdown of exactly which game each of these action packed baseball cards came from - check it out!

Personally, I do like horizontal baseball cards. Going forward in my collecting efforts, I am going to try harder to collect them properly - by freeing myself from the chains of sequential checklist #s and simply keeping 9 such cards all together on a binder page to make them so much easier to enjoy.

Of those, the David Price, Chance Cisco, and Greg Allen cards are clear winners, with so much winning over their other 'Water Slide' cards, that I will never get tired of such winning, that I can tell you.

I might get tired of all these RCs, though, whew. 25 RC logo cards in a 200 card set is 12.5% of the set - 1-in-8 cards is some kid who may or may not 'stick' in MLB. But those are the last ones to share, finally.

Meanwhile, I just realized I should have grouped some of these Base Card Veterans into a page with all Alternate Uniforms. I like those, particularly on baseball cards, cuz I can't see them on the radio, where I absorb most live baseball action. Colorful Alternate Unis make for more colorful baseball cards, and that is more better. This 2018 base design is really starting to grow on me.

A few more 'Farewell' cards in there for players who changed teams last winter, and a rare photograph of Troy Tulowitzki actually taking a recent At Bat for the Blue Jays. I hope that one is covered in that '18 Opening Day blog I haven't really delved, yet. And I would have to say that otherwise just ordinary baseball card for TT there is actually better than his Series One card, which is part of the weird "Pointing" subset fetish Topps produced this year in S1 & S2. Pointing is sometimes considered rude due to some ancient quirk in our DNA &/or our cultural DNA, and it doesn't always work on sports cards, if you ask me. If you want a final Toronto Tulo to remember, pick that one.

I did mention that Solarte card is one of 2 such in this set; the other is Ian Kinsler -

This will be the only California Angels 'Water Slide' for Kinsler, who pulled off a rare design+team triple header for Topps in 2018, appearing in Series 1 as a Tiger, Opening Day shown here, and in Update as a Red Sock. I was glad to see him finally get another chance to be on the winning side in the World Series after such a solid career, but felt pretty bad for him when he had such a Buckner-esque experience this time, though with the sting lessened quite a bit by his particular bad game making no difference to the outcome of the Series.

Still, a nice card to have if you collect Ian Kinsler, which wouldn't have been possible without Topps Opening Day, for pack rippers at least as it is also part of the Angels 'Factory' Team Set. 

Opening Day is now a set/product that I feel has been near totally re-born, and I look forward to starting to rip (the good kind) it all over again, in a little less than 90 days as I type.

I also found a clear, obvious winner for Best Card of the Set, which could obviously only come from these Opening-Day-only cards. My Best of the Year? Stay tuned. But clearly a contender. And this player had a really nice candid card, amidst all the all-action-all-the-time cards that make up 'Flagship' these days, in Series One - a pair of nice gestures from Topps, here. And I think there should be an excellent chance for this recently retired, future Hall of Famer to get a true "Sunset" card send-off in 2019 Series One, just four too long weeks away as I type. But if that does not happen, this will have to do, and will do nicely:

Shopping with the window closed

One of today's goals was to buy two new tires for the truck. Instead, I bought, and if I type on long enough here, I can get the not very surprising reveal all the way off the teaser part of the blogroll, and yeah, you are already guessing what I bought … a repack.

The tire store was across the parking lot from a K-Mart. A K-Mart I hadn't previously pillaged for any possible remaining Mike Trout rookies. And the tire clerk had forgotten my truck has a diesel engine = I needed a higher load range tire than they had in the shop.

So off to K-Mart for a little Trout fishing. Early to bed / early to rise / fish all day / make up lies. I'll be honest here though - there were no 2011 Update packs to be had, which wasn't too surprising.

But the baseball card jones had to be sated. I selected this:

I have been skeptical of these. I like repacks. But a big reason I like them is I at least get to know one of the cards I am buying. Yes, I am a box searcher. I look through all of the packs to figure out which one has some goofy card I like, before you get a chance to pick one blindly, without even looking.

But I can't do that with these obviously. Here is the rest of what this pack promises, hidden behind the ugly green plastic:

Well that's good, of course I want to collect my Favorite Stars from a Championship Collection of Trading Cards. Who wouldn't?

And though I keep wanting to work on another post unrelated to repacks, well, this repack might have a card that I can use in that post, so, just to be sure, I'll open this repack first.

But first, let's inquire a little more skeptically. Where did this repack come from? As always on this blog, let's check the back:

Hmmm, I thought you could get in big, big trouble for being an MJ Holding Company. And I'm pretty sure Michael Jordan might enjoy a few recreational sports cards in his spare time, but I'm also pretty sure he's got bigger companies to run than a used sports cards repacking company. I have seen this name before somewhere, I will have to look into this mystery company sometime. This was part of my goal of buying this pack. Journalism. Serious, heavy-hitting, data-driven, well-researched Journalism. Yeah, that's the ticket. I was going to get real with these repacks, and count the cards inside. But there's 100 cheap-ass baseball cards inside, we already know that, silly!

No, I was going to help educate just what my loyal blog readers should expect for their hard-earned five spot from those 100 baseball cards. How much junk wax? How many cards from last year? Which manufacturers paid off this repacker the most? How many "hits"? Would I break even buying this pack, or could I turn a profit flipping repacks? (You'll be surprised….)

But then, this happened:

WHAT! Repackers can't do this! Sure, they can cruelly Bip you with multiple copies of the same card, but they are not supposed to just put stacks of cards all from the same junk set in there like they didn't even care about the product they so lovingly distribute to baseball card addicts like me. I mean, if I wanted cards all from the same set, I'd buy one of those repacks full of actual junk packs of baseball cards.

So much for my serious research. Ruined by bad data before I even start. There is only one solution — I'll have to buy another one of these repacks to see if MJ Holding Company has formed a habit with this practice. Darn.

OK, OK, let's look at some baseball cards already. Here is that crucial tone-setting first card:

Hey, a Manager card. I like Manager cards. In fact, that will be the title of an upcoming post. I knew this repack would help me be a good blogger. And if you love baseball cards, you have to have lots of Alou cards. We'll save this one for further consideration some day in 2017, at this rate. But 2003 Topps? There are reasons I drift away from baseball cards once in a while. I like colorful cards. I like strong primary colors. But I think this set puts me to sleep, and it's already late.

What's the next card?

Hmmm, that MJ Holding Company repacker person is more sly than I thought. The second card is the famous baseball player replaced by the first card! Maybe MJ can help you understand the game of baseball after all.

I'll have to blame these poor scans on the beer though. I ran a chainsaw a bunch today, and to try and get the taste of gasoline off the tip of my tongue, I went with a heavily hopped beverage - 2014 Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale - and forgot to check how the scanner was registering the cards before I scanned them all for you. Sorry about cutting off the tops of the cards there. Bad blogger, bad. This will be a problem for the whole post, oops.

That's sure a lot of blue on that card though. I like it though. Nicknames make for better baseball cards. I'll read the back later, let's keep flipping through these blue cards:

It's a Manger Hot Pack! Yippee! This is a very rare "In Action" Manager card, though you can't really expect a 72 year old baseball lifer to challenge the photographer to stay in focus.

But this was my first clue these cards came from an actual baseball card collection. Luckily for me, that collector who sold their collection to MJ Holdings Corporation - hmmm, I wonder what you could get back in trade for baseball cards from them? - well, they picked up the Traded set from Topps in 2003, which is where Topps put all the Manager cards that year. Which is a pretty good idea Topps could use when they have a hard time filling out all 330 cards in the Update set these days. BRING BACK THE MANAGER CARDS! please.

But I couldn't be that lucky to purchase 100 Manager cards at once. I also found this card:

Nice palm trees! I think this card might hold down the Twins shoulder patch binder page slot for a while. Me likey.

So much blue though, isn't there some other set of cards in this repack?

A blue bat! Blue empty seats! Blue alternate uniform! There is no escape from the blues, every grown-up knows that. I'm pretty sure I've never seen a blue bat on a baseball card before though. I'm also pretty sure 1989 Donruss is going to have a tough time convincing me to keep any of their other 659 cards with a design that boring. But of course, with baseball cards, there's always the next pack…

This pack was pretty loaded with those cheap flimsy cards though. That portion of it did have one other surprise:

So for you lazy types that couldn't be bothered to figure out how to put the challenging jigsaw puzzle together even though you already owned hundreds and hundreds of the baseball cards that came out of the same packs, they gave you a cheater card showing you what the puzzle looked like? I did not know that. I'll use this to my advantage. Clearly, the one cool piece of this puzzle would be the one with the Brave on it. Sorry, Warren, this puzzle just doesn't do it for me, and nether does this set of baseball cards.

But that's the beauty of a repack - there are always other sets to check out:

Back to the blues. Does this pack have a theme or what? And What IS That in Tony's uniform there? A Saturday Night Special to really put the fear in base runners thinking about stealing one? Never trust a Pirate. And those fore-arm bands? What's up with that?

Even beer can't help you escape from the blues, trust me:

Something doesn't seem right about that card. Those pesky red Empty Seats? You thought I liked these cards. I do, I do, that's not it. That Espy card is a classic. No, no, it's something else...

There, that's better. Whatever possessed the Mariners to switch to teal anyway? Teal is pretty classy, sure, but the ocean is blue, everybody knows that.

And what about collecting my Favorite Stars like I was promised?

Everybody likes an Eddie Murray card. But wasn't there some of those chippy black border cards everyone hates in here somewhere?

And wasn't I complaining just yesterday about lackadaisical baseball card editors carelessly dropping graphical elements on the cards? Yes, yes I was. But I dig that Win! Twins! logo. Looks like I'll have more Twins patch cards to be looking for.

I'm not sure what to make of 1987 Donruss. I mean, it's like every card got run over by one of those old-time bullpen buggies I discovered while wasting time on the Internet, like you are right now:

Which are pretty cool. I hope that idea has been factored into a nickname for this set. I mean, I do like black border baseball cards, they make the colors in the image just pop oh so well. I wonder what else I can find in 1987 Donruss?

Shazam! Now there is a puzzle I would like to complete! And they call this stuff junk. At least that means it will be cheap!

There was quite a stack of these cards in the pack, but sadly no puzzle pieces. Were there any more good cards?

All-right all-right, another cool Mark Langston card. His binder page will be filling up before I know it. That star sure does look pointy, Mark, good thing you usually have a great leg kick going on your cards.

I think there were a lot of famous baseball players in 1987 sets. I sure hope so, because they sure printed a lot of their cards, which is good for me, so I can find sweet Hall of Famer cards like this one:

Nice. Though again I wish I could re-assemble the card and put that old school Sox logo over in the left corner, a little more outta the way.

Yes, 1987 Donruss seems like it could be enjoyable to assemble, particularly since I won't let 1987 Topps grow into very big piles. And I'll need some 1987 cards to keep up with my baseball history:

Why there's Johnny Football of his day. Quarterback of the Michigan Wolverines but made Pro in Major League Baseball instead. I doubt you'll ever see his like again. He was pretty famous in Michigan when I was growing up, but I never knew he was also born right there in Ann Arbor - what a storybook baseball card, thanks Donruss. I'll have to keep an eye out for more of his cards and see how his total career turned out, I forget these things. Here he is in 1987 already a DH though, hmmmm…

Well, so much for my repack with a very low score on the variety index. Let's hope the repacker tried a little harder putting the second stack of cards together:

Sweet. A baseball player from the very first set of baseball cards I ever collected, still going strong on cardboard in 1991. This would be Frank's final of 3 Upper Deck cards, but is better than his 91 Topps. This pack is off to a good start!

Though this is a rather routine action in game - the runner is already safe on a pick-off attempt - I always like a card where the fielder hasn't closed his glove on the ball yet. Hey man, nice shot. Upper Deck was also known for intriguing photos on the back of course:

I think this might have been one of Bryce Harper's favorite cards when he was a little boy. 

It was nice to see a short run of 1991 Upper Deck to start the next portion of 50 cards, because that set is full of these types of cards:

Now there's a Pitcher In Action card. Repacks usually have a generous helping of early Upper Deck issues, quite probably because the print runs of those cards are pretty high I imagine. This will work out well for me, because I think I will just keep an occasional UD '91 until I have 9 really good ones. They are not all fabulous action shots though, Upper Deck also liked to have fun posing the players:

Another great Empty Seats card, naturally in this pack with blue seats. Yes, all four of those cards are keepers. That card has some potential for use in the post I try to keep working on, if I didn't keep buying new repacks lately. Once the card designer puts a team logo on the card, you can quickly get triple logo cards. Unlike this set:

Perhaps Leaf was just practicing here for their unlicensed future. With no logo or even team name, the photo selection doesn't come through to support that design decision. And I have never liked the main element here, recalling the little sticky-back thingies you would use on each corner of a photo to affix it to a page in an album, you know, when people kept their photographs without using electronics, back when we had to walk 3 miles through the snow, each way, to get to the one room school house, sonny. 1991 Leaf will be a one-and-done set in my binders - I will probably just keep one card from it, when and ever I find a really, really good one.

Perhaps someday Leaf will hook me up with a card from my oddball personal baseball card memes like this Stadium Club does:

This card could read Louisville Slugger for the name and I would be happy to accept it as a Lurking Catcher card. That bat looks like it's up to something…I'm always on the look-out for Floating Bat cards now. 

With a hit of Stadium Club, this repack is finally starting to behave like a repack. And nothing says repack like a shiny 90s insert:

I might scan that one again to see how it turns out a second time. Or, I might have a Shiny 90s scan-off contest - wait till you see a 95 or 96 Pacific Oooooh, Shiny I pulled from my extra repack the other night; just ridiculous. I'll give you a heads-up in advance so you can have shades handy that night.

Did I just type the word night here in the middle of the night? Did I find a night card? Yep.

A pitcher-at-the-plate insert night card no less, probably; you can't always tell if any Diamaondbacks card is actually from a night game. Like most inserts in the 21st century this one too, from 2002, is mostly designed for a relic version. I think bat relic cards for pitchers are about the only such cards I would enjoy owning.

Once you start pulling inserts in a repack, the cards from sets you've never seen before won't be far behind:

This is actually a 3-D card, in that you would need a 3-D scanner to capture the embossed faux-baseball stitches on the top right of the card; also the surface of the card is also a nice faux-leather, though you'll not often see leather that glossy. Still a fun go at something a little different from Upper Deck in the 2001 Ovation set. There were a couple more of these in the repack, gave it a little heft. I think I will enjoy owing some of these for the tactile experience. Much better than 1995's Topps Embossed. You missed Topps Embossed? Don't worry, they're easy to find, and real, real cheap too.

You never know what those non-Topps baseball card companies would try next:

Here Fleer tries a hand at a retro issue in 2001 for it's 20th Anniversary. I hadn't seen one of these before; I'll be keeping an eye out for more. The back of it is pretty interesting:

This is actually a nod to sets in the later 80s, rather than 1981 Fleer, which wasn't all that adventurous on the back. I like this kind of baseball data a lot better than new composite statistics I haven't had time to figure out yet. My usual radio announcer, Dan Dickerson for the Tigers, uses some of these #s occasionally. For several minutes I had to wonder how Wilson's 1st Pitch On-Base Percentage could be higher than his Batting Average — he must have been hit by a 1st Pitch in an At Bat or two.

This is another card I can use in a future post, and in future collecting, but it came near the end of the pack, which closed with another several 1991 Upper Deck. This repacker also thinks I should have a certain wonderful baseball card, that I didn't have to scan for you tonight:

…because I scanned it for you the other day; this is the third copy of this card I have pulled lately.

I thought I had probably seen another of my newly repacked 91 UD cards online before, but it turned out that had only been the back of the card. So this was another fun find in my retro repack of bewitching baseball cards: