Mail Call: Dog Sitters Aren't Supposed To Sit On The Dog.

       I recently spent a week dog sitting my brother's dog Stella.  You have seen her here before as this is certainly not the first time I have done the staycation thing with my favorite canine.  A lot of people think this is not a good way to spend your off time but I honestly cannot think of a better way.  I am not big on travel and adventure; the notion of going to Rome to see the Colosseum or to Tokyo to try to figure out a language that is way over my head sound like more trouble than they're worth.  Plus, going to Disney World with two small children, like my brother did this time around, sounds like pure unadulterated torture.  But spending a week of solitude in a large mostly secluded house with a very low maintenance and adorable yellow lab?  Pure heaven.  In fact, part of my motivation to reignite the blog came from my memories of writing curled up on a couch with the dog sleeping at my feet.

       The only really good part about coming home to real life is the big pile of mail waiting for you. Specifically the cards, the bills can go get fucked.

So let's take a look at the goodies inside these envelopes and packages.

       There is one Listia seller that I really enjoy buying from (he also has a dog as his profile pic. Coincidence? I think not...).  When I order a lot of 6 cards from him, there is always 9 or 10 in the envelope.  I like this both for the surprise and for the maximum efficiency of his mailing as this is about as many cards as you can get into a PWE before you have to add extra stamps.

Can you guess which card I bought this lot for?  Hint, it is not the Bobby Bonilla.  Oddly, it is also not the amusingly named Pete LaCock, who has a wonderful family history.  X for the center square if you knew the answer without clicking.

       There were some players I collect in that pile too.  That is a Frank Thomas I needed as well as a couple of Big Papis. Saints vs. Colts? I always like how that turns out. Also, that's Ron Meyer (no relation).

Joe Flacco has officially been categorized, the verdict is not elite.  But also, still not the worst QB to lead the Ravens to a Super Bowl victory. So he has that going for him, which is nice.

This year is an Olympic year so when I saw this lot, I had to have it to make a page.

These are 1996 Collect-A-Card Centennial Olympic Collection cards and I'd be lying if I said I had ever heard of them before.  The photography is nifty but you would expect that since the Olympics are pretty much the Olympics for sports photographers too.

       Speaking of collections, these are from the famous (and infamously overproduced) 1992 Sporting News Conlon Collection.

While this batch seems to make a tidy page, they are actually destined for other things.  A few name collections, a couple photo collections, and one is going with my Babe Ruth cards.  Your rudimentary knowledge of baseball history should tell you which.

       Okay, now things get a little more random.  That 1960 Joe Cunningham All Star card is bound for a small collection of cards that I will reveal, well, around the All Star Break (I bought that one on eBay).  That Rocky IV card is one from a set I never knew existed and captures one of the more ridiculous moments in a most ridiculous movie. Apollo Creed deserved better, dammit, and Rock should have thrown the damn towel.  I got that lot of Piazza cards for the MLB Debut insert that I didn't have but it included that UD Masterpieces which might be my favorite non-Met Piazza card. 

Lastly, I bought a set of cards on eBay that I ran into by accident looking for something else, but seeing it, I just had to have it.

        I am sure they are going for a Where's Waldo thing here, just another example of manufactured whimsy from Topps Opening Day.  While nine card sets are ideal, I don't mind ten when I can pluck one of the cards for a player collection - in this case, David Wright - and use the rest for the page (even if it includes a Chipper Jones card). 

I do love how busy this page looks and it will find a place of honor in my weird insert collection binder.  There was also a 2020 Topps blaster waiting for me, but that will have to be another post.  I needed something to cheer me up from missing that cute damn dog.

Has anyone ever wondered...

 ...that maybe JFK had it coming?

 

Forget about who did it or any Oliver Stone conspiracy nonsense and just embrace the notion that things were awful without him but they could have been even worse if he'd stuck around.  Be careful what you wish for is all I'm saying.

Mail Call: Wes is More.

Yesterday, I declared this month the one I settle all draft folder business.  This week, specifically, I am clearing out the forgotten trade post drafts that got lost along the way. 

The first one of these I did was over two years old (shame on me!), luckily, this one is only a year old.  Wes of Jaybarkerfan's Junk is one of the most generous and prolific traders I have come across during my blogging.  He straight trades, he holds contest after contest, he organizes card drafts that have quality stuff, and sometimes, he just plain gives shit away.  Back in the winter of 2014, he declared that if you sent him a SASE and a team, he would send you as many cards as he could stuff into it.  Pretty sweet deal and of course I couldn't resist because free stuff.

He included a very shiny and see-thru Todd Hundley - one I didn't have - and a recent Gary Carter insert that I had yet to procure (and one that I have received a couple times since, but Wes was first).  There is some junk wax (Mookie is never junk, though) and some Mets cards from one of my all time favorite sets, the 1981 Topps.  All this for nothing more than .69 worth of stamps. 

I really wish I could remember why I scanned the back of that Elliott Maddox card.  I haven't a clue, to be honest.  I do see he played for the Senators back in 1971, which to a six year old in 1981 would have seemed like some kind of dark age, but I digress.  I also see that Wes stuffed that envelope so full, the post office machines tried to eat it.  Damn you USPS but thank you, Wes.  It's nice that this post came up today since yesterday I mailed out the scratch off from 2015 Topps I pulled to Wes because he asked for it.  Enjoy!

***

Since this was designated a Mail Call, there is stuff from Listia as well.  I recall picking up these Mariano Rivera cards to finish off his page (or maybe to start a second?).  Mo is now long gone now;  these old posts are gonna make me sad.

The other cards in this scan were an odd Mets lot, one with a Ron Swoboda card I had never seen before:

Ron Swoboda would have been just another vague Mets outfielder, but he made the wise decision to make an amazing catch in the World Series.  Ask Sandy Amoros or Al Gionfriddo if this is a good idea or not.  Anyway, this oddball card commemorates the catch and I had to have it. 

Last but not least is a card that probably should have its own post, but it was included in this one and it is a shame but hey, I may as well cover it since it is here.  I do remember very vividly the odyssey of this card. 

Yes, that is a brutally miscut 1994 Upper Deck card.  The front is half Frank Thomas and half Cliff Floyd and the back is all Alex Fernandez.  When I saw it on Listia, I immediately became obsessed with it.  I had to add it to my collection, both for the big error and the Big Hurt.  I watched it, I bid on it, I nursed the bids, and in the end, I won it.  Then began a two pronged issue.  One, right after I won the card I got an email from some other dude saying he wanted the card.  He really really wanted the card.  Would I relist it for twice as many credits?  I turned him down.  He offered me $10, then $20 for it.  I still said no.  He must has emailed me 50 times with different scenarios and reasons begging me for the card.  It got so bad, I eventually had to block him.  Then after all that, the card took weeks to show up.  The seller had an impeccable feedback rating, so I found this odd.  Turns out, though, he tried mailing it in a PWE in the screwdown you see in the scan.  Seriously.  Somehow, it found it's way to me in a mangled envelope in the (in)famous USPS 'oops' plastic bag.  Now that I think of it, that might be why I included it with this post since Wes' SASE got eaten by the hungry machines as well.  Let this be a lesson to you kids, pack your cards securely and wisely because those evil sorting machines show no mercy. 

Football '14 Week 7: I Still Just Can't Even.

       I am like an overwrought teenage girl right now, football and all the nonsense from earlier this year still has me with a bitter taste in my mouth.  I will watch the Saints today, but I probably won't enjoy it.  In the meantime...

Here is a little reminder of better times; this magazine is my latest Listia pick up and it goes nicely with my Super Bowl coffee table book.  Living in New Jersey, I wasn't able to get all the cool local swag back in 2010, so I am overjoyed when I find it for free online.  And yes, those are Christmas Ornaments on the left, but I am sad to report they have been left out all year.  Don't judge me!

Chrome Is Where The Heart Is.

       People use the term "house-bound agoraphobe" so loosely these days.  One would think while one has been kind of cooped up in the house for a month (by choice) that one would have all sorts of time to blog about his hobby.  Yup, you would sure think that, wouldn't you?

Anyway, I have these packs to open this evening...

One would think I made a trek to Target to get these - but one would be wrong - I nabbed these off of Listia.  Didn't you even read the opening sentence to this post?

I have quite the love affair going with Chrome; it is one of the few brands I have a complete run of pages for.  Here you can see the page that has been devised from these packs:

Some great facial expressions going on here, though I am not sure that is what Chrome does best.  Also some very colorful uniforms, which pop off the chrome even better than you can see in the scan. 

So of course I keep nine cards for my page, what else is gonna stay?  Well, funny you should ask...

I pulled three of the Rookie Cup cards, which is always a plus.  I got one (1) base Mets card, Wilmer Flores, who more and more does not look like shortstop of the future.  The one X-Fractor I got was Raphael Montero, which makes this a more than successful pack ripping for Mets rookies.  Also there are some cards I have put aside for other bloggers, though I already found out the Dodgers are not needed, so those are up for grabs.  

You are supposed to get a refractor in every two packs, so let's see if I came out ahead:

With the x-fractor above, I came out way ahead.  In terms of players, meh.  Any and all of these five are up for trade if you want them. 

The bonus to these packs are the three orange refractors included.  This means I have nine, a perfect page maker, if I so choose:

The orange works better with some teams than other but I think it looks great with Mets players.  Plus, that photo of Curtis Granderson is 1000x better than the one they plastered on the base set.  And I must say, pulling Mike Trout and Jose Fernandez in the same pack was quite nifty.

And to pull the old Gilligan's Island Theme on you, here's the rest:

Derek Jeter and Stephen Strausburg might thrill some, but not me.  There are a dozen other players here that I have no use for.  If you do, feel free to drop me a line and we can work out a deal.  I am gonna go hide under the covers and wait for football to start for real tomorrow.

Christmas In July.

       When we last left off, I was about to open about 7000 pieces of mail that accumulated over my dog sitting staycation.  Of course to do so, I needed a staycation from my staycation (how's that for pealing out the watchword?)  Anyway, I finally got to give The Stack the attention it rightfully deserved.  Let's just hit the ground running...

I bought a very random lot of oddball 90's food issues from an ebay seller and he mailed the cards in 9-pocket pages.  With a few changes for aesthetics, this page of 1993 Jimmy Dean cards is one of the rare ready-made pages in my collection.  We'll get into the rest of the cards in this lot in a moment.

I had to reorganize the pile of mail into something I could handle.  It went from this to this:

I am going to need a second cup of coffee...I mean, there are 35 PWEs alone here:

Included amongst the Jiffy packs were some trades and contest entry winners and they will get their own write ups soon.  In fact, Night Owl already got his. 

Okay, that is enough Postal Porn, let's get back to the cards.

Also included in that madcap food issue lot were some 1992 Jimmy Dean cards, and...

...a 1992 Score P&G All Star Set.  I already have this set broken up into a page and players, so if anyone wants this one, just shout.  It has a wonderful early 90's look and checklist. 

The reason I bought this lot was it had some of the 1992 Mr. Turkey cards and I couldn't tell you why, but I find this to be one of the great all time oddball sets: the name, the design, the airbrushing, this set has it all.   I still need three more to make a page but I am working on that.

The other set in here was a 1992 French's set, something I had never seen before.  Even though this is an 18 card set, I am going to go against my best instincts and break this badboy up into a 9-pocket page and for player collections.  A few of the leftovers might even find their way to you in trades. 

I was on a real Mr. Turkey binge and also bought the 5-card 1993 Baseball Greats set. 

I nabbed this particular one, over all the others on eBay, because it came with an official Mr. Turkey Baseball Greats notepad.  All of my correspondence will be done on its pages from now on. 

I got a little carried away with my 527 eBay purchases:

The top three all came from the same seller, you know, to save on shipping.  The others all came in a combination of low price or short impulse.  I have four binders full of low price and short impulse buys on that front.  Where else can nameless/faceless rookies hang out with the likes of Mario Lemieux and Brett Favre?

Going back to early 90's oddballs, here is another set I only recently found out existed, the 1992 Upper Deck Heroes Highlights.  It is ten cards of early retro vintage goodness:

I immediately put nine of the cards into its own page courtesy of the other oddball seller.  This set is wonderful in its Upper Deck-ness: the player selection, the terrible computer color adjustment on otherwise awesome photos.  Given my love of the Upper Deck Heroes series and faux-vintage, it had to be mine.    What happened to the other card in the set, you wonder?

It is none other than Reggie Jackson and that card will go into my player collection.  It was a hard choice between his and Ted Williams but the Splinter's card just looked better on the page. 

The other cards on this scan all come from those PWEs and Listia.  I have decided to jump on the Yasiel Puig bandwagon.  I figure anyone who makes traditional sportswriters that uptight must be doing something right.  I will need six more; please check the player page want lists for further information.  Also there are two Mike Piazzas I needed and one that I didn't.  Also some nifty Goudy reprints and a 1963 Topps Dal Maxvill.  I am not 100% sure why I bought these, but hey, the price was right. 

Here are some more puzzling cards from Listia:

The top three cards were all bid upon at the very last minute for 200 credits or less.  My motivations were nothing more than "oh, look, card!"  I figure, any OPC card with a trade line is fun and the blue parallel of a Kansas City Royal is quite good looking.  I also got lots of 2010 Topps and 2014 Opening Day with the similar thoughts and theories.  I love that photo of Big Papi and not only is that EY card have a fine photo, it is his "rookie card."  Sold and sold.  While looking for a few Roberto Clemente cards, I found one Listian with a bunch of small faux-vintage lots of different players.  I won the Clemente, Al Simmons, Tony Gwynn, and Buck Leonard lots.  I am willing to bet that is the first time those four players have ever been in the same sentence together, much less the same envelope.  A simple search of Google proves my suspicions on that front to be correct, at least in the online world.

Sorry folks, we aren't even close to being done.  Did you see that pile?  I mean, this scan is just the "bonus" cards I got in all those envelopes:

I find that a lot of Listia sellers throw in random bonus cards or use non-baseball cards in as toppers.  None of these cards remotely goes with anything I bought but they are appreciated nonetheless.  The Rickey and Buster Keaton cards are especially appreciated. 

I didn't get a lot of other sports cards, but there was just enough to make up a single scan:

Those hockey cards were all nabbed last minute while I was browsing.  I bet you'll never guess why I got that first one?  That 1992 Dave Krieg finishes my Topps page for that year.  Would you believe I finished my 1960's pages before I finished the 90's?  I really didn't buy any football cards back then.  Those bottom two Prizm cards are very very shiny and those scans do them not justice. 

Speaking of shiny blue Prizm cards:

I picked up a lot of seven baseball cards and now I have to decide whether to get two more of that year or make a Frankenstein page of those shiny wonders.  I lean towards the hate side of Prizm, but shiny is shiny and those blue cards are good looking.  Of course, they don't hold a candle to the Topps Blue Refractors.  Maybe I should just send them all to Chris at View From the Skybox and be done with them.  I also picked up a huge lot of 2013 Allen and Ginter dirt cheap.  The big cards are not shown here, the minis are.  While I don't want all cards to be mini, there is something just so enjoyable about those little devils. 

Wait, where are all the Mets cards?  Don't worry, they're coming...

All these 2014 cards come from Listia, including that camo parallel Jon Niese.  I might have to do his rainbow now that I have one of his low numbered parallels.  While I usually like Mets parallels to be in blue or orange, there is something organic and baseball-appropriate about the green parallels.  Topps has used a lot of white for the base the last decade or so, but I think a light green color like this might also do nicely.  I was always a fan of the 2001 Topps set for this reason, though the color on that border leans a little too teal for what I am talking about.

This Matt Harvey comes from that Opening Day lot from earlier, but he migrated down here.

The other cards on this page are random and diverse.  The second card is a rare shown-as-a-Met Richard Hildago card.  The Orosco, Kingman, and the bottom three were all in a couple of random Mets lots I got on Listia for nothing more than I like to tear open envelopes and pull out Mets cards.  The two Tom Seaver cards are the oddest of oddballs.  The middle one is a Sportsflics-esque card from Kellogg's back in the early 90's.  I remember actually pulling this card out of a cereal box.  I couldn't remember if I still had it or not, so I picked it up for nothing on Listia.  The other card comes from eBay.   It is from 1995 and not only have I never seen it before, I can barely find any information about it.  It's a cool looking card, so my $2 was well spent.

Last but certainly not least, let's look at the non-card items:

I got a couple of 1987 Mets schedules on Listia, which actually document the fact that the Mets once won a World Series.  Stop laughing, it's true!   I also got a free Saints car air freshener on Listia because hey, free air freshener.  The other thing here that I picked up is a Mets 101 board book for my niece's 1st birthday.  Even though I am aware that indoctrinating your children as a Mets fan could be considered child abuse, please do not report me to the authorities.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Can I Please Have Your Attention?

I've just been handed an urgent and horrifying news story. And I need all of you to stop what you're doing and listen...
Cannonball!!!

Anyone who has searched Listia the last few weeks has seen this gem at the top as the key card of one of those tiered daily escalating mega-listings.  Every day for three weeks it was there just staring at me, taunting me with all its beauty.  Now I did not have nearly the credits necessary to win this, but I took a chance and sent a message to the winner right after the auction ended and asked what his intentions for the card were.  I was very polite yet direct, a method I have championed before.  After a little give and take, and a slight bit of drama, the winner of that big ass listing decided to sell it to me.  As you can see it arrived today and I am overjoyed.  Proving that being polite and direct works, the dude told me he let me have the card (and even better, at my price) because I was enthusiastic and honest with him; I wasn't going to flip it on eBay, I really wanted the card for my collection because these are two of my favorite players of all time.  And I am quite grateful for that.  Plus look at that thing, it is glorious.  After I take it out for dinner this evening, we will spend the night watching TV and snuggling, then I will tuck it in before bed.  I love it that much.

Mail Call: Little Letters from Listia.

       I have covered this phenomenon before, but it seems my mailbox is always jam packed on Mondays, as though the post office does everything on Sundays.  Either that, or Monday is the regular delivery guy's day off and he leaves the bulk of the heavy lifting to the fill in.  I would be easily persuaded to believe either theory.

Today's odd twist is that all of the letters in the box today were short ones - #8 to use the vernacular as opposed to #10 (business size).  Well, all except that one large manilla envelope.  One envelope to rule them all!

So enough postal jargon and minutiae, what goodies are inside these?  Let's take a look:

Two of those top three were straight impulse buys.  I like those 2008 Stadium Club base cards, even if the whole set and execution of that product was a disaster, and that Magglio called to me.  That Sidney Johnson is not only a nifty photo but a card #527 I did not have, so it is easy to see why I sniped that one up.  The top left card is a manu-patch silk card thingy from this year's Topps flagship of Matt Harvey's rookie card.  I wouldn't pay money for that thing, but I was happy to nab it for much less than the GIN credit price.  The Matt Moore is from this year's Heritage and since I am fond of the design, I thought maybe I would put together a page of these badboys.  The Heritage Chrome refractors always seem extra shiny to me for some reason.  Oooooo shiny....  The bottom row is a batch of Walmart parallels from this year that I got on Listia, yet another type of card I will never pay money for, at least not from the source that is.  I will put together a page from these.  I now have two of the three retail parallel pages covered with just Toys 'R' Us not represented.  I kinda like the odd symmetry that the colors are blue, red, and purple - it's a color wheel thing.  Okay, I am rambling now.  Last but not least is the little packet there.  While I am 99.99% certain my mother does not read my blog, inside that homemade little pouch is part of my mom's Mothers Day present, so I will err on the side of caution and not reveal what's in that until after the first Sunday of May.  And no, it is not a Saints football card; I have offered my mom those on countless occasions and she always says "that's nice, but what the hell am I supposed to do with this..." so I don't even try to give them to her anymore.  Moms?  Amirite?

Mail Call: Double Dutch.

       As of the beginning of March, I had never traded with continental Europe and now, just six weeks later, I have done so twice - both times have been with the appropriately named Dutch Card Guy.  When I posted my Topps Heritage box break, the big "hit" I got from that box was a CC Sabathia Mint card with a 1965 nickle embedded in it numbered to /15.  A neat card for certain, but not one exactly in my wheelhouse.  Enter DCG.  I knew he was a CC collector but I wasn't sure if he'd want the card so I put it on eBay.  I got a bid on it immediately, which wasn't too surprising, but low and behold, it was by the aforementioned DCG, which was.  He messaged me that he wanted the card and was willing to bid for it.  I told him, nonsense!  I am sure we can come up with a trade for it.  He told me he had this card he pulled last year:

A coin for coin swap?  Perfection!  I pulled the card's auction immediately and we hammered out some details and this wonderful trade was complete.  I don't know if I am ready to become a Mike Trout super collector but a card like this might get the ball rolling on such a thing.  If I can trade awesome hits for cards like this, it might be doable; his cards aint cheap, ya know...

The details included that wonderful 2005 Topps Steve Trachsel red x-fractor you see below.  Those red refractors really pop and I have found for some reason, the 2005 ones really work, not to mention that is a nifty picture of The Human Rain Delay.  I didn't have a Mets one of these and now I do. As good as the scan here shows it, believe me, it is ten times shinier than that, even.

He also threw in a couple awesome unexpected goodies, that 2014 Donruss Puig and that 2008 UD Masterpiece Ryne Sandberg, great cards both, ones I did not have and will definitely keep.  So thank you once again, Jeroen, for a unique trade. I also want to thank the Dutch Postal Service, which once again got a package across the Atlantic to me in less than 10 days. Sometimes the USPS can't get things across two states in less than 10 days.

***

Also in the mail today were these two cards, both interesting in and of themselves even if on the surface they appear rather bland.

I picked up that Roy Campanella on the right from Listia and is just a glorious card.  It is a TCMA card from 1979 and it emulates the classic 1953 Bowman Color set.   It does two things for me: it completes my Campanella player page and it also shows him on a card with a full photo standing - something I neither had seen before nor owned.  Given his tragic accident, I think this was a necessity for his page. 

I picked up the other card on the left from eBay and it doesn't certainly look extraordinary at all, does it?  I mean, it is a player so obscure I had to look up since I have never heard the name - turns out Mike Leclerc had himself a decent couple of years in the NHL before retiring at the tender age of 30.  I will chalk up his anonymity in my world to the fact that he played on the west coast and the Devils don't play the Western Conference much.  I kinda like it because it shows the old garish purple and teal-green colors of the old Anaheim Mighty Ducks plus that so-awful-it's-kinda-neat logo of theirs.  It is a jersey card too, so I get to touch the fuzzy.  But the key to this card is the serial number; anyone who has dug deep into my wantlists knows I have an affinity for the number 527 and lo and behold, yes, this card is serial numbered number 527.  But there is something very special about this particular card, look at the back and see if you can spot it:

Here, I'll make it very obvious for you, in case you are missing it...

Enhance!!!

^^^^^^^ look here dummy.                               

Yes, you are seeing that correctly.  That is a card serial numbered higher than its supposed edition.  I gotta say, there is a lot of reasons that Pacific went out of business and I wanna say quality control might be one of them.  I have never seen such a thing on a trading card?  Have you?  

Mail Call: Ten! Ten Plain White Envelopes!

       Ahahahaha! Okay, well, to be all nit-picky and specific, it is nine plain white envelopes and one yellow one...

                                                                                                                                                                      ^^^ See? Yellow one.

I swear to god, my postman hoards my mail and delivers it all at once.  This represents almost two weeks of purchases on Listia and eBay all spread out on different days and yet somehow, magically, they all get delivered at once.  I mean, yeah, there was three snow storms and a holiday but still, it makes me imagine the Newman style of postal delivery.

Now sprung from their PWE prisons, what you see here is an odd mix - but really, if you read this blog with any sort of regularity, it all makers perfect sense...

In the first row, you'll see I picked off that Pujols and those two 1985 Topps hall of famers for literally nothing on Listia.  I grabbed that gold Jimenez parallel on eBay for a dollar for my pages.  In the second row is some very typical Max pickups, New Orleans Saints and New York Mets cards.  I got that Sid Fernandez for 100 credits on Listia and bought a whole lot of nine cards to secure that Hojo, which I am 98% sure I don't have.  Of course now I have 8 Mets doubles - that I will probably put on Listia.  Oh the circle of life.  The final row shows a couple of Oakland A's players who are both #527 in their respective sets.  Somehow, I still have not written my post about my 527 collection.  At least I - and by extension you - have something to look forward to.  Lastly is one of those Olivia II smutty art cards.  Shiny and boobies for free?  How could I resist?

Mail Call: You Ain't Got No Alibi.

       I acquired a few odd things on Listia and eBay this week and I was stumped as to what tied them all together.  Then I laid them out and I realized there was one very obvious trait that spanned across all of these seemingly unrelated sets and designs: they are U-G-L-Y ugly.

First off is the 2012 Panini Cooperstown:

This design is trying way too hard to be old-timey and instead looks like the framework for one of those sepia toned gangster novelty photos you'd buy at the mall or at an amusement park.  And the design is the least of the worries for this set.  Without a MLB license, Panini can't show logos.  And in not showing logos, instead of airbrushing, they decided to crop the photos in as awkward a way as possible, oddly cutting off the top halves of heads. 

2013 Panini Cooperstown is a step up from last year, but really. it had nowhere to go but up and it is a very small step.

The design and colors are somewhat better this time around. Plus they seemed to try to use better photographs and where that didn't happen, they used the hall of fame logo on top of the photo frame to do the dirty work of copyright protection.  Still, pretty terrible rather than ungodly awful. 

In 2010 I was not living near a baseball card shop, so I was never able to pick up the HTA giveaway set from that year.  I found one cheap during a search of eBay for other things and impulsively decided to grab one. Now, I had seen these cards before but never in person...

...and believe me, scans do not do justice to how ugly these cards are.  They are flat in both color and texture.  The jeweled border is too busy and the font they use over it gets lost in the busyness so you can barely read the player name.  The idea of having the MLB logo match the team colors seemed like a good idea, but the logo takes up far too much real estate and just sits there like a lump overwhelming everything else.  Due to the appalling design elements, the photo of the player only gets about 40% of the area of the card and then it gets super imposed on a background of more team colors shooting up like a demented sun ray (or perhaps those humungous MLB logos are radioactive).  If this was made in a first year GD class, it would get an 'F' and a 'come see me' on the cover page. 

Vintage players don't fair much better...

...the only slight improvement is the older style photos pop much better against all that modern color rather than getting hopelessly lost.  These would get a 'D-' instead of an 'F' from Professor Max.

Also on Listia, I bought a lot of 2013 Topps Strata football cards, a brand I had seen at Target but decided was too expensive.  Even for free, I might have gotten ripped off on these.  Take a look:

This is a design straight out of early millennium Upper Deck.  Circles and color everywhere and worse, words in the circles, all against a super-modernist metallic grey robotic background.  And as if that was not enough, Topps decided to add a team logo jutting out of the bottom element, thus giving a nice odd cover to 75% of the crotches of the players.  It's not the worst crotch logo of all time, but certainly it is a topper to an ugly ugly design.  I am getting vertigo just looking at it.

The pièce de résistance to all this hideousness is a set I never knew existed at all.  Feast your eyes on the 1991 Foot Locker Slam Fest card; they are a new low in oddball awful.  I got these off Listia and the auction showed the checklist and the promo sheet, but not the cards themselves.  I saw the players involved and decided I should own this set, wondering why this set wasn't more popular and why I had never heard of it.  Then it got to my mailbox and everything became abundantly clear:

In and of itself, the design is not atypical for unlicensed oddball giveaway cards: very large promotional logo, simple lines, red white and blue color scheme...not all that bad, really.  But, and whoa is it a big Coco but, the photos in this set are too horrible for words. 

As an unlicensed set, you know there can be no logos, and since they are advertising their store and their TV special, Foot Locker decided to get photos of everyone in the uniform from that special.  Now, special is not a word I would use for those uniforms, the word I would use is amateur...on a ghastly level.  Not to mention most of the pictures look like they were taken with a disc camera and then the photos themselves developed by a technician's assistant at K-Mart. 

I also love that it says Limited Edition on them too.  I wonder how many of these they made?  250,000?  500,000?  One million?  *pinky to lip* 

I am just gonna show the whole set of these because they have to be seen to be believed.  I had to scan them with the lid closed because they are so curled, the stock they used so cheap.  I wonder if they would look any better against a dark background?  I wonder if they would look better on fire?

If you haven't been paying attention, some of the names in this set are Ken Griffey Jr., Barry Bonds, Wilt Chamberlain, Calvin Murphy, John Havlicek, Tim Brown, Carl Lewis, Eric Dickerson, Earl Monroe, Deion Sanders - you can see why I took a chance with this one.  I might just keep it in tact in the set portions of my binders as a warning to the others.  This thing makes some of the Fleer boxed sets from the 1980's look like the 1957 Topps set in comparison.

Lastly, you can see from the backs that they issued these cards in series.  Yup, you had to go into to Foot Locker more than once to get your hands on these babies. 

There were even coupons inserted into the mix but alas, they expired in August of 1991.  Even back then though I knew Domino's Pizza sucked so it is just as well.