Love In The Time of Corona.

       Last Monday morning, I went to Costco and Target and it was a very quiet, uneventful trip.  Little did I know that in the next few days, going to the store would become something like a cross between old Woody Woodpecker cartoons where the women kill each other, bridal day at Filene's Basement, and the Road Warrior.  Lucky for me, I am a slight hoarder at all times and don't need soap, sanitizer, or toilet paper any time soon.  Also, I did stop in the card aisle in Target and grabbed some Heritage packs (they had no blasters) and impulsively grabbed a blaster of Star Wars Skywalker Saga cards while looking in vain for Heritage blasters.  This would prove very fortunate and unfortunate but not in the way I thought.  Kind of like how most of our weeks went.

I rarely buy single retail packs of baseball cards because I find all you ever get are base cards and maybe an odd parallel but very rarely do you ever get something of substance.  I figured since all I wanted was some examples of the Heritage, I would just grab 6 packs and go about my business.  These might have been the luckiest six packs of retail cards I ever bought.

One thing I collect in totality is Topps rookie all stars.  I love me some fancy trophies on my baseball cards and I got five of them in these six packs, including two short prints.  The two short prints I got were Pete Alonso and Vlad Guerrero Jr., the two cards I figured I'd have to pay through the nose for on eBay if I ever wanted them, and here I got them in back to back retail packs.

I even got one of the two Alonso league leader cards and three of the postseason cards.  And we are just getting started.

I got five inserts.  That's practically one per pack but it didn't quite come out that way because I got two Tom Seaver Flashbacks stuck together in one pack.  I also got another Flashbacks insert, Rod Carew, and two Then and Now cards - one of them also with Tom Seaver.  Look him up, kids, he was pretty good.  I did get one other base double in the five packs - it was Michael Conforto, a Mets player.  This never happens.  I always get doubles of San Diego Padres or Milwaukee Brewers.

There was one other Met and one other league leader card.  Not too shabby. 

I am pretty sure the 1971 set is in my top five all time designs and the Topps people really nailed the look of it.  The colors, the lower case ee cummings style names, and the random action photos - which were new in '71 - are all here.  Even the random rookie cards and odd position designations are here.  I didn't scan the backs but the backs all look right with the head photos and esoteric write ups. They even have SSPs of the OPC backs, which are some of my favorite OPC variations.  Alas, I did not get one of those.

I also love poses where the hitters are swinging and pointing the bat at your face, I got three of them in three different styles.  I saw that the Alvarez/Aquino rookie card is hot.  I am not one for hot rookies, so if anyone wants to trade for this thing, let me know.

This is the page I ended up piecing together from the five packs, I think it looks great.

I went with just about all posed shots but got a variety and the one action shot is decidedly inactive (I picked a Luke Voit action shot for the vertical example, that's on the back, the back I didn't scan).  I chose a few teams that didn't exist in 1971 just for a little timely juxtaposition.  I was thrilled with my choice to lower myself to retail packs.  I know it will never turn out this good again.  If anyone is putting the set together and has a wantlist, drop me a line and I'll see what I can fill before these go to ebay or Listia.

On the other hand, the Star Wars cards were...underwhelming.  The blaster had 10 packs and 60 cards but no indication on the outside what they looked like; this seems to be on purpose.  The design is very staid.  I prefer a little color and whimsy in my Star Wars cards and all I got here is some stars from a NASA chart or something off of a Battlestar Galactica poster. 

The photos and subjects seem to cover all eight movies, I assume this set was leading into the ninth.  All the cards are vertical and none of the captions are puns or anything.  I am falling asleep just looking at them.

I scanned a second group to continue the monotony.  Not even Natalie Portman can make these more exciting.

Though I gotta say, I do love that middle card, it is a great shot from the climax of the Force Awakens.  Lightsabers and snow, more of that please.  One out of 60 is a very bad ratio.

Each pack had a parallel base card where, oooo pinch me, they changed the color of the thrilling border to a rusty orange or a royal blue.  I suppose the blue is a slight improvement but I got two of those and eight of the rusty orange.

Seriously, the write ups on the front and backs of these cards is more boring than my write up here.

Each pack also had an insert.  These were at least a little more interesting, if slightly repetitive.

Five of them were from the Path of the Jedi set, which were almost exactly the same as the style and substance of the base cards.  I do like that Han Solo card because the highlight of the seventh movie to me was the fact that Harrison Ford didn't mail in his performance as he has in a few of the other movies he's done in his old age (I'm looking at you, Indiana Jones 4 and Blade Runner 2049). So that's 2 out of 60.

The blaster's special insert was a manu-patch and I got A Princess Leia.  I actually have a use for that card so it is staying in my collection.  I might cobble a page of these together but it will hardly find a place of honor in my Star Wars book. 

That was the other Path of the Jedi card, which looks like the other one on the other page.  The best looking card in the whole blaster was the advertisement card with that borderless shot from the first movie.  If anyone wants to use that 10% off code, be my guest.  It really had been an odd week indeed.

You Can't Get Rid of Me That Easy.

       It seems for most people 2016 has been a rough year. As usual, I was ahead of the curve and my nightmares started in 2015.  I was in a car accident on Super Bowl Sunday that left me shaken but unscathed but that was to be the least of my issues.  I posted on and off all through 2015 right up until what would seem a very exciting time for me, the Mets going deep into the playoffs.  I posted on the day of that first postseason game in nine years, and then aside from an auto-post on Christmas and a couple of Hall of Fame induction posts that I already pretty much had written out, nothing.  This blog has been silent. Why, you ask?  It is on that aforementioned October night that our story begins...

These are the Mets holiday parallel cards from that big box store I don't shop in.

I will not bore you too much with the details of this story as I have told it a few too many times and I have grown weary of it.  Plus it is kind of horrifying and gross but I will hit the important parts, though. I watched that first playoff game with a great deal of anticipation, obviously.  I sat in my big comfy chair and did not get out of it the whole night.  The Mets won a tight and tidy 3-1 victory and as the final out was made, I got up to do the business we all have to do.  That is when things turn ugly.  The last thing I remember was fainting on the toilet. I hit my head and passed out.  I woke up in a pool of blood, feces, and throw up and I could barely move.  This was not a pretty picture and I was in trouble.  911 was called and an ambulance came and some very well trained EMTs scooped me up and took me to the hospital.  I was cleaned up and put on fluids as they tried to figure out what was going on with me.  I was there one day, then two, and so on.  No food could go in me, nothing but blood and pain was coming out of me.  Two of the finest doctors on the eastern seaboard were looking over me and on day three, I asked them point blank what was wrong with me.  They looked at each other and shrugged - they actually shrugged.  I was in real trouble.  Test after test was done to me, pint after pint of blood was going into me.  I didn't eat anything solid for nine days.  As a last resort, they gave me a little camera pill, like something out of the Jetsons, to go through my gastrointestinal tract and if that didn't find anything, they were going to have to cut me open.  I swear this is the short version of this story and to tighten it up even further, yes, they found out what was wrong with me without having to cut me open.  I had a hidden hole in a hard to reach part of my intestines (the jejunum for those who like hard to pronounce medical words).  Rest and no food eventually healed it up.  I was in the hospital for a couple weeks.  I was an absolute wreck physically and emotionally for months.  The physical part eventually healed and my strength and stamina returned.  My emotional state, usually pretty precarious to begin with, was not so easily dealt with. 

Since all I have done is vent in this post, let me say a belated Happy Holidays and to everyone reading.

Near death experiences are supposed to energize you, instead with old contrarian me, it has put me in a deep funk.  Every time I think it is getting better, I realize it isn't.  Old things that used to make me happy simply don't.  New things bore me.  I have never been so down or inconsolable and that is saying something.  Every day is a struggle and every moment I am left alone with my thoughts makes me more depressed. I have tried everything I could think of to help myself to very little success.  I wish I could tell you I have figured it all out but I haven't.  Right now emotional survival is the key.  I haven't much wanted to blog because I really haven't been collecting much and what I have hasn't brought me much joy.  I am a red hot mess.

They didn't scan too well, but these are the shiny metallic foil ones.

Not to sound like some kind of inspirational trinket bought at the mall, but happiness is a choice.  It has been about 14 months that I have been Greco-Roman Wrestling these demons on a daily, practically hourly basis, and this New Year's seems like as good a day to just turn my back on them.  Oh, I am going to be very aware of my mental health but I am going to make a concerted effort to streamline this process that has just been exhausting.  I am not sure if it will work or not, but one thing I do desperately miss is the happiness that card collecting brought me and the fun and feedback I got from writing my blog.  So that is what I am going to do.  I am going to drag myself kicking and screaming back to my old self.  I have tried every other damn thing and maybe now is the time for the the direct approach, which I know seems obvious to some but for me it is novel because my head is a wacky place and I tend to outsmart myself when I keep things simple.  At this point it seems I have nothing left to lose.  I have been slowly reacclimating myself to old friends and my family and while it hasn't snapped me out of things quite yet, it wasn't nearly as hard as my brain has been making it out to be.  So this week, I am going to start this blog up again and I trust that the 12 of you who used to read it will do so again.  Wish me luck.  And a very Happy New Year to you all.

Feeling Blue.

       There is nothing better in this world than watching the Mets go into Yankees Stadium for two days and beat up on the Bronx Bombers by a cumulative footballish 21-14.  There is nothing more depressing than watching the Mets come home for two games and get shutout twice in a row, 4-0 and 1-0.  Because it happened in that order, I am very bummed out indeed.

These blue parallels from this year perfectly capture my mood.  It is a rainy, gray, disgusting Friday morning and it is only gonna get rainier and muggier. 

Of course, last night, my rage may have gotten the best of me.  I woke up this morning and saw what I posted on facebook...

I hope Fred Wilpon is happy with his billion dollar white elephant of a ballpark and the crappy team he has built on the cheap who can't score in it. If there are any terrorist organizations training their members to fly planes into targets, I have a brilliant idea for you. Let me know when you plan the operation so I can show up with marshmallows and maybe to piss on the ashes.

Yikes. 

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?

Night Owl Trade Post #8000.

     I have lost track of all the jiffy packs and PWEs I have sent to upstate New York for Night Owl.  Our constant trading alone should be keeping the USPS in business.  While I am sure the number isn't quite 8000, I am sure it's gotta be about 50.  He also posts my stuff a lot more constantly that I post his, but that is why he has the best card blog on the block and why mine is merely a curiosity to about a dozen of you. 

So anyway, after busting my 2014 Topps packs and putting aside all the nifty Dodgers cards, I packed up those and a few other cards we had negotiated for and in return, I got what is promised to be "part 1."

Pretty sweet "part" if you ask me.  I got the last 2014 Zack Wheeler TFIN insert I needed, a great Matt Harvey insert (who am I kidding, all Matt Harvey inserts are great), and a couple Walmart parallels that I will never get on my own.  Not forgetting the Kaz Matsui rookie I didn't own and a super sweet David Cone jersey piece with a pinstripe and a low serial number, though anyone who reads Night Owl (which is everyone) knows how he now feels about jersey cards.  While I am a skeptic, I also am compelled to touch fuzzy things, so you can send them all to me if you want. 

Oh, and he bipped me.

Mutherfucker.  Last laugh is mine, though, I am putting these nine "devilish" Mickey Hatcher cards into my nine of a kind pages.  Nice try, Night Owl, nice try.  I eagerly look forward to part 2.

Wave of the Present.

       So as promised in my last post/tease, I cracked open some brandy dandy new 2014 Topps in the form of two blasters and two Target jumbo peg hanger packs.  These are the fruits of those delightful labors.

These nine will be immortalized as the 2014 Topps page (until I decide to change it).  Topps has stepped up its photo game since the disasters of 2008/2009.  They are crisp and clean and there is a great variety of shots.  This is by the far the strongest element of the flagship set this time around.  The design is a step down from last year's minimalist piece of perfection.  I can describe it as sort of like the 2005 Topps and 1984 Donruss designs had a May/December love child.  I find the team logo and the team name on the right side redundant - one or the other would have been enough - but the nice little wave with the name and position is pretty cool.  In fact, that little wave reminds me of this gem and if Night Owl needs a suggestion for a name, Catch the Wave seems pretty appropriate. 

Here are the Mets I pulled.  Topps really liked those new blue jerseys, huh?

I am sure Matt Harvey will look back on the face he is making on this card with great fondness.  There were probably 10,000,000 photos of Matt Harvey taken last year and that is the one they went with?  On the other hand, there is some nice action on the Turner and Lagares cards.  I'll need to add the other Mets to my want list.

Some other base cards of note that are staying in the collection:

Of course the all star rookies must stay.  The Wil Myers photo is nicely cropped with his trophy.  I only wish he could afford the extra L and E for his name.  The World Series cards make me quite happy this time around since my baseball mistress won it all last year.  Napoli's beard deserves its own card.  I really liked the two photos on the Chapman and the Cespedes, it is just coincidence they are both Cuban.  Those 1969 A's throwback uniforms are magnificent.

My blasters promised manu-patch cards and this is what I got:

Too bad Prince got traded from the Tigers because that patch is amazing.  A Detroit fan could not be taken to task if they decided to just cut that card into a square to highlight that patch.  Pity the Miggy patch has the classic D and not this.  That Bryce Harper is nice, though it is destined for eBay unless someone has to have it.

Also here is the coupon book from the blaster.  These are very useful coupons for the Target card aisle shopper:
$5 off a 2014 Heritage value box
$1 off three packs of Opening Day
$1 off two packs of Gypsy Queen
$1 off two packs of MLB Chipz (the only one I probably won't use)
$1 off an Archives jumbo pack
$5 off a Topps series 2 value box.

The coupons are dated to coincided to a 2 month window when the products are released.  I like the inclusion of this, my being a cheap bastar...I mean a frugal sort, I never look down upon using a coupon. 

Inserts?  Oh yeah, we got your inserts.  This year's theme is The Future is Now:

These are sort of painted/graphic art photos with of all things lens flares involved.  JJ Abrams approves these cards.

I am not sure why Topps feels the need to have theme, but here are some more inserts following the "theme":

The top six cards are called Upper Class and they are nice enough, I guess.  They cover the rookie class of each year and highlight the best of the bunch.  Yankees fans can wallow in seeing Cano in the pinstripes one last time.  The bottom three cards are from a set called 50 Years of the Draft and in a stroke of luck I got not one but two Derek Jeter cards.  Joy.

I am greatly disappointed that the All Star Rookie Cup inserts are hobby only.  I will have to pick these up on ebay I suppose.  Must. Have. Trophy. Cards.  (If you have these to trade, you know what to do...)

Since Topps has decided to constantly shove minis down our throats, this is what we got this time around:

These aren't just minis, they are die cut minis based on the 1989 design which I guess kind of reflects this year's base design.  I am personally minied out and all these do is remind me of these.  Underwhelming, to say the least.

Lastly, Topps pulled out the old 1983 Super Veteran idea and made it as bland and boring as they possibly could:

Also there you see the 14th year of the numbered gold parallel which would be fine if they didn't make any other parallels...and oh boy, are there parallels.

In the jumbo peg boxes were yellow parallels:

The one thing I can say about these is I am glad that they have taken the celebration photos out of the super short print realm and made them base cards.  And no, I didn't get any super duper short prints in these boxes, not that I care much.

Topps also has these Power Player parallels, which are plain parallels with no foil:

They have codes on the back and I have no clue if this is a game or a contest or whatever Topps has been doing the last few years.  If anyone wants these codes, I happily will let you have them if you have the other Mets cards or something.

These are the shiny red hot foil parallels:

I think I preferred last year's shiny green ones. 

These being Target boxes, there were also red Target exclusive cards.

They also do blue for Walmart and purple for Toys R Us.  Since I don't shop in Walmart at all and have no need to ever go into TrU, I only ever see get these in packs.  I like the bold red border, it doesn't really clash with too many teams - though the Royals and Brewers come close - and for teams like the Phillies, Nationals, and Red Sox, they look great.  And for the A's, they of course become accidentally Christmas themed.  

My only issue with all these parallels?  Well, look:

In two blasters and two jumbo packs, I got 40 of them.  Forty!  Three each in the jumbos and two in each pack of the blasters and that is way way waaaaaay too many.  Unless this is unusual and I just have a shit load of them.   Not shown are the camo, black, pink, clear(!), platinum, and the printing plates.  You can make a rainbow page with just the flagship set now.  I would rather have more base cards.

Speaking of base cards, lets get back to them:

Like I said, there is some great photography going on in this set.  I also like that the design works well both horizontally and vertically; this is not always the case.  The backs are decent and include for the first time WAR, which is appreciated (though they do not say which version they are going with).  It is also pretty nifty that they tied in the wave element from the front to the back.  They also have a little blurb from everyone's rookie year since, hey, everyone was a rookie once.

So. More themes.  More parallels.  More minis.  Topps seems stuck in a rut.  The look on Mike Trout's face kind of covers my overall feelings about all this - "meh" with a touch of dread and disgust.  There has to be a reason for all this stagnation and a lack of innovation and in fact, it is right there on the wrapper if you look closely...

Enhance!

Yup, there's you're problem.

Football '13 Week 6: Road Trip! (Cancelled).

       When the schedule came out earlier this year, I got very excited at the prospect of the Saints playing the Patriots.  This match up doesn't happen very often - every four years to be specific.  Plus, since it was an away game, it gave me the rare opportunity to see the Saints close to home as Foxboro is barely a three hour drive from the house.  Not to mention that New England in October is quite the spectacle to behold, nature wise.  I was psyched.  I was all set to get gouged on StubHub and make the trip.

       And then my brother and sister in law decided to have a child.  This fact is kind of a big deal as it is the first of the new generation in my family.  They like children and are far more god-fearing than I am and in that, they decided to have the Christening this weekend.  I love football but family comes first, so I begrudgingly gave up my road trip to southern Massachusetts and instead I am headed in the other direction this morning, on my way to Pennsylvania.  I am not looking forward to a morning in church but ya gotta do whatcha gotta do.  It helps that the kid is absolutely adorable.  

So in honor of my aborted trip, here are the 1998 Bowman Interstate Parallels.  Baseball used the international theme and flags but since 99.9% of football players are from the United States, they used state maps instead:

And as a delightful bonus, on the back they put a mocked state license plate with a position or player appropriate pun (check out that Rickey Dudley):

One of the best parts of a road trip is finding these on other people's cars and chuckling, groaning, or trying to figure out what the hell they are trying to say. 

I liked these silly cards so much, I made two pages, one of veteran players and one of rookies:

1998 had a great rookie class, granted, these are some of the lesser lights. 

The silver lining to the day is that it is a late afternoon game, so all of the church nonsense and most of the family hobnobbing will be done by the time kickoff, um, kicks off at 4:25 (not to mention my brother has a much much bigger TV than anyone else I know).  So rather than getting pelted with objects in the upper deck of Gillette Stadium, I'll get to have seconds of a catered spread in the comfort of my brother and SIL's living room while watching the game.  Hmmmm, maybe they did me a favor?

Football '13 Week 5: It Belongs In a Museum.

       Back in the early '90s, the shiny high end parallel war scorched the earth.  Every brand came out with a high end brand and every high end brand tried to out-shiny the other guy.  It was an ever escalating battle that was eventually deemed moot by serial numbers and game used swatches.  It also left a few brands in its wake.  One of them was one I thought could have been a contender: Score.  Score came out in 1988, a year before Upper Deck.  It was colorful and had big bright pictures.  It's entry in the high end sweepstakes was Pinnacle and Pinnacle looked great.  It had solid designs and great backs.  Then when everyone decided to go full bleed (one of the shots across the bow Stadium Club is responsible for), Pinnacle lost its way.  It stayed simple, but just could not keep up with the SPs and Stadium Clubs of the world.  Score was eventually bought out by Donruss and Donruss was eventually bought out by Pinnacle and by 1997, Score and Pinnacle were gone.  Panini has brought back the Pinnacle name recently, but it just isn't the same. 

The one thing Pinnacle can hang its hat on was what they called the dufex effect.  It made things all shimmery and shiny and it looked wonderful.  Pinnacle referred to these parallel cards as the Museum Collection.  Sadly, I cannot explain why they decided that shiny was museum quality and not, say, painted-style pictures, but who am I to try to explain marketing from the 1990s? For football, they changed the name to the Trophy Collection, because, well, once again, who really knows...

I picked these cards up in recent years and never had the joy of pulling a shiny dufex out of a pack.  I have to think it was kinda mind-blowing in 1994 to pull such a weird wild card.  My, how times have changed.

So shiny, so 90s.  RIP Kory Stringer - always hydrate when you workout.

I never noticed before, but the corner of that Craver card is clipped off.  I also have a card from the wrong year on this page.  I am a terrible curator of my dufex museum. 

Football '13 Week 3: Shiny!

       I have my snacks and adult beverages.  I have the Saints and Giants (and Mets) all on at 1pm.  I am still in my pajamas and there is a beautiful first-day-of-autumn breeze blowing through my living room.  Life is pretty good right now.  This is easily one of my favorite kinds of days, so let's look at my favorite kind of cards...shiny!!!

2012 Bowman Platinum:

These are the rare cards that actually scan better than they look in real life.  Pay no attention to the man in the lower right hand corner (gotta get a replacement for that one).

2001 Topps Archive Reserves:

This set was done in the early aughts faux-vintage retro reprint phase of card companies.  They did two years of baseball, they only did one year of football.  You don't see the name Elroy a lot anymore - I think the Jetsons killed it - and he also had one of the best nicknames ever, Crazy Legs. 

2005 Topps Chrome Gold inserts:

I have no idea if they did refractor versions of these cards, but it would hardly matter.  They are very dynamic all on their own.  Vegas baby, Vegas!  This is the rare page with a mix of current and retro players.

2000 Bowman Reserve:

This is an all refractor type set that is the exact opposite of the Bowman Platinum above; no scan I have ever seen does these justice.  It's like they put extra rainbow shininess in the mixture before they went to press.

1998 Topps Gold Label:

There are a million variations to these; I am pretty sure that was their only reason to exist.  It's like they all sat around in Topps HQ and said "hey, how infuriating can we make a set to collect?" and came up with these beauties.   Of course, they then outdid themselves and came up with these, though they never did that design in football.  I have no idea if that is a good thing or not.

1994 Topps Football Special Effects:

I always found these parallels fascinating.  It features a shiny bit that I had never seen before or since.  The player name is done in silver glowing letters and there is a plastic sheen of little checkerboard lens flares over the whole thing.  They never did this to any other set and I wonder why (update: I just looked it up and they also did it to Premiere Hockey that year).  Maybe it wasn't received well?  Maybe it was too expensive to do?  It is a shame, because it looks damn cool. I once considered building the whole set of these, but decided a single page would more than suffice.

1993 Stadium Club:

Look! Little tiny squares of shiny.  Remember when little tiny squares of shiny were reason to get excited?  Now little squares of fabric don't even get people excited.

1998 SPx:

Die Cut! Shiny! Holograms! So 1990's, it hurts.

1996 SP:

This is a great example of a set that is deceptively shiny.  There is no extra foil or refraction or anything else going on, but the texture of the borders and the darkened backgrounds make everything stand out a little extra.

1994 Upper Deck Electric parallels:

It's electric, boogie woogie woogie!!!

1991 Upper Deck Game Breakers:

This is the entire nine card set -- I love it when that happens.  These are nothing but shiny.  Did Upper Deck fall in love with holograms in the early 90's or what?  My scanner does a pretty good job with these.

1998 eX football:

Talk about a 90's card maker's wet dream...half shiny, half clear plastic.

1998 Fleer Brilliants Blue parallel:

With a name like "Brilliant" you think it would be a lot shinier.  The blue parallel at least adds a little interest to the background, the regular issue was just flat silver.  I'm not sure why I included this page.

1998 Flair Showcase:

Unlike those lame Brilliants above, these are so well done.  The background is in one solid shiny muted color and it makes the foreground picture pop.  Throw in the simple design elements and font and you have well hell of a good looking card.

2004 Press Pass Big Numbers inserts:

This is one of the first football pages I ever put together and it is exactly the way I made it nine years ago.  Larry Fitzgerald turned out to be a pretty good player, as did Will Smith (this one, not this one). The rest?  Very hit or miss, though it is a shame that Jarrett Payton (Walter's son) never got much of a chance.  I was really rooting for him.

2007 Score Atomic parallel:

On these, the shiny is done in a series vertical streaks.  They seem to have been influenced by the credits in the movie The Matrix.  With three games going with high interest now and none the rest of the day, maybe I should watch that, I mean, come on, anything is better than watching the Jets.