Call Me Repair Man Man Man Man Man

So just because a blog bat around is from years ago doesn't mean I can't still talk about it right? Great, because there's a neat one I found not too long ago that I want to talk about even if it was from around the start of the decade.

Looking at the archives for various blogs brings up an interesting topic presented originally by Stale Gum.

The topic was, what would you do to fix Topps flagship? The only rule being that you have to keep the price to $2> per pack (before taxes).

This was shortly after 2011 Topps Series One had been released. Apparently everyone had opinions on the set (before we would all realize just how much worse flagship would become), and this one presented people with an opportunity to give more of them.

I'm a good seven years late but with 2018 Topps set to hit the shelves in two days I figure I'd put in my two cents. If your blog wasn't around in 2011, I'd recommend you chime in too.

Step 1: More Players

I know that a few other bloggers suggested this as well, and I'll suggest it too since it's a good idea.

It appears that between Series 1, 2 and Update, there's a total of 990 base cards (give or take). That's all fine and good until you realize that most of the Update checklist is garbage (stupid ASG cards) and not every player receives a card. Some no name on the Rays could carve out a 10 year career as a solid bench guy and they might get like 2-3 flagship cards tops (no pun intended) during that entire time. Well unspectacular, insignificant, forgettable teams like the Rays need cards too, I say bloat the checklist to four digit totals so all 750+ players can be properly represented between the three sets. Or as close as possible considering that some individuals may not have contract agreements with Topps in place. Just make the teams as close to equally represented in the base sets as you can, make the All Star Game cards short prints, and go ham with the favoritism all you want with the SSPs/SSSPs/SSSSPs/SSSSSPs etc...

Step 2: Bring Back Retail-Exclusive Parallels

When collectors talk about parallels, they often demand less of them. But in my case I want certain ones brought back.

Up until a few years ago you could find exclusive parallels at retail stores like Target (red), Walmart (blue) and Toys R us (purple). The first two stores have since dropped the retail only parallels (apparently they prefer exclusive products now) and with Toys R Us declaring bankruptcy I think the purple parallels are going to go bye-bye soon. Scratch that, I think they're gone given how I've seen jack regarding 2017 Update's purple parallels. Retail shoppers still get things like exclusive retail only inserts or those manufactured relics that come in blasters but they all suck donkey balls. I would much rather see a return of the colorful borders seeded at like one per pack or something.

And while we're at it, bring back the retail only format of the black parallels and throwback parallels too and print more of them. None of this serial numbered to 66 or 99 crap.

Step 3: More Than Just Players

When I said I wanted to inflate the checklist to the 1000's, I meant it. I mean why stop at just representing all 30 teams equally? Why not also focus on the managers, coaches and front office personnel? I'd love to get cards of key people like the manager, GM, the President of Baseball Ops, the shadow GM's with fancy titles, the director of player development, roving instructors, etc... In an age where we have access to so much information, knowing who exactly is running the show has never been easier (and important).

Although to be fair these might be better served as inserts. Either way I still think it'd be neat to have cards of in charge of making lineups and in charge of creating teams that can make lineups in the first place.

That said just keep it to people actually involved with the baseball aspects of the team. No one wants "anonymous executives."

Step 4: Different Photos From Opening Day/Team Sets/Topps Chrome/Topps Chrome Update

This is a pretty common opinion. It's no secret that Topps tends to just rehash the same images over and over again for Opening Day, Flagship, the team sets, Topps Chrome and occasionally Topps Chrome Update. So I recommend that they use different pictures for all of them. Would be kind of neat to see different photographs used on basically the same design in a context that DOESN'T involve shortprints.

Step 5: Stop With The Inserts That Have Blank Spaces

From COMC

Back in 2012 I remember a lot of the inserts pissing me off because there was a whole lot of unnecessary space left open. I think the idea was so the card could look nice when a sticker autograph (or an actual on-card autograph) was applied to it, but that doesn't excuse how ugly the unstickered cards (which outnumber the autographed cards BTW) look.

From COMC

Plus it's not even a card worth getting ink on. I mean what kind of person is going to want to get a turd like this signed? If you're a normal person with even the slightest bit of taste you can find loads of cards better than these lousy inserts to either get ink or have a sticker autograph on. Admittedly I haven't kept up with flagship since like 2013 so I'm not sure if these kinds of inserts are around anymore, but if they're still around I hope these needlessly empty cards go away.

Step 6: Revamp The Boxed Complete Sets

This is straying from the topic at hand but it's kind of related. Have you ever seen those $50 boxed complete sets of flagship at your local big box store or LCS? Well if you have you're probably like me in thinking they could use some work. Starting with how they only do Series 1 and 2. I've long held the opinion that if Topps is just going to package the entire flagship set into one entity for lazy people then they might as well include Update.

For another thing the special bonuses could be improved. Something more than a shiny refractor of a player from the past with a selection of five random variation cards. I mean those are a good starting point, but maybe bring the number of variations up and then take the lazy route of just chucking an autograph in there. If I'm paying $40+ for something I'd better be getting an autograph. To keep costs low, 28 of the 30 autographs will be garbage barely worth the shipping fee on eBay and the last two will be Bryce Harper and Mike Trout. All sticker autographs.

Recently Topps has started opting for relics. Which is nice, but unless it's a patch or something limited to like five copies it's still not worth it.

So here were the best ideas I could come up with to "help" Topps flagship. The fact that these were the best of the best should indicate just how horrible the rest of them were.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).

A Leftover From 2017

In the waning days of 2017, a few last minute things arrived in the mail that I didn't really get to blog about. Might as well wrap it up with the last one.

Torrens card number 115 (or 114, as my Excel spreadsheet seems to indicate) is this orange mini.

For whatever reason, the 2017 edition of Topps mini is not hitting the shelves (read: eBay) as much as they did in years prior. I've read that people who ordered the cards online had issues getting them in hand. Also the price-to-card ratio made a lot of folks reluctant to pick up any in the first place.

The market is so nill on these that I don't even have the base mini yet. So far I've got the blue numbered to 10 and the orange numbered to 25 above. All I need now are the red (numbered to five), gold (the 1/1) and the base. The chase for Torrens' return to cardboard rages onward.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).

Super Late

In passing I mentioned how I arranged to get a J.T. Miller Young Guns card sent to me. It was in preparation for his signing event at a bar in NYC.

It arrived two weeks after the event had happened.

What happened?

Well first off I bought the card from Canada. I knew that it would then be considered international shipping but I picked this one because it had Free Shipping.

I knew that international items can take time but I made sure to get the item roughly three weeks before the Miller signing event. If I've had packages and letters from foreign countries (with free shipping) reach me in two weeks in the past, so why the heck not? Plus the estimated arrival period was right where I wanted it to be.

I guess I should've known better than to trust the postal delivery service, even if it was late November/early December. The card finally arrived a week and then some after the end of the estimated delivery time period. I kept in contact with the seller who was super nice and helpful, but it ended in the 3rd best case scenario where the card arrived, but it arrived late.

It's a shame because this card would've looked fantastic with a crisp blue sharpie signature on it. I specifically picked this card because A). rookie card and B). the white ice in the back (and Miller's uni) makes it a perfect specimen to contrast with the ink.

Instead I scrambled with what I had and settled for the 2017-18 Upper Deck base card. It's not bad and I still like it but, I can't help but wonder what might've been if the YG had come in time.

So lesson learned. Buy international cards with the Free Shipping option if you're either not in a hurry or if you can afford to think ahead 2-3 months in advance of whatever plans you have for it.

And if you're in a real hurry, go the domestic route and swallow the $3 shipping fee.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).

Let It Snow

So you've probably heard that winter is cold. Especially this winter where temperatures are regularly around negative degrees celsius. Just recently NYC got a blizzard that proved to be more wind than snow, which kind of explains why it's so freaking cold.

I appear to be one of the few people in my circle/area/species who actually likes snow. Or at least doesn't flat out hate it. I mean I get it, we homo-sapiens are tropical creatures. We're probably better suited for jungles and very damp, moist, humid areas as opposed to snowy, icy tundra.

My motto has always been to survive by wearing lots of layers. It's probably just me but I always wear three layers of clothes once the lows start hitting the 10 degrees celsius mark in December and once they hit zero I add a fourth/fifth. I prepare two scarves in my backpack, and also two hats (a knitted hat and an overly large New Era had above it) to protect my hair that I keep long on purpose in the winter (no joke, my hair's just as long as my girlfriend's now). And for added security I keep napkins in the jacket pockets, and two layers of gloves (rubber gloves and a regular gloves on top). Of course with Timberland boots because Nu Yawk. I look ridiculous/fat but we'll see who has the last laugh when they have to walk to the store in knee-deep snow because the roads are blocked and you're out of milk.

Snow has become the scapegoat as everything wrong about winter. Personally I assign blame for why winter is so cold on wind. Blasted wind blowing snow in your face and piercing whatever clothes you have on that wasn't specifically built to combat it (windbreakers are your best friend folks!). Where was this wind when I was burning to death in July?!

But it has it's positives. As a kid I loved getting days off of school thanks to the snow. When it snows the temperature usually rises thanks to increased humidity (kind of like when it warms up a bit when it rains in fall). It can create some of the visually stunning scenes in nature ever (which are usually the uninhabited ones). Plus playing in the snow can be a lot of fun, even as an adult.

2018

Like how I've had this quasi-yearly tradition where I take a trench run picture of Poe Dameron's X-Wing in the snow. Obviously it's nothing like the actual scene but as more blizzards hit NYC at the start of the year, the more I'm willing to keep this going.

2017

2016

One of these days I'm going to make the porch light green for the sake of making it seem even remotely close to the original.

So winter is here. It's cold, our heating bills are going up, everyone else is saying they'd prefer to be melting in 40 degrees c weather (remember that when summer rolls around), northerners keep complaining about the snow and smug ex-northerners who moved down south will keep reminding everyone that they don't regret leaving for Key West.

Their loss. You haven't lived until you've had sex in the snow.

Of course snow has it's drawbacks too. It takes a lot of work to clear from your driveway, it tends to clump up and get harder/turn into ice, the sludge it leaves on the roads are disgusting, it can delay traffic for hours.

As always thanks for stopping by. To my fellow northerners, stay warm and please take extra special precaution when traveling. Wear multiple layers of clothing before you leave the house regardless of how much that down jacket makes you look like the Michelin Man. Then again, I assume a lot of you already know this. I mean I'm in NYC where it's cold but usually not AS cold as say... Buffalo or Peoria. Woof.

Take care :).

Goals For 2018, Grades For 2017

Yup, new year, new goals and new grades to dish out.

Unrelated Scan 1

2017 Grades

5. Go Three Weeks Without Buying Cards Per Month

F. This goal was doable for like the first few months of the year. Then, well, you all saw how the number of Torrens posts I made went up right?

4. Monthly Limit for Card Purchases

F. Forgot to set limits for pretty much the entire year.

3. Acquire Autographs of The Ghost crew

F. I got the Kanan Jarrus (Freddie Prinze Jr.) autograph and that was it. Zeb (Steve Blum) remains at large.

2. Downsize My Yankees Collection

C-. I did manage to get rid some Yankees thanks to Twitter contests I held (yup, I'll hold contests but I won't participate in them) and a yearly donation to The Lost Collector Card Institute, so now I have significantly less. I gave myself a barely passing grade because I'm still left with way too many prospect cards that I'm going to have to sort out and do something about before they drown me in my sleep.

1. Create a Definitive and Cohesive List of Players I'm collecting

D. All I did was create a list of foreign/non-Japanese players who've played for the Chunichi Dragons, only to forget about it by April. That's not good enough.

Yikes, what a horrible report card. Almost mirrors the one I got this past semester (which was much worse mind you). Ugh!

But that was that, now to see what's next.

2018 Goals

5. Get to 10 Bowman Chrome Luis Torrens base autographs

In 2017 I actually picked up a few Torrens BoChro autographs for fairly cheap. After realizing that I might as well take advantage of a market I've been looking for years, I made it to eight Torrens BoChro autos. My goal is to pick up at least two more of these base autographs. Not to be all "hoarding prospector" like, but because it pleases me to see like an array of the same card while knowing that they're all autographed for some reason.

4. Get to 10 Filip Chytil Young Guns Rookies

Okay, for this goal I'm going full prospector hoarder mode. Because I want to be the crazy guy who amasses a fairly large collection of the same card. What better than a promising New York Rangers rookie who figures to be a key part of the Rangers' center depth going forward? Two down, eight more to go.

3. Zero Boxes or Full Priced Blaser Boxes

Since early 2015 I've had a decent streak going where I stay away from opening any hobby boxes or blaster boxes at full value. It wasn't until my 2017-18 Upper Deck Hockey break that the streak ended (even then I got a $5 discount) but meh, it was fun. Still, with baseball products becoming increasingly predictable and not quite up to snuff anymore, I think I'll go back to passing on buying boxes. Same goes for blasters, unless they're heavily discounted.

2. No More Card Shows

If all I'm going to do is complain about them, then I might as well stop going :P. Besides, I can always mail in cards to get signed if I wanted to (and I might actually).

1. BUDGET

Alright, no more fooling around. Time to go back to penny pinching mode. Every time I set an arbitrary limit to how much I can spend for myself, I create excuses and exploit loopholes. So I'm going back to my old "no buying cards for six months" thing. I came close to completing it in 2016, I have hopes that 2018 will be the same.

EDIT: Allow me to add an addendum here. If I do purchase something in one of the six other months, I can only spend $50 during those months. Max.

Unrelated Scan 2

With that, those are my goals for the new year that is upon us. Wish me luck. I hope you all have the best of luck with your goals too.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).