By Force

The bad combination of my lack of boxed/packed purchases, and my lack of any luck pulling anything of note in the boxes/packs I do buy, keeps me from acquiring unique cards. Namely things that sound like what the "super sick hits" crowd would be into. In concept at least.

For instance the uber (the word, not the shitty company) popular short print (SP) autograph, or the rare dual autograph or the even more elusive triple autograph.

If you want a shot at these via packs/boxes you're probably going to have to dump several months worth of salary to buy several cases. Maybe you might hit one in your sixth case.

If you want them on the secondary market, you might be able to find some with underwhelming names for cheap but most will cost a fair bit because the people who pulled those cards expect it to pay for their six+ cases.

Which is why the IP/TTM route gives me a great alternative.

The Jacob Faria card right there is one of my latest TTM returns. It'll be featured in the month-end roundup post, but I'm showcasing it here first because it sparked a topic worth talking about.

That Faria is an SP. It's a photovariation or whatever from 2017 Topps Update. Last year's Update had a million SP's and were printed (and more importantly inserted) at a rate where they felt like they weren't even SP's at all. I sent it out via TTM thinking "meh, why not?" and now, by sheer force, is my first SP auto.

Hah, take that certified SP autos! I got one for far less than you'd cost. It's actually on-card and not a sticker placed on a card printed at the last minute to boot!

Earlier this year I completed my first dual autograph. Courtesy of Matt Sauer and Clarke Schmidt in Staten Island. To this day I love this card and it remains my first (and to date only) dual autograph. I had chances in the past with the likes of Eric Jagielo, Aaron Judge and Ian Clarkin that I let slip by due to sheer fear of the unknown and risk. I also botched it with a dual that never came back to me even after it was signed by Billy McKinney. I wasn't going to let it happen this time. I grabbed the opportunity to get both at once, and I feel all the better for it.

So I have an SP auto and a dual auto too. Do I have a triple auto?

I do now!

The triple auto above actually came in my mail box on the exact same day as the Faria. Meaning I got all of these in the span of about four months (at most). Although if you include the time it took me to get the signatures on these three, it goes way longer. Let's rewind a bit...

This journey started in 2016 when the Doyle came back to me via TTM in March. Heath and Rajsich were prominent, but also oddly elusive signers. Any TTM addresses they once had floating around on the internet were shoddy, out of date, and untrustworthy at best. So I kept this card around hoping the two would show up at the local card show.

Heath finally did in 2018. I blogged about it three weeks ago.
This is where shit got serious. It's one thing if a triple-auto failed because the first guy didn't even respond/sign. But now I've put time and money into this and am OVER the halfway point to completion. It's officially a project. I'd have to really nail it on the last signature by any means necessary. Of course Rajsich was still pretty hard to find via TTM (although some of my friends in Japan have had success with him). But as luck would have it a reliable method of obtaining his autograph popped up.

Through the wonder of mail-in autograph ordering, I got Dave Rajsich. Completing this triple auto. Rajsich was a signer at another show the organizers of my semi-local card show was hosting. Unfortunately that location was way too far for me to attend in person so I sent this in as a mail-in (which also meant I paid a fee, worth it!). It came back in the SASE I sent along with it, so this too will count as a TTM for the year.

There we go. A triple auto three years in the making. In a lot of ways it's fitting that the first triple auto I got is the one card from the 1979 Topps Yankees team set that has the words "Yankees" and "Prospects" on it. That compliments the dual auto from the two (assigned to) Staten Island boys well. Too bad Faria is a Ray and ruins the symmetry. But I don't see my Luis Severino/Don Mattingly/Robinson Cano/Joe DiMaggio SP's getting inked any time soon so I guess I don't have any choice.

So to recap I acquired a...

short print autograph,

dual autograph,

and a triple autograph all in 2018.

Man, 2018's been one fun year for me as an autograph collector I can tell you that much.

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

Subjective Value

By now most of you can probably tell that I don't particularly care about the book/Beckett/fair-market value of my collection. The "value" I attribute to my collection is purely in terms of how much enjoyment it brings me in just having it. Thus far that level of enjoyment has been extremely high. High enough for me to continue collecting in spite of knowing that the money could be used in a way better manner (e.g. actual investments like stocks and bonds).

But every now and then I wonder about what would happen if that enjoyment ever disappears. What would happen then? Why would that enjoyment ever disappear in the first place?

I'm not really talking in terms of "what if I leave collecting?", but more along the lines of "hmmm, this card isn't nearly as special to me as it was in the past, what should I do with this card then?".

Real talk, I don't have a good 80% of the really nice cards I used to have back in 2013, because I've moved a lot of them and the shift towards what means a lot to me now has been drastic. A Posada autograph numbered to 10, a Pettitte autograph, a Cano/Melky dual autograph, various other items that were pretty scarce and unique, all gone. At one point I really wanted to have them. If I didn't I wouldn't have dished out assets (cash or cards) to get them. But at some point later on I basically decided "meh, I can live without them". And given how I haven't missed them in the time since, that appears to have been the case.

So if that happened to my nicer cards, can it happen to one of my key collections?

Of course when I say that, that could only mean that I'm wondering if I'll ever stop collecting Torrens. Or if you want to read even further into it, if it means I'd dismantle my collection and get rid of all of it.

I'd like to think that I'm at the point of no return now. The point where I go all in no matter what.

In theory that's not a bad stance to have. More cards? The optimist in me thinks that that just equals more fun. Bring it on!

But the cynic in me knows that that's a double edged sword.

Essentially I'm locked into a non-verbal agreement where I feel obligated to go after every single card that's set to be released in the future. It's fun to think about when you've got things under control, but as I've learned in the past 12 months, it can all get really overwhelming really quickly. Especially if you're unfortunate enough to have to deal with dumb parallels or dumb gimmicks like those 5x7's or 10x14's.

So to make an ass/example of myself I recently picked up several of these very parallels. I've gone on record in the past stating that if you want to assemble a halfway decent rainbow/collection, you need to start with the obscure/rare stuff first. In recent times obscure has become synonymous with crummy gimmick.

See what I mean? I present to you all two Torrens cards that have only one real discernible feature, a foil stamp! These are the Limited and All Star parallels respectively. Remember those big boxes of complete flagship sets that we always see and ignore at Target? Well some of them have these dumb foils on the front, making them parallels. I had a hunch something like this would happen (thanks a lot Acuña!) and it came true. To make matters worse, the Limited version is an online exclusive.

This is the type of shit that makes people give up on player collecting. It's what pushes me to the brink of quitting. Do I really want to spend money on this stuff? Well in the end I did, making me a total moron and leaving me feeling like a moron too.

Since I was picking stuff up I decided to go after some other cheap Series 2 Torrens parallels too. Most of which cost less than the $3.50 shipping fees. I forgot to mention it in my rainbow building post but, nothing will make your heart sink more than seeing that the serial numbered cards (that have print runs higher than 25) you want have $3.50 shipping fees attached to them. True story, just ask P-Town Tom, he knows the struggle/pain/torment.
Thank goodness the pink there at the bottom had free shipping.

But I know that this is the type of stuff that separates and elevates my Torrens collection from other Torrens collections (if there are any :P). This is the kind of dumb blind loyalty that got me through two rainbow builds.

I was going to put in a non sequitur here about how weird obscure cards show up in the weirdest places later, but then I got word that Torrens had a Topps Chrome Sapphire card. Topps Chrome Sapphire is Topps Chrome's online exclusive version. The only real difference is that there's a special cracked ice blue tint to the card and maybe there are a few parallels (too many parallels in my book). I hate that these exist. It means I have to chase them, not just this year, but also next year when they resurface as "Buyback VIP 1/1" variations. BLARG.

So when all his said and done, what am I supposed to do with this stuff if I ever do feel like the value these cards once had to me dissipates?

I don't know, I'll get back to you after I find the series 2 purple parallel that was sold exclusively at Meijer, the Topps Chrome Sapphire superfractor, the Topps Chrome Sapphire red refractor, a ton of other parallels, and my will to live.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.

Five Minute Blogpost

Create a blogpost in under five minutes? Um, okay...

Star Wars the Clone Wars is coming back!

Only for 12 episodes though :(.

Okay bye.

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

(2 minutes, take that!)

Blogging Investment

Not too long ago our good friend Fuji had an interesting question to close off his blogpost (as he is one to do). That question was how much time do we invest into our blog posts.

I've found that the answer varies depending on what the post I write about is about.

Before we start, let me just say that the timeframe I'm going to set these posts in is the time between when I finally start writing the new post and when I finally hit the Publish (or more often the Schedule) button for the last time. So I'm not counting the time the ideas have been in my head stewing and marinating (because if I included this then my unpublished/unmade farewell post would have been in the works for five years and counting).

Unrelated Scan 1

1). Less Than an Hour

I think the average amount of time I spend on a blogpost is anywhere between 30 minutes and an hour. For the most part these are fairly simple and short blogposts where I didn't go into much depth. Often times these could be shortened down into really simple "show and tell" posts or just me spouting nonsense like a sports talk radio host going into a monologue that lasts way too long. It's like once I start typing all those words just flow out. After that I usually reread what I wrote once or twice to make sure no egregious grammar mistakes are there (although minor ones do manage to slip through the cracks until I notice them six hours after the blogpost goes live). The posts that take less time are ones where I just lazily reuse the same pictures of cards I've already shown on this blog over and over again. The most time consuming aspect of these posts are likely just scanning, cropping and uploading photos for the sake of having a good enough presentation.

2). Between 1-2 Hours

Most of the posts where I recap my trips to Staten Island or Brooklyn take a good 1-2 hours to write. A lot of that is thanks to scanning/cropping/uploading pictures taking up at least 30 minutes. Every. Single. Time.

Because it takes me a good hour (and then some) to get home from the stadium(s) I usually spend the ride home thinking of what to write and say (often saving the decent lines into the Notes app on my phone). Then I just unload all of the words I deem worthy of sharing in one long ass blogging/typing session when I get home. Once the words are all written down I start scanning and putting them into place.

I know I mentioned that I'm only taking the time AFTER I press the new blog post button into consideration but I felt I needed to say that I do think ahead sometimes in the interest of conserving time. Plus even with that head start, it still takes me over an hour to write those posts because I have to look up information about the players.

3). More Than 24 Hours, Less Than a Week

If a blogpost takes more than two hours to make, then I've likely ended up writing it across multiple days. The "research" posts I make every once in a blue moon fall under this category, as well as the Clone Breaks. The post about 2004 Upper Deck Power Up took me a week to write because I wanted to be thorough. The first "Revisiting Profiles" post I ever made about Lefty Davis took me a week to write because information ended up being scattered across multiple sources and wouldn't/couldn't be gathered in one sitting. Of course my Ode to a Dodgers Prospect posts take a solid week to make too. Anything where I have to look at multiple sources at once requires more time to put them together to make one cohesive picture. At least for me anyway. In the end I'm uncharacteristically proud of how these turn out though. Like, I'd actually reread them when I'm bored levels of narcissistic pride.

4). More Than a Week, Less Than a Month

This category just has the monthly TTM roundups I do at the end/beginning of every month. The individual writeups for the people who send returns back to me are done in under an hour the day the SASE enters my mailbox, but the post itself isn't finished until the cutoff point I've set.

5). More Than a Month, Less Than a Year

I've had a few posts in the works for months. None of them ever get published the way they've existed for the better part of their draft stage. These posts that take forever are usually GIANT research posts where I have to look at and analyze dozens upon dozens of individuals for one handy dandy blogpost. Like take the one I infamously deleted where I was doing a profile on a lot of the bust prospects who got a shit ton of cards in the 1990's and 2000's. That took me several months to write (and it wasn't even done!). I accidentally deleted it and I started writing a new one. But in the time since I've decided to stop with that and have since slowly integrated the information originally gathered for that post into other posts.
And that's usually what happens to the other posts that take me forever to blog about. Most of the stuff I wrote for them get cannibalized to help spruce up other posts in the works (or to make the writing process a lot faster) and what's left ends up being deleted.

Related Scan

The only real exception to this was the post I wrote in 2017 where I reflected on Luis Torrens' first season as a big leaguer. That was written across the span of several months because it's easier to record the feelings/vibes/perceptions/stats when they're still new and happening as opposed to looking back after the season ended and with a different view than if I'd been writing it in real time. That clear vision and focus appears to be the only reason that that post survived and the rest didn't.

And that's about it. None of the posts I've written have ever taken more than a year to write.

Unrelated Scan 2

So yeah, I guess I probably invest a good two weeks worth of time into my blogposts when an entire year has passed if you were to properly keep track like some company's payroll department. No complaints from me though. The posts give the cards even more depth and meaning. Because blogging about them at all signals that these cards are significant enough for me to talk about them and share them with the world. In that regard blogging is an extension of my collecting hobby. I suppose that there is a part of me that thinks the time I spend writing could be better suited for other things, but then I remember that I've wasted a good two/three years of my life already by being on Twitter and think that my blogging is just fine by comparison.

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

Minor League Hockey Cards

To the surprise of absolutely no one, I've been on a hockey kick recently. More specifically minor league hockey. That also shouldn't be a surprise.

These are exciting times to be a fan of the New York Rangers and minor league hockey players. The Rangers are in a transition/rebuild phase where they're looking to build the next great Rangers team, and the young players they've got now are really exciting and figure to either be the next key pieces of the core going forward, or solid complimentary pieces surrounding whoever does end up being the core of the team.

So what better way to learn about minor league players (or potentially rookies) than through cards? As a guy who absolutely loves minor league baseball cards I'm super keen on learning the similarities and differences between baseball and hockey cards. So let's begin!

#1 Minor League Team Issues

Much like their baseball counterpart, hockey teams do have their own minor league issues. Some I purchased recently were made by a very familiar company.

CHOICE!

At this point I've declared Choice to be the number one minor league sports card company. They've made cards for the Staten Island Yankees, Trenton Thunder, Pulaski Yankees and Scranton Wilkes Barre Railriders, and now I find that they've made hockey cards for the Hartford Wolf Pack. The Wolf Park are the Rangers' AHL affiliate and the closest they've got to a triple-A affiliate.

The Gilmour card above borrows the 2016 Topps design but the back does a lot more than the original 2016 Topps back did. Featuring lots of details (mostly accolades) involving Gilmour. Love it.

I picked up some more Rangers prospects on cards made by Choice. Thanks to a eBay coupon brought to my attention by The Lost Collector, I managed to get my first taste of authentic minor league hockey cards.

The interesting thing about these is that the sizes of these cards varied. For the most part they're all your standard card size and fit in binder pages/sleeves with ease, but the Gettinger is the closest to an actual normal card and the other two are cut slightly thinner. You don't really notice it at first but when you stack all three together you can see the difference.

Still, I love minor league issues and I'm super glad hockey has their fair share of them too.

So there's one familiar concept down, the team issues. But then that leads to the next big question. Is there a mainstream prospect oriented hockey product.

#2 Mainstream Prospect Cards

When I say "mainstream" I mean cards that were distributed outside the arena the minor league teams play in. Or in other words, they're made by Upper Deck.

As far as I can tell there is no "Bowman" equivalent in the world of hockey. At best you've got the Young Guns rookie cards which are the "premium rookie cards" for the players who're lucky enough to be shown on them. But they're more akin to Topps flagship rookies more than they are to BoChro autos.

So if there's no Bowman, the next logical step is to wonder if there's a hockey version of Topps Pro Debut. There is.

This Sean Day is from the 2017-18 Upper Deck CHL set. UD's approach to prospect cards is to release entire sets dedicated to individual leagues. So there's a set for the Canadian Hockey League and one for the American Hockey League (possibly more but I couldn't find them).

This Chris Nell is from the AHL set.
Both cards are made similar to the flagship Upper Deck hockey cards only with a big less gloss on the front (makes it easier for signatures I suppose).

These very much remind me of Topps Pro Debut. Top prospects depicted in their minor league uniforms and their minor league teams? Yeah that's Pro Debut material right there. Even if you expanded it back to the original Tri-Star era Pro Debut concept.

Of course these are cool in their own way and I personally love the concept of card sets devoted to leagues. It appears as though both the AHL and CHL team sets are primarily made up of 100 cards each along with 50 short prints and fair bit of inserts and hits here and there. Very cool.

#3 Non-License Holders

So far we have the equivalents for the minor league team issues and Pro Debut down, but there is one area of card prospecting left to explore. The cards made by companies that don't have a license or permission to use logos. Choice (and any other company that may may minor league cards) get permission to use logos courtesy of the team that enlisted their services. Upper Deck has permission to use logos because they're the exclusive holder of all NHL related logos and trademarks (a monopoly isn't just a hockey thing people!). So of course that leaves the third parties. The ones that technically have permission thanks to the Players Union that allows them to make cards with the players' likeness and names, but nothing more.

In the baseball world that tends to fall on companies like Panini and Leaf. As far as Panini is concerned they only make the hockey stickers and nothing more since Upper Deck got the exclusive NHL rights (apparently not for stickers though, go figure). So that leaves Leaf free to make some cards using any means possible to get around the lack of logos.

Scan courtesy of COMC

For the most part Leaf tried getting around it by using minor league logos that they could get but that appears to have largely stopped. Nowadays they make things like entire sets dedicated to established big league goaltenders but without any team names or logos. As such you end up with pretty ugly cards like the one above.

Forgive me but for this part I decided not to pick up any cards on my to see how these are. I'm on a strict budget and these would've made me go over it by a lot. Also these cards look pretty ugly. Lots of open space, no photos and sticker autographs.

So with that, I think we can close the books on this research (for now) and determine that, yes, minor leagues are just as lively and in existence in hockey as they are in baseball.

I love minor league sports. I can't wait to go see my first ever minor league hockey game this year (if I can). Hartford (or Bridgeport?) here I come!

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

Budgeting... Success!

We've now reached the third and final installment of the card show. Thank goodness.

At this point a good $65 had been spent at the card show. $10 went to the entrance fee, $49 went to the autographs and the remaining $6 went to the dime box bargains.

In spite of this there were some more things I wanted. Hockey things. Non-sports things.

To be more precise, I wanted some hockey stuff for myself and vintage non-sports wax packs for my collecting buds overseas. Accomplishing both in one swoop on a limited budget wasn't going to be easy. In fact I'd dare call it impossible. But I found a way.

I found one hockey vendor with a Hartford Whalers hat and shirt. They were the only hockey-focused vendor in the entire show. Other vendors had some hockey but mainly big ticket items like the Connor McDavids or Auston Matthews or Mathew Barzals. I wanted Rangers. More specifically I wanted Rangers no one particularly knows or cares about (#MyBrand).

Case in point, this Rob O'Gara Young Guns card. This had been at the top of my mental want list for no reason other than "he's a Ranger now currently playing for the Hartford Wolfpack". There it was at the card show. I quickly had an idea of how to get it in a trade, but I'd need some more stuff for myself.

The vendor had a box with some old non-sport stuff. Stuff that would cost me $20 (s/h included) if I tried buying them all on eBay separately like a moron. I had some of them included.

They offered me a fair price for a big bundle. I countered with a trade offer.

I traded away the Brock Boeser Young Guns RC.

On the surface this is a bad trade for me. Because it really is. That Boeser YG goes for $30 on a bad day and $50 on a good one. At the same time, I had no real use for it other than as trade bait. I cashed it in to get two things I really wanted in one swoop. That matters more to me than what this could've potentially gotten me on eBay.

The seller threw in some extras to make it a bit more fair for me with that Jimmy Vesey rookie card and the Ryan Spooner rookie card. Vesey recently got signed to a two year extension to show what he can do under a different system/coach and reach his ceiling. Spooner is prime trade bait material but still with the Rangers at this time.

Maybe in time I'll come to regret this trade, but as for now Boeser isn't a Ranger so I'm pretty okay. I'm sure some of you are probably thinking I'm a moron and also thinking of how to swindle me out of my better cards, but the thing with me is that most of my better cards are really just assets I'm willing to trade away when I see something I REALLY like. I got one card I really wanted, two extras, and some fun stuff for friends for one non-autographed/non-serial numbered card. That's as much as I could reasonably want in a trade. Most of all the fact that I didn't end up spending even more cash on stuff is what really helps. I'm a lot more reluctant to spend $30+ in cash as opposed to trading away $30+ in card value.

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

Crave The Blue Sharpie Ink

(Editor's note: Apparently every card blogger ever has been to a show recently, here's another card show post)

Last year I had a pretty mediocre experience with a local card show. Nothing awful but enough to make me put not going to one in 2018 on my New Years Resolution goal.

Well here in October I failed my second NYR goal for the year by going to one anyway.

But this year's show wasn't all that bad. I actually stuck with my initial budget and kept costs down just enough that I wouldn't curse out the show's name when I went to withdraw money from the ATM. I picked up a fair number of things and just enough that'll ensure that I have plenty of blogging material this week. You've been warned.

Anyway, today will be part of the card show haul and features the main reason I went. As you all can imagine, it was for the autograph guests. The glorious, the stupendous, the expensive, autographs! Anything I do that's hobby related nowadays comes down to "Is this a Luis Torrens card or a card I have a chance of getting signed?" and nothing more. Feel free to look at me disapprovingly, but to me nothing makes a card cooler than getting some sharpie ink courtesy of the person featured on the card on it.

The local show was doing a reunion of sorts featuring some key members of the 1978 World Champion New York Yankees. As a guy who's been slowly (but surely) working on the 1979 Topps Yankees team set for years now, this was a perfect opportunity to knock some obscure ones off of my list. Unfortunately a lot of the members were expensive ($29 for Ed Figueroa?!), so I dwindled it down to two players I decided to get ink of.

The first of which was Albert Walter "Sparky" Lyle.
Lyle was signed by the Baltimore Orioles as a free agent back in 1964 but later drafted by the Boston Red Sox in the MLB draft (I have no clue how things worked back then so I won't bother). He made his MLB debut in 1967 as a Red Sock and would serve as the team's closer for the late 60's and early 70's. Then in 1972 he was traded to the New York Yankees, a trade the Red Sox would really regret, as he racked up a ton of saves with the powerhouse Yankees in the 70's. During the six years Lyle was a Yankee he was named to three All Star Games, he won two World Series rings, won an AL Cy Young and was twice the league leader in saves. Lyle was eventually traded to the Texas Rangers following the 1978 trade along with several other people in exchange for Dave Righetti and several more people. After that his effectiveness started to ware off and by 1983 his career was over. He later went to be a manager for the Somerset Patriots (indy ball).

Lyle was pretty nice and the line for him was the biggest. I waited until 30 minutes before his session was due to end to get into line and it still took a line for me to finally get his signature. I attribute that to him having a friendly personality as he made conversations with pretty much all of the people looking to get his signature.
Sidenote, it doesn't surprise me at all that the show organizers scheduled Lyle and Graig Nettles on separate dates.

The second but definitely not least autograph I got was from long time journeyman MLBer, Mike Heath.
Heath was drafted by the New York Yankees in the second round of the 1973 MLB Player Draft. Originally Heath was a shortstop/infielder but in 1976 he was converted into a catcher where his strong arm could be a really useful asset. He was a pretty okay catcher offensively but with Thurman Munson behind the plate at the time he was blocked and spent most of his time in the minors. Even in 1978 when he won a World Series Ring he spent a lot of time in the minors. Heath was part of the trade I mentioned earlier that sent Lyle (and others) to Texas for Righetti (and others), and spent some time with the Rangers org before being traded again to the A's in a minor trade. With the A's he found his playing time increasing as well him being relied upon to man more than one position. He played second, third, short and all three outfield spots. Basically he was the super utility guy and that goes a long way in explaining how he managed to carve out a very nice 20 year career as a professional baseball player.

Heath was also an extremely friendly person. I gave him a card of his for him to keep and he offered to sign it for me in addition to the RC above. Of course I declined and asked him to keep it but that little gesture goes a long way.

So yeah, no "wow, I wasted money to meet a jerk" stories thank goodness. Then again Lyle has always had a reputation as a practical joker and someone who can laugh at everything in life, while Heath literally made the most of every situation he was ever thrust into. So I guess it shouldn't be too surprising.

The two signature combined cost me $49. A steep cost I know, but to be honest I'm pretty satisfied. I made huge strides with my 1979 project thanks to the Lyle autograph. And I'm only one Dave Rajsich signature away from completing my first ever tri-auto! Best of all, he's signing at another card show so I may attempt a mail in request. Fingers crossed.

So big thanks to Mr. Lyle and Mr. Heath for the awesome autographs.

Stay tuned for some more posts about the card show this week.

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

2018 IP Auto Count: 83

Four Eye Openers

So one of the realms of sports I rarely ever bother going into is college sports. College baseball, basketball, football, hockey, etc... I don't pay attention to any of that.

Except maybe on MLB draft day to see what players did in college performance wise. But other than that, college sports aren't my thing. Why? Well the most obvious reason why is that my college(s) up here in the northeast doesn't exist in the world college sports (none of the local colleges here do). But the biggest reason can be summed up in one acronym.

NCAA

Yup, one of the most controversial, shadiest and secretive organizations in America (which is saying a lot). The debates surrounding college sports have been around for as long as I can remember, and they'll probably stay around until we're all wiped out in the upcoming nuclear war.

Everybody has their opinions on the various issues surrounding the NCAA and their collegiate athletic programs around the country. The biggest of all being whether or not the players deserve compensation. Some argue they're students and they're being compensated for with a scholarship. A counter argument is that the amount of revenue they bring in every year far exceeds the value of the scholarship and they deserve a bigger cut of the pie that is the NCAA's revenue. Which reportedly topped $1 billion in 2017.

Now please spare me your opinions on this. I really don't care. I've been alive and on the sports-faction of the internet long enough to know that people telling others what they think isn't changing shit about the current situation that the NCAA and the athletes are in right now. It's just regurgitating the same conversations over and over again. And if I wanted to see that I'd just read the comments on (insert popular sports blog here) articles.

I just wrote all of that because that's simply what keeps me away from college sports. Too much bullshit around an inferior grade product.

That said, every now and then I can enjoy college sports related things, depending on how they're presented to me.

So let me introduce a video series called "Foul Play". A four part video series created by SB Nation that focuses on the debacle centered around the University of Mississippi aka "Ole Miss" in recent years where they've been under investigation by the NCAA for giving money to players in exchange for commitments to come play for their football team, the Rebels.

The videos (all adding up to about/less than two hours) are amazing. Well produced, well shot, well made. I binge watched all of them in one sitting.

For me this was an amazing look at one sliver of the things that go on in the world of college football. Things that happen in southern football culture (though at this point I assume this happens well beyond Mississippi's borders in other parts of the country too, looking at you California). Things that are happening to real people, in real places, in real-ish time.

On top of that, (the later two episodes especially) go into what is the underlying root of the problem. Why are the schools, teams and athletes in situations like this? What can be done? What should be done? What ultimately will be done?

If you have two hours at your disposal this weekend I'd highly recommend giving these videos a shot. I wouldn't say that they made me interested in college sports (nothing really could), but it made it interesting enough that I'd willingly go back and watch these videos just for the heck of it even in spite of the subject matter.

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

Hooray! Hockey Stickers!

As the baseball offseason slowly approaches like the walk of death, that means that we're in the transitioning phase right now. Baseball is winding down, football is well underway, preseason basketball is heating up, soccer is happening somewhere in the rest of the world, and regular season hockey is almost upon us!

As of this post I'm still not exactly a hockey "expert" or superfan. I'm just a regular fan who likes the New York Rangers. Especially their prospects. But I do like the team a lot, even if they don't have much of a shot at a postseason run this season. I support the Rangers' current rebuild where they're not tanking/losing on purpose, but they know they're not good enough to contend so they're on standby looking to make shrewd trades to make their 2019 NHL Draft selections so much better, and to give them just enough cap space to sign some big name free agents to speed up the rebuild process (looking at you Artemi Panarin).

But of course, this kind of thinking/fanalysis lends itself to going down a very dangerous hole. One where I start looking at players as names on a spreadsheet and as assets like they're account names on a Balance Sheet.

So to remedy that I rely on things like cards, and stickers to help me attach a human face to a name.

Which finally brings me to today's topic. The 2018-19 Panini-brand NHL Stickers are finally out and I grabbed a the official sticker book as well as some packs while at Modell's.

I tried building last year's book right after the season ended (bad idea), and failed. This season I'm not sure if I'm going to attempt to build the entire set, but I'm definitely motivated to finish off the Rangers team set. Why?

Because my boy Filip Chytil is in it! Woooooo!!!

Of course other players I really like like Mats Zuccarello, Pavel Buchnevich and Neal Pionk are represented too. As well as the King Henrik Lundqvist and long time veteran, Marc Staal.

Anyway Chytil is/was priority number one. As luck would have it I found a somewhat shady way to find him.

You see the packs this year are manufactured in a way where you can see through the other side and see which number the very last sticker is. Doing this I managed to find 170 (you can sort of see it on the scan too), which is Chytil's sticker number.

I also plucked out other packs in the 160's (the Rangers numbers) and several of the single digit ones.

I'd like to think that what I did wasn't pack searching since I didn't thumb my way through it or violate the packs so as to damage the insides. All I did was just turn them over and look at the number staring back at me through the cheap packaging. Kind of like seeing the first card through those thin plastic rack pack wrappers of Heritage or Archives. But I also kinda sensed that I was doing a lot of mental gymnastics to convince myself that I wasn't cheating.

Ultimately my concerns were quelled when a staff member/security guard standing a few feet away from me didn't tell me to stop. Good enough for me.

So with that trick, I managed to land not one but two Chytil stickers. Which was huge for me because eBay is running out of these quick.

Other Rangers I managed to get where Kevin Shattenkirk, King Hank, Mika Zibanejad and Kevin Hayes. Two of these were picked up deliberately, the other two just showed in the packs by pure happenstance.

This year the packs only contain five stickers per pack, down from seven per pack last season and pretty much on par with the FIFA World Cup stickers released earlier this year.

Here are some notable names I pulled.
Panarin is interesting because he's a really good winger who's set to be an unrestricted free agent at a really young age. He's also said to want to come to the Rangers. Getting someone like him (and Jacob Trouba down the line) would speed up the Rangers' rebuild immensely.

Matt Duchene is interesting, not particularly because of who he is himself, but because of the trade that brought him to the Ottawa Senators. Duchene was originally a Colorado Avalanche centre and one of the better players on the team. He was traded to the Senators in a three team trade in exchange for a big haul that included a protected first round draft pick. The Senators opted to keep their first round pick in the 2018 draft and will part with their pick in the 2019 draft instead. Which will turn out to be a really dumb move because in the 2018 draft they only had the fourth overall pick (they drafted Brady Tkachuk). In 2019 they're a strong contender for the first overall pick because their team is garbage. They were always going to be terrible, and pretty much cemented their horribleness when they traded away the franchise's best defenseman (Erik Karlsson) to the San Jose Sharks for... nothing.
But they have to forfeit that pick to the Avalanche because of the Duchene trade. So Colorado is in the most ideal spot ever. They're going to contend in the Western Conference and they're going to get a first overall (or no worse than top three) pick in the 2019 draft. Incredible. This is why I'm interested in hockey, we don't have boneheaded dumb things like that happen in baseball. For good or for bad.

Lastly there's Nico Hischier. Last year's rookie class featured a lot of solid names and Hischier was chief among them. The 19 year old Swiss forward has established himself as a good young piece for the New Jersey Devils to build around for years to come.

These are the only two special shiny stickers I pulled (outside of a few of the awards stickers I'm going to show shortly). A cute and very cool caricature of future HoFer Roberto Luongo and a team logo sticker for the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Plucking out the single digit cards (most of them anyway), allowed me to get seven of the nine award cards. These awards all the hockey equivalent of awards like MVP, Cy Young, ROY, along with gold gloves and a lifetime achievement award.

So all in all I managed to get NINE Rangers (including a Chytil dupe).
Which is perfect because I plan on using Panini's online services to get the rest of the stickers I need for the Rangers (and the last two Award stickers I need).

Also, the trick I mentioned earlier works with NFL stickers too. As the Eli Manning there proves.

I'm not 100% sure if I'll go after the rest of the sticker book after that (probably not), but I'm strangely addicted to this. Part of me really wants to see this through. The other part doesn't want to because this book has a lot more stickers to chase than the previous edition (the stickers per team went from 13 to 20!).

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