2001 Pacific Baseball

It shouts it on the front of the pack 'Pacific Ornaments'.

I was really hoping that this pack would contain one of the 24 Christmas ornaments cards. The pack says 2 in 37, so the chances are not bad. To some it is probably a stupid idea but the oddball in me was hoping....

Lets see-

113 Pokey Reece Reds

425 Bill Haselman Rangers

146 Larry Walker Rockies

450 David Wells Blue Jays

40 Javy Lopez Braves

178 Moises Alou Astros

354 Mike Matheny Cardinals

108 Danny Graves Reds

205 Blake Stein Royals

287 Glenallen Hill Yankees

440 Jose Cruz Jnr Blue Jays

319 Travis Lee Phillies

Nope.
No Luck. Not even a seasonal name.

Maybe next Christmas.



On an additional note
I am trying to find good homes for some of loose cards I have. Trades have been arranged with some of the teams but the Expos, Tigers, Angels, Twins, Yankees, Athletics, Mariners, Bay Rays, Rangers, Blue Jays, D-backs, Cubs, Rockies, Marlins, Dodgers, Pirates, Padres, Giants and Nationals are still begging to be place in a friendly environment.
I cannot guarantee they will be worth a fortune but they may fill some of the holes you have in your team sets.
E-mail me a line if your interested.

2001 Topps Archives Reserve

After making some bank on a few duplicate bobbleheads, I found myself with a surplus of online cash. Therefore, I felt justified buying a box of 2001 Topps Archives Reserve. This was a really unique product that I have encountered when making improvements to my Robin Yount collection. Basically this is a set of refractor reprints of the Topps rookie cards of 100 of the most famous players in baseball from 1952 to the present. There is a surplus of 1952 Topps reprints, these being the first Topps card of many of those players, being that Topps began producing cards well after many top players began their careers. To me, baseball card collecting should be fun, and this looked more fun to me than most of the sets out there now.

Oh, and take a good look at the wrapper. This will come into play later on.

Let's tear in.

Top to Bottom:
30 1967 Topps Sal Bando
This is an odd card because Sal's true 1967 rookie portrays another player, identified only as R. Schwartz on the card. Topps saw fit to hack the card in half to honor Sal's greatness and R.'s suckitude. After several All-Star years with KC/Oakland, Sal became a major part of the Brewers' growth into a pennant contender in the early '80s. He then proceeded to run the team into the ground as the team's '90s GM. My father was the principal of the school Bando's kids went to.

85 1960 Carl Yastrzemski
My first knowledge of Carl Yastrzemski came from a periodical called "Cobblestone: The History Magazine for Young People." My parents were real big on subscribing to magazines for us kids. In fact, I can probably list, in fairly accurate chronological order, the magazines that came to my house. Let's see, there was Turtle, Your Big Backyard, Children's Playmate, Electric Company (my subscription ended before it became Kid City, thank God!), Ranger Rick, and then finally a long run on SI for Kids. Believe it or not, most of these are still being published today!
Anyways, I digress. The Cobblestone magazine centered each month around a single topic. Some, I took a look at the cover and quietly slipped it into the specially designed Cobblestone magazine boxes. (You think I'm joking...) This one here, "The Voice of Walt Whitman" from May of 1986, for example. Others became a staple in my room's library. One of these was about the election process. My favorite, though, was "Baseball." The issue had instructions on how to throw different kinds of pitches, an article about players' equipment, and even an interview with Yaz. I distinctly remember one of the question he was asked was about if there was any truth to the rumor that a large portion of Fenway Park sod was in his house's yard. Carl thought back and believed this to be true, but he had since sold the house. Anybody else ever read that mag?

TT35F 1973 Joe Pepitone Team Topps Legends Certified Autograph Issue
Very nice card with a fancy signature. I'm not even mad that it's a Cub, even though those are the only autographs I pull anymore. Joe is cool with me. If current Cubs were like Joe Pepitone, they'd be 200% less susceptible to d-baggery.

Here it is, the pull of the century...Congratulations! You are due to receive an Autographed Baseball Card of... Willie Mays.

Let's take a look at the again, just to make sure that I pulled the best card in the set...

Yup, that says "Wille Mays."

Heyyyy...wait a second.
(Blink. Blink. Deep breath. Motorboat sound.)

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

Yeah, I opened this, no lie, on July 31, 2008. Too bad. It looks like I was exactly five years too late.
I guess I don't need to tell anyone here how I feel about redemption cards.
Soooo..is anyone aware of any recourse I could take with Topps about this? Would it be worth putting in a phone call to Duryea? New York? Has anyone ever turned this into a positive situation? Let me know your thoughts.



Anticlimactically, here's #30 1952 Johnny Sain
Johnny was a 10-year veteran by the time he got his first Topps card. But hey, that's the way things shake out.


Man, that redemption still irks me almost two weeks later. I'll go deeper into this box on Thorzul Will Rule. It was a pretty great box of cards.

2001 Upper Deck Evolution Baseball

At long last, my computer can finally handle the task of creating a pack post. Trips to the Mac store on two consecutive nights made for some tense evenings but all is finally well.

Today's pack came in a trade from fellow member dayf. It's always fun to get a pack from the fallow period between around 1994 and this past season where I failed to collect any cards at all. Sure, the big names are the same, but it's the obscure faces that make it invigorating to open something from those dark ages.

Let's tear in. (Man, it feels like a long time since I've typed that!)

Top to bottom:
85 Ken Griffey, Jr. (Spokesperson on the first pull...sweet.)

14 Jim Thome (A future hall-of-famer whose rookie cards you can get for a nickel...also sweet. Outside of the Cleveland metro area (as well as select pockets of Philly and Chicago), Thome reportedly has to pay people to autograph their cards at shows.)
81 Scott Rolen
55 J.D. Drew
EC 2 Gary Sheffield E-Card UD Classics Scratch Off

The thing about this card is...well...where to begin? The back of this card suggests I scratch this off and "Go to upperdeckdigital.com to digitize your e-card." This is stupid, and very 2001 of Upper Deck. First of all, a digital baseball card is like a non-alcoholic beer. Or, more aptly, an imaginary handjob. No one wants it, but if you somehow got a hold of one, what would you do with it? The practicality of this card has also long since expired, as the above web address merely gets you to Upper Deck's website.

To top it all off, as a Milwaukee resident and die-hard Brewer fan, I consider Gary Sheffield to be the most reprehensible player the organization ever signed. And this includes Julio Machado, a guy who is currently finishing up a twelve-year prison sentence in Venezuela for fatally shooting a woman for basically cutting him off in traffic. Sheffield was worse. The guy was a complete jag-off for his entire stay, starting from the time he chose #1 as his uniform number. Had I acquired this card in 2001 and decided to redeem it, the most likely outcome would involve smoke billowing out from my DVD drive.

God, what an ass!

Thanks, dayf. Not to be too negative, any pack with a Griffey is a good pack. I look forward to future trades.

By the way, check out Thorzul Will Rule and its new design. In my triumphant return I have posted a few select treats.

2001 Topps American Pie

I was cleaning out the basement and found this pack (among many others) among the detritus. Topps American Pie Baby Boomer Baseball edition. Anybody out there remember this crap? Back in the early days of the Retro wave there were a lot of odd throwback sets designed to separate the nostalgic collector from their moola. Some, like Heritage, stuck and thrived. Some, like this, did not. The basic idea behind this set is to combine baseball players from the 60's and 70's with pop culture icons and events from the same period. Donruss Americana is going to try the exact same thing, just without all those pesky baseball players.

Before we open up this puppy and find out what horrible things could lurk inside to cause this pack to be banished to the basement for 6 years, let's take a look at the wrapper, shall we? The logo of this stuff looks like a bad shroom trip. It's a bit frustrating for a blogger whose mission statement is to get kids to do cards and not drugs to have to deal with a set that is trying to BE drugs. The great Willie Mays shouldn't be associated with all this stuff. The crazy rainbow of colors in the background is more reminiscent of the woefully underrated Upper Deck 70's set than the design on this product. That's not the only misrepresentation on the wrapper, I think the font used on "baseball legends and pop culture icons" is supposed to be a retro 60's computer font, but it looks more to me like a 50's tiki font. They wouldn't be trying to sneak 50's icons in here, thus prematurely aging the target boomer audience, would they? The horrors! Ok, enough nitpicking the wrapper, let's look at the cards already.

117 Bay of Pigs
134 U.S. Gas Shortage
150 Malcom X
109 Johnny Podres
108 Lou Whitaker

It's a bit jarring to open a pack of cards and see a picture of a tank labeled "Cuba Invasion Debacle". This isn't actually the worst card from the set, I have one titled Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with a picture of a nuclear mushroom cloud on the front. I've filed that card away with my 2007 Atlanta Falcons team set. The Gas Shortage card is pretty funny in retrospect. Gas prices were cheap as hell in late 2001 and I'm sure I laughed at all those non-gas having suckers because I would surely never have to deal with that. After two horrifically lame cards I finally pull a cool Malcom X card. Fight the power! I really wanted to do my 6th grade Black History Month report on Malcom X, but I got stuck with WEB DuBois. I wish Wikipedia was around back then, my report sucked. Finally! Baseball cards! Johnny Podres, while he technically did play during the 60's, is a 50's baseball icon period. Topps also screwed up the bio, stating that the Brooklyn Dodgers bested the Yankees in the 1953 World Series. Sort of off topic, but does anyone know if Johnny Podres has a card where he's in a Padres uniform? Edit: Andrew with the assist! The pack ends up on a high note with a card of Sweet Lou. It might be a sweeter card if the border design weren't so weird. It does have Yogi on every card though so I guess it's not so bad. Not good enough to save this pack though. Back to the basement with you!