Topps Tiger Fan-Favorites!

GOOD NEWS, EVERYONE!
Well, Tigers collectors, anyway.  As I usually do several times a week, I was on the always-awesome Cardboard Connection yesterday and the title of an article caught my eye:  "2013 Topps Archives Baseball Fan Favorites Autographs Spotlight 1980s and 90s."  "Cool!" I thought, "A lot of my favorite players, even the guys that weren't stars, are from the 80s and 90s."  I proceeded to check out the checklist for names that would interest me, and two caught my eye.

One was former Tigers SS Travis Fryman.  I think Travis is a great fit in a set devoted to "fan-favorite" players--guys who weren't really sought after nationally, but certainly appreciated by their own fans.  I have managed to pick up one of his few certified autos, this 1996 Leaf Signature Bronze version,

which is an excellent on-card issue from his second-to-last season in Detroit, his fourth of five All-Star campaigns.  I'm especially glad to see Fryman get a new certified auto because his current run is 10 different cards:  the above card, plus Silver and Gold versions from '96 Leaf Signature; a 2005 Topps Retired Signature issue (which I totally need to find), a Refractor version of that, plus four autographed plates; and a cut auto from 2012 Leaf History of Baseball.  What I'm getting at here is that it's a fairly big deal for Tigers/Fryman collectors that he's got a new autograph coming out!

Well that's all well and good for Tigers collectors, but one's never enough.  That's why I was so excited to see this in the checklist:  "FFA-MT Mickey Tettleton, Detroit Tigers."  Sweet!  One of my all-time favorites, he of this batting stance,

has had VERY few certified autos.  In fact, as I was verifying the current total, which I knew included this one from my PC,

I hadn't even realized that he actually does have a second issue from 2012 Leaf History of Baseball.  Unfortunately, like Fryman's, that's numbered to just 10 copies.  So getting another shot at a Tettleton graph is pretty exciting!

I know this year's Archives are incorporating another four past designs, from 1972, 1982, 1985, and 1990, so I'm curious which design each player will get.  Regardless, I'll be pretty with whatever they get.  Since this is a Topps product, I won't play the lottery and try to pull these, and I know as usual I'll have to wait until the initial hype dies down, but I'm sure I'll be able to buy or trade for each.

As a sidenote, former '68 champ Denny McLain also appears on the checklist, but he's a jackass and I won't be pursuing him.  Still, a few other former Tigers will be available as well, albeit in different uniforms.  Those players include:  Darrell Evans (Braves), Dan Gladden (Twins), Eric Davis (Reds), Fred Lynn (Red Sox), Greg Jefferies (Mets), Howard Johnson (Mets), Hal Morris (Reds), Juan Samuel (Phillies), Lloyd Moseby (Blue Jays), Ray Knight (Reds), and Ruben Sierra (Rangers).  Not a terrible group!

So hopefully you'll be seeing Fryman's and Tettleton's 2013 Archives autographs over here within a few months.  And I also hope that you collectors end up with your fan-favorites as well!

Completed sets: 2011 and 2012 Topps Prime Nine promotions

You might remember that I put up a series of posts highlighting my fantastic last trade with legendary blogger BA Benny back in March.  In the very first post I was so overwhelmed with all the complete sets he had sent me that I decided to just take a quick snapshot of all of them together (mostly in boxed-set form) so I could return to posting them individually later.

Well today I'm ready to show a couple of them off, and I decided to do both of these at once because they're relatively small at nine cards each, plus they're related--the complete versions of Topps' 2011 and 2012 Prime Nine promotions.

First up is the 2011 set, which was subtitled "Player of the Week Refractors."

Topps chose nine players--one for each defensive position, of course (which means no DH!)--and then listed nine reasons each was worthy of the selection:

Happy belated Jackie Robinson Day, everybody!

The set works pretty well if you don't think of it as Topps' version of the All-Century Team or something like that.  And obviously they didn't do that or all NINE cards would have been Yankees.  Anyway, these are shiny, Refractory, purdy cards that were available at select hobby shops that year for collectors that pulled their redemption cards (two per hobby box, says SportsCardRadio).  I complain about redemptions pretty often, but a card that drives collectors to hobby shops to pick up free cards they don't have to wait for is a logical way to do it, and for this I salute the company (a rare honor these days).  And to keep the lovefest going, I'm even willing to say that the player selection here is pretty reasonable as well.  Personally, I would have gone with Ripken over Jeter, but Jeter's plenty deserving himself, so I'll abide.

The following year, Topps went homerunnier, Yankee-er and curvier with its Home Run Legends set:

Chrome cards are bendier than Bender "Bending" Rrrrrodriguez!

Each player in this series had made it to the 500 HR list at the time except Pujols, who's still around 25 shy as of today.  Conspicuously absent are players such as Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and Rafael Palmeiro, though it's very likely they were left off due to lack of collector interest.  The strangest snub to me is Ken Griffey Jr.--throw him on there instead of Jackson--you've got enough freaking Yankees as it is!  Junior is one of only eight players to reach the 600+ mark, while Reggie was a self-important strikeout machine.  At least Topps deigned to include a few non-Yanks, including one of my favorite legends, Frank Robinson:

McGwire still owns the rookie record with 49, though at least Robinson went on to a much, much more storied career.  And what a card from last year said holds true today:  no active player is anywhere near his 586, with Pujols being the next big threat.

Also, it's nice to see Banks get a little more recent hobby love.  His 512 HR tie him with Eddie Mathews for 21st overall, and that total best such legends as Lou Gehrig, Stan Musial, Chipper Jones, and Carl Yazstrzemski.

All in all, I'm happy to declare both of these promotional sets a victory for Topps.  They're shiny Refractors that came from a fairly well handled promotion and highlight some players that deserve plenty of attention (and Reggie Jackson).

I'll scan more of the sets Mike sent my way in the future when my posts get boring or I'm lacking for content--and if you go back and look at that first post, you'll see I have plenty left!

Check out Prof. Farnsworth's announcement

So guess what I found on my porch when I got home from work today?

It's one of those wonderful boxes from Washington stuffed with cards!  And as I previously mentioned, many (and some of the best) of those cards will be heading to people like you!  I'm planning on trying to get most of my shipping done on Saturday if possible, pending a couple other deliveries, but many of you should expect to see packages from me by next week, except those of you hosers in Canada, who might have to wait a bit longer.  I'm excited to be able to send those out finally, plus have a bunch more cards to show off, though all but maybe one will be featured on TMM.

Anyway, I'm too tired from work to write up a real post today, so instead, I give you the gifts of optimism and anticipation!

Excuses, excuses (but good news for youses)

I guess the title makes more sense if you read it in his voice

I realize I was pretty lax about posting last week.  Well, more than just lax--I literally posted nothing over here for a week.  I'm here again today to tell you that my posting will again be a bit sparse for a couple days this week, but this time it's not out of laziness, but for a good cause:  I'm putting together a new COMC package so I can finally pay back those of you who sent me some fantastic trade packages late last year and complete a few new trades (plus I also want to send a couple other random ones out).  This one will, as usual, include a ton of stuff for my PCs--especially my Michigan baseball player collections--but I'm working on acquiring some great cards to send to some outstanding traders, new and old.  I'll also be gearing up to send out a few other packages I've owed to some of you for weeks--I promise I'll get those done too.

Because I've got a ton of potential cards in this package and I'm working on getting the best price possible on everything, that'll be my focus for a few days until the last offer has been accepted and I can click "ship."  I hope you don't mind another lull in posting (not that anyone complained last week), but I promise it'll be worth it to many of you.  I'll make sure to make a big deal out of finishing up and getting back to posting, so worry not!

Lots of money will be involved, so here's Matthew Lesko again

Parallelarrhea: too much of a good thing?

If you get this reference you're awesome.

A couple weeks ago my first post on things I love about the hobby discussed how much I enjoyed the invention of the Refractor, an insert I still value today.  It led to the creation of one of the most popular types of parallel cards among collectors, not to mention a reason for Topps and other manufacturers to dive in headfirst to parallels as inserts.  In many ways this was a good thing for hobbyists like us because it's resulted in some very cool cards in our PCs, be they shiny, artistic, ultra-rare, or all of the above.  But as we get further into 2013, it's worth asking:  are we at a saturation point with parallels?

"R" is for "red" and "rare"

As someone who doesn't really chase complete insert sets and isn't the devoted team collector many of you are, this isn't an issue that was on my radar at all until recently.  Last year as I sought a new challenge more interesting than "Amass as many Michigan hits as possible," I took a look at the complete print runs of some of my favorite Michigan Baseball alumni and thought it would be fun to pursue a "supercollection" of each of them.  (For my purposes, that meant one each of every non-1/1 card (which would just be a bonus) since in my collecting world, more than one person is allowed to be a supercollector of a player.)  This isn't supposed to be an extremely easy project, even if I was only chasing one player, and I wouldn't want it any other way; one of the most interesting aspects of collecting is working on a specific collecting goal, making it public on a blog and/or message board, and enjoying meeting and trading with new collectors, some of whom have the same interests as you.  That makes the project and the hobby extremely enjoyable.

"Shiny":  I don't believe there's a power in the 'verse that can stop them

However, as I've pursued my player-collecting goals recently, especially when I've been able to buy large chunks of cards from COMC, I've noticed how many parallels each card has, and it really feels like things are getting out of hand.  On Monday over on TMM I showed off nine more new cards of pitcher Clayton Richard--six from 2011 Topps Chrome and three from 2011 Topps flagship--the third in a series of posts covering Richard rainbows I'm pursuing as part of his PC.  In posting those, I realized that his Topps Chrome base card has nine Refractor parallels--NINE!  Similarly, his 2011 Topps base card includes ANOTHER nine parallel versions.  Considering we're now dealing with just Topps as our only licensed card manufacturer, it's crazy that players could have this many different versions in any given set--and that's not taking into account that Topps does this in so many of their products; don't forget Bowman and Chrome, plus Topps Mini, just to name a few more.

Blue:  don't be sad--you just pulled a Refractor!

Don't get me wrong:  I'm a big fan of each player I collect, and I pull for them to appear in as many sets as possible, because that gives me more to collect, and more importantly, that generally signifies that each player is having enough success to be included.  The problem here, though, is overload.  Whereas a few years ago I might have needed to pick up as many as five parallels for my PC, if that, my work and money spent might be doubled.  I wouldn't take issue with this if, say, Topps flagship and Upper Deck each produced five parallels of their own, but that's clearly not the case here.  Would you like to see a list of each of the nine Refractors Clayton Richard has in 2011 Topps Chrome?:

• Atomic Refractor (/225)
• Blue Refractor (/99)
• Gold Refractor (/50)
• Orange Refractor
• Purple Refractor (/499)
• Red Refractor (/25)
• Refractor
• Sepia Refractor (/99)
• X-Fractor

The first thing noticeable here is that there are two cards numbered to 99.  Why is that necessary?  Next, there's the existence of the "Atomic" and "X-Fractors," which are practically redundant:

Most of you probably already know that the X-Fractor is on the left and the Atomic version is to the right.  If you hadn't seen these before, though, and didn't know the difference, would you notice, and better yet, would you care?  And while we're at it, do we really need SIX different colors/styles (including Sepia) of Refractor parallels?  Red and Orange, for example, are redundant, but Topps has been inserting the Oranges as a "bonus" in rack packs.  Purple and blue are also fairly similar, and I wouldn't be shocked to learn that most people would favor Blue--which can really make for a stunning card--over purple.  Why not narrow things down to a regular Refractor, Blue, Gold, and maybe one other color or style that could change yearly?  I would argue that these excessive versions just don't bring anything to the table and in fact hurt the product by creating a glut of inserts.

Just as bad, if not worse, are the many versions found in the flagship set.  The base card parallels include:

• Black (/60)
• Cognac Diamond Anniversary
• Diamond Anniversary
• Diamond Anniversary Factory Set Limited Edition
• Factory Set Red Border (/245)
• Gold (/2011)
• Hope Diamond Anniversary (/60)
• Target
• Wal Mart Black Border

Another nine, and another bunch of extraneous cards.  First and foremost, the retail-exclusive Target and Wal Mart cards need to go.  There's nothing good to say about them and there never will be, especially when you're forced to try to pull them yourself or pay a premium over the base version for a card that's barely different.  Besides that, while I understand the idea of doing something special for the Diamond giveaway, was it really necessary to insert barely different numbered versions in regular factory sets?  And while I understand Topps was rightfully celebrating 60 years of making cards, did we need three different "Diamond Anniversary" cards, two of which were unnumbered and one which has the same print run as the reasonable Black parallel?  I would stick with Gold, Black, the giveaway set, and ONE of the Diamond Anniversary versions, none of which should look awful like the Cognacs:

This is the obligatory part of the post where I want to remind you that I'm not specifically trying to pick on Topps, at least not this time.  While we're all stuck with the consequences of their monopoly today, they're far from the only offenders of parallelarrhea in card-production history.  In others' cases, it may not be an offense such as producing too many parallels with the same picture, but instead one or more extremely useless versions, such as Score's one-per-pack Glossy cards.  But how many times did you pull or pick up an Artist's Proof, Press Proof, Gold Press Proof, Museum Collection, Cooperstown Collection, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, etc., and not say to yourself "Jeez, ANOTHER one?"  I can't even open a Bowman product anymore because the one-per-pack Golds are such a stupid waste of a card (remember set-building?) that I'd rather not waste my money.

The Refractor:  can't go wrong with the classics

But I know Topps can get it right, because as far as I'm concerned, there was a point not long ago when they WERE doing it right.  They took what was generally a nice design with excellent photography, then enhanced it a few different ways--the fan-favorite Refractor (maybe even a blue one!), a Gold version numbered to the year it was produced, or maybe a rare Black--making for a card that was both nice to look at and significant to pull or purchase.  Learn from the lessons of the glut of card-production in the 1990s and get things back to reasonable levels and collectors will be much better for it, while continuing to spend their collecting money on your products.  Your move, Topps.

COMC haul #7: Action Jackson

(Note:  all COMC haul posts can be accessed here)

Well, what a difference a few weeks can make, eh?  The last time I posted a COMC pickup of Austin Jackson, the Tigers and Giants had yet to begin their World Series clash.  Obviously that didn't work out so well for Detroit fans, but it was still nice to be in it.

Anyway, I promised in that post that the fairly cool card I showed off that day would be bettered by the OTHER AJax I landed in my flurry of purchases.  Feast your eyes on this guy and decide for yourselves:

Austin Jackson 2011 Topps Triple Threads Sepia triple jersey auto (#74/75)

My first thought:  the "Future Phenoms" title grabs me, and because Jackson has blossomed into a star since the card's release, I can't help but reference Futurama, given that Austin's future is NOW:

Besides that, my main reaction is that this is a very spiffy card.  Standard Triple Threads complaints apply, of course, but since most of those have to do with paying the idiot tax of actually buying a box, I actually have zero complaints.  This is just a pleasing design with some nice colors that compliment Detroit's uniforms, and a pretty nice layout.  Even better:  you won't believe how much of a steal this was.  I'll spare you the random guesses:  it was a cool $5.  YA RLY.  The main reason:  a condition note due to minor damage, with that damage being some peeling/bending of the olde English "D" over the center swatch.  You can kinda see it right under the "P" in "Phenoms."  Somehow I saw past this incredibly apparent blemish and plunked down my $5 anyway--I'm such a trooper!

So all in all, nice card, and a nice addition to my Tigers PC since I now have an AJax relic, manupatch, and auto/jersey.  I can't help but feel good about growing my collection of one of MLB's future (and current) stars with a bargain such as this!

Watch for more Tigers goodness soon--maybe this time I won't wait almost two weeks!