by Matt | May 25, 2017 | Cards
I really enjoy watching knuckleball pitchers in general. So when Steven Wright joined the Red Sox a couple years ago I was excited. I knew he was one of only a few pitchers actively throwing a knuckleball. Actually, I think at the moment it’s just two, Wright and R.A. Dickey. Regardless, the card industry took it’s sweet time making any Wright cards. He had a 2006 appearance in Bowman products (RC in Chrome, auto in Sterling and a base card in Bowman Heritage), but that was it. Three cards (and some parallels) in just that one year.
He was traded to the Sox in 2011, had appeared in several games, but was never on a card until last year. 2016 Heritage High Numbered was his first Red Sox card. Appearing in the All-Star game last year finally bumped him up into card checklist status and his first Sox/Topps autos appeared in Topps Tribute over the winter. Unfortunately for Steven, 2017 didn’t start off well and he just underwent knee surgery. His season is done, but the silver lining for card collectors is that his card prices are at an all time low. I was able to pick up four awesome autographs for less than $10 total.
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by Matt | May 22, 2017 | Cards
I don’t pretend to know how everyone else stores cards, I’m sure everyone has their own system. For me, since my primary goal is year-to-year team sets, I use binders and pages, and that seems to work out fine. It also means that binders get the majority of my attention. As a result, that also means I don’t put “hits” in said binders. I have “shoebox” style monster boxes instead. I’ve filled up three of them (the 3000 card variety) so far with random Red Sox cards… with little to no organization, unfortunately. I was putting some cards in one of the boxes and realized I was dealing with this…
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by Matt | Apr 21, 2017 | Cards
I’ve been having fun lately with my customs. It started as a way to create cards for sets that should have existed. Missing players, deeper rosters, that sort of thing. Not every set can have 700 cards, but my imaginary additions can fill in the gaps. Then it sort of evolved into this exercise of creativity whenever I was lacking it. My day job is that of a web designer, but I’m only actually “designing” a new site every few months. The rest of the time is the actual building of a site, adding content, manipulating text, changing code, adding links, that sort of thing. So, while editing CSS all day can be rewarding within a finished product, it doesn’t really get the creative juices flowing. There’s only so many times I can spec “Raleway, 15pt, #2A2A2A” before it gets redundant.
Every once in a while, I need to take a break and do something creative. I think it’s a good exercise for just about anyone. Even if it’s not creative, strictly speaking, everyone should find a little time to do something they enjoy.
So, once a month or so, I’ve been working on custom cards. I also realized I hadn’t shown any (except my Fire redesign) since the 2016 Olympics cards. Enjoy, and click the previews to enlarge!
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by Matt | Apr 12, 2017 | Cards
I’ve been on a bit of a Mookie Betts kick lately. Awesome player, seemingly genuine human being, and cornerstone of the Boston outfield for years to come (especially if contract extension rumors are true). I’m stockpiling as many Mookie cards as I can. I’ll never be able to afford those $500+ rookie autos, but I can gobble up as many others as I can find. These are just the recent additions to the collection.
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by Matt | Mar 23, 2017 | Cards
With the release of 2017 Gypsy Queen a week or so away, I’ve been preparing my now-traditional “recreation” of the cards. It’s a fun exercise for me as a designer. I try and deconstruct a card, it’s design elements, font choices, photography effects, etc. It’s a way to exercise that creative part of my brain. Yesterday Topps updated the “sell sheet” and released a more-or-less final checklist before the products launch, which is fueling this design breakdown. PDFs, in case you weren’t aware, are considerably easier to pick apart than low-res JPGs they normally put out for previews.
If you have no interest in what fonts Topps is using this year, feel free to tune out for while. For those of you who might be curious, let’s rip into this puppy.
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by Matt | Mar 10, 2017 | Cards
Topps Heritage is completely unacceptable this year. It’s nuts, and I’m not playing it’s stupid game. Last week, after failing to find ANY Heritage, in any form, in any store, because logical distribution in a major metropolitan areas is apparently too hard, I turned to eBay for a team set. A base team set was $3.99, which got me 18 cards base cards. Do you have any idea how many more there are to find, or would be if I was even interested any more? There are SIX freaking shortprint cards and nearly 30 inserts. I can live without the inserts, that’s not the end of the world. What is completely unacceptable though, is that the MAJORITY of the starting lineup for the Red Sox is a short print. I saw only two sellers offering “Master Sets” when the product launched. One of them wanted $45 and the other wanted $50. Not happening. Not for a team set.
Chris Sale, David Ortiz, Mookie Betts, Xander Bogaerts, Dustin Pedroia, Jackie Bradley Jr, and David Price are all short printed. After a brief glance at the checklist I’m willing to bet that if in the last 5 years a player was on an All-Star team, or is a hot rookie of some sort, their card is probably short printed. It’s not just my team either. You’ve got your Kris Bryant, Jose Altuve, Correa, Stanton, Strasburg, Goldschmidt, Bautista, Sanchez, Syndergaard, Hamels, etc, etc, that are ALL SHORT PRINTS.
You know how much sellers are looking for for a short print? $2-5, each. I am not paying $30+ for 6 cards when I paid $4 for EIGHTEEN! That of course, also doesn’t cover the awesome $3.50-3.75 most sellers are now charging for shipping (which, I understand, is a lot of eBays fault). So, $5-8.75 per short print??? Not happening. NEVER happening.
I’m not upset that there are short prints, we’re never going to get Topps to stop doing that. What I’m most upset about is that it was a conscience choice to put, literally, the most popular players behind an artificial “scarcity” barrier, for every team, throughout the product. You want to SSP some weird colored parallels, fine. You want an hard to find SSSSP action variation of a RC, fine. Just stop making everyday and starting lineup players artificially shorted. That’s just bullshit.
Think about the Sox starting lineup. Out of the 9 most obvious players in the lineup, I can easily find Hanley Ramirez and Rick Porcello base cards. Everyone else in the 1-400 checklist is either a bench player, or a #3-5 starting pitcher. That’s some serious bullshit.
Think about YOUR team’s starting lineup. How many of them are short-printed? Let’s pick one at random. How about the Nats? Scherzer, Strausburg, Harper, Murphy and Turner are SPs. That’s 5. Want to do another? How about the Tigers? Verlander, Cabrera, Upton, Kinsler, Fulmer and Norris, that’s 6. You can see my point.
I just can’t support something like this. I was never crazy about the ’68 design, but this just soured me on the entire product. Sorry Topps, just not taking the bait this year.
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