Category Archives: Product Spotlights - Page 5

Product Spotlight: Topps Tier 1, Tier One, Tier 1 One, Tier Whatever

Posted by on 2 October 2012 Comments Off on Product Spotlight: Topps Tier 1, Tier One, Tier 1 One, Tier Whatever

Finally, a product that is honest with itself

Look, I don’t buy boxes of premium products.  If I’m going to drop hundreds of dollars on cards, I either want a good number of cards (preferably enough to build a set) or just the premium inserts that I want.  I’m not in this for the gambling, so missing out on a slim chance at a big score is worth it if I can get the cards I want at a reasonable price.  In the case of 2012 Topps Tier One, I spent less than the price of four boxes and got cards that are better than could be expected from four boxes, which is a win in my book.

Base Card

So beautiful

Got ya, there are no base cards!  If there’s one thing that I hate in sports card products, it’s filler.  No, not those blank cards that are used to thicken packs to make it harder to find high-dollar cards by feel.  It’s the base cards in those one-big-ass-hit-per-pack products that seem the most pointless.  I mean, how do you collect base cards when the packs cost $100+ each?  Mix in a few levels of parallels and some inserts to thin things out and you have, at best, some singles you can get a few dollars for because the people who want them aren’t going to drop a few thousand dollars to pull one.  That’s why it was refreshing to see Topps basically say “Look, this is a pure gamble, there’s no collecting to be done here, just a big win or a big loss,” with 2012 Topps Tier One.  Each box contains one pack that in turn contains just three cards, two with autographs and one without (plus a bonus relic in every fourth box).  Based on the Twitter buzz about this product, you would assume that there was a 1/1 bat knob in each pack, but that of course was not to be.  There was still a lot to like about this product, when purchased on the secondary market of course (good advice for any premium product).

Top Shelf Relics / Autographed Relics

If one is boring, three is, um, also boring

Single Relic: Numbered to 399 or 150
Double Relic: Numbered to 50 or less
Triple Relic: Numbered to 25 or less
Autographed Single Relic: Numbered to 99
Autographed Double Relic: Numbered to 25
Autographed Triple Relic: Numbered to 1

Mets: David Wright (Autographed Relics have not been seen)
Non-Mets: Eddie Murray (Relics only), Gary Sheffield (Autographed Relics only)

These are the filler relic cards, with even Wright’s triple relic commanding less than $10.  If you pulled one of these as your non-autographed card, well, my condolences.  And stay away from the slot machines.  Like last year’s cards, these are largely forgettable and don’t really get any better with more material.  The usual boring gray jersey swatches don’t help much either.  How long has it been since we’ve seen a pinstripe jersey card from Wright?  Autographed versions may exist for some players, but the checklist doesn’t match up with what has been seen.

Prestigious Patches Relics / Autographed Relics

The thin blue line makes a crappy patch

Relic: Numbered to 10
Autographed Relic: Numbered to 10

Mets: Dwight Gooden, Rickey Henderson (Autographed Relic only), Eddie Murray (Autographed Relic only), David Wright (Autographed Relic only)
Non-Mets: Willie Mays (Relic only), Nolan Ryan (Relic only), Tom Seaver (Relic only), Warren Spahn (Relic only)

A better relic pull would be one of these jumbo relics.  Most of these are patches, but Wright has large pieces of gray jersey with blue piping instead (Topps and I clearly have different definitions of ‘patch’).  Gooden and Murray have nice big Mets patches, which at least explains why Murray is shown as a Met here.  In general, I’m really getting tired of seeing Murray, Henderson, and Ryan shown as Mets, but I’ll allow it if the purpose is to match the material in the card.

Bat Knobs

Numbered to 1

Mets: Gary Carter, Jose Reyes, Tom Seaver
Non-Mets: Carlos Beltran, Rickey Henderson, Eddie Murray, Gary Sheffield, Duke Snider, Darryl Strawberry

And here’s the real relic draw.  With going rates around $800 for most players, a bat knob pull would make up for a few boxes of garbage.  It is also extremely unlikely (odds are 1 in 204 packs).  Pulls of a lifetime tend to be somewhat rare.  But they sure look nice.

Crowd Pleasers Autographs

Blue: Numbering Varies
White: Numbered to 25
Silver: Numbered to 10
Gold: Numbered to 1

Mets: Ike Davis, Ed Kranepool, David Wright
Non-Mets: George Foster

On the autograph side of things, you have several mostly identical insert sets.  Crowd Pleasers are landscape-oriented cards featuring on-card autographs in either blue ink on a white background or White/Silver/Gold ink on a black background.  These are some sharp-looking cards and have ink colors that you don’t really see much anymore now that Sweet Spot is gone.  The player selection is fairly standard but better than most products, with David Wright and Ike Davis representing the current Mets and Ed Kranepool representing retired Mets.  It’s always nice to see more Kranepool, but some more variety would have been welcome.  Luckily, there are plenty more autograph insert sets to work with.

On the Rise Autographs

Blue: Numbering Varies
White: Numbered to 25
Silver: Numbered to 10
Gold: Numbered to 1

Mets: Jon Niese
Non-Mets: None

These are essentially the same as Crowd Pleasers, only with portrait orientation.  Jon Niese is the lone Mets representative here.

Top Tier Autographs

Blue: Numbered to 50
White: Numbered to 25
Silver: Numbered to 10
Gold: Numbered to 1

Mets: Nolan Ryan
Non-Mets: Willie Mays

Same as above, more or less.  Of course they throw in Nolan Ryan here as a Met…

Everything Else

Top Shelf Relics Legends

Single Relic: Numbered to 50
Double Relic: Numbered to 15

Non-Mets: Willie Mays

Clear Rookie Reprint Autographs

Numbered to 25

Non-Mets: Willie Mays

Mays never stops signing autographs apparently.

Double Autographs, Triple Autographs, Cut Signatures, Elevated Ink

Nothing worth noting.

Verdict

There’s some nice stuff here, but it feels awfully redundant sandwiched between Museum Collection and Triple Threads.  It was refreshing for Topps to drop the pretense that anyone is buying these for anything other than the big hits, but what does that say about this product’s identity?  For Mets fans, this product is all about the autographs, but even that is only a draw because of how little variety there’s been in other products.  Outside of Archives, there’s been little to choose from in on-card autographs beyond Wright and Ryan, and even Tier 1 only adds Kranepool, Niese, and Davis (plus some very nice parallel ink colors).  Beef up the autograph offerings in the other products and Tier 1 becomes completely unnecessary.  Next year, Topps should drop the non-base cards from this product and come up with some new ideas.  How about autographs on manufactured material, has anybody done that yet?

Product Spotlight: 2012 Topps Archives

Posted by on 18 June 2012 Comments Off on Product Spotlight: 2012 Topps Archives

Today’s stars, old favorites, and classic card styles team up to save the hobby

You know you have a hit on your hands when people start proclaiming it to be the best of the year in May.  Well, either a hit or a colossal flop you’re trying to cover up with marketing hype.  And really, any time you’re digging up old material and presenting it to a new audience with a modern look, failure is a distinct possibility.  The hype was for real this time though – The Avengers really was that good.

A few weeks later, with The Avengers still packing theaters, Topps released the long-awaited 2012 Archives.  Long waits for new material are nothing new to this product; Archives debuted in the early ’80s as a reprint of the 1952 Topps set, then took the rest of the decade off before returning in the early ’90s with the 1953 and 1954 sets.  A less focused product was released in 1995, wrapping things up for that decade.  The Archives brand was reborn in the vintage boom of 2001 with reprints covering the full history of Topps and for the first time included autographed cards, mainly from lesser-known stars (my big pull – Dom DiMaggio).  This run lasted for five years under a variety of names including Archives Fan Favorites and All-Time Fan Favorites.  Topps made a half-hearted attempt to revive the concept with last year’s Topps Lineage, but it was not well-received.  (I was going to do a full review of the history of this product, but I’m running a bit behind on things at the moment; I’m writing this with reviews of 2012 Museum Collection and 2012 Bowman written and waiting for scans…).

Card Designs

The 2012 incarnation of Archives focuses on four classic Topps sets: 1954, 1971, 1980, and 1984.  All designs are faithfully reproduced on high-quality matte finish thin white card stock.  I put a lot of weight on the look and feel of cards and these are just perfect, finding a pleasing balance between the low quality stock of the originals and the thick and glossy stock used in previous Archives sets.  The matte finish gives these cards a vintage feel, while using the same quality on the cardbacks makes them look more sleek and modern (some earlier Archives sets used rough backs opposite glossy fronts, which has the opposite effect).  The higher quality photographs really make the retired players stand out – their cards have never looked this good.  The design team for this set deserves some kind of award.

Player Selection

Unlike the 2001-2005 Archives run, the 2012 set consists of both retired players in the old designs (with new photographs) and current stars and rookies.  It makes for a thin player list in a 200 card set, but hopefully the success with this year’s product will lead to a more substantial set next year.  For once this year, the Mets were well-represented with eight cards in the base set plus four SPs, three reprints, a sticker, seven autographs, and one jersey card.

SPs

In addition to the 200 base cards, 40 short prints were inserted at a rate of one per four packs, plus a #241 Bryce Harper as a very limited late addition.  These were not limited to the four styles used in the base set.  The Mets were well-represented here with four of the 40 SPs.

Gold Parallel

All 200 base cards were featured in a gold foil parallel set that somehow manages to look better in scans than in person.  This was a great way to get a more modern-style insert into this product, though parallels of the SPs would have been nice as well.

Reprints

These are more like the Archives cards of old, complete with gold foil logo.  Three Mets made the cut here.

Retro Inserts

Topps mined its history of odd and quirky inserts to round out this product, and I can only hope they do this again next year.  Unfortunately, a Tom Seaver sticker is the only Mets representative in these four insert sets.  A David Wright 1977 cloth sticker is the obvious omission here, that would have looked spectacular.

1956 Relics

This game-used set is a great example of retro-modern fusion done right.  The 1956 design is sufficiently different from most of the rest of this product to make it interesting and the layout leaves plenty of space to fit a piece of jersey or bat.  David Wright finally got into the inserts here with a jersey card (blue and gray variants).

Fan Favorites Autographs

The big draw of Archives since 2001 has been its autograph set, featuring on-card autographs from some of the biggest names in the history of the sport and many lesser stars and fan favorites.  This year’s Fan Favorites Autographs set featured seven players shown as Mets and eleven more former Mets shown in other uniforms.  Noteworthy among the 18 are Jose Oquendo with nine variations, one for each position he played in a single game, Willie Mays with the only redemption of the bunch (and the hardest to obtain), and Gary Carter with the first-ever sticker autograph in Archives.  Carter has been a fixture in Archives autographs since they debuted in 2001, so it was nice to see him back one last time on a card numbered simply GC.

1983 Mini Autographs / Autographed Originals

There were two other autograph cards from former Mets in Archives – Nolan Ryan in the 1983 Mini Autographs (#d/50) and Willie Mays in the Autographed Originals (#d/5).  Sadly, these were out of my price range and will not be shown.

Six box breakdown

I bought in big with Archives – six hobby boxes.  The results were decent enough.

3 200-card base sets
188/200 card base set
~200 extra base cards
12 Gold parallel cards
27/40 SPs + 9 extras
32/50 Reprints + 4 extras
17/25 1977 Cloth stickers + 7 extras
16/25 1967 Stickers + 2 extras
9/15 1969 Deckle edge + 3 extras
12/15 1968 3D + 6 extras
13 Fan Favorite Autographs
2 1956 Relics

Big hits:
Bryce Harper Fan Favorites Autograph redemption card

It should be noted here that, after fees, the Harper auto redemption card brought in enough to cover the cost of three boxes of cards.  Everything else that I sold (11 autos, 2 relics, 1 base set) added up to the price of one box.  That left me in for only the cost of two boxes, with an Olerud auto, a couple of base sets, a good start at the insert sets, and a bunch of extras, all of which could probably have been purchased for around $100.  In pure dollars, that’s a net loss of more that $50 even with an improbably good pull (easily top 5 of my life).  While the big pulls in this product were good for $100+, the basic autos and relics were practically worthless; none of the 11 autos I sold topped $10 and the relics were lucky to sell for more than $1.  This does not of course take into account the fun of opening packs (which was pretty much gone after four boxes), but that’s really the only reason to open boxes vs. buying singles/sets on he secondary market; there should never be a financial motive for the typical hobbyist.

Suggestions for next year

I realize that it’s a longshot to think that anyone at Topps is reading this (or that anyone at all has made it this far down), but any discussion of 2012 Archives will inevitably veer into speculation about next year’s product (and I think the success of this year’s Archives will guarantee that it comes back in 2013).  While Topps got a lot right this year, there’s always room for improvement.

Base Set Card Designs

1955, 1962, 1969, 1986
The Mets will host the All-Star Game in 2013, so why not give them a nod in the base set card designs?  Don’t mess with the card stock or glossiness (or lack thereof), this year’s set got it just right.

Autographs

John Olerud 1999
Lee Mazzilli 1982
Tim Teufel 1987
Edgardo Alfonzo 2001
Rusty Staub 1974
John Franco 1991
Al Leiter 2002
Mike Piazza 2005
Todd Hundley 1996
Al Jackson 1963

Inserts

More or less the same as this year, a few more Mets would be nice…

Gum

Um, no.

Seriously, Gum?

NO!

Product Spotlight: 2012 Bowman

Posted by on 3 June 2012 Comments Off on Product Spotlight: 2012 Bowman

After 10 years without opening a pack, I’m off the wagon

10 years ago, I officially gave up on opening any current-year baseball card product.  After more than two years of opening packs, boxes, and cases (probably close to 1,000 packs in all) and getting squat for big hits (Babe Ruth bat cards were barely worth more than a box of cards by the time I finally pulled one), I called it quits and stuck with singles on the secondary market.  I never did finish the 2002 Fleer Tradition set…

In May of 2012, my days of not opening a current-year product were over.  I had expected this to happen when 2012 Topps Archives was announced, but surprisingly it was 2012 Bowman that did me in.  Bowman?  A product that I had never bought more than two packs of since it became relevant in 1992 (though that year’s packs yielded a Mariano Rivera RC)?  I’m still not sure why this was the product that brought me back, but I have no regrets.

Card Design

There’s been a lot of praise for this year’s Bowman product, or at least that’s what shows up on the @toppscards Twitter feed (and they couldn’t be biased, right?).  Still, at least a few people are raving about it, and for good reason.  For the first time since being introduced in 1997, the red-blue-green color coding for stars, first cards, and rookies/prospects is gone, replaced by a simple team-based color stripe around the photo.  Topps abandoned a formula?  I’m shocked.  The result is a classic baseball card look that reminds me a bit of 1990 Fleer (one of the few times Fleer got it right in their 25 year run).  Topps also managed to give the base and prospect sets distinct designs that clearly belong together.  The design is simple and elegant, a rare but welcome combination.  New among the variants this year are ice parallels and wave refractors, both of which are very visually interesting (unlike most previous attempts to jazz up parallels).  The ice parallels remind me a bit of 1999 UD HoloGrFX, a great-looking product that was doomed with a terrible follow-up in 2000.

Mets Representation

The downside to this product is that it continues the trend of underrepresentation of Mets players in 2012 products.  While three Mets made it into the 110-card prospect set (including Spring Training star Josh Edgin) and another three made the 25-card Bowman’s Best prospect set, only four made the cut in the 220-card base set: Wright, Davis, Dickey, and Duda.  That puts the Mets somewhere around the bottom quartile of teams by base set representation.  It’s better than the Astros (1 card), but do we really need every Yankees starter?  Couldn’t someone be bumped for Johan Santana and Daniel Murphy or Ruben Tejada?  Topps didn’t even find room for Jason Bay, which is quite unusual.  Oh well.  Jordany Valdespin (retail autographs white/blue/orange/red) and Brandon Nimmo (Bowman Black autograph) round out the Mets roster.  Of note is that Valdespin’s autographs hit retail at about the same time as this game-winning 3-run home run against the Phillies:

Set Overview

This part is a bit complicated.  Inside packs of 2012 Bowman, you’ll find cards from three somewhat distinct products: Bowman, Bowman Chrome, and Bowman’s Best (and their various parallel sets).  These were all separate products back when I last bought packs, but the days of downsizing have crammed them all into a single product.  That makes sorting out the checklists a bit of a challenge.

Let’s see if we can get this straight.  The base Bowman product is 330 cards, with 220 cards in the regular base set and another 110 BP-prefixed prospect cards (with 4 of them misnumbered, oops).  The base set has several “RC” designated cards, but only one of them (Cespedes) is also a first Bowman card; the prospect set has lots of cards that are one or the other, but none that are both.  Bowman Chrome is exclusively parallel to the 110-card prospect set (with fitting BCP prefixes) and Bowman’s Best is a 50-card insert set with 25 BB-prefixed Bowman’s Best cards and 25 BBP-prefixed Bowman’s Best prospect cards.  Did you get all that?

But wait, there’s more!  The autographs are even more confusing, with Bowman autographs (all stickers) exclusive to retail packs and Bowman Chrome autographs (all on-card) exclusive to hobby packs.  Some of the autos in each are parallels of their respective Bowman/Bowman Chrome cards while others are from players who do not appear in the respective set or players who aren’t anywhere else in the 2012 Bowman product.  And then there’s the Bowman Black autographed insert set…

As for the other parallels, well, there are base parallels, chrome parallels, and ice parallels, with some serial numbered, some not, some (gold) only of the 220-card base set, some others (purple, all chromes) only of the 110-card prospect set, and yet others (international, blue, orange, red, ice, red ice) covering all 330 cards; the autographs have similar parallels without any gold, purple, international, or ice/red ice variants (among others).  Oh, right, and the Bowman’s Best cards all have die-cut parallels numbered to 99, 25, and 1.  Still with me?

Luckily (or not), you won’t see most of these in a pack.  A typical pack will contain one gold parallel card, two Bowman Chrome cards, two prospect cards, and five base cards.  Autographs are one per hobby box (and three per jumbo box, not that you can find any).  The blue and red wave refractors aren’t in any packs, those are a limited wrapper redemption that I just barely got my wrappers in for before the 10,000 packs were claimed less than a week after the product launched.  Like the silver and red ice parallels, the blue and red wave refractors are new parallel styles and look great.  It’s nice to see some parallels that aren’t simple color variants or bizarre checkerboard patterns.

Here’s the breakdown of what I pulled from four boxes, your results may vary:

1 complete 330-card Bowman set (1-220, BP1-BP110) + lots of extras
83/220 of the gold parallel set + 13 extras
12 International parallels
4 Blue parallels (#d/500)
2 Orange parallels (#d/250)
5 Ice parallels
2 Red ice parallels (#d/25)
90/110 of the Bowman Chrome set + 78 extras
3 Refractor parallels (#d/500)
1 Blue refractor parallel (#d/250)
2 Chrome autographs
2 Blue refractor autographs (#d/150)
16 Bowman’s Best cards

And via wrapper redemption:
18 Blue wave refractor parallels
1 Blue wave refractor autograph (#d/50)
1 Red wave refractor parallel (#d/25)

Big hits:
Rookie Davis Blue Wave Refractor Autograph BCP43 37/50
Andrew Susac Blue Refractor Autograph BCP97 142/150
J.T. Wise Red Wave Refractor BCP67 12/25
Justin Nicolino Red Ice Parallel BP1 08/25

As far as value for the money goes, it wasn’t bad.  Finishing off the base set was a big plus, but it would have been nice to get the chrome set as well ($5 on eBay fixed that).  Two red ice parallels was a big surprise (those are supposed to be about one per case), but those were the only cards numbered to less than 150 straight out of the box (two more came from the wrapper redemption).  The one-per-box autographs were nobody special, though getting two blue refractor autos was nice; the best autograph was the Rookie Davis blue wave refractor auto.  And one of the base blue parallels was Cespedes, so that was a decent pull (the same box also yielded the base and gold versions as an added bonus; that was much better than the box with gold and ice Shane Victorinos).  The biggest Mets hits were a Bowman’s Best Zack Wheeler and gold parallel David Wright, nothing to write home about.  The wrapper redemption yielded the biggest pull and accounted for about half of my eBay sales, making the value for future purchases look much poorer.  And now on to Archives…

Product Spotlight: 2012 Topps Heritage

Posted by on 29 April 2012 Comments Off on Product Spotlight: 2012 Topps Heritage

Treating the Mets like it’s 1963

Topps Heritage has turned out to be the most long-lived retro/specialty product in baseball history.  Now in its 12th year, the formula is simple and everlasting – take the Topps product from 49 years ago, replicate it with current players, repeat next year.  Last year we finally got to the set that introduced the first Mets cards, so there was plenty to satisfy any Mets fan.  The party’s over in 2012 Heritage, as Topps treated the current team as if it had just turned in a 1962 performance and barely acknowledged that a team called the Metropolitans even exists.

Card Design

#imwith28

I’ll be honest, the 1963 design isn’t one of my favorites.  It seems to be quite popular, but the simplicity of geometric shapes and primary colors just doesn’t work for me.  And that yellow back…  I’m all for readability, but it looks like these got dropped in the toilet.  It is what it is though; this is a retro set, so we’re stuck with the design.

Base Set

The new Mets, same as the old Mets

Ten Mets cards make up the base Mets team set.  There are no real surprises here; most of these guys will look familiar from last year’s set.  As he did in Topps Series 1, Schwinden gets the RC designation here.  We also get a team card, which is always nice.  A few notable players are missing, but there are SPs coming up later that should cover all of them, right?

Floating Schwinden clone heads, the new market inefficiency?

Four Mets appeared on multiple player cards.  Reyes once more gets recognition for his batting title, though the card is a bit ambiguous when it comes to who came out on top (sure looks like Kemp won from this card).  Chris Schwinden inexplicably shows up on a quad rookie card after getting his own card elsewhere, so, um, that’s another card.  Josh Satin quietly makes his debut in another quad rookie card, and then Chris Schwinden rounds the group out with, um, another quad rookie card?  What the hell, Topps?  Three Schwindens?  This had better he a reference to a Mets rookie who appeared on three cards in the 1963 set, otherwise this is just stupid.  Actually, it looks like they did this with a few players.  Not enough rookies to pad out the set?

Topps continues to lobby for Jason Bay as the face of the franchise.

Finally, the SPs add some star power with Ike Davis, David Wright, Frank Francisco in his first Mets card (not really a star but I’ll give him a pass for being new) and Oh come on Topps, Jason Freaking Bay???  He’s a lost cause, but Topps showcases him as one of only three Mets in the Opening Day set and now makes him an SP in Heritage.  Did somebody at Topps not get the message that, short a miracle, this guy will be a platoon player at best by the end of the year?  These are your New York Mets, missing only the bulk of the rotation (Niese, Pelfrey, and Gee) and a center fielder.  It’s not the best mix, but this is a specialty set, so you can’t expect to get everyone.  Heritage always has lots of fun variants and parallels, so there should be plenty more to see.

Variations

Not a mistake, this is every Mets variant in 2012 Heritage

Or not.  No Mets were featured in any of the multitudes of variant sets.  No errors, no color swaps, no store exclusive bordered cards, not one single chrome or any chrome parallels…  Last year there were 37 cards in this category.  This year: 0.  Hey Topps, tell us what you really think of the Mets.

Inserts

Who's the guy with the hair and why is he in a Mets uniform?

Luckily, the Mets weren’t shut out in the insert category.  The annual Clubhouse Collection Relic set featured two Mets, David Wright and Jose Reyes?  This is really getting old.  Wright also appeared on a little sticker.  And that rounds out the current player inserts.  Maybe getting nothing would have been better.

Who has two autographs and led the 1962 Mets bullpen in losses? This guy!

But wait, there’s more!  The Real Ones Autographs insert set has been a treasure trove of forgotten player autographs, with last year’s set giving us four (three and a half?) players from the 1962 team.  This year, we get one more original Met, Craig Anderson!  …  Craig Anderson?  He, um, led the Mets pitching staff with 50 appearances in 1962.  And didn’t do much afterward.  There you have it, your vintage Mets representative, Craig Anderson!

If you’re underwhelmed, well, you should be.  Look, I’m ecstatic to get a 1963 reprint autograph of ANY Mets player.  These are the guys who started the club, going from the standard for futility to World Champions in less than a decade.  Without them, we would be stuck with the Yankees and their dozens of championships, and who wants that?  I hope every one of them who can still hold a pen can get Topps to make some cards for them to sign.  But when your team’s only representative is a guy who lost a bunch of games in 1962 and then fell off the map, somebody isn’t trying hard enough.

Topps, I’ll give you a hand here.  There’s a guy out there who, as a Met, was named a Topps All-Star Rookie in the 1963 set.  He went on to get a World Series ring with the Mets in 1969.  He is still active in the Mets organization mentoring young players and representing the team.  You may have seen him in uniform at Spring Training this year.  He has never been featured as a Met on a certified autograph card.  His name is Al Jackson and he should have been in this year’s Heritage Real Ones Autographs set.

Not shown as Mets, but that won't hide their shame...

Maybe I’m just making a big deal out of nothing.  Maybe Jackson won’t sign cards anymore.  Maybe he’s just too busy working on building the next Mets championship team.  But was there really nobody else from the 1963 Mets team set who was available?  Three other former Mets did sign on cards showing them with other teams – Hobie Landrith, Chico Fernandez, and Ed Bauta.  Of the three, only Landrith was on the team in 1962 and only Landrith would have a career after the Mets (he was traded for Marvelous Marv partway into the 1962 season).  We still got autographs from four ’60s Mets players, so maybe things aren’t that bad.

This team set was way too easy to assemble. Still working on 2011...

No, they are that bad.  23.  That’s how many Mets cards were in Heritage this year.  Last year is was more than 80.  The product as a whole seemed to be a bit less exciting than last year’s product, and 1962 was a big year for the team, but the Mets should still have been good for at least 30 cards.  This is after all a product with well over 1,200 cards when you consider base cards, SPs, variants, inserts, etc. (everything except 1/1s and box toppers).  Hopefully there’s more to come later in the year with Topps Chrome.

Box Toppers

Pro tip: 3-pocket currency pages work great for storing these in a binder.

For the consolation prize, there were a few Mets cards featured in the box toppers that have become standard in Heritage.  First are the ad panels, three-card blocks that feature a rotating lineup of players.  This year, Jose Reyes (NL Batting Leaders) and Johan Santana made the cut, with panes showing them in all three positions, for a total of six cards.

1963 was a good year for names, not so much for baseball.

Original 1963 Topps cards with a special foil stamp accounted for the second box topper.  These included well-known Mets like Choo Choo Coleman, Marv Throneberry, and Al Jackson.  In fact, there was probably a better variety of Mets players here than in the actual Heritage product.

Product Spotlight: 2011 Donruss Elite Extra Edition

Posted by on 3 March 2012 Comments Off on Product Spotlight: 2011 Donruss Elite Extra Edition

Too legit to quit, not quite legit enough

Donruss’s Panini incarnation has suffered from one major setback – the lack of licenses to use Major League Baseball players or team logos.  After Playoff/Donruss bid farewell to licensed MLB products in a blaze of Absolute Memorabilia glory, the brand fell on hard times.  Limited to minor leaguers and retired players, Donruss managed to release a few passable products before being absorbed by Panini.  Topps outlasted Upper Deck and claimed the title of MLB Survivor, but then Panini swooped in and secured a license – from the MLB Players Association.  While that wouldn’t give Panini the rights to use MLB team names and logos (Upper Deck paid a hefty price for crossing that line in 2010), it did give them access to the MLB roster of players for the first time in six years.  2011 Donruss Elite Extra Edition (released in January 2012, the first of several “2011” Panini releases in 2012…) positions the brand to begin chipping away at the Topps monopoly (mk. II) by laying down a thick foundation of prospects.  Will that be enough to draw collectors back into their fold?

Read more »

Product Spotlight: 2012 Topps Series 1

Posted by on 26 February 2012 Comments Off on Product Spotlight: 2012 Topps Series 1

Topps remembers Tom Seaver and tries to photoshop out the memory of Jose Reyes

With the [trademarked term for a significant football game] just around the corner at the end of January, one thing was on everyone’s mind – baseball cards!  Topps Series 1 dropped on January 31 with a huge media event that looked like someone put Keith Olbermann and a camera crew in my living room circa 2001.  Anticipation had been building for weeks, filling the 40-day gap since the last Topps product release.  So did the product live up to the hype?

The big news in the lead-up to Topps Series 1 was the inclusion of several short-printed variant cards.  The big ones were photoshopped cards of fan-favorite Jose Reyes and some guy named Al in their new teams’ uniforms (I guess Prince Fielder waited too long to sign).  These were announced as very limited short prints, just to make sure nobody sold them cheap on launch day.  Other SPs included humorous cards showing mascots, Gatorade, and Skip Schumaker’s foot (more on this later).

The theme for the bulk of the insert sets this year is gold.  Golden Moments, Golden Greats, Gold Standard, Gold Futures, gold-colored coins, Gold Rush wrapper redemption cards, and even 1/1 solid gold cards (via redemption of course) filled out the base product.  The Golden Moments insert set filled the annual role of “set spread across all mainline Topps products with relic and autograph variants.”  Manufactured material also got a boost, expanding into metal objects like pins, coins, and rings in addition to the usual cloth offerings (this year’s theme: retired numbers).

With the stage set, launch day held a few surprises.  First, the first-ever card featuring Jose Reyes in a (fake) Marlins uniform was overshadowed by a squirrel.  The Skip Schumaker SP featuring the Cardinals “rally squirrel” was the hot ticket, with one of the first pulled selling for over $600.  After a few ending in the $300+ range, prices quickly settled down to the $100-200 level.  These should bottom out somewhere in the $20-$50 range, which is still absurd.  The Reyes card meanwhile is settling in at about $50-$100, not that it matters.  This is supposed to be about the Mets after all.

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