Tag Archives: Sandy the Seagull

Inside the 2014 Queens Baseball Convention

Posted by on 21 January 2014 Comments Off on Inside the 2014 Queens Baseball Convention

No Mets fan fest? No problem.

It’s the time of year when the last pitch of the World Series and the first pitch of spring training both seem like an eternity away. That’s why many teams use this time to connect with their fans. When they aren’t signing washed up players to minor league deals that is. If you’re a Mets fan though, there is no mid-winter celebration to fill this void. Or at least there wasn’t until the fans took matters into their own hands and put together the first Queens Baseball Convention on January 18.

For me, the journey started in Massachusetts. And then went up into New Hampshire because I needed to get gas. From there, I crossed Massachusetts and Connecticut before stopping in New York to prepare for the event the next day. It may not sound like an epic journey, but it sure looked like one from the train along the Hudson on Saturday morning. Ice and snow gave way to cold rain as Citi Field drew near.

The home run apple was not welcoming fans to a game on this dreary day. The gates to the Jackie Robinson Rotunda were closed and locked. What few fans approached the stadium made the long walk around to the back where McFadden’s Citi Field and the Queens Baseball Convention welcomed them in from the cold.

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Mascot Spotlight: Sandy the Seagull

Posted by on 10 January 2014 Comments Off on Mascot Spotlight: Sandy the Seagull

Representing the Brooklyn Cyclones since 2001, Sandy the Seagull is one of the lesser-known Mets mascots working in the minors. In 2013, after appearing only in Cyclones team sets, Sandy had his first Topps cards in 2013 Topps Pro Debut’s Mascot Patch set. With a base version numbered to 120 and parallels numbered to 50 and 1, Sandy’s total print run from major manufacturers comes in at less than 200. It’s not much, but I suppose you can’t expect too much from someone who hasn’t appeared above the NYPL.

The Essentials: 2013 Mets Manufactured Material

Posted by on 13 December 2013 Comments Off on The Essentials: 2013 Mets Manufactured Material

The kitchen sink of baseball cards has standouts and oddities

A lot of baseball cards have been released in 2013. Between Topps (MLB and MLBPA licenses), Panini (MLBPA license), Leaf (no licenses), and Upper Deck (MLBPA license but strict MLB oversight), more than 40 baseball products have been released this year. So which cards stand out from the rest? To answer that question, we’ll break down the key Mets cards from 2013 in The Essentials.

Manufactured material, like game-used memorabilia and certified autographs, traces its roots in the modern sports card era back to the late 1990s. Aside from its use as a surface for autographs though, it wasn’t until recent years that manufactured material came into its own as a hobby offering with diversity and innovation. Topps raised the bar in 2012 with premium metal manufactured relics and continued this trend into 2013.

Minor League Logos

So many things wrong with that d’Arnaud card…

Back again after their debut in 2012, minor league hat logo patches from many minor league teams were included in Topps Pro Debut and Topps Heritage Minor League. Oddly, it looks like these are the exact same patches that were used in 2012. Topps must have had a few extras left over… Note the use of last year’s logos for the St. Lucie Mets and Buffalo Bisons (as for why Travis d’Arnaud is shown with the Bisons, well…). Between the two products, six Mets were featured on logo patch cards, covering most of the top prospects in the Mets farm system. Unlike last year, a consistent style was used for both sets of logo patch inserts in 2013. It would be nice to see Topps continue this moving forward to create a running set with top prospects for years to come. The logos need a bit of an update though.

Mascot Patches

Not shown: Buster T. Bison. Not sure I even want to…

New for 2013, Topps Pro Debut added patch cards for various minor league mascots. Cyclones mascot Sandy the Seagull was the only mascot from a current Mets farm team featured in this set, but Buffalo Bisons mascots Buster T. Bison and Belle the Ballpark Diva were shown in their 2012 incarnations, so I guess they count (though I wouldn’t exactly call them essential). I’m not quite sold on these just yet.

Retail Commemorative Patches

At the major league level, the bulk of the manufactured material was released in the base Topps products: Topps Series 1, Topps Series 2, and Topps Update. Many of those were the cracker jack-style prize inside $20 retail blasters, included as a consolation prize for spending $20 on a few packs of cards with terrible odds on getting anything good (with most of those “good” cards not worth much of anything anyway). Of course, with typical selling prices between $5 and $25, they sometimes make you feel like a bit of a chump for spending $100 a pop on hobby jumbo boxes where the only decent card is a manufactured relic that sells for between $5 and $25… But I digress.

The first of the retail manufactured patch sets feature miniature versions of commemorative shoulder patches or anything else Topps felt like making. Only two Mets were included here, David Wright with the Mets 50th anniversary patch and Tom Seaver with the 1969 World Series patch. I guess these can get filed away with all of the similar cards Topps has produced over the last few years.

The second retail manufactured patch set consists of framed mini card patches featuring an assortment of rookie cards and other random stuff. For the Mets, that meant rookie card patches from Darryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden, and Jose Reyes and a very off-center 1970 Topps Nolan Ryan.

Silk Collection

Shoulder surgery starting pitchers for the, um, DL I guess…

Honestly, I’m not really sure how to classify silk cards. They’re not typically considered relics, but they are technically manufactured material, so here they are. R.A. Dickey, David Wright, and Matt Harvey are the big Mets names with silk cards in 2013, but I don’t have any of them so here’s Johan Santana and Shaun Marcum.

Award Winner Relics

This year’s theme for hobby manufactured relics was award winners. Each card featured a tiny metal replica of one of several featured awards, including MVPs, Cy Youngs, Silver Sluggers, Rookies of the Year, World Series MVPs, etc. The best looking of the bunch were the MVP relics, but the Mets have never had an MVP.

They have had a bunch of Cy Young winners though, most recently R.A. Dickey in 2012. Who was not featured in this set. Instead, we got Tom Seaver and Dwight Gooden.

Darryl Strawberry’s Silver Slugger rounds out the three Mets featured in Series 1 with a photo that somewhat ironically crops out the bat he is swinging. Series 2 featured Mets Rookies of the Year Tom Seaver, Darryl Strawberry, and Dwight Gooden. Um, what happened to Jon Matlack? Am I the only one who remembers that he existed?

Proven Mettle Coins

And that brings us to the last and best category of manufactured relics, the coins. Last year, Topps introduced manufactured coin relics, the first I’ve seen since some pretty lame attempts in the late ’90s that embedded what looked like amusement park tokens into cards. The Topps version uses huge coins with the card barely wrapped around them. Only one Met, Tom Seaver of course, was featured in last year’s coins. In 2013, the Proven Mettle (get it?) coins featured a three-tier parallel with copper (#d/99), wrought iron (#d/50), and steel (#d/10) versions. David Wright joins Seaver this time for a total of six Mets cards. If you only get one manufactured material card from 2013, it should be one of these coins.

Did I miss anything?  Let me know in the comments.

Product Spotlight: 2013 Topps Pro Debut

Posted by on 20 July 2013 Comments Off on Product Spotlight: 2013 Topps Pro Debut

d’Aaud!

The first of the year’s minor league releases, Pro Debut gives us the rare chance to see logos from farm teams on the familiar base Topps design.  Brandon Nimmo with the Brooklyn Cyclones, Wilmer Flores with the Binghamton Mets, Travis d’Arnaud with the, um, Buffalo Bisons?

Card Design

So many things wrong with this card…

Pro Debut uses the same design we’ve seen in Topps Series 1 and Topps Series 2, which I really should have gotten around to reviewing by now.  So here it is in all its glory, the standard white border with a bit of color and a small spot of design by the name and team logo.  While the design won’t exactly turn any heads, the choice of team might.  Travis d’Arnaud never played for the Buffalo Bisons and the Bisons never used this logo as an affiliate of the New York Mets.  So what the heck is going on here?  Given how forthcoming Topps has been lately regarding its numerous problems, we may never know how this oddity came to be.  So I guess that leaves it to me to come up with a few crackpot theories to explain its origin.

Lead Times

The simplest way to explain errors like this are the long lead times in sports card production.  Sometimes you just have to get the photos out the door way ahead of release and hope for the best.  It is possible that the photo deadline fell somewhere between November 20, 2012, when the new Bisons logo was unveiled, and December 17, 2013, when Travis d’Arnaud was traded to the Mets.  But for a product released on June 26, 2013?  Six months is an eternity in this business, so this one doesn’t make much sense.

Risk Management

A somewhat more likely scenario involves the lead times not for the photography, but for the manufactured logo patches.  These would be needed in advance of card printing, so it makes sense that they would be ordered before the photography has been finalized.  Based on the delays Topps apparently encountered in receiving the logo patches for 2012 Topps Heritage Minor League Edition (last-minute redemption cards were issued in their place), a solid risk management strategy would have been to order the next batch well in advance, potentially in the one-month window during which it looked like d’Arnaud would be playing for the Bisons.  It wouldn’t do to have the player shown with a different team and it would be confusing to show a player with two different teams in the same product, so there’s a decent amount of logic here.  And the logo on the patch isn’t the 2013 Bisons logo but the 2012 Bisons logo in 2013 colors, indicating that the ordering deadline was too soon after November 20 to do a full logo redesign.  But with the error apparent so far in advance, wouldn’t ordering an updated patch have been a feasible option?  We’re talking about less than 100 tiny pieces of cloth here.

Work of Art

Enough with logic, maybe they were so impressed with their artwork that they didn’t want to let it go to waste.  After decades of uniform manipulation, they finally got one right, then the guy gets traded!  Screw it, we’re keeping it the way it is.  This one makes no sense, which is why it is my favorite option.

Token Bison

Maybe we’re overthinking this.  Travis d’Arnaud is the only player from the Buffalo Bisons in 2013 Pro Debut (two mascots in the Mascot Patch insert set are the only other Bisons).  It’s possible that the Bisons needed to have at least one player in the product and d’Arnaud was it.  Without a replacement, Topps could have found themselves in a tough spot.  A quick fix of showing d’Arnaud with the Bisons and calling it a Mets affiliate doesn’t make much sense but technically checks off the box.

Miscommunication

Or maybe this was just a colossal screw-up resulting from the many people responsible for different parts of the card not all working from the same notes.  Imagine if you’re doing the final layout with the deadline fast approaching and, on card number 200, you get a picture showing a player with one team and a description showing him with a different MLB team’s affiliate.  The clock is ticking, you still have 20 more cards to finish off, and you’re not being paid enough to care.  In reality, that’s how cards like this are made, so this scenario wouldn’t surprise me at all.

Player Selection

2013 Topps Pro Debut: Now with 25% pro debuts!

As for the rest of the set, there’s a mix of players from Kingsport to Las Vegas.  It’s mostly first-round draft picks and top prospects here, so we’ve seen most of these guys before.  Many, many times.  You’ll note that Gavin Ceccini and Luis Mateo are the only ones with the Pro Debut medallion, because they’re the only ones who made their pro debut last year.  That’s a bit disappointing for a product called “Pro Debut.”  Brandon Nimmo and Michael Fulmer are in Pro Debut for the first time, but as first-round draft picks, they’ve been around in Topps products before.  Zack Wheeler, Wilmer Flores, Noah Syndergaard, and Travis d’Arnaud have all been in Pro Debut two or three times before this (and, along with Fulmer, had insert cards in 2013 Bowman), so you would think they would have aged out of this product by now to make room for younger guys like Gabriel Ynoa, Kevin Plawecki, Darin Gorski, or Cory Mazzoni.  At least Luis Mateo (the one in the Mets system, not to be confused with the other Luis Mateo) gets his first professional cards here, though I would have preferred Ynoa.

Gold Parallel

As usual, every base card has a gold parallel numbered to 50.  Also as usual, I have all of them except the Wheeler.  While most of these are available for less than $5 shipped, the Wheeler sells for $15-20.  Or at least it would if anyone selling one would ask less than $25.  So we’re at a stalemate, which will end with anyone who wants to buy one not caring anymore before anyone considering selling one accepts reality.  And so the only people who will own them will be people who don’t really want them.  And that’s this crazy hobby in a nutshell.

Futures Fabric

I think I own about half of this jersey by now…

Following the usual script, 2013 Pro Debut has more pieces of 2012 Futures Game jerseys first cut up in some of last years late releases.  Wilmer Flores is the only Met here, with jersey swatches (plus gold parallels numbered to 50 and printing plates numbered to 1) and jumbo logo patches (numbered to 5).  Zack Wheeler is conspicuously absent, indicating that his material may be needed in another product later this year (Finest maybe?).

Logo Patches

Yes, that’s a 51s player in a 2013 Bisons jersey next to the 2012 Bisons logo in 2013 Bisons colors

Like last year, we have an assortment of logo patches from Mets minor league teams, including Wilmer Flores with the Binghamton Mets, Zack Wheeler with the Las Vegas 51s, and, um, yeah.  Eh, two out of three ain’t bad.

Mascots

You don’t want to think about this #SandysMess

Everyone loves mascots, so after the first-ever mascot autographs in 2013 Topps Opening Day, the minor league mascots got some recognition in a manufactured patch insert set.  The only Mets affiliate mascot in the bunch is Sandy the Seagull from the Brooklyn Cyclones (two Bisons mascots appear as they did in the Bisons’ Mets days, with the Blue Jays Bisons logo, so, um, I don’t know how to count that).

Conclusion

As with most of this year’s Topps releases, the value per box is fairly negligible, with the manufactured patches being worth more than most of the autographs and memorabilia cards (which are largely worthless).  Most of the cards here could be obtained fairly inexpensively, making this a good source of prospect cards, though most of the prospects here are no stranger to Topps products.  Notable cards are Luis Mateo’s first Topps card and Noah Syndergaard’s first base card as a Met.  And the Travis d’Arnaud abomination.  Yes, this product is most notable for an inexplicable freak of a card.  That’s the minor leagues for you.