Trading with the Troll

Just thought I'd throw up a quick trade note with a few pictures to come later. Thanks to a generous Troll, I managed to take 32 cards off my want list for 2010 Topps Series 1. I'm finally getting caught back up with things after being on the road for 3 weeks, and will scan a couple of my favorites that The Troll sent. My thanks for the generous trade, hopefully I sent a couple things you needed as well.

Free Custom Card? Sign me up. :)

While doing my morning blog reading, I came across a link from Waxaholic to a blog I'd never visited. Hey, That's Mine!, a blog by Big D, who makes some pretty awesome custom cards, go to his site and enter for a chance to win a free custom card designed by Big D himself. I did. :)

Cracking the Gibson, or something like that

So, I decided it was time to gamble with the Topps Million Card Giveaway, and see what my codes would get me. I had 6 codes to enter, below are the cards they revealed.

First code entered and I get a 2008 Series 2 Ryan Spilborghs from the Colorado Rockies, card #607. Could be worse, maybe the next one will be a Royal.


Next, I get this 1975 Series 1 Roy White, #375. Why is it that I'm always getting Yankees and Red Sox cards? Don't they know I'm a Royals fan and could give a flip about those teams? Anyway, moving on.


My third code goes into the system and spits out... wait for it. No, not a Yankee, a 1976 Denny Doyle Series 1 card. Yankees - Check, Red Sox - Check. This is annoying, maybe I should have listened to my dad and never gambled.


Who am I kidding, of course I'm going to put the last three codes into my personal Yankee/Red Sox card generator. In goes code number four, and out comes Dale Murphy, #210 from the 1989 Series 1 set. Ok, I can live with that, I remember seeing the Braves play a few times in the 80s.


Come on number 5! What is this card, looks pretty odd to me, but also kinda cool. It's Eddie Murray and a 1988 Record Breakers Card from Series 1. Can't help myself from thinking Eddie Murphy when I look at this one, what with the multiple Eddies on the card, looks like something Eddie Murphy would do. Well, if one of them was 500lbs+, could talk to animals, and had an alien in its head. Moving on.


Lucky number 6 goes into the Million-Card-Giveaway-don't-give-kcscorecards-any-royals-blackbox. I can just hear the Gibson chunking away at Topps HQ, trying like hell to deny me what I want. Then suddenly... Woohoo! A Royals player, and none other than Bo Jackson. I thought he was the MAN back in the 80s. Maybe gambling does pay off. Nah.

Favorite Card Designs... So Far

As I said a couple days ago, I got a bunch of Royals cards from gcrl in the mail. I scanned in a few of my favorites, and thought I'd share them here with you. Now, these are my favorites as far as design goes, sure I like Luke Hochevar and Joakim Soria, but I didn't pick these cards out because they were on them. Now, on to the cards.

First up, Topps Heritage. This card just reminds me of cards I used to see when I was alot younger. The layout of the back of the card with the cartoon, stats, and highlights just "looks right" to me. I also love the front of this card. The large closeup picture of the player with a smaller near-full-body shot, just looks cool.


Next, Upper Deck Series 1/2. Not a whole lot to say about the front of this one, I love the nice big picture that takes up the entire card. Clean, understated logo and name at the bottom. The back of the card using a cropped version of the front picture, while abit lazy, doesn't detract from the card. the only thing I don't like about this one... I wish the team logo filled the square its in, instead of having a white bar on the right side.


My favorite of the cards gcrl sent me, has to be this one. Classic, classy, just a very, very cool card in my eyes. Not alot needs to be said in my opinion, it speaks for itself.


My absolute favorite cards that I've gotten so far has to be the Allen & Ginter's. Everyone here knows what they look like, I haven't scanned of those yet to show you exactly. But those cards also speak for themselves, just gorgeous little pieces of cardboard art.

I've stated before that I'm a completist. After looking at alot of the card sets out there, I'm going to have to revise my want list. I still plan to concentrate on all 2005-present Royals that I can find, but will be adding a few sets to my list of things to collect. I'll mainly be after base cards sets, maybe working on a few short prints.

Right now, these are the sets that are intriguing to me:
Topps Series 1/2
Upper Deck Series 1/2
Topps Heritage
Topps T206
Allen & Ginter's
I'm sure that is far more than enough to keep me looking for cards for a long time to come heh.

What to my wondering eyes should appear...

But mail from Gcrl, in a manila bubble mailer.

The mail on Saturday brought a pleasant suprise. Gcrl had posted that he would send me some cards a little while back to help out a newbie collector. What a wonderful mailer full of cards he sent. Since I've stating I'm going to start my collection by gathering up Kansas City Royals cards from 2005 to present, plus my fantasy team, he sent me 52 different Royals cards from various sets and two for my fantasy team. Since I'm completely new to this addiction, I might not get all these sets named correctly, but I'll try to detail what he sent me, and tonight I will scan a couple of my favorites to share.

This post is as much for me as it is anyone else, finding out what sets these cards are in was an education for me. I found that between http://www.teamsets4u.com/ and http://www.checkoutmycards.com/ I was able to find every one of them and attribute them to the correct set (I hope).

The list is pretty long, 54 cards in all, enjoy.

2006
Upper Deck Update:
1090 - Buddy Bell

2007
Topps Series 1:
27 - Joey Gathright
146 - Luke Hudson
184 - Gil Meche
262 - Ryan Braun
303 - Mark Grudzielanek

Upper Deck Masterpieces:
83 - Billy Butler

Goudey Red/Green Backs:
137 - David DeJesus (Green)
144 - Mike Sweeney (Red)

Upper Deck Series 2:
123 - Mitch Maier
131 - Todd Wellemeyer
735 - Octavio Dotel
748 - David DeJesus

2008
Upper Deck Timeline:
43 - Alex Gordon

Upper Deck Series 2:
524 - Shane Costa
526 - Mark Teahen
776 - Jose Guillen

Topps T205:
TCP4 - Luke Hochevar

Topps Chrome Refractors:
183 - Billy Butler

Bowman:
37 - Gil Meche

Topps Stadium Club:
101 - Luke Hochevar

Topps Heritage:
86 - Alex Gordon
236 - Mark Grudzielanek
239 - Zack Greinke

Topps Series 1/2/Update:
46 - Zack Greinke
189 - Esteban German
208 - David Dejesus
210 - Mark Teahen
222 - Mark Grudzielanek
577 - John Buck
585 - Brian Bannister
UH109 - Alberto Callaspo (1060/2008)

2009
Upper Deck Series 1/2:
494 - Joakim Soria
678 - Zack Greinke

Topps Chrome Refractors:
26 - David DeJesus
167 - Joakim Soria

Upper Deck Goudey:
84 - Joakim Soria

Topps Heritage:
108 - John Buck
135 - Devon Lowery
196 - Alex Gordon
308 - Zack Greinke
353 - Luke Hochevar
367 - David DeJesus
413 - Kansas City Royals Team Card

2010
Upper Deck Series 1:
240 - Jose Guillen
248 - Miguel Olivo

Topps Heritage:
148 - Chris Getz

Topps Series 1:
69 - Kansas City Royals Team Card
117 - David Dejesus
182 - Coco Crisp

Fantasy Team (The Whippets)
2010 Upper Deck Series 1:
188 - Todd Helton

2010 Topps Series 1:
295 - Kevin Youkilis

Thanks again gcrl, I'll keep any extra Dodgers cards I find set aside for you. Now I have to go back through these sets and see what else I need to track down. I can feel a cardboard addiction settling into my completist brain already, and this list gives me a great jumping in point!

First Cards

I finally had to do some shopping on my way home from work yesterday, and as luck would have it, I had to drive right past a place that I knew had some baseball cards. Since I started this blog last month, I've mentioned a few times that I was going to start on my card collection, I finally did.

I bought two packs of 2008 Allen & Ginter's, and a handful of Topps Opening Day 2010. I haven't opened the Opening Day cards yet, but wow those Allen & Ginter's cards are gorgeous! The look, the feel, just the sheer enjoyment of opening those packs was great. I have a terrible feeling that my "Want List" is going to continue to grow and I may have a hard time just collecting Royals and fantasy team cards. Being a completist, I'm already positive that I'm gonna have to chase down more of these Allen & Ginter's cards, they are beautiful little pieces of cardboard art. I only wish they were a little less expensive.

Without further adieu, here are the cards I opened last night:

Pack #1
56 - Nick Johnson
253 - Nick Blackburn
US15 - State of Iowa - Casey Blake
326 - Mini Adam Kennedy
199 - Daric Barton
269 - Gary Sheffield
265 - Brian Roberts
179 - Hideki Matsui

Pack #2
108 - Alex Romero
158 - Mary Shelley
US42 - State of Tennessee - Todd Helton
83 - Mini Masahide Kobayashi
88 - Troy Glaus
61 - Adam Dunn
251 - Matt Cain
7 - Mickey Mantle

Calling all cards Pt. 2

Since I'm posting everything else that crosses my mind baseball-wise here, I may as well post this as well. I've finally had to accept the realities of what can be found for Royals (and my Fantasy team) players as it pertains to baseball cards. So, with that in mind, I've decided to just get what I can find, as the desire to add the cards I can get outweighs my disappointment in the cards I can't.

These are the players and years I intend to start collecting. I will mainly be shooting for base cards, as I don't plan, nor want, to spend alot of money. This isn't something I'm wanting to do as an investment, but mainly as another way for me to enjoy my favorite team, and my fantasy players.

Kansas City Royals - all players 2005 to present
The Whippets (my fantasy team listed below) - cards from 2010 where possible, older if not available

Thats it. :) Not an enormous list by any means, but I'm sure it'll keep me occupied and entertained trying to track them down. Since I'm just going for base cards, I can't imagine it'll be too difficult (why do I tempt fate by even saying that?) to get what I'm looking for. I am sure I'll end up buying packs here and there of whatever product happens to catch my eye when I've got a couple dollars in my pocket, so hopefully I'll end up with some stuff to trade away for what I'm looking for. Otherwise I'll probably just pick cards up as singles.

Now, you may be asking yourself, Why only Royals from 2005 to present? Well, I only started following baseball, and the Royals, in 2005 so I figured I'd collect cards of players I've watched. Once I get caught up on the players I've seen here for the past 5 seasons, then I might work my way backwards. If I stumble across some of those cards now, I'll be happy about it, but I'm not concentrating on them.

If anyone has base cards of the players above that they have no desire to keep, let me know, I can find a good home for them. :) Hopefully I can return the favor at some point. With that said, I'm off to try and find a list of these cards so I can get a figure on how many I've just committed myself to trying to find lol.

Calling all cards, Anthony Lerew, where are you?

As I mentioned in my earlier post Stage 2: Wanting the Cards, I had looked for a baseball card set that wasn't full of inserts, short runs, alternate cards, etc., as I didn't really want any of that stuff. My search had been partially in vain. What do I mean partially? Well, I have learned that Topps apparently puts out a Topps Baseball Factory Set each year. This set basically compiles all the base cards from their Series 1 and Series 2 sets for the year into one. That sounds great! No unwanted chase cards, or extraneous stuff that I'm not really interested in. Now, comes the partially part.

If you take a look at this blog, I think it would be pretty easy to see that when you boil it down, I'm really a Kansas City Royals fan. Sure, having cards for other players is cool and all, but what I would really like is a set of basic cards that includes every player, for every team. Why every team? Well I'm sure I'm not the only one out there who would like to have a card for every player on their team for a given year, and if I'm gonna ask for every Royal, I imagine someone else wants every Cardinal. I apologize if this sounds greedy, but if you ask my wife, she would say my completist attitude is annoying to her as well. :) To make matters worse, I'm not only a completist, I'd also like them to have the same format, not some being hologram cards, or a card splashed with gigantic ribbons of color, you get the idea I'm sure.

So, after discovering the existence of these Factory Sets I did a little research. I wanted to see how many players from the 2009 Royals are actually in the 2009 Topps Factory Set. I found a total of 21 players listed for the Royals. Of those 21, only 19 actually played in a game for them in 2009. That left 26 players who DID play a game for the Royals without a card in the set. They are, in order of number of games played:

Player................Games
Alberto Callaspo........155
Mitch Maier.............127
Willie Bloomquist.......125
Yuniesky Betancourt......71
Jamey Wright.............65
Brayan Pena..............64
Juan Cruz................46
Josh Anderson............44
John Bale................43
Roman Colon..............43
Kyle Farnsworth..........41
Ron Mahay................41
Luis Hernandez...........37
Robinson Tejeda..........35
Horacio Ramirez..........19
Ryan Freel...............18
Bruce Chen...............17
Tug Hulett...............15
Sidney Ponson............14
Yasuhiko Yabuta..........12
Dusty Hughes..............8
Victor Marte..............8
Carlos Rosa...............7
Lenny DiNardo.............5
Doug Waechter.............5
Anthony Lerew.............3

I can understand some of these guys not having cards, Anthony Lerew only played in 3 games after all. I'm probably one of the few folks, other than Anthony Lerew, who wants this card. Some I don't understand, Alberto Callaspo played in 155 games and has no card in this set? Sure, I'm naive and don't understand all the business ins and outs of player deals with card companies, I'll admit that, I just know what I want. I'd like to see maybe a Series 3 set from Topps, that throws a card in there for all the players that weren't in Series 1 or 2 and played a game in the Majors that year. Tall order I know, but with Topps being the exclusive Official Baseball Card Company of Major League Baseball, its something I'd like to see.

Barring the ability to get a card for every player on a team, for a given year, in a single set, I'm wondering if someone out there has a database that shows what set a player IS in for a given year, or if that player even has a card in existence. For example, is there someplace on the internet that I can go to and:

1. Select Kansas City Royals - 2009
2. See every player that played (even Anthony Lerew) that year
3. See what set they have a card in
4. If no card exists, tell me that

If I could find that, I could at least feed my completist monster. :)

Stage 2: Wanting the Cards

I mentioned in my earlier post that I had a few other baseball interests. I'd like to talk a little about one of those interests now.

In my route to baseball discovery I went through a few stages that I'm sure every baseball fan goes through, normally at a much younger age than myself however. These are the stages I went through:

1. Loving the Game (play, field, team)
2. Wanting the Cards (favorite players, teams)
3. Obsessed with the Numbers (scoring, stats)

I talked a little about Stages 1 and 3 in my first post, now I'd like to talk about Stage 2: Wanting the Cards.

Everybody knows about baseball cards. Most kids collected them if they had any interested in a ball team or player. Since I came into my baseball enjoyment later in life I never bought any cards as a kid. A few years back when I really gained an interest in baseball I figured, heck, I need cards for the guys on my favorite team, the Kansas City Royals. Talk about a can of worms. There were so blasted many card sets to choose from I didn't even know where to start! I looked online, I looked in card shops, but could never decide which cards I wanted to collect, so I never bought any. The selection was too diverse, or too expensive, or didn't have the players I wanted. I was frustrated. Why can't someone just print a set of baseball cards that has all the players for all the teams. Print one set at the beginning of the year with initial line-ups, then print a second set to update near the end of the year? I don't care about game-used jersey swatches, or chucks of a baseball bat, or dirt from the pitching mound. If someone does/did print one like that, I must have missed it. Am I alone in wanting a nice looking baseball card, with a large, clear picture of the player, some stats on the back, and reasonably priced? No way, I refuse to think I'm the only one who wants that.

Now, about this same time I got into my first rotisserie league. I'm pretty computer-literate, and like to think I have a decent eye for design, so I figured I would just MAKE my own baseball cards for the players on my rotisserie team since I couldn't seem to buy what I wanted. I built up a template, created a nice logo for my team, and proceeded to create them. While doing this I started to look around on the internet and found that I wasn't the only one creating custom cards. Goose Joak happened to be doing the same thing, albiet with a better design asthetic, and he was apparently a Royals fan also. I have lurked his blog for the better part of a year now. :)

My only stumbling block came when I decided, how cool would it be to have some of my custom cards signed by the players? Kind of a one-off fantasy baseball card set for just little ol' me. I decided that I didn't know the legality of using someone elses photos and presenting them to a ball player for an autograph, and scrapped the whole project.

So now I've come full circle on Stage 2. I still want baseball cards of the players on my team, and my fantasy team, I know that all the players I want will not have a card created for them for the 2010 season, and I don't know if I'll have the gumption to create them for myself. Even if all the players I want will have a card created, they will likely be from ump-teen different sets. Won't someone think of the casual baseball card collector like me who doesn't give a flip about jersey swatches and super-duper high-end collector sets? I'm not trying to make a fortune on old cards, I just want what I want. :)