Since when is nicotine bad?

In the late ’80s, if a baseball card inadvertently hit the streets with a tobacco advertisement in the background it was immediately pulled from the market.  Hence, every other card in 1989 Fleer has an error variation with a Marlboro billboard in the background.

Hey, it was the ’80s, cigarettes were cool.

By the early ’90s cigarettes were passé and chewing tobacco, or dip, was what all the cool kids were doing.  I don’t remember cards of players actually smoking cigarettes, which I can understand being frowned upon.  So why were cards of players with MASSIVE wads of dip allowed?

Which 1994 Fleer Ultra picture of Lenny Dykstra features more dip, the front:

Or the back?

Sunday reading

Courtesy of Grandpa Joe:

(Click a couple times to get to the full size scan.)

Who would you rather?

Let’s flashback to 1988, shall we?  Let’s just say the internet was common and fantasy baseball was as popular as it is now.  Who would you rather?

Player A:  .269 AVG, 39 HR, 101 RBI

Player B: 1.000 AVG, 478 HR, and 1,420 RBI

Player A was Darryl Strawberry, who would’ve been an easy choice for #1 overall pick, although personally, I would’ve jumped all over Player B… this guy:

Homerun Harold of the Sunkist Growers league was a dominant force.  Baseball cards really did used to be BIG, didn’t they?  “Homerun Harold” comes from a baseball themed fruit snack.  I don’t know how I felt then, but today I don’t particularly care for them.  Call me crazy, but I’d rather eat an actual piece of fruit (or put a piece of fruit in an ice cold Blue Moon) than have it turned into a sugary, gummy substance.

Baseball cards came in dog food, breakfast sausage, cereal, and now fruit snacks?!  What a wonderful world.

Pogs, meet baseball cards

The baseball card industry was booming in the ’90s.  Everyone was collecting cards!!  There were gold parallels in Topps, Donruss unveiled their “Elite” insert set which numbered only to 10,000, and Upper Deck had holograms on the backs of each card to ensure authenticity.  Times were good.

Another craze that took the country by storm was pogs.  They originally debuted as a Hawaiian game in which the tops were taken off of milk cartons (or juice cartons, or… something like that) to get the ‘pieces’.  You’d then slam them on top of each other, trying to get the stack to flip.  You kept the pogs you flipped.  Easy enough.  Of course, in true ’90s fashion, pogs made a come back and they were mass produced as all heck, and everyone had ’em.  In fact, I remember my elementary school banning them because they were viewed as a form of gambling.

So what do you get when you cross pogs with baseball cards?  Pogs on baseball cards, obviously.  This dual pog card came from a pack of 1993 Ted Williams (or whatever the brand was actually called).  Brooklyn Dodgers logo and Roy Campanella, very nice!

If any of you Dodgers fans want these, you’re gonna have to win them off me.

Things I love about the hobby

Yesterday I posted a list of things that bother me about the hobby, so today, as promised, I’m presenting my personal bright side of things.

1.  The internet. Some may claim that this has ruined the industry, but I prefer to see it as having simply changed it.  We can buy our favorite singles online through sites like Check Out My Cards, Sportlots, and eBay.  We can get cheaper hobby boxes from a multitude of sources.  We can watch video box breaks on YouTube to see first hand what’s inside these boxes.  Hobby shops, should they choose to embrace change instead of shun it, now have a larger potential customer base than ever before.  We, the consumer, win.

2.  Jersey cards. I’m sorry, but I’ll always love them.  I’m pretty sure I’ve run my finger across all two hundred or so in my collection, and I’m willing to bet most of you have done the same!  Heck, even my four five month old son (time flies!) loves doing this.  He also likes to eat them.  Thanks to the internet, I can just replace them if he ever manages to swallow one.  We should all try to eat our favorite cards.

3.  Blogs. We all have a terrific opportunity to share our collections and views on the hobby, and it gives our priceless pursuit, if you will, a bit of meaning.

4.  Trading. A side effect of blogs.  I love working out a deal with a fellow collector, and nothing beats the surprise of discovering that he/she has included something you hadn’t negotiated (but often is better than what you did!).  Never before have I been able to turn my Red Sox or Orioles or Marlins or Reds cards in to something ‘good’.

5.  The card shop. They’re few and far between, and I can’t find much at my shop cheaper than what I can get elsewhere, but there’s nothing I’d rather do for an hour than walk around the shop.  The smells, the sights, the promise of an unopened pack –  it’s a beautiful thing.

6. Variety. Some may look at the absurd amount of product being released on a monthly basis as a bad thing, but it also means that there’s something out there for everyone.  Opening Day and Upper Deck X cater to young collectors and parents/uncles/aunts/grandparents who just can’t say “no” when their little ones ask for a pack of cards.  You’ve got the annual and all-encompassing yearly flagship sets in which stars and virtual unknowns are intertwined.  If you’re looking for the big hit, $100 boxes are plentiful.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I don’t think you can ever have too many options.  Unfortunately, there’s about to be a lot less variety on store shelves due to exclusivity contracts.

The little things. I’m talking about small stuff that I’m not sure if words can describe, like the sound top loaders make when you place one on top of the other.  Flipping through my box of relics and autos.  The sound of Allen & Ginter when shuffling the cards in your hand.  Mini top loaders.  Completed binder pages.  The smell of a freshly opened box.  The list goes on and on…

The sports card industry, like anything else, has good and bad aspects to it.  So long as you can see the good with the bad and stick with what you enjoy, it’s a hobby that will never grow stale.  I would love to read comments about the “little things” that you love about card collecting.

Things I hate about the hobby

Perhaps ‘hate’ is a strong word.  “Strongly irked by” may be more appropriate.

1.  Saying “mojo” in video box breaks. Guaranteed one-per-box hits do not qualify as ‘mojo’.  If you insist that it does, I have the most mojorific collection on the planet.  Take one glance at my collection and you’ll undoubtedly stop calling every single relic card you pull ‘mojo’.

2.  The term “PC”, or, “personal collection.” What do you call the rest of your cards, then?  Community pool?  Can I swing by and poach the hundreds (thousands?) of cards that are not PC?  I understand that this generally means that a card is not for sale or trade, but it implies that you don’t care about your other cards at all.  How sad.  Also, “PC” already stands for something else.

3.  Complaining. Is it just me, or do some people spend more time complaining about what they don’t like that enjoying what they do?  You know what I do if I don’t like something? I don’t buy it.  A novel concept, isn’t it?  I suppose this post itself is a complaint, but not about any specific product.

4.  People who say they don’t care about book value, but secretly do. Admit it, you check out Beckett to see what your cards are worth.  No, you can’t sell your card for anywhere close to book value, but it gives a great general sense of ‘worth’ vs. ‘worthless’.  If nothing else, it’s a great reference for what/who is or isn’t in a particular set.  For as lame as Beckett seems through the blogosphere looking glass, we sure do talk about it a lot.

5.  Pack searchers. I don’t buy much retail, but these people creep me out and almost make me embarrassed to admit that I collect baseball cards.  How is a $2 jersey card worth the shame and embarrassment of a grown man frantically searching through packs at Target to find a Juan Pierre swatch in the card aisle?

I consider myself a “glass half full” guy when it comes to the hobby, so the next post will be my personal bright side of baseball cards.

Friday night card show

For months I’ve been flipping through the one Beckett magazine issue I own, which I use mostly as a checklist or a “who’s where” inventory system for my pack purchases.  I realize that the pricing is a bit… off… but that’s fine, it’s not the main draw for me.

At the back of the issue is a listing of card shows, and I always think back to the days as a kid when I’d go to one with my dad, meet a famous athlete, and come home with a couple packs of cards.  And then I remember the summer of 2004 and going to various card shows in the town I worked in.  There was never anyone signing, but there were a reasonable amount of dealers peddling their goods.  I was big in to 2004 Bowman and spent most of my couple hundred dollar a month “salary” (I was an intern) on boxes of the stuff.  I still don’t have the full set…

Anyhow, I scanned the listings for card shows in San Diego to see if I’ve missed any.  Sure enough, there’s a show every Friday night not too far from where I work!  Well, there WAS a show every Friday night in October (that’s the Beckett issue I have).  Alas, some quick digging revealed that it takes place EVERY Friday night! How cool is that?  Granted, it’s a small show, listed as being only 20 tables (and I’ve heard it’s often less), but various people have told me it’s actually decent despite its size.  “Decent” is relative, though.  I’m hoping for cheap boxes and discount boxes of autographs and relics.

I’m determined to brave traveling on the highway during after-work rush hour to check it out, and I’ll report back on my findings and any pick ups.  Like I said, all I’m hoping for are hobby boxes priced close to internet pricing since that’s the one thing my shop doesn’t offer.  The have plenty of boxes, sure, but I’m not paying $47 boxes for a box of ’08 Timeline.

Wish me luck.

People collect things other than baseball cards??

Contrary to recent purchases, I tend to enjoy cheaper, lower end products more than the expensive stuff.  Not really sure why, other than the fact that when it comes to inserts I generally prefer quantity over quality and I don’t like the feeling of buyer’s remorse. I’m not in this hobby for the money!  I may sell the occasional “pick ’em” lot on ebay, but that’s only after I’ve exhausted all trading possibilities on the blogosphere.

It should come as no surprise that I like saving money when it comes to my reading material, too, and am a big fan of the public library.  Turns out they carry most newer releases and you can actually order books to be delivered to your “home” branch.  Not too shabby.  And since they’re free, I’m more adventurous with my selections and enjoy judging books by their covers, especially on the new release shelf.

Recently, I picked up a book called “Error World,” by Simon Garfield.  While it is mainly about stamp collecting, it is more generally a book about collecting as a whole.  I came across quite a few parallels between the stamp world and our own:

The problem was, the inexperienced believed that their stamps were worth what it said in the Stanley Gibbons catalogue, whereas that was merely a top-end selling price, often including a handling charge.  The cheap stamps in the listed in the catalogue at 20p each were actually worth about a penny when you came to sell them.  It is only the truly rare stamps that achieve the catalogue price.

Sounds a bit like baseball cards and Beckett book values, no?

Is there any other hobby where obligation and habit compel you to buy things you don’t like? With stamps it has ever been thus, and everyone has their breaking point.  On those rare occasions when I regret my decision I console myself with the knowledge that the stamps will never be rare, and my grandchildren could always buy them from a dealer at minimal mark-up.  And then… and then I miss not owning the stamps.

Who among us has bought something we shouldn’t have, passed on something we wished we hadn’t, or sold something we regretted soon thereafter? Yep – nearly everyone.

I’ve heard a lot of theories as to why people collect, and the most popular one now is that collectors have to own, they have to gather, they have to do this stuff.

I’ve never thought about why I collect, only that I enjoy it so very much.  The excitement of an afternoon at the card shop or a delivery box waiting for me at the front door never tires.  I’ve always loved watching baseball, I still watch games almost nightly in season, and I play adult baseball on weekends even though my body is beginning to suggest that softball would be best.

I only collect baseball cards along with the occasional Sports Illustrated or other magazine or newspaper, but I’m sure others collect more than just rectangular pieces of card board.  So I ask, what else do you collect, and why do you collect it?

Baseball cards on ESPN

Mike and I are ironing out the scoring from our first couple packs of 2010 Topps and will get them posted in just a couple hours.  To pass the time until then, Jim Caple has written a piece on ESPN.com about the hobby, including a video with a shop owner in Washington.

Check it out.

I love weekend mornings