If you thought Strasburg-mania was bad…

… wait until the Joe Shlabotnik frenzy begins.

Courtesy of Grandpa Joe.

What have I missed?

With baseball season now over – and the Yankees season having ended a few weeks earlier – I’ve admittedly slowed down on card collecting.  It’s certainly not due to lack of interest, rather it’s the annual occurrence of feeling worn down from the better part of a year reading, collecting, watching, and listening to all things baseball.

I was discussing the state of the industry with a fellow blogger (this guy) the other day when I started longing for something exciting to reinvigorate the hobby.  I’m not talking about refractors or bigger swatches, no, but rather 1990s Pacific levels of excitement.

I want innovation, like how crazy die-cut cards seemed when they debuted.  Or cards in a can.  Or even the protective layers of film over Topps Finest.  Something, anything, to pump new life in to the hobby.

Anyhow, the discussion turned towards upcoming releases that may be fun to check out.  We went back and forth about how Topps’ flagship products are the only sets with variety (OK, I did all the insisting that flagship sets are best), and moved on to Topps Heritage, and blah blah blah.  It piqued my curiosity enough that I went to BlowoutCards.com to see what early pricing looked like on ’11 Heritage.

And then my jaw hit the floor.

I couldn’t find anything on Heritage, but I did notice that 2010 Topps 206 is now $35 a box.  ’10 Topps Chrome and ’10 Topps Update are only $37.  2010 Topps Pro Debut Series 2 is only $33.

Uhhhh…. weren’t prices skyrocketing just a few months ago?  What happened?  Granted, not ALL boxes are priced at rock bottom prices, but these are absurd.  Or maybe they WERE absurd, and now they’re more in  line with what they should’ve been all along?  Has the Strasburg bubble popped, leaving retailers with cases of unsellable products that they no doubt over-ordered?

From what I’ve seen, the quality of the hits in these boxes are no worse than they’ve ever been, and while quality control may be lacking lately it didn’t stop people from going crazy over 2010 Bowman.

The winners in all of this?  The consumers.  Finally.

One pic pack rip – 2010 Bowman (hobby)

(Yes, it’s short a card. And yes, of course, the missing card is a chrome. No Strasburg lotto ticket for me.)

The answer to the 2010 Ginter code is so easy

Obviously, it’s STEPHEN STRASBURG.

Go ahead and submit it, and send half of the autograph set back my way.  You’re welcome.

Card Shop Friday

Joseph and I ditched work and daycare early (with mom’s OK, of course) to hit up the card shop.  Turns out it was a wise decision – other than for baseball cards – as a stomach virus has been spreading through the daycare center.  Yippee.  Joke’s on them, though, ’cause mom and dad were already hammered with a stomach flu!  HA!!  Or maybe the joke’s on us because now Joseph will likely be sidelined for the entire three day weekend.

Hopefully not.  Anyway, let’s get to our haul.

We picked up two additions for our man cave card shop, which from this point forward will be referred to as the MCCS. The first addition was a tiny little box (in stature, not content!) of 1990 Topps Major League Leaders.  The cards/packs are about 3/4 the size of a normal pack, and the cards feel like they’ve got raised fonts and pictures.  At $5 for the box I figured it was worth a shot.  I’ll rip a pack at a later date to see what the cards are actually like.

Next up, 1991 O-Pee-Chee.  True story: I’ve never purchased or opened a pack of O-Pee-Chee in my life.  Crazy, right? You’d think that at some point in time I would’ve come across at least one pack, but no.  I always knew about OPC, but I’d always assumed they were rare French cards.  Keep in mind that this was also a time when I thought I’d be able to retire off of my Shawn Green rookies.

Joseph and I were both in the mood to bust some wax, but not in the mood to dedicate a large portion of our funds to packs.  We’ve got a jumbo box of 2010 Topps Series 2 set to arrive Tuesday, so we just needed something to scratch the itch, if you will.  We picked up a pack of 2009 Bowman Jumbo, discounted to the incredible low price of $5:

No, there’s no Stephen Strasburg rookie worth a million dollars, but there are decent odds of an autograph and/or a cool refractor.  Besides, most of the players in Bowman won’t be household names for a few years, anyway.  We’ll buy 2010 Bowman when the hype dies down.  For now, give us last year’s stuff on the cheap!

And then we kinda choked.  I (we) actually did sorta want to pick up one more pack of Bowman, but the box was rather thin, and the paranoid collector in me pictured someone buying packs until he or she found the autograph.  That’s an incredibly expensive way to bust wax, and it probably didn’t happen, but you never know.  So no 2010 Bowman.  We’d thought about getting a jumbo pack of 2010 Topps, just to see what was coming next week, but the price would’ve put us over the amount we’d wanted to spend.  I asked Joseph he wanted ’10 Topps, or Topps Chicle.  He said, “ammmmoooooooossshhhhhoooooob-b-b-b-b-b-b-b”, so we got two regular packs of 2010 Topps:

There’s a slight chance of pulling something nice, and one of those Million Card Giveaway codes will pay for the packs, anyway.  So I suppose it could’ve been a worse decision.  Besides, these packs are from Joseph’s cardboard allotment, so they’re his.  Oh-by-the-way, I also picked up some 9-pocket binder pages for some sets I need to put away.

It was a great afternoon at the shop and an even better way to kick off the holiday weekend.  There will most definitely be more half-day Fridays in our future.

And wouldn’t ya know, there’s more!

I noticed a package at the front door when we got home, postmarked from Mississippi.  Care package from grandma and grandpa! Whooooooo!!!  What could be inside?

There was a ton of stuff for Joseph (I figured there would be), some cookies for the wife (and me!), a tool to test for electric current (which I didn’t have when I shocked the $%#&! out of myself when uninstalling our old dishwasher), and this gem from my youth:

I don’t how common these were, but it’s a soft plastic storage case for baseball cards, with trays inside:

Awesome!  This is the one piece of my collection as a kid that I remembered more than anything else.  If you’re wondering, the cards inside are all from ’88-’93.  I’ll clear those out and use this as a storage case for Joseph’s cards.

Also included: a stack of grandpa’s “extras” from 1967 Topps, which is probably worth more than my entire relic collection combined.  My favorite from the stack was this one:

Pie face!  Who knew Topps was issuing SP’s in 1967?  This card commemorates the 1966 World Series champions, which according to Wikipedia was the Orioles.

A trip to the card shop, a surprise package, cookies, and actual vintage cards… a happy Memorial Day weekend indeed.