Christmas Cards 2024

Guys, with this post I've bested my record (set last year) for least number of posts on my blog in a year. Hurray! It's a Christmas miracle; 2024 wasn't my least prolific year as a blogger! We're trending upwards!

Let's count down some cool cards numbered 12/25 that I got this year and haven't featured on the blog yet.

#6 Luis Robert, a.k.a. Lou Bob Jr., had a down year in 2024 with the historically bad White Sox, but he's a guy I've kinda collected since pulling a nice parallel of his back when he first popped onto the scene (1st Bowman mega box parallel). I needed an auto for the PC and eventually landed on this 2022 Topps Definitive card for about the price of a blaster. I'll be interested to see if he gets back on track next season or if his peak is in the rearview now.

#5 Spencer Strider made a big splash a year ago before being sidelined by Tommy John surgery. I landed this nice Five Star auto a few months back. He's another guy I hope is able to bounce back next season.

#4 is a Yogi Berra bat relic from 2005 Topps Pristine Legends. I'm working on a refractor version of the base set, and while I'm not actively trying to complete any of the hits, sometimes they pop up in my searches, and if the price is right, I might take a run at it... especially if it's serial numbered 12/25.

#3 - I had an eye out for a Max Scherzer autograph and landed this solid one from 2014 Topps Five Star. It pairs nicely with a similar Christmas Card I've got of another of the era's top starting pitchers...

Twice the holiday dominance! I was thinking how cool it would be if I could get a Verlander to go with these, but looks like Justin wasn't in Five Star that year, so no chance to match up with these guys. But maybe I'll score a different Verlander auto in 2025. Trying to nab autos of these "no doubters" before they're enshrined.

#2 is a big boy: Albert Pujols! I wanted an autograph as the cherry on top of my Pujols PC and, again, figured I'd better do it now before he's up for Cooperstown and his card prices see a bump. I held out for a Christmas Card, and wound up with this Leaf Pro Set "LFG!" acetate. That must stand for "Let's friggin' go!" as the kids like to say these days to psych themselves up. On the downside, it's an unlicensed stickergraph, but it otherwise looked cool to me and the price was right.

Drum roll for the #1 card in our Christmas Card countdown...

...

...

#1 - Ichiro auto! And it's licensed and on-card. Glad I got him in a Mariners uni, too. It's from 2020 Topps Transcendent, my first ever pickup from this popular high-end set, if I'm not mistaken. The metal frame is a classy touch. "[ OF ]" in the bottom corner nearly looks like "1 OF 1", but no, it's even better than that! It's 12/25!

Have a wonderful December 25th, everyone! And Merry Christmas, too, if that's your thing!

Joy of a Completed Set: 1978 Topps

This year I've been trying to stick a fork in some long-term collecting projects that had been languishing in "almost there" status over the past few years. The big boy was 1957 Topps, completed back in October. And thanks to my latest COMC order, I've knocked out a couple more sets, including previously covered 1992 Leaf Gold and this one from about 47 years ago..

Yep, today's post is to bask in the joy of a completed 1978 Topps set. While my "birth year set" is technically 1977 Topps, I was born during the offseason near the end of the year, so if I really wanted to push the parallel of entering this world around the same time as a baseball card set, it makes more sense to align with '78 Topps. Plus the '77 set features photos from the 1976 season anyways. So while it's not exactly a "baby book" for me, I can at least work up a little extra personal connection with the '78 set today.

The set/design has grown on me over the years after not doing much for me as a kid. One compliment I can give it is it's among my favorite designs to see in refractor form. I'm still working on a run of Topps All-Time Favorites refractors and I'd rank the '78s at the top (best looking) there, maybe just slightly below the 1970 Topps refractors when they make the borders shiny silver (sometimes they didn't and just left them matte grey, which doesn't look nearly as cool). I think maybe the fact Topps hasn't run 1978 into the ground in their modern era has helped the design remain sorta fresh.

Funny enough, the final pair of needs arriving in the COMC order were both team cards: #451 Minnesota Twins and #577 Oakland A's. The third-to-last need was also a team card (Pirates, from Sportlots). I don't even remember who the last player card I needed was. Thanks again to Dennis for sending me the Trammell/Molitor rookie a while back, which helped the setbuild be relatively painless to wrap up.

I've got 23 cards in the status of "upgrade would be nice" on my spreadsheet, but these days upgrading is very low priority and I don't really care about the condition of the set, I just find peace in the knowing that I've got a complete set of 1978 Topps there to take a look at whenever I want to.

My 1978 Topps set is a basic one-of-every-number set, currently, but I wouldn't mind expanding it slightly to include the 2 recognized variations. The #23 Bump Wills error has a black circle drawn in area between the crotch and rookie trophy. Seems to cost upwards of $20, which is more than I care about it, but I'll put it on my TCDB wantlist just in case a future trade partner has one to spare. I also need a #374 Jose Morales error where the stitching on position baseball is black, not red. Turns out the copy I have (red laces, like the rest of the set) is actually the more scarce variation, with the black laces version being the common. Guess I'll have to grab one in a future Sportlots order or something.

I'm also interested in possibly adding an appendix of the effectively "1978 Topps Traded"-type cards from that year in the same design via OPC and Burger King or Zest or whatever. But yeah, I'm only interested in the cards where the photo is significantly different than the flagship Topps card. Can anybody point me to a list of such cards to target? (Feels like this is something up GCRL's alley.)

I've now got a new oldest 3-year run of completed sets thanks to already finishing '79 and '80 in recent years. I'm focused on wrapping up '72 and '75 now, and after that I'll hope to bust out the relatively lightweight sets from '76 and '77, leaving 1970 Topps as the toughest obstacle on the horizon as I try to complete the run of 70s Topps flagship.

BIRTHDAY BONUS

I received a pair of mailings from blogger buds just in time for Christmas Eve, so let's check them out!

First up is a PWE from beloved chronicler Fuji. The envelope looked like it had been rained on a bit while out for delivery, but the main card was safe inside.

Nice! Going old school with a Helmar Turkish Cigarettes card with the Oregon state seal.

Great addition to my collection. Love super old cards plus cards with a personal connection, so happy to get this vintage representation of the state I've called home for the past 15 years.

Thank you, Fuji!

-   - -o

Next up is a little bubble mailer from another of the cardsphere's top solid dudes, Dennis from TMV.

Bringer of Gavins! Shiny Sheets and a nice pair of Escobars.

But the real highlight was this Gavin Floyd plate from 2011 Topps! 

Not just a cool 1/1 Gavin-- 2011 Topps is a modern favorite of mine. You might recall I've still got a massive parallel frankenset crawling along where I'm trying to build that year's flagship sets (S1, S2, Update, Chrome) as a mix of the various parallels. Surprisingly I didn't have any printing plates among those cards despite having nearly every other parallel from that year. But yeah, this one's going to further pump up my Gavin Floyd PC.

[A little coincidence to mention, Fuji included a pair of 2011 Topps cards as bonus protection for the Oregon Helmar, though his note specified they were just along for the ride as support.]

Big thanks, Dennis! That brightened my day.

And thanks to all you readers for finding a moment to swing by the blog. Happy Xmas Eve and I hope you have an awesome Christmastime season.

Joy of a Completed Set: 1992 Leaf Black Gold

[Such a gut punch to lose Rickey unexpectedly. I figured he'd outlive us all.]

Here's a post I already had just about ready to go. Yep, I recently completed a set of 1992 Leaf Gold.. a.k.a. Black Gold. Took me a few years to accumulate them all, but wasn't too tough thanks to how overproduced baseball cards were back then. The gray-bordered base set doesn't do much for me, but with a black border and some gold foil, the design and photos come together to create works of art! I'm traditionally a "box guy", but this is the first full-size set that I've been compelled to page into a binder since returning to the hobby. (As a kid I paged up 1991 Classic Minors for some reason [so jam-packed with potential at the time!], but I think that's it other than maybe a few smaller sets like 1986 Donruss The Rookies and 1991 Upper Deck Final Edition.)

The final card to get was Griffey Jr, no big surprise, and I'm pretty sure that was the only card that cost me over a buck.

Here's another solid page I snapped a pic of. This was "my era", when baseball was a major part of my life as a kid and I'd pour over the Sunday sports section page where they listed everybody's stats up to that point.

Unlike the majority of handbuilt setbuilds I've undertaken, 1992 Leaf is a product I personally ripped a few packs of when it was new. So I suppose it makes it more personal for me since I felt the first-hand thrill of pulling a nice Gold parallel from a pack back when there was actually some buzz around it. If I could go back in time and tell my younger self that I would one day own a complete set of the parallels, I'd blow my young mind.. but of course I'd probably have more interesting things to tell myself. But still, it would be cool.

It's tricky photographing the foil, but one quirk with the set I'd like to touch on is how a small percentage of these cards have transitioned from black gold to "black silver". Here's a closer look:

I'd estimate maybe about 2% of these cards (counting my full set and another half-set of dupes) have had their gold foil become silver somehow. The backs of these cards also seem to have a weird splotchy fading thing going on:

"Silver" splotchiness on the right. ^

I'm pretty sure these didn't come out of the pack like this, but rather were unintentionally altered somehow over the decades since they were manufactured. Perhaps someone out there can explain what's going on? Like.. I'd love to know how to make "1992 Leaf Black Silver" cards as something new in my cardart arsenal, fitting in along with my creamy 1991 Fleers and "distressed wood" '87 Topps. I don't think sun exposure causes it, though I've currently got a dupe common in a sunny spot as an experiment. I'm guessing it's caused by oxidation or something a bit over my head like that. Elevation? Exposure to extreme temperatures, maybe? I should throw a card in the oven for a few minutes and see it anything interesting happens. Does this ever happen with early Topps Gold parallels too? Please speak up in the comments if you've got any leads regarding the mystery of 1992 Leaf gold foil somehow turning silver sometimes.

My completed set isn't in perfect condition. I've upgraded a couple bad offenders, but for the most part the cards are in good-enough shape. Sometimes there might be a minor issue with centering or dinged corners, but the most common defect that can torpedo the eye appeal of these cards is when the gold foil has chipped off a bit.

I didn't come across any card that was completely without foil, but some had been ravaged pretty bad in that regard. The Dave Martinez dupe above barely has foil on the right-hand side. I wish I knew a method to safely remove the foil from these cards because, again, that could allow for some new "cardart parallels" like I like to make.

Despite completing the set, and wanting for no specific upgrades, I'm not actually done hunting down these black gold beauties. Yep that's right, I've decided to work up an appendix with the preview cards. Identified by the "of 33" numbering on the back, these were distributed in two-card packs to dealers who ordered 1992 Donruss factory sets directly from Donruss. They look similar, but typically use a different photo than the standard issue. I'm about a quarter of the way there with the previews, with 8 of 33 acquired. Gotta admit that most of those 8 were just found among the regular cards, sort of like when you're working on a vintage Topps set and you end up with a couple OPC cards trying to sneak in.

So yeah, if you had gotten into the habit of setting aside bulk stacks of 1992 Leaf Black Gold for me, you no longer need to do so. Shoutout to John Miller for sending me many of these. By the way, I've finished designing a custom 9-card "Series 2" of bubble gum bubble cards a couple months back, but my printer crapped out when I went to print them. But good news: I'm getting a new printer for my birthday, and so John and Bob can expect mailings from me around the new year.

As I say, I've ended up with a ton of dupes, probably half a set worth, so if anyone reading would like a "starter lot" of '92 Leaf black gold, just let me know. But it's ok if I end up with a bunch of dupes because I can use the extras for cardart:

Leaf Gold gold leaf. Kinda like a meta palindrome of a parallel! I have a stack of stars and fan favorite dupes I'd like to make into this remix, but so far I've only gotten around to a few.

Thanks for stopping by and happy holidays, all!

some COMC highlights

Showing off some various pickups from my latest COMC order.

I was happy to hear Dick Allen and Dave Parker got the "Call to the Hall" the other day, though in Allen's case, it was bittersweet since they jacked him around so much when he was still with us. But being honored posthumously is better than not being honored at all, I suppose.

It's kinda surprising to me, but I'm still the #1 ranked Dick Allen collector on TCDB. I'm also ranked #1 for a couple obscure guys who most people don't remember, but to be ranked #1 for a HOFer isn't so easy. The rankings can change quickly, but whatever happens in the future, it's neat to have been the top-rated Dick Allen collector per TCDB on the day he made the Hall of Fame.

Thanks to the above modern parallels (btw, screw Topps for waiting until the moment he died to start putting him in new releases again), I'm up to 91 unique Dick Allen cards (2nd place collector is at 84). Call it an unofficial New Years resolution to break triple digits by the end of 2025.

Some vintage pickups. Mike Reinbach has a whopping 13 cards in the 1975-76 Calbee set, which as I understand it were distributed via packs of chips in Japan. And this one with the fielding shot was the last one of the 13 that I needed. So that makes for a nice little accomplishment. But he has several later Calbee cards from 1977-1980 still out there, so the search for Reinbach will continue unabated.

Nolan Ryan takes me to the cusp of completing my first Kellogg's set, now down to only Yaz and Garvey to wrap up the set from 1980. Back in 2020, I wanted to expand my wantlist to facilitate more trading, and I decided to take a run at all the vintage Kellogg's baseball sets (1970-1983). These few years later, trading has slowed for me and my collecting mindset is more on wrapping things up than finding new things to chase. Most of those Kellogg's sets are out of my reach unless I really prioritize them at some point, but I sure would love to at least knock out one or two years. Besides '80, the only other set I'm anywhere close with is '81 Kellogg's, with 16 cards remaining.

As for the 1974 Rookie Pitchers, thanks to this card I can claim to have a complete base set of 1974 Topps. See, my previous copy of this card erroneously assigned Dave Freisleben to Washington, and so it was technically an error variation taking the slot in my set. So with a correct San Diego designation on this card, my set is now a complete base set including some variations. For a master set, I'm lacking 9 Washington variations, the "Apodaco" typo of #608, and another version of the above #599 (I still need the small print variation, where the "S" in Padres aligns with "B" in Freisleben).

Bobby Richardson is a new refractor for my 2005 Retired auto set. That's at over 71% complete as a mix of base and refractors. That's just behind my 2003 Retired auto set that's at 79%. And of course 2004 Retired is still just waiting for a Trammell refractor. (*sigh* Will 2025 be the year I finally land that whale?)

My 1975 Topps needs are the same as they were last time I posted them on the blog, but now I've got these in-hand that had been "pending". Looks like my half-assed goal of completing the set during its Heritage Year won't come to pass, but luckily for me that doesn't really mean shit to anyone anyway so I'll just complete it next year instead. I spent like an hour trying to come up with a trade return for fellow blogger S.A. 75, but it was one of those frustrating experiences where like you go through a stack of cards checking numbers, and after a while of misses you get excited when you find a card that's one number off-- oh, so close!-- lol, and at the end of the stack you're lucky to have one need for the guy. But hopefully we're able to swing a trade one of these days if I can scrounge up more needs of his.

[In better news, I did complete a couple sets thanks to this COMC order, but I'll do separate "Joy of a Completed Set" posts for them soon rather than cover them here.]

Another set knocking at the door of completion. Just 38 cards left to go with 1972 Topps.

Shiny Bips.

Just one Christmas Card in the order, a rookie auto of a guy named Xavier Grimble. Sometimes I just browse looking for 12/25 cards that catch my eye. It was cheap and "Xavier Grimble" is a fun name. He had a decent little NFL career, seeing action in 47 games with the Steelers in the latter part of the previous decade.

Here's a Kevin Mitchell minor league card. I don't have much to say about it, but it's a Mets card, or close enough, so I wanted to take a moment to pay my respects to bloggin' buddy "Warren Zvon" of the blog Mets Baseball Cards Like They Ought To Be (a.k.a. Mets Fantasy Cards). Turns out he was one of the many people globally who didn't make it through 2020 alive, though I only recently found out about his passing thanks to Blogger being weird and bumping up some old posts in the reading list. But yeah, I loved his blog. His outside-the-box thinking with his digital customs helped inspire creativity with my own customs and cardart stuff. Lots of really cool ideas and animated gifs among the hundreds of Mets customs he featured on his blog. Good guy. Sad he's gone. RIP Warren.

Also sad to see Chris The Collector not just stop blogging but delete his blog too. Hopefully he comes out the other side of what he's going through and eventually returns to the cardsphere. We're rooting for you, Chris!

And sad that Nick at Dimeboxes is taking another leave of blogging duty. Him and Night Owl and Fuji have always been the "big 3" that I looked up to as a card blogger. It's a bummer when he goes quiet.

Best of luck out there, Nick! Hope to see you back to blogging before long.

As for me, my post total for the year will shake out around 30-something posts, vying with last year as my least-ever number of blog posts. But don't worry, guys, I'm not planning on closing up Baseball Card Breakdown any time soon. I don't get around to typing up posts as often as I'd like-- other things distract me from typing away for the hour or two or more it takes me for a typical post-- but I do have plenty left I want to blog about, in addition to the usual "check out these cards I got from Check Out My Cards" and trade recaps, etc. As the world accelerates its burning, I've been trying to wean myself off social media for my mental health's benefit. I'd rather just hang out on my little chunk of the cardsphere with my head in the sand than stress out over all the bullshit and injustice going on, you know? Easier said than done. But yeah, expect more blogging from me in 2025, not less.

Closing out with a Jose Canseco 1986 Donruss Rated Rookie. Just an iconic junk wax era card I've never owned but always kinda wanted. And now I have one. Had hoped to find someone to trade me one for the past few years, but finally gave in and bought the cheapest one on COMC.

That's it for today. Thanks for reading!

Sentimental Sundays: Spider-Man comic book collection

[This is a post I wrote in late 2020 that was forgotten about in my drafts. The thing was it just turned out kinda boring and some of the photos suck, so I wasn't compelled to post it. But what the heck, I already typed up the thing, so why not just publish it.]

For a couple years when I was a kid in the early 90s, I was an avid comic book collector, with most of my allowance money being split between cards and comics. Then I lost interest in both hobbies and boxed up everything in the garage. Jump to 2008 when I'm whittling down my possessions in anticipation of a move out of state, I pulled out my best/favorite 10% or so from each collection-- basically a shoebox and a binder of cards and one box of comics-- and jettisoned the rest on Craigslist for a few bucks.

Those keepers from my childhood comic collection had been missing for several years and I was starting to worry they disappeared somewhere along the line. But one happy moment during the otherwise exhausting recent move was that the box of comics turned up, tucked away out of sight in the back recesses of a big desk.

For this post I'm going to open up the box for the first time in over a decade and take a look at my treasure trove. I've got a rough idea of what's in there, but I don't doubt there will be a few surprises I forgot about.

Ok, ready? Let's open up the box!

Over half the contents are Spider-man comics. I think I'm going to split this into a couple posts. Today will cover the webslinger, and I'll do the non-Spidey comics in a future post.

Amazing Spider-Man #59, my oldest Spider-man (1968). Not a super notable issue, but it's the 1st cover appearances of Mary Jane. And though the Brainwasher might be a nobody of a villian, there's also a Kingpin cameo in there. Tried to get an idea of what this goes for on eBay and it looks like you can probably score it for twenty-something bucks, but if it's in solid condition it could creep into triple digits. 

The Amazing Spider-Man #177 (Feb 1978). Green Goblin was probably my favorite villain. It's funny that I was a Spiderman collector as a kid, but "got over it" and these days while I like him fine, I never bother to watch any of the movies. I saw much of one of the Tobey Maguire flicks once because somebody put it on at a party I was at, and we watched that Into the Spider-Verse animated one last year, but I think that's it. Maybe someday I'll crank them out, but I'm just not that into superhero movies. [2024 Update: I've been watching through the X-Men/Wolverine films with just a couple left until I wrap things up with Deadpool and Wolverine. After that, I'll likely hit the Avengers series.]

Now we're into the early/mid 80s. I thought the black suit was pretty cool. I was also a fan of the Hobgoblin as a bad guy. Looks like these issues aren't worth much today.

Got a little run of Amazing Spider-Man #298 thru 300, which are notable for being the start of Todd McFarlane's run, plus the earliest appearances of Venom.

And here are a few Amazing Spider-Man comics from the early 90s. I had a subscription for a year or two, though didn't keep all of them. 

Nice run of 30th Anniversary hologram covers.

Love the shiny foil covers.

Spectacular Spider-Man highlights.

And this pair closes out the post. I likely kept these issues because, again, I found Green Goblin and Hobgoblin to be among the more interesting villains.

Thanks for checking out my little collection of Spider-Man comics. Maybe I'll do a post on my non-Spider-man comics one of these days. Have a great week, guys.

Ai blog comments.. gross

Yep, we're at that point now: Artificial Intelligence powered comments left on blog posts.

Turns out automated blog-reading spambots left a ton of comments on my latest Vintage Frankenset post. Normally I delete spam when I see it, but honestly I was a bit awed by the advanced modern assault on morality.

The Ai had clearly been trained by pouring through countless blog posts and comments, now able to determine the kinds of comments that real people would make based on the text of a post. The type of spam comments that we typically see on Blogger are easy to spot, especially when there are a bunch together. The photoless avatar and string of random malicious links are a dead giveaway. The text of the spam comments is usually something like, "Thank you for this very informative article! [spam link here]" which could be used indiscriminately on any post. But now, these Ai spam comments are saying the kinds of thing that readers would actually say. Here's a sampling..

Yeah, god damn it, each card does tell a story, not just about the player but also its journey into my collection. But I don't want a spambot with malicious intent telling me that! It picks a line to parrot back to you, pointing out the implied subtext.

Sure would be nice if Google did something to try to deal with this new problem, but slim chance. Google can't even work it out with their Chrome web browser that when we click on links on our Blogger reading list, we don't need the annoying "Redirect Notice" page they make you go through, like they're doing you a fucking favor. So dumb! (and yeah, right-click opening in a new tab can avoid it, but it's still stupid that Google can't get on the same page with two of their own products.)

Anyways, the world is a horrible place and will only continue getting worse until humans go extinct.

Thanks for reading! :)