Too Many Verlanders From the Dollar Store

Christmas came early for me yesterday, with four (4!) packages of cards showing up in my mailbox. There was eBay bounty, a Listia lot, and a couple bloggers bonanzas. This post will take a look at the latter pair.

Dennis from TMV sent me a nice PWE Christmas gift. I was too impatient to wait till the 25th, so I ripped it open then and there.

Love the Trevor Christmas Card! It's not easy to see in the scan, but there's a 12/25 in the upper right. As you can tell by now, I decided against doing a "12 Days of Christmas Cards" blog series this year. Just too much work. But I'll probably do a post or two showing off some more 12/25 cards I've picked up this year. And spoiler alert: this is not the last we'll see of that serial-happy set, Moments & Milestones.

The Giles Brothers are always nice to see reunited in their hometown.

And the '70 Sparky Anderson has been on my sidebar wantlist for a while now.. great to finally get it. You keen-eyed folks out there might notice that Sparky seems to be half-assedly airbrushed from a non-Reds uniform (into something that still isn't a Reds uniform. Whatever, Topps.) But that's because the photo was taken when he was a coach for the Padres in 1969. Let's fix the card up real quick using some photoshop magic...

Ah, that's better. ..even if I was too lazy to get the fonts right.

Thanks so much for the gift of cards, Dennis!

The other package was from Doug of Sportscards From the Dollar Store. This was technically a trade package, but since he only asked for a couple cheap autos via PWE from my recent trade bait post, and then overdelivered in return, it was as good as a gift in my eyes. Doug knows I hate dealing with my local post office, and as such don't do many international trades (sorry, Caitlin, Papoy, Dutch Card Guy, et al), but a PWE can slip by with little consternation on my end (i.e., no customs form or dreaded visit with surly behind-the-counter postal workers).

Hockey greats!

Gavins!

Padres! That's a great Caminiti shot.

Randy Jones 1/10 cut auto! This card is so cool and so awful at the same time. Love Randy Jones, the first really good pitcher in San Diego history. He doesn't have many certified autos out there. I think one from Fan Favorites and not much else. But I gotta say I'm against making cut autos of living players. Roberto Clemente? Ted Williams? Jackie Robinson? Mickey Mantle? YES, to cut autos. But if a guy is still with us, willing and able to sign his name on a card... NO, to cut autos!! This here is a '77 Topps card that's been cut to only Randy's torso. So terrible. (I'm also against autographs on cards that already have a facsimile autograph on them, so this is a double whammy!) But so great. I love it like a son.

Doug knows I'm a sucker for shiny cards.

Trea Turner was the Padres 1st round pick of 2014, tabbed as San Diego's future shortstop. Sweet USA bat relic from him. Fingers crossed he pans out in the bigs.

Finally, some vintage OPC hockey! Even though I know jacksquat about hockey, still love to see these vintage designs that I'm not very familiar with.

Thanks again, Dennis and Doug for the sweet cards! The both of you are super generous and I hope you have a great Christmas!

A buck worth of cards picked up specifically as trade bait is all it cost me in return for everything in this post. I'll have to return the favor one of these days. The cardosphere is always a great place, but especially with the holidays upon us, folks seem to be even more generous. For my part, I just dropped 3 holiday surprise PWEs in the mail to friends of the blog, with at least one more penciled to go out shortly.

Parallel Universe: Gavin Floyd's feminine side

A recent trade with the awesome Tony L. netted me a loaded PWE with some great additions to my collection, including Gavin Floyd's infamous "lipstick" card from 2013 Heritage.

So what's the deal here? Had he just finished eating a cherry popsicle moments before this photo was taken? Did somebody at Topps make an interesting choice during the "retro filter" coloring process? Or does Floyd simply enjoy making himself pretty by applying tasteful lipstick from time to time? Hey, it's a free country!

Let's enter the Parallel Universe to look at some of the lesser-known variations of this card.

Here's the most common one:

The "upside-down frown" variation is more scare (#'d /199):

But the real hit is this one (#'d /50):

However, the ultimate superdragfractor 1/1 is this beauty:

Ain't she just the belle of the ball? Base-ball, that is! It's a heck of a game.

We'll see you next time.. here in.. the Parallel Universe!

p.s. Obligatory Twitter contest plug

Parallel Universe: 2014 Heritage innovates and astounds

[Grandparental Advisory: These are obviously fake, photoshopped cards. Just some silliness. For fun.]

Now let's enter the Parallel Universe and take a look at some of the incredible parallels that are in store for us in the brand-new 2014 Heritage set.

Parachute-allel /25

These parallels are printed on combat-used U.S. military parachutes. Pretty bad-ass.

Heritage Farm cookie parallel /5

Heritage and Pepperidge Farm have combined forces to bring collectors the most delicious cards to date. Milano Rivera? Paul Goldfishcracker? They're all here! The only question is will these edible cards make it into your binder or your tummy?

Micro /25,000

Minis for today's generation! If you don't have a powerful microscope handy, you'll just have to take Topps' word for it, but each pack (allegedly) contains upwards of a dozen micros, each a tenth as wide as a human hair. And look for Atomic parallels, /5! (You won't find them! They're a very tough pull! And they're too small to see!)

So go out there are get you some 2014 Heritage, boys!

And we'll see you next time.. in.. the Parallel Universe!

Parallel Universe: previewing 2014 Topps' lesser-known parallels

Parallel Universe is a brand new feature I just came up with. You loyal readers out there know I like to do weird and creative things to cards, such as make my own glow-in-the-dark variations. And I also like to mess with cards in Photoshop. Well, this is like a combination of those 2 things. I'll take cards and design fake parallels that I think would be cool or funny if they actually existed. Many will be bizarrely random. Who knows, maybe a card company will stumble upon my blog and use one of these ideas in a future set! (Allow me to again brag about kinda being recruited by Upper Deck a few weeks back. If only I could have done that job from home! Oh well.)

So yeah, let's enter The Parallel Universe and examine some lesser-known (fake, made-up, for-fun) parallels in this year's forthcoming Topps flagship set.

Polka-Dot Hearts parallel, /333

With this cute variation, Topps seems to be pandering to the little girl demographic, a goldmine yet untapped by sportscards. Available in special blasters only by mail-order (see ad in Tiger Beat magazine), these are serial numbered to 333. <3 <3 <3

Sandpaper parallel, /50

It doesn't get more manly than this! Available only in Home Depot retail packs, 1:280, these parallels are printed on carpenter-grade sandpaper.

Garfractor, /1

Topps teams up with Jim Davis for this mega-hit that brings everyone's favorite comicstrip cat Garfield to baseball cards for the first time. These 1/1 Garfractors are sure to command premium prices, but holding one of these shiny beauties in your hand, you'll agree they're worth all the lasagna in Italy.

That's it for today. Join us next time.. in.. The Parallel Universe!

Baseball Card Mashup: bizarro Griffey RC's!

New feature. Baseball Card Mashup will take well-known cards and mush them up via Photoshop in ways that may hurt your brain to look at.
Ok, here we go.

Can you imagine? Maybe Upper Deck would have flamed out. Maybe Fleer would have rose to be a more respected brand? Who knows.

What do you think?

Personally, I think Score's Ken Griffey, Jr RC is his best. Too bad it didn't make the base set and instead got relegated to the Rookie & Traded factory set where it languishes in relative obscurity.

What if back in '88, Score got a jump on everyone and made Griffey their #1 card? Maybe the company's fortunes would have turned out differently.

Ok, I wasn't planning on doing this, but damn it, now I want to see it.. so looks like I'll be tangenting into Cards That Never Were territory.

Yeah, I was lazy and just used his dad's card and didn't bother altering the text (besides trying to turn LF in CF), but it gets the point across. If that was the first card in Score's first-ever set, we'd all have a lot more respect for Score today, I'd bet.

We'll see ya next time for another installment of Baseball Card Mashup!