Monday, May 21, 2018

Art Deco Garbage*

I am not a big fan of the 2010 National Chicle set.  I know plenty of collectors who love the set.  I know a lot of collectors who hate it.  It has always been really low on my list.  There have been plenty of painting/sketch/art sets produced over the last two decades that it's not really hard to find a few favorites.  I spent a chunk of the past year working on one of the Topps Gallery Heritage sets.....




which is one of the best art sets in my opinion.  Plenty of others that I could post here too.  There are some decent art cards in the National Chicle set, if you pick and chose single cards, you can find some winners.  Sort of.  One of my favorite Cardinals cards.....




the painting of Brock is nice, but is that a Venezuelan flag in the background?  Cool if this were a Dave Concepcion card.  Miguel Cabrera is also an acceptable player for a Venezuelan flag background.  

Beyond the odd touches, again Lou Brock with a Venezuelan flag, my reasons for not liking the National Chicle set are pretty short.  Mainly, I despise the revisionist cards in this product where players are drawn into other uniforms.  I couldn't find my Lou Gehrig soul patch card, but there are still other really bad cards to show as examples.

As a Cardinals fan, this one is downright terrible.......




Pujols as a Brown?  Sigh.  So many things are wrong with this card.  There are worse though, with this Babe Ruth card being the crown jewel of awful in this set.  




I guess Babe Ruth was at least on the Braves for a season at the very end of his career.  Better than Pujols as a Brown considering he has no connection to the Orioles or Browns.  If you are going to make a Babe Ruth card on the Braves, then why is he still standing in Yankee Stadium?  

The wrist bands half way up the forearms, turtleneck looking thing.  This is a Chipper Jones card with a Babe Ruth head with the facade of Yankee Stadium in the background.  

These cards are sort of like the revisionist history quotes that people post all over the internet.  One of my biggest pet peeves in life.  I hate made up history.....



Abe said this in a movie.  Right?  

So, what card could possibly make me want to touch such a terrible set?

Imagine that Topps made a card in this set, of a younger player at the time, whose card had a pleasing background that matched the team's color scheme.  Picture that this same card actually pictured the player in their uniform, not of another nearby team, or some other weird connection to the past or future.

The card is also autographed and I am willing to overlook the rest of the set for this card.....




It's not a rookie autograph, rookie card, or anything overly special, but it's just a nice card with a good player's autograph.  Bumgarner has been a really good player to this point in his career, a few World Series, a whole bunch of home runs, and a lot of snot rockets.  


                                    


I actually had this card a few years ago, traded it to a Giants fan, and I sort of regretted it a short time later.  I have a few other nice Bumgarner autographs, so at the time it did not feel like much of a loss.  The Giants have had a rough last year and I feel like there have been a few more nice cards of Bumgarner floating around and they seem to have come down a bit too.  

Could not pass this one by.  The asterisk?  

*While the National Chicle set is generally art deco garbage in my opinion, this card is an art deco gem,



1 comment:

  1. Chicle is mostly awful. I thought 'Chipper' too, immediately. Pujols as a Brown? And what's with the club he's swinging??? I do like the stock used for these cards. Autos are sharp. I can see why you'd enjoy having this one.

    ReplyDelete

Around The Card Room, Take 17

I got my first job was pushing in carts and bagging groceries at the Dierbergs in Manchester, Missouri during my junior year of high school....