The Retail Card Aisles of Northern Michigan - Part 2

On the previous post, I shared a few of the cards that I picked up while visiting my in-laws in northern Michigan. The card aisles of the two large box stores in town, Meijer and Wal-Mart, both had more packs of cards than I have seen living outside of Raleigh during the past year and a half to two years.  

A quick refresher. 

 

The Meijer card aisle is on the left, Wally World on the right.  

For this post, I am just breaking the cards into brand rather than by location purchased.

First up is another pack of the Panini Chronicles cards. Again, I am still confused as to whether or not these cards all come from a single set or they are different sets packaged together. I don't care enough about Panini to research the answer and I fear it's a rip off of the 1998 Donruss Collections product.  

If you don't know that one, the card manufacturer Pinnacle re-released all of their Donruss and Leaf products at the end of that year, but they put some foil finish on the cards. In my opinion......

I have three highlights from this pack of cards. 

On the left is Akil Baddoo. I saw him with the Tigers this summer and enjoyed his style of play. I am looking forward to picking up some more of his cards this year. More Akil later in the post. 

In the middle is Clayton Kershaw. This is the same style card as AJ Puk and Gregory Polanco cards from the previous post. Again, the card has a nice finish on the surface and the thick card stock is always a plus. The Pete Alonso is another acetate card, but it's different from the three in the previous post. Are the acetate cards supposed to have variations like the Topps Tek cards?  I love acetate baseball cards, but the line pattern on this one is boring.  

Next up is a few cards from Topps Archives. I have really become torn on this product in recent years. Topps has gone completely overboard with reusing former designs in current products. At some point they are going to completely ruin the Topps Heritage product. However, for the moment I still really enjoy the autographs and a few of the inserts in this product. Topps does come up with some nice cards here.  

Topps did a really good job of picking out photos for the 1970s players. Not a Nolan Ryan fan, but good job putting him in an Angels uniform. Dick Allen and Mike Schmidt have great 1970s hair. The uniforms in the picture are an added bonus. The red version of the White Sox uniforms is underrated. I felt like the 1970s players had the best looking cards in this year's set.  

Next up is a pair of Movie Poster inserts. These are really neat.  

Most of the cards are team themed, like the A's card on the left. However, I do really like the Black Aces poster card.  The black and white photo with the red background really pops. The term "Black Aces" was coined by long-time Indians and Twins pitcher, Mudcat Grant. There are players who fit Grant's description left off of the card. One of those players was Grant himself.  Give credit where credit is due.  This would be a better card if Grant had been included.

Just my two cents.  

I did not land many Cardinals cards in my packs of Archives. My only two options were Lou Brock and Paul DeJong. I am sorry, but Paul DeJong is a no at the moment.  

Lou is an easy choice.  

My favorite Durham Bulls card....

I am going with this Evan Longoria insert, but let's talk about this card for a minute. This is card is the direction that Topps should take the Archives set.  This is a modernized version of a 1989 Topps Big card. They were a kid-friendly oddball set released that ran for several years. 

This is the original design.  

Topps always uses past oddball designs for insert sets in Archives. They should just make them the base set design for the entire product. Small change, but it would help to preserve the former flagship brand designs for future Topps Heritage sets. Again, just my opinion.  

Onto the last group of cards. These are out of the Update Series. I got two of these box toppers.  

I like the Satchel Paige card.  Big Papi.  Meh.  

I also ended up with two more Akil Baddoo rookie cards. Did I mention I hate when Topps overuses former designs?  I am going to ignore that for the 1986 Topps card on the left. That is a good looking baseball card.  

I also picked up a pair of Luis Patino rookie cards. He has been my go-to Durham Bulls player of sorts during the past year. However, the card on the right is a little ridiculous.  

Topps made Rookie Debut cards for a handful of players in the 2021 Update set. Read the small print there and you can see that Luis Patino actually made his Major League Debut in August of 2020. He was traded to the Rays in December of 2020, started the year in the Minors, and was called up by the Rays. I get the card on the left since Patino was both traded and called up to the Majors in the past year. I do not understand why he is getting a Debut card from a previous season.  

Favorite Cardinals cards.  

Ignore the previous comments about Topps reusing old designs here too.  The Molina has a Chrome finish, Arenado and Carlson are the regular card stock. I love the 1992 Topps cards. 

Favorite former Durham Bulls players in this set....

I am going with Blake Snell and Jake Cronenworth.  Easy choice.  

That's it for the card aisle. 

Got One Of Them Hot Boxes

I bought baseball cards at Target.  Not a real common occurrence, but I am usually at least willing to walk past the card aisle and see what is there.  I think about it for a few minutes. 

There is the "Remember you pulled an Al Kaline autograph out of a $20 box here once"

There is also the "Isn't this the store where some jerk slit the top of a pack of cards we bought?"

If I do decided to buy cards, I now make sure the packs are sealed, or the box is not wrapped in Glad Food Wrap or something.  

On with the story.  

Now, if you have never heard of a hot box, they are sort of a mythological creature in the world of baseball cards.  I liken the hot box to things like....

The chupacabra. 

The Loch Ness monster.  

Bigfoot.  

So, I start opening up my packs of Topps Heritage cards and I get a Chromium looking card of Aaron Judge.  I flip the card over, no serial number.  

Weird, but I am in the middle of opening up packs, so I just set it aside and open the pack.  I get another Chromium looking card of Jose Ramirez.  No serial number.  

At this point I am intrigued, but I am still not going to stop for two of these cards in two packs.  

Then the next pack started out with this card......

and ended with this card......

I knew something was up with the box of cards that I was opening.  I checked out a few different checklist type sites, you should read Cardboard Connections, and I found the answer was indeed something called a "Hot Box".  These aren't just Chromium cards, or Chrome, or whatever you want to call them.  They are some form of purple Chrome.  

I was stunned, so what did I end up?  This is great stuff for a retail box.  I mean, it's not Al Kaline, but for $20 at Target.....

All a very good haul, but I got one other card, which is going to go along way towards putting together this set.  

Hot Box!!!! 

Archives Base Set

Last Archives post until I end up trading for a bunch of cool autographs of guys who played 20 years ago.  Until then I will do a little bit on the base set.  Like the recent additions of the Archives sets, this year's set is based on three previous set designs: 1957, 1976, and 1983.  I am a little bit partial towards the 1983 design, but that was the first year that I collected baseball cards and I love that set.  A lot.

The 1957 design is also a favorite too.  It's really simple, but sometimes simplicity is a good thing.  Topps has always done a really good job of getting the details correct on the remakes in Archives.  It's cool to see players from a different era like Ken Griffey Jr. and Cal Ripken pop up on this classic Topps design.  Topps also used this card design in the 2006 Topps Heritage set, so it was the second go around for players like Ken Griffey and Jorge Posada, but at least Topps changed up their pictures and did not rehash something from a past set.  

I am not a huge fan of the 1976 set.  It's before my time and I am not sure there is a card in that set I ever felt like I had to own.  I picked up an Eckersley somewhere along the line, but it was not a priority.  I like this Goldschmidt card because people should like Goldschmidt right now.  The most bizarre card in the set appears in the 1976 section of the set......

That Khris Davis card is clearly a picture of Carlos Gomez.  Topps had a card similar to this in the Heritage set with a picture of Shelby Miller on a card of Lance Lynn.  It could just be an editing, quality control, type of issue.  Imagine that, or maybe it's somehow intentional.  Pretty sure it could be part of the Ginter Code.  The answer this year is........

and we are finally to my favorite part of the set.  As mentioned before I love this set and was really happy with how these look.  Except that looks like a familiar Mike Schmidt picture..... Colors and borders from the cards match the cards from the 1983 set, but the Rays cards with the yellow writing is a little bit hard to look at.  I understand that Topps is taking a little bit of creative liberty with the design on the teams that did not exist at the time the set was made, but yellow print is really a good thing.  

2015 Bowman Base and Prospects Sets

Last week I showed off the autographs that came out of my jumbo box.  This week I am onto the base set and some parallels later in the week.  For now I am sticking with the base set......

The organization and design of the 2015 base set is pretty much the same it has been for the better part of a decade.  There is a base set with 200, the first 150 cards featuring established Major League players.  The design is what is...it looks like a Bowman set.

The backs of the cards are typical of Bowman too.  I know I do not do backs of cards often, but Bowman has a distinctive card back.   The little charts, graphs, and diagrams at the bottom (what us teacher folk call text features) have changed over the years, but the three sections of text have not.....

The back half of the base set, consisting of the last 50 cards, consist of young Major League players/Major League ready prospects.  Players like Jorge Soler, Joc Pederson, and Javier Baez make up this part of the Bowman set.  While the quantity of players in this category included in the Bowman base set has changed from year to year, they have been included in with the veterans for almost a decade now....

The Bowman packs also feature cards in the Prospects and Prospects Chrome sets.  Each of the sets is a total of 150 cards and features the same players in each set with the same card number in each of the sets.  The design for the Prospects and Prospects Chrome sets is the same as the base set, but the numbering on the backs of the cards features the BP, for Bowman Prospects, and BCP for the Chrome Prospects.  There are definitely some good players in this year's set......

This Willy Adames is in the Bowman Prospects set.  Notice the 1st Bowman logo up in the top right hand corner of the card.  I am not going to go through the Bowman Prospects set in this post and tell you everyone that I like and do not like, but I do think this set has the potential to be a pretty deep set in the long term.  There is not a Bryce Harper, Strasburg, Kris Bryant mega prospect in the set, but the number of potentially good prospects in the set is still pretty impressive.  Adames is one of the prospects in this set that I am high on.  Over the summer I will round out the set, pick up some autographs and share a few more names from this set.....

Rodon might be one of the bigger names in this set.  This is from the Bowman Chrome portion of the prospects set.  He actually is scheduled to make his first start of the year this afternoon, I am typing this on Saturday afternoon, and he is clearly going to be a contributor to the White Sox this year.  

Overall this set is everything that collectors should expect out of Bowman.  I think there is good player selection within the prospects portion of the set.  I like this set and look forward to picking up some up the rest of the cards I need to finish out the base set, prospects set, and chrome set.  Of course there will be more autographs too.  Before we leave......

Big shout out to Bowman for putting Durham Bulls pitcher, and Rays prospect Matt Andriese in the set.  He does not have a ton of cards, not the most popular prospect in the game, but the guy works hard.  Fun player to watch if you are looking for a good player to collect in this set.....

2015 Topps Jumbo Box

This feels like the official start of the 2015 card year.  I picked up a jumbo box of the new Topps base set after school one day this week at my favorite local card shop Big D's Sports Cards.  I had a great time opening the box and talking cards and baseball with the owner of the store Jimmy.  So here's a look at my box and my take, with a little bit more detail than the other day, on the 2015 Topps base set.

After spending two days looking at these cards I have decided that I am going to like the design of the 2015 Topps base set.  It is a little bit busy at the bottom of the card between the bottom and the patterns, but at least Topps has gotten away from the white bordered cards that they have put out the last six or seven years straight.  It had gotten a little bit monotonous and I am happy to see Topps roll the dice a little bit and try something different.  I think the design could have been improved a little bit if they had toned down the colors a little bit.  The parallels are monochromatic and look even better than the base cards.

I especially love the gold parallel cards.  These are really sharp, but then again any of the colored parallel cards look nice with the simplified color scheme.  This Hamilton looks cool.  Is that iced camouflage?  I'm not sure, but it's serial numbered to 99 and looks really nice.

Another oddity of the 2015 Topps cards is the combination of the Future Stars tag at the top of the card along with the Rookie Card.  Have these two Topps hallmark logos ever appeared on the same cards before this year?  I could not think of one, but then again I did not go research it either.  Why does Even Gattis have a Futures Stars logo anyway?  He has been in the league for a few years now.  On to some hit cards.....

My relic cards.  What do you want out of a relic card out of a Topps base set?  Carlos Gomez is fine for a hit out of this box.  I could have done better, but the relics out of the base set all end up selling for less than $5 at some point anyway right?  Gomez is a good player and I am not sure that I have a relic card of him.  Welcome to the relics box Carlos.  

Definitely not a keeper here, but still a really cool pull out of a box of base box of Topps.  I am not going to sell or trade this Baez card simply because he is a Cub, but because I am not sold on him being an impact player.  Something about him reminds me a little bit of Dan Uggla.  Plays second base, hits .190, strikes out two or three times a game....Moving on.....

This was my manu card out of my jumbo box.   These seem like they are pretty nice, but I am starting to wonder if the manu card is getting a little bit stale.  I saw a couple of manu cards on Ebay and on trade sites that had the Future Star logo on them that looked really nice.  Topps did a logo man manu card a few years ago.  These kind of seem like a rehash.  

My favorite insert set out of the set was the Gallery of Greats.  These are a knock off from the late 90s/early 2000s Topps Gallery product.  These looked nice back then and they still look good today.  I pulled this nice Kershaw and also landed a Hanley Ramirez.  I am going to have to pick up the rest of these at some point this spring.  By far the nicest looking insert.

I also liked these defense insert cards.  How many Colby Rasmus insert cards have been made?  I am not sure there have been many, but I really like defensive sets.  There are always some sort of insert like this in Gypsy Queen and am happy to see it in the base Topps set.   One more like.....

I liked both of these cards and I am pretty sure that I have copies of both of hanging out in a box somewhere.  Old cards are always cool, and while I like for Topps to go out on a limb sometimes, they are a tradition rich company.  It's nice to see some of these classic cards, and cool names, reappear in modern products.  

Last insert set for the moment.  There was a ton of hype around these First Pitch cards.  I honestly do not get it.  What am I missing here?  Sure there is 50 Cent, but I am not sure I really care about half the people in this set.  There is this soccer guy?  There is Macklamore, some gymnast, and maybe Eddie Vedder?  I am just not excited about these.  Sorry.