The Retail Card Aisles of Northern Michigan - Part 1

I made the 15 hour-plus drive to northern Michigan last week with my wife and kids to visit the in-laws. Not the upper peninsula, but rather the top of the lower peninsula. It's a really quiet place in the winter as you can imagine. The peace and quiet was great with the way this school year has gone. There was nothing I had to do, and no place I had to go.  

My kids got outside to enjoy the snow....

There was really good food as always. My in-laws are some combination of French-Canadian and Polish decent. The traditional holiday food at their house is usually some combination of the two, so there are meat pies and pastries (French Canadian) and pirogies (Polish).  

Homemade, created with love, not out of a freezer box.  

Onto the cards.

The town has two big box retail stores. There is a Meijer and a Wal-Mart. Both stores somehow have an abundant selection of retail baseball cards. Living outside of Raleigh, I can count the number of times I have seen packs or boxes of baseball cards at a retail store during the past year and a half. It is a rarity. 

Meijer and Wal-Mart four hours north of Detroit? 

Some of the Meijer baseball card display is cut-off on the left-side, but you get the idea. The place is completely full on retail cards. Some of the displays within the section have not been touched. I asked about the cards that were being sold at Service Desk on Saturdays. The answer was a generic, "hockey cards".  I could see that.  

Wally World.  

Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed the snow, good food, but also these two fine retail baseball card aisles in northern Michigan.  I made several visits to these two places during my week and a half in Michigan, so I am splitting the post into two halves with a breakdown of the different card products.  

First up, is some Topps Holiday, which I bought at Meijer. It's on the second shelf from the top in the right side. They were completely untouched. If I did not buy them, they would still be there right now. My wife was mildly amused with the purchase holiday themed baseball cards. 

I was trying to put the set together, which I am close to doing. Here are some of my highlights from my three boxes.....

We have got some ornament box toppers. These feel like they are a rip-off from old Pacific cards. Pacific used to release their base set around Christmas. I believe their final year or two there were Christmas ornaments in the packs. The Pacific ones had cooler shapes and they did not airbrush cheesy Santa hats on the players.

Snowmen relics.    

Love the Aaron Judge with the pinstripe running through the middle of the jersey swatch.  

I also got a few Santa hat and scarf variations.  

Obviously the Dylan Carlson card is a favorite here. Although, after pulling these cards I tried to pay attention to whether or not people still wear scarves. It snowed a few times while we were in Michigan and it was really cold. No, people no longer wear scarves.  

Favorite Cardinals cards. 

Tio Albert of the Dodgers has a different vibe than Anaheim Albert. Nice that Topps has made a few cards of him with the Dodgers. Hopefully this ages better than the Ken Griffey Jr. cards with the White Sox.  The Arenado card just seems to fit him a player. He makes a face like this seemingly once a week. Who knows when this picture was taken.  

Not a favorite Cardinals card, but it was weird to see Jon Lester with the birds on the bat.  

The Cardinals scotch taped together a rotation for the last two months of the season, which included Lester. He pitched well for them, but as a long-time Cub and member of a Red Sox team that beat the Cardinals in the World Series, it was weird to see this card.  

My favorite Durham Bulls player in the set is Jake Cronenworth.  

There is no card of Blake Snell wearing a Santa hat this year. I feel a little sad about that.  

That brings me to the second part of my post, which features cards from a few packs of Panini Chronicles. I picked these up at Wally World. I was sent there to buy a star tip for a frosting bag. These cards are better than fancy shaped frosting. Not a huge Panini cards fan, more a curiosity with this purchase. I had actually opened a pack of these a few weeks back. Some of the cards were interesting. Why not?  

There are 15 cards in a pack with a variety of different designs. I have no idea if these cards are all a single set or different sets packaged together.  

These are really thick cards with heavy card stock. Nice glossy finish too. I pulled two relics out of my three packs. Love the AJ Puk card. I saw him pitch with the College National Team at USA Baseball a few years back. Good college pitcher, hoping he can pull it together in the Majors.  

"OverDrive" sounds kind of dumb, but I like the overall design. Yes, I am ignoring the airbrushed logos. Both cards would be in the "shiny" category in terms of finish. I like the pink hues on the cards.  The Dalbec is some sort of parallel, but it's not serial numbered or anything.  

Next group of cards are all acetate.  

The white background is from the scanner. Are these from the same set or subset?  Why is Aaron Judge standing on some sort of island?  I like acetate cards, but I am not sure about these.  

Last cards for this post.  

These two cards have a similar finish as the Juan Soto and Bobby Dalbec, but without the stupid "OverDrive" wording over the card. I like the diamond design in the background. The Ke'Bryan Hayes is a parallel with more sparkle than the Acuna, but not serial numbered.  

Tomorrow, I will share out a few more cards that I picked up while visiting the retail card aisles of north Michigan.  

2019 Blake Snell Autograph Count: 28

I said I was done for the year after the last Blake Snell post, but thanks to the generosity of a fellow collector, I now have my 28th autograph of the year.  Completely unexpected.  I am very grateful for the extra card. 

This is from the Topps Holiday Set.  It's a retail product that is sold exclusively at Wal-Mart.  The autographs in the set all look the same with a Christmas sweater type design in the background, a picture of the player wearing a Santa hat, and a chunk of the Santa hat from the photo. 

It's a sticker autograph, which is fine in my book on retail exclusive products.  You cannot be too picky if you are only spending $20 for a box of cards.  I actually think that the sticker is fairly well blended in here.  The busy background provides good cover for the edges of the sticker.  The rectangular section with the sticker just looks a little duller. 

Back of the card. 

The back of the card has the standard "Congratulations" disclaimer.  It also clarifies where the Santa hat came from on the front of the card.  It would not have shocked me if the Santa hat was airbrushed onto Snell.  

Things I Am Sorting Part 9

A whole bunch of things to run through and catch up tonight, so let's start out with a card connected to yesterday's post.  I was hoping this card would arrive in time to put together with the Carlos Martinez and Blake Snell card, but it was a few steps too slow.  So, here is one more Holiday Relic from the Big Blue Box Store......

Archer is one of my favorite Durham Bulls, out of the Rays relics on the checklist, this one was a must have if I am going to put these into the collection.  The snowflakes in the corners of the card are a little bit more visible on this card than the two yesterday.  Cool picture of Archer too.

Next up is a card from my latest set project.  I am working on the 2002 Bowman Futures Games Autographed Relics.  Nice looking set that I am piecing together.  First addition to the set since I announced the project is kind of the oddball of the set....

The set is a relic set, like the vast majority of Topps cards produced from All-Star Game related events, the cards contain pieces of jersey.  For whatever reason Toby Hall is a game used base card.  I have no idea why and I am sure that I will never know.  It's still a really cool card and added bonus, Hall was on the Durham Bulls at the time of the Futures Games and the production of these cards.  He was a serviceable Major League catcher, but has a career OPS of .899 and a batting average of .326 as a member of the Bulls.  

I will cross this card off of the checklist.  One third of the set is done.  

Next is another set, but this one is a new release and it's already completely put together.  We are going to do a little compare and contrast with the cards.  

I picked up a copy of the much ballyhooed Gold Label set.  If you really like this set, hear me through until the end.  It starts out rough.  First, this set is not nearly the quality of the original Gold Label sets.  I love the design, on first glance I loved these, but then I held one in my hand.  The card stock the cards is printed on is cheap and the edges of the cards are chippy.

The original Gold Label cards, or any of the original run through the early 2000s, blow these cards away in terms of quality.  The card stock is thick, the edges are not chipped, and the gloss finish is much nicer.  This is a card from the original.....

If there was a way for me to allow each of the readers of this blog to reach out and touch these two baseball cards you would feel the difference immediately. Unfortunately that sort of technology does not exist, so you are going to have to take my word for it, or go get your own Gold Label cards.

The backs of the cards are quite different too.  I do not talk a lot about card backs, but I always enjoyed the backs of some of the late 1990s and early 2000s set.  Many of them had nice finishes, color photos, and interesting designs.  The original Gold Label back.....

Very well done 1998 Topps card designers.  A little busy, but overall I like that the stats are a little different and you have the nice color picture of the player.  Not sure what I would get rid of, maybe the factoid or the name at the top (I didn't know BJ worked out with JJK, but I did know his name was Brian Jordan), but the card seems a little busy. Again, I really like these backs though....

and the Gold Label.  It's not bad, but this is supposed to be a nice product.  Where is the effort?  This is a passable card back, but I want another picture of Manny Machado.  I want some cool stats, like his average exit velocity on extra base hits.  Give me something.  Anything.

Sigh.  Let's talk about one more thing.  This can be applied across the board to all Topps products, I just had never expressed this opinion before.  It's been lingering in my head....

This is a 1990s remake set.  There are current players in the set and then there are older players in the set who have retired.  I get the modern players, while the original Gold Label did not have retired players in the set, I am accepting of the concept of having older players.  However.....

lets look at two Braves cards.  I like Hank Aaron.  I like Greg Maddux.  Not really.  One of the players would seem to fit a little bit better into a 1990s remake set than the other.  Again, I like Hank, but you are not a 1990s player.   The set has Randy Johnson in a Mariners uniform and Mike Piazza in a Mets uni which I really like a lot.  It has Cal Ripken in an Orioles uni, but it's an 80s Orioles uni.  cartoon bird, not the black hats with the serious orange bird.  

Just my two cents, but I would love to see remake sets with past players match up a little bit better.  As a 1990s collector I think I would have enjoyed the checklist a little better if I had been able to see some good players from that decade.  Give me Albert Belle, Sammy Sosa, Brady Anderson with sideburns.  

Really, the design of the cards in Gold Label is nice and I think this is a set that is worth owning if you can find a copy of the set on the cheap.  The boxes are not too bad as far as cost goes, but a few autographs and a copy of the set can be had for roughly the same amount of money.  

Really, the back of the card design is probably me just being nit picky and the card stock thing is just kind of how cards are nowadays.  Some of the recent Five Star sets had some nice thick card stock, but even that has thinned out over the last year or two.  

Wally World's Holiday Cards

A few weeks ago someone messaged me about some "sweet" Carlos Martinez card that they had pulled from a pack of cards at War-Mart.  I looked at the blurry picture of a 2016 Topps card with a snowflake in the corner.  I kinda had to hold back the eye roll.  The cards seemed gimmicky and not nearly as cool as some of the past cool holiday themed cards, especially those awesome die-cut Pacific Ornament cards from the late 1990s.

Welp.  I still think the cards are kind of gimmicky, still not as cool as the Pacific Ornaments, but I sorta caved a little bit once I saw the relic cards in the set.  Not that I really love relic cards all that much, but there are a few players I like, so what the heck.  I got a few.  Might get a few more.  These are especially nice when I can trade for them, or buy them off of Ebay, rather than actually having to venture into Wal-Mart.  

I hate the place, although I liked when Mizzou fans made fun of former coach, and Duke player, Quin Snyder by photoshopping him into pictures as a Wal-Mart greeter.  

So here are the Wally World holiday cards that I have managed to add so far....

First up is a card of the Cardinals ace pitcher Carlos Martinez.  The snowflake design doesn't really stand out on this card, but it's there.  This is the only relic card of a Cardinals player in the holiday set, so this is likely it for cards of the Birds.  There are some Metallic cards in the set, but I am likely to skip over them.  

Next.  One of my favorite Durham Bulls from last year....

Big fan of Snell, great pitcher, and should be fun to watch for a long time.  There are several other Rays cards in this set, even a few autographs, so I will likely have another couple cards from this set to post in the not too distant future.