Around The Card Room, Take 18

I am here this evening to talk about one of my biggest blogging fails.  

It all started when I decided I would live blog a Durham Bulls game ten years ago. 

I hung out at the American Tobacco Campus before the game and it got a short blog post.  

Love the water fountains, so relaxing after a long day at work. 

I bought dinner at the ballpark. It was a Pepsi and a hot dog. That dinner was a short blog post.  

The Bulls wore pink uniforms. That was a short blog post. Pictured is pitcher Alex Colome.  

Then the game started and disaster ensued. I thought I was going to see a loaded Durham Bulls team battle a loaded Syracuse Chiefs team. Each team scored a run in the first inning, but Syracuse than put up 11 runs in the second with Steven Souza collecting 5 RBIs.  

Kind of hard to blog about this kind of game.  

The live blogging came to a grinding halt and has not been attempted since.  

It was one of my bigger fails as a blogger.  

What am I left to show for this attempt at live blogging?  

Two things. 

First, I have a healthy collection of Steven Souza cards. He had a great 2014 season in Triple A, One of the better ones I have witnessed in the two decades I have followed Minor League Baseball. Souza was also a solid Major Leaguer for the Nationals, Rays, Diamondbacks, Cubs, Dodgers, and Mariners.    

Second, there was a bobblehead giveaway the night of my live blog attempt. The box and ticket were featured on the live blog, but the bobblehead was never shown.    

The bobblehead of Bulls outfielder Wil Myers has since left the box and resides in the baseball card room. Myers is a North Carolina native and was the top prospect in baseball at the time he was in Triple A, so it was a big deal that he was playing in Durham, 

Here is the front of the bobblehead.  

and the back of the bobblehead.  

I really like this bobblehead, even if it reminds me of my failed attempt to live blog a baseball game.  

Set Appreciation Post #20 - 2012 Topps Pro Debut

No special guests or Aaron Boone memes for this set appreciation post, just baseball cards of players wearing Minor League uniforms. As a person who follows and watches Minor League baseball, these are always fun sets to flip through. This was the third Pro Debut set, so it was still a relatively new product at this point. More than a decade removed from its release, there are plenty of players on the checklist who are in the prime of their carer or beyond.  

Let's get it.  

The 2012 Topps design has always been fairly low on my list, easily the bottom quartile of all their base sets. It's just uninspired and looks like they did not put much thought or effort into this design. Someone came up with this five minutes before pitching it to some higher-up. The photography is fine, it's not Stadium Club or anything. You better believe I am going to count the bad design towards the final rating at the end of the post.  

It gets worse.  

There are no statistics on the back of the card. I almost want to stop the post here and just tell you to avoid ever touching this set. Add in that Topps is calling Dante Bichette a "dynamic offensive" player. That is only making things worse. He couldn't hit a beach ball outside of Denver.  

This set is really a hit or miss product. The good names are great, but there are a lot of former highly regarded prospects who never panned out or lived up to the hype. As a fan of the Minor Leagues, I am going to try to stick to the success stories for the cards I show off. The percentage of players who did not make it is really high, even for a Pro Debut product.  

The best three cards in the set are no-brainers. Like decade into their careers and they are Hall of Fame trajectory type players.  

First, we have Syracuse SkyChiefs outfielder Bryce Harper.  

Bryce Harper was in Triple A less than a month during the 2012 season before the Nationals called him up to the Majors. I usually make a point to see players like Harper when they roll through Durham, but he did not make it that far into the schedule. Despite the miss on my part, this is a cool card. I miss the SkyChiefs, who had a train as a mascot. You can see it on his batting helmet. There is story there, but I am not going to tell it on my blog. Cool card and a cheap Harper rookie if you don't own one. 

One of the other really good cards belongs to Cardinals third baseman Nolan Arenado.  

Arenado is shown here with the Modesto Nuts of the California League. That's A Ball and Arenado is 20 years old in this picture. Arenado was actually on Modesto in 2011, his 2012 season was spent with Tulsa in the Double A Texas League. Who would have guessed this guy would go on to hit 300 home runs and win 10 Gold Gloves? 

Baseball America rated him the 42nd best prospect right along side fellow third baseman Mike Olt and Will Middlebrooks in their 2012 Prospect Guide.  

Oops, missed out on that one.  

Last up of the really good cards is Manny Machado of the Fredrick Keys.  

I will not listen to your Manny Machado slander about him not being a future Hall of Famer.  

A few other really good players in this set......

We've got Jose Ramirez. Probably also a Hall of Famer, or getting really close. The card shows him with the Indians entry into the 2011 Arizona League team. Ramirez is an 18 year old on this card, one the youngest players featured in this Pro Debut set. This card is why this set is fun to look at years later.  

We've also got what feels like an air brushed Gerrit Cole.  

Cole was actually in college in 2011. He went to UCLA and was selected by the Pirates with the first overall pick in the MLB Draft. Cole did end up playing with the Bradenton Marauders during the 2012 season, but he was only there for a few starts before the Pirates promoted him all the way up to their Triple A team.  

Locally, we've got Christian Yelich playing for the Greensboro Grasshoppers.  

Yelich is another really young player in this set, only 19 in this picture. Turned out to be a pretty good player. Why do the Greensboro cards never have the players posing with the bat dogs?  

Many teams have bat dogs these days, Greensboro was the originator.  

Let me move on to the Cardinals and Durham Bulls portion of the post. 

There are a lot of Durham Bulls in this set. There are not many Cardinals players in this set. At least not many who made it to the Majors.  It was a toss up between Shelby Miller and Matt Adams. 

I am going with Matt Adams, because you can see his uniform.  

I have always liked the Springfield Cardinals uniforms. The Cardinals should do this with all their Minor League affiliates. Two birds on the bat with the city name in the Cardinals script. 

My best memories of Matt Adams on the Cardinals include his home run off of Clayton Kershaw in the 2014 NLDS.......

There was also that time FanGraphs wrote an article about how bad Matt Adams was playing left field and fellow Cardinals outfielder Tommy Pham liked the article post on Twitter.  

On to the Durham Bulls portion of the post. There are a lot of them.    

Some former Bulls are in the base set, but were on the Royals at the time this product was released......

You can't read the names, because it's 2012 Topps, but this is Wil Myers and Mike Montgomery.  

Montgomery recorded the final out in Game 7 for the Chicago Cubs in 2016 World Series, so I should probably ignore all his cards, but he also threw a no-hitter for the Durham Bulls at a game I attended. Seeing a no-hitter is pretty cool, so I just try to ignore his Cubs cards. 

I have also sacrificed a Durham Bulls card from this set for an in-person autograph for my son.  

Never replaced it, not sure I ever will.  

There is also a card of Taylor Motter in the set, but he is on the Princeton Rays and not the Durham Bulls. He looks weird with short hair.  Motter does not have any certified autographs, but I have an in-person autograph copy of the card that I prefer to the unsigned copy.  

There are also two Tim Beckham cards, which both show him on the Durham Bulls.  The first is a relic card.  

There are parallels of this card with patch pieces, but they've always been really expensive when they've shown up and the patch pieces are just the blue trim from the middle and sleeve areas of Beckham's jersey.  If I ever saw a patch piece from the Bulls logo, I would be all over it.  

Last Tim Beckham card......

Easily my favorite Durham Bulls card, as well as my favorite card overall in this entire set.  

Let's make one more stop with this set and then I will assign it a rating.  

Pro Debut products usually come with a few autographs per box. The 2012 Pro Debut set was no different, but the autograph checklist is terrible. I have autographs of Drew Hutchinson, Charlie Tilson, and Matt Adams, and they are three of the better names available.  

So, how does the 2012 Pro Debut set rate?  

I had been ranking the sets featured in my Set Appreciation posts, but I am going to stop that today.  Instead, I am going to rate the set on a 1-5 scale based on its design, quality of checklist, insets, value and price, and also an overall. 

Today's rating scale is using the Durham Bulls beloved mascot, Wool E. Bull.  

The design is really bad and the lack of stats on the back of the cards is really hard to get past for me. I gave the set 1 Wool E. Bull for design and I felt like that might be generous. The checklist has some strong names, but it is really top heavy. There are a few other solid names in this set that I did not bring up in the post, my time is limited, but there are a lot of failed prospects here. More than other Pro Debut sets. 

My two highest ratings were for inserts and value. While the autograph checklist is terrible, I am a sucker for those manufactured patch cards with the Minor League logos. I know that there are few Minor League card collectors floating around on Blogger, but those are universally loved and were a great concept. The value offered here is good too. There are really cheap boxes and packs of cards that you can find on the discount table at shops and shows.  

Overall, I give this set two Wool E. Bulls.  There are better Pro Debut sets out there. 

That Didn't Last Long and A Set Update

I went into work at the end of last week and one of my students brought me a pack of 2018 Topps cards.  You know, the set that I am not collecting.  Hard to hand a pack of baseball cards back to an eleven year old and say, "Sorry, but I do not collect these".

I opened the pack of cards.....

First card of the year goes to Diamondbacks infielder Brandon Drury.  

First Cardinals card was Dexter Fowler.  I like the action shot.  

First former Durham Bulls player was Wil Myers.  

A few thoughts on the base cards.  First, the wave on the front of the card isn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to look.  I am still not rushing out to buy a bunch of packs, but definitely better in person than online.  I will still always refer to these cards as the "Aqua Fresh" set.  

The card backs are a huge letdown.  

For the second year in a row we've lost the player's stat line in favor of some box with the player's Twitter and Instagram handle?  If someone was going to follow C.C. Sabathia on social media, I am pretty certain that they don't need a baseball card to prompt them to do it.  He has an Old English Sheepdog (+1), but he named it after an NFL team (-1).  

I know I have advocated for sets being more kid friendly, social media connections are definitely more kid friendly, but as a young collector the stats on the back were helpful with matching up players who appeared old and washed up on television versus someone my dad and older brother told me was a good baseball card.  

Fergie Jenkins comes to mind.  

Old guy pitching for the Cubs.   

Hall of Famer.  

Two more quick items.  First, I never posted the best card I pulled out of the pack with the scans above.  I was rather surprised, in a good way.  

Would love to have seen a Cardinals Postseason card, but the players have had a hard time overcoming Mike Matheny lately.  Maybe next year.  

Last item.  I have also started working on the 1983 Topps inserts.  I have picked up 8 of the cards so far.  I won't repost the whole checklist, but I have 92 more cards to find.  

I like the idea of mixing vintage and modern players in the 1983 set.  I wish the retired players matched up a little bit better with the players who actually appeared/played around that time.  Of the retired players in this group of cards only Darryl Strawberry seems to fit.  

I understand that Topps has to make as many Derek Jeter cards as possible, but he did not play in 1983.  Same with Canseco.  Can't we sub out Canseco for Rickey Henderson?  Seems like a better choice for an A's outfielder from the early 1980s.  Maybe a Don Mattingly in place of Jeter?  

Tek Savvy Rays

I hope that everyone is having a good 2017.  We are a few hours in, doesn't feel that much different from 2016.  It's cold rainy day here in central North Carolina, so I figured I could catch up a little bit on blogging.  It's been a few days since I posted, a pair of new cards for your Sunday.

First up, is a new Blake Snell.....

I have picked up a bunch of the Topps Tek autographs over the last two years since Topps relaunched this product.  I always enjoyed collecting these back in the late 1990s and early 2000s when the original few sets were put out.  The new version does have a base set, but I have not really gotten into those as much as I have enjoyed the autographs.  There have been some good current and former players on the checklists for autographs, plus they've been on card card signatures.

Snell was kind of my Durham Bulls player of choice during this past year, I have picked up a bunch of his autographs, so hopefully this year will have plenty of more new Snell autographs for me to track down.

and more Topps Tek....

It's a little weird to see Wil Myers back in a Rays uniform, but this is one of those "older" Topps Tek autographs that I spoke of in the paragraphs above.  Beyond being really cool cards, a lot of the autographs from the 2014 and 2015 Topps Tek sets have become really inexpensive.  This Myers card cost me more in shipping off of Ebay than the cost of winning the auction.  

Two cool new cards to start off 2017.  Hope everyone had a fun and safe New Years Eve!  Happy 2017!  

Fixing Aledmys

A few months back I ordered one of those Throwback Thursday sets from Topps.  The cards arrived in the mail and were quite disappointing.  Instead of receiving a nice copy of the Cardinals shortstop's first rookie card, I got a bent up card.  Not happy.

I decided that I did not want to miss out on having the card, and it's not like Topps really did anything to help resolve the situation, so I went ahead and traded for another copy of the card.  This time the card came in a nice bubble mailer and was in good condition.

The scan is a little bit crooked, not my best day, but the card also does not have a big crease in it.  After completing the trade it has become clear to me that the best way to pick up these cards is to let other people buy them and pick them up on the secondary market.  Trade partners and sellers on sites like Ebay want to maintain their reputation, they know how to package cards, and if something were to go wrong I probably won't be ignored.  

Besides trading for the Aledmys rookie card I also picked up a nice Wil Myers card.....

This is from this year's Topps Chrome set.  I have picked up some cards from that set, but have yet to post them on here.  This is an insert set featuring different Rookie of the Year winners.  Myers is one of two former Durham Bulls players in the set along with Longoria.  There are also autographed versions of these cards, but the seem like they might be a little pricy.  

Trading Card Co-Op

It's been awhile since I have had a chance to visit a local card shop here Raleigh.  It's been almost a year and half since the area has had a shop.  I have enjoyed hanging out at the card shows that are at the North Carolina State Fairgrounds during the hiatus.  There are always plenty of good cards at those shows, and it's fun to meet and talk to all the different collectors, but I have still missed having a card shop to call my own.  

A few of the collectors, who run some of the booths at the local card shows, have been working on a plan to bring back a card shop to the area.  After a lot of planning and hard work their shop, the Trading Card Co-Op, opened this weekend.  Sure, there was a tropical storm lingering around North Carolina during the beginning half of the weekend, but that was not going to stop me, and a bunch of other collectors, from making a trip out to the Grand Opening.    

If you live in the area, or are visiting the Raleigh area, the shop is in the Royal Building on Hillsborough Street across from Meredith College.  It's in the same building as The Brickhouse restaurant and Ben & Jerry's.  A convenient location, just a stop light down from 440.  

The shop has a really cool feel and has a little bit different set-up from other card shops.  The store is inside the building and collectors are welcomed by a glass facade, which makes up two of the four outside walls of the shop, and a nicely designed store logo on the front door.  

The inside of the Trading Co-Op has a really cool concept and feel.  From the outside doors it looks like any other card shop:  Boxes of new products on shelves, tables with boxes of cards, display cabinets, etc.  However, once you get inside the front door and start looking at the store's inventory and talking to the owners you will see why this is a unique and must see hobby shop.  

When I first visited the store I spent some time talking with Jimmy, who ran Big D's Card Shop and was also a fixture at many of the local card shows, along with James who is also a fixture (and organizer) at the local card shows.  There are several other collectors who frequent the local card shows who have also an interest in the Trading Card Co-Op, which is really where the shop takes on its flavor.  

The Trading Card Co-Op has much more of a card show feel than a card shop feel.  The display cabinets are each stocked by one of the steak-holders in the store.  There is literally something there for everyone.  When I visited on Saturday morning, I had a fairly busy day planned, and can honestly say that the forty-five minutes to hour that I spent in the store were insufficient to take in everything that I would have normally done on a visit to a card shop.  

Again, a stand alone brick and mortar card shop might be doable in that amount of time, but a good card show?  You can't pass up a good table, I have been there.  Only, at the Trading Card Co-Op you are looking in the standard card shop display cases.  

I started out with Jimmy's cabinet since he always has some Durham Bulls goodies lurking inside for me.  You can't see it too clearly from the picture, but there are some nice Blake Snell cards on the bottom shelf.  Jimmy is also the resident expert on the Carolina Hurricanes and always has a nice mix of hockey cards.  

I had actually done a little work with Jimmy on a few cards the week before the store had opened and picked up two nice cards, one Cardinal and one former Durham Bull. 

 Cardinals player first:

I have a bunch of the Cardinals autographs out of the Past Time Pennants set, but did not have the Gibby autograph.  Always a nice signature, plus he is wearing his trademark jacket underneath his jersey.  Jim Edmonds rolled like that for awhile too.  

Durham Bulls player:

I have not done much with memorabilia cards this year, but this one was too nice to pass up.  The card has the authentication sticker on it that Topps started using last year with the Strata cards.  I am typing this post while holding a baby, that's been most of my day, so I still need to look up the code to see when Archer wore this jersey.  

So, this is where the card shop feel kicks in.  After finding a pair of nice cards from one seller, I moved over a cabinet and found a few more nice things around the shop.  I picked up an Aledmys Diaz Optics rookie card from James.....

who had a stocked cabinet filled with all sorts of great baseball, football, and basketball cards along with some great autographed memorabilia.   If my budget had been a little larger I could have had a pretty fun time picking out some of the cards in here.....

Really I could go on and on about each of the different sections of the store, but I am not writing a dissertation here.  Let's summarize it this way:  The inventory is really strong in each of the cabinets and the collectors running the store are very knowledgable.  Here's a look at some of the other cabinets......

This is one of the cabinets (above) that I could have spent some more time on.  I see that Rodon on the top shelf.  Let's hope its there next week.  Some very nice hockey and football stuff in here too.  

This cabinet (above) was baseball heavy with a lot of nice modern stuff on the top and some vintage stuff underneath on the bottom two shelves. The vintage cards looked sharp.  The cabinet below had some great basketball autographs and cards, a little soccer, and a nice Piscotty card on top. 

a cabinet of autographs......

and more...

                  

They even have a cabinet with gaming cards. 

If I had spent another hour or two at the store I could have sat down at each of the cabinets and done a write up on each of them and had a lot of material for my post.  I feel that way moving from table to table to table at a card show sometimes too.  I picked out a few cards, but could have easily bought something from each and every cabinet in the store and the pieces would have been strong additions to my collection.  

There is even a section in the middle of the store with boxes sorted out by teams for collectors looking for some more inexpensive single cards.  I found a cool old Pacific Darryl Kile parallel numbered out of 70...

The store also sells packs and boxes, which is the direction I went, since my time was limited and I have been a little behind on my 2016 cards.  I missed the basketball, football, and hockey boxes, but in the picture at the bottom you can see the shelves wrap around most of the store.  They also post collectors opening boxes and their hits on their Facebook page. 

I decided to work on Stadium Club and Finest.  I know the post is getting long at this point, but everyone wants to know what came out of the boxes.... 

 Let's start out with the Stadium Club.  

The base set probably deserves its own post, or two, which it will get in the coming days.  I pulled two autographs out of the box.  First up, is Reds catcher Kyle Waldrop.

Waldrop has been in Triple A with the Louisville Bats for the last few years.  The Reds had him up the last week or two, but I believe he's been sent back down to the International League.  The Bats are out of the playoffs, so I am guessing that he might be done for the season after this weekend.  

Which brings me to my other autograph....

which belongs to Rangers pitching prospect Luke Jackson.  Kind of a different looking card, so I had to flip over to the back which revealed that I pulled.....

a 1/1.  While Jackson has not spent a ton of time with the Rangers this year, the former first round draft pick, is still rated by most publications as a Top 20 prospect in the deep Texas system.  In fact, several have him ahead of Michael Matuella, former Duke pitcher, who once was considered a candidate to go first overall in the 2014 draft.  

and the Finest.  I will do more pictures, less words....

all very nice, so the two autographs had a very strong Durham Bulls flavor to them.  First up is Andruw Jones.  Always a very nice looking signature....

and the final autograph was my favorite card I landed from the first weekend of the Trading Card Co-Op: 

This is just a great looking cards.  Not sure it needs a lot of explanation.  

Overall, I had a great time during my brief stop at the Trading Card Co-Op, but I am looking forward to my return visit in the very near future.  There is so much in the store and it is such a cool concept to have a card show set up and feel.  If you live, or have the chance to visit, the Raleigh area I highly recommend a visit.