Prelude

As sort of an intro to dayf's Topps '52 Rookies box break over at A Pack A Day, I'm gonna bust 2 packs of '52 Rookies right here, right now. So here we go.

Pack #1
#32 Ryan Rowland-Smith
#65 Carlos Gomez
#DFC7 Paul Lo Duca Chrome numbered 1507/1952
#37 Alexi Casilla
#176 Aaron Laffey
#163 Juan Gutierrez

Well I've heard of none of these prospects AND I got a Paul Lo Duca chrome. Paul just had arthroscopic knee surgery and will be out 4 to 6 weeks. The Nats are apparently talking to Johnny Estrada about coming on to catch. Good luck with that. Alright Pack #2

#99 Jason Miller
#57 Sean Henn
#98 Joakim Soria
#DF8 Miguel Tejada
#182 Shelley Duncan
#159 Edwin Bellhorn

Alright! People I've heard of. Both Yankees prospects, I know a bit about Henn and Duncan just because everyone seems to know about Yankees prospects. Whenever I hear Shelley Duncan I think of Sandy Duncan. And his first name isn't even Shelley! It's David. Shelley is his middle name. I want to hear the story of why he chose Shelley. Or why his parents chose it for him. Middle school must have been rough. Oh and I got a card of that roider Tejada. The poor Astros. Couldn't they have waited like a week before trading for him? Or made the trade contingent on the Mitchell Report or something? Hope they've got a backup plan if he gets arrested or something.

COTW for 1/27/08: 2006 Topps Mickey Mantle Home Run History: Home Run Number One #MHR1

I know what you're thinking: "Why is this card that I had what seemed to be hundreds of when I opened all those packs of 2006 Topps the Card of the Week?" Ah, my friends, you have to turn the card over in order to see the magic. "Illusions, Michael!"
Since I had a ton of these laying around after many blasters back in 2006 and it'd kinda be hard to get Mickey to sign them, I sent a few off to Randy Gumpert, the pitcher who gave up Mantle's first home run as named on this card. I didn't know whether he would sign them or not as some pitchers don't like to be known as "the guy so and so hit his xth home run off of". But Mr. Gumpert was glad to sign them and he has a great signature. This is one of those items that's just a little outside of normal and that's why it's the Card of the Week.

Why I Love This Hobby, Pt. 1

When I first got into this hobby, I was collecting because I loved (and still do) the Braves.  I wanted to have all their cards, to have the players that were horrible in the 80's, the ones that went from worst to first and pretty much anything that featured blue, red and a tomahawk.  But I also got cards that weren't of Braves and so I began to delve deeper into the world of baseball, statistics and everything that it had to offer.

Now there are many reasons why I love collecting and hopefully in a series or posts or articles or whatever you want to call them, I will highlight a few of my reasons that I love this hobby and always have even during my hiatus.  

Nothing makes me happier than taking an old box of cards that I have long neglected and shuffling through them.  To feel the tension of the glossy cards sticking together as you gently try to pry them apart with your fingers, to get the residue of 80's cardboard dust on your hands that was still on the card from the cutter, there's no better feeling.  Except for one: looking through a box and finding a card that turned from "who?" into "Wow!"  You know those cards, the Topps prospects you've never heard of or the random player on a Bowman card.  Most of the time, there are maybe around 5 prospects that the average collector knows about.  Of course you have those that are prospect fiends, but for the average joe collector, the prospect list for collecting is around 5 players or so.  Like this year, most collectors would have known Joba and Phil Hughes.  The rest kind of get jumbled past there.  Most team collectors know about these prospects and the prospects on the team they collect.  There are, however, very few collectors that can know every single prospect and what his chances of success will be.  This is a reason why I love this hobby.  You can have hidden treasures right in front of you and not know it until 5, 10 even 15 years down the road.  This is what happened to me.  Over Christmas, I was going through some of my cards that are my parents' house and among other things I found this:

For those who can't tell, it's a 1994 Sportflix Rookie-Traded A-Rod rookie card.  Now it's no 1994 Score Rookie-Traded A-Rod, but I was still really happy.  Back in 1994, I probably had no idea who Alex Rodriguez really was.  I had probably heard the name, but had no idea how good of a prospect he was or the player he was going to turn into.  In the same week, I also found in my cards 4 Kevin Garnett rookies, a Marvin Harrison rookie, a Kobe Bryant rookie, an Allen Iverson rookie and lots of other things.  So why do I love this hobby?  Delayed gratification.

TriStar Surprise!

So I got a blaster of the TriStar Prospects Plus today hoping, much like dayf to find a Jason Heyward auto. I didn't get that elusive auto, but what I got was most surprising
Every other auto I have seen from this set was one of the Farm Hands inserts. Imagine my surprise to find this. Not only is it nice and green, it's numbered 14/50. I also got another Farm Hands auto in the box of Todd Frazier. TriStar, you made my day.

COTW for 1/20/08: 1995 Pinnacle Museum Collection Checklist #177

In today's world of having multiple parallels that are silver, orange, gold, frankincense and myrrh, I recall a simpler time when each set had one or two parallels if any at all. The search for the ToppsGold cards of your favorite players or that particular Stadium Club 1st Day Issue was so much easier for people who like to collect players. Now they have to buy tons of cards for every set if they're a completest and like to have every card of that player in the set. Not only that, the scarcity of the cards that are 1 of 1 or 1 of 10 or whatever makes them even harder to find even though we do now have eBay. One of my favorite parallels was the Museum Collection from Pinnacle. It featured a foil on the entire front of the card that gave it a bit of an effect that was kind of like a poor man's refractor. Every time I pulled one of these cards I was thrilled. Until one day in 1995, I pulled this:
That's right, I pulled a Museum Collection checklist. No, not a checklist of the Museum Collection cards, a checklist that had the Museum Collection foil on it. This might be the crappiest insert ever. A checklist? Really? Not only did I have a checklist taking up a card that might have been one of my favorite players, but it was an insert checklist. I feel like this would be the perfect insert for chemgod over at Bad Wax. Every time I look at this card I get depressed.

It's A Late Christmas Present

Mark Teixeira signed a one year contract with the Braves for $12.5 Million. This looks great on it's face in order to be able to negotiate a long term deal with him. This makes Scott Boras seem almost like a normal agent. I'm giddy. Seriously. If I can have him for $15 mil a year, do it.

The Grimm Reaper

Of the tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands, who knows) of cards that I have, a small portion of them are football cards. While I do have a good amount, they pale in comparison to the number of baseball cards I own. However, there are two things that strike my fancy when it comes to football cards: Falcons and offensive linemen. This is because I am (unfortunately) a Falcons fan and because I used to play offensive line. I understand how under appreciated linemen are in the world of collecting and in sports in general. Without a good offensive line, the team's offense does not work no matter what system you're running. That's why when I came across this on eBay, I had to get it.What this is is a 1969 Topps Dan Grimm File Copy. What that means was that Topps kept one of each card of each set it made that was clear of stains and marks in case they wanted to use it again in a "Turn Back The Clock" insert or now in the Heritage series (or so I'm surmising, I could be totally wrong on this). So this is the Dan Grimm that was kept at Topps since 1969. When I got it, it was already encapsulated so that was not my choice. However, I didn't really want the card because it's "valuable" per se, but because of the history of it being a file copy and because it was a Falcons' offensive lineman. I'm quite a sucker for provenance and good back stories. It's one of those unique things that's just neat to have. I'm happy with this addition to my collection.