Blaster Madness #8: 2019 Topps Stadium Club

When this yer's version of Stadium Club debuted, y Twitter timeline was flooded with images from the set. As usual, Stadium Club offers the best overall photography of any set Topps offers, and this year did not disappoint. I made my way to Walmart to grab a couple of blasters a couple of days ago. Let's see how I did.

As I mentioned, the photography is second-to-none.

When sorting through my cards, I initially thought this was Babe Ruth. The photo definitely makes on think of the Great Bambino. Such a beautiful card.

However, this is the card that I fell in love with. This might be my favorite card of all time, and I have zero ties to Bench. Everything about this card is perfect. I dare anyone to find a better photo used in this year's set.

The only Ranger I pulled in my two blasters was this red foil parallel of Adrian Beltre. I'm not complaining. I pulled a few other parallels, as well (black foil, sepia).

This chrome parallel of Rickey Henderson was in my first blaster. I think this is the second year of Stadium Club featuring chrome parallels, but I could be wrong.

I pulled plenty of inserts, also, with this red foil Ronald Acuna Beam Team being the best one. According to the odds on the box, these fall one in every 193 packs. Not too shabby.

However, the best card of the two blasters was this beauty:

This is the Ken Griffey Jr. photo variation short print! Outside of a photo of the Kid's backswingm is there a more iconic photo of Griffey than one with his hat backwards?!

So, there are my first two blasters of 2019 Stadium Club. Full disclosure: I went back to the store the next day and bought another blaster and a fat pack. I'll share the results of those tomorrow.

Have you bought any Stadium Club this year? If so, what did you find?

Blaster Madness 1: 2018 Topps Chrome

As promised, today begins my new series "Blaster Madness." Since I've moved back home, I haven't had the opportunity to purchase many hobby boxes. My supply of cardboard comes primarily in the form of blasters from Walmart. TO say my options are limited is an understatement, so apologies if my posts become a bit...redundant. 

My first offering for this series takes a look at a blaster of 2018 Topps Chrome. Let's take a look and see what I found.

First card of note for me was Adrian Beltre. Beltre signed with the Rangers prior to the 2011 campaign and has been the most popular player on the team since. Beltre may retire this offseason - I would venture to say that he most likely will retire. However, that decision hasn't been made. I would never be opposed to having Beltre back again for another season. If I'm being honest, I wouldn't be opposed to having Beltre slide into our open manager position. I can dream right?

Next up is a base card for my Joey Gallo PC. I really like this card. I haven't set out to determine when the photo was taken, but it was clearly after something good happened. If I had to put money on it, I would guess that this was taken after a walk-off hit.

On to the non-Ranger cards of note. This is my first Chrome Ohtani rookie. It will be interesting to see how long he continues to pitch and DH. I know he will strictly DH next year while recovering from Tommy John surgery...it will be interesting to see if he stays in that role after next season. If so, the Angels paid a ton for a DH.

I also pulled this Devers base rookie card. I'll be completely honest: I don't know much about him, so I don't have much to say about the card.

Keeping with the rookie theme, I also snagged this Rhys Hoskins rookie refractor. When I saw the "RC" designation on this card, I was a bit surprised. It feels like Hoskins has been around for a while, but I am guessing that he made his debut too late in the season last year to be included in Update, so his rookie cards are falling into this year's product.

The final card of note in my blaster was this sepia refractor of Mike Trout. I don't seem to pull many refractors of Trout, so this was a nice surprise. It will stay in my collection for now.

So there it is, Blaster Madness #1. Not the best blaster I've ever had, but certainly not the worst. Thanks for reading!

A Violation of Common Sense

BEFORE I BEGIN: I am currently working on my "What I Collect" post for Night Owl's Blog Bat Around. It's taking me a bit longer than I anticipated (because my dissertation is ruining my life, as I have mentioned previously). I promise it will be published this week! Now, on to today's regularly-scheduled post...

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I'm really growing to love the Trading Card Database. It is a fountain of cardboard information and even facilitates trading with new people. This is great...until it isn't.

I recently completed a trade with a user that would net me the Adrian Beltre Players Weekend manufactured patch. I know, just last week I complained about these cards. Still, this is a card featuring a Ranger and I collect cards featuring Rangers, so you do the math. Full disclosure: I sent only four insert cards to the other person (who proposed the trade), so this "problem" wasn't a big deal. 

Fast forward to the day that I received the card. The other person sent the card in a PWE. Not a problem, but it is a relative thick card. So long as he put it in a toploader, the card should have made its way to me safe.

But it didn't. 

Turns out that the other trader doesn't really care about packaging, as he just threw the card in a team bag and then an envelope. No penny sleeve, no toploader. When it arrived, it had a vertical crease down the middle.

The crease isn't visible in the scan, but it's there.

This really bothered me. It still does. However, I decided not to say anything about it to the other trader. I felt that the card was essentially free so I shouldn't complain. Now I'm kicking myself because it is definitely outside of the acceptable timeframe to complain.

Still, it's a violation of basic common sense that anything sent in a PWE will go through an automated sorter, meaning that extra thick cards are at serious risk for damage. I wonder if he even felt the slightest built guilty when he received the bubble mailer from me that had each card in a penny sleeve and top loader. Doubtful.

Am I making too much of this?

A Trade With Cards on Cards

A while back, I saw a post from Madding on Cards on Cards asking if anyone had any Ginter dupes from 2017. I did (spoiler alert: I still have plenty from Ginter and other sets like Heritage on my trade bait page that I am happy to send away!), so I put together a box to send his way.

I received a padded mailer back and was stoked to see what was inside! Included with a number of my set needs were some pretty incredible Rangers. Here's a look at some of my favorites!

I've really been falling for all the unique oddball sets I come across. I believe this Topps Bazooka set is a bit more "mainstream," but it's still an oddball to me.

Speaking of oddballs, I love these Denny's Grand Slam cards. Juan Gonzalez was a stud for the Rangers. For a while, he had a rocky relationship with the organization after he retired. That relationship seems to have thawed a bit, as the Rangers inducted him into the team's Hall of Fame (though he wasn't present - his son represented him).

These Franchise Flashbacks are a pretty cool Opening Day insert. This one features Adrian Beltre wearing the uniform of the Fort Worth Black Panthers, a team associated with the Texas Negro League of the early Twentieth century.

If not for my Sage Steele autograph from Allen & Ginter, this would have been my vote for Best Card of 2017. Though Lucroy isn't with the Rangers any longer (and though he suppposedly didn't enjoy his stay), this card is beautiful. I can assure you that this was take after a rain delay for two reasons: first, we only get clouds like this after storms; and second; the stands appear to be near empty, suggesting that everyone was taking shelter and hadn't returned to their seats yet. Either way, it's a beautiful card. Kind of shocking that I didn't have it yet.

And here was the big surprise of the package: a Fan Favorite auto of Jeff Burroughs from 2016 Topps Archives. Burroughs spent seven seasons with the organization (two of which were in Washington before the team relocated). He was the 1974 AL MVP, hitting .310 with 25 homers and 118 RBIs. Burroughs would be a two-time All Star ('74, '78) before retiring after the 1985 season. 

Madding, thank you for the cards! I love 'em!

I Got Zapped!

I feel like this title has been used many, many times before I put it up there. As I am certain everyone knows, getting "zapped" means that you received a crazy good package from one Mr. Zippy Zappy. Before the holiday, I was zapped for the first time.

A while back, I pulled a rainbow variation of Luis Torrens' 2017 Topps Update card. I finally got it in the mail to Zippy earlier this month. I had no expectation of anything in return - I was happy to help out a Torrens collector.

But Mr. Zappy would have none of that.

I received several repacks - all of them amazing! Let's have a look at the highlight of each pack.

For the record, these came from the same pack and I couldn't decide which I liked better, so I chose to share both. I'm really starting to fall in love with non-Topps minor league cards. The Alfaro is a 2013 South Atlantic League All Star card. Love it! I also love these Gallery of Greats inserts and did not have the Beltre, so this was a welcome addition! 

You can never go wrong with a Pudge card. I haven't bought much Bowman this year, so this was definitely on my list. I love old school Upper Deck, mainly because the photography was great. Here, we see Kenny Rogers catching the pigskin. I'm certain Nolan Ryan threw it a year before. (See what I did there?!)

Zippy even included an auto! This one comes from 2013 Panini Prizm Perennial Draft Picks and features Alex "Chi Chi" Gonzalez. Chi Chi was cut and re-signed with the Rangers earlier this offseason. He's a first round pick, so hopefully he can put something together. The Bell hails from the 1983 Topps All-Star Set Collector's Edition, the first of it's kind in my collection.

Lastly, we finish up with a Sega CardGen card of Michael Young. This, too, is a first for my collection. I've been wanting one for a really long time (I've had a Matt Harrison Sega card in my eBay watchlist for a year or more).

I was unaware that these were Topps products. It's cool to see everything written in Japanese!

Zippy, thank you for the cards! They are truly appreciated!

AB3K Topps NOW!

It has been almost two weeks since I posted about my last Topps NOW purchase: cards for Adrian Beltre's 450th home run and his feat of being the 21st player in MLB history to reach 5,000 total bases.

Chris, a.k.a. The Collector, asked in the comments of that post if I had the Topps NOW card for Beltre's 3,000th hit. I had ordered it, but did not have it at the time.

But I do now.

As much as I usually love the images chosen by Topps for the NOW cards, this one just seems boring to me. I don't think that's necessarily Topps' fault - there is only so much you can show to represent a hit. However, the images on the reverse side of the card are far better:

Once play stopped for the crowd to recognize Beltre, his kids ran from the stands all the way to the outfield wall to uncover this logo the Rangers had prepared for the hit. The bottom images show Beltre's teammates coming out to hug and congratulate him on the accomplishment. I love both of these images, and I think it would have been awesome to have the second (bottom) image on the front of the card and the first (top) image on the back. But that's just me.

I believe this is the fourth Topps NOW card that I have purchased this year. I hoped they would put the following image on a card - it is just begging to be put on cardboard - but it didn't happen. Hopefully it will someday!

I hope everyone is well!

Topps NOW...Again

I am finding myself watching for Topps NOW cards featuring Ranger players. Rather than purchase them through Topps, I find that I can usually get them through eBay for about $5 with free shipping.

Such is the case with my two most recent pickups, both centered on Adrian Beltre.

First up:

The One-Knee Wonder. Beltre has made this follow through famous, so it is only appropriate that his card celebrating 5,000 total bases show it.

I also grabbed this one:

Beltre recently hit home run number 450. I believe he currently sits at 455, so hopefully he will reach number 500 next season. If he isn't already, having 500 homers (to go along with 3,000+ hits) should make him a first ballot hall of famer.

What are your thoughts on Topps NOW? Purchased any for yourself?