You got $4.97 burning a hole in your pocket? Buy our 1970 Topps e-book.

1970 Topps wasn't the sexiest baseball card set ever made.  The '70 Flagship is the red-headed step-child (or is it the grey-haired step-great aunt?) of the pre-Donruss & Fleer/post-War Topps canon.  A drab and unloved set that, not surprisingly, has been scarcely featured amongst the recent gaggle of reprint-themed inserts.

But if you're a hardcore baseball card collector (and if you're reading this blog, you probably are), you'll be pleased to know that the gang at Sports Collectors Daily, (of which, in the interest of full-disclosure, I am a contributor,) in association with the unopened pack collecting guy known as "The Unopened Pack Guy" have teamed up to produce the ultimate guide to collecting the 1970 Topps set.  In fact, that's what it's called: The Ultimate Guide to Collecting 1970 Baseball Cards, and it's available right now for download for the low, low, price of $4.97.

That's right, for less than the price of a pack of 2012 Topps Archives, you can download the e-book (available in both the Kindle and Nook formats) that includes a checklist of ALL 720 base cards, lists of pack, wrapper, and display box variations, oddball issues like the 70 Supers, and inserts and test issues.  And if you act now, we'll even include everything you'll ever want to know about 1970 O-Pee-Chee Baseball.

Whether you have the full 720-card base set, or nothing from this set at all, this is a guide that MUST be in every card collector's virtual library.  So what are you waiting for?  It's not like you actually need any more Archives.

A Vote of No Confidence

They're not a sponsor of this website, nor are they paying me to mention this, and no I'm not getting a cut of the sales.

But right now, you can buy a Hobby box of 2012 Topps Heritage for $46.95 (plus shipping, handling, and appropriate sales taxes) at Dave & Adams.  That's less than two bucks per pack.

Let that sink in for a moment.  

I can never, ever, recall Hobby boxes of Heritage selling for less than $50 -- and keep in mind, this was a product that was released less than four months ago.


Of course, there is a good reason for this.  With all the variations, gimmicks, retailer-exclusive parallels, and meaningless "value added" content, Heritage has become a uncollectible bloated mess -- yet another "marathon" product that most collectors know they'll never be able to fully collect.  So why even bother starting?

The $46.95 Heritage Hobby box is an indictment against the current product development regime at Topps.  The Hobby has spoken with their wallets.  But are they listening?

UPDATE:  Blowout has matched D&A's $46.95 price.  Not surprising if you ask me.

Pissing Away Beckett's Credibilty, One Tweet at a Time.

Some things just have to be said.  Even if they are unpleasant to say, and even if such unpleasantries are uncomfortable to write, you just have to suck-up and do what needs to be done.  So, let me take a deep breath.

(SIGH!)

OK then, here we go.

Over the last 24 hours, Chris Olds has managed to piss away about three buckets and a dram full of credibility.  (For those of you not familiar with the British Imperial measurement system, three buckets and a dram works out to about two shitloads and a pint, or just under forty liters.)  How you ask? It all started innocuously enough with this Tweet.

My Topps Archives base set is complete. Now just 23 SPs short.
— Chris Olds (@chrisolds2009) June 9, 2012

And it all degenerated from there.

I won't reprint the complete series between Olds and myself, The Cardboard Junkie, Those Back Pages, Long Fly Ball To Because..., and others, I'd be here all day if I did.  If you want to see all the fallacious arguments, pretzel logic, red herrings and attempted changing of subjects, you're just going to have to look for them yourselves.

All I'll say is, if the Editor of Beckett Baseball and Beckett Sports Card Monthly honestly believes that a full 241-card base set of 2012 Topps Archives is "complete" at only 200 cards and doesn't include the Bryce Harper RC, then we're all fucked.

(OBTW, if you're not following me on The Twinkah, why not?)

But is it a "Fuck Yeah?"

I was dicking around in Tumblr and slapped this together: http://baseballcardsfuckyeah.tumblr.com. 

Yeah, I don't know either.