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.

I Do Not Run Marathons

Have you ever run a marathon?  Why not?  Twenty-six point two miles over varying terrain for a couple of hours can't be that hard?  The Boston and New York Marathons attract thousands of runners, so it must be easy, right?  I have my reasons for not running (I'm out of shape and with a set of knees that have been completely destroyed by years of soccer.  Besides, if was ever stupid enough to try, I'd keel over in exhaustion about five miles in.), but what's your excuse?

If you're like most people, you don't run marathons because you know you'll never, ever, be able to finish it -- at least not in a reasonable time.  What's the point in starting something you know you'll never complete?

This brings me to 2012 Topps Archives Baseball.  By all outward appearances, this should be an awesome product, and the kind of set I'd be buying by the pallet-load -- if I had the money, that is.  Under ordinary circumstances, this could be a legitimate "Product of the Decade" contender (and that's a "shoot.")

It could be, but it's not.  And you can all put the blame on one card.  This one...  

 

It's not that Topps included a Harper RC -- personally, I think it's great that Topps was able to add him at the last minute.  No, it's the way they went about it: a super short-printed base card.

Topps could have easily printed enough Harper's to make it both attainable and realistic to complete a full 241-card set.  They made Yu Darvish and Yoenis Cespedes regular ol' base cards, and that hasn't hurt their "value" (whatever that means), why didn't they do the same with Harper?  Heck, they could have printed enough to equal the production of the other 40 All-Time Fan Favorties SPs (cards #201-#240).  

But Topps chose NOT to.  They could have made it a one-per-sixth box hit, but instead they made it a one-per-sixth case hit.  In other words, they gimmicked the shit out of it.

(Keep in mind, we're not talking about an Autographed Bowman Chrome Prospect Lavender/Fuschia Die-Cut Nuke-Fractor serial-numbered to 99; the Harper in question is a base card in a base-level product.)

This is what the current regime at Topps fails to understand about collectors.  We don't want to run marathons, we just want to collect baseball cards.  Topps didn't need to make 2012 Topps Archives Baseball a marathon, but they chose to anyway.  

We bother collecting a set you'll never be able to complete?

UPDATED: How Will Topps Fuck Up Series Two vis-a-vis Bryce Harper?

4/30 Update:  WE HAVE A WINNAH!!!

As expected, Topps, predictably, will add Harper as a 661st card and SP the shit out of it.  And yes, the cynically-timed press release from the desk of Clay Luraschi arrived in my e-mail box just a few moments later.  We all knew they were going to do something.  Their staleness and stupidity is now beyond cliche, almost to the point of self-parody.

I'll have more on this later.

---

As you've by now heard, Bryce Harper was called up to the Bigs, and makes his MLB debut tomorrow in LA. Well isn't that special? It's like the Nats actually think they're a Big League team now!

But I digress. We all know Topps has a need to fuck-up their flagship product with gimmicks, especially when it comes to a "hot" rookie (See Stephen Strasburg in 2010, and Kosuke Fukudome in 2008) -- something they, curiously do not do with some of their other base-level products (i.e. Bowman).

With 2012 Series Two only five weeks away, this give Topps more than enough time to produce the inevitable gimmick. And what better way to ridicule Topps than turning said inevitable gimmick into a money grab for me. Yes, I'm taking some action on this. Place your bets folks, the pari-mutuel windows are open!

Here's the Morning Line...

5:1 A "late addition" of a 661st base card short-printed to the bejesus that not even Brent and Becca will find it in 100 cases. This is what they did with the Albert Pujols and Jose Reyes "331" and "332" cards in this year's Series One. Topps had about seven weeks between the time Pujols signed for Anaheim and the street date of S1, which gave them plenty of time to include this card in the base set. With S2 scheduled for release in only five weeks, the turnaround time would be cutting it close, but I have complete faith in Topps with pulling this one off. In fact, it would not surprise me if Clay Luraschi is hacking out the cynically-timed press release now.  

25:1 A "Golden Giveaway" exclusive card. I don't think Topps would do something like what they did with Strasburg in 2010; but since they've done it once, you can't discount the possibility that they'll do it again. For the uninitiated, the day before his debut, Topps announced that Stephen Strasburg's "rookie" card would be made available the exact moment he stepped onto the field on their Million Card Giveaway website. Most of the MCG cards had already been redeemed long before this promotion announced, and had collectors known about it, would have waited. Topps has done some pretty stupid things the last five years, but they're not dumb enough to repeat this debacle.  

8:1 A 661st card thrown into the factory sets that will be different from his Updates & Highlights base card. This assumes that the pack out is already so far along and there's nothing Topps can do to include Harper, even if it wanted to. So, they'll add Harper as a bonus in the factory sets and save his "real" RC for Updates & Highlights.

999:1 A regular, un-gimmicked, non-short-printed base card. And only a base card. Pfft! Yeah, right. Remember who were dealing with.

5:2 A pie-in-the-face, or other similar non-squirrel-related gimmick. Look, we're all expecting Topps to do this. They've become so predictable, nothing they do surprises anyone anymore.

50:1 Bryce Harper in a Squirrel Costume. If Topps wants to destroy any credibility they had left with The Hobby, they'd go for the squirrel. Then again, this assumes that Topps has any credibility left.  

12:1 Bryuzo Harpuzki: Japanese Mega-Prospect. Of all the bets on the board, this might be the best "value bet." It's been a while since Topps did something borderline racist as Kazuo Uzuki, and quite frankly, they're due.

9:1 Harper with Obama and Dmitri Young Photoshopped in the background. OK, so Meat Hook might be a but of a stretch. But who else qualifies as the "Greatest Washington National of All Time?"

You know you've made it when you've been meme'd.

So yeah, I went ahead a made a Jefferson Burdick meme generator thing.

I'd like to post them all, but there are just too many to post here.

UPDATE

Inspired by The Cardboard (or Pony, or whatever the fuck he's calling himself now) Junkie, I've created this "Dos Equis Man" meme. Feel free to add your own.

Y U HATIN' ON JEFF?

No, I couldn't think of anything else clever to caption this old picture of Jefferson Burdick either.

Maybe you can come up with something better? Here's the photo, go for it.

It's See-B.S. Sunday Morning with Armen Keteyian.

By now you've seen the piece that aired over the weekend on CBS Sunday Morning. To be fair to Mr. Keteyian, Charles Osgood had the week off -- Osgood would have NEVER allowed this to air -- and you can only do so much with a 5 minute segment. He told a story which he thought was an accurate depiction of The Hobby in 2012. With that said, I thought it was a fine segment ... had it aired in 1994.

The main issue I had with the story was that it completely misunderstands what The Hobby has evolved into. It is not the Romanticized vision of "Leave it to Beaver"-era kids swapping cards, wrapping them up in rubber bands (now you know why you can't find a 52 Andy Pafko without severe notches), then riding the trolley with Mom, Dad, and Sis for a double-header at Ebbets Field.

Those days are past now, of course, and card collecting has ceased to be a "kiddie" Hobby for at least a generation. It is a Hobby for young internet-savvy men (and a few chicks, too), and there's nothing wrong with that. You wouldn't know that from the Keteyian piece.

You also wouldn't know from Keteyian how stratified The Hobby has become. Mr. Mint and five middle-aged guys in a VFW Hall in North Jersey on a Tuesday night are not representative of The Hobby as a whole.

Yes, The Hobby does have problems. But it's no where near as bad as CBS led Sunday Morning viewers to believe.

ZOMG! HE'S BACK!!!

Yes, yes, yes!!!

The Cardboard Junkie is back on The Twitters! And he's not just Tweeting about ponies!



Go follow him. Now.