2009 Upper Deck Series 2: The Non-Review!

2009 Upper Deck Series 2
(how much will you pay me not to say "Electric Boogaloo?")

For those not in the know, this is what I call a NON-Review. I’ve already reviewed the Series 1 product, so I’ll just stick to what’s unique to Series 2 that maybe wasn’t such a big deal the first time around.

SET YOUR BLASTERS TO "MEH"
Apparently these "hot boxes" that have been talked about are hobby-only, because the blaster that I picked up at Target was far from hot. It wasn’t even luke warm. I suppose that’s the point of blasters and retail packs, though. Ya know. To not be anything special. I did notice a couple of semi- kindof- sorta-interesting facts about my blaster. 10 packs per box, 8 cards per pack, 78 total cards. Wha? Alright, that’s excusable, but just barely. I’ve seen much worse offenses in hobby boxes. The other interesting detail I noticed was that I only pulled two rookie cards. This isn’t a complaint, mind you, but a curious observation. Well, when I say "rookie cards," I mean the ones with the rookie card graphic plastered on ‘em. Does anyone really consider these actual rookie cards?

Series 2 base includes players in their "new" uniforms. See, Topps? They didn’t even need photo manipulation! Too bad that some of these, much like the above card, features photography from pre-season photo shoots and not of on-field game action.

I’m sorry, but I’m just still not on board with USA Baseball as an insert. Is this Upper Deck’s sneaky way of releasing true rookie cards before a given player’s actual rookie season? Again, doesn’t this make the rookie card graphic obsolete? If Baylor University’s Kendal Volz ends up on a Major League team in a few years and Topps (considering Upper Deck might not be making baseball cards after this year) slaps a rookie card logo on his card, will it even matter? Perhaps a solution is to change the graphic. Perhaps instead of the logo saying "Rookie Card" it could say "Rookie Season." That way when baseball card companies jump through loopholes to release true rookie cards, they can still satisfy the MLBPA with a silly little graphic to make sure the whole world knows that you’re holding one of the first cards of that player in a Major League uniform.

Starquest continues through the second series (and, if you didn’t notice, through First Edition, too) with another 25 cards. Nothing new here other than the players featured. There are still a silly amount of pointless parallels. The Cliff Lee pictured above is a Black Ultra Rare. I also pulled an Emerald Super Rare Curtis Granderson. So, uhh… which one is more rare? I’m gonna go with Black Ultra. The Holy Beckett seems to agree. In fact, they say the Black is 3X more valuable than the plain old common version. Who could argue with that?!

At first glance, I let out a half-hearted groan at the prospect of having a Basketball subset in my baseball cards. That was until I noticed what it was. A preview card of the upcoming UD Goodwin Champions set. Unlike their turn with Goudey, this preview looks inspired and certainly has potential. These cards are based on the N162 Goodwin Champions set released back in 1888. They were produced by the same company responsible for Old Judge. Gee, I can’t wait for someone to mimic the Gypsy Queen set.

As per usual, Upper Deck says you’re gonna get ONE JERSEY CARD! This time it wasn’t even on average. Last time I pulled a jersey card from Upper Deck, I got a Rickie Weeks gamer. This time? I got a… a… wait, who? Alright, I’m at a loss here. I watch a lot of baseball. I watch a lot of SportsCenter. I’ve gotta tell ya. I’ve never heard of this guy. Hell, even his Wiki page has barely heard of him. He has a hell of a baseball name, though. I’ll give him that. I wonder if he signs TTM?

IN THE END…
Not much has changed, positively or negatively, from Series 1 to Series 2. I just don’t get the Starquest set. USA Baseball would be better served, in my opinion, as a standalone product to perhaps rival Bowman for true rookie cards. The jersey cards, in my view, remain a problem. If I pulled the same size and color jersey swatch of Jake Peavy, I’d actually feel like I got something fun and worthwhile instead of something boring and worthless. Why are you even promising jersey cards in each blaster, anyway? To boost sales? Alright. I wonder, though, how sales would look if you cut the odds down to 1 jersey card in every 5 blasters, cut the roster of players down to about 50 (1 or 2 stars from each team–and NO ONE ELSE), and list all of the players on each blaster. Hell, even throw in some mystery stars, hot prospects, and/or hall of famers not listed on your checklist (but make sure to keep it to about 10 players, and seed them in 1 in every 100 or so boxes). If I knew that if I was going to pull a jersey card at all that it would potentially be of Joe Mauer and NOT Joe Koshansky, I might be more willing to gobble up a few boxes instead of just one. I dunno, just throwing that out there. Series 2 didn’t seem to offer much in the way of blaster form, so hopefully all of those enjoying their hobby hot boxes will have a much more positive experience. Oh, and, you guys with the hot boxes suck.

Just sayin’…

2009 Topps Finest Rookie Redemption: COUNTDOWN

At Least I Have This To Tide Me Over
(…for the next year or so…)

Today is the day that I enter in my redemption code for the 2009 Topps Finest Rookie Redemption card that I pulled out of my master box of Finest this year. Who will I get? When will it get here? Why should you care? I’ll tell you why…

IT’S CONTEST TIME, BABY…
For the next full week, you have the opportunity to guess the exact date that my redemption card arrives in my mail box. The first person to guess the exact date will win the card!

Ready? Set?!… GO!!

2009 Bowman: The Review!

Home of the Rookie Card
(whose bright idea was that, anyway?)

Let me just point out that the last and ONLY OTHER time I’ve ever purchased Bowman was back in 1990. Ya know, back when Bowman was its own entity and STILL sucked like Charlie Sheen at a coke party. Since then, Topps has taken the reigns. I will say one thing for Topps, they sure like to stick to tradition.

MUSIC
A Perfect Circle – Mer De Noms

PURCHASE TYPE
Blaster, Target, $19.99 + 3 Retail Packs, Target, $2.99/ea.

PACKAGE DESIGN
This box is ALL TEXT. And David Price. But mostly text. It’s almost as if they’re telling you right on the outset that there’s no design here at all. It’s all just words and letters and, ya know, sometimes there’s some color, but not often. I kind of imagine that the box and wrappers were designed during a Little Rascals brainstorm session. What’s that Spanky? More text? O-TAY!

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
To be quite honest, my expectations for this product started out lower than Rue McClanahan’s nipples. Just cracking open the first retail pack and it was plain to see that 2009 Bowman couldn’t even get a chin up on those sagging milk bags. They say this is a prospector’s set. I sure as hell hope this is Topps’ way of sticking it to those prospectors. If not, I’d like the name of Duryea’s finest pharmacist.

THE PRODUCT

Base Alright, so this review has started off a bit more immature and juvenile than normal. Kind of appropriate given the product, if you ask me. Nonetheless, I will relax the snark and do my best to bring something useful and constructive to the table. Let’s start with the base card design. Believe it or not, this is not the worst design I have ever seen, but it’s very close. I mentioned earlier that Topps likes to keep with the traditional. They prove it here in keeping with the Bowman affinity for lines and stripes. There’s nothing wrong with trying to incorporate a brand element into the design, of course. The problem here is in the presentation. There was not one single card that I pulled that caught my eye or seemed to have anything of interest. Even the photography is sadly plain and uninteresting. The blue parallel adds a little bit, but not enough to save face. Base face. Oh, and, these are the flimsiest cards I’ve ever handled. Ever. Topps Attax seem like Topps Finest compared to these.

Inserts: 1st Bowman Cards Remember when I said I’ve seen worse designs than the base set? Well, this is it. I feel bad for all of these kids on these cards. They take their 1st Bowman Card home to their parents and have to suffer the embarrassment of the lack of effort on the part of Topps to present something… ANYTHING… worth looking at. Seriously, I feel like I’m looking at a bug zapper. Well, that would at least be more fun. The Chrome versions look a little better, but it’s probably because they’re shiny. Not bug zapper shiny, mind you. Something that confounds me just a might. All of these 1st Bowman cards. They’re considered TRUE Rookie Cards, yeah? So in a couple of years when some of these kids pop back up in Bowman again, I can look forward to their cards including the fancy Rookie Card logo, even though those cards aren’t REALLY their rookie cards? Right? Just checking.

Inserts: World Baseball Classic Didn’t Topps already release a box set of World Baseball Classic cards? Now they’ve got to include them on the 1st Bowman Card set design? Yeah. That sounds like a fantastic idea. I’ve got a better idea. No, really. Check this out. This will be constructive, I swear. My better idea? Trick or Treating on North 25th Street in Milwaukee in 1990. What’s that? You’re going to trump MY great idea? With what? Featuring photos of guys I’ve never heard of on teams I’ve never seen? Wait, there’s more? Featuring those guys in their workout jammies? BRILLIANT! Ya know, I would say that Topps phoned in this set, but that would have been too much work.

HIGHLIGHTS
It’s very rare that I actually pull anything worthwhile in retail packs or blasters. Even the blasters that swear up and down that you’re gonna get one game-used jersey (on average*) rarely ever have anything worthwhile. There’s only been one instance that I’ve pulled something unadvertised, and that was a rookie autograph from a blaster of 2008 Stadium Club. It was a nice surprise and a fairly thrilling experience. Imagine my surprise as I’m yawning through this blaster when I stumbled upon…

Holy hell, it’s a certified autograph!

…of a scout? Double you tee eff?! All apologies to Billy Blitzer, but… REALLY? Let me ask you something, Billy. When Topps dropped by with those manilla envelopes full of blank Certified Autograph stickers, did you find it odd or flattering? Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was awfully cool to score probably the only autographed card sitting in the entire Target that I was at. Let’s think about this for one second, though. Scout autograph. Sticker. The end.

LOWLIGHTS
Did I mention that these are the flimsiest cards I’ve ever come across? Even the old box bottom cut-out cards are more substantial than these things. Unfortunately, one of the bad parts of being a flimsy piece of paper is that it’s easy to get dinged up.

At least one card in each and every single pack that I pulled from my blaster had a dinged, dog-eared, feathered, creased, bent, or destroyed corner. These are packs from inside of a BOX, people. How is this type of damage happening? Rocky Dennis looks better than the corners of some of these cards, for cryin’ out loud.

Is it just me or does something seem a bit off with this photo? If you said "that ‘C’ is WAY the F too big," you’d be correct! Is this a case of Topps painting a Major League logo over a Minor League helmet? I’m guessing so. I’ve seen it in quite a lot of these cards. I don’t really care so much that the photo was manipulated. I just care that it’s glaringly obvious.

INTERESTING TIDBITS

• 118 Total Cards
  • 49 Base Cards
    • 3 Doubles
  • 12 Total RCs
  • 7 Total Gold Base Parallels
    • 2 of which are RCs
  • 1 Total Blue Parallels
    • 1 of which is a RC
  • 23 Total 1^st Bowman Cards
    • 4 1BC Doubles
    • 4 1BC Gold Parallels
  • 17 Total 1^st Bowman Chrome Cards
  • 3 World Baseball Classic Cards
  • 5 World Baseball Classic Chrome Cards
  • 1 Certified Autograph
  • 4 Checklists (not counted towards total)

• 8 Chicago Cubs (1 Double)
• 0 Cleveland Indians

FINAL SCORE
It took nearly 20 years to buy another pack of Bowman. It may take yet another 20 before I buy again. I was quite honestly, and quite truthfully, bored from opening these packs. I mean, my attention was better held by a DVR replay of Glee. I have to say, if I were a prospector only aiming at all of the TRUE Rookie Cards, I’d be awfully insulted. Then again, Topps does hate you. Congratulations! That just earned you a 1990 Bowman Ed Zosky! You were once a top prospect, but your career batting average is .160 with 0 home runs. Sounds about right.

10,000 Maniacs

A Milestone
(…of my own)

From the day that this blog opened on December 6 2008 to just a little under a half year later to today, Memorial Day, May 25 2009, this blog has earned its 10,000th unique visitor (tracked as views). At this pace I should hit 1,000,000 visitors in a little under 50 years! Woo hoo!

Back Again

If You Break My Heart, I’ll Go
(but I’ll be back again…)

Hello, baseball card blogosphere. How’ve you been? Anything happen in the last week or so while I was away? I’m guessing things were pretty slow. No landmarks were achieved. No contests were to be had. Nothing at all to speak of. Guess I picked a good week to take a break.

EXTREMELYLARGEWINKANDNODCOUGH

As I noted in my Mid-Term Report, I’ve been feeling very underwhelmed with the 2009 product. Yes, we can blame it on the economy. It’s easy to do. Here. I’ll show you how easy it is. Remember a couple years ago when you could get a 12 pack of Major Brand Cola for $3, and sometimes 2/$4? Remember when you could get a double cheeseburger with TWO slices of actual cheese from a McMajor Brand Fast Food McRestaurant on the $1 menu? Remember a year ago when your favorite comfort food dark chocolate wrapped peanut candy food was only a couple of bucks for a medium sized bag? It’s the economy. See what I just did there? All I had to do was say "it’s the economy" and everything was suddenly better. Okay, so things aren’t suddenly better, but at least in my head I felt there was a rational explanation for why we’re paying higher prices for lower quality products. Take this year’s Bowman set for example (which I can’t WAIT to pounce on when I finally find a blaster around here). I recently purchased three retail packs for the standard $3/pack knowing FULL WELL how terrible these cards were going to be. Even the economy couldn’t have saved me from such a terrible decision. What is wrong with me? I just can’t stay away from this crap!

To be completely honest, if it weren’t for my persistent need for more Twins cards and this blog, I would have never laid a penny down for any 2009 Bowman. Not one red cent. But, the fact of the matter is, I have laid down a number of red cents, and, by the looks of it, will continue to do so until someone talks some good bloody red sense into me.

Whilst I was away, I did make a few purchases. Yes, the aforementioned Bowman packs times three, plus I found a blaster of ‘09 Upper Deck Series 2 that I’ll be Non-Reviewing at some point. I also did a bit of ‘Baying. Finding Twins cards on the blogosphere has been a bit harder than I had assumed it would be. One of the BINs I "won" was of a card I have been eying up for some time. I had taken my sweet time rationalizing the price. You see, King Beckett wants me to shell out $4 for it, and the seller wanted $2.50. I was hoping that no one else would bite and he would drop the price to at least $2, but the seller stuck to his guns and called my bluff. He called it so bad that I in fact purchased BOTH copies of the card that he had.

2001 Topps Archives Reserve 1985 Puckett Reprint Chrome Refractor

I don’t normally purchase single cards from this seller. I usually go after Twins team sets, and I’ve purchased quite a few, including, you guessed it… 2009 Bowman.

2009 Bowman Evan Bigley 1st Bowman Chrome Card

What’s great about this seller is that you can often find FULL team sets, not just base cards. For instance, the Bowman team set that I purchased also came with all of the chrome parallels offered for the Twins. He usually has the best prices for team sets, and he’s an insanely fast shipper. If you’re looking for any team sets, or even any single cards, give RK Collectibles a look.

I’m sitting here singing his praises when really I should be scoffing at the guy for enabling me. How dare you make it so easy to feed my need!

A QUESTION FOR THE MASSES
For me, it’s a hope to find a connection with what was once a thrilling and fulfilling time in my childhood. What keeps you coming back to the hobby for more?