Chunks of Bazooka

Just to get this out of the way, don't forget about the contest. Deadline is Thursday morning prior to the tipoff of the first game.

I've been saving these up for awhile, but here's an example of another set that has grabbed me and basically forced me to want to collect it whether I like it or not. The question for me now is not really price so much as it is availability. I rarely see 2006 Bazooka anymore, after seeing it show up in most of the repack boxes that I bought a couple of years ago. The packs have a really high fun factor (they were undoubtedly aimed at kids, if that tells you anything about me) so I would love to track down more unopened stuff if possible. Here are three packs that I've had sitting around.

Pack 1:
125 - Jorge Posada Blue Fortune (There is one blue parallel card in each pack, which contains a "fortune" at the bottom of the card. Besides this, they're basically identical to the base cards.)

71 - Rich Harden Gold Chunk (The Gold Chunk cards are also a one-per-pack parallel and serve as relic decoys because of their thickness. Oddly enough, though I actually like this, but the backs of the cards are UV coated. Not the fronts, but the backs...)

10 of 24 - Zach Duke Comic (The wrapper did not have stated odds for the comics, and I got one in all three of these packs. I don't believe that they're one-per-pack, though. Still, you're only looking at 4-6 base cards per pack, which probably makes collecting everything all the more difficult. I imagine that the Pirates organization is run exactly like the comic depicts it.)

2 - Scott Podsednik

61 - Luis Gonzalez

137 - Jim Edmonds (I saw that Edmonds hit a HR for the Brewers the other day. Yikes.)

48 - Cliff Floyd

80 - Jeff Francoeur

Pack 2:

210 - Bryan Bullington Blue Fortune (I have no idea who this is, but it looks like he came down to the community batting cage on the baseball equivalent of cosmic bowling night. Also, the Rookie Card logo is HUGE.)

185 - Carl Pavano Gold Chunk

22 of 24 - Roger Clemens Comic (Given what we know now, this achievement doesn't seem quite as amazing anymore, does it?)

75 - Alex Rodriguez (Here's what the backs of the base cards look like. They're kinda silvery, which is nice. The parallel cards have the same design only with blue or gold as the primary color.)

104 - Nomar Garciaparra

110 - Barry Zito

132 - Mark Buehrle

50 - Albert Pujols (I don't think I had this one.)

Pack 3:

42 - Joe Mauer Blue Fortune

165 - Nick Johnson Gold Chunk

11 of 24 - Xavier Nady Comic (I think they just mailed it in with this comic.)

3 of 30 - Hank Blalock Stamp (This isn't really a "stamp" so much as it is a baseball card representation of what a stamp might look like. These are probably based on the same thing that the stamps in 2010 Topps Heritage are based on, but I'm too lazy to confirm it. These fall at one in six packs.)

114 - Lew Ford

5 - Derek Jeter

148 - Jason Bay (Nice to get former Portland Beavers Xavier Nady and Jason Bay in the same pack.)

120 - Andruw Jones

If anyone has any extra 2006 Bazooka cards, chunks, or whatever debris they came up with, please let me know. In fact, if anyone knows where I could buy some packs/boxes of this stuff, I'd be curious to know that as well. This will go on my long list of things to work on as far as my want lists go.

Ginter Mini Treasures from The Basketball Card Blog

For the second time in as many month's, I received an extremely generous supply of unwanted 2008 Allen & Ginter minis from a fellow blogger. This time, the loot came from The Basketball Card Blog, where all resources seem to be reallocated to an Allen & Ginter style basketball set that Topps put out last year, best known as Murad. And like last time, I will post an image of every single mini that I received, because they're fun to look at in strips like this.

There were a dozen of the regular back minis. I am really starting to think an entire regular mini set might be attainable someday, even though I am still stuck at a handful of short printed cards short of the regular set.

Bengie Molina and Kevin Youkilis are of the regular short printed variety, while there were also five of the Allen & Ginter back versions. (NOT-SO-SUBLIMINAL MESSAGE HERE. SIGN UP FOR MY MARCH RADNESS CONTEST NOW. THANKS.) Getting now former Cardinal Rick Ankiel on a variation card was a nice touch.

I had completely forgotten about EDGAR RENTERIA and his special capitalization. Renteria had a pretty nice run as a Cardinal, and I really didn't see him ending up as one of those guys that bounces around for the rest of his career (Boston, Atlanta, Detroit, San Francisco... is he still there?) A black bordered version of Jeanette "The Black Widow" Lee is very fitting. I remember seeing her run tables like crazy during many bored Saturday afternoon hours on sports channels in the past.

Here's something I didn't expect - a few inserts, including a rare shark card. The Bull Shark will join the Tiger Shark I already have in my collection as I'm now 40% of the way to a full on Shark Arsenal. And then there's Stephen Drew... what did Stephen Drew's card do to stand out?

Ah ha! This is awesome. As you can plainly see, Stephen Drew's card is in fact a hand-numbered Bazooka back parallel mini. I was lucky enough to pull a Nick Johnson Bazooka back in this set out of a pack, but didn't get anything like this last year. It's stuff like this that makes the writing and preparation here worth its while. It's also stuff like this that makes me seriously delusional about tracking down more cards from this set. If I was going to make any modern baseball card set a long term project, however, I think 2008 Allen & Ginter would make a strong candidate. I liked last season's set and I may like this year's as well, but there's something about the 2008 set that really grabbed me. Maybe it was just because it was my first look at A&G.

Thanks again to G_Moses down at The Basketball Card Blog. It's live, you know... from Rip City. And that city, quite frankly, is better than your city. (Sorry about your city.)

March Radness Contest: Return of the Radness

Get your brackets ready! It was a fairly disappointing weekend down at Cards on Cards central, as due to some banking issues (curse you, US Bank... I think?) I was unable to attend the monthly card show in the Portland area. Among other things, like supplementing some trade needs, I was hoping to pick up some loot for this contest. However, I'll make an effort to get some stuff together by the end of the contest to make this go smoothly.

This is an official contest announcement for the 2010 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. I have invited everyone back from last year, and I hope to add some people so we can get a good group in this time around. All you have to do is fill out a bracket selecting the winners of all of the regular tourney games before the first game tips off on Thursday. You will need a Yahoo account and enough patience on your hands to select the winners of all of the games.

Still interested? First prize will get an assortment of unopened baseball packs that will probably cost me in the $20 range. Nothing fancy here, I'm afraid. First, second and "worst" prize winners will also receive a couple of team bags of assorted cards from their favorite baseball teams. I will probably make an effort to throw in a "hit" of some sort for the first prize winner. Since this is through Yahoo, you also will have an opportunity to enter their contest to submit a perfect bracket that could earn you $1,000,000 internet real dollars.

Click here to enter the contest. The group ID is "96491" and the password is "marchradness". If I am unable to ascertain your e-mail address from your contest entry and you do not provide it to me through some other form of communication, then your prize may be voided if I can't prove who the winner(s) are. Scoring will be according to default Yahoo rules to make it easier on my brain, so please make an effort to read those before submitting your bracket. The "Play-In" game is negligible, just like the amount of people who will actually watch it.

Please let me know if you have any questions, unless it is about advice for what teams to select. The only thing I will give you is that if you select any Pac-10 teams to win, you probably need to get your head examined.

Airbrushed Fridays: 1989 Topps Traded #69T

Who else is ready for baseball to start? I actually put in for a vacation day from work for Opening Day this year, as well as the day after. I plan to revel in the beginning of the 2010 season. Who knows, perhaps I'll even be inspired to do some sort of contest. I don't want to get ahead of myself here, though.

Terry Leach was a little known but surprisingly effective reliever and spot starter throughout his career. He spent nearly all of the '80s in the Mets system and would have earned a World Series ring with the 1986 Championship team had he been around the big league club for more than his allotted 6 2/3 innings pitched. He finally got his ring with the Twins in 1991 after making two World Series appearances.

Why did Topps airbrush Terry's photo? Leach was a midseason trade piece in 1989, when the Mets acquired one Aquedo Vasquez. Vasquez was out of baseball two years later, having never made a major league appearance. Leach actually made 30 appearances including 3 starts with KC in 1989, so I'm not sure why Topps dropped the ball on this one.

What's wrong with this picture, anyway? It looks like the "artist" decided to use the sky background as some sort of template for painting/brushing/whatever over Leach's cap and uniform. If this really represents Royal Blue, then I'm afraid someone needs to reevaluate Kansas City's color scheme.

(If you are interested in obtaining a card featured here - but not this one - please send me an e-mail. If you have a card you would like to nominate for Airbrushed Fridays, please get in touch as well. I will require that I am able to see the card in person, either on loan or as a donation, so that I can examine the card and experience it in all its cruddiness.)

And on one final note - Happy Anniversary to my wonderful girlfriend, Erin. Today is our day.

Jack

A few posts back, I mentioned that the Dante Cunningham Blazers autograph that I got from The Basketball Card Blog was my second certified Blazers autograph in my entire collection. Wait a second... I didn't mention it? I need to stop writing posts in my mind and start committing them to text as soon as they pop into my head. In any case, this post is about the first certified Blazers auto that has ever come into my possession.

I was a fan of Jarrett Jack from the outset. I was actually familiar with him (in name mostly) from his college days because someone with the last name Jack just stuck out to me even though I don't really follow college basketball all that closely. I ended up catching the Blazers home opener in person during Jack's rookie season and watched him sprint out for a breakaway dunk. The thoughts raced into my head as he headed towards the hoop. Can this guy dunk? Will this guy dunk? It was a great moment, and a pretty entertaining game in what ended up being a very dreadful Blazers season. Portland won just 21 games in Nate McMillan's first season as Blazers coach. They'd end up hitting the lottery hard next season, positioning themselves to grab Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge who have helped shape the franchise as we know it today.

Jack became my favorite player initially. After a couple of years, he became one of the most vocal and spirited leaders of a young team on the rise. The problem, for Jarrett Jack, is that he was anointed the tag of "combo guard" and had a penchant for careless turnovers at crucial times. This was usually a forgivable side effect of a running team, but McMillan's teams in the Brandon Roy era were not running teams and Jack began to be a scapegoat for all of the team's ballhandling issues.

Jack spent last season with Indiana after being involved in a draft day trade for Jerryd Bayless and is now the starting point guard for the Toronto Raptors. His shooting percentages have skyrocketed. I'd trade him straight up for Jerryd Bayless in a heartbeat. Bayless has a knack for going straight to the basket to produce points and has some room to grow, but Jarrett Jack does pretty much everything Bayless does - only better.

I only paid a couple of bucks for the autographed card. Blazers cards are outrageously overpriced in this area, but once someone becomes a former-Blazer, they almost immediately hit the bargain bin. I need to take advantage of this more.

Catching Up

I'm in a good mood tonight. It's funny how a Blazers win will do that to me. I've also given up on trying to write these blog posts as if it were the day that my readers are likely to read the post rather than the day it currently is for me. Right now, it is 12:25 AM PST and I still consider it Tuesday until I go to sleep. Sorry, that's just the way it is.

I made another trade with Chris awhile back. There's a few Chris's out there, but this was my second trade with this particular Chris. I know a number of you have traded with him and I have to say that I highly recommend him. He has a very comprehensive want list and trade list, which makes it really easy to set something up. Even better, he started up a Wiki for baseball cards. We can always use more and better resources, especially ones that are free.

I have a dilemma that remains unresolved about the 2009 Topps 206 set. I acquired a bunch of these, basically the contents of a hobby box minus all of what the box purchaser considered "good cards" and it would make a really nice start to building a set. The problem is, I don't know if I have the time or the cash to every get it going. I haven't bought a single pack of this stuff, mostly due to the money and abundance of other things that I wanted, so the set itself has yet to really endear itself to me. Still, I will go after all of the Cardinals (cross Pujols off my list) and I'm sure I can figure out what to do with the rest of the cards later.

This is probably the best card of the lot, at least for my purposes. It's a much-needed short print from the set that will never die. Of course, this goes straight into my Cardinals collection so the card remains on my list for the actual set.

This is just a gorgeous looking card, foil and all. I wonder if the rest of the cards in this set look this nice. This is from an Upper Deck All-Star Classics set, circa 2005.

The card says it all. I don't even have to explain this one. Pujols has missed the past couple of days of spring training due to a cranky back. Let's just hope that's all it is. With my favorite teams' luck this past year with injuries (see: Portland Trail Blazers) and general idiocy (see: Oregon Ducks football), I could really use a nice drama free year out of the Redbirds. I do know that I'm ready for spring training to be over with.

Orlando Cepeda and the Seven Wizards

I just have a quick post tonight. As I mentioned previously, I hit the card shop about a week back. I scooped up a small stash of Ozzie Smith cards for my collection. I actually started my collection of Ozzie cards before I got serious about starting an all-Cardinals collection, and he remains one of the few Cardinals who I make a point of collecting the cards in other uniforms as well. All in all, I grabbed eight cards for about $3 or $4. There were actually two "legends" types of boxes sorted by player name next to each other, and both had sections for Ozzie Smith. I continue to be baffled and confused by the organization of places like this. Let's just say that I have some fairly basic ideas about how places should be organized and friendly to walk-in customers and most card shops I've been to fail in that aspect. Actually, I've been to a number of record stores that are that way as well.

I actually bought a pack from this set on one of my prior trips to this shop, so this 2002 Upper Deck World Series Heroes design was already familiar to me.

The foil on this is hard to read, but it is from Upper Deck and has a 2005 copyright on the back. It says something about Past Time and Pennants.

One of the more baffling things to me before I started getting sucked in to collecting cards again was the use of old designs or, in this case, just reprinting old cards themselves. It was one of the main things I thought I would always resist, but now I love stuff like this. I wish we could see another Topps set like Archives or Fan Favorites in the future, but they would probably have to contain 90 different Gordon Beckham cards and autographs of guys that haven't appeared in a major league ballgame since 2007 and likely won't again because they still have boxes of stickers laying around.

This is a pretty nice design (they don't call it "Legendary" for nothing) but there's something odd about Ozzie's beard.

This is some sort of offshoot of 2002 Upper Deck Sweet Spot Classics. There's nothing that clashes more than black & white photos of players (who clearly played in a color photograph era) aboard glossy UV coating and slabs of foil.

I got a huge kick out of this. I almost held this out for a future Airbrushed Fridays post, but I don't even know who to blame for this 1993 Duracell card that was licensed by the MLBPA and clearly not the MLB. On the back is just a copyright from the MLBPA and another one from something called MSA. Could a collector reasonably tell the difference between this an an MLB Properties-licensed set? I'd like to think so.

Finally, I really liked the design when I saw Ozzie's 2004 Legendary Cuts card, and this Orlando Cepeda looks even better. All in all, I was pretty pleased to knock off 7 cards from my boundless Ozzie Smith want list and pick up another Cardinal HOFer in the process. Support your local card shop and all that.