Random Cards From My Collection #35

Another 10-card collection of randomness.

Card #32,008
1992 Pinnacle Rookies #15 Gary Scott

I paid about $4 for this 30-card set last February. It features a great set of players, except for this guy. I'm sure he's a great fellow, but his career consisted of 2 years, 175 at bats and a .160 average.

Card #9,260
1989 Bowman Reprint Inserts #1 Richie Ashburn

1989 Bowman was pretty forgettable except for their non-standard size. But this re-print insert (even though it has a sweepstake entry form on the back) were pretty nice. They came in a Tiffany version as well.

Card #2,169
 1998 Ultra Gold Medallion #485 Mike Piazza

Sorry, Mike, no first-ballot HOF berth for you.

Card #26,284
2007 Topps #63 Scott Proctor

These 2007 Topps cards feature my least favorite card element: silver foil on a black background. At least this one scanned well.

Card #23,284
1996 Select #165 Jimmy Haynes

I don't actually own this card anymore, I traded it to an Orioles collector a few years ago.

Card #20,710
1993 Pacific #239 Mickey Morandini

I think this is the first year that Pacific published Spanish language cards. Every year their cards got more and more elaborate until they went bankrupt around 2002.

Card #17,507
2002 Topps #339 Alex Rodriguez

Say what you want but I like 2002 Topps with their mud-colored borders!

Card #6, 524
1987 Topps #215 Mark Langston

This card has something modern cards don't have - a gum stain!

Card #14,220
2006 Fleer Tradition #51 Chris Carpenter

The first year of Upper Deck ownership of Fleer and the last year for Fleer Tradition. This is probably the only Fleer branded set by Upper Deck I actually like.

Card #2,501
2004 Topps Traded Future Phenoms Mark Malaska

I think that Mark is still waiting for his Future Phenomship to arrive. In 2 years (2003-2004), split between the Rays and the Red Sox, he had a 3-2 record.

Nobody gets in this year

Well, nobody other than Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert, umpire Hank O'Day and barehanded catcher Deacon White.

2012 Upper Deck Goodwin Champions #182 Deacon White

  So who didn't get in?

2007 Bowman Heritage #39 Craig Biggio

1st Year: 388 Votes (68.2%)

2005 SP Legendary Cuts Legendary Lineage Material Jack Morris

14th Year: 385 Votes (67.7%)

2006 Artifacts NL Artifacts Blue Jeff Bagwell

3rd Year: 339 Votes (59.6%)

1993 SP #98 Mike Piazza

1st Year: 329 Votes: (57.8%)

1988 Fleer Headliners #6 Tim Raines

6th Year: 297 Votes (52.2%)

1992 Fleer Smoke 'n' Heat #1 Lee Smith

11th Year: 272 Votes (47.8%)

1995 Pinnacle #100 Curt Schilling

 1st Year: 221 Votes (38.7%)

2006 Upper Deck First Pitch Hot Stove Headlines #18 Roger Clemens

1st Year: 21 Votes (37.6%)

2006 Topps Turkey Red #573 Barry Bonds

1st Year: 206 Votes (36.2%)

2004 Diamond Kings #19 Edgar Martinez

4th Year: 204 Votes (35.9%)

1997 Upper Deck #75 Alan Trammel

12th Year: 191 Votes (33.6%)

2004 Topps Pristine Fantasy Favorites Relics Larry Walker

3rd Year: 123 Votes (21.6%)

1996 Pinnacle Power #12 Fred McGriff

4th Year: 118 Votes (20.7%)

1979 Topps #39 Dale Murphy

15th (and last) Year: 106 Votes (18.6%)

1999 E-X Century #16 Mark McGwire

7th Year: 96 Votes (16.9%)

1990 Topps Batting Leaders #4 Don Mattingly

13th Year: 75 Votes (13.2%)

1999 Topps Gallery #104 Sammy Sosa

1st Year: 71 Votes (12.5%)

1994 Pacific Gold Prism #5 Rafael Palmeiro

3rd Year: 50 Votes (8.8%)

Song of the Week - Settle Down by Kimbra

I don't listen to the radio at all, so for all I know, everyone knows about Kimbra Johnson. I got this CD from my daughter and just heard this song the other day. Wow, what a song. It's from her new album "Vows", released in May 2012.

The official video is a bit weird, but this live studio performance is fantastic.

2012 Topps Pro Debut - First Look

Topps has produced this set since at least 2010, but this is the first time I bought any. There were 185 cards in the box. At $.30/card, the price wasn't bad. I haven't cataloged every card yet but I don't think I got any doubles so I must have a pretty large proportion of the set. I see on Beckett.com that a number of the cards have short-print variations but I haven't chased that down yet. Beckett doesn't give any way to tell which is which but I'm hoping that baseballcardpedia.com will.

Jiwan Jones #13

As I believe is the case from previous years, the design is the same as the regular Topps set.

There are no stats, only biographical information on the back. Since this guy has been in the minors since 2007, I wasn't quite sure what this set is trying to do.

Chase Davidson #19

 This guy made his pro debut in 2011. I finally figured that the set is based on the player's minor league status in 2011. Cards of players making their debut in 2011 have the Pro Debut logo. I actually pulled several Astros players from the box.

Tanner Peters #62

 
One of my favorite cards from the box. In 2011, Tanner was playing for A's single A team, the Vermont Lake Monsters. I like the background, which seems very not-Vermont like, his team name and the fact that he's wearing #68 on his uniform. I'm guessing this is a photo from spring training in Arizona.

Bryce Harper

There are a few players included who made their major league debut in 2012 (or even in 2011). Topps probably figured that this set would sell better if Bryce Harper was included. They even put him on the box. He did make his pro debut in 2011 so I guess he belongs in the set.

Jarred Cosart

 Another Astro. Cosart was a high draft pick of the Phillies who was traded to the Astros in 2011 in the Hunter Pence deal. Cosart is from League City Texas, where I now live and was drafted right out of high school, the same high school my kids attended. He is 2 years younger than my youngest son so they must have been in school together.

Rymer Liriano

There is only one parallel set, the gold. These are numbered to 50 and I pulled 2 of them.

Alexi Amarista

 The box promised two autographs. They are sticker autos, pretty much what you expect these days. Amarista actually was called up in March 2011 and played a lot in 2012 for the Padres.

Sean Buckley

 Buckley was the 29th round pick of the Cubs in 2008 but didn't sign. The Reds drafted him #6 in 2011 and he started in their minor league system that year, thus the Pro Debut logo.

Anthony Gose

 This is a 50-card insert set, apparently inserted one per pack because I got a bunch of them. Gose was the Phillies #3 pick in 2008. He was part of the trade with the Astros that brought Roy Oswalt to the Phillies. The Astros traded him the the Blue Jays for Brent Wallace. Gose hit .223 in 166 at bats for the Jays in 2012.

Matt Szczur

The box also promised two relic cards. There are 41 of these, plus a Gold parallel.

Will Middlebrooks

 I don't really consider a manufactured hat patch to be a relic, but apparently Topps does. Middlebrooks played 75 games for the Red Sox in 2012, hitting .288.
 

Movies of 2012

Things are pretty slow with baseball cards lately so I thought I'd do another movie post. Everyone likes to do their best and worst lists for the year and I thought of doing that but decided to take a different approach. I'm going to list the top 20 grossing movies of the year and link to my reviews of them if I saw them. Then I'll list the other movies we saw this year in rank of their box office gross. We saw 18 movies in the theater in 2012. Two of them, War Horse and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy came out in 2011.

 Sound like fun? I hope so.

1. Marvel's The Avengers. Ran from 5/4 to 10/4. $623,357,910. Recommended

2. The Dark Knight Rises. Ran from 7/20 to 12/13. $448,139,099. Recommended

3. The Hunger Games. Ran from 3/23-9/26. $408,010,692. Recommended

4. Skyfall. Ran from 11/9-present $289,600,000. Recommended

5. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn 2. 11/16-Present. $286,433,000. I had not the slightest interest in this so you're on your own.

6. The Amazing Spider-man. 7/2-10/14. $262,030,663. Liked it but it was a pointless reboot.

7. The Hobbit: The Unexpected Journey. 12/14-Present. $238,108,000. Recommended. Hard to believe it's the 7th highest grossing movie of the year and it's only been out for 2 weeks.

8. Brave. 6/22-Present $237,259,580. I didn't see this but my wife and daughter loved it.

9. Ted. 6/29-10/25. $218,665,740. A man and his talking teddy bear. The trailers looked awful.

10. Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted. 6/18-10/18. $216,391,482. After seeing the trailers for this all I can say is I'm glad I don't have little kids anymore that I have to take to the movies.

11. Dr. Suess: The Lorax. 3/12-7/26. $214,030,500. See my comments on #10.

12. MIB 3. 5/25-9/9. $179,020,854. It was fun but kind of tired. I didn't post a review

13. Wreck-It Ralph. 11/2-Present. $175,505,332. Didn't see it, don't know anything about it.

14. Ice Age: Continental Drift. 7/13-Present. $161,130,056. Ditto #10

15. Snow White and the Huntsman. 6/1-9/6. $155,136,755. Wanted to see it but didn't. My daughter loved it.

16. Hotel Transylvania. 9/26-Present. $143,923,820. I don't even remember the trailers for this.

17. Taken 2. 10/5-Present. $138,897,494. Couldn't believe they made a sequel to Taken. No interest.

18. 21 Jump Street. 3/16-7/1. $138,447,667. Never watched the TV show. Trailers didn't look that interesting.

19. Lincoln. 11/19-Present. $131,867,159. May still see this.

20. Prometheus. 6/8-9/20. $126,477,084.  Pretty good, doesn't hold a candle to the original Alien.

24. The Bourne Legacy. 8/10-11/8. $113,203,870. A well-made, completely pointless movie

35. John Carter. 3-9/6/28. $73,078,100. Pretty good, unless you expect a movie to make any sense.

40. Looper. 9/28-Present. $66,362,517.  The basic premise of the movie makes no sense, but we liked it anyway.

42. Battleship. 5/18-8/2. $65,233,400. The worst movie we saw all year.  

50. Total Recall. 8/3-10/7. $58,877,969.  Another movie that was enjoyable as long as you ignored the rather large problem with the plot.

69. Moonrise Kingdom. 5/25-11/1. $45,512,466. Possibly the best movie of 2012 we saw all year.

70. Jack Reacher. 12/21-Present. $44,661,000. Pretty good. It's apparently getting eaten alive by The Hobbit.

98. Cloud Atlas. 10/26-Present. $26,682,072. Maybe the 2nd best movie of 2012 we saw. 

108. Man on a Ledge. 1/27-3/1. $18,620,000.  We enjoyed it but it was far from a great movie. I didn't realize it had done so poorly. I guess we won't be seeing Man on a Ledge: Over the Edge anytime too soon.

And finally, there are 655 movies on this list. The last is:

655. The Ghastly Love of Johnny X. 10/26-Present. $86. Yep, the movie's been open for 2 months and it's made $86. 

  
  

Movie Review - The Hobbit

I read only one review of The Hobbit and it was terrible. I wasn't that excited about it in the first place. I'm a big fan of the "Lord of the Rings" books and movies but it'd been some 40 years since I'd read "The Hobbit" and frankly I didn't remember much about it.  But several people I know saw it and loved it so we went to see it yesterday. In 3D. And at the high frame rate.

We found it to be quite enjoyable. I'll never love it as much as LOTR but few movies will raise to that level for me.

If you liked LOTR, I think you'll like this as well. If you didn't like LOTR, then just stay away, you'll hate this.

It's got everything a good LOTR nerd wants: hobbits (of course), dwarfs (almost all of the major characters are, in fact, dwarfs), Gandalf, orcs, underground passages, Gollum, and elves.

It's also got a bunch of stuff that wasn't in the book. The book was pretty thin. Even if Peter Jackson filmed everything in the book, he couldn't stretch it into 3 long movies. If you're a great "The Hobbit" fan-boy you should stay away.

The plot, at least so far, is pretty simple. The dwarfs lost their homeland (and a great pile of gold) under the mountain to a flying, fire-breathing dragon. Now, some generations later, they want the old place back. Gandalf, the great gray wizard, agrees to help them. And he brings along a hobbit, for reasons which are never made clear. After various adventures (several running battles with orcs, dinner with the elves, and being rescued by giant birds), the party arrives within 2 movies of their goal. Oh, and a golden ring is involved.

I'm not a big fan of 3D movies. We only saw it in 3D because we had the time of the regular showing wrong and decided to stay for the 3D. It was only luck that it was also a high-frame rate showing. The 3D was pretty good. 3D is pretty good when it is not too obtrusive. I'd definitely say that the 3D enhanced the movie watching experience for me. I'm not too sure about the high-frame rate. My son has seen the movie in 3D at both the high and regular frame-rate and he thought the difference was very noticeable. He thought that the high-frame rate was much crisper. I'll admit that the movie was about as sharp and clear as any movie I've seen.

The review I read made a reference to Star Wars, liking the Hobbit Trilogy to the 3-movie prequel to Episodes 4-5-6 of Star Wars. In fact, he wrote that "The Hobbit" was 'one Jar-Jar Binks' away from being as bad as "The Phantom Menace".  This is not the movie I saw.