2016 Topps Gypsy Queen Discounted Blaster

While out looking for 2017 Topps I came across a discounted blaster of 2016 Topps Gypsy Queen. I'm not in love with this set and only bought a few packs last year but the blaster was only $11.98 and promised "1 Exclusive Short-Printed Mini Base Card Parallel Inside!"

It turns out that I'd pulled one of purple minis these from one of the 3 packs I bought last summer but this still goes in the reference books since it's the retired players subset.

I also pulled this from the box, a foil-backed mini I didn't know existed. Apparently these are only available in blasters. It's a 50-card set, numbered 301-350. As usual with this kind of card, I'm happy I have it but who was asking for foil-backed Gypsy Queen minis?

I'm always happy to pull a relic card from a blaster.

And another card for the reference book is this insert I didn't have.

Many baseball cards have a few sentences on the back highlighting something about the player. I guess these little paragraphs are probably difficult to write, not because it's hard to think of something to say about a player but because there is so much that could be said. Sometimes these read like they were plucked from a bucket of random stats for each player but a few of these Gypsy Queen backs stood out for me.

So Familia was pitching a save while his wife was giving birth. His bad luck, I guess, that he couldn't be there with her. But what is that opening line "His wife Bianca didn't need labor induced" supposed to mean? His Wikipedia page wasn't much help beyond saying she was his fiancée at the time and that he was arrested last October on domestic violence charges. 

Here's another one.

Why exactly is it strange that Turner hit .323, .322 and .322 in his first three professional seasons? And where is the twist? There were no clues on his Wikipedia page.

9 Years and Counting

As usual, I missed the anniversary of my first blog post because I always think it was late in February when actually it was February 2, 2008. This will be my 1,669th post, that's 185 a year on average. Not as many as some but enough. These days I get 200-400 hits on each post which just astonishes me. Thanks for reading. My normal practice for my anniversary post is to re-post my favorite card, Mike Schmidt's rookie card. So here it is.

My 100,000th Card

The 2016 Topps Update Megabox yielded the 100,000 card in my collection. I had expected to pass this milestone with the 2017 Topps blaster I bought but there were too may duplicates in the box. With any farther ado, here it is.

Betts had a pretty good 2016. He hit for a .318 average and led the league in at bats (672) and total bases (359). He also hit 31 home runs, was an All-Star, won the Gold Glove and Silver Slugger awards and was 2nd runner-up for league MVP.

This was the second card from the second pack from the box. I already had more than half the set so usually opening more packs at that point yield a lot of duplicate cards. But I've opened 3 of the 5 packs with no dups so far. Just for fun, here's the rest of the pack.

A nice outfield action shot.

You don't see guys batting without helmets too often, but this is during the Home Run Derby. This is a subset of this set I could do without.

Hey, a gold card. And a Phillie no less.

I learned that Keith Urban was born in New Zealand from this card. Now I know 2 things about Keith Urban. The other is that he's a country singer.

The second Phillie card from the pack.

It looks like the catcher has the ball but can he get the tag down?

Another nice outfield catch. Nieuwenhuis came up in 2012 and hasn't had much of a career as yet. I haven't seen him on a card since his rookie year. He seems to have found some playing time with the Brewers.

2016 Topps Update Chrome

While looking for 2017 Topps at Target I found a "Megabox" of 2016 Topps Update. I didn't really need any more of that product but there were 2 packs of Topps Update Chrome in the box, which I hadn't seen.

By the way, my dictionary defines "mega" as an adjective meaning very large or huge. This box only had 7 packs in it for a total of 48 cards. This is not even as many cards as are in a normal blaster.

The set is a 50-card parallel of 2016 Topps Update using the extra-sparkly Chrome finish Topps has used on the past several years of Update Chrome. I'm pretty happy with what I got. There were 4 base cards, 3 rookies and one insert.

Why the card numbers are prefixed with "HMT" is unknown to me. Topps didn't number last year's Update Chrome with a special prefix.

Here's one of the rookie cards. This looks pretty cool with the chrome effect.

Doug Fister is the only Astro in the set. He was 12-13 with the Astros last year in 32 starts.

Velasquez is one of three Phillies in the set. This is one of only 2 cards for which I also have the base Topps Update card.

It's clearly the same photo but the smoke pattern is different.

There are only 3 inserts in the set, and only one of them is a non-relic and therefore likely to be in the megabox.

Henderson not only got his 3,000 hit in 2001 with the Padres, he also set the career record with his 2,063rd walk. He has 2,190 walks for his career but has been passed by Barry Bonds who has 2,558. Here are the 2002 Topps cards commemorating Henderson's 2001 achievements, in real time, so to speak.

2017 Topps Series 1 - First Look

I drew a blank at 2 Targets, but was able to find a rack pack and a hanger box at Walmart. The cards are a bit cheaper this year. I paid about 19 cents/card last year, these were 15 cents/card.

Here are the cards as they came out of the rack pace. There are 36 cards in the pack, so I'm not going to show them all. And this post will only be the base cards.  I'll post the inserts soon.

Some thoughts on the first two cards out of the pack. First off, a minimum of foil again this year. As with 2015 and 2016 only the Topps logo is in silver foil. I'll call that a plus as putting the player and/or team name in foil often makes the card hard to read.

2016 cards had the smoke/fog effect and 2015 had the dirt effect. No such effects in 2017 Topps. Another plus.

As with 2016, the cards are again full bleed. I like full bleed cards but, call me a traditionalist, I like flagship Topps to have borders.

The backs have full stats (always a good feature) and as usual, are team color coordinated with the design feature from the fronts repeated on the back. I've been longing for a vertically oriented back with a photo for years. Frustrated again. Topps last vertically oriented back (including full stats and a good sized photo) was 2000. Topps hasn't had any kind of photo on the back since 2011.

I like the overall design of the front better than last year. Good logo placement, the player name is easily read. The team name is a bit obscured but the logo makes up for that.

The first Astro from the pack. I only have prospect cards for Reed for last year. He got called up in 2016 and used up his rookie eligibility so no rookie card this year.

The first rookie card from the pack. Both he and Reed appeared in 45 games last year but Reed had over 130 AB, which makes him not a rookie anymore, while Bell only had 128 AB. The back of the card touts Bell as the Pirates savior at 1st base but he has more appearances in the outfield then the infield. It's also the 3rd Pirate card out of the first 11 cards in the pack (of the 31 base cards in the pack, 4 are Pirates).

Since at least 2003, the League Leaders cards have featured a trio of players on the front, usually on a horizontally oriented card. I'm thinking they couldn't think of how to work that big design element at the bottom of the card onto a multi-player, horizontal card.

As is often the case, a design element that looks dramatic on a vertical card looks like an dramatic waste of space on a horizontal card.

At least the Rookie Cup is back. Note that the back has Mazara's social media handles. There are 7 horizontally oriented cards in this pack and they were all grouped together.

My first Phillies card is also the team card.

The only base cards I didn't see in this pack that were in last year's set are the "Future Stars" and postseason subsets.

January 2017 Books Read

Only 4 books read this month. I either have to stop obsessing about the number of books I read (probably a good idea) or read shorter books.

This was a birthday gift from my wife. I've been a Springsteen fan for about as long as you could be a  Springsteen fan if you didn't grow up in Asbury Park. He got a lot of early radio play in Philadelphia. I'm not a big concert goer and I've only seen him perform once, and that was at a bar in New Jersey in 1975.  Springsteen is just a little older than I am and I was able to empasize with his description of growing up a Catholic.

Another near-future dystopian novel. This one hit close to home as the various generations of the Mandible family are about the same ages as the generations in my family, so maybe I could live to see this future. As I got into it, it became clear that the novel describes a Libertarian nightmare, and was pretty implausible. Especially the part about Arizona leaving the union and forming its own country.

Another implausible story. What would happen, if overnight, a vast forest just sprang up out of the ground?  This book answers that unlikely question. Although there's no reason or explanation for the central plot device, the characterizations of the people in the novel are good and believable.

This is the second novel by the author of "The Girl With All The Gifts", which I had enjoyed a great deal. I understand a movie based on the book will be coming out this year. "Fellside" tells a different story, about a young woman sentenced to prison (Fellside is the name of the prison) for the accidental killing of a young boy. While in prison she gets visited at night by an apparent ghost. The first 2/3 were pretty good but the ending got a bit beyond belief.