Category: todd frazier

An Impromptu Package From Stubby: Gypsy Queen Greens And MOAR!

…starts with these.

Oh, and this…

 

See, apparently, Stubby is building this set (the green border retail parallel of 2017 Gypsy Queen), and in doing so, he’s ended up with a bunch of doubles, which I now have. The ones pictured above are the ones I’m keeping. (Especially that Koufax.) The rest? Hell, I’m never building this…I haven’t even grabbed any base Gypsy Queen yet (even though it is a nice set this year). So, with Stubby’s blessing, I’m offering ’em up for trade.

Here’s the list of what I have right now:

10 Miguel Cabrera

11 Jordan Zimmermann

16 Trea Turner

17 Dexter Fowler

23 Blake Snell

25 Michael Fulmer

32 Johnny Cueto

41 A.J. Ramos

51 Kevin Kiermaier

52 Jose Bautista

55 Corey Dickerson

57 Jean Segura

58 Jung Ho Kang

68 Alcides Escobar

85 Raimel Tapia

86 Chris Archer

90 Justin Turner

98 Adam Wainwright

99 Brandon Crawford

117 Jonathan Villar

122 Dee Gordon

124 Buster Posey

126 Justin Verlander

149 Matt Holliday

152 Wilson Ramos

159 Matt Kemp

160 Josh Donaldson

163 Renato Nunez

165 J.A. Happ

178 Dallas Keuchel

183 George Springer

190 Miguel Sano

191 Marcel Ozuna

192 Christian Yelich

202 Welington Castillo

207 Jeremy Hellickson

212 Masahiro Tanaka

213 Elvis Andrus

217 Josh Harrison

237 Jon Lester

238 Tyler Naquin

241 Josh Bell

249 Luke Weaver

253 C.J. Cron

254 Danny Salazar

255 Matt Wisler

265 Eugenio Suarez

268 Joe Panik

271 Colby Rasmus

278 Alex Colome

285 Kirby Yates

287 Tony Watson

291 Didi Gregorius

296 Jose Abreu

If you’re interested, give me a buzz. They probably won’t be around forever! If you’ve got some green border doubles you can send me to send to Stubby, those are welcome, too! Here’s his want list:

2017 Gypsy Queen Green Border Retail Parallels:

13-15, 21, 26, 33, 34, 37, 39, 43, 46, 64-66, 69, 74 (Correa), 88, 91 (Swanson), 94, 97 (Cecchini), 105, 119, 121 (deGrom), 125, 127 (Cespedes), 129, 138, 164, , 174, 181 203, 211, 218, 223, 225, 229, 230, 234, 239 (A. Cabrera), 247, 260, 261, 267, 275, 279, 280, 293, 302 (Sandberg), 303 (Jeter), 306 (Griffey Jr.), 311 (Ozzie Smith), 312 (McGuire), 316 (Pudge Rodriguez), 318 (Brett)

Stubby put some other fun stuff in the box, too, so let’s have a look at a few of the highlights…

This card was in a carefully obscured card holder, with no idea as to its identity. A mystery! I loves a mystery.

!

Like hell it has no value! I needed it for my ’72-’73 set that I’ll never finish. (I do like their fries, though.)

Going back to the GQ stuff, here’s a pair of Ichiro inserts. These are keepers, because that Ichiro feller’s on ’em.

Stubby threw a handful of old wax in the box, too. (Yeah, I opened it all.) I came up basically empty on the ’90 Topps Hockey I opened (no Islanders or names I recognized), there are apparently Hall of Famers visible on 3 of the ’81 Fleer Teams In Action Football cards, but I haven’t tried to dissect who they are yet, and while there was a Dwight Evans and a Paul Molitor card in the ’91 OPC Premier pack I opened, I’d have to check to see if I have either and the cards are on a different floor of the house than I am right now. However, in my ’13 Topps Series 2 pack, there was a fun little number.

Needed it for my set! I don’t end up adding to this set enough.

This was the best of the bunch of packs he through in, though…

Someone was just talking about that Fleer collectors’ hat on Twitter the other day. I would really love to see proof that it exists. Anyway, I opened a bunch of ’86 Fleer, whatever I could get my hands on at Cumberland Farms (because it was damn tough to get elsewhere), and I eventually bought a complete set in a lot of other cards, but I never did get one of these from any of the packs I opened, until now…

Coulda used you in ’86, guys!

Thanks for the stuff, Stubby!

2017 Donruss!

Finally had a chance to pick up a blaster of this stuff, which I’d been waiting for fairly eagerly since I saw the sell sheets. How’d I do?

Not too bad, I suppose.

If you’re seeing this year’s set for the first time: yeah, they riffed on 1990 Donruss baseball, which was…not many peoples’ favorite card design, but they managed to make it look solid just by making it not look red.

Just for a quick comparison, here’s Bernie Williams’ rookie from that set (sorry for the low-res pic, I just screenshotted it from Trading Card Database because all of my ’90s are upstairs). Now, by itself, it’s a fine looking card. Bernie being on it helps. But if you have to look at 716 of these, you’re probably not gonna be thrilled.

Anyway, Donruss changed their logo, added those diagonal stripes on the border, and rounded the corners of the pictures, but it’s a clear homage.

If this is the first time you’re seeing modern Donruss cards, you may be noticing that they don’t have logos or team names on them. They’re licensed by MLBPA, but not MLB. I will say that this seemed to limit their photography, or just the overall look of the base cards, a bunch this year, if only that it made the cards look kinda monochromatic.

It’s not as much of a problem in their 1983 Donruss homage inserts. The border colors help here. I wish the player name font had been a little more accurate…

(Also from TCDB, for quick comparison. Name lettering doesn’t look as…tense.)

…but otherwise, I’m more inclined to chase the 1983 inserts than I am the base set, after grabbing a blaster.

Some of that has to do with these cards, which are part of the base checklist, being seeded about 1 every 4 packs. There’s a reason why this set is selling for about $160 on eBay, and it’s because it’s very, very difficult to complete. By comparison, the 1983s, which are not part of the main checklist, come in at 2 per pack. After 7 packs, I’m over a quarter way through that set, and I’ve got 2 out of 45 from this part of the base set. It’s an old complaint with modern Donruss, they’ve been doing this every year since the brand relaunched in ’14, but this is the first time I’ve really looked at the numbers.

Then you throw in stuff like base variations (here, they’ve replaced Corey Seager’s name with “ROY” because he won Rookie of the Year), and it just gets to be a headache.

(This one’s already been traded to Night Owl.)

I did get some cool inserts, though. I mean, on a set like this, you can’t complain about these 3 names on numbered cards. Keeping the Altuve, the Trout’s definitely up for grabs (or going to COMC if it doesn’t go before I send out my next shipment), and I’m still deciding on the Machado (I don’t collect him, but it’s a nice looking parallel and it’s low-numbered).

They’re also seeding “hits” in every blaster this year (dunno if this is a new practice or not), and this is what I got. This is available for trade for the time being, too.

So, I’d say it wasn’t a waste of a blaster (or the money), but I wasn’t overwhelmed by it, either. I do like the Altuve card, and the base cards look good, but the short-prints at the front of the set checklist (unlike something like Topps Heritage, where they put them at the back where you can deny they exist) are a psychological deterrent to collecting this stuff seriously. It kinda does the opposite of what Panini wants it to do, I think. People want a run of 1-whatever, not 46-whatever, and they’re generally not willing to drop $3 a card to get there, especially without team logos.