Card Madness 2018: Let's Get It Started!

I started this blog in 2016 and one of the first things I did was to create a Card Madness series to match up with March Madness.  In a nutshell, I put all 32 NFL teams in a bracket and pitted random cards from my collection representing each team against each other until we had declared a true NFL card champion.  The result?  A wildly popular blog series that averaged about 11 pages views per round.  Okay, so maybe it wasn't wildly popular.  But, hey, I was just starting out and had never made a trade and I'm frankly surprised anybody stumbled upon this little blog.  If you're curious, the Raiders beat the Vikings in the final round.  I skipped last year, but I feel like it's time to do a Card Madness tournament again--baseball style. 

When I ran this little tourney through the first time, I had set criteria and I gave each card a score.  That was a little too much work.  This year, I won't be scoring the cards, but I will be looking at roughly the same criteria and making less objective judgment calls.  That may be less transparent, but I don't feel like spending as time as I did before, it's just for fun anyway, and I want to play with my cards how I want to play with them.  The general criteria for selecting a winner are

1. The player featured on the card.
2. The design/overall look of the set.
3. The photo on the card.
4. The back of the card.
5. Any extras that might break a tie.

The bracket was created using all 30 MLB teams and will be divided by league.  One team in each needed to have a bye, so I selected reigning champs Houston for the AL and my Cubbies from the NL to get a free pass.  The bracket can be seen here.   Cards were chosen at random and each team will have a different representative every round.  This is baseball after all.  You can't pass the ball to Michael in Crunch Time; you have to go with the next man up in the order.

Got it?  So let's to our first four matchups.

Round 1: Cleveland Indians vs. New York Yankees

2015 Topps Gypsy Queen #139 Jason Kipnis vs. 1996 Ultra #392 Melido Perez

First, we’ll look at the players.  Kipnis has been one of the better 2^nd basemen in the Majors for the past few years.  Melido Perez had one pretty good year in 1992, posting a sub-3.00 ERA and pitching 10 complete games.  Other than that, he’s better-known to me for having a brother, Pasqual, who also pitched in the Majors.  The card design is an easy pick for me here, too.  I may be in the minority, but I like Gypsy Queen’s designs, and 2015 was one of my favorites.  1996 Ultra, on the other hand, is the probably the least interesting set that Ultra ever produced.  There is nothing that catches the eye, and the thin foil lettering is hard to read.  GQ hands down on this one.  Combine the card design and the player, and the Indians win this round going away.

Winner: Indians

 

Round 1: Pittsburgh Pirates vs. Colorado Rockies

1996 Ultra #535 Mike Kingery vs. 2015 Topps #587 Daniel Descalso

Oof.  96 Ultra again already.  I have a lot of this set because I obtained the complete thing in a collection I bought off a guy a few years ago.  I have broken it up into my trade boxes and sent some away since then, but much of it is still hanging around in my collection.  2015 Topps, however, is beautiful.  It’s bold and beautiful and completely unique among flagship sets.  The purple of the Rockies looks especially good in this set.  As far as players go, I honestly have no idea who Mike Kingery is.  Every time I see it, I think Jeff King (I know him), but Kingery is a mystery.  A quick baseball-reference search tells me that he had a pretty long career and a couple of decent years, but mostly hung out just above the Mendoza line.  The Pirates were his last stop.  Descalso isn’t the greatest player either, in fact, he’s probably not even as good as Kingery, if I look at the numbers.  I’ve always kind of liked him, though, because of his name.  “Descalso” means “barefoot” in Portuguese, so I’ve always had fun thinking of him as “Shoeless” Daniel.  The players are about a wash, so I have to look at the way the purple pops on the Descalso card.

Winner: Rockies

Round 1: Minnesota Twins vs. Toronto Blue Jays

2015 Topps #399 Josmil Pinto vs. 2017 Topps #82 Aaron Sanchez

Pinto only played in 84 Big League games.  Aaron Sanchez’s card touts his league-leading ERA.  I think we can settle the debate on the better player.  2015 Topps is more colorful and interesting than 2017.  It is superior.  So let’s examine the photos.  I like the All-Star Game patch on Pinto’s jersey; Minneapolis hosted the 2014 Midsummer Classic.  And is he holding his batting gloves?  When was this picture taken?  The Sanchez has a really interesting detail to me: I like the blue stitching on his glove.  This is close call, so I’m going to be very subjective here.  The crowd in the background of Pinto’s photo and the speckly color of the border become very busy and the card feels crowded.  Sanchez, however, has just the wall in the background of a borderless card.  The feeling of simple clarity that the Sanchez card gives me beats out the jumbled colors of Pinto.

Winner: Blue Jays

We'll continue Round 1 later.  I may not keep up with the tourney perfectly, but I will try to have the Card Madness Sweet 16 before the real Sweet 16 begins next week.  Let's see which team has what it take to come out on top!

Some Collective Minds Work Faster Than Mine

There are card bloggers out there who get involved in trading wars with the likes of Jay Barker Fan.  These battles are epic.  They involve huge trade packages and result in a lot of good blog reading.  I'm not on that scale.  Some people out there have piles of high-quality trade bait that are probably bigger than my entire collection.  My trade boxes are filled with a lot of commons that I just don't see on many people's wantlists.  Some bloggers are sending out extras from the year that dwarf my total accumulations for the same time period.  And that's okay; I love the hobby and I collect what I can and I try to send some good stuff to others and it's fun.

There is one particular blogger out there, though, who I can't seem to keep up with.  I wouldn't say I'm in a "trading war" with him, per se, but he does send me a package usually right after every time I send a return one to him, and I can never call myself even with him.  Greg at The Collective Mind is the trader who just happens to have a lot of cards from my wantlist and who keeps sending them to me faster than I can return the favor.  In December, I finally sent him a package in return for a trade that he sent me probably 3 or 4 months earlier.  It didn't take him long to strike again, and I received another package from Greg last week.  So here I am again--owing a debt of cards to Greg.  Now, don't get me wrong; I'm not complaining.  And I would hope that neither of us would classify this as a trading war.  He just works faster than I do.

So without further ado, let's check out the goodies I got from a Collective Mind.

Greg prefaced this package with an email saying that he had a card from my 2017 Update needs and that he checked out my TCDB wantlist for some other set needs.  Here are the cards that fill set needs.  The statue is of James Fenimore Cooper, author of Last of the Mohicans.  The card comes from the Village insert set, from 2012 Panini Cooperstown.  Apparently Cooper's father was a founder of Cooperstown.  I did not know that.

Here we have a trio of All-Star MVPs, two of them gone too soon.  I haven't really cracked into 2018 Topps yet, so I don't have any 1983 inserts.  I do enjoy the original set, modeled here by lanky pitcher Jon Matlack.

Here is an eclectic smattering of Rookies of the Year.  We have regular vintage Topps, an early-Donruss Diamond Kings, a more recent A&G insert, and a lenticular card from 2010 Topps.  The players are an eclectic mix, too.  Hargrove was solid, but may better remembered as a manager.  Longoria has been a star, while Coghlan is better as a role player.  Carew is an absolute legend in the game.  These four players are all on different levels, but they all can claim they won a Rookie of the Year award.

Finally, here are just random cards that I wanted for my collection.  The two historical event cards are really cool to me.  My favorite class in college was Sports in American History, and my professor literally wrote the book on the Baseball Hall of Fame.  It made for some good conversations with him outside of the classroom.  These cards satisfy my thirst for commemorating history, not just immortalizing a single player on cardboard.

Thanks for the cards, Greg!  No, I don't have a package ready to go for you yet, but I will put something together for you.  I'm trying to keep up, I promise!

Wax Box Set Building: 1992 Fleer Football

My evolution as a set-builder has had me scouring ebay for the past few months for cheap wax boxes of yesteryear.  In my football collection, I recently completed two long-overdue projects: 1988 Topps and 1995 Collector's Choice.  I have a good chunk 1996 Donruss completed and 1997 SPx is done.  From there, I have no complete sets until 2006 (Rookies and Stars).  I'm thisclose to 2008 Topps, 2012 Topps, and 2012 Rookies and Stars.  Then beginning in 2013 I see multiple complete sets from each year.  In light of this collection breakdown, I decided to try to complete one set from each year that I have collected.  That would be 1988-1997 and 2012-present.  With the completion of 1988, the years I lack are 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, and 1993.  Eventually, I'll go and find a set from the 15 gap years, but I decided to start with the early 90s years because A) I want something to represent those first years of collecting and B) some of those junk wax boxes are pretty cheap.

I started with 1992 Fleer.  I actually busted this box a while ago and my wantlist has been up on the blog for quite some time.  I haven't actually shown the cards from the break yet, though.  Let's take a trip in our time machine to 25 NFL seasons ago with 1992 Fleer.

Here is my box of 36 packs.  Each pack contains a whopping 17 cards!  There are four insert sets in this product--All-Pros, Rookie Sensations, Team Leaders, and Mark Rypien performance highlights.  I don't think the Rookie Sensations or Team Leaders were found in the type of box I got.  The other "features" mentioned on the wrapper--Pro-Visions and NFL Prospects--are subsets of the base set.

This set took me back to the Utah State Fair when I was 9 or 10 years old.  As my family walked through the vendors and booths, I always had my eyes open for someone selling cards.  My first taste of 1992 Fleer was when I bought a Thurman Thomas Pro-Vision and couple of loose packs from a vendor.  It seems like I paid a quarter for the Thomas and 50 cents each for the packs, but my memory isn't that great. 

Now with 612 cards in the box and a 480-card set, I should have no problem completing this set, right?  We'll see just how close I came.

The Good:

I really like this design.  It's clean, simple, classic.  I'm glad that Fleer used team color schemes on bottom bar.  The team logo in the NFL shield shape looks good.  I like the company logo both clearly identifies the product and stays unobtrusive.  The photos are clear and high-quality.  The base cards just look nice.  Plus, in an old product like this, you're bound to find a good number of Hall of Famers.

The league leader cards are nothing special, but I do like the subset 25 years later.  It's fun to look back and see who was dominating the NFL back then.  Here we have the sack kings of each conference, the AFC receiving leader and the NFC interception leader.  None of these guys probably come up in conversation to often nowadays.

The Pro-Vision cards are pretty cool.  In 1991, they were inserts.  In 1992 they were moved to the base set, but two years later, they became inserts again.  I just noticed that all three of the cards I scanned feature the moon.  Not all of this subset have the moon, just so you know.

The Neutral:

 Both of the insert sets are neutral.  They both have the same navy blue border and gold foil.  I like the All-Pro a little more than the Rypien highlights.  It's interesting to me how Mark Rypien came from nowhere, led the Redskins to a Super Bowl victory while winning NFL MVP in 1991, and by 1994 Washington was drafting Heath Shuler in the top five of the draft.  I will always keep my Rypien cards though, because my dad was a big Redskins fan at the time and Rypien was a household favorite.  Interesting note: his nephew, Brett Rypien, is the quarterback at Boise State.

The Bad:

Yes, the back does have a unique photo that is generally more close-up, personal shot.  The drawback is the truncated stats.  Only four years are shown.

The NFL Prospect cards are just bad.  First of all, they're boring.  Second, there is no logo anywhere, and I'm not a fan.  Last, the checklist is awful.  There were no great players in the 1992 Draft.  No Hall of Famers.  Troy Vincent was probably the best first rounder, and he isn't even part of the set.

The last bad aspect of this set is the glaring omission of some big stars.  My understanding is that some players refused to sign with Fleer, so they could not included.  Players who are missing?  You may have heard of some them: Montana, Marino, Aikman, Bruce Smith, Deion Sanders.  Even the complete set feels incomplete without some of the greatest players of the day.

The Ugly:

The collation.  This set had horrible collation.  Remember how I had 612 cards in the box to try to put together a 480 card set?  Well, I currently have 338 of those cards--a measly 70% of the set--and not all of those came from this box.  Some cards I pulled four or five times, while I others I never laid eyes on.  At first this break was fun, but as the dupes piled up for the same cards over and over again, it got kind of tedious.  I even pulled extra Mark Rypien inserts.  The collation in this box was just downright ugly.

That didn't stop me from enjoying the set.  My wantlist is up, so if you have any extras of this cheap junk wax set, I'm still looking to complete the set to fill the 1992 hole in my collection.

I have other 1990s boxes to share, too.  I'll be posting more later as I try to complete more sets from my childhood.