Friday, February 23, 2018

2017: What Did I Miss?

The last year I was truly, fully out of the hobby was 1999.  The sixth grade must have been an especially taxing year.  And when I came back the next year?  It was pretty easy to figure out what I missed.  After all, my upper threshold on packs was about $2.  And a quick flip through the latest issue of Beckett gave me a pretty good idea of what players and sets were hot, and the price guide had plenty of photos to see, in all their black and white glory, what had come out the last year.

Jump ahead nearly two decades and it feels like I was out for a month with mono and just came back to class the day of the final.  Considering how formulaic card companies have become with their releases, it should be easy to pick up where you left off.  ...Shouldn't it?

I've been browsing COMC, taking a look at CardboardConnection here and there.  But the reality is that this hobby isn't nearly as digestible today as it was in 1999.  The checklist for Bowman Chrome is probably as long as it was for the entirety of baseball releases in 1999.  And that doesn't even count Bowman with Chrome, Bowman Chrome Draft Picks, Topps Online 5X7 cards with eighteen different color variations, and the tens of thousands of commons that had a stamp added and were thrown in just for good, confusing, measure.

The hobby has changed.  Some of those changes are for the best.  A lot of them are for the best.  Autographs of Hall of Famers are readily available.  The are cards on vintage-ish stock, and cards on acetate - something for everyone.  And boxes now cost as much as a mortgage payment.  Well, maybe that last one isn't so good...

But there is a big chunk of me that misses being able to spend 15 minutes flipping through a few pages of a magazine and have a handle on the state of affairs.  More game used cards.  Nolan Ryan reprints.  This Rick Ankiel guy must be one heck of a pitcher, and always able to consistently throw baseballs over home plate.  Alright.  Ready, set, go!

And maybe that's where we went off the rails.  Or at least I did.  Because in 2014, 15, 16, the hobby didn't feel like a hobby.  For me a hobby was something I could do for pleasure in my spare time with my spare brainpower.  Collecting felt like it became its own second job, just to keep up with what releases came out, what cards I needed, where to find the cards.  What had for decades been a fairly straightforward proposition: here are the cards, pick what you like, now became this complex game that involved a slide rule and triangulation to figure out which end was up.  Are Topps Chrome autographs part of the base set?  Are they an insert?  They look like base cards.  But the numbering is different.  Why is the numbering different?  Do Bowman with Chrome prospects go with my Bowman set, or my Chrome set.  How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?

Maybe I'm alone here.  And while I keep repeating my collecting mantra of "buy what you like," I'd be lying if I said I don't feel cannibalized by my own hobby.

So all of that - all of THAT - is to say point me in the right direction, friends.  What did I miss in 2017?  Any products that are "must see?"  Any new inserts or technology that knocked your socks off?  Any big changes?  Are gold refractors suddenly numbered to 250?  Because this ain't 1999, and if they even still sell them in stores, I don't think Dr. Jim Beckett is gonna help me out these days.

11 comments:

  1. I’m not totally sure about everything that happened last year. I usually buy a few packs of Topps/Heritage/Update at Target or wherever, with a few of Bowman/Donruss thrown in for good measure. Topps Fire came out, and it has a bunch of different color parallels. I didn’t care for it, but a number of collectors liked it. Topps did away with the First Pitch inserts, but replaced it with cards of MLB network personnel, which I liked. That’s about all I have.

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    1. I'll have to check out Fire. I'm remembering it either as an insert or maybe from football in previous years and I liked it. I'm pretty similar - Topps/Heritage/Donruss/Update are the products that usually draw me in the most each year.

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  2. More times than not I'm just looking for unique checklists. Ivan Nova had an autograph release in Donruss Optic and David Freese had one in Diamond Kings. Those were the only new non rookie autos I can think of off the top of my head for the Buccos. Topps pretty much just kept rehashing Polanco, Marte and Cole.

    Rookie wise Elias Diaz and Adam Frazier were in a few Panini products. Glasnow and Bell were in pretty much everything.

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    1. I'll have to track down a Freese. I was able to snag a Nova auto on COMC for a couple bucks. I was amazed how far Glasnow autos have fallen, even with his performance. I was able to get a couple in the $3 range. One of my biggest frustrations is having the same 4-5 guys with autos in every single product. I love Marte, but I do not need another auto in my collection at this point.

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    2. I would be ok if Topps put a year hold on Polanco and Marte in favor of other Pirates. It took me a while to even realize that Freese card existed as it was tucked away in a lower numbered DK auto insert.

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    3. Ah, the joy of leftover stickers. Hey, I'll take it.

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  3. You missed about 100 different Aaron Judge rookie cards produced by Topps. I'm being 100% serious.

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    1. I remember thinking in 2001 that Pujols and Ichiro were really being over saturated. The Bryant craze was bad enough...I can only imagine how overboard Topps went with a NY player. But I think that's just the small market team angst talking...

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  4. Great thoughts on the hobby. You are not alone. I feel like it is headed for a crash. Companies are going to price themselves out and over produce the affordables at the same time. You forgot to mention the hundreds of 1/1's everywhere. I would forget about 2017 and look toward 2018 to find something you like.

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    1. The nice thing about being a team collector is that there's always something else to chase, so I can shift focus to finishing off some of my vintage team sets or picking up some rarer early 2000's cards. But I agree that at some point there has to be a tipping point. Box prices continue to skew towards high end, and while at the same time companies are driving down auto prices by continuing to pump out thousands of cards per year of the top guys in an attempt to justify those box prices. Something has to give.

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  5. I've always separated the "hype machine" from "the hobby". I only look at the release calendar to figure out if there's anything coming out soon that I might buy. Otherwise, all the stuff about the "hot" releases and players is irrelevant, because I don't care. I don't do Bowman at all for the reasons you stated - you can't tell them apart and it looks like five different products in one.
    Yes, they've diluted all the clever ideas out of the flagship inserts. To the point that this year they are ALL boring. I'm waiting to see what A&G looks like, and hoping BUNT is nice too. Ignoring the rest. Might give high end a try, but that will probably be something a couple years old.
    I agree it's going to crash unless they let other (more creative) companies back into producing real cards, and/or they cut down on the bloat.

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