Congrats, Junior

The whole "getting older" thing is starting to become a reality for me.  And I don't know that there are many markers that will make that more clear for me than The Kid heading into the Hall, a kid no more.

For me, Ken Griffey, Jr. was the player that made buying a pack of baseball cards worthwhile if you pulled his card.  Or enticing to buy in general just by having him on the packaging.

He was the epitome of cool, backwards baseball cap and effortless gallop.


While I fully admit the aura of childhood and ESPN catchphrases added to the hype of Griffey in my mind, I don't know that there is a player who I have watched play a game so effortlessly as he did.  And say what you will, but there is no player out there who I would rather see as the player to receive the highest percentage of Hall votes.  And it's a damn shame anyone out there thought him unworthy, for whatever their twisted personal cause.

He brought a degree of fun, excitement, and anticipation to a game where 90% of the action is inaction.  Everything about my own baseball playing was built to mimic my favorite player.  From my Junior model glove and bat to my left handed, upright stance.  But no matter how many hours I spent swinging, I could never find a swing as sweet as his.  I don't know that anyone ever will.  It's simply the way baseball was designed to be played.

It's strange to see two players I grew up watching not only reach the twilight of their careers but now take their place amongst the immortals, their playing days a memory just the way Clemente is to my father or Mays to my grandfather.  Players who played so effortlessly that it's almost impossible for the next generation to envision.  And maybe I'm lucky in that regard.  At least I'll have some youtube clips to back up my argument when my future kids claim that the next great player is the best thing to ever touch a field.  But of course I'll always be right.  And Junior will always be the answer.

Recapturing My Youth: 2001 Donruss

Man, what a difference a year can make.  A year ago, my goal was to put a decent dent in my 2001 Donruss Stat Line set.  The set is (relatively) small.  But the fact that each card is serial numbered, many to some pretty low quantities, and nearly a decade and a half old made reality set in.

Love it as I might, completion isn't realistic.  So new goal?

Hoarding!

Shameless, gleeful hoarding.

I'll still pick up any card from this set when I can at a decent price.  But realistically coming anywhere close to assembling a set just isn't going to happen.

And that's alright.

 2001 Donruss was probably the first set I really fell in love with.  At first, it was the nostalgia of a beloved brand returning to the hobby in the same year I was returning to the hobby.  I am and always have been a sucker for nostalgia.

 But as I started opening the product, it quickly became obvious this was a gem.  Ignore the Pujols and Ichiro hysteria that would ensue.

 For $1.99, the packs had an array of serial numbered and foily cards.  That wasn't something that many, if any, packs at that price could offer then.  The packs had a real bang for its buck.

 And then there were the Retro packs of 1999 and 2000 style cards.  A pack within a pack.  You know what that means?  The suspense of ripping two foil packs for a mere $2.

 The set is one that still brings back fond memories for me.  As it seems to for other collectors as well, since the set still seems to sell well.

But that's ok.  Even if I never become some super master set collector Jedi for 2001 Donruss, I'm more than happy to hoard each and every cards I can into my collection.  Just like I would have in 2001.

Dr. Frankenstein

Sometimes my custom projects feel a little bit like being a mad scientist.  If you saw my custom "workshop" you might agree.

But my ventures into custom cards has opened up a whole new world of collecting possibilities.  To be blunt, I haven't been crazy about many of the autograph designs of recent years.  And with the ways companies recycle the same players in the autograph checklists for products, there are so many players that never have an autograph as a Pirate.

Enter a razor blade, computer, some paper and glue.

I took advantage of the Black Friday sales on COMC to snag some cheap autograph cards with the intention of removing the sticker and repurposing them into a card that I found more appealing.

So consider this the before post.  I'm hoping the "after" photos will be even better.

Like a Gaylord Perry auto for $4.  While I feel a little bad about deconstructing the autographed card of a HoF'er, I'd at least like to have a card in my collection where he's playing the right sport.

 But hey, at least Gaylord has a photo.  The 2012 SP set has some great autograph names.  And some hideous cards.  UD would have been better sticking these in a vault until they get their license back sometime in 2142.

 Byrd was a fan favorite of mine during his short stint in Pittsburgh.  Now I just need an autographed card for the occasion/

 Corey Hart?  Not so much.  But still...Pirate!

 I don't have a good justification for this one, aside from it having two players who have seen major league time for only $1.  Who am I kidding?  That's just cause enough.

 Chris Volstad is what happens when your team doesn't have enough pitching depth at AAA.  A Chris Volstad auto is what happens when you feel compelled to capture that moment on cardboard.

 Say what you will about Panini, but I'll say this:

 They capture a hell of a lot more autographed subjects than Topps.  And better yet, the stickers are pretty easy to remove and repurpose.

Like I said - not the most exciting post of the year.  But I have a nice mix of some former stars and ex-Bucs that I'm looking forward to turning into autographed cards.  The toughest part is going to be deciding how I want these new cards to look.

Getting Tekky With It

I don't think it's a shock to any casual reader of this blog that I'm all about cards from the 90's.  Childhood nostalgia.  Inserts.  Yada yada yada.

The fact of the matter is I'm a total mark for it.  So last year's Topps Tek release was about as close to wetting my pants over new baseball cards as I've been since...well, since I was actually of an age where it was appropriate to do such an act.

But one problem.  I just couldn't pull the trigger on any boxes.  Sure the product looked nice, and was selling well.  And...I loved it.  But paying $60 for a one pack, one autograph box?  It's just not my collecting style.

So I waited.  And waited.

I did manage to find some Tek base cards and a couple parallels at a show a month or two after release.

 But that was about it.  My Tek collection fit into a couple of 9 pocket pages.

 But as this hobby is known to do, after I waited out the initial wave and crash, I've been able to feed myself a steady diet of Tek cards.

 In fact, many of the parallels and autographs have come down to insanely cheap prices.  Which is music to my ears.

 The set has a nice number of 90's players, so I've mostly focused on picking up parallels of those players.  With the only Pirate in the set being Gregory Polanco, and the AL and NL players having different patterns it seems totally justifiable.

 And while there were some very nice autos to pull in the set, there are also some real duds.

 But hey, take a pen to a Tek card, and it's still a Tek card.  Which means if it's cheap, I'm an eager buyer.

 All these cards are going into my small but mighty Tek binder.  At some point some 2015 cards may join it as well, but I haven't been nearly as excited about the patterns or player selections in this last year's release.  My only real gripe with the set?  The team selections for the players.

The Crime Dog as a Devil Ray?  Alomar as a Jay rather than an Indian or my preferred Oriole?  Albert Belle from his two year stint with the White Sox?  It's far from ideal.  But...meh.  The cards still look awesome.  While I won't do anything totally crazy like try to put together a set, I'm thrilled to pick up copies on the cheap whenever I can.

State of the Blog Address

It's been a pretty good sports weekend for me.  WVU won a wild bowl game last night, and the Steelers unexpectedly clinched a playoff spot today.  To top it all off, I took the title in my fantasy football league which was all but locked up before the 4:30 games even started thanks to big days from a couple players.

While my collecting goals for 2016 were pretty easy to pin down, I needed a to take some real time to step back and evaluate where things stand here at Battlin' Bucs.

As I head into year 4 of this blog, I'll be the first to admit that I'm a little surprised I'm still at it.  The longest any of my previous blogs had lasted were exactly two posts.  Not a high score that was tough to beat.

But 2015 was a turning point for me, and a turning point for this blog.  Early in the year, my views had hit an all time high, and I had some posts that I really enjoyed writing about the state of the hobby and collecting that sparked some really great discussions in the comments.  Shortly after, I basically dropped off the face of the blogosphere.  It's not that I didn't enjoy blogging or the hobby, but life got in the way, and frankly at time I got very disinterested in collecting current releases.

Adding to my muddled feelings, 2015 marked the first year since 2001 that I didn't have a season ticket package for the Pirates.  Over the past 15 years, I've had the chance to watch hundreds of games in person and become connected with the team on a number of levels.  The down side to that is that, regardless of the product on the field, things can happen behind the scenes that can really rub you the wrong way.  I'm still a Pirate fan, but frankly my personal thoughts on some of the folks and the decisions the business has made outside of baseball makes it hard to cheer as a fan anymore.  I watched 2 games in person last year, and honestly don't know that I will top that number this year.

So while I still enjoy card collecting, adding Pirate cards for 2015 and beyond just doesn't seem as important as it did for the years that I was passionately following my team.  And as a collector, my interests and posts just as often as not have little to do with the Pittsburgh Baseball Club.  So to some extent, the entire name of the blog feels like a misnomer these days.

In the year ahead, I hope to be more active in posting, reading, and commenting on other blogs.  I love the sense of community.  I love sharing my prized additions with the small segment of the population out there who would have the slightest inkling of interest.  But whether it's a byproduct of the passage of time, adulthood, or something less defined, I just don't feel the same connection with the game or the hobby that, frankly, may have defined me too much during my teens and 20's.

What does that mean?  It just means getting a little more creative.  I can't run out to the store or the LCS and bust a pack of my favorite product, knowing I will get a little pick-me-up or the chance of scoring a great card.  But I can head to my computer, printer, and paper cutter and put something of my own making that can do just that.  The ability to create and design my own custom cards has filled a gap and frustration that has been brewing for me with the hobby for quite a few years.

This year will be the first since 1980 when the license for cards in each sport is held by one manufacturer.  I think that is something that is fundamentally flawed, and is potentially devastating for the hobby.  And the end result, the cards that are produced, don't really speak to my interests as a collector.  But the ability to make the cards that I want, largely when I want, is something that has kept my fire for cardboard alive.

I hope that you all continue to read and discuss the hobby here at Battlin' Bucs in 2016.  And I hope you all don't mind too much if there are more pictures of the wacky cards I dream up, and fewer that someone at Topps or Panini does.  I'm looking forward to a year of bring more active as a blogger, and getting back to the core of what I have enjoyed about card collecting since I was a kid without fussing over hits, cost, and the other less appealing aspects of our hobby.

Happy 2016!

Mark

The First Customs of 2016

 You can never go wrong with a classic like 89 UD, though I don't know that I'll use this design all that often.

This one is going to be part of a series for all the 2006 All-Stars.  I may adapt it for the 1994 All-Star game as well, though I doubt I'll be able to find many photos from the game itself for that one.  The design still feels a little flat to me on this one.  I tweaked it a few different times, and this was what I like the best, but I'm all ears to suggestions.

2016 Collecting Goals

My 2016 is already off to an interesting start.  I got woken up today by a loud thud downstairs, and the sound of our cat triumphantly charging up the stairs with a mouse in mouth.  And while my furry friend is a great catcher of mice, apparently, he is less skilled in their slaughter.  Before I was fully awake or dressed, the mouse had escaped, and is presumably cowering in fear behind the fridge where Waldo has been positioned all morning.

Here's to 2016!  I'm just going to take that as a good omen...somehow.

I always enjoy setting some collecting goals for myself each year.  It's a mixed bag of those that I think are within reach, and others that might be a bigger stretch.  But I always find it helpful to look back at the end of the year, see where my collection was headed, where it actually went, and maybe start trimming off some of those aspects that ended up being less important than they seemed in January.

1) Buy a house.  

While not exactly a collecting-related goal, this will (hopefully) be a deciding factor in how much progress I make on my actual hobby goals this year.  With Kate and I both landing new jobs in the final quarter of 2015, we're now both commuting an hour each way, and in different directions to boot.  We've been saving up for a house for a while now, and both financially and for where we are in life it seems like a good decision.  Target goal is to be into a house by summer.

*note: if anyone has any "why not to buy a house" horror stories, now would be the time to share.

2) Reach 17,500 new Pirate cards.

Right now I'm just north of 16,400.  So adding about 1,000 new cards seems reasonable.  In past years I've blown by this number, but if things go according to plan this year, I'm leaving some wiggle room for additional expenses and the fact that when you reach 16,000 different freaking cards, it gets a little harder to find ones you don't already have.

3) Add 2 pre-war Pirates cards.

Ideally, one from the T206 and one from the T206 sets, which are my favorite pre-war releases.  This has been a goal of mine for a few years now, and I just can't seem to pull the trigger.  Either I'm going to need to settle for a lower condition card in my ideal price range, or pony up some more cash for a copy that meets my eyeball test.

4) Reach 20% on my 2000 Topps Refractor set

This is a repeat of last year's goal.  I'm right around 10%, so I'm hoping to bump up by 10% this year - that comes out to about 40 new cards.  Unfortunately I've picked off much of the low hanging fruit, so this one might be tough.

5) Get organized!

I've been moving my Pirates collection over to 9 pocket pages.  And I've made a lot of progress.  But my incoming cards keep outpacing the rate that I can get stuff into pages.  Let's hope this year is the end to the madness.

6) Have a man-cave.

This one is directly tied to goal #1 most likely.  But I've been accumulating tons of cool memorabilia - game used jerseys, signed photos, lithography, bobbles, etc for years now.  And 95% of it is either still in my bedroom at my parents or stored in boxes in their garage.  So if/when we find a house we love, the numero uno project is going to be turning the basement into my Pirates wonderland.  Should this goal become a reality, expect pictures.  Lots of pictures.

7) Spend less money on dime box digs.

This one hurts me just to type.  You all know how much I love digging around through a dime box for forgotten treasure.  But that's just the problem.  Every show or flea market I go to, I always end up coming home with at least 50-100 cards that are just flat out cool.  After a while, it adds up.  I now have a couple thousand miscellaneous cards - Negro League stars, Mark Prior as a Padre, throwback unis - that I love, but don't really have a concrete place in my collection.  And that's fine.  I just can't continue at the same torrid pace, or I'll be walled in by cards.

And even at a dime a pop, the price adds up.  So I'm going to try to cut back in that area this year, as much as it pains me, to divert those funds to some higher end pursuits - hopefully the aforementioned man cave and/or some autos of my favorite players from the 90's.

So there you have it.  Some of these goals I'll breeze by.  Others I'll fall flat on my face.  But I'm looking forward to 2016, another year of collecting, and everything the year will bring.

Except mice.  No more mice, please.