Too Many Tinos

Just a short post today. It's been 10 days since I've done so, but I'm too busy to play with baseball cards and blogs right now. Pretty recurring theme. Maybe the end of the blog is near...

Some of my favorite DMs or emails are when a fellow collector comes across a Tino they think I don't have. This happened a few weeks back when Dennis of Too Many Verlanders was going through a big lot he bought on Facebook. Usually the answer is "thanks, but I have it." But in this case, Dennis indeed found one I didn't have!

There we go! Nice little 1997 Donruss Gold Press Proof. There's a little bit of a diecut to it too, which is easy to miss. I think 1997 Donruss holds up pretty well. It's not the best Donruss design, but far from the worst.

Dennis also flanked the card with two gems.

While I have tons of these, they are still so fun. What a great set.

Thanks for thinking of me, Dennis!

Derek Jeter - The full Project 2020 rundown

After over a year of waiting, Derek Jeter will finally be inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame on Wednesday.

Sadly, I am traveling during this time and will probably miss most of the ceremony. I'm sure I'll catch the replay of his speech.

Jeter was a special player for me as a kid. I feel like we are up together. I was in the 6th grade when Jeter took over as the everyday shortstop on Opening Day of 1996.  I was in seventh grade when the Yankees won the World Series later that season. I was in ninth, tenth, and eleventh grade when they three-peated from 1998-2000. I was an annoying Luis Gonzalez single away from seeing the Yanks win the World Series every year I was in high school.

He wouldn't win another until 2009. By that time, I was a young professional living and working in NYC. College had come and gone, with Jeter still entrenched on the left side of the Yankees infield. I was at Game 6 of the 2009 World Series when the Yankees clinched the title. My date for the game was the woman who would soon become my wife.

Derek Jeter was the Yankees shortstop from the time I was in junior high through the time I was married with two kids. That's pretty insane, any way you look at it. So while it'll be trendy over these few days to knock him as being a overrated slap hitter or that he couldn't play defense, that's going to fall on deaf ears on this blog. It's rare to grow up with a player and have them being linked to nearly every baseball memory you have.

I have that with Jeter.

While he has always been a more secondary part of my collection compared to Tino Martinez, I have about 1,000 different Jeters, give or take. But in 2020, Jeter was the focus for me during Covid-fueled trading card boom.

Why?

Because I completed the Topps Project 2020 full run of Jeters.

It was expensive, but I don't regret it one bit. The funds were there. The retail cards weren't on the shelves. So this took the place of what I might have normally spent on cards. 

All together, they create quite the masterpiece:

Just look at those! Maybe by themselves they don't equate to much, but when viewed as a collection, it's an incredibly unique piece.

Over the last couple days, I went back and looked at these for the first time in months. They had been stored away, but it was fun to go back and enjoy them with Project 2020 a distant memory. And while Project 70 is doing it's best to beat artist renderings of cards into the ground, these will always hold a special place.

And do you know what? My tastes changed over time. Some I loved at the time, I found myself perhaps not feeling the same now. Some I barely remembered now really popped for some reason. So with that, here a few categories of the Project 2020 cards after I revisiting my collection:

Favorite card: Tyson Beck

This one was always one of my favorites, but I feel it holds up. There's a lot going on, but I like how the full piece comes together. The iconic Draft Pick text from the back of the card is there. Jeter's RC image is there on the right, although he's holding Lady Liberty's torch. The colors are vibrant, the card is busy, yet captures Jeter well with his smile and his swing.

Card that I like more now than before: Jacob Rochester

I don't know why, but I kept coming back to this one. I think the sea foam green is what has attracted me to the card. I don't know if it'll ever be my favorite, but when I saw it I definitely felt more attracted to the simplicity of the design than I had remembered.

Least Favorite: Keith Shore

Oof. Moving on.

Missed the mark the most: Oldmanalan

I shouldn't be THAT surprised by this, as this artist was often out to lunch on most of his cards. And while this was definitely not his worst card, I found it odd that he didn't use the image from Jeter's RC at all.

Most surprising: Don C

This was another polarizing card, but I liked it immediately and still do. It's obviously a homage to Seinfeld, where Jeter made an appearance on the show after the 1996 season. What was most surprising about it to me was how different it felt from Don C's other cards, which were a bit more artistic.

I could take a look at these again next year and feel completely different. Regardless, the full run is now a cornerstone of my entire card collection, and something I'm grateful I decided to follow through on.

Congratulations to Derek Jeter!

Fairfield Repacks change with the times

I've always like Fairfield repacks, more for their entertainment value than anything else. I would pick one up here and there from Walgreen's for $4.99. Would I get $5 worth of cards? Sometimes. Would I enjoy the way I spent my $5? Almost always.

You're never going to strike gold with these things. Once in a while someone on Twitter will claim they got a Bryce Harper RC or something, but I don't believe most of that. Those types of posts are fake and just for likes.

Still, I never really considered myself to be a sucker when I bought these. I knew what I was getting. A year or two ago, you'd get 100 cards, an unopened pack, a few hall of famers, and maybe a little bit of trade bait. 

Now? Not so much.

For the first time in months, I came across one of these on Saturday at Walgreen's. There were three total, but I bought just one. Very non-flipper of me, eh? The packaging has undergone a few changes over the last few years. The preview window of the hero card is gone. I always liked that. It would help me choose which to buy.

You know what else is gone? It doesn't say how many cards are in the box. It used to advertise 100 cards. Then sometime last year it dropped to 80. Now? No mention.

Hits have gone from 1:4 to 1:8 over the last few years. The hits were never very good anyhow, but still fun to snag a random auto or relic at those odds.

For years these were $4.99, but when I rang them up at the counter, they were $5.49. The $.49 isn't a big deal, but still, there's price increase of 10% off the bat.

When I opened the box, the first thing I noticed? A lot of free space! The boxes are still big enough for 100 cards, but nooope. Guess how many?

80? Nope. 75? No.

51 cards!

That is a drastic decrease. Over the past year or two, these have gone from 100 cards to 51. Something tells me it's supposed to be 50 and I ended up with a bonus card by accident.

That's an enormous drop, if you ask me.

When you get 51 cards, do you know what else you get? More junk. I know, I know. These have always had junk. But I would say, what, maybe 50% was junk wax, and the rest were maybe cards from the last few years, or some oddballs?

I only got two cards that I would call recent:

Now to be fair, I was surprised to see a card from 1957 pop out. That is different. Usually the oldest card would be something from the late 70s. That was a welcome surprise. No creases, either!

Outside of the three above, the other 48 cards were all junk wax. And there were ZERO oddballs.

The pack was 2021 Opening Day, which shows that this was packed very recently. While I'd rather have this than a pack of 1990 Donruss, it still doesn't really make up for the emptiness that the box provided.

So that's that. Again, I know these repacks are often fairly lackluster, but now this feels like it's on a completely new level of rip-off. If that's how all these are from now on, I won't be rolling the dice anymore with Fairfield repacks. I'll keep my $5, happily.

These are a lot more 2021 than they are 2019, and that's sad.

The future, but now

Although I was out in Colorado for MLB All-Star Festivities, I decided not to attend the Futures Game.

It wasn't for lack of interest. I just had better things to do in Denver that afternoon, including visiting one of my old college roommates.

One of the most surprising storylines of the game was that Jasson Dominguez was selected to the AL squad. At the time, he had less than 10 games to his credit, so it was definitely a leap.

Still, it's an exhibition game, and he's one of the game's top prospects. Maybe some guys deserved it more, but to me, if baseball has a chance to showcase young players who might be household names one day, they should do it. The game means nothing, so bring your big guns and show them off.

Dominguez hit a 100mph+ rocket for an out, but otherwise the game was uneventful for him. Still, it gave him a chance to be around other top prospects, many who are right on the doorstep of the majors. Hopefully he noticed how they prepared for the game, and took some notes. One note I hope he didn't take was letting the NL win. We all know that doesn't happen in the big boys game.

As expected, Topps put out a few cards to commemorate the game via Topps Now. Dominguez received one, so I headed to eBay and scooped it up for half the price that it goes for on Topps website. Dominguez cards are still rare enough to me that I don't mind spending a couple bucks for them here and there.

It's not first Bowman Chrome, but it's still pretty cool.