Contest time! Bookmark it

It's been a long time since I've done a blog contest. The last one I did was in 2018. So with Opening Day just a few weeks away, how about another?

As many of you know, I like to take baseball card scraps and turn them into some sort of craft or artwork. I don't know why, but I've always hated to throw away baseball card packaging.

One of my favorite items made from recycled packaging are my custom, handmade bookmarks. I'm honestly not sure if anyone even uses bookmarks in 2020, but they look pretty cool:

See? These are made with actual wax wrappers from each product.

They would fit nicely in your favorite baseball book. That's where the contest comes in! The winner will receive one of my bookmarks of their choice!

Details:

Only one entry per person. All you have to do below is comment with what your favorite baseball book is. That's it! No problem if there are repeats on the list. Hopefully you'll share some that aren't too common and others will be inspired to read it too.

Contest ends Sunday, March 15 at 11:59pm PT. I'll then take all the entrants and randomly choose a winner.

I guess I need to share my favorite baseball book too, right? I don't have a no-doubt favorite book, but one that I've read in the last few years and really enjoyed is The Baby Bombers by Bryan Hoch, which details the Yankees newish approach over the last few years of developing talent and building a team that is on the cusp of a championship. What this book doesn't account for is all of those players getting hurt!

Anyways, looking forward to seeing what you all choose. Thanks for participating!

An Epix pickup

I've always been a big fan of 1998 Pinnacle Epix.

It was a really cool set. Several Pinnacle products featured cards from the set. For example, you could find these cards in Pinnacle, Score, Zenith, etc. Although the cards looked the same, they could only be fund in that particular set. Collectors would lose their shit right now if Topps tried something like this. Topps also isn't organized to do something like this. Or they'd ruin it and make SP and SSPs only available in certain products. Don't try it, Topps.

I first came across this set because I pulled a Mark McGwire from Score int he summer of 1998.

I remember exactly where I was. My mom dropped me at CVS to look at cards while she ran another errand, and then was going to pick me up on the way home. Imagine that? Dropping her kid at CVS to look at cards for a few minutes.

Anyways, I opened a few packs while waiting for her outside, the McGwire was in a pack of $.99 Score. Nothing fancy ever came from Score, so I was shocked. These fell at 1:61, and mind you it was in the middle of the 1998 HR chase, so this card was booking in the $60 range by the almighty source of card values, Beckett.

That's the only one I ever saw, and still keep it in my collection.

Last week, while feeling nostalgic, I started looking at a few of these, and thought I should own a Yankee. So I bought this for a few bucks, as Jeter is the only Yankee in the set. This particular one would have come from Zenith, I believe.

It's a great looking set, and the memory the comes with it makes it even more special.

A little ink and a little vintage

Just a quick Saturday morning post to clean out a couple scanned cards, as a few cards have trickled in here and there.

As you know if you read Zippy Zappy, Bowman Chrome is king. I've been a little better about buying BoChro autographs of guys I like. One of these guys is Garrett Whitlock, a solid pitching prospect who unfortunately had TJ Surgery last year. Therefore, it was a very minimal purchase.

One that cost me a little more, but still under $10 shipped, was a refractor autograph of Michael King. I recently purchased his base chrome auto, but with all of the Yankees pitching injuries, he's knocking on the door for a rotation spot to start the season, or at some point once a 6th or 7th starter is needed. It felt like a good time to buy him in case he gets hot.

The last card is one I'm a little torn on, as I'm not confident is is authentic. Behold, a 1957 Topps Whitey Ford.

The reason I'm skeptical is because of the price, as I only paid a few bucks for it. The condition scans better than it is, as it's got some surface wear and soft corners. I'd like to think it's real, but I just don't trust people in the 2020 hobby. If it's real, even as a set filler, it should have gone for more.

I hadn't bought a vintage card in a while, so hopefully it is real.

The Torrens Fan Club strikes again

Out of nowhere, the Luis Torrens Fan Club struck me with a PWE, mere days after previously sending one. I wasn't prepared.

Zippy Zappy has been Zion AD hunting, and looks like he had a few leftover 2019-20 NBA cards he sent my way. Hmmm. He shoved a very lot of them into a single PWE:

A mixture of Hoops and Donruss. Some good names too! My favorite card is probably the Malcolm Brogdon, because it reminds me of the time Malachi Richardson made him look foolish in the Elite 8.

Oh yeah, this was shoved in there too. Just an autograph of an All-Star. Dellin makes me sad in 2020.

Thanks for the PWE, ZZ. I sent one earlier in the week to him, which probably means I have about 20 more coming my way.

Panini could be winning

Over the past few years, I've been really unimpressed with Topps. There have been some exceptions, but as a whole, I feel their designs and card products are pretty lackluster. I know they receive a lot of flack and hating on them is the cool thing to do.

Some of it is warranted. Some is not.

But I just don't think they care about the aesthetics of most of their cards.

As a child of the 90s, I like flashy cards. I like inserts that feel special. Ones that feel rare and nit because they are low-numbered.

Instead, we get things like 150 Years of Baseball that are fairly bland and lack much design thought, and the company just wants to stuff as many subjects into the set as possible.

I miss the 10-card RBI Kings or Wave of the Futures. I miss looking forward to the card that is not like the others in each pack, as opposed to having to squint at the backs of cards looking for microscopic codes to see if I pulled a special card.

Not everyone agrees, and thats fine. One era of collectors prefers a big base set and that's it. Some prefer all the parallels and latest prospects. I prefer a time when inserts were shiny, thoughtful, whacky, and even a bit asymmetrical.

Lately, I've been gravitating towards some of Panini's cards. The logo-less photos are hard to get around. I still don't love it. But their designs can be really interesting. I'm not talking about the weird 2020 emoji cards. I'm talking about Lumberjacks. Like this:

I mentioned on Twitter it looks like a car air freshener. This card could be dangling from the mirror of a cab. It's so cool. And it's even textured. That's what I like. This is something Pacific would have done. They made card ornaments, after all.

Another card that caught my eye was this Prizm. It's an Illumination. That doesn't mean anything to me. I'm not smart enough to know which Panini set is which, but when something like this catches my eye, I try to make it mine. The colorful jewels looks awesome.

I'm not a Panini stan. Not at all. A lot of what they do is awful. And the logo situation is crap. And I rarely see them in stores. And when I do the packs have four cards in them.

But their cards look better than Topps' do right now, and it's not particularly close.

A straight up investment

I know the words "investing", when mixed with "hobby", create quite the visceral reaction, especially on Twitter. There are some who are firmly in the camp that collecting cards is a hobby and only a hobby. There are some who want to stock up on all he latest prospects now, taking a more investment-based approach.

I fall in the middle. I don't chase massive hits and open cases of the latest looking for Vlad Jr and Tatis and Wander Franco. But I don't get upset at people who do. Everyone collects for different reasons. Some to actually collect. Some to make money. Some to do both.

I recently bought an autograph of a Yankees prospect that I have no intention to keep.

It's not that I'm not a huge fan of him. I've been advocating for Clarke Schmidt for a long time. I have a lot of his cards, specifically autographs.

However, this one doesn't mean much to me. It's just another card. Emotionless. It's a sticker, it came from some on-demand product, and it's not one I particularly care to own. But Schmidt is having a fine spring and showing massive potential.

And it's numbered 7/10. That's nice. I have every intention of selling this card once he makes it to the majors or the hype train picks up while he's in the minors. And it might not. There's always risk, especially with pitchers. And Yankees pitching prospects. And he's a pitcher who had TJ Surgery before. It's a risk.

At worst, I bought a Yankees autograph for $24 that will sit in my collection. At best, I'll sell it for twice that or more and buy something I'd rather have, such as a Jorge Posada or Rickey Henderson autograph.

Investing? Hobby? Whichever. It's all gambling, and I just placed a futures bet on Mr. Schmidt, whether I keep the card or not.

A nice PWE from Georgia

Last week, a nice PWE showed up from Georgia courtesy  of John over at Johnny's Trading Spot.

One of the highlights was this Luis Torrens diecut. While something like this should be in ZZ's collection, I do need to hang onto it so I can take down Gavin on TCDB.

My next favorite cards were these Inaugural Season Yankees Stadium cards. I had never seen them! What perfect looking Yankees cards with he Pinstripes in the design.

Johnny also hit me with a couple Hometown Heroes of Tino!

Lastly, a couple of 1989 Baseball America cards. This is a sneaky fun design, the more you look at it.

Thanks for thinking of me, Johnny!