Detroit Tigers Cards and Stuff

Moving to Facebook

2011-10-17T21:35:00.002-05:00

After much deliberation, I'm taking this over to Facebook. You can search for it under Detroit Tigers Cards and Stuff. I started a page over there tonight and got more "likes" in 3 hours than I've had responses here in the last year.

I've run out of ways to bag on the sorry state of the hobby. At least over there I've got 40-50 friends who are Tigers fans who I know will contribute to the discussion about Tigers stuff. Hopefully there will be more interaction, which is what I always wanted for with this blog. I get tired of reading my own stuff. Besides, I never learned anything about the new releases until others chimed in.

Fear not, I'll continue to flex my acerbic wit on Facebook. C'mon over and join in.....

2011 Topps Lineage Part 2

2011-08-24T18:11:00.004-05:00

I'm a goddamned idiot.

I've bought 6 blasters, 14 rack packs, and 8 regular packs of Topps Lineage. I've amassed over 600 cards, counting inserts. I've spent almost $250 so far.

I'm still missing cards of Francisco Liriano and Victor Martinez from the base set. FROM THE FUCKING BASE SET!!!

This is EXACTLY why I quit trying to put fucking Topps set together.

The love I first had for this set is long gone.

I'm NEVER buying a fucking pack of Topps cards again.

At least not until 2012 Heritage.....

PS: All is not lost though. I pulled this sexy little mofo from a blaster box today.....

2011 Topps Lineage, Topps Stickers, & The National

2011-08-18T17:54:00.007-05:00

After successfully staying away from buying any packs of Topps cards since I finished the 2011 Heritage base set, I succumbed to my weakness once again. Fucking Topps. In my defense though they've actually released something interesting enough to warrant it.

Topps Lineage is one of the cooler sets I've seen in some time. It's a tad bit pricy ($3 for a pack of 8 cards, $5 for a rack pack of 14 cards, and $20 for a blaster box of 56 cards and a relic card), but luckily it's a small set with no short prints, so it's reasonably affordable.

The base design isn't anything special, but it's not bad either. It looks like something that would normally be used for a regular Topps set.

I really like the mix of Hall Of Famers, current stars, and prospects. It seems like a quarter of the set consists of about five teams, but overall it's a decent mix. The Tiger checklist is modest for a 200 card set.

43 Victor Martinez
105 Ty Cobb
143 Miguel Cabrera
156 Austin Jackson
187 Justin Verlander

The big draw here of course are the '75 Mini inserts. This is a fantastic tribute to an iconic set. It's a little bloated for an insert set (200 cards, same checklist as the base set) but otherwise it's a great throwback. Hell, most of the ones I've picked up are even off-center, just like the originals.....

The cloth stickers and Venezuelan cards are disappointing. I assumed the cloth stickers would have the 1977 design and the Venezuelan cards would have one of the 60's designs. Instead both have the same design as the base cards. It's not terrible with the cloth stickers, but the Venezuelan cards are completely indistinguishable from the base cards on the front. The only difference is on the back, where the copy is in Spanish and the numbering is slightly different. Yawn.

I'm ambivalent towards the 3D and Pop Up cards. It's odd that the 3D cards have all the elements of '69 Topps, yet are rearranged around the card. I'd like them a lot better if they'd used one of the Kellogg's designs or even the design of the 3D cards from the mid-90's.

Continuing with the throwback theme, Topps has thrown their hat back in the sticker ring again, more or less rebooting the line from where they started in 1981. It's a very nice, simple, clean design (with the names on the front now! No more having to turn the stickers over to tell the difference between Kiko Garcia and Lenn Sakata!!) The set is very basic: 9 players from each team, a 9 player HOF Foil subset, and foil logo stickers. If you were a fan of stickers in the 80's (as I was) then you'll be a fan of these. A pack of 8 is $1, so this should be a fairly inexpensive set to assemble.

64 Alex Avila
65 Austin Jackson
66 Magglio Ordonez
67 Brandon Inge
68 Jhonny Peralta
69 Brennan Boesch
70 Miguel Cabrera
71 Victor Martinez
72 Justin Verlander
298 Tigers Foil Logo

Of course there's a sticker book that can be purchased too. As an avid collector of stickers though, it would be nice if Ultra-Pro or somebody would come out with sheets for the stickers. They are just a bit too wide to put in the tobacco sheets. (Hey Ultra-Pro! If you're reading this, how 'bout making some pages for the 75 Topps Minis and 80's League Leader Minis while you're at it???)

Finally, the National was here in Chicago a few weeks ago. No, not the awesome band, but the National Sports Collectors Convention. It was quite possibly the most disappointing card show I've ever been to. I'd guess that close to half the dealers there were peddling graded cards from the 50's, 60's, & 70's. Probably another quarter were selling high-end memorbilia such as jerseys, helmets, bats, framed/autographed posters, etc. Most of the rest were either grading services, auction services, or tables piled sky high with overpriced recent unopened boxes. I found a whopping three tables that were selling 2011 baseball singles (and a couple of those folks thought they were selling 1952 baseball singles, but I digress.....)

As someone who almost exclusively collects Tigers cards, there was very little there to justify the $20 entrance fee 9without a single promo/giveaway this year) or the four hours spent walking around only to leave with a handful of Tigers cards and a bunch of $3 boxes of 80's Topps Stickers. The weekly Sunday card show in my neighborhood has more to offer me and the admission is usually free. If you're into big ticket collectibles, then the National is the place for you. Unfortunately, it's no longer the place for me. Which means, of course, that the next time it's in town I'll be back.....

All was not a wash at the National though. I added these two gems to my collection:

One last note. I've got relic cards of the Lineage '75 Minis of Andrew McCutchen (bat), Aramis Ramirez (gray jersey), and B. J.Upton (gray jersey), as well as an on card auto of Fausto Carmona (2008 Topps replica) if anybody might be interested in trading me a similar Tiger counterpart.

Ramble On: Confessions Of A Sunday Afternoon Beer Drinker

2011-06-26T20:37:00.007-05:00

In no particular order.....

1. I'm not usually a fan of the tobacco era type cards that Topps trots out each year, but I dig the Gypsy Queen issue. The parallel Kaline card with Tiger Stadium in the background may be my favorite 2011 card.

2A. Pro Debut is out. What a set for suckers. I saw these going for $65 a box at a card show today. I have been to two card shows in the last two days and a grand total of one dealer was selling singles. A couple of dealers I talked to who sell singles of new stuff said they aren't fooling with it because nobody buys them. I'll be surprised if Pro Debut is around next year.

2B. Apparently Jacob Turner is in this set for the second year in a row. Apparently I don't understand what "Pro Debut" means.....

2C. I want a Francisco Martinez card real bad...

3. Could there be a worse issue this year than Bowman? Is there a worse issue any year besides Bowman? Another year of an uninspiring design. Another year of an uninspiring player selection. And where are the Jacob Turner cards? Yes, he's in a couple of the insert series, but no base card? C'mon already! (I will admit the Bowman's Best throwback/reprint is pretty bad ass though.)

4. I'm going to be moving in a couple of months. I've got a bunch of team lots with anywhere between 300-500 cards each that are going to be donated to the resale store down the street at the end of August. If you collect another team besides the Tigers and are up for a swap then drop me a line. There are plenty of stars, inserts, and complete team sets in these lots. Seriously folks, there is some great stuff in here and all I'm looking for are lots of Tigers cards.

5. I bought an iPad 2 a couple of weeks ago and it has already become an invaluable tool in my card collecting. Instead of endless piles and printouts of checklists, I've been scanning each page of my Tigers collection and loading them into Photos. Now if I want to see what I'm missing I can pull up a photo in seconds and tell without a doubt if I have a card or not.

6. Picked up this Mickey Lolich 1973 Kellogg's card for free at a recent show. How cool is that?

7. In 15 years of owning Mac computers, I had my first ever hard drive crash about 6 weeks ago. Luckily I had about 90% of my files backed up. Unfortunately I had 0% of my 2011 RobbyT cards backed up. It's really taken the wind out of my sail as I had 20+ cards already done. I'm hoping to get back into it in the second half once real baseball card season dies down.

8. The Tigers are in first place despite some mediocre play as of late. This "Just-in", Verlander's 8th inning last was fucking incredible. That was more exciting than the 9th inning of his no-hitter.

9. The National is coming up in about 6 weeks here in Chicago. If anybody is going to be there and would like to meet up give me a holler.

10. There is a new forum where a bunch of old Detroit Free Press/World Crossing Tiger fans are hanging out. Stop by and check it out. You won't find a funnier bunch of folks around.

Starting Lineup Figures, Detroit Style

2011-05-15T19:23:00.007-05:00

I came across the Hank Greenberg SLU pictured above while checking out a new card store last week near my neighborhood. I've never been an diligent collector of SLU's, but over the years if I saw one of a Tiger somewhere (and it was under $10) I picked it up. I've got a box of maybe 10 or so different Tigers in the attic at my folks' house.

After picking up the Greenberg I realized that I've never seen a complete checklist of Tigers anywhere, so I searched around the internets and tried to compile one of my own. As I'm sure I probably missed a few here and there or maybe got a year wrong, I would love some input if anybody has anything to correct or add to the list, which looks something like this:

1988
Willie Hernandez
Jack Morris
Matt Nokes
Alan Trammell
Lou Whitaker

1989
Tom Brookens
Matt Nokes
Luis Salazar
Alan Trammell
Lou Whitaker
Alan Trammell - Jose Canseco "One On One" combo
Team Lineup

1990
Kirk Gibson (it must be noted that his figure is a Dodger, but his prominent card is of him with the Tigers)
Matt Nokes
Lou Whitaker

1991
Cecil Fielder

1992
Cecil Fielder
Cecil Fielder Headline Collection

1993
Travis Fryman

1994
Ty Cobb
Cecil Fielder
Tony Phillips

1995
Mickey Tettleton

1996
Hank Greenberg
Ty Cobb 12"

1997
Tony Clark

1998
Bobby Higginson

1999
Tony Clark

It's a testimony to how bad the '89 team was that Tom Brookens and Luis Salazar have figures. It's shame really that the Tigers were so bad during the era that SLU's were produced. I'd love to have one a Team Lineup of the 1984 or 2006 teams.

I really like the Team Lineup set from 1989 though. Where else can you find Gary Pettis, Alan Trammell, Chris Brown, Lou Whitaker, Jack Morris, Fred Lynn, Matt Nokes, Keith Moreland, and Chet Lemon all immortalized in one collectible of one of the worst Tiger teams in their history?

I think my personal favorite is the 1997 Tony Clark with him wearing the awful BP jersey from that era which is identical to the first Tigers jersey I ever picked up.

Researching these led to me looking up info about the subsequent McFarlane figures too, which I'll delve into in my next blog entry.

Anybody got any good SLU stories?

2011 Topps: Miguel Cabrera

2011-05-04T17:53:00.004-05:00

By my count Topps has released 5 issues so far this year:

1. Series 1
2. Opening Day
3. Heritage
4. Blister Pack Team Sets
5. Gypsy Queen

Pictured above are Miguel Cabrera cards from 3 of those 5. (This year's blister pack team sets also include separate sets of AL and NL All-Star teams, which is where the last card comes from)

I didn't even bother to include the parallels, which makes the case even worse.

So tell me again why it's a good thing that Topps is the exclusive manufacturer of baseball cards? Or why the hobby is going in the shitter due to lack of interest?

2011 Topps

2011-02-19T19:24:00.004-06:00

The 2011 Topps Series 1 cards are here and I have a few opinions and observations. (Don't I always?)

The Base Set: Absolutely beautiful! I thought 2010 was the best looking Topps set of the last 20 or so years and they have blown those away this year. I love the the Old English D over the baseball. I love that the elements of the design are very minimal, yet effective and easy to read. My only knock with these cards (hey, you know it as well as I do....) is the continued use of foil stamping on base cards. It adds nothing to the card. I think the cards would look even better if they replaced the foil with the contrasting team colors. I'll look forward to seeing what they do with the Opening Day series, which in my opinion ALWAYS looks better than the regular series base cards because of the lack of foil stamping. But again, major kudos for an otherwise outstanding design this year.

The Variations: Who doesn't love these? For years I have wondered why Topps doesn't just do these as a part of the regular set. To me, these are about the only cards worth chasing the last three years. Hmmm....maybe I just answered my own question. (I am a little more excited this year, as the Hank Greenberg card pictured is the first Tiger variation that I've added to my collection. I'm on the lookout for the Ty Cobb variation. I have 2010 variations of Walter Johnson and Steve Carlton, and a 2009 variation of Duke Snider if anybody is interested in a trade....) I also like that the baseball on the front of the card has a sepia/yellowed tint compared to the white baseball on the base cards. Subtle, and very nice.

The Parallels: The gold cards are gold cards. The diamond cards are nice and sparkly. That's about the best I can do. As a one year thing, the diamond cards are slightly interesting, but if they never return to future Topps sets I won't be heartbroken. They kinda remind me of the 1994 Topps parallels with the funky varnish pattern over the player photos. I'm not too sure about that Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull thing replacing the OED though.

The Inserts, Part I: I'm going to divide this up into two groups. Part 1 is going to be about the reprint cards. If I were to subtitle this even further, it would read something like: Enough With The Fucking Reprints Already. Let me preface this by saying that I have held true to the vow I made last year to not purchase any more packs of baseball cards. 2011 Series 1 has come and gone and I've managed to find all the base cards and almost all of the inserts at the local card show circuit. I found the two Tigers pictured for 25¢ each. No big deal.

I can muster a little love for the reprints that date back before 1980. I suspect that's why Topps continues to do this. But if I was still buying packs and trying to build sets (and I was not a Tigers fan) it would piss me off to no end to pull an insert card that's a reprint of a card that was issued just five years ago!!! Crap like this is exactly why I have given up trying to build sets (Ok, along with a lot of the other insert offerings.....and the fact that you have to buy $100 worth of packs to finish one series when you can spend $50 for a factory set in August.....but I digress......).

Giving credit where credit is due, I dig the "pre-Topps" older cards that have the designation with which I have no clue what it stands for (CMGR = Cards My Grandpa Rolled smokes with?). I'm not a huge fan though, mostly due to the abundance of Tobacco era related cards in the last few years anyways like T206, Turkey Red, Chicle, etc......but I can dig pulling cards of HOFers AS OPPOSED TO REPRINTS OF PLAYERS FROM SETS THAT ARE ONLY FIVE YEARS OLD!!!!! It may be time for me to grab another beer, and to move on from reprint cards......

The Inserts, Part II: There is nothing noteworthy here. Just a lot more bloated, uninteresting sets. Diamond Duos = Legendary Lineage. Nothing more, nothing less. At least Legendary Lineage sounded cool. As for Topps 60, I don't even really get the point? The random statistical categories assigned to these make these humorous at best. Miguel Cabrera: 2008 American League Home Runs? I would be much more interested if it read Miguel Cabrera: My Top Ten Favorite Brands of Scotch. Who knows, maybe that's in the works for Series 2.....

IN CONCLUSION.....I have nothing but high praise for the base cards. It's a magnificent looking set (even if the Tiger selections for Series 1 are pretty sketchy.....I know that by that end of the year there will be cards for everybody....). But Topps has missed the mark on all of the insert sets. Again.

PS: 2011 RobbyT Cards are in the hopper. I'm just waiting on some spring photos to start rolling in. I saw a really great looking mugshot this week to use as my first one.....

RIP Sparky

2010-11-05T18:16:00.005-05:00

I guess it's somehow fitting that the Skipper of the Tigers has passed away in the same year that the Voice of the Tigers passed on too. Sparky Anderson and Ernie Harwell were easily the most iconic Tigers of my youth and two of the game's great men. It's a shame that Sparky is not in the Hall Of Fame as a Tiger, especially since it stems from a tiff with ownership over refusing to manage the replacement players in the spring of 1995. Sparky was the only one in the game to have sense enough to refuse to be a part of that nonsense, and for that he should always be recognized. In fact Mr. Ilitch, it's far past time that a statue went up at Comerica Park to honor Sparky. This should have been done when he was well enough to have a day of his own. Do it now.

The images of Sparky are everlasting. Heaping praise on the next big prospect, only to ship him out three weeks into the season. Yelling at Kirk Gibson that Goose Gossage was not going to walk him before one of the most memorable HR in Tiger history. Talking to the media in that "aw shucks I don't know nuthin" persona he carried even though he was usually the smartest man in the room. It seems hard to believe he walked away from the game fifteen years ago and never once looked back. Baseball coulda used a lot of Sparky since then.

I have a couple of pretty cool pieces of Sparky memorabilia. One is a life sized cardboard cut-out of Sparky that was part of a Fantastic Sam's promotion from some time in the 80's. I picked it up at a card store in Memphis for $1. I used to have it set up in a two bedroom apartment I once lived in. The way it was placed in the room it was the first thing you saw when you exited the bathroom and I can't count the number of people who jumped back startled when they saw ol' Sparky standing there. I still laugh thinking about it.

I also have a game program from 1984 that I got Sparky to sign that summer at Tiger Stadium. My friends and I went to many games that summer and we would always sit in the lower deck right field bleachers so that we could cheer for Kirk Gibson. On several occasions we were the first ones in line when the gates opened, but there would always be this guy already sitting in the stands listening to a boom box and chatting with the players on both teams. (When I got older I figured out that the must have been the official Detroit dope dealer to the visiting A.L. players....)

This particular day was in the fall, when it was apparent that the Tigers would be making the postseason. The guy was badgering Gibby about getting him some Series tickets. Gibby told him he'd see what he could do. The guy then asked Gibby to get Sparky for him. Gibby put two fingers in his mouth and whistled loudly at the Tiger dugout and waved his arm. Immediately Sparky came trotting out to the right field fence. There were only a handful of us standing there as the guy begged Sparky for Series tickets. I walked up to the fence and held my program and pen out to Sparky. He grabbed it and signed it without ever looking up. He told the guy he'd see what he could do and then trotted back to the dugout. To this day I'm more amazed that hippie got Gibby to get Sparky to come out there and talk to him about Series tickets as anything I've ever seen in baseball.

My other favorite Sparky story is the one that never happened. Earlier that summer, my family from Arkansas came to visit us. My uncle grew up with Glenn Abbott, who was a Tiger pitcher at the time. My uncle was hoping to be able to say hi to Glenn at the game, which my 15 year old brain took to mean that I was going to get to go into the clubhouse before the game and meet Sparky and all the players. I had visions of getting a ball signed by all the players and getting to sit in Sparky's office with him and discuss the great summer of Tiger baseball that we were both enjoying.

Well, we went to the game that night and Abbott was nowhere to be found. We looked high and low for him and never saw him once. I sat and brooded for the rest of the night while we got swept in an old fashioned twi-night doubleheader against the California Angels. My dream of getting to meet Sparky was crushed. The next morning when I got up, my dad handed me the sports pages and showed me where Glenn Abbott had been released the day before we went to the game. And so it goes.....

Luckily I did get the autograph from him later that summer. But whenever I think about Sparky, I always think about the time we never got to meet and hang out. Hopefully, a long time from now of course, we will be able to spend that time together and catch up on baseball after all. We'll have a lot to discuss.

Rest In Peace, Sparky. You were the best. Bless you, boy.

1986 1987 1988 Topps Mini League Leaders

2010-10-25T18:35:00.003-05:00

The first of a two part series called "Things Topps tried to revive in the 80's that would not catch on until years later....."

Here a couple of months back I came across a website that had a lot of cheap wax boxes from the 80's. I remember messing with these a little bit way back when, but I don't think I ever collected full sets. Since the boxes are cheaper now than they were then I went ahead and picked up a box from each year. Hell, a box of these are about the same price as one rack pack of 2010 cards and these were chock full of HOF.

I'm on a quest to collect all of the 80's oddball stuff and these rank up there among the best. An obvious throwback to the '75 minis, as the name suggests this set is composed of the the statistical leaders of varying years. They are smallish sets (66 cards the first year, 77 cards the following two years) and Topps produced these for 5 years before giving up on them. As per usual with Topps, distribution within each box is awful. I got two of some guys and seven of some others. But I got a complete set out of each box and that's all I was after. Even though the design is minimal, I really think that's a positive thing coming from the 80's.

There's a mostly great representation of Tigers in these sets, Walt Terrell notwithstanding (Walt ranked tied for fourth in shutouts in 1985 with 3, hence his inclusion). Anyways.....

The 1986 Topps Mini-League Leaders Detroit Tigers:
13 Darrell Evans
14 Jack Morris
15 Lance Parrish
16 Walt Terrell

The 1987 Topps Mini-League Leaders Detroit Tigers:
53 Kirk Gibson
54 Willie Hernandez
55 Jack Morris
56 Alan Trammell

The 1988 Topps Mini-League Leaders Detroit Tigers:
10 Darrell Evans
11 Jack Morris
12 Alan Trammell
13 Lou Whitaker

Nowadays the tobacco card inserts that are roughly the same size are pretty popular. They are much harder to get of course, but these cards are available for a fraction of the cost and are pretty cool sets. It's a shame these never really caught on, but it seems like none of the oddball wax products that came out in the 80's were that popular.

2010 State Of The Blog Address

2010-10-04T18:02:00.006-05:00

It's been a slow summer blogging about Tigers cards. The Tigers collapse after the All-Star break put a damper on the baseball season, but it did not put a damper on collecting. Overall it was a good year of collecting, with many hits and just a few misses. I have fully incorporated something old and something new as collecting tools this summer, as well as made some decisions on what I will and won't be collecting from now on. Hopefully I can tie everything up into one well written essay on my card collecting experience in 2010, but chances are I will just end up with several empty beer cans. In either case that'll be good enough for me.....

First off: The death of the Topps base set. I finally finished off my 2010 Topps base set about a week after the factory sets hit the stores. Sadly, this will be the last year I put together the base set by hand. It just doesn't make sense anymore. I probably dropped a couple of bills on packs and boxes this year. I still came up about 20 cards short of the set, while ending up with a couple hundred crappy inserts that I don't give a damn about. I was able to flip most of the inserts on ebay, but the whole process is far too cumbersome to continue anymore. In 2011 and beyond, I will just wait until August and pick up a factory set for a fraction of the price that I spend on trying to put one together myself. (And this year I would've gotten a Strasburg RC, plus variations of Austin Jackson and Brennan Boesch. I may still end up buying that set before it's all over with....)

I have been pretty outspoken in my disdain for the plethora of inserts that riddle the Topps base set. But one cool discovery led to another, which led to me really never wanting to pick up a pack of Topps base cards again. The local card show circuit.

I found a cool website this summer that lists quite a few card shows across the country by state. It turns out that I live about 10 minutes away from both Bloomingdale and Schaumburg, which between the two have a show almost every Sunday afternoon. Since I found the link, I have been to just about every one of them. They're not huge, ranging anywhere from 5 to 15 dealers a show, but I've come to know a few of the dealers from my frequent attendance and it's been fun to actually talk to guys who do this as a weekend hobby.

The first show I attended was a pretty good sized one. It was there that I noticed at least a half dozen tables covered with Topps base cards and inserts. At almost every table I saw the inserts weren't priced any higher than the base cards (10¢ each). It completely makes sense since there are so many inserts. The thing I really like about it though is that if there is ever a cool insert set that I like, I can likely pick it up for next to nothing.

Given that I have come to loathe inserts, it only reasons that this year Topps would put out an insert set that is totally cool, and that's the Vintage Legends. They have taken 25 HOF players and put them on cards from years that they weren't originally on. (The Ty Cobb pictured above, Nolan Ryan on a '52, George Sisler on an '88, Jackie Robinson on a '76, etc.) The concept is not new by any means, but these look outstanding, and I was able to get almost all of them for 10¢ each.

I was able to finish my set of Vintage Legends from a website I found called Sportlots. I'm sure this is not new to a lot of people, but for set builders and team collectors like me, it is solid gold! I have absolutely fallen in love with this site for having the hard to find commons needed to finish my old sets. There must be millions of cards listed with the majority of them selling for 18¢ each. I am surprised at the quality of cards you can get for that price. I pretty much assembled all the base cards for 2006 and 2007 Topps Heritage Tigers for that price. I finished out the Vintage Legends set as well. And....I finished out a set that I never thought I would.....

2010 Topps Heritage! (Well, sorta.....) This was my first year to try and put a Topps Heritage set together. I was still 100 something cards short when I hit the card show circuit, but within a month I'd completed the base set. (There's the catch...) I do however have 40 something of the 75 SP cards and every time I place an order on Sportlots I try and pick up one or two more. Hopefully I can finish off the entire set before the 2011 cards come out next year.

I've really enjoyed collecting Heritage this year and I plan on this being the set that I will collect by hand going forward. It's always the best looking set of the year, it's not overloaded with lousy insert cards, for the most part the insert cards included are ok, and it's not a huge set to put together vs. the cost involved to assemble it. I probably have spent three bills to get what I have, but it sure seems like I have a lot more to show for it than I do with the Topps base set.

As for the rest of it.....it's been a slow summer for new stuff. The Allen & Ginter and T206 cards do nothing for me. Hell, they look like the same cards every year. Same with Finest. The National Chicle cards were ok, but nothing to write home about. I dig the Pro Debut cards (where the hell is the Jacob Turner card?) but their player selection is atrocious. The only Tiger with a remote chance of being something someday is Casper Wells, and he's already been featured on a Bowman card. I sort of get the feeling that this set is Bowman's illegitimate brother, primarily made up of the leftover minor leaguers who weren't good enough for inclusion in Bowman.

Speaking of Bowman, I have noticed a trend that really pisses me off, has pissed me off for some time, and yet nobody has been able to give me a reasonable explanation for it. The RC logo. I have noticed many dealers selling cards with the RC logo at a premium, despite that fact that none of these cards are true rookie cards!!! I refuse to pay $1 for an 2010 Austin Jackson RC that is not a RC. Even worse is asking a dealer why it's priced more and he looks you in the face and tells you it's a RC. C'mon guys. Let's cut it with this stupid fucking logo that is nothing more than a tool for card buyers to get ripped off.

As for Upper Deck, I can't say I will miss their mediocre product, but I dug last year's O-Pee-Chee and I'm disappointed that it won't be continued. I hate that Topps has the monopoly on the baseball card market, but if they continue like they did this year of only releasing a product every 4-6 week I could learn to live with it.

I am anxiously awaiting the release of the Updates & Highlights series this month. I'm looking forward to the cards of Boesch, Rhymes, Wells, Oliver, Valverde, Raburn, Kelly, St. Pierre, Peralta, Galarraga, and Avila, just to name a few.

One last note before I wrap it up. I spent a whole week this summer dividing up about 15,000 doubles into teams, so if there are any team collectors out there looking to deal, please drop me a line. I broke up several factory sets to take Tigers cards out of, so there are many complete team sets of stuff included.

Happy collecting everybody! (Only 4 empty beer cans......)

Will The Real Brennan Boesch RC Please Stand Up?

2010-07-26T18:02:00.005-05:00

Go to ebay and type in "Brennan Boesch RC" to see what pops up. There seem to be three different cards that make up the majority of the search results, which leads me to one obvious question: Why is a 2008 card listed as his RC by so many people when there are TWO 2007 cards of Boesch? To top it off, all three cards are Bowman cards. Are people that desperate to make a few bucks that they'll flat out lie to do it? Hell, who am I kidding.......

WARNING: DISHONEST BRENNAN BOESCH RC BELOW!!!

Of the two remaining candidates, there is a HUGE oddity with one of them. Boesch is pictured wearing a Padres uniform. Huh? Boesch has never suited up for the Padres. It's readily apparent that this is a Topps Photoshop job, but why? And why the Padres? As far as I can tell there is no corrected version/variation. I don't get it. I'd love to hear from somebody who knows. This would explain why it's not in the team set I bought back in 2007

Based on the above, I'm going with the 2007 Bowman Heritage as Boesch's RC (pictured at the top). Actually, my basis is on the fact that it's the only one of the three I already own......

Armando Galarraga

2010-06-04T17:01:00.007-05:00

Everybody has seen it, everybody has formed an opinion about it, and most everybody has moved on from it. For the record, my two cents are that no matter what MLB/Bum Selig decide to call it (or not call it), I don't think there is a Tiger fan around that doesn't consider it a 28 out perfect game and that's good enough for me. So many perfect games have been forgotten over time, but this will live up there with Don Larsen and Harvey Haddix as one of the most memorable ones ever, as it should be. Congrats Armando!!!

Since AG was the Tiger story of the week (it's a shame Austin Jackson's catch in the 9th was lost in all the hubbub....), I thought it would be fun to showcase a few of his memorable cards as a Tiger, as well as show off a couple of his 2010 RobbyT cards as well (if there is one thing we don't lack for around here it's self-promotion......)

Easily the biggest one in my collection would be the 2008 Topps Update & Highlights jersey card insert. I just picked up this card in the last year when Meijer was having their blow out sale on these blasters and was lucky enough to get it as one of the inserts.

Two others of note are his card #50 from the 55 card Detroit Tigers special edition team set and a Bowman Gold card, both from 2008 as well. I'm leery to call these his RCs despite the designation on the front of the cards, simply because anybody in the know realizes that designation doesn't mean shit most of the time.

As luck would have it I got to see AG pitch a couple of weeks ago at Dodger Stadium (his only loss so far this year) and he's scheduled to pitch in Chicago next week a game that I'll be attending. Here's a pic I took at the game in L.A.

Kudos to AG on one of the most amazing games pitched in baseball history!

1981 Topps Stickers

2010-06-02T17:41:00.005-05:00

I know I've been slacking lately, so thanks to everybody who sent emails asking where I've been. I was kind of squatting here and there for a bit before heading out west the last week to follow the Tigers in Oakland, Los Angeles, and Seattle. I'm back home now and have a permanent residence, so things should be picking back up here at DTCAS.

I've been out of the card loop for a few months, but quick checks in Target and Meijer this past weekend show that I haven't missed anything. While unpacking boxes this weekend I found a few things that I picked up recently and hadn't had a chance to blog about, so I'll start with these.

A couple of months ago I found an entire set of 1981 Topps Stickers on ebay for around $10. I'm sure if you do the math for inflation I got the set for less than what a handful of packs cost back then (20¢ if memory serves me well, maybe 15¢). They have held up well (the look like little minis of the SSPC sets of the 70's) and the set is chock full of HOF.

The list of Tigers featured is interesting. The absence of Lou Whitaker is glaring given he had just won ROY two years earlier, but when you look at the stats none of the featured players had worse seasons in 1980. Hell, if anybody has a beef it's Richie Hebner or Tom Brookens, who arguably had better years than Rick Peters or Alan Trammell.

The 1981 Topps Stickers Detroit Tigers:
73 Lance Parrish
74 Steve Kemp
75 Alan Trammell
76 Champ Summers
77 Rick Peters
78 Kirk Gibson
79 Johnny Wockenfuss
80 Jack Morris

I've been on a bit of the sticker binge the last year or two and I have a question for anybody who collects them. How do you display them? I can't find any vinyl pages that come close to fitting the size (they won't stay put in a 9-pocket page). I guess at no more than $10 a set I could just buy the old sticker book and stick them in there, but that sort of defeats the purpose.

Or does it?

April in the D

2010-04-25T15:11:00.006-05:00

Lot of goings ons around here lately and there is nothing like an afternoon of watching Rick Porcello pitch BP to the Texas Rangers to get me in the mood to catch everybody up. These are in no particular order.....

1. Made a trip up to Milwaukee to catch the Tigers last official Spring Training appearance. Yeah, the one where they gave up four runs in the bottom of the 9th to lose to the Brewers, 13-12. It was a great trip regardless. All seats were $10, first come first served, and I ended up sitting about 10-12 rows behind the Tigers dugout. There's a pic of Zumaya from my seats.

2. Made a trip over to Detroit to catch the Tigers play the Indians the first Saturday of the season. Bonderman looked fantastic that afternoon and the Tigers won 4-2 on an absolutely beautiful day. The weather was so nice I ended up getting a sunburn! This pic is the last out of the game.

3. I picked up an overpriced Topps team set at Comerica Park. I know you can get these at Meijer or Target for half of what you pay in the park, but I was already there, it was already there......what the hell. $4 is not going to break my budget. HOWEVER, I did end up stopping in Meijer on the way back to see if they had any caps or other Tiger stuff that I couldn't live without, and lo and behold there were the team sets. With a difference though. It looks like the fancy, high priced set you get at the park has a FREE COLLECTOR CASE (they bolded it first, not me....) as opposed to the retail version which does not.

So now I have two of them. Which is not a bad thing. I've been picking up these little team sets all over the country for the last 3 years and I have them in their own binder. I'll put one set in there and the other one in my 2010 Tigers binder. It does make me wonder though why there are two different types. Even though I can't put my finger on it, I'm sure Topps is screwing somebody over. I always am.....

4. I was in Target yesterday, and I've noticed plenty of times those bricks of cards that you can get for $5 that guarantee there are at least $10 worth of cards inside, or something like that. I saw that there was one that had two bricks, half filled with cards and half filled with Topps coins. I grabbed on of those, and a couple of the $4 "mixed bag" blister packs that make the same claim.

It made for some fun opening to get home and see what all was in those grab bags. I ended up with a complete '90 Topps/Kmart Superstars set (33 cards, no Tigers), 60 '90 Topps coins (interestingly enough, I got exactly two each of thirty different coins, including two of Alan Trammell), 3 rack packs of '89 Topps, 1 rack pack of '87 Topps, an '81 Fleer Dale Murphy, a '90 Post Cereal Nolan Ryan, and a some other crap. (Like a '95 Pinnacle Tony Phillips) It was certainly more fun than shelling out the same amount of $$$ for a few rack packs of Topps Heritage.

Oh well, not much else going on around here lately. I nabbed '81 & '82 Topps stickers sets off ebay a few weeks ago. Come to think of it, that'll give me something to discuss later on this week.

2010 Topps Heritage and Other Random Musings.....

2010-03-29T18:20:00.004-05:00

I swore I was not going to try and build a 2010 Topps Heritage set.....and it turns out I am partially right. I'm not going to try anymore.....it's a shame too, because I think this is without a doubt the best looking Heritage set that has been released done so far.

Let me start at the beginning. Back when the rack packs first came out I noticed that you could see through the packaging much like the regular Topps rack packs. You can clearly see three of the four cards in the packs. One day while cherry picking for Tigers I noticed a serial number on the back of one of the cards on the bottom side of the pack. I bought it, and sure enough it was a chrome card.

Not long after I noticed that you can clearly see a SP card in a pack, as it is always the last card in a pack and the white card stock is easily distinguishable from the gray card stock. I started going around to area Targets and Meijers just buying the packs that I could see SP or chrome cards in. In the last two weeks, I've picked up a total of 41 SP cards, 7 chrome, and 3 chrome refractor cards just by inspecting the back of the packs.

Even with the SP cards (37 different, 4 doubles), I'm still 38 SP cards short and about 80 base cards short of a 500 card set. Now I've bought upwards of 50 packs at $5 a pack, yet I don't even have 80% of the set even though I've got over 700+ cards total. With this I've decided that this was a foolish endeavor and that I'm not going to try and finish this set by buying any more packs.

I went on ebay to see if it would be worth my while to try and sell off what I had to recoup my losses and call it a nice, but costly lesson learned. I learned a lesson all right. None of these cards are selling for all that much on ebay. You can get the base set of 1-425 for roughly $40. The SP sell for around $2-$3 each if you package them in a lot big enough that the shipping doesn't eat you up. I see all kinds of chrome and refractor cards not even selling for a $1 because of the $2-$3 shipping cost involved. So for less than what I've got in it now, I could've had the entire set already. I wouldn't even come close to recouping what I've spent.

So really, what is the point of buying packs of anything nowadays? This is the second Topps issue this year that I have thrown some major cash into while trying to put together a set the old fashioned way. (I know, fool me twice.....the old fashioned finger banging is all I got) I really am done with building sets from now on. If I see something I like I'll just wait for it to hit ebay and let some other sucker waste his/her money putting it together.

On the flip side, it was a great find at Meijer that helped me come to this conclusion. They had their 2009 Topps factory sets, which retailed for $60 last year, marked down to $50. On top of that they were having a 20% off all cards sale which brought the price down to $40. Since I boycotted buying packs in '09, I picked up a set. It had one of the cool Mickey Mantle chrome reprints ('57) as well as a pack of five Rookie Card variations that are exclusive to factory sets. I opened the set when I got home and one of them was a Rick Porcello. Not a bad deal for $40 IMO. That's about the price of eight rack packs or 4 jumbo packs, which would have only given me around 250 cards roughly.

I've noticed a trend regarding Topps cards. The longer you are willing to wait the cheaper you can get them. I've seen 2008 factory sets for $24. There were hobby boxes of 2006 and 2007 cards for $19. What incentive does a set builder have to even fool with it anymore unless you want to wait for three of four years to try and do so?

In conclusion, I've got a ton of Heritage doubles if anybody is interested in trading. I'm going to hold onto the SP cards, but if anybody is up for a swap of doubles drop me a line.

Card Show, Day 2

2010-03-20T19:19:00.008-05:00

With the weather absolutely crappy here in Chicago today, I decided to go back to the card show and spend the day checking out all the booths that I didn't pay much attention too last night. I pretty much shopped out of the $1 bins all day, and came away with a pretty nice haul.

My absolute best find of the day belongs to Lou Whitaker again. I have never even seen a '93 Topps Finest until I found this one in a $1 bin. I thank the card grading revolution for this find. It's off-center enough that I can see why it would be shunned, but given the fact that these things are impossible to find I'd think it would sell for more than a $1. No complaints here that it didn't!

I found some SSPC cards that I'd never seen before either. I've never done a lot of research into these, but the copyright date on the back reads 1975, so I'm going to assume for now that these are from 1975. I got cards of Ralph Houk, John Hiller, Ben Oglivie, and Gene Michael, who I never knew played for the Tigers before. I love the "no design" design, but the photos are atrocious. They all look like mug shots, except in color!

I knocked out all but one card in my '82 Fleer team set. (The checklist card) Like '83 Fleer, I collected a bunch of these as a kid to be missing so many of them. Raise your hand if you think that Jack Morris card might rank as one of the worst looking cards of all time. Exactly what were they trying to get in the frame there?

I snagged this Cobb HOF Heroes card thinking it was the real one, not noticing that it was a reprint from a 2003 Donruss set. Hell, with the glossy finish and thick card stock, this card is actually much nicer than the original.

I didn't know that Upper Deck made a set based on the 2008 Olympics. I found this card of Tiger phenom Jacob Turner. I haven't seen any other Turner cards yet. Would this one be considered his rookie?

The day was not all fun and games though. I learned a very valuable lesson today while digging through the $1 bins. You know that warm, tingly feeling you get when you open a pack of cards and lo and behold there is a chrome insert inside? Or better yet, a refractor, or x-fractor, or blue border, or black border, etc.? And the feeling that you've pulled something really cool out of the pack?

Well I no longer have that feeling after today. Eventually EVERY SINGLE ONE of those cards will make it to the $1 bin. Ok, maybe not every single one, but damn near most of them. I probably only searched a tenth of all the $1 bins that were there today and came away with 22 different Tigers refractors. Everybody ranging from Kyle Sleeth and Mike Maroth to Justin Verlander and Miguel Cabrera. I found 6 different '09 Bowman Chrome and 5 different '07 Topps Chrome. Once upon a time these things were the cat's meow. Now they've gone the way of the jersey card and autographed card. Ho-hum.

It's been a great two days of collecting. Usually I only hit the shows on the first night but from now on I'm going to plan a second day back to dig through all the $1 boxes to see what other Tiger treasures I can dig up. Now when is that next show?!?!

Card Show Last Night!

2010-03-20T05:39:00.008-05:00

Last night I went to the Sun-Times Card Show in Rosemont. I've been to enough of these things in the last 2+ years that I've gotten to know a handful of dealers who are some good guys, so it's always fun to visit and say hello, and then dive into searching for Tigers cards! Last night was a rousing success!!!

I picked up 21 '60 Topps Tigers cards, bringing me 5 short of finishing the team set. I'm not really familiar with the gray back vs. white back story, but I did notice that some players had both. Does anybody know if there's a checklist out there detailing which ones are which?

I found the last two cards I needed to finish the '69 team set, Dick McAuliffe and and Bill Freehan. At 42 cards, this has to be one of the largest Tiger team sets ever (I'm including the All-Star cards, World Series cards, League Leaders cards, etc.) I'm going to guess that maybe the 2007 Topps set is larger. (Which should not qualify since they made two cards of Gary Sheffield and Mike Rabelo.....)

I found 12 of the '70 cards, including nice ones of Willie Horton, Norm Cash, and Mickey Stanley. I'm only 6 short of that set now, but one of them is a Kaline high number. I'll be poking around ebay for that one.

I found a few more cards from the 70's that I needed, with the highlight of the night being the '78 Lou Whitaker RC to finish out that set. This was the first year I collected cards so it's pretty cool to finally finish this set with one of my all-time favorite Tigers.

Rounding out the vintage edition of the night were a handful of early 80's cards including '81 Topps and '82 Topps of Jack Morris and a bunch of '83 Fleer including a Howard Johnson RC. I collected a ton of '83 Fleer when I was a kid and I'm amazed that I'm missing so many of these. Even after last night I'm still 6 cards short.

That was it for the older cards. By my count I'm only about 50 cards away from finishing all my 70's Tigers sets, with the bulk being '71 and '72. Oh well, that'll give me something to shoot for next time!

2010 RobbyT Cards: Brent Dlugach & Ryan Strieby

2010-03-14T22:06:00.002-05:00

Found a couple more. Brent and I went to college together. I'm pretty sure he's the only U of Memphis Tiger to ever play for the Detroit Tigers.

I'm pretty sure Ryan Strieby is not.....

2010 RobbyT Cards: Jacob Turner & Phil Dumatrait

2010-03-14T21:32:00.003-05:00

A couple more from the weekend. I drafted Turner today in my keeper league. I think I'm in love. I haven't even seen a Bowman card from this guy yet.

File Dumatrait under one and done......

1960 Topps Al Kaline

2010-03-12T23:35:00.003-06:00

So I picked this nice little card up off ebay this past week. Fantastic condition, I think I paid around $25 for it, which was a steal for me. But when it arrived I noticed something odd about it.

There are little red marks in the upper left corner that I know from my experience in printing are a flaw from the pre-press cutting a mask for the red background. Is this common with this card, or was this an error that was corrected later in the run? It's not enough to bother me in the slightest, but as someone who has cut enough background masks in my day I'm really curious if this is how all the '60 Kaline cards are. Are there other cards like this in the set?

Back in the old days you would cut a window out of a vinyl mask for each image to appear on the printed piece. On anything that formed a corner, if you extended the mask too far out your exacto blade would leave a tiny cut line like the one seen in the pic above. Now it's all done on the Mac. No cut marks. The process used to be called four-color stripping (four colors because that's how many inks are used, and stripping because in the real old days you used to strip the emulsion off the film before you burned printing plates), and yours truly was a stripper for many years.....

Knowing that I know what this is is actually pretty cool.....next time I'll give a little lesson in trapping.....

2010 RobbyT Cards: Wilkin Ramirez

2010-03-11T20:53:00.003-06:00

I'm beginning to think he's never going to make it with the Tigers.

I didn't realize that this was the third year I made one of his cards.

2010 RobbyT Cards 3-10-10

2010-03-10T19:13:00.004-06:00

Here are the latest from sunny FLA.

Don Kelly has been having a nice spring so far.

These are for you Mr. DeArmond.

I have to stay on the ball in Spring Training to get photos of some of these cats because they may not be seen in a Tigers uniform again all season. I hope Mr. Sborz is one of those fellows.....

2010 RobbyT Cards Are Here!

2010-03-08T21:47:00.003-06:00

It's been a harrowing night around here, as a roofer fell through my ceiling this afternoon, but the cards are finally signed off on and I'm looking forward to getting started and getting more out as the 2010 Championship Season gets underway!!!

2010 Topps Heritage Bonanza

2010-03-03T19:07:00.007-06:00

Target now has Heritage rack packs. At $5 a pack for 14 cards I don't see myself picking up too many of these. However, since you can easily read 3 of the 4 cards showing, I went through the dozen or so packs that were there and found three packs with Verlander's name showing and one pack with Granderson's and I bought those 4 packs.

There were a total of 8 Tigers in the packs, and the Granderson was a chrome card. There also were cards of Edwin Jackson in his new threads and Johnny Damon in his old ones.

I've posted pics of most of the Tigers cards. I got two cards of both Dlugach and Marcus Thames.

That Kaline card is pretty damn sweet. I probably sat in one of those seats at one time or another in the mid-80's cheering for Kirk Gibson.

As usual, I think this will be the coolest set of the year, but between the price and all the frigging variations and short prints it won't be one that I'll be trying to put together. I usually end up with around 50 to 100 or so Heritage cards from each year that I keep in a binder all to themselves. I think of all the Heritage sets so far I'd rank these up there with '59 and '57 sets.

One suggestion I would make to Topps. PLEASE LEAVE THE HISTORY LESSON CARDS OUT OF YOUR SETS!!! There's nothing worse than pulling an insert card commemorating the passing of the 23rd amendment (not that I am against Washington D.C. getting voting rights or anything). Well ok, I lied. There is something worse than pulling one of these cards......can you guess what it is?

You got it. Two of those fuckers.....

Awesome Day

2010-02-27T14:45:00.008-06:00

With little to do today, I googled and located a couple of card shops in the area. I thought it would be a nice way to kill an hour after lunch and if I was lucky maybe pick up a card or two. Instead I ended up with a treasure trove of a couple of hundred Tigers cards. All for around $25. I wish every Saturday afternoon was this much fun!

The first shop I went to was a tiny place that looked like they did more business selling coins than cards. There was a little baseball section in the back corner. I looked at a few singles in the case without spotting any Tigers. There was a box labeled "superstars" that I thumbed through without finding anything either until I got to the very end of the box. There were two mint condition '66 Topps cards of the A.L. Home Run Leaders (Norm Cash & Willie Horton) and the A. L. Strikeout Leaders (Mickey Lolich & Denny McLain). As you can see these cards are in beautiful shape and were only $2 each!

As I was walking to checkout I started chatting with the owner and I told him that I collected Tigers stuff. He said he had a bunch of Starting Lineup figures so I looked those over too. Lo and behold if there wasn't a Tony Phillips in the bunch! (I get WAY more excitement from finding cards/memorabilia of mediocre Tigers than I ever do from the stars...) I've probably got six or eight SLU's but I did not have a Phillips. For only $4 I felt like I was stealing it. So needless to say, the visit to shop #1 was a success!

On to shop #2 which had a much bigger card selection. There were two 5,000 count boxes of common cards on the counter. Two hours later I'd picked out close to 200 cards. First off I found the two cards I needed to finish my Topps Series 1 set as well as the two cards I needed to finish my 2010 Topps Series 1 Tigers team set. I also picked out 6 refractor cards, a couple of Ty Cobb cards, and the rest were commons and stars from '80 through '10.

The owner and I were chit-chatting and he told me that the '10 Heritage cards were out. He knew I was looking for Tigers so he went through the few packs he had already opened and gave me cards of Brandon Inge, Magglio Ordonez, and Jarrod Washburn. I bought three packs and pulled a Ty Cobb from one of them (along with chrome cards of Jeter and Lincecum that I'll offer up for trade....) Heritage is by far the best card release each year. It's such a shame Topps screws it up with the SP and variations, but I'm not going to let them rain on my fun afternoon.

After I was done the owner informed me that he had SEVERAL HUNDRED THOUSAND commons in boxes if I wanted to go through those too! He said he had cards going all the way back to the 60's and that I was welcome to come up anytime I liked and he would set me up with a table and chair and let me go through them to my heart's content. I told him he had a deal!

Between today's haul and the package I received from dayf last week (thanks again!) I've got a whole night ahead of me sorting Tigers cards into albums and and updating my checklists. I'll also be watching the lot of 100 2010 Topps inserts I put up on ebay last week as it struggles to climb to $2.

It wasn't a perfect day though. I pulled a photoshopped Heritage card of Placido Polanco which made my heart sink a little bit. Poli was my favorite Tiger during his time in Detroit stemming from seeing him hit a HR at a AA game that I went to with my grandfather. I didn't get to know my grandfather until late in his life and it turned out he was as big of a baseball fan as I was. I followed Poli's career with the Cards and Phils and thought it was pretty awesome when he came to the Tigers. I still think of my grandfather when I think of Polanco and seeing that card today wasn't any different. Thanks for the great memories Poli and good luck with the Phils.

Well, I think it's about time to crack open a beer, turn on some 80's tunes, and get to sorting!

2010 Topps Opening Day: Max Scherzer

2010-02-24T18:41:00.005-06:00

So I was in Target today.......(for the record, I am in Target almost everyday. They sell beer and baseball cards and are not owned by crooked people from Arkansas....)

I picked up a handful of packs and got this bitchin' Max Scherzer parallel/photoshop card. I'm looking forward to watching Scherzer in the OED this summer, especially after he gets to spend the spring with Rick Knapp.

Speaking of spring there is like a 100% chance I'll have a 2010 RobbyT card or two posted to the blog this weekend. Time for me to shut up about Topps and do it my ownself!

The only other three cards I got of note were Brandon Inge, Fredbird, and the Phillie Phanatic. I'd swap both of those mascot cards for a Paws in a heartbeat. Shoot, the mascot cards are about the only thing going for this set. I may try and collect them all.

2010 Topps Opening Day: Observations on a Sunday afternoon

2010-02-21T15:49:00.004-06:00

2010 Opening Day cards have hit Target. As this is not a set I'm going to get to worked up over trying to finish, here are some observations I made after opening a handful of packs today:

1. These don't look much different from the base Topps set. No foil stamping of the player's name and the addition of the OD logo are the only differences I see. I never have understood why Topps doesn't have a totally different design for these. (Well actually, I think I have an idea, but I'll hold off for now.....) it's be nice to see them use these to trot out some sort of design they might have used for a Bazooka or a Topps Total issue.

2. Seven cards for a $1. Six base cards and one insert per pack. No inserts to get excited about. One insert set seems to be all the team mascots. Another are parallels with a metallic greenish/blue border that are very reminiscent of '92 Fleer. God those were awful.

3. Several photoshop jobs in the packs I got. Granderson, Halladay, and Figgins. All are very well done. But there will always be a little part of me sad to see air-brushing go the way of bubble gum.

4. The first pack I opened, the first card was Porcello. I only need two cards to finish my Topps base set and this is one of them. It doesn't really mean anything, but I observed it, therefore I'm writing about it. Plus I needed more time to ponder #5.

5. I don't understand why Topps advertises these as a "Fun, easy-to-collect, celebratory brand attracts kids early in the MLB season." (from the MLB website, Topps doesn't appear to have updated their web site in months...)

They don't look any different than the base set. They aren't really any cheaper than the base cards (10 packs of these @ $1 X 7 cards per pack = 70 cards for $10 vs. 5 packs of the base cards @ $2 x 12 cards per pack = 60 cards for $10, 64 if you buy rack packs).

The inserts certainly aren't any cooler. I can't imagine too many kids of any age who would rather pull an insert card of Billy The Marlin instead of Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantle.....if anything kids are way more likely to be interested in collecting cards that are worth money.....I know, I used to be one.....

So what it the reason for the marketing ploy? The only thing that I can see that makes this set attractive is that with only 220 cards in it, one should be able to collect the entire set for under $50.

Maybe I'm missing the boat, but it seems to me that they are marketing these towards an unknowing father or mother who think they're getting junior something on the cheap that he would love, when that's really not the case at all. All a part of Topps plan to return collecting to the kids, I'm sure.....

Oh well, I'll continue to buy a pack or two here and there trying to get the Tigers. If I see any kids buying any I'll be sure to mention it.

2010 Topps: The disappointment continues

2010-02-17T19:12:00.003-06:00

So here's where I stand today. I've added up all the receipts from my purchase of 2010 Topps and it comes to around $250. I bought six blasters from Target and the rest have been rack packs.

I'm still 16 cards short from completing the base set. I can't even begin to describe in words how ridiculous this is. I'm not even missing anybody good. (The best player on the list is Adam Dunn. Second is Francisco Cordero.) I've purchased about 900 cards by my rough estimate and I'm still missing 16 cards from a 330 card base set. I swore in 2007 that I would never do this again. But here I am again.

Luckily, I flipped a Rickey Henderson variation and 85 insert cards on ebay and spent the $$$ on '66, '67, & '71 cards of Al Kaline, as well as a '67 Bengal Busters card. I've still got about $5 left in my paypal account. I've also got a nice trade lined up with a fellow blogger that I'll comment on when the deal is finally consummated. This weekend I listed the 60 Target Throwback cards and the 12 Million Card Giveaway cards that I had laying around. It looks like I'll do well enough with those to grab another 3-4 Kaline cards from the early '60's, which is what I should have done with my money all along.

I bought 4 more packs today, peeking through the wrappers to try and get some of the guys I was missing from my set. I was able to get about 50 cards that I was missing, plus one more MCG game card that I just HAD to redeem to see what all the fuss is about. I'm now the lucky owner of a '93 Andy Benes card (of which I already own). Whoo-boy.....

At this point, I don't know if I'll even bother trying to finish the 2010 set. Once again Topps has sucked all the joy I have out of collecting and building a set.

I'm interested to see how this all plays out in the hobby. Topps is royally screwing over the last of old school set builders like myself. Meanwhile folks are lining up at the trough to get the game cards, hoping for the grand prize of a '52 set, while more likely to end up with a '90s common card.

Is this really where collectors wanted to see the hobby go, or has collecting passed me by? I'm really hard pressed to think of a reason why I should continue throwing my money away. I'd love to hear others take on the state of the hobby.

2010 Upper Deck: Genius?

2010-02-08T18:16:00.003-06:00

I stopped in Target on my lunch break today to pick up a 12 pack of Diet Mountain Dew and while I was there I mosied over to the cards aisle with the intent of picking up a few packs of Topps when I saw that the Upper Deck cards were finally out. They had blasters and rack packs, and not wanting to deal with a bunch of unwanted inserts, I picked up a handful of the racks. I was as curious as anyone else to see how they skirted the deal with Topps, and boy was I surprised.

In a move of genius, it looks like Upper Deck managed to get around the logo issue by selecting some very well positioned photos. It looks like they are forbidden to use the team names too, as all mention of of any teams is done so by the city they play in and not the team they play for.

According to Topps website, "Topps will have exclusivity on MLB, Jewel Event (?), and club trademarks, logos, and other intellectual property, for use on baseball cards, stickers, and certain other products categories featuring MLB players. Topps' exclusivity begins on January 1, 2010."

While Upper Deck did a great job of picking photos that obscured most of those things mentioned, not all of them do, so it will be interesting to see what merit Topps' lawsuit has. (You can clearly see the logo on Magglio's helmet). On the majority of cards where you can see the front of the players' uniforms, the logos on the jerseys are mostly blocked by the players arms. Also most of the caps were caught at an angle where you can only see the logo partially.

Lawsuit or not, kudos to Upper Deck for not caving in to what is an asinine move on the part of Bud Selig to run them out of business. I love the Porcello card where you can read the entire name and number on his uniform. I would love to see an entire set with the photos framed that way. Whoever was doing the job of designing these did a great job. The small head shots more than make up for some of the photos where you don't get the entire face of the player.

As for Topps' beef with Upper Deck, I say fuck 'em. They've been violating the rookie card rule ever since it started by including inserts of prospects in their Bowman sets long before they reach the major leagues. Now Upper Deck has come back and decided to play hard and loose with the rules too.

It's about time.

2010 Topps - Ready To Trade Inserts?

2010-01-28T19:31:00.005-06:00

I swung by the Target near where I live tonight after work to pick up a few groceries, and lo and behold if they didn't have 2010 Topps at that one too! Knowing that I need to curb spending on these until the jumbo hobby packs come out next week, I only picked up one blaster and 5 of the regular packs.

I opened the first regular pack and the two inserts inside were a Ty Cobb Red Back and an Edwin Jackson Turkey Red. Yippie! I did ok in the blaster, getting a Throwback card of Wilken Ramirez and base cards of Aubrey Huff and the AL Wins Leaders with Verlander.

I've accumulated a nice collection of inserts that I'd be willing to deal for Tigers insert cards if anybody out there is interested.

I've got patch cards of Babe Ruth, Bob Gibson, and Evan Longoria. I would likely only swap these for patch cards. The rest of the inserts I'm pretty open to mixing and matching.

I've got 40 throwback cards including Tom Seaver Franchise History, Ichiro, and AL league leaders for HR and RBI.

I've got 4 of the Cards Your Mother Threw Out with the original backs: Jackie Robinson, Carl Yastrzemski, Thurman Munson, and Paul Molitor.

I've got quite a few of the regular CYMTO, a well as plenty of other inserts like Turkey Red, Legendary Lineage, When They Were Young, History Of The Game, Tales Of The Game, and Peak Performance. I've also got a gold card of Jason Bay.

I'm pretty much only looking for Tigers inserts in return, but I'd be willing to listen if I was wowed with a nice sized lot of base cards. If any team collectors are interested, drop me a line and tell me what team you collect and I'll be glad to post a list.

2010 Topps

2010-01-27T19:03:00.004-06:00

I swore I wasn't going to do this anymore. I knew I was just setting myself up for getting mad. I saw the new packs of 2010 Topps in Target the other day and after staring at them for a couple of minutes was able to walk away without buying a pack.

I swore I wasn't going to do this anymore. I was walking around Target today after lunch. (I go to Target a lot....) I saw the new blasters of 2010 Topps. I picked up a box to see how many cards were inside and noticed on the side of the box that each box contained one patch card. Having never owned a patch card, and really jonesing to open some packs of cards, I knuckled under and bought a blaster.

I opened the box while sitting in my car in the Target parking lot. I dumped the packs out, found the pack that had the patch card, opened it up, and...and...and.....HOLY FREAKING MOTHER OF ALL THINGS HOLY! AN AL KALINE PATCH CARD.

Right then I knew that I was going to let Topps off easy this year. This is one of the sweetest relic cards in my collection. But then I started opening the other packs....and....and...and...

Well, nothing worth writing in all caps about, but this is a really nice product. The base cards look great and there are some great inserts too. So here's my 2¢ on 2010 Topps. (Actually my $60. I went back to Target after work and picked up two more blasters.)

THE GOOD

1. This is easily my favorite Topps design since 1991. Not coincidentally both feature the team logo prominently on the card. After years of flat designs, these cards pop. Very clean and colorful. I likey.

2. There are some honking cool inserts, the best of which are the parallels printed on the same stock as the Heritage cards. (Check out the old Topps logo on these. Nice.) Topps should have released these as a separate set altogether.

3. The Cards Your Mom Threw Out. A fifty+ card insert set reprinting various cards in Topps history. My favorites of the ones I got were a '59 Bob Gibson, '61 Roger Maris, '65 Juan Marichal, and a '74 Dave Winfield. I also got reprints of a '53 Jackie Robinson and a '60 Carl Yastrzemski, but they're not a part of that set. I'll have to investigate.

4. Babe Ruth. Three different insert cards. One called History Of The Game, one called Tales Of The Game, and a Turkey Red card. All three look awesome. I will never bitch about getting cards of HOFers, especially when they replace 37 different Kenji Johjima cards. (Sorry Topps, I'll never get over 2007...)

5. Combo Cards and Checklists. Topps killed two birds with one stone by putting the set checklists on the back of the Combo Cards and making them a part of the base set. Nicely done.

6. Franchise History. I'm not really sure what these are but the four I got look pretty cool. One of Rickey Henderson from when he was an A, one of Tom Seaver throwing out the first pitch at the last game at Shea Stadium, and a couple showing both the Red Sox and Marlins multiple World Series banners hanging in their stadiums. Very cool.

THE BAD

1. Once again this is not the set for set builders. Not if you want to build one for less than the amount of a car note. The three blasters contained 243 cards total. I ended up with 137 base cards. I haven't sorted them yet, but after doubles I'm guessing I ended up with about a third of the set for $60. I'm betting you could drop a couple of bills and not finish Series 1, and that's fucking absurd.

2. Topps Town. Is it an insert card? Is it a game piece? Whatever it is, it counts as a card in the pack. There appear to be 25 silver cards and 25 gold cards. I realize that Topps Town is geared for the kids, but since that's the case why put them in the boxes for the adults? Put them in the single packs that retail for $2. And don't put one in every pack either. I'd give up every one of these I have for a couple of the parallels.

3. SP cards. Or alternates, or whatever they're called. I got one of Walter Johnson, which I would gladly trade for the Hank Greenberg, but this is unnecessarily gimmicky. Why not just add them to the set so that everybody can enjoy them? For the first time in a long time Topps has released something worth spending money on. There's no need for this goofyness anymore.

THE RESEARCH

I got on the web trying to find a checklist so I could post the Tigers team set and insert cards, but I couldn't find one anywhere. I was able to find a checklist of the 25 SPs, but not a complete list of anything else. So for now I'll list the Tigers I got or know about and then I'll fill it in as I find out more.

The 2010 Topps Detroit Tigers:
1b Hank Greenberg (SP)
68 Brandon Inge
84 Nate Robertson
119 Wilkin Ramirez
171 Justin Verlander (either AL wins or strikeout leaders)
254 Edwin Jackson
293 Brent Dlugach
309 Gerald Laird

For inserts I got the parallel card of Edwin Jackson on the Heritage stock, a card of Justin Verlander called "When They Were Young," and a Topps Town card of Miguel Cabrera.

MAYBE (and I can't stress maybe enough...) Topps isn't going to be so Mickey Mouse after all. I give this release a big thumbs up. I like what I see so far, even if building a set is going to cost a small fortune.

If there are any team set collectors out there wanting to swap insert cards drop me a line. I've got about a hundred or so and I would love to put together a Tigers team set of the parallel cards. I've also got patch cards of Bob Gibson and Evan Longoria if anybody has a Hank Greenberg they'd like to swap.

And dadgum, that is one sweet Kaline card.....

1996 Fleer Ultra

2010-01-08T20:17:00.002-06:00

Past readers know my take on Fleer Ultra, so I won't go into it again. But in honor of that John Flaherty card....

My top 5 favorite Lyle Lovett songs:
Fiona
North Dakota
Church
If I Had A Boat
I've Been To Memphis

The 1996 Fleer Detroit Tigers:
57 Chad Curtis
58 Cecil Fielder
59 John Flaherty
60 Travis Fryman
61 Chris Gomez
62 Bob Higginson
63 Felipe Lira
64 Brian Maxcy
65 Alan Trammell
66 Lou Whitaker
345 Kimera Bartee
346 Greg Keagle
347 Mark Lewis
348 Jose Lima
349 Melvin Nieves
350 Mark Parent
351 Eddie Williams

There was a parallel set. It was gold. If I had a pony, I'd ride it on my boat. (That's not a very flattering pic of Sweet Lou. It's not hard to see that this was the end of the ride for him.)

I only have one other insert. It's a checklist card from Series 2.

2 Cecil Fielder

1996 Fleer

2009-12-11T21:12:00.003-06:00

I'm tired of looking at that picture of the homecoming queen at the top of my blog. Time to do something else, even if it's half-assed.

I really dug the '96 Fleer, even if they don't look all that great. The matte finish was a great idea. But the design couldn't have been any worse than it was. I mean, I'm a minimalist and all when it comes to cards, but good grief. This may have been the plainest set in baseball card history. These make '61 Topps look like '90 Topps. (Ok, they don't, but you get the picture.....)

I never realized how much Clint Sodowsky looks like Michael Biehn. From The Abyss. Yeah, that's right....right about the time his starts wigging out.

The 1996 Fleer Detroit Tigers:

105 Danny Bautista

106 Joe Boever

107 Chad Curtis

108 John Doherty

109 Cecil Fielder

110 John Flaherty

111 Travis Fryman

112 Chris Gomez

113 Bob Higginson

114 Mark Lewis

115 Jose Lima

116 Felipe Lira

117 Brian Maxcy

118 C.J. Nitkowski

119 Phil Plantier

120 Clint Sodowsky

121 Alan Trammell

122 Lou Whitaker

There was a parallel set printed on glossy stock that was the same as the regular set.

There was also an update set:

U33 Kimera Bartee

U34 Mark Lewis

U35 Melvin Nieves

U36 Mark Parent

U37 Eddie Williams

U219 Cecil Fielder ENCORE

I have a couple of inserts, I don't know for sure if that's all there were.

Prospect

3 Tony Clark

Team Leader

6 Travis Fryman

The number of former and future Padres on that roster is staggering, and it would only get worse.....

Reaffirmation Of Why I Fucking Hate Topps, Part 4

2009-12-07T18:31:00.006-06:00

I knew better than to attempt this. That's why I'm madder at myself than I am at Topps. But this is fucking ridiculous. Let me start with who I'm still missing before I really say how I feel about the whole motherfucking deal.

UH20 Justin Masterson RC

UH39 Jose Molina

UH45 Eric Hurley RC

UH57 Ramon Castro

UH63 Eric Brunfeldt

UH78 Dallas Braden

UH81 J.C. Romero

UH108 Shin-Soo Choo

UH144 Robinson Tejada

UH189 Micah Hoffpauir RC

UH201 Travis Denker RC

UH225 Ryan Tucker RC

UH234 Carl Pavano

UH309 John Bowker RC

Now to the punch. I BOUGHT 8 BLASTERS AND A FUCKING HOBBY BOX AND I'M STILL MISSING THIS MANY CARDS. IIRC correctly, each blaster had 80 cards. The hobby box had 360. THAT'S 1,000 CARDS. HOW THE FUCK CAN THAT NOT BE ENOUGH TO COMPLETE A 330 CARD SET???

Ok, I'm done with capital letters for the rest of this post. But shit, that's fucking ridiculous. On top of the 14 cards I'm missing, I got roughly 100 insert cards, the majority of which are crap (see picture above, which by the way is off-centered, has a ding on the corner, and has two serious crimps about an inch from the top, and that's the way it came out of the pack.....) Hell, I got three Millard Fillmore cards for crying out loud!

Out of all those inserts, I only got one Tiger. (The Galarraga jersey card). If anybody is interested in making a trade for any of these insert cards for some Tigers inserts, please respond below. Not knowing this set all that well, I would suppose that the best three inserts I got are a Miguel Tejada jersey card, something called Silk Collection of Andre Ethier (cool card, but if somebody has a Tiger one of these I'll gladly part with this one), and a chrome refractor of Max Ramirez of the Rangers. I'll trade all three. If you collect a certain team, post below which one and I'll tell you what I have for inserts. I'm also interested in finishing the WBC set if you have doubles of those too.

I know. It's my own damn fault. I knew this was going to happen and I let it anyway. But good grief, this is horrible. The best (being sarcastic here...) part is that the 8 blasters were priced at $20 each, and the hobby box was priced at $72. That would've been $232 before the Meijer discount (I got each blaster for $8 and the hobby box for $40, which is still $104). I'm still missing cards. Yeah Topps, It's Upper Deck cards sitting next to yours in the store which is why collectors are unhappy. Go fuck your collective selves.

1996 Bowman's Best

2009-11-16T19:53:00.003-06:00

You gotta love a 180 card set from 1996 that's called "Best" and only contains TWO Tigers cards....

The 1996 Bowman's Best Detroit Tigers:
5 Cecil Fielder
69 Travis Fryman

...and Cecil was negligible by 1996......

1996 Bowman

2009-11-16T19:42:00.004-06:00

I think there are a couple of new readers around here since I blogged about the last Bowman set so I'll reiterate what it is that I love about Bowman sets. I love looking back at the ineptitude of the Tigers' organization to draft and develop talent. I love getting to a Bowman set in the binder just to count the Tigers that I have no recollection of whatsoever and this year's set is no different. I was living in Memphis in the pre-internet days, and the Bowman set was often how I found about who the Tigers prospects were. In almost all cases, it was never good.....

The 1996 Bowman Detroit Tigers:
100 Cecil Fielder
106 Travis Fryman
138 Luis Garcia
162 Greg Whiteman
164 Tony Clark
182 Cameron Smith
214 Justin Thompson
247 Mike Darr
268 Juan Encarnacion
276 Greg Keagle
352 Raul Casanova
358 Richard Almanzar

Add Garcia, Whiteman, Smith, and Almanzar to the list of Tigers prospects I have no memory of. The only reason I remember Darr is that he was killed years later in a car wreck after being traded to the Padres.

There was a lame parallel set that replaced the cool 1968ish Topps patterned background with a solid silver metallic one. (That's the Garcia card, which doesn't scan well obviously.)

And So On And So Forth.....

2009-11-16T18:31:00.006-06:00

I totally blame Meijer for this. I really do.

Since I've all but finished putting together a Topps Series 2 set, I went back to see what else I could maybe work on. (Despite my claims that I would never again buy a pack of Topps cards. Yes, I am a liar and a hypocrite.)

The natural continuation would be to go ahead and build the 2008 Updates & Highlights set, since one, Meijer has plenty of blasters of these, and two, Topps didn't bother to offer this one as a factory set that I could pick up after spending over $100 trying to complete it (see Topps, 2007...)

So a building I a went!

It didn't help matters any that Meijer has these heavily discounted too. Well, actually it did help matters. These blasters were $19.99 marked down to $11.99. On top of that Meijer is currently discounting all cards 25%, so these are only $8.99. That's not horrible for a box that has 80+ cards and one jersey or bat card per box.

I picked up four blasters of the Updates & Highlights and one of the combo Heritage Update with Updates & Highlights blasters too. The collation of these is even worse than Series 2. Out of the five blasters, I got a total of 305 base cards. Out of that, I got 173 different cards in addition to 132 doubles. Damn near half the cards were doubles, and I'm still only about halfway to completing the set.

Enough bagging on Topps for now though. I think I've complained enough so that I'm starting to sound like a broken record. The funny thing is that there are some great things going on with this series.

I collect a set each year almost as a scrapbook or sorts of that season. Therefore, I dig the subsets a lot, and there are no shortage of them in this series. I really like the All-Star and Highlights cards. I could live without the Home Run Derby cards, as I'm not a fan of the contest itself, but all in all I think this is the best series of the three. And as much as I hate insert cards, I love the WBC insert cards. I like the Year In Review Cards, but would have preferred that they be base cards. What better time to release a 180 card subset than in the final series of the year? The Ring Of Honor cards are ok even if the player selection is not. (Jesse Orosco? Dave Justice? David Cone? Mike Lowell? Thank god I got a Bruce Sutter...)

The political cards are even worse this time around, as there is a First Couples card showing a pic of each President and the First Lady. I would really rail on these, but then I pulled a Tricky Dick card and his smiling face made me laugh so hard that it was impossible to be too upset about these.

It's time for me to go back to blogging about old Tigers team sets for awhile. Which is infinitely more fun than ragging on Topps.

Reaffirmation Of Why I Fucking Hate Topps, Part 3

2009-11-11T19:17:00.006-06:00

6 more rack packs purchased today x 36 cards = 216 cards - 6 insert cards = 210 base cards.

For those of you following at home, that is now 26 rack packs and a total of 910 base cards.

To build a 330 card set.

26 rack packs that originally had a $4.99 sticker price. ($129.74 in 2008)

26 rack packs that I've only paid $2.39 per pack ($62.14 in 2009)

26 rack packs to finally finish my Series 2 set. Priceless.

NO, I FUCKING LITERALLY MEAN PRICELESS, BECAUSE THE DAMN THING IS STILL MISSING CARDS.

Cards I need to finish my 2008 Topps Series 2 set:
472 Shawn Marcum
507 Mark DeRosa
543 Carlos Lee

Unbelievable. I really don't know what else to say. This is 2007 all over again, and I haven't even started on Series 3 yet. I now could've bought the entire factory set for what I've spent trying to build a Series 2 set. That's what I've spent in 2009 too, not what I would've had to spend last year. For that kind of money I could've bought TWO factory sets.

Gee Topps, I wonder why you keep losing customers year after year? Perhaps 50 years of fucking over good paying customers has finally caught up to you. As it should.

If anybody has these three cards and they would like to trade me for the 583 doubles I have, please drop me a line. Before I go and buy more packs.

Please.

Reaffirmation Of Why I Fucking Hate Topps, Part 2

2009-11-09T21:53:00.010-06:00

20 packs opened total x 36 cards per pack = 720 cards - 20 insert cards = 700 base cards.

There are 330 cards in Series 2.

Cards I need to complete Series 2:
331 Dave Roberts
350 Mark Teixeira
354 Edwin Jackson
360 David Ortiz
375 Fausto Carmona
395 Lance Berkman
407 Johnny Damon
411 Jason Kubel
418 Dioner Navarro
421 Brandon Backe
431 Delwyn Young
436 Joe Blanton
472 Shawn Marcum
473 Joe Maddon
487 Corey Patterson
489 Joakim Soria
507 Mark DeRosa
537 Scott Moore
543 Carlos Lee
558 John Russell
569 Brad Hennessey
593 Randy Wells
594 Mike Morse
604 Wily Mo Peña
607 Ryan Spilborghs
611 Garret Anderson
618 Pat Neshek
621 Denard Span
623 Trey Hillman
636 Rafael Betancourt
638 Juan Pierre

330 cards in Series 2 - 31 cards I'm missing = 299 cards total I have.

700 cards total I bought - 299 cards I have = 401 doubles.

I have 6 cards of Chris Capuano, plus 5 cards of at least another dozen players.

$50 spent on these cards, and I'm still missing 31 to complete the set.

Fuck you Topps, FUCK YOU!

Sadly, I'll shell out another $20 or so tomorrow to buy the last 6-7 packs that Meijer has left. If that doesn't complete the set, then I'll start buying blasters.

And then I'll never buy another pack of Topps cards again. EVER.

I'll wait until the end of summer and buy that fucking factory set.

Thanks Topps. I've been building your sets since 1978. But now that's over with. I'm done trying. Once upon a time, it was a fun night in the RobbyT household to buy a bunch of Topps packs/boxes to sort and put together a set. That time has past.

Thanks for the memories, fuckers......

Reaffirmation Of Why I Fucking Hate Topps, Part 1

2009-11-09T18:33:00.006-06:00

Ok, so my long (14 months) self-imposed pack buying boycott came to a crashing halt Saturday afternoon. I totally blame Meijer for pricing these so low that I just couldn't say no. But I did, and I'm still just as mad as I was 14 months ago. This looks like a great place for me to bitch awhile as well as pontificate about the state of the hobby in general.

The packs that got me were the 2008 Topps Series 2 baseball. I already had a set of Series 1 that I put together by buying somebody else's leftovers but I never got around to picking up a Series 2 set. I was hoping to wait a couple of years and just find a good deal on one of those Tiger versions of the factory sets. But these cards were too discounted for me to pass up.

These were the jumbo packs of 36 cards that were priced at $4.99 when they came out. Meijer had them marked down to $2.99, with an additional sale of 20% off all cards, bringing the final total down to $2.39 a pack. I shuffled my feet for awhile, looked down at the ground, and then held my breath as I picked up 10 packs and checked out at the register.

Perhaps ready to give Topps a second chance, I eagerly opened the packs when I got home. Some good, some bad, but mostly the feeling I had afterwards that I was wasting my time and money trying to collect a fucking Topps base set.

The good and the bad are sort of related. I absolutely hate insert cards. That's because so many of them are piss poor I don't get who the hell would be interested in them. The Topps Stars are among the worst inserts ever. (Even though I did get one of .26...) The Year In Review cards are a cool concept, but a 180 card insert set spread across three series? Really?

The one that chaps my ass most of all is the card of FDR and Herbert Hoover. Where did this marriage come from? I didn't read FDR's biography hoping there were five pages about Hank Greenberg in there somewhere! Not only do I not give a rat's ass about political cards, but these are printed on cheaper stock then the unnumbered checklists. Seriously, the Toppstown game cards that come in every pack are nicer than these.

Ok, I'm done with that rant. Now for the good. I like these jumbo packs because you only get one insert per pack. In a pack that only has 6 cards that makes it virtually impossible to build a set. But in a pack that has 36 cards, that's a ratio I can take of having to write off a card that's not part of the set.

That left 350 cards to try and build a 330 card set. Not since mid 80's Fleer could you pull something like that off, so I was prepared that I wasn't going to get the whole set. But how many different cards did I get?

Two hundred and twenty one. That's right I got almost exactly two-thirds of the set. That's ridiculous. Knowing just enough about probability as I do, that means I would likely have to buy another 10 packs to have a realistic shot of finishing this set. And that's where I really get juiced.

Yeah, I only paid $23.99 for these 10 packs. With tax it was a hair over $25. Which means that I'm going to have to shell out another $25 to try and complete this set. That's $50 for one fucking series of Topps if I'm lucky. That's outrageous, and that's not as bad as it could be. These were originally $5 packs of cards. Last year you would have had to shell out $100 to try and complete this series. HEY TOPPS, NO WONDER YOU ARE LOSING LONGTIME CUSTOMERS LEFT AND RIGHT!!!

Well, I'm almost finished with my second beer and now I'm done ranting. Yes, my sucker ass went and bought 10 more packs today that I need to open, so I'll have more to bitch about later. (And while I'm scanning a few cards, I opened the first card and got a card of Abe Lincoln. If anybody has some Tigers inserts they'd be willing to trade for these crappy political cards, like Abe Lincoln, I'm all ears. Get it? All ears? I'm done.)

2008 RobbyT Cards

2009-10-16T20:41:00.006-05:00

2008 was my first year living in Chicago and I was able to go out and catch a bunch of Tigers games. I went to 7 games here against the White Sox, as well as trips to New York and Detroit. I also started blogging for the first time in '08, so the Tigers' last place finish notwithstanding, it was a great baseball season for me.

This was my biggest set to date, checking in at 73 cards. I really like the look of the base cards, but I'll admit I mailed it in on the Highlights, Down On The Farm, and Negro Leagues Tribute Cards. The cards of Ordonez and Verlander are my favorites, as I was at both of the games pictured. The Ordonez pic was from my only trip to Yankee Stadium. The Verlander pic was from a cold, rainy, nasty Saturday afternoon game against the White Sox early in the season that I went to with a bunch of great friends (the game where Gavin Floyd took a no-hitter into the 8th inning).

The 2009 RobbyT Detroit Tigers:
1 Denny Bautista
2 Yorman Bazardo
3 Francis Beltran
4 Jeremy Bonderman
5 Eddie Bonine
6 Miguel Cabrera
7 Brent Clevlen
8 Francisco Cruceta
9 Freddy Dolsi
10 Jeff Farnsworth
11 Casey Fossum
12 Armando Galarraga
13 Freddy Garcia
14 Gary Glover
15 Curtis Granderson
16 Jason Grilli
17 Carlos Guillen
18 Mike Hessman
19 Mike Holliman
20 Brandon Inge
21 Jacque Jones
22 Todd Jones
23 Matt Joyce
24 Chris Lambert
25 Gene Lamont
26 Jeff Larish
27 Jim Leyland
28 Aquilino Lopez
29 Zach Miner
30 Magglio Ordonez
31 Placido Polanco
32 Ryan Raburn
33 Wilkin Ramirez
34 Clay Rapada
35 Edgar Renteria
36 Nate Robertson
37 Fernando Rodney
38 Ivan Rodriguez
39 Kenny Rogers
40 Dusty Ryan
41 Ramon Santiago
42 Dane Sardinha
43 Bobby Seay
44 Gary Sheffield
45 Marcus Thames
46 Clete Thomas
47 Justin Verlander
48 Dontrelle Willis
49 Joel Zumaya
50 Highlights Dontrelle Willis
51 Highlights Curtis Granderson
52 Highlights Carlos Guillen
53 Highlights Todd Jones
54 Highlights Miss America
55 Highlights Tigers Meeting
56 Highlights Tigers Win
57 Highlights Adopt A Hottie
58 Highlights Mickey Lolich
59 Highlights Booblehead
60 Highlights Carlos Guillen All-Star
61 Highlights Jim Leyland All-Star
62 Highlights Farewell Tiger Stadium
63 Highlights Magglio Ordonez
64 Highlights Placido Polance
65 Highlights Ozzie Virgil
66 Highlights Mike Hessman
67 Highlights Gary Sheffield
68 Down On The Farm Ryan Perry
69 Down On The Farm Rick Procello
70 Down On The Farm Ryan Strieby
71 Down On The Farm Dontrelle Willis
72 Highlights Todd Jones
73 Negro League Tribute Bobby Seay

It was a great year for me as a collector. I went to 4 card shows here including the National. I also bought my last pack of cards in September, making it over a year now since I've bought any packs/boxes. I had a lot of fun at the card shows picking up old Tigers cards that I didn't have before. I also bought alot of oddball 80's stuff that I enjoyed collecting when I was a teenager: Topps Stickers, Fleer 44 Card Box Sets, and Donruss Action All-Stars.

25 Years Ago Today

2009-10-12T19:08:00.004-05:00

It was on this night 25 years ago that a 15 year old RobbyT went to the greatest game I have ever seen in my life, Game 3 of the 1984 World Series. My brother and I pitched together the money we'd made from cutting grass that summer and sent in for tickets the day it was announced in the paper that they were going on sale. A couple of weeks later we'd scored four tickets to Game 3 of the ALCS and four tickets to Game A of the World Series. (Which would've been Game 1 had the Cubs just beat the Padres, but alas, it wasn't meant to be....)

I still remember October 12, 1984 like it was yesterday. I could hardly sit through school that day I was so excited. I remember us parking on one of the side streets in the Corktown neighborhood and the huge crowd of people lining up outside the stadium. It's an overused cliché by announcers, but for the first time I understood what they meant by "the electricity in the stadium." It truly was electric.

I took my little cheap ass Kodak 110 camera to the game, but we were so far away I couldn't get any good pics. The only decent one I got was before the game when Sparky, Dick Williams, and the umpires were walking around going over the ground rules of Tiger Stadium.

I remember screaming at the top of my lungs as Marty Castillo's HR sailed over the left field wall. I also remember Chet Lemon making a catch off of a Terry Kennedy shot right at the warning track in dead center that would have been a HR in any other park in baseball. We sat about 10 rows back.

Oddly, my most vivid memory to this day is from the ride home, when the news came on the radio at the top of the hour with the broadcast that the Tigers had beaten the Padres 5-2 to take a two games to one lead in the 1984 World Series. I didn't know what surreal meant when I was 15, but when I learned what it meant, I knew I had experienced it in that moment.

Hard to believe it's been 25 years. That was such a special summer in my life. Ah, what I wouldn't give to be 15 for one more summer.

Bless You Boys.

Bless You.

The New Blog

2009-10-11T11:22:00.005-05:00

I've started a new blog which is solely dedicated to RobbyT Cards. I didn't want to "soil" this blog by posting cards of other teams here and since I've now got two full season's worth I thought it was time to start getting some of them out there.

http://robbytcards.blogspot.com/

I'll be posting my cards from 2008 and 2009 over there for the next few months. I'll debut the 2010 cards sometime around Opening Day.

Please check it out and enjoy!

P.S. Pictured here is a 2009 RobbyT Justin Verlander. Once the season ends I'll do an entry here on the entire team set.

1996 Topps Gallery

2009-10-01T20:10:00.002-05:00

Ok, last one of the night I promise. But it's felt good to get back into the rhythm of sitting down and blogging. I've been pretty busy for awhile, but I am hoping to get back to a somewhat more regular pace blogging about long forgotten Tigers cards and players. I know, I've said it before, but last year I really started picking up the pace around this time, so I'm sure I can do it again this year too.

I've admitted before, I love bagging on Topps but that I'll give credit where it's due. This is one of those times.

This is a pretty nice looking set. The concept was right on, even if the execution was a little off. The idea of cards with paintings was not new, but the added matte effect of the background was new. Too bad Topps didn't think to add that effect to the player so that it doesn't look like the background was photoshopped, but they would. The Gallery cards in years to come would be among the best issues Topps released.

The 1996 Topps Gallery Detroit Tigers:
32 Travis Fryman
85 Chad Curtis
123 Chris Gomez
138 Tony Clark
160 Cecil Fielder

1996 Topps Chrome

2009-10-01T19:56:00.002-05:00

I imagine it went something like this:

EXT: A COLD, BLUSTERY DAY

INT: A BREAK ROOM INSIDE A LIFELESS CORPORATION

Topps Guy #1: You know what? (Unwraps tuna salad sandwich and smells it)

Topps Guy #2: What? (Picks his nose)

Topps Guy #1: You know how those Finest cards are one of our most popular sets? (Talking with a big glob of mayo stuck to his mustache)

Topps Guy #2: Yes. (Notices tomato soup has dripped on his shirt and tries to wipe it off)

Topps Guy #1: Well maybe we could make another set just like them, but instead just use the design of our base set? That way we really wouldn't have to put any extra work into them. (Wipes off glob of mayo with his bare hand and wipes his hand on his jeans)

Topps Guy #2: Ok. (Wipes booger behind ear)

The 1996 Topps Chrome Detroit Tigers:
60 Travis Fryman
157 Cecil Fielder

1996 Topps Finest

2009-10-01T19:21:00.006-05:00

The mediocrity of Topps Finest continued in '96 with a slight twist. This was their first issue that was numbered by Calculus majors. There were three different types of cards in the base set, Gold, Silver, and Bronze. These were not parallels, but actual separate cards. Then from these, the backgrounds were then again divided up into subsets such as "Prodigies" or "Franchise" just to name a few. Each card therefore had two numbers. It's number in the base set, and it's number in the subset.

Stupid I know. I will not attempt to list both numbers here (especially since my source for checklists did not number both and I do not own all these cards), but I can provide the G, S, or B designation.

The 1996 Topps Finest Detroit Tigers:
S84 Cecil Fielder
S127 C. J. Nitkowski
B138 Phil Nevin
B152 Travis Fryman
B172 Chad Curtis
S223 Kimera Bartee
G290 Cecil Fielder
B336 Justin Thompson
B344 Cecil Fielder
B356 Tony Clark

There were also the refractor parallels of each card too. Yippee!

1996 Stadium Club

2009-10-01T18:25:00.003-05:00

I was one of those folks who went out and bought all the new Beatles reissues last month. I already had all their stuff on iTunes that I'd acquired from here and there over the years, but I'd never actually owned any of their stuff, so I decided what the hell, they're remastered and each has a nice little documentary and booklet included.

I've managed to plow through about half of them now. I'll grab one and listen to it for 2-3 days on my commute. So far my clear favorite is Revolver, followed by Rubber Soul and Please Please Me. It has certainly been a worthwhile purchase in that it's getting me into The Beatles in a way I never had before. I would listen to the songs when they came on shuffle, and I know the hits, but actually listening to the album several times repeatedly and then reading wiki and watching the mini-documentaries on each cd has really been enjoyable.

The 1996 Stadium Club Tigers:
21 Chad Curtis
42 Tony Clark
60 Phil Nevin
84 Sean Bergman
95 Cecil Fielder
145 Chris Gomez
234 Bobby Higginson
302 Felipe Lira
337 Alan Trammell
397 John Flaherty
431 Travis Fryman
445 Steve Rodriguez
170 Bobby Higginson

The "shark's tooth necklace" set. These are awful. These are Stadium Club. I guess there was some sort of parallel set that was a game card that you could fill in the back and send away for a chance to win something. Long story short, I have the Bronze version of Chad Curtis's card.

I have a couple other insert cards too. Whoa boy.

Bash & Burn
9 Chad Curtis

Power Packed
8 Cecil Fielder

After several days of listening to Let It Be, I listened to Let It Be...Naked, which was the original album before Phil Spector doctored it up. Trust me on this one. Don't buy the Phil Spector version. Go get the Naked version. Much better. The Long And Winding Road on the Naked album is fantastic.

1996 Topps

2009-10-01T17:54:00.003-05:00

So the Tigers are up by 2 games with 3 games to play. The 2009 season is coming down to the wire and it's nail biting time for Tigers fans. What better time than to look back at 1996 Topps?

This Tigers team was one of the worst teams of all time. Just look at that list of players below. 109 losses. Team batting average of .253. Team ERA of 6.38. No, that's not a typo. 6.38!

Topps pretty much mailed it in that year too. At around 450 cards, this was their smallest base set since the 50's. There was nothing special about the design. There was nothing special about the player selection of Tigers either (although I guess that's not really Topps' fault....). There was nothing special about 1996 period.

The 1996 Topps Detroit Tigers:
42 Sean Bergman
71 Felipe Lira
98 Bobby Higginson
134 Chris Gomez
190 Travis Fryman
202 Chad Curtis
244 Brian Powell
291 John Flaherty
337 Tony Clark
348 Phil Nevin
366 Jose Lima
393 Cecil Fielder
398 C. J. Nitkowski
425 Daryle Ward
429 Clint Sodowsky
431 Brandon Reed

Add Brian Powell and Brandon Reed to the list of Tigers I absolutely have no recollection of. I wish I could add Sean Bergman to that list too.

I have a single insert card from a set called ProFiles by Kirby Puckett. The back of the card features "Insights" about the player by Kirby. It sounds cheekier than it actually is. There's a nice little story by Kirby about Big Daddy hitting a HR over the 440 sign at Tiger Stadium. Sorta cool I guess.

AL-04 Cecil Fielder

2007 RobbyT Cards

2009-08-26T19:54:00.007-05:00

Just to make it perfectly clear, even though I love to bag on the card companies when they make a crappy looking card, don't think for one second that I'm not afraid to judge myself in the same fashion.

These flat out suck.

The bad part is I don't really know how it happened. It just sort of did. I had a design, then started tweaking it a little bit here, and then a little bit there, and next thing you know......I ended up with this crap. But at least I never sold them 6 for a $1 and had 14 different variations of the Neifi Perez card....

The 2007 RobbyT Detroit Tigers:

1 Jeremy Bonderman

2 Tim Byrdak

3 Jose Capellan

4 Sean Casey

5 Eulogio De La Cruz

6 Chad Durbin

7 Gorkys Hernandez

8 Curtis Granderson

9 Jason Grilli

10 Carlos Guillen

11 Mike Hessman

12 Omar Infante

13 Brandon Inge

14 Todd Jones

15 Jair Jurrjens

16 Wil Ledezma

17 Jim Leyland

18 Aquilino Lopez

19 Mike Maroth

20 Cameron Maybin

21 Macay McBride

22 Jose Mesa

23 Andrew Miller

24 Zach Miner

25 Craig Monroe

26 Magglio Ordonez

27 Neifi Perez

28 Timo Perez

29 Placido Polanco

30 Mike Rabelo

31 Ryan Raburn

32 Nate Robertson

33 Fernando Rodney

34 Ivan Rodriguez

35 Kenny Rogers

36 Ramon Santiago

37 Bobby Seay

38 Gary Sheffield

39 Jordan Tata

40 Marcus Thames

41 Virgil Vasquez

42 Justin Verlander

43 Joel Zumaya

44 Tigers Special Ernie Harwell

45 Tigers Special Al Kaline

46 Tigers Highlights Justin Verlander No-Hitter

47 Tigers Highlights Maybin & Hernandez Futures Game

48 Tigers Highlights Neifi Perez

49 Tigers Highlights Rod Allen

50 Tigers Special Paws

51 Gene Lamont

52 Lloyd McClendon

53 Remember When Cecil Fielder

54 Remember When Alan Trammell

Yeah, these are easily the least favorite of mine from the 4 years I have made cards. I expanded the set to 54, and it's nice to see some cards of some guys who made brief appearances with us, but I'm not a big fan of this set. It looks too much like '89 Pro Set football gone horribly wrong.

I do like the Kaline card though. I doubt there was another one of him that year in uniform. (At the All-Star Game in San Francisco as an honorary captain) If my buddy Ed goes back to fantasy camp in 2010 I think this will be the card I pass along to see if he can get it autographed for me. I've never had one of my cards autographed before, and this would certainly be the one I would want to have autographed.

I wish I had more to write about these so I could post a lot more of them, but I don't. At least this last line will let me leave one more that's another personal favorite....

Dear Mr. Eisner

2009-08-19T18:39:00.011-05:00

By now I'm sure you've had time to let the dust settle a little bit from the announcement that Topps will be the exclusive manufacturer of major league baseball cards in 2010 and beyond. So let's take this time to have a friendly little chat.

You see, I'm one of the adult collectors that your company ran off two years ago. No, I wasn't one of the crybabies who stopped collecting because they felt their cards "weren't worth" anything. I'm also not one of the morons who couldn't discern a box of Topps cards from a box of Upper Deck cards when I was shopping at Target. And I'm damn sure not one of the losers who blog solely to let others know what I've pulled from a pack of baseball cards, or even worse make a youtube video of it for Christ's sake.

I am one of the guys who collects for the love of the hobby. I am one of the guys who loves sitting down on Saturday afternoons and opening a box of cards while watching a baseball game, then writing down the missing cards I need to complete a set and trying to get those cards by trading with friends or splurging on a few more packs or maybe even another box. Unfortunately, I haven't been that guy for two years now, and it falls directly on the shoulders of your company.

I've told my story a time or two on the blogs, but never before have I had your ear, so I'll tell it again. (BTW, what lovely ears you have. Oh c'mon, you didn't think I wasn't going to slip in a Mickey Mouse pun or two somewhere in here, did you?)

In 2007, I spent approximately $400 buying boxes and packs of Topps Series 1, Series 2, and the Update/Highlights series. And what exactly did that get me? Well it got me 10 cards short of a complete set, that's what it fucking got me. I did however get a boatload of Kenji Johjima insert cards (check it out sometime, there were like 35 different Johjima insert cards...) as well as a dozen or so Joe DiMaggio insert cards THAT ALL LOOKED EXACTLY THE SAME!!! Talk about a Mickey Mouse operation.....(ok, I'm done with the mouse jokes...)

Well that was pretty much all it took for me to give up putting sets together, something I started doing as a 9 year old kid in 1978. Why on earth would I want to drop that kind of cash to put together one set? Hell, why did I? Especially if I can wait until August and pick up a factory set at Target for $50? After 2007 I quit trying to put together sets, which led to me qutting buying boxes, which ultimately led me to quit buying packs. It'll be one year next month since I bought a pack of cards and opened them.

I know you're a busy guy, so I'll try to keep it brief. I'm only going to ask one thing of you. It's not even a big thing.

Please see to it that the Topps base set returns to being an affordable and collectible product.

That's not too much to ask is it?

By affordable, I mean lets stop this 6 cards for a $1 nonsense. I work in printing. You should feel ashamed for ripping people off like that. 12-15 cards is more than a reasonable amount for a pack of cards that costs a buck. It ought to be a crime to go pick up $20 in packs of cards and not even get 100 base cards by the time you subtract doubles and inserts.

By collectible, I mean stop it with the enormous amount of of inserts, short prints, variations, gimmick cards, etc. that flood the Topps base set every year and make it impossible to finish a set. Once upon a time Topps cards sold for the simple reason that they were the best. Now that you've got no competition, you've kinda won that title back by default. How about acting like it now? Produce a great looking set with great players, subsets, and rookie cards and let that be the reason why people want to buy it.

Now I'm not asking for you to revamp all your products. There are always going to be folks who invest simply hoping to pull an expensive card out of a pack and brag about it to all their friends. There are always going to be folks who can't sleep at night until they've hunted down every possible insert and variation to complete a master set. There are always going to be folks who blog about what they got out of a pack of cards. (Neither one of us can help these clowns, but I couldn't resist the temptation to bag on them twice!) The best part is you've already got plenty of products to keep all these people happy.

But how about just returning the base set to the collectors who purely love the fun of collecting?

I know you've talked about returning the hobby to the kids, and I'm all for it. I'd just like to take this time to point that you've lost a lot of the adults over the past few years too. The adults with really good jobs, who like to spend money on little pieces of cardboard. How about doing something to get us back too?

Thanks,

RobbyT

P.S. I've enclosed a 2008 RobbyT Placido Polanco and a 2009 RobbyT Alex Avila rookie card just for you. Since I quit buying cards I just started focusing on making my own. What do you think?

In no way am I trying to influence you to give me the job of restoring the Topps brand back to prestige it once held. But if you think I'm the man, then I'm willing to give it a shot.....

2009 Upper Deck

2009-07-20T19:11:00.010-05:00

What? Me blogging about new cards? After I've derided the cardmakers time and time again and vowed not to buy any more packs or boxes?

Don't worry. I've held true to my vow up to this point. I met a great dealer at my first show in Chicago last year who busts open cases upon cases of cards. I talked to him for a bit at that show and asked him if he wouldn't mind pulling out a team set plus any miscellaneous inserts of Tigers from the stuff he opened. He said he'd be glad to and a great relationship has come of it. He usually makes it to a show here to Chicago about three times a year. I'll go and pick up my cards and chit-chat with him and his dad for awhile and the whole arrangement works out well for everybody.

Well he wasn't able to make the show last week, so instead he mailed me the latest batch of Tigers that he had saved up for me. I've been putting off blogging about any 2009 cards because I have so few of them since I am NOT buying any packs anymore, but with the big package that came in today I thought it might be fun to review something current, especially with all the time I've been spending on 90's cards around here.

So I'll start with this 2009 Upper Deck release. There are so many good things about this set that I like. These are great looking cards, the inserts look great too, this is one of the biggest team sets I have seen in a long time, I got a Clete Thomas AU Insert, all around these are just absolutely fantastic.

As I do when I get new cards, I catalog them so that can I print out a sheet of paper of what I'm missing (there always seems to be a missing a card or two) so that when I go to my next show I don't have to lug around a bunch of binders. But as I was cataloging these this evening I noticed something that literally floored me.

THERE ARE CARDS OF THE SAME PLAYERS IN $ERIE$ 1 AND $ERIE$ 2!!!

What the fuck is the deal with that?!? $erou$ly? You've got to be kidding me!

Arghhh....it was bad enough when Topp$ did it in their 2007 $et (Gary Sheffield and Mike Rabelo) but there are quite a few of them here. I count FIVE players that were duplicated, and damn if one of them isn't Sheffield, who didn't even make the team out of Spring Training! Gerald Laird only shows up on the front of one of the team checklist cards. There are no cards of Ryan Raburn, Fu-Te Ni, Brandon Lyon, Matt Treanor, Dusty Ryan, or Jeff Larish. What could possibly be the reason for this?

Ok, I can understand that there are no cards of those guys because I'm sure there is little demand for them. But they did issue cards of Zach Miner, Bobby Seay, Freddy Dolsi, Chris Lambert, and Todd Jones, so it's not like they didn't already issue some low demand cards. So then why make duplicates of other guys and then end up with a set that checks in at over 1,000 cards? If I was trying to build an entire set I would be pissed. Especially with the price of packs these days. I guess little has changed in the last year. Both card companies are still out to fuck as many people over and take as much money from them as they possibly can. It's a shame too. This is a nice set. There was absolutely no reason for this.

The 2009 Upper Deck Detroit Tigers:

125 Armando Galarraga

126 Miguel Cabrera

127 Placido Polanco

128 Edgar Renteria

129 Carlos Guillen

130 Gary Sheffield

131 Curtis Granderson

132 Marcus Thames

133 Magglio Ordonez

134 Jeremy Boonderman

135 Dontrelle Willis

136 Kenny Rogers

137 Justin Verlander

138 Nate Robertson

139 Todd Jones

140 Joel Zumaya

428 Chris Lambert

437 Team Leaders

495 Team Checklist

633 Fernando Rodney

634 Justin Verlander

635 Bobby Seay

636 Clete Thomas

637 Placido Polanco

638 Ramon Santiago

639 Adam Everett

640 Gary Sheffield

641 Curtis Granderson

642 Freddy Dolsi

643 Magglio Ordonez

644 Zach Miner

645 Brandon Inge

945 Rick Porcello

995 Team Checklist

1006 Ryan Perry

It's a shame to be disappointed in this set, because there are some great looking inserts too. (These are probably not all the inserts, just the ones I did a limited amount of research on.)

O-Pee-Chee Preview

OPC-15 Magglio Ordonez

O-Pee-Chee Insert

OPC-37 Magglio Ordonez

Stars of the Game

GG-MC Miguel Cabrera

Starquest

SQ-19 Miguel Cabrera

SQ-36 Justin Verlander

Inkredible

INK-CT Clete Thomas AUTO

Needless to say, I'm glad I haven't caved in on my vow not to buy any more packs of cards and pissed away money in the wind trying to complete sets that can't be completed without spending hundreds of dollars. But now I'm contemplating giving it up altogether and just sticking to making my own......instead of letting the card companies continue to stick it to me.

2006 RobbyT Cards

2009-07-18T19:25:00.006-05:00

Ladies and Gentleman, my first very own card set.

It all started with me making a trip up to Comerica Park from Memphis for a Labor Day weekend series against the Angels in 2006. Nothing monumental happened during the trip with regards to my future as an aspiring baseball card designer. Well, nothing that I was cognizant of at the time anyway.

Upon returning home after the weekend, I was perusing the game pics on the Detroit News website when I came across this photo of Curtis Granderson. I was at the game when he made that catch and and soon as I saw the picture my first thought was, "Wouldn't that look great on a baseball card?" And so the seeds were sewn.

I have had a career in printing for the last twenty years with fifteen of those years spent in desktop publishing. I worked in layout programs such as Quark and InDesign on a daily basis, so building a baseball card was certainly no challenge from a technical standpoint. All I needed to do was collect the photographs and place them into a design of my own. Unfortunately my desktop publishing experience didn't translate into me being a top flight graphic designer/artist. But I think I was able to use that to my benefit here, as it forced me to come up with a crisp, clean, and simple design, which regular readers of this blog know generally translates into me liking a set.

I like to think this set pays a lot of homage to one of my favorite card sets of all time, 1981 Fleer. I don't think this is the best set I've ever designed in the four years I have been doing this, but as the first it will always be pretty special to me. It adds to the coolness for me that I was putting this set together during the fantastic post-season run of 2006. In fact, the little mug shots in the bottom corner were not in the original design, but before the post-season started, the Free Press made these available as downloadable masks that you could print off. So I downloaded all the faces, made a few tweaks, and voila! A set was born.

The 2006 RobbyT Detroit Tigers:

1 Jeremy Bonderman

2 Sean Casey

3 Alexis Gomez

4 Curtis Granderson

5 Jason Grilli

6 Carlos Guillen

7 Omar Infante

8 Brandon Inge

9 Todd Jones

10 Wilfredo Ledezma

11 Jim Leyland

12 Zach Miner

13 Craig Monroe

14 Magglio Ordonez

15 Neifi Perez

16 Placido Polanco

17 Nate Robertson

18 Fernando Rodney

19 Ivan Rodriguez

20 Kenny Rogers

21 Ramon Santiago

22 Marcus Thames

23 Justin Verlander

24 Jamie Walker

25 Vance Wilson

26 Joel Zumaya

27 Tigers Future Stars: Cameron Maybin and Andrew Miller

28 Tigers Future Stars: Brent Clevlen and Kevin Hooper

29 Tigers First Basemen: Chris Shelton and Matt Stairs

30 Tigers Hurlers: Chad Durbin and Mike Maroth

31 Tigers Specials: Gene Lamont

32 Tigers Specials: Dave Dombrowski

33 Tigers Specials: Mike Illitch and Ivan Rodriguez

34 Tigers Specials: Jim Leyland

35 Tigers Specials: Dmitri Young

36 Tigers Specials: Ernie Harwell

The downside about using the mask photos though was that there weren't masks for everybody that I'd already made cards for. So I decided to make up my own Specials cards with a nod towards the Fleer Specials of the 80's. Some are rookies, some recap events and the season, and some feature guys like the GM and owner who normally wouldn't get their own cards.

One final thing of note. When I was a kid starting out collecting cards, I never knew they were "classified" by dates. I just knew that there were baseball cards for different seasons, but I had no idea that they were labeled by the year of issue, and not the year that they recapped. I still get confused to this day when I am thinking about Topps sets from '76-'80. When I first designed this set, I referred to it as my 2007 set, but that never set right with me. The photos are from 2006, it was designed in 2006, and technically it was issued in 2006. So I have decided to call it my 2006 set. Being the designer does have it's privileges.....

Reader Mailbag

2009-07-14T22:08:00.004-05:00

So I should probably answer a few emails from the handful of readers that read this blog.

First off, I'd like to say thanks to the folks who follow along here. I know I've been slacking this year, but it ain't easy plowing through these crappy 90's baseball cards.

So what have I been doing with myself these days? Mostly vacationing and following the Tigers around the midwest for the last month. But I should get to these emails and maybe that would answer a lot of questions.

RobbyT, you used to give us updates on all the games you went to last year. Why haven't you done so. C. Clark, East Lansing, MI.

Well Chris, I apologize for that, but I've been to so many games this year that I haven't had time to list them all. I will do so here.

4-10 Twins 12, White Sox 5

4-17 Cubs 8, Cards 7

5-7 White Sox 6, Tigers 0

5-29 Cubs 2, Dodgers 1

6-8 White Sox 6, Tigers 1

6-10 Tigers 2, White Sox 1 (Happy Birthday DT!)

6-12 Tigers 3, Pirates 1 (Happy Birthday to me!)

6-13 Pirates 9, Tigers 3

6-14 Pirates 6, Tigers 3

6-16 Cardinals 11, Tigers 2

6-17 Cardinals 4, Tigers 3

6-18 Tigers 6, Cardinals 3

7-3 Tigers 11, Twins 9 (yes, the 16 inning game, and yes, I stayed for all of it...)

7-4 Twins 4, Tigers 3

7-12 Cardinals 4, Cubs 2

As you can see Chris, I've been plenty busy this year watching games. Thanks for asking.

Next question.

RobbyT, you have promised us for years that you would tell us the whole story behind your designing your own baseball cards. J. Roy, South Portland, ME

J., I promise that will be my next blog entry. I promise. The 2006 RobbyT Cards will be the next thing you will read about. Especially with this being the third anniversary.

Next question.

RobbyT, are you going to get back to to blogging with the frequency you used to? It's fun to hear your take on cards with the printing and baseball back ground that you have. RobbyT, Oak Park, IL

Thank you my friend for the kind words. As we both know there will be a lot of hard work ahead to get through the next 13 years of Tigers baseball cards. But I know we can do it, er, I can do it.

RobbyT, were you really driving that truck in your picture? B. Reynolds, Cincinnati OH.

What do you think?

Thanks for the mail my friends.

1995 Upper Deck SP

2009-07-14T21:33:00.004-05:00

I keep forgetting this game is tied. I blame beer and Roy Halladay. But like any true denier (yeah, I made that word up...), I blame somebody....

Regular readers know what I think SP stands for. Irregular readers may dig through the blog to find out why. Or else eat more prunes and lots of Soy Joy bars....

The 1995 Upper Deck SP Detroit Tigers:

16 Tony Clark

152 Chad Curtis

153 Lou Whitaker

154 Alan Trammell

155 Cecil Fielder

156 Kirk Gibson

Ok, there is a DIE-CUT insert card. That must be cool (end sarcasm, as someone in the printing business die-cutting is not that big of a deal, especially nothing this simple....)

PP10 Cecil Fielder

There is also a parallel set that looks just like the

GRANDERSON HITS A TRIPLE!!!! WHOO-HOO!!!!!

base set, but instead of red, it's silver. Whoopty doo.

GRANDERSON SCORES THE GO AHEAD RUN!!!

1995 Upper Deck Collector's Choice

2009-07-14T21:11:00.003-05:00

Nice job by Edwin Jackson with the 1-2-3 inning!

I'm a fan of the big cheap sets and this one is no different. Simple, clean, and easy enough to build. They all should be like this. Well, except for the pink Tony Clark card...

The 1995 Upper Deck Collector's Choice Detroit Tigers:

16 Tony Clark

51 Cecil Fielder

465 Travis Fryman

466 Danny Bautista

467 Sean Bergmann

468 Mike Henneman

469 Mike Moore

470 Cecil Fielder

471 Alan Trammell

472 Kirk Gibson

473 Tony Phillips

474 Mickey Tettleton

475 Lou Whitaker

476 Chris Gomez

477 John Doherty

478 Greg Gohr

479 Bill Gullickson

There were a couple of parallel sets that aren't worth mentioning, so I will. One had a silver foil signature on the front, the other had a blue foil border. There was an insert called Crash The Game, which I don't have, but will gladly list.

6 Cecil Fielder

It turns out the parallels were not a total parallel, but a shortened set, so I'll list them too.

217 Kirk Gibson

218 Lou Whitaker

219 Chris Gomez

220 Cecil Fielder

221 Mickey Tettleton

222 Travis Fryman

223 Tony Phillips

1995 Upper Deck

2009-07-14T20:33:00.004-05:00

Going to the 5th and the NL is up 3-2. Mass substitutions have begun. HEY MLB, I'VE GOT AN IDEA ON HOW TO MAKE THE ALL STAR GAME MORE INTERESTING. HOW ABOUT LETTING THE STARTERS PLAY AT LEAST FIVE INNINGS?

I like this set. Very clean, crisp, minimalist design. Upper Deck liked it so much that they pretty much duplicated it in 2008. After that horrible 1995 set, these were a welcome issue.

The 1995 Upper Deck Detroit Tigers:

184 Chris Gomez

185 Travis Fryman

186 Kirk Gibson

187 Mike Moore

188 Lou Whitaker

189 Sean Bergman

227 Tony Clark

233 Bobby Higginson

249 Rudy Pemberton

421 Greg Gohr

422 Felipe Lira

423 John Doherty

424 Chad Curtis

425 Cecil Fielder

426 Alan Trammell

They did the Electric Diamond parallel sets again, this time with a silver or gold foil stamped "home plate" in the upper corner of the card. I've only got a few of the inserts and one of them is only a checklist. Another is that lousy looking "Special Edition" set.

I vaguely remember the Predictor inserts being game cards that if the player did something related to the statistic listed on the front you could win a complete set. I'm guessing Cecil Fielder didn't do that. Oh well, here are the inserts that I know of:

Checklist

1 Cecil Fielder

Predictor

R13 Cecil Fielder

R32 Cecil Fielder

Special Edition

95 Cecil Fielder

96 Alan Trammell

97 Tony Phillips

98 Junior Felix

229 Chad Curtis

230 Lou Whitaker

231 Kirk Gibson

232 Travis Fryman

Joe Mauer has tied the game at 3 with an RBI double. Sweet!

1995 Pinnacle Zenith

2009-07-14T20:12:00.003-05:00

I laugh at the goldbricks pictured on the cards. Score/Pinnacle could not have left any more of a subtle hint. Unfortunately that's all I can laugh about with these.

The 1995 Pinnacle Zenith Detroit Tigers:

15 Cecil Fielder

66 Kirk Gibson

105 Travis Fryman

131 Bobby Higginson

Obama is a Steelers fan? Now the NL has tied it up! I hate Score/Pinnacle! I'm done here!

1995 Score Select Certified Edition

2009-07-14T19:56:00.004-05:00

Pujols error leads to the AL's first run in the top of the first. Lincecum fails to cover first and now it's 2-0 AL. Tim McCarver can't quit using the word buoy. NL goes 1-2-3 in the bottom of the first. So far this is fun!

Ok, I'll give credit where credit is due here. These have an interesting look with the bronze shadow silhouetting the player and the black and white background. But with only 135 cards in the whole set, why bother? Oh well, at least Gibby is actually on his own card with this Score issue. Maybe that's why these are certified?

The 1995 Score Select Certified Edition Detroit Tigers:

40 Travis Fryman

45 Kirk Gibson

47 Cecil Fielder

102 Bobby Higginson

1995 Pinnacle

2009-07-14T19:30:00.004-05:00

Sheryl Crow singing while the Batplane flys over. Yawn. At least the introduction of all the Cardinals Hall Of Famers was cool. Always neat to see Stan The Man. Cool to see President Obama too, but did he have to wear that god awful jacket? LOL, I never knew he was a lefty. Who woulda thunk it?

This is not a great looking set, but not so horrible that it's worth complaining about, and there are still more Score/Pinnacle set to go, so I'll save it. Again, these remind me of Stadium Club cards, and I never thought they were so hot either. It's a full set, at least by 1995 standards, so there, I said something good.

The 1995 Pinnacle Detroit Tigers:

15 Danny Bautista

42 Junior Felix

69 Chris Gomez

117 Lou Whitaker

124 Travis Fryman

130 Milt Cuyler

148 Jose Lima

184 Cecil Fielder

209 Tony Phillips

338 Eric Davis

349 Kirk Gibson

379 David Wells

392 Alan Trammell

I can't find any info that there were any inserts or parallels with this one, which seems odd, but with something this mediocre, that's a good thing.

1995 Score Summit

2009-07-14T18:55:00.008-05:00

As I sit down to write tonight I'm listening to the player introductions of the All Star Game. It's fantastic to see the Tigers' future core representing the team tonight. Congrats to Curtis Granderson, Brandon Inge, Edwin Jackson, and Justin Verlander. (who pitched his no-hitter on my 38th birthday!) Much like baseball cards, the All Star Game ain't as much fun as it was when I was a kid, but I still enjoy it. So while I'm in good spirits, I'm going to knock out the rest of the 1995 Score/Pinnacle issues. I'll do my best to stay positive in my review of these cards.

These cards suck. Yet another unneeded and uninspiring issue by the folks at Score. Or Pinnacle. Or whatever the hell they called themselves back then. Either way, this is another crappy short set that's rookie heavy. (although I think Bowman beat them to every one of these Tigers rookies years earlier.....) Nothing about the design or player selection really stand out here.

The 1995 Score Summit Detroit Tigers:

57 Cecil Fielder

91 Travis Fryman

109 Kirk Gibson

134 Bobby Higginson

153 Rudy Pemberton

160 Shannon Penn

166 Todd Steverson

About the only interesting thing with this set is a handful of uncorrected errors involving Tigers. Pemberton's card has the Dodgers' logo foil stamped on it while Penn's card has a Cubs' logo. Meanwhile there are Tiger logos stamped on the cards of Antonio Osuna and Ozzie Timmons. If I could've picked the pair that I wished had been Tigers, it'd be Osuna and Timmons, but that's like saying I would prefer a Stroh's over an Old Style. Either way, you lose.

There only inserts were a parallel set called the Nth Degree that were a sort of speckled foil thing. These don't look as cool as the scan makes them look. I find that to be a case with a lot of foil cards. Maybe I should just scan them all.

I'm no math expert, but N = 0 here.....

1995 Score Select

2009-06-23T18:44:00.004-05:00

Two of the things I dislike most about card sets are horizontal designs and small sets, and this set has both of those covered. These don't look awful though. The selection of players is interesting. No Trammell, Whitaker, or Tettleton, but there are cards of Danny Bautista and Chad Curtis.

I have never noticed this until this moment right now. The action photo on Gibby's card is of Tettleton. Well I'll be.....

The 1995 Score Select Detroit Tigers:

25 Kirk Gibson

31 Danny Bautista

96 Cecil Fielder

132 Travis Fryman

184 Chad Curtis

205 Jose Lima

What?

Stop!

Lima Time!

Whoa-oh-oh-oh-whoa-oh-oh!!!

1995 Score

2009-06-23T18:01:00.006-05:00

It's about 95 degrees in my apartment as I type this around 6 pm. I left Memphis because of heat like this. But I'm sipping a cold beer and settling in the for the first game of the Tigers - Cubs series, so it's not all bad.

I guess I had pretty much given up on Score by 1995. I only have a handful of these. I remember thinking these were atrocious back then, but they really don't look so bad now. Of course I was on a steady diet of paxil, xanax, and Bud Light in 1995, so that might explain it a little bit, but that's a story for another day. The earth tones of the borders have a nice mellow look.

The 1995 Score Detroit Tigers:

18 Junior Felix

49 Tony Phillips

78 Mickey Tettleton

94 Kirk Gibson

116 Chris Gomez

148 Mike Henneman

174 Mike Moore

203 Joe Boever

231 John Doherty

259 Milt Cuyler

292 Jose Lima

322 Series 1 Checklist

341 Travis Fryman

373 Lou Whitaker

383 Alan Trammell

398 Cecil Fielder

406 Eric Davis

484 Tim Belcher

496 Danny Bautista

504 Chad Kreuter

526 David Wells

527 Juan Samuel

594 Phil Stidham

It looks there there were a couple of parallel sets (Gold Rush and Platinum) that have just been given more mention than they deserve.

I only have one insert card, from a set called Hall Of Gold.

HG49 Mickey Tettleton

HG50 Tony Phillips

HG79 Travis Fryman

HG82 Cecil Fielder

1995 Leaf Limited

2009-06-21T19:39:00.004-05:00

So it's been six weeks since my last entry and in that time I have not been able to come up with anything to say good or bad about these cards. I guess I'll leave it at that.

The 1995 Leaf Limited Detroit Tigers:

25 Chad Curtis

52 Travis Fryman

93 Alan Trammell

106 Bob Higginson

139 Cecil Fielder

142 Lou Whitaker

I don't think I have ever cared for these little card sets that don't even give you a full page of Tigers. There, that's something.

The Party's Over.....Time To Get Back To Work

2009-06-21T19:12:00.003-05:00

So.......in case anybody has been wondering where I've been.......well, let me gladly fill you in. I've been on the road following the Tigers for close to two weeks now! I caught a couple of games here in Chicago, and then went to Pittsburgh and St. Louis for one hell of a 40th birthday present to myself. I saw 8 games (the Tigers went 3-5) on my vacation and now I'm ready to get back to the blog.

I've been a little slack around here lately (I had no idea it'd been six weeks...) but with me finally being home for awhile and full of Tiger enthusiasm I hope to get back into rhythm and continue blogging about Tigers cards and Tiger related topics. Don't worry, it'll seem like no time has passed at all with all the crappy mid-90's sets I've got lined up to do.....

I'll likely be mixing in some vacation memories and photos along with more 1995 Tigers sets over the next week or two, and I've got a request to get my homemade RobbyT cards up here, so I'll be getting on that too. Anyway, it's great to be back and if anybody is still following the blog then it'd be great to hear from you!

1995 Leaf

2009-05-10T18:27:00.007-05:00

This is a sweet looking set. The rainbow foil comes off the card really well. This might well be the best looking Leaf set to date. I can't say anything good about the foil stamped player name at the bottom, so I won't.

The 1995 Leaf Detroit Tigers:

9 John Doherty

35 Chris Gomez

63 Cecil Fielder

78 Kirk Gibson

113 Jose Lima

139 Greg Gohr

178 Lou Whitaker

207 Travis Fryman

224 Alan Trammell

248 Danny Bautista

254 Sean Bergman

278 Mike Moore

297 Chad Curtis

I only have one insert and it's fabulous. The best part is that the scan is about a million times better looking than the actual card. In real life, the border is a silverish looking color. But the scanned version actually makes it look like a 3D rainbow orange tiger skinish sort of thing, which totally rocks! Seriously, the card I'm holding in my hand looks nothing like the one pictured.

Cornerstones

2 Fryman/Fielder

1995 Studio

2009-05-10T17:54:00.004-05:00

One cool thing about Studio is that they were always trying to do something not seen on cards before. These are no exception. Yeah, they're a little bit schlocky, but as a one-time issue I like 'em. The credit card motif works and lends itself well to the info on the front of the card like the debut year and birthday.

The 1995 Studio Detroit Tigers:

27 Travis Fryman

45 Cecil Fielder

53 Chris Gomez

70 Chad Curtis

80 Lou Whitaker

98 Alan Trammell

191 John Doherty

This is one of the few cases where the parallels turned out better than base set. Technically, they are not parallels, since they didn't do this for every player, but trust me, they're parallels.

The Gold and Platinum series were a no-brainer for something credit card related. I like the rounded corners and the gold foil hologram pops a lot more than the silver base set cards. Personally I would have like to seen an insert set along the lines of Past Due or Credit Declined, but that's just me speaking from personal experience.....

Gold

27 Travis Fryman

45 Cecil Fielder

As Platinum cards typically designate something exclusive and hard to get, it should come as no shock that there were no Tigers in the Platinum set. (FTR is looks like about half the teams didn't land a single player in the Platinum set.)

1995 Donruss

2009-05-10T17:32:00.003-05:00

I would be tempted to rank this as one of the best looking sets Donruss ever made. It could be right up there with '83, '84, and '93. It's got the great looking picture-in-picture similar to '83 Topps, except with an outstanding home plate frame bordered in team colors. But I can't do it, and regular readers will know exactly why.

The silver foil absolutely ruins these cards. Making it even worse, the debossing of the team and player names makes them virtually unreadable. It's not hard to imagine how much better these cards would look if the ribbon was dark blue, with the team and player names reversed out in orange. Or vice versa. Instead it's all to easy to see how they add nothing to a fantastic design. What a shame.

The 1995 Donruss Detroit Tigers:

45 Lou Whitaker

82 Travis Fryman

109 Cecil Fielder

137 Jose Lima

154 Mike Moore

172 Chris Gomez

219 Chad Kreuter

249 Danny Bautista

257 Kirk Gibson

274 Milt Cuyler

309 Junior Felix

312 John Doherty

339 Tim Belcher

362 Joe Boever

407 Tony Phillips

434 Bill Gullickson

465 David Wells

502 Alan Trammell

506 Juan Samuel

537 Mickey Tettleton

Donruss issued a parallel called Press Proof, that looked just like the regular cards, except they were gold foil instead of silver, and had the words PRESS PROOF written across the top of the card. They did not look any better.

1995 Fleer Emotion

2009-05-10T16:55:00.004-05:00

One of the unsung joys I have received from blogging about Tigers cards is getting to see cards and sets that I completely forgot existed. For me, collecting from the mid-90's to the mid-00's usually meant going to a card store or two (when they were still around...) and sorting through common bins for an hour or two. I'd get home; crack open a beer; sort them all into the appropriate year, make, and model; file them away in plastic pages; and promptly forget about them.

This is one of those sets. I don't remember anything about these. Being a mid-90's set of course the front is all cluttered up with unreadable foil stamping, but the ghosted orange background really adds a nice original look to the set. I admit that the big lettered "emotion" printed makes checking them all out pretty good for a laugh. I've listed each "emotion" with the corresponding card. Enjoy.

The 1995 Fleer Emotion Detroit Tigers:

41 Chad Curtis - MOVING

42 Cecil Fielder - MIGHTY

43 Travis Fryman - COMPOSED

44 Kirk Gibson - DELIGHTED

45 Bob Higginson - LEARNING

46 Alan Trammell - STEADY

47 Lou Whitaker - SAFE

See? Though ARE funny! And funny is an emotion! Get it?

1995 Fleer Flair

2009-05-06T19:59:00.004-05:00

Not much going on here that's different from the other Flair issues, except they turned them on their sides. Here goes.

The Beatles - Here Comes The Sun

Van Halen - I'll Wait

Prefab Sprout - Cruel

The 1995 Fleer Flair Detroit Tigers:

37 John Doherty

38 Cecil Fielder

39 Travis Fryman

40 Chris Gomez

41 Tony Phillips

42 Lou Whitaker

255 Chad Curtis

256 Kirk Gibson

257 Mike Henneman

258 Bob Higginson

259 Felipe Lira

260 Rudy Pemberton

261 Alan Trammell

1995 Fleer Ultra

2009-05-06T19:45:00.004-05:00

Quite possibly the least amount of effort ever put into a card design.

You know what that means around here. Unfortunately I didn't listen to five songs today. Not much effort on my part either.

The 1995 Fleer Ultra Detroit Tigers:

44 Danny Bautista

45 Junior Felix

46 Cecil Fielder

47 Chris Gomez

48 Chad Kreuter

49 Mike Moore

50 Tony Phillips

51 Alan Trammell

52 David Wells

284 John Doherty

285 Travis Fryman

286 Kirk Gibson

287 Lou Whitaker

I only have one insert and it's a doozy. Nothing says cutting edge like a close up of a cleat or a batting glove. The background of this card reminds me of those little puzzles you could get at Stuckey's when I was a kid. You know, the one with 15 squares and one empty hole and you had to slide them around to end up making a picture of a map of the U.S. or some sort of wild animal? Yeah, those....

All-Rookie

2 Chris Gomez

1995 Fleer

2009-05-06T19:15:00.002-05:00

One year after issuing one of the best looking sets of all time, Fleer gave the world this mess. This was the year they gave all the teams in each division a similar design. The funniest part about this is that the design of the A.L. East teams was probably the best of the bunch. (Yeah, we were once in that division...)

The 1995 Fleer Detroit Tigers:

44 Danny Bautista

45 Joe Boever

46 Milt Cuyler

47 Storm Davis

48 John Doherty

49 Junior Felix

50 Cecil Fielder

51 Travis Fryman

52 Mike Gardiner

53 Kirk Gibson

54 Chris Gomez

55 Buddy Groom

56 Mike Henneman

57 Chad Kreuter

58 Mike Moore

59 Tony Phillips

60 Juan Samuel

61 Mickey Tettleton

62 Alan Trammell

63 David Wells

64 Lou Whitaker

I've only got one insert card, and it's not bad looking. I like cards that incorporate newspaper themes. But would it have been that much trouble to maybe throw a Tigers headline or box score back there, instead of a Braves-Giants box?

Headliner

9 Cecil Fielder

The Tigers were well represented in the Update set. Unfortunately they were well represented by mediocre to poor players. (Bob Higginson notwithstanding)

17 Sean Bergman

18 Chad Curtis

19 John Flaherty

20 Bob Higginson

21 Felipe Lira

22 Shannon Penn

23 Todd Steverson

24 Sean Whiteside

1995 Bowman's Best

2009-05-04T21:09:00.002-05:00

I have a hard time believing that anybody's "Best" set of cards could contain a card of Pat Ahearne. I actually have two of these, and if a certain high school baseball coach shows up for the Tigers series in Pittsburgh next month, the other one is his.

The 1995 Bowman's Best Detroit Tigers:

B20 Tony Clark

B30 Pat Ahearne

B49 Juan Encarnacion

R28 Cecil Fielder

R64 Chad Curtis

R70 Travis Fryman

1995 Bowman

2009-05-04T21:00:00.002-05:00

Ah, I love the Bowman. I can totally overlook the piss poor design of any Bowman issue just to be reminded of the piss poor Tigers' prospects who graced these cards. And don't kid yourself, both were piss poor.....

The 1995 Bowman Detroit Tigers:

68 Justin Thompson

78 Cade Gaspar

127 Bob Higginson

167 Sean Whiteside

195 Matt Brunson

253 Tony Clark

302 Travis Fryman

340 Chad Curtis

375 Chris Gomez

416 Cecil Fielder

427 Jose Lima

Who was Sean Whiteside? Anybody?

1995 Topps Bazooka

2009-05-04T20:47:00.003-05:00

I never realized until now that Topps issued the Bazooka cards this far back. This looks to be Topps first entry into really cheap cards for kids, but I don't remember enough about these to make that claim officially. Packs of Bazooka cards were always pretty cheap, but at 132 cards for an entire set, I'm guessing here that Topps sort of undershot the mark. What did it take, like $8 to build a whole set? I'm not complaining mind you, but why would anybody release a set of cheap cards with this few cards in the set.

The 1995 Topps Bazooka Detroit Tigers:

12 Cecil Fielder

59 Travis Fryman

101 Mickey Tettleton

1995 Topps D3

2009-05-04T20:33:00.003-05:00

Another one I'd like to see in my ideal Topps Mystery set, this is yet another Topps gimmick set that I like. Nothing really innovative here, these are pretty much the same as the Topps Kelloggs 3D cards of the 70's. What separates these from those though are the great action shots, instead of a close up of a guy with a washed out background. Another one year wonder that Topps would never produce again, but a good one still the same. The scan doesn't do these justice.

The 1995 Topps D3 Detroit Tigers:

30 Lou Whitaker

51 Travis Fryman

59 Chris Gomez

1995 Topps MB

2009-05-04T19:45:00.003-05:00

As I sit here and ponder how to say what it is that I like about this set, and I do like it, I'm suddenly pondering something else, and I'll get to it shortly. But let me start with this set first.

I dig these a lot. For anybody who may not know, the "MB" is slang for embossed in the printing world. For anybody who may not know what embossed means, check this out:

Wiki definition of "embossing"

This gives the card a true three-dimensional feel and it makes for one very top shelf looking card. This is the Woodford Reserve of printing right here. Over the years Topps threw so many gimmicky cards at us, that a lot of the original ones fell into obscurity pretty quick. Such is the case with these. A great concept and a great design that Topps would never issue again.

Which brings me back to what I was pondering. Why doesn't Topps combine say six of these innovative type sets into one big set called Topps Mystery? Some other issues I would suggest would be things like the D3 cards, Gallery, Turkey Red, Finest, and maybe some other issue like Archives. They could issue 90 cards of each style (3 players per team) and make a modest 540 card set. Each pack would contain 9 or 12 cards of one design and each team would have 18 cards total. Then they could showcase all of their interesting designs in one easy to collect set. That way instead of issuing the same handful of players in all these small sets, they could incorporate a lot of cool stuff as well as a full team's worth of player into one nice set. And you'd never know which style of cards you were going to get in any one pack.

Oh well, something to think about.

The 1995 Topps MB Detroit Tigers:

42 Chris Gomez

50 Travis Fryman

76 Cecil Fielder

79 Tony Phillips

97 Lou Whitaker

121 Mickey Tettleton

1995 Topps Finest

2009-05-02T20:15:00.005-05:00

Again, I take issue with a set called Finest that contains someone as horribly bad as Sean Bergman, but I'm willing to let it go. I'm not really sure why Topps decided to add the protective laminate. Did anybody ever peel it off knowing that they were decreasing the value of valueless cards? Can you even decrease the value of a Sean Bergman card? Maybe if you unpeeled it and it became a Mike Moore card.......

The 1995 Topps Finest Detroit Tigers:

3 Chris Gomez

42 Travis Fryman

107 Mickey Tettleton

124 Cecil Fielder

153 Mike Henneman

203 Alan Trammell

212 Tony Phillips

220 Lou Whitaker

257 Bobby Higginson

263 Chad Curtis

306 Sean Bergman

329 Felipe Lira

1995 Stadium Club

2009-05-02T19:54:00.003-05:00

Stadium Club. I don't like writing about them anymore than you like reading about them. Let's cut to the chase.

The 1995 Topps Stadium Club Detroit Tigers:

6 Travis Fryman

34 Mickey Tettleton

78 Danny Bautista

105 Cade Gaspar

154 Junior Felix

182 David Wells

208 Tony Phillips

250 Bill Gullickson

298 Alan Trammell

309 Cecil Fielder

329 Mike Henneman

383 Chris Gomez

460 John Doherty

481 Lou Whitaker

515 Cecil Fielder Extreme Corps

547 Chad Curtis

585 Felipe Lira

611 Bobby Higginson

There was some sort of parallel where they have World Series logos gold foil stamped on the front of the cards. Your guess is as good as mine. Someone feel free to explain.

Ok, so I have this one insert card of Cecil Fielder. I'm too lazy to look it up, or even if there are any other inserts, but if anybody wants to fill in the blanks then please go ahead.

1995 Topps

2009-05-02T18:37:00.005-05:00

Oh, where should I begin? This is not a bad looking set. But it's ruined for me by the horrible font used for the player name, coupled with the name being in an unreadable gold foil. I still have to tilt these cards back and forth like a Sportflics card and hope to catch the light at the right angle to read these names.

One thing I'd like to say, I'm a sucker for the multi-player rookie/prospects cards, and this one looks great, as long as I don't consider who is on it. I wish Topps, or Upper Deck for that matter, would do more of these, but with the bizarre rookie card rule that I still haven't figured out (mainly how Bowman gets away with printing cards of minor leaguers, but yet no one else can...) it looks like these have gone the way of packs actually being made out of wax. It's a shame, and I wish somebody would explain that rule to me.

The 1995 Topps Detroit Tigers:

15 Lou Whitaker

40 Travis Fryman

68 Junior Felix

97 Mike Gardiner

125 John Doherty

153 Tony Clark

182 Milt Cuyler

209 Tim Belcher

220 Cecil Fielder

249 Bill Gullickson

277 Chris Gomez

307 Mike Henneman

334 John Flaherty

362 Chad Kreuter

434 David Wells

457 Joe Boever

474 Alan Trammell

492 Cade Gaspar

519 Kirk Gibson

541 Tony Phillips

557 Danny Bautista

576 Mike Moore

612 Mickey Tettleton

636 Sean Bergman/Shannon Penn On Deck

These even had a pretty cool quasi-parallel set. An all foil design (I know I've bitched about it, but these are ok) called Cyberstats. They look just like the base cards, but the backs have the '94 stats extrapolated as to what they would've done had the '94 season not been cancelled. I thought there were only a handful of these, since I only have a handful of these, but my research has found that there were a lot of these. My research also shows that Big Daddy was on pace for 133 RBI, which would have tied his career high. Mike Moore was on pace to suck even more than he did. Go figure.....

13 Lou Whitaker

32 Travis Fryman

123 Tim Belcher

124 Cecil Fielder

135 Junior Felix

136 Bill Gullickson

150 Chris Gomez

165 Mike Henneman

231 David Wells

242 Danny Bautista

252 Joe Boever

267 Alan Trammell

306 Kirk Gibson

322 Tony Phillips

350 Mike Moore

380 Mickey Tettleton

The Traded Set was issued in packs for the first time since '75. I remember buying a ton of these packs and still not getting the Nomo or Chipper cards. I do have all the Tigers though so I guess I should be happy.

16T Brian Maxcy

21T Chad Curtis

31T Todd Steverson

35T Bob Higginson

68T Felipe Lira

88T Pat Ahearne

107T Rob Gable (ok, I lied. I don't have this one. Who the hell was Rob Gable?)

1994 Upper Deck SP

2009-04-30T21:09:00.005-05:00

I didn't blog about '93 SP because I don't have any. I'm only blogging about '94 SP because I do. It looks like Upper Deck finally joined the all foil club here. I said all I have to say about that. I never knew what the SP was supposed to stand for, but if stands for shitty product, I would not be surprised.

The 1994 Upper Deck SP Detroit Tigers:

176 Cecil Fielder

177 Travis Fryman

178 Mike Henneman

179 Tony Phillips

180 Mickey Tettleton

181 Alan Trammell

You know, if you can't at least make a set of card with at least 9 players per team represented, you really shouldn't even bother.

There were two insert sets called Holoview. Both contained the same players. One set was blue and one set was red. Oh boy....

7 Cecil Fielder

9 Travis Fryman

1994 Upper Deck Collector's Choice

2009-04-30T20:29:00.003-05:00

Collector's Choice was Upper Deck's foray into superoverproducedcardsforkids, and as with most other issues of this type ended up outdoing their base set. There are ever so faint gray pinstripes on the cards, and the line art in the bottom corner obviously pays homage to the '75 Topps set. This was pretty much a no frills set, but sometimes no frills sets are ok with me. This is one of them.

The 1994 Upper Deck Collector's Choice Detroit Tigers:

27 Matt Brunson

56 Tom Bolton

100 Cecil Fielder

110 Chris Gomez

118 Bill Gullickson

132 Mike Henneman

167 Chad Kreuter

230 Tony Phillips

275 Mickey Tettleton

291 Lou Whitaker

352 Tigers Team Card / Cecil Fielder

364 Junior Felix

375 Travis Fryman

403 Kirk Gibson

421 Scott Livingstone

442 John Doherty

459 Mike Moore

474 Alan Trammell

499 David Wells

557 Danny Bautista

561 Tim Belcher

563 Eric Davis

There were a couple of inserts:

Home Run All-Stars

HA4 Cecil Fielder

Team vs. Team

13 Cecil Fielder

Then there were the parallel cards. Someday I'd love for someone other than me to take the time to delve into the history of the parallel card. It would be great for someone to explain to me their purpose other than to drive obsessive-complusive collectors into buying every pack they could find to try and complete these next to impossible to complete sets. Perhaps, I just answered my on question.

But I think it's pretty clear that two parallel sets in one issue is a bit too much. Especially when the gold cards were seeded 1:36 packs. IF you didn't get any doubles, you would have had to purchase 24,120 packs of cards to get a complete set of 670. Ouch. Sometimes I think these card companies are just out to make money.......

I hope that I have been able here to demonstrate just how ridiculous parallel cards are. Since I think I have done so, I promise never to mention them again.

1994 Upper Deck

2009-04-30T19:42:00.004-05:00

Ok, so next to my computer sits a little table where sits the album of Tiger cards that am blogging about. For the last 6 weeks I have stared at '94 Upper Deck trying to come up with something, anything, to get through this set and continue moving along.

Tonight I give up.

These cards sucked. These are easily the worst Upper Deck base set ever. The inserts sucked. The parallels sucked. After tonight I hope to never see them again.

The 1994 Upper Deck Detroit Tigers:

37 Travis Fryman

51 Travis Fryman

56 Tony Phillips

93 Chris Gomez

179 David Wells

201 Alan Trammell

220 Cecil Fielder

247 John Doherty

261 Eric Davis

286 Cecil Fielder

296 Matt Brunson

301 Mickey Tettleton

316 Mike Moore

321 Mike Henneman

345 Travis Fryman

364 Tim Belcher

392 Chad Kreuter

414 Lou Whitaker

458 Bill Gullickson

547 Matt Brunson

You know a set sucks when Matt Brunson is in it twice.

I only have one insert, which apparently was released regionally in packs. (I thought they didn't start that until '95, but I'm too lazy to look it up?) Anyway, this is from the "Eastern" region.

E4 Cecil Fielder

Whew, I thought I was never going to do this again. I'm glad this is over.

P.S. Thanks to the two regular readers of this blog for contacting me in the last couple of weeks asking me if I was ever going to continue. The answer is yes. Thank you for your continued readership.

1994 Church's Chicken

2009-03-21T17:13:00.004-05:00

This one is deserving of it's own blog entry. I don't know anything about it other than it has a 1994 Pinnacle copyright on the back. It really doesn't do for me much as an advertisement to eat more fried food though....

9 Cecil Fielder

1994 Pinnacle

2009-03-21T16:55:00.004-05:00

These look like Stadium Club cards. That's not meant to be complimentary and should not be taken as such.

The 1994 Pinnacle Detroit Tigers:

10 Cecil Fielder

67 Mickey Tettleton

96 John Doherty

125 Chad Kreuter

154 Mike Henneman

183 Travis Fryman

212 Mike Moore

234 Danny Bautista

281 Lou Whitaker

330 Tony Phillips

359 Milt Cuyler

388 Eric Davis

414 Chris Gomez

429 Alan Trammell

433 Matt Brunson

453 Kirk Gibson

464 David Wells

491 Tim Belcher

I'm not usually a big fan of parallels, but Pinnacle knocked it out of the park with these. Very cool. They should have just made these the base cards and called it a day.

I've got a couple of inserts, but nothing to blog home about.

Power Surge

14 Travis Fryman

The Run Creators

11 Tony Phillips

There was also a Cecil Fielder card that looks just like his base card, but with big block letter printed across the front and back that reads "SAMPLE"

All righty then....

1994 Score Select

2009-03-21T16:38:00.003-05:00

Damn I was hoping these were the ones where I got to play songs.....

The 1994 Score Select Detroit Tigers:

186 Danny Bautista

194 Chris Gomez

215 Tony Phillips

224 Mike Moore

233 Cecil Fielder

248 Tim Belcher

266 Kirk Gibson

273 Eric Davis

285 Alan Trammell

295 Travis Fryman

323 Lou Whitaker

327 Chad Kreuter

331 Mickey Tettleton

335 John Doherty

357 David Wells

368 Mike Henneman

Score Select Skills

10 Travis Fryman

1994 Score

2009-03-21T16:02:00.006-05:00

I needed something to do this afternoon since I'm not getting to see my alma mater (Memphis) play their second round game against Maryland. Fortunately, judging by the scoreboard I'm not missing much.

I don't really have much here. These are ok. I guess for Score that's high praise. My favorite card is easily the Team Checklist. There is next to nobody in the stadium, yet the upper deck center field bleachers are packed. I'll admit that's the first time I've ever seen that many people out there without a huge cloud of smoke hovering right above......

The 1994 Score Detroit Tigers:

11 Travis Fryman

51 Mickey Tettleton

79 Lou Whitaker

103 Tony Phillips

117 Mike Henneman

143 Mike Moore

171 Scott Livingstone

198 Bill Gullickson

215 Dan Gladden

228 Rich Rowland

232 Skeeter Barnes

268 Gary Thurman

286 Bob MacDonald

309 Chris Gomez

322 Team Checklist

337 Alan Trammell

369 David Wells

393 Cecil Fielder

421 Kirk Gibson

503 Chad Kreuter

504 Eric Davis

531 John Doherty

532 Matt Brunson

559 Danny Bautista

There were some inserts too, including a parallel set that looked just like the regular set, but had gold foil borders. Hmmmm, I wonder where Topps stole that stupid idea from?

Boys Of Summer

51 Danny Bautista

Cycle

5 Tony Phillips

Gold Stars

40 Cecil Fielder

48 Travis Fryman

There was an update set of sorts that looks nothing like the base set. These may rank among the worst cards I have ever seen.

Rookie & Traded

44RT Junior Felix

84RT Danny Bautista

95RT Chris Gomez

158RT Jose Lima

Memphis wins by 19. Yay!

1994 Studio

2009-02-21T17:34:00.002-06:00

I'm a big fan of the Studio "franchise." I get what they were trying to do and more often than not they were a nice issue. But this is one of those "not" times, and not because these are bad looking cards. It's more to do with the way they went about it once they came up with the concept.

I like the "locker room" concept. It's a fresh idea. But it was all down hill from there. The first glaring mistake is the jersey hanging on the wall. Any half-assed fan can tell that those aren't Tigers jerseys hanging up there. There's no name on the back for one. Second, the numbers on the jerseys are huge, and in no way resemble the numbers on the real jerseys. I could live with that though, if it wasn't for the other glaring noticeable mistake.

They used the same locker for every picture. Every card shows a picture of a locker in the corner of the room. It's easy to identify by the shadows on the right side of the card. A closer look at the left of the card shows that there is no locker on that side either. But when you really look at the card close, it looks like the "locker" is actually one of those cheap pieces of Sauder furniture, that any bachelor can easily identify. You know what I'm talking about. The thing that comes unassembled in a box, with four pieces of wood and eight screws, yet takes three hours and several expletives to assemble, and there is always one screw left over. Yeah, those.....

The 1994 Studio Detroit Tigers:

189 Eric Davis

190 Cecil Fielder

191 Travis Fryman

192 Tony Phillips

193 Mickey Tettleton

194 Alan Trammell

195 Lou Whitaker

1994 Leaf Limited

2009-02-21T17:10:00.002-06:00

If I was in the mood for bitching, this is one of those sets I would bitch about. Five Tigers cards in the whole set, foil printing ON TOP of more foil, and just a putrid design. These look like something I'd get from the Bellagio. These are awful.

Did I mention that they FOIL PRINTED ON TOP OF FOIL? I had to blast the shit out of this scan to even show any sort of contrast. The dark area is all silver foil. The white area is some sort of silverish rainbow foil. The first time I scanned this card all you could see was Trammell, that's how much foil is on here.

The 1994 Leaf Limited Detroit Tigers:

31 Cecil Fielder

32 Travis Fryman

33 Mickey Tettleton

34 Alan Trammell

35 Lou Whitaker

There was also a Leaf Limited Rookies set, but I can't recall if they were insert cards, or their own set. I'm not really all that curious about it though.

12R Danny Bautista

35R Chris Gomez

1994 Leaf

2009-02-21T15:02:00.003-06:00

The folks at Donruss/Leaf mailed it in with these. The marble background was played out by '94. There is not much more going on with these than there was the year before. You know the drill, if I'm not convinced they put much effort into something, neither will I...

The 1994 Leaf Detroit Tigers:

5 Chad Kreuter

39 David Wells

50 Cecil Fielder

80 Lou Whitaker

120 Alan Trammell

147 Bill Gullickson

160 Tony Phillips

183 Mike Henneman

197 Mike Moore

202 Scott Livingstone

232 Tim Belcher

256 Eric Davis

279 Mickey Tettleton

342 Kirk Gibson

371 John Doherty

405 Travis Fryman

There were also your typical handful of Cecil Fielder inserts, with a Danny Bautista thrown in for giggles.

Clean Up Crew

5 Cecil Fielder

Gold Rookies

7 Danny Bautista

MVP Contenders

A6 Cecil Fielder

Power Brokers

7 Cecil Fielder

1994 Triple Play

2009-02-21T14:45:00.003-06:00

Another year of Triple Play, another nicely done set. It's funny that I didn't care much for these cheap issues back when, but now I would love to see a cheap set like this that was given its own great looking design instead of the refurbished look of Topps Opening Day and Upper Deck First Edition year after year.

The gigantic player name, use of the team logo, and prominent use of team colors all score high marks from me. That's also a cool masking effect with the player name. As someone who has spent a career in desktop publishing/printing, it's fun to notice something like that being done for the first time. But as I've noticed, Triple Play was always about fun.

The 1994 Donruss Triple Play Detroit Tigers:

241 Eric Davis

242 John Doherty

243 Cecil Fielder

244 Travis Fryman

245 Bill Gullickson

246 Mike Henneman

247 Tony Phillips

248 Mickey Tettleton

249 Alan Trammell

250 Lou Whitaker

Inserts:

Bomb Squad

2 Cecil Fielder

Medalists

1 Mickey Tettleton

5 Lou Whitaker

7 Alan Trammell

9 Travis Fryman

Nicknames

1 Cecil Fielder

1994 Donruss

2009-02-21T08:06:00.004-06:00

For reasons unknown to me, I have been stuck for over two weeks now trying to come up with something to say about these, but I am at a loss. This is a great looking set. There is nothing about the design that I have any major qualms with. I have nothing to work with here. About the only thing I noticed is that the team logo changes from the old circle logo in Series 1 to the current tiger jumping through the D logo in Series 2.

In the spring of '94 one of my friends and I would take our morning break at work by walking across the street to Mapco to get a fountain drink and a pack of cards. I would get a pack of Fleer and he would get a pack of these. I'd give him any Cardinals I got, and he returned the favor with Tigers.

That's pretty much all I've got.

The 1994 Donruss Detroit Tigers:

27 Cecil Fielder

44 Mickey Tettleton

78 John Doherty

108 Kirk Gibson

138 Dan Gladden

167 Greg Gohr

195 Bill Gullickson

224 Chad Kreuter

252 Bill Krueger

280 Alan Trammell

307 David Wells

360 Lou Whitaker

378 Travis Fryman

415 Bob MacDonald

442 Danny Bautista

445 Tony Phillips

475 Milt Cuyler

496 Mike Henneman

554 Mike Moore

597 Scott Livingstone

618 Eric Davis

628 Chris Gomez

637 Buddy Groom

645 Rich Rowland

There was a lousy parallel/insert set called Special Edition that looked like the regular cards, except every element other than the photo was covered up with some sort of foil stamping. Not surprisingly, I don't own one of these.

27 Cecil Fielder

44 Mickey Tettleton

80 Lou Whitaker

98 Travis Fryman

Other inserts included:

Diamond Kings

22 Cecil Fielder

Dominators

1 Cecil Fielder

Long Ball Leaders

1 Cecil Fielder

MVPs

20 Cecil Fielder

It's a shame there were so few Cecil Fielder insert cards in this set.....

1994 Fleer Flair

2009-02-05T19:20:00.007-06:00

The readers have spoken and they liked the Ultra format so much that they have asked me to come up for a similar concept so that they don't have to hear me bag on Flair also. So I put the iTunes on random, and from now on you'll get the three songs that it takes me to do a Flair entry.

The Replacements - Shooting Dirty Pool

The Men - Church Of Logic Sin and Love

Heart - All Eyes

The 1994 Fleer Flair Detroit Tigers:

46 Eric Davis

47 John Doherty

48 Junior Felix

49 Cecil Fielder

50 Kirk Gibson

51 Mike Moore

52 Tony Phillips

53 Alan Trammell

291 Danny Bautista

292 Travis Fryman

293 Greg Gohr

294 Chris Gomez

295 Mickey Tettleton

296 Lou Whitaker

There were no inserts of Tigers. But that won't stop me from the bonus song.

Prefab Sprout - Jesse James Symphony

Thanks readers, I really love this format......but I'm going to need a lot more suggestions for formats once I get to Score cards......perhaps a review of the last movie I've seen, or maybe what I had for lunch that day. I'm wide open, and I've still got a few Donruss sets to go until I get there......

1994 Fleer Ultra

2009-02-05T18:59:00.004-06:00

It's such a shame that Fleer followed up an all-time great set with this crap. In fact, Ultra would never again come close to the great looking sets they issued in '92 & '93. So in the Stadium Club tradition, and so I don't have to bag on these for the next 10+ years, I will start a new Fleer Ultra format and instead list the 5 best songs I heard today, in no particular order....

World Party - Take It Up

10,000 Maniacs - Cherry Tree

Bob Dylan - Buckets of Rain

Camera Obscura - Dory Previn

The Rolling Stones - Far Away Eyes

The 1994 Fleer Ultra Detroit Tigers:

51 John Doherty

52 Cecil Fielder

53 Travis Fryman

54 Chris Gomez

55 Mike Henneman

56 Chad Kreuter

57 Bob MacDonald

58 Mike Moore

59 Tony Phillips

60 Lou Whitaker

352 Danny Bautista

353 Tim Belcher

354 Eric Davis

355 Rick Greene

356 Mickey Tettleton

357 Alan Trammell

358 David Wells

A bonus song since there are insert cards.

The Church - Reptile

Rising Stars

5 Travis Fryman

RBI Kings

5 Cecil Fielder

I love the new format myself......