Twins All-Stars

Congratulations to Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau and Joe Nathan on their selections to the American League All-Star team again this year. Mauer was voted in by the fans to start and Morneau and Nathan were voted in on the players' ballot.

Mail Day - Freedom Card Board Break

Yesterday, I received the cards from markakis8 from the Freedom Card Board break.

Below is a much better scan of the featured card.



Here are some of the other cards from my share of the break.





In addition, I had also received some additional cards from the raffle of unclaimed hits.

All of the extra cards will be going out to their respective teams.

2009 Topps Finest Team Collectors Break

It's been a while since I've posted and I've been wanting to post this for a long time. Though now that I'm posting again, I have a lot of things on my mind I'd like to write. I'll take it as I can.

Last week, I received the cards from the Team Collectors May Case Break - 2009 Topps Finest. I will the Twins share with my Tier 2, Aaron. Here is what I have from my half of the break.

Standard Base:





Refractors:



Blue Refractor #/399:


Green Refractor #/99:


In general, I have never been a big fan of Finest. I don't dislike Finest, but I won't exactly go out of my way to get Finest. Some people absolutely love Finest and more power to you.

As a Twins collector, I will certainly go after any Twins cards in the set.

That being said, Topps must hate the Twins. Out of a base set of 200 cards, there are only 4 Twins. They didn't even include the best closer in the game today, Joe Nathan. Compare that to the 8 Red Sox or the 11 Yankees, who placed third in their division last season. Are Yankees fans even clammoring over Xavier Nady? At least we were given more than the poor Pirates who only got Nate McLouth. In addition, there were no Twins featured as Rookie Cards or Finest Moments cards.

Normally, in our Team Collectors case breaks, we split the costs evenly between all teams. However, the collation of cards among teams was so lopsided that, for the first time, we priced the shares on a sliding scale. The Twins share was $14, thus, my half was $7. Still, not bad for $7 spent.

2009 Upper Deck A Piece of History Player Collector Case Break

About once a month, I participate in a case break with the other team collectors. This case break, however, was the first I had participated in outside of the group. The case break of 2009 Upper Deck A Piece of History was run from Markakis8 at the Freedom Card Board forums.

I had bought in on the following players and cards:
Joe Mauer (base, parallels and possible jersey)
Justin Morneau (base, parallels and possible jersey)
Jose Mijares (base, parallels and possible autograph)
Jason Pridie (base, parallels and possible autograph)
Francisco Liriano (possible jersey)
Justin Morneau/Adrian Gonzales - Cut From The Same Cloth

I received my share of the break last week and here are how they look.

The usual base:





Of course, I would have loved to see more Twins in the set, but we always seem to get shorted on our regular players. I'm glad Upper Deck is using Mijares and Pridie as Rookie Cards, because they are not found in any Topps products.

Jose Mijares does not quite look like himself on his A Piece of History card. He looks about 50 pounds lighter. Here is the Mijares that Twins fans know and love.



The parallels:



I was glad to get two parallels from the case. I would have liked to have seen the parallels distributed more evenly between cards. One collector received eight Vladimir Guerrero blue parallels and three green parallels.

The Cut From The Same Cloth insert:


There were also Joe Mauer/Russ Martin Cut From The Same Cloth insert, but those cards were reserved by someone else.

Now for the hits!





I felt I was pretty lucky with the three jersey cards. Liriano is only in the set as a jersey card. Upper Deck advertises one autograph and two MLB memorabilia cards per box on average. However, every box contained only one memorabilia card... hardly on par.

I do find it a little bit exciting when I see a picture in a card I recognize. If you look at the Joe Mauer Stadium Scenes card, it is a picture inside the Metrodome. The picture appears to have been taken from 1991.

A Piece of History also includes history moments base and parallel cards and one Piece of Hollywood card per each box. Not sure what the deal has been with the card companies, both Upper Deck and Topps, but I am really, really hating non-baseball cards in baseball card product. Those 50 cards of history moments could have been 50 additional players and the Piece of Hollywood cards are worthless to baseball cards collectors and Hollywood memorabilia collectors alike. This is the reason why I do not buy the product for myself.

My First 2009 Topps Short Print Variation

Today, I made the usual trip into Target, looking for the baby's diapers and other household necessities. As I usual do with each trip to Target, I stop by the sports cards at the front of the store and browse through the blaster boxes looking for something interesting. I looked through the 2009 Topps Series One blasters, checked the UPCs and saw one was different. I was hoping this would be the box with the Target retro variations.

After I got home from work... after my wife and girl were gone... and after the boy fell asleep... I opened the box. I opened the first pack and, to my disappointment, they were regular cards. Looking at what has been posted on other blogs, I realize I picked the wrong UPC.

The disappointment wouldn't last much longer. Four packs into the box, I pull my first short print variation: Babe Ruth.



For those collectors who don't know... and almost everyone who has bought some 2009 Topps knows... Topps seeded a number of short print variations. The short prints have the same numbering as the regular Topps cards and the same design, but feature some of baseball's greatest legends: Babe Ruth, Pee Wee Reese, Rogers Hornsby, Jackie Robinson, Cy Young, Ty Cobb, George Sisler, Christy Mathewson, Jimmie Foxx, Honus Wagner, Roy Campanella, Mel Ott, Tris Speaker, Walter Johnson, Lou Gehrig, Thurmon Munson and Johnny Mize. There are also short prints of C.C. Sabathia as a Yankee and of President Obama. I pulled #1 Babe Ruth... the regular #1 is Alex Rodriguez.

Anyone who knows me knows that I collect the Topps set every year. I have every Topps set complete from 1976 through 2008 and will be looking for 2009. Part of the fun in building the sets in recent years is also to add in insert cards and variations. While I am not normally a fan of the variations Topps has done in the past, I really like what they did with this year's variations.

My question: What do I do with Babe Ruth?

However, the short print variations are very difficult to pull: one card in every 119 packs. With one card pulled, it will be insurmountable odds to pull the other 18 short print variations. Buying the needed cards off of eBay would cost over $30 each. Likewise, I could sell the Ruth card for that much and recover what I paid for the blaster. The card itself is looks very nice and it would be hard for me to let it go. I will be thinking more on that one.

With this Topps blaster, two more Twins cards will be added to the collection:





I already have the base cards from Series One thanks to the other team collectors.