My 30-Day Baseball Card Challenge: Day One

A few days ago, as I was doing my best to finally complete my longer than expected 12 Days of Trade Posts series, I read this post from Tony over at Off Hiatus Baseball and I immediately knew what the subject matter of my next (probably longer than expected) series was going to be.

As soon as I saw it, I knew The 30-Day Baseball Card Challenge would allow me to have some fun creating content that I probably wouldn't have ever written otherwise. I plan to take the challenge as it made: one topic per post. I'm not sure how long it will take me to complete the 30 topics, but 'day 30' will be written some time before the end of the year. I hope that a few of you will find my choices to be entertaining reads. Let's dive into day one: a card from the current year with a photo you like.

When I saw the topic for day one it gave me an excuse to go flipping through the stacks of 2017 product that I've opened so far. While there were several worthy candidates that fit the topic, I decided to go with a card that I haven't previously shown off. I recently found this Gary Sanchez in my first a Donruss retail pack of the season. I was immediately impressed by the composition of the photo. It does a great job of hiding the lack of licensing. Though the background is blurred, I'm pretty sure that is Joe Girardi in the dugout and I'm pretty sure this was taken during a game against the Rays. As I was scanning this awesome piece of cardboard for its place in this post, my mind wandered back to the day one topic. As it is written, it doesn't say anything about having to own the card you select. So, I started seeking out a card that I don't own that has a photo I like. After some searching, I settled on this:

This SSP photo variation from Opening Day is a card I will likely never own. It reminds me of cards you would find in the early to mid-nineties. There's a great view of Tal's Hill in Minute Maid Park behind Longo. It's rare to find this kind of pre-game warmup captured on cardboard. I suppose there was an unintended double meaning to my last statement. There aren't many cards that depict baseball players throwing a football and now that this one has been released, there aren't many copies to go around. I've said it before, and I'll say it again... I sure wish that Topps would utilize some of these unique photos to add some spice to a base set. I mean, how many of the same type of photo can you possibly look at across a 300+ card series without getting bored to tears? Thanks for reading.

Sneak Peek at 2017 Heritage

About a week ago, I finally picked up my Topps Series one jumbo box and the associated silver packs. It was so much fun ripping those packs, but as has been the story with much of what is going on in my collecting life over the last few months, I haven't scanned/written up said fun. At any rate, since I just busted my first real look at Flagship, my internal product release calendar was way off. Subsequently, when I walked into my local Target while on my lunch break today, I had no clue that I was going to see new product staring back at me from the shelves of the card aisle. I was looking for one of the Topps blister packs that had four packs and one of the 'fielding award' cards(I hoped to find one with Brett Gardner) or another Road to WrestleMania jumbo packs. Instead I found this:

Heritage was on the shelf a day early! As an added bonus, my hanger box had this stuck to the front of it:

That will be important later. I probably wouldn't have grabbed a loose pack of Topps since they were all clearly searched. Hey, a free pack is a free pack so I picked one from the gravity feed box and hoped that it would at least have one of the 1987-themed inserts. More on this in a bit. Let's take a brief look at what came out of the Heritage hanger box.

First things first, here are a few of the more interesting of the plain old base cards. I chose to show Duffy since he is with the Rays now and there really wasn't much other competition for 'interesting' or 'exciting'. Obviously, I chose Bartolo so everyone could see him in all his airbrushed Braves glory. I added Kershaw because he's one of the best pitchers in the game right now and there wasn't much other competition for 'interesting' or 'exciting'. Sounds like there's an echo in here, but that's what the contents of this hanger box had me thinking over and over.

I will say that I like the All-Topps(AS) subset. I pulled five total from this portion of the base set. These were my three favorites of the bunch(Kershaw and Scherzer not shown).

The Russell is a High Number SP. To top all, it looks as though the 1968 Game set makes a return this year in two distinct forms. The Manny in the middle is part of a 30 card set while the Jake Thompson RC is from a 15 card, Target-exclusive set that focuses on 2017 rookies. Topps decided to borrow from a different 'Game-like' set by making the regular set with blue backs and the rookie set with red backs. Though not historically accurate, I think it's a really nice and easy way to distinguish between the two while giving a nod to the 1951 set. Man, it looks like I'm going to have 45 more 'Game' cards to track down. I haven't even finished the set from that time they put these in Archives...

Anyway, let's move on to the loose pack of Flagship. As I flipped through the stack, I was mostly underwhelmed at first glance.

These were my highlights. I was thrilled to pull the Judge RC and I was indeed fortunate enough to pull one of the 1987's(a need at that). Almost immediately it occurred to me that guy in the middle didn't look the way I remembered seeing him while recently busting my jumbo box. A quick glance at the code on the back confirmed my hope/suspicion that I had just pulled the SSP photo variation of Mr. MVP/World Series Champ, Kris Bryant. Those fall at a whopping 1:566 packs and I pulled one of the most popular guys on the series one variation checklist! Unbelievable! I think my adrenalin is still pumping. Guess those pack searchers at my local Target couldn't pick out all of the good stuff. That was one heck of a free pack! Thanks for reading.

Knocking Out Set Needs, Courtesy of Night Owl

A while back, I made my first trade with Night Owl. I knew that eventually we would swap again and a few weeks back, I received a small bubble mailer from him. It was heavy on cards needed for various sets.

I'm slowly, but surely putting together this 1993 Hostess set. Back when it was released, I didn't even know about it even though I was definitely collecting. I came upon my first of these in one of those Walgreens, 100 card repacks earlier this year. This Brett Butler puts me one more card closer to finishing off the set.

From the '90's, we move to 2015 Topps insert needs. The Ackley puts me one card away from finally finishing that Robbed insert from series one. The Eclipsing History actually isn't for my set, it's for my Yankees collection(my set is complete already). Beltran was one of many 1st Home Run cards I needed.

See, I told you there were more! I particularly enjoy the Cobb. It was a great surprise to find so many cards that I could cross off my various lists, but the centerpiece of this swap is up next.

I saw this card in a post that NO wrote about some Topps Chrome that he busted. I immediately noticed it was the photo variation and asked if it would be up for grabs. He agreed, and told me he didn't even know it was the variation card. I didn't it when I read the post, but it looks like this is a refractor. I'm not sure if Topps did that with all of the photo variations or if this is a true parallel. Either way, I'm happy to have this in the collection. Thanks NO, I've been putting together a stack to send back your way. This time, I'm trying to make sure that it has more WOW factor than the last stack I sent. Thanks for some great cardboard!