Gold Medal Club (Part 2: Inserts)

I wouldn't have to split my posts up into multiple parts if Topps didn't pack their blasters so full of blog-worthy cards.

Or if I didn't find myself writing at least 1,500 words every time I put a stack of cards together.

Either way, Stadium Club kept me interested for another year with fun inserts, new and old.

2021 Stadium Club Greats #SCG-23 Roger Clemens

If you dig out your old 1991 Stadium Club box, you'll find a card of Roger Clemens that looks nearly identical to this. The photo on this Stadium Club Greats insert is the same as on the 1991 original. The only difference you'll find is gold foil instead of silver, although it's less likely to be centered quite as well. That was a common issue with early TSC, the foil not lining up all that well with the rest of the design elements. This is a sample size of one, but it appears that they've made great strides in that department over the past thirty years.

Thirty years, yes, that's how long it's been since Stadium Club first hit the shelves. It's been on-again off-again since then, but I continue to enjoy its renaissance.

This isn't a straight reprint, as the card back has an entirely new theme. Instead of the green back with the so-called BARS System and a little image of the player's first Topps card, we get a lengthy write-up of the Red Sox portion of Clemens's career. It mentions three Cy Young awards, four times he led the league in ERA, and his massive career strikeout total that has him in third place behind only Nolan Ryan and Randy Johnson. It skips over additional awards earned during rest of his career with the Blue Jays, Yankees, and Astros, and makes no mention of his lengthy campaign to get into the Hall of Fame.

2021 Stadium Club Virtual Reality #VR-7 Ronald Acuña Jr.

For the 1995 set, Topps debuted a partial parallel set called Virtual Reality. It attempted to project the final full-season stats for 1994, which was cut short by the infamous strike. Sadly, the current state of the world gave Topps an opportunity to trot this theme out one more time, although that's one aspect of Stadium Club I would have preferred to never see again.

According to the Topps prognosticator, if the 2020 season hadn't been pandemic-shortened, Acuña would have finished with 124 runs scored, 38 homers, and a .250 average. His actual numbers during the 60-game season were 46 runs, 14 homers, and still a .250 average.

By running a bit of math, it appears that Topps really didn't forecast anything beyond multiplying his actual stats by 2.7, which is simply the rate of how much longer a full season would have been than the shortened season. There was no factoring in a hot spring, a late-season surge, a midsummer slump, or the actual difficulty of schedule the Braves would have faced if they played the rest of the divisions. It's an interesting exercise, but take these numbers with a grain of salt.

1995 Stadium Club Virtual Reality #94 Joe Girardi

The 1995 Virtual Reality set didn't take things quite so linearly. In looking at the back of Joe Girardi's '95 VR card, Topps had some faith that Girardi would bump up his average with a "late-season rush", and would put together a nice four-game hitting streak in an alternate-universe Labor Day weekend of September 1994. Which, as we know, is quite typical of how Rockies seasons go.

They also thought Barry Bonds would tie Roger Maris's single-season home run record of 61. Clearly they put some thought into this project back in the mid-'90s rather than just put =[cell]*2.7 into a spreadsheet and filled down.

2021 Stadium Club Sepia #43 Evan White (RC)

My haul of colored parallels was right in line with stated pack odds. I felt like I got a nice mixture of what was on offer, starting with Evan White's rookie card in Sepia form. The young first baseman already has a Gold Glove to his name, but his promising career is on hold for right now while he recovers from hip surgery.

2021 Stadium Club Black Foil #183 Joc Pederson

Back to the world of full color, here's Joc Pederson pictured (very briefly) as a Chicago Cub. Pederson only spent the first half of the 2021 season in the Windy City before becoming an early casualty of the Cubs rebuilding program. He was traded to the Braves in mid-July, shortly before most of his more well-known teammates were sent elsewhere.

The first game Pederson played as a Brave was against the Tampa Bay Rays, but that was a home game. He never played the Rays as a Cub, so I'd guess that this shot of him with a Mike Zunino cameo was actually taken during the 2020 World Series when he was still a Dodger, then given the Photoshop treatment.

This card is one of the Black Foil parallels, which is somehow even less shiny than you'd expect.

2021 Stadium Club Red Foil #38 Cal Ripken. Jr.

The Red Foil is much more striking, and is reminiscent of early Stadium Club sets like 1994. Of course, both Cal Ripken, Jr. and cameo player Wade Boggs were in that set, and between the two, we're looking at two Hall of Fame plaques, thirty-one All-Star appearances, sixteen Silver Sluggers, and more. Add to that a Rookie of the Year award for Boggs, and two MVP awards for Ripken, which is mentioned on the card back.

2021 Stadium Club Red Foil #77 Jesús Sánchez (RC)

Jesús Sánchez is clearly amazed by those accolades.

2021 Stadium Club Autographs #SCBA-JM Julian Merryweather (AU) (RC)

I was lucky enough to pull an autograph in this blaster, an on-card signature of Toronto Blue Jays rookie Julian Merryweather. He's appeared in twelve Big League games thus far, but has been recovering from an oblique strain for most of this year. When he does return, he'll pitch in Toronto for the first time. His home games thus far have only been played at his team's temporary homes in Buffalo and Dunedin, FL.

He's on the older side for a rookie, as he'll be turning 30 in just a couple months.

2021 Stadium Club Oversized Master Photos #OBPDG Deivi García

Concluding this 2021 Stadium Club blaster is the first card I found in it, the Master Photo box topper. It has unusual dimensions of 3 3/8" x 3 3/4", and is significantly smaller than past Master Photos I've seen from older Stadium Club sets. Compared to that, I'm unsure what makes this "Oversized".

I don't know much about Deivi García, who is probably the least well-known name in the entire collection of Master Photos, but it is nice to see an unfamiliar player on the 1993 Stadium Club design. There isn't much to be found on the back. It's mostly white like an old photo print. One of the corners is a little dinged, and there's also a little damage on the back of Sánchez's card. I escaped the worst of it, but I definitely heard some tales of woe regarding quality control of this beautiful set. I'm sure this not-quite-square thing would have gotten damaged eventually wherever I found a place to store it, but it's concerning.

I'm continuing to keep an eye on Target's website for Topps product, and it's actually somewhat consistently available. You have to be quick, but not as quick as when flippers were running rampant in the card aisle. They have A&G, Gypsy Queen, and Series 2 blasters available as I write this, so act fast if you want some!

And keep your fingers crossed for good quality control.

What a Difference a Year Makes

I don't really remember when I bought it. It was most likely shortly before the seismic shift we all experienced in early 2020. But whenever it was, I've had a single value pack of 2020 Topps on my card table for quite some time. I bought the factory set last year, as I always do, and a few have trickled in via trade, so sorting through one pack was pretty low down the priorities list compared to everything else that's gone on since then.

2020 Topps #99 Dan Vogelbach

All this time, Dan Vogelbach's smiling face has been looking up at me, and by now this card has etched itself into my memory. I know no bigger fan of his than Tom at Waiting 'til Next Year, and I've seen quite a few variations of this card pop up in my blog feed thanks to him. The stocky player has been on my radar a lot the past few weeks, as he's now on the Milwaukee Brewers. The Rockies played the Brew Crew seven times since mid-June, losing five, which is partly the reason why Milwaukee was on an 11-game winning streak heading into Sunday.

Sadly, Vogelbach experienced a hamstring injury while playing in Arizona, and is out for six weeks. Lucky for him, he managed to score on the play anyway, thanks to some lackadaisical defense on the part of the last-place Diamondbacks.

2020 Topps #212 Mike Fiers

Mike Fiers is still with Oakland, but he's suffering from an elbow injury and has only made two starts this year. His facial hair is a lot more normal in this photo compared to what he's tried to pull off in the past. He's quite well-known for blowing the whistle on the Astros cheating scandal, but he's also thrown two no-hitters in his career, which this card back tells us. One of those came against the Dodgers, the other against the Reds. 

One of those teams has been no-hit so far in 2020. Surprisingly, it's not the Reds. 

The card back concludes by telling us that Fiers is one of only 35 pitchers with multiple no-nos, certainly an elite club. The list of those with three or more is far more exclusive, as mentioned by Justin Verlander when he threw his third in 2019. Nolan Ryan leads with a whopping seven, likely an unbreakable record, even with the way they've been piling up lately.

2020 Topps #262 Anthony Santander

I haven't followed Orioles right fielder Anthony Santander much during his career, and this card doesn't tell us anything beyond his Major and Minor League stats. Still, this card definitely caught my eye thanks to Santander's special alternate jersey which includes the dazzling design of the Maryland state flag on the sleeves and shoulders. 

Camouflaged on his right sleeve is the number 20, a memorial patch the Orioles wore in 2019 for Frank Robinson. Robinson played for the Orioles from 1966-1971, winning an MVP award and two World Series rings. He became the first Black manager in MLB history as a player/manager for Cleveland in 1975. You might find him in your 1991 Topps set and other overproduction-era boxes back when Topps still gave us manager cards.

2020 Topps #86 Hyun-Jin Ryu LL

We lost a lot of baseball legends in 2020, but sadly plenty more passed away in 2019, too. Don Newcombe died in February 2019, and the Dodgers honored "Newk" with a #36 patch, which you can see on Hyun-Jin Ryu's right sleeve.

As noted by the yellow banner on the card, this is actually a League Leader card. You have to flip the card over to find out which stat is being profiled here, and it happens to be ERA. Ryu's 2.32 edged out Jacob deGrom's 2.43, although deGrom is practically a lock to win that title this year. deGrom has been slipping a bit, but it's still below 1.00. And in any case, Ryu is playing for Toronto now. He switched leagues, but technically hasn't switched countries yet, as the Blue Jays are still playing in Buffalo for the time being.

And Don Newcombe still isn't in the Hall of Fame.

2020 Topps #121 DJ LeMahieu

Counting those Blue Jays, it's been over sixty years since there were three MLB teams playing their home games in the state of New York, and almost a century since the Yankees finished a season as the worst of three. It's a technicality, I'll grant that, but it just goes to show what a dominant franchise The Bronx has had for longer than anyone can remember.

Generally speaking, the Yankees don't do memorial patches the way most other teams do. There are occasional patches, often guided by whether a Yankee has had their number retired, but they're more known for wearing black armbands instead, as we can see on DJ LeMahieu's left sleeve. Gio Urshela has another example of this. This particular one was for longtime Yankees All-Star and pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre.

After getting good looks at both the 2020 and 2021 Topps sets, I'm not sure I have a clear favorite. Both have lots of angles and parallelograms, but I do appreciate how much more readable the 2020 set was. I'm still finding myself squinting at 2021 Physical Base cards in Topps Bunt, and my eyes aren't getting better with age, let me tell you.

Nor is my back, but at least that's better than it was a couple posts ago.

2020 Topps #613 Isiah Kiner-Falefa

Sharp-eyed collectors will notice that this Rangers card of Isiah Kiner-Falefa is actually from Series 2. I didn't pull any Rangers in this pack, nor did I find any Rockies. The latter was because of a little bad luck, but the former was because I didn't manage to locate the one single Rangers card Topps added to Series 1. At the time. the card world was abuzz with speculation about why the Rangers were basically omitted, and I've since read that Topps was waiting to add the Inaugural Season logo for the team's new home at Globe Life Field. Nick Solak, the lone Rangers representative in Series 1, didn't have that logo on his card, but it's visible here in the lower right.

I guess it ended up being unintentionally accurate, since the ballpark wasn't able to officially open until late July 2020.

Kiner-Falefa has transitioned away from catching in favor of the left side of the infield, but catchers in full gear always make for a great card, and Topps made excellent use of the horizontal orientation here.

2020 Topps '85 Topps #85-18 Roger Clemens

You can always count on an insert or two even in the smallest of packs, and this pack came through with a couple pitchers. First up is another non-Hall of Famer, Roger Clemens, pictured with his original Red Sox team. Topps continued their Anniversary theme into 2020 by dusting off the 1985 design. We've seen this for quite a few years now, as we saw similar sets using the 1987, 1983, and 1984 designs.

Even though this young-looking Clemens is on the 1985 design, complete with red stirrups, I believe the photo itself is from 1990. The Red Sox have their own history of wearing black armbands, and I believe this one is what they wore in 1990 following Tony Conigliaro's death. I highly doubt I'd have been able to place this photo without that feature.

Topps reproduced the period-correct lime green background color on the card back, and considered Clemens's total career record when telling us about his massive counts of strikeouts and wins. Despite that, somehow they couldn't squeeze his full annual stats onto the back, cutting off five seasons prior to 1989. Not even his MVP year of 1986 is listed.

2020 Topps Turkey Red '20 #TR-33 Matthew Boyd

My other insert from this pack came from the again-resurrected Turkey Red set. It doesn't have the special texture it did back in 2005 and 2006, but it should still be familiar to collectors who have been around Topps brands for a while. I saw a Rockie arrive last year from Chavez Ravining, but this pack made sure I had both leagues covered. 

I don't know much about Matthew Boyd. After a quick glance at his Baseball Reference page, it appears that he led the AL in home runs allowed in both 2019 and 2020, but he seems to have settled down a bit this year. What I can tell you is that the knee sock style looks perfect on a retro design like Turkey Red.

2020 Topps Turkey Red '20 #TR-29 Nolan Arenado

I didn't pull this final card from a pack. Rather, it came to me from Brian at Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary. It was actually part of a prior trade, but I felt that this particular insert would fit better in this post. These must have been somewhat plentiful, as it's the second Turkey Red I've seen sent by a fellow blogger.

Nolan Arenado, noted as all Turkey Red subjects are as a "Prominent Base Ball Player", has his usual accolades and superstardom documented on the card back. "Defensive brilliance", "astonishing range", "annual fielding awards", and so on. This is not news. What's news since this card was printed is that now he's doing it for St. Louis.

It was a big weekend for him. The Cardinals were in town, marking Nolan's first return to Denver since his offseason trade. Denver-area fans gave him a warm standing ovation before his first at-bat, and it was an emotional moment for all. I didn't attend any of the games this weekend, but it looked a lot like Troy Tulowitzki's first return here in 2016.

It just so happens that Arenado was up to bat in the 8th inning as I wrote this. He grounded out to Ryan McMahon at third who made a play that looked a lot like many plays Nolan made himself at the hot corner.

Having your favorite player switch teams is never a fun experience. It's one of many ways in which a sense of stability is not something I particularly expect any longer. And the world has changed in far more profound ways than that since these cards were printed. But in another sense, things are as predictable as ever. This post's title is intentionally ambiguous, but after all is said and done, Nolan Arenado is still the starting third baseman for the National League in the upcoming All-Star Game here in Denver, and he's still making great plays out there (again, as I write this).

I'll let you know how it goes.

Target Made Me Pay in Dollars

Topps comes out with quite a few baseball products this time of year. Stadium Club, Archives, Chrome, Allen & Ginter, even Bowman Platinum is making a comeback. Update will be out right smack in the middle of the postseason. I haven't purchased packs of many of them, but they're starting to trickle in via trade.

Still, I do like a low price point. And Topps Bunt, a new physical product based on their smartphone app, fit the bill pretty well. A 24-card value pack set me back a mere $3 at Target recently. I haven't looked over the whole 200-card checklist yet, but the pack I got was pretty full of players like this:

2016 Topps Bunt #179 Jose Canseco

Jose Canseco was one of the first cards to fall out of this pack. Canseco, of course, was baseball's steroid poster child, and the first of only four players in the 40-40 club (three of which are tainted by steroid scandal). The back of this card has a paragraph about his 1988 season in which he set that mark, but nothing about how "clean" he is. Nor his hilarious Twitter account, which would be perfect for a digital-themed set like this. 

2016 Topps Bunt #138 Nomar Garciaparra

Nomah (sorry, Boston) was in here too, and this turned out to be a bit of a Red Sox hot pack. He's on the Dodgers broadcasting team now, and I heard a bit of him earlier this week as the Rockies regular channel didn't televise either game of Wednesday's split doubleheader. The Rockies and Dodgers were rained out on Tuesday night, and the Rockies came darn close to sweeping L.A., if not for a 9th-inning grand slam.

There were two grand salamis in that game (way better than calling it a Papa Slam), the first from rookie Stephen Cardullo, who recently broke into the majors at the ripe old age of 28, turning 29 the same day he hit his first Major League home run in Game 1. And as I write this, Nick Hundley just hit one to left-center for his first Major League grand slam, helping the Rockies trounce the Diamondbacks to begin the holiday weekend!

If you want Papa John's at a discount today, don't miss out.

2016 Topps Bunt #83 Roger Clemens

Roger Clemens, a 300-game winner, doesn't pop up in sets too frequently anymore. He's definitely not as well-liked a guy as Ken Griffey, Jr., who still gets more cards than most active players. For multiple-team stars like these past three, Topps is definitely using their most well-known team for the photo and logo. You probably won't find too many unfamiliar uniforms in Bunt, but the product could continue to evolve if Topps decides they like the physical/virtual crossover.

2016 Topps Bunt #139 Stan Musial

Stan Musial was always a Cardinal, winning a whopping seven batting titles during his career. As you'd expect, Ty Cobb holds that career record with an amazing twelve, exactly what you'd expect from the all-time batting average leader. Musial won three World Series in his career, and even threw a pitch in 1952 in what amounted to a publicity stunt.

I like the action shot, but I'd put his Archives card from this year above it. The design of 2016 Bunt, which is now starting to show up in the app itself, is pretty plain and logo-dominated. It's been compared to 2011 Topps Lineage, and minus the foil, I can see the similarity. It even has the same 45-degree bend in the bottom design element.

2011 Topps Lineage #33 Tony Perez

Topps was a few years ahead of putting accent marks on player's names, something the MLB is finally taking seriously on uniforms. Tony Pérez, a key member of the Big Red Machine, got a great batting cage shot in 2011 Lineage. I'm fairly close to completing Lineage, but I still need to go through the checklist and figure out which ones I'm missing. It can't be more than a dozen.

Lineage has another similarity to Bunt, and that's the team logos. Logos in Bunt are a dominating element in the design, but Topps was careful to use period-correct logos, just like they did in Lineage.

2016 Topps Bunt #166 Carl Yastrzemski

In a set with all these legendary retired players (which aren't too common in Bunt outside of the insert sets), I think it's the least they could do. No one wants to see Jackie Robinson with a big "LA" logo behind him.

2016 Topps Bunt #180 Robin Yount

So far, it's been a lot of the same players as I pulled in those packs of Archives and Stadium Club. This shot of a young Robin Yount isn't quite as interesting as his dirt bike card, but those 1980s Milwaukee jerseys are pretty cool, back from their American League days. This photo would fit well in one of the insert sets, as we'll see soon.

2016 Topps Bunt #48 Dwight Gooden

Dwight "Doc" Gooden has been in the news lately following his 30 for 30 episode, along with Darryl Strawberry, the darlings of the 1986 Mets. Strawberry's name is even burned into my little league baseball bat. And I love those 1980s Mets uniforms. This pack is worth it for the throwbacks alone.

2016 Topps Bunt #23 Xander Bogaerts

Yes, I actually did pull a few active players, too. The Red Sox streak continues, this time with the third different logo in four cards. Bogaerts is from Aruba, one of only five Major Leaguers to hail from the island nation. The only other one I've heard of is Sydney Ponson. Xander is only in his fourth year, but he's becoming a fan favorite in Boston, and earned his first All-Star selection this year.

2016 Topps Bunt #62 Starlin Castro

Ex-Cub Starlin Castro is now in the same division as Bogaerts, and though the Yankees are in a rebuilding year, they're going all-in on the youth movement. It's been working for the Cubs, and it's good to see the Yankees turning an eye toward the future instead of clinging to aging players. Of course, the Yankees still honor their past, as we can see the memorial #8 patch of Castro's sleeve in honor of the great Yogi Berra.

A lot of bloggers have been suggesting that Topps Bunt could possibly replace Topps Opening Day. Personally, I think just because they're both on the lower-end of the pricing spectrum doesn't mean they don't both have a place in the market. Sure, Opening Day could be better differentiated from Topps Base, but if the market can support numerous high-end products like Museum Collection, Triple Threads, and Tier One, then why not more than one set for the low-end crowd and kids without money to burn on "hits"? Opening Day has all those awesome insert sets, and doesn't focus on retired players the way Bunt does.

At a buck or two a pack, I don't see a problem with keeping them both around.

2016 Topps Bunt #144 Yasiel Puig

Yasiel Puig has gone through some transaction drama in the last month, first being demoted to Triple-A, then placed on waivers, then claimed by the Brewers, only to end up right back on the Dodgers after the transaction fell through. Not many players in this small set have spent recent time in the minors, but the back of this card has it right—Puig has a "flamboyant style".

The back of each card also reminds us how this set blurs the lines between physical and digital. It's physical enough that I couldn't buy it with digital coins at the Target checkout lane, but Topps was sure to print "Collect and Trade this card in the Topps Bunt app today!" on the back of every card. Below that are logos for both the Apple and Google Play App Stores.

It would be cool if I could actually add this card to my digital Bunt collection just by virtue of owning a physical copy, but that's not the case (yet). At least they gave me a scratch-off code for a digital pack, and I won another code in a recent contest at Sport Card Collectors.

I'd also love to see Topps develop a web app for Bunt, as the mobile apps are a bit clunky and hard to navigate, especially when your collection grows.

2016 Topps Bunt Unique Unis #UU-3 Shin-Soo Choo

And now we come to the inserts. I only found two, so I can't quite say whether these are up to par with the awesomeness found in Opening Day, but I find them pretty appealing. Fans of throwback uniforms are sure to like this one, Shin-Soo Choo is sporting some 1970s-era Rangers gear, and Topps even gave us the date of this card for us! I always appreciate that. It's a hint of 1997 Upper Deck, and also their Topps Now product.

2016 Topps Bunt Programs #33,924 / #P-30 Carlos Gonzalez

Using that code I won from Sport Card Collectors, I was lucky enough to pull Carlos Gonzalez' card from the Programs insert set, which even has the same card number on the virtual back. It also has a Digital card number up in the 30,000 range (amazing how many digital cards they've released). The base cards of retired players have the same backs as their printed counterparts, but active players that can score points in the app's fantasy scoring system get the same card back as normal Bunt digital cards. Last time I posted a Bunt card, I was on an iPhone 4S with a different aspect ratio, and Topps was about 30,000 cards from designing this one.

I'm sure this makes a lot more sense if you've actually used the app. My collection of digital Pokémon is coming along nicely, too. 

2016 Topps Bunt Light Force #LF-8 Luis Gonzalez

The final (physical) insert card from the pack is dubbed "Lightforce", and I must admit that I don't really get the theme here. It definitely has sort of a spacey galaxy thing going on, and it seems to be color coded to the old Diamondbacks uniforms. Which is nice, because it looks like it could actually be a shot from the Hubble Space Telescope. 

After looking at eBay, it seems like all the cards from this insert set have the same color scheme, it just happened to coincide perfectly with Arizona's old colors. Which by the way, are light years (sorry) better than their current dark gray monstrosities. That link opens a PDF, by the way, in case you are still running Acrobat 6 on Windows 98 and are worried about program startup times.

I guess that tongue-in-cheek sentence above really does indicate that maybe, just maybe, digital cards aren't so crazy after all. It wasn't so long ago that it was quite a lengthy ordeal to open a PDF on an underpowered computer over a dial-up connection. But now I can go walk around outside and collect Pokémon, open PDFs in multiple tabs in barely more than the blink of an eye, have my car read me a text message, deposit a check through my phone, and now carry around on that phone the same cards that I put in my 9-pocket pages.

Welcome to the future.

It's about time!

I am about to turn 30, and baseball card collecting has been an off-and-on hobby of mine since 1993. Astute baseball fans will recognize that year as the inaugural year of the Colorado Rockies. Yes, also the Florida/Miami Marlins, but that's not the team that got me hooked on the sport of baseball and its related collectibles.

I came of age in this hobby smack in the middle of the "junk wax" craze, when every third strip mall had a card shop, and we were all stockpiling 1991 Topps and 1992 Fleer as though it was our ticket to a life of wealth and luxury. Sadly, that was not to be, though I seemed to maintain enough interest in this hobby to keep most of my cards around all these years.

I still stop by the local card shop from time to time, I have a few local dealers I see once or twice a year, and I'll even pick up something at Target or eBay once in a while. In other words, I do not breathe, eat, and sleep this hobby like some of the other bloggers in this community, but I still have an appreciation and a healthy sense of nostalgia.

There are a few hundred blogs in this community, but I can't say I read too many of them. For a while, I read JB Anama's BDJ610's Topps Baseball Card Blog and the Dodger-centric Night Owl Cards. I've even glanced at Cards From the Quarry (because Go Rockies!) and Garvey Cey Russell Lopes (because there are an awful lot of Dodger fans in this community). But time constraints don't really leave room for much more.

I've even done a handful of trades. Several months ago, I sent some 1993 Upper Deck to TTG at From An Unlikely Source and he responded with a stack of Colorado Rockies cards, which were much appreciated.

But I really have to give full credit for my decision to finally join the blogosphere to Nick at Dime Boxes, who runs the best baseball card blog out there, in my opinion. He and I have done a few trades in recent months. In fact, I was the one who sent him the "Starter Kit" he blogged about in September, and I was ecstatic to see he was so pleased with the selection of cards and supplies I sent him.

So when I randomly won his New Year's contest a few weeks ago, and a stack of a couple hundred cards showed up in my mailbox earlier this week, complete with all the vintage goodies he promised, I decided I had to do justice to such a random act of kindness. I ordered a scanner on Amazon, and decided to stop lurking and start creating.

I am finally happy to count myself as a member of this highly esoteric yet tight-knit group of baseball card bloggers, and show one of my favorite cards that Nick sent my way.

2007 Upper Deck #339 Roger Clemens

I am a Colorado resident and native, and I have seen most of my professional baseball games at Coors Field. I mentioned this to Nick when he emailed to verify my address and what I collect, and what shows up? A broken-bat shot of 300+-game winner Clemens at Coors Field. I've read enough Dime Boxes to know that Nick is a huge fan of pitchers at the plate and broken bats. Combine the two and I can't even imagine how tough it must have been for him to tear this out of his collection.

But that level of generosity showed me that it was about time for me to just "start a blog already!" (as it appears on my to-do list) and join what I have found to be a generous and passionate community.

There is plenty more where that came from, but that will have to wait for a later post.