Baseball Card Collecting Blogs

Below are a list of some of our favorite card collecting blog articles. The links that follow them are to up to date feeds from recently submitted articles to each respective blog. Each blog gives its own unique insight into the baseball card collecting hobby. Read through these to gain more information on today's hottest cards, brands, sets, and players in the collection industry. The feeds from each blog are rotated, so check back often for new articles and information.

Cardboard Junkie
Updated :

Very likely the only post on Attax you'll see on this blog all year
Topps screwed me. 

2010 Topps Heritage Box Toppers
You all know Atlanta Sports Cards as that site where you can get cheap boxes, but I know them as the shop that puts boxtoppers in the 50 cent bin. On a recent trip there I snagged some of the new Heritage strip toppers.


Topps has put these in their Heritage hobby boxes since 2008. It is basically a strip of three random cards uncut so it is impossible to safely store. As far as I can tell they aren't terribly popular, probably because of their clunkiness and because even obsessive team collectors don't have much use for them. What Cardinal collector would want a dirty Cub on their LaRussa card? Carlos Quentin won't even acknowledge the inferior team from his city to his right. Dempster feels like the guy in the middle seat on an airplane with two with Kevin Smith on one side and, well, me on the other.


The backs have ads for 2010 Heritage on them. Because, you, know, you might really want to learn about this new product you just bought 5 minutes earlier. Strips like these were given out as premiums to shop owners to get them to stock Topps cards back in the late 50's. That's what I heard at least, there isn't a whole lot of information out there on them. One thing I regret about today's collecting culture is that people won't automatically cut these strips up into three separate cards anymore. Maybe in 5 or 10 years from now eBay crooks will do so in order to market them as SUPER RAER 1/1 SOOPER SHORT PRNIT!!! Actually, I could cut this one up and have two of them traded off in a half a second. That would leave me with a Cub though... ew. No thanks.


Topps switched things up this year and added a second box topper. This one features two of their depressingly impossible to find stamp insert set from one team on a strip. The stamps aren't real, but are printed on the card. So Topps' #1 priority is to market to kids, and instead of making the stamps a cheap one per pack insert and including a stamp album as a box topper, they make it a 1 in a hundred something packs framed insert numbered to 50 each and throw these at us instead. Yep, marketing to kids right there... kids eat that shit right up.


For adults this isn't a bad insert set at all, especially for team collectors. The front features a couple of stars from one team and the back is chock full of team info. Why don't Topps add these strips to blasters? Back in the day, dang near every blaster had a jumbo sized insert in it. I guess now that they have no competition, they will be able to do such innovative things. Right?

National Chicle Art From Dave Hobrecht
UPDATE: corrected some errors and added the Crawford original.

Remember way back when Topps showed off a few cards from National Chicle and everyone was like ewwww what's Ichiro doing in a Pilots' uniform and then like a dumbass I had to chime in and went for a joke that flopped instead of saying what I was actually tying to say and then everyone lost they damn minds and some dude from a national baseball card publication e-mailed me a couple dozen times and the artists got all pissed off at me for speaking truth and I ended up becoming the poster child for BOOOO NATIONAL CHICLE when all I was trying to say was chill homies National Chicle is gonna be a sweet-ass looking art set and that Chipper Jones card looks mighty fine but why did they put Babe Ruth's name on it?

Remember that?

No?

Good, maybe that mess has finally blown over then. Anyway, Topps is steadily releasing more and more images of the base cards (remember them? base cards? Beuller?) and my predictions were 100% accurate. It really is an excellent looking card set and the paintings for the cards look fantastic.

In the middle of that brouhaha, artist Dave Hobrecht e-mailed me and offered to give me a sneak peek at the artwork that he contributed to the set once he got the OK from Topps. He got the OK and e-mailed me images of the artwork he created. Dave paints in black & white and Topps added the color so it would match the rest of the set. CORRECTED:  Dave painted them in black & white and  added the color himself. Topps tweaked a few of them (like A-Rod) so it would match the rest of the set. This is the basic art you will see on the cards. Enjoy!


(I'm guessing on a lot of the names here, if I'm incorrect please  let me know)

Shane Victorino
Rich Harden (in Texas uni?)
Orlando Hudson
Miguel Cabrera
Michael Saunders
Marlon Byrd
Kosuke Fukudome
Josh Thole
Jonathon Broxton

(my eyes suck and I'm breaking in new glasses so if it's not a close up, I'm hopeless)

Lou Gehrig?Mel Ott (wrong New York team!)
David Wright
Babe Ruth (for reals!)
Carl Hubbell?Christy Mathewson
Ty Cobb
Alex Fraudriguez
Josh Beckett
Walter Johnson in a Nationals uni maybe?
Hunter Pence
(how do I not recognize the Brave immediately? what has happened to me??)

Carl Crawford
Joey Votto
Asdrubal Cabrera
Russell Martin
Jayson Werth
Johnny Damon
Reid Gorecki (oh, that's why)
Aaron Hill
Victor Martinez

Ok, why is Reid Gorecki in every damn Topps set? He played about three games for the Braves last year and isn't even in the organization anymore. I'll admit I cheated on a lot of these by going off the names listed on Dave's eBay auctions.

What's that I say? EBay auctions? Why yes! Dave got to keep the artwork and is selling much of it on eBay.

Here's Russell

And Jayson

And Crawford

And Pence.

You can look over his entire eBay store if you like, there's lots of cool goodies there.

SO WHAT I'M A TRYIN' TA SAY HERE is that National Chicle is going to rock your ass with ART. All you fellows out there who are bored with the utterly subdued '61 Heritage set might want to give this color explosion a try when it comes out. When does this come out anyway? Please let it come out after payday. Make that two or three paydays. I need to save up for a box. Even if they don't correct the error on that Chipper Jones card. Yay National Chicle!

ALSO: Some of you weren't happy with Crawford's beady little eyes. Um, Crawford's eyes actually do sort of look like that. Here's the black & white original for comparison.


Seriously, do a Google image search for Crawford, dude's got jeepers creepers peepers.

Additions to the Yo Momma Gallery
Knockin' Three trade posts out with one stone. Here's a whole bunch of additions to my Yo Momma set. According to the initial sell sheet there's another one in series two. Oh bother.

This pile came from a fellow ATLien, Jim Garrison...


These are from Rob, who has a blog, but I forgot what it was...




This Nolan Ryan back was in another of  long line of packages from Madding at Cards on Cards.


These I stumbled upon whole tracking down some more Code cards (which I haven't redeemed yet since the Transmogrifier is pritting out junk again)

Thanks to all, your packages are ready and will be in the mail as soon as I can get to a post office. The hunt continues...

The bums will NOT always lose!


I raise a Caucasian tonight in your honor, sir...

Virtual Trading
As opposed to real trading, which I am hopelessly behind in right now. So instead of answering e-mails and getting packages together, I'm trading virtual bits of cardboard over at the Yo Momma Card Code Transmogrifier. This is the oldest card I've gotten out of that one armedbuttoned bandit:


Hooray! 2010 Topps Heritage! I don't mind pulling a '61 Topps card but I think I can flip it for something better.

I made offers to some other folks for some cards off my Braves want list. I targeted one card off my list for each year from 1957 to 1964. What year do you think I'll get? Will I get anything? If you want this card for for very own personal virtual Topps card bit bucket, better make an offer quick. See? it's a ROOKIE. Don't all offer at once, now.

MINIONS!!!!!


This post was originally going to be to order you all to send your 2010 Upper Deck cards to a douche at MLB Properties, but like Thorzul's original idea, plans changed at the last minute. Don't get me wrong, we all still need to Bip the hell out of that ass, but more important things have arisen.


Some jackass swiped all of The Collective Troll's favorite cards. Now shit happens, life isn't fair and we all fuck up and pay for it every once in a while. It happens to everyone. That's not the point. What's really important is how we react when something like this happens to someone else be it a friend or a stranger. The guy who swiped the cards may have sold them off already, or is sitting on them waiting for the heat to die down or got spooked and trashed them. Hell, he might be an evil Anti-Dayf and swiped them to add to a massive collection. Now, Bacon may never see any of those cards again, but that doesn't mean we can't replace some of them.

This is a fact:


Unless you're reading from Afghanistan or the middle of the Amazon or are a minimalist or an ascetic and gave away all your worldly possessions or are a heroin addict and came to this blog by a Google search accident, you probably have a whole bunch of cards somewhere. You don't like the Rays, who likes the Rays? Even with Longoria and a World Series berth, there just ain't that many Rays fans out there. And if you ARE a Rays fan, then I bet you have a whole crapload of rays and at least a few have to be doubles.


Here's my first contribution:



I picked this up at the flea market a couple of years ago because it looked cool and was really cheap. I don't care about Ben Zobrist, but Troll might appreciate it. so it's going to Troll. If you have Rays you want to send to Troll, e-mail him and tell him. If he gets all bashful and doesn't respond, e-mail me. I'll get him your Rays even if you have to send 'em to me first and I have to hop on 75 South and hand deliver them. I enjoy reading Troll's 8,000-word posts too much to see something like this knock him down.

Don't let the theiving jerk win. We can turn this:


Into this:


Now Minions... GO!!!!!

Four more packages inna mail
Kids been barfing ALL WEEK. .

So I've, um, gotten a little behind in my posting. Here's four packages getting the one card treatment. Each one has a special theme involved, so they will be getting their own post eventually. Once the projectile vomiting stops.



This came from Jim right here in the ATL. Jim sent a whole lot of cards from a a set I'm building and incuded a couple of 'mini' jersey cards. Both were actually from sets that just happened to be mini sized. This here is Fleer's valiant but awkward attempt to rip off the 1955 Topps Double Header set. All the photos were computerizedto look like they were painted (by a robot, but painted) and the cards were the same size as the originals. Unfortunately they didn't make the entire set double folders and the resulting base cards look a bit odd. I like the Maddog, even if that jersey piece has him squished over to the left.


Matt G. (who has a blog, I just can't remember what it is) dumped a bunch of "evil Braves" among other things in this package. He was 99% sure I had this card, but I DIDN'T SO NYAAAAAH. This one went right into the A&G mini binder, deposing a 2008 Gary Sheffield in the process.



What's better than a Chipper card? A Chipper and Chrstie Brinkley card. CHEWING GUM. This one is from Madding at Cards on Cards in a recent A&G SP swap.



This one came from Steve at The Easy Life. Steve did a Bad Bad Thing. that is all I have to say about that. While I hate Bowman now thanks to Topps screwing up the brand beyond repair, a Chipper parallel numbered to 500 overcomes all hate.

Thanks guys, I'll be posting and sending once I clean up all the yuck on the walls...

A Mooss once Bipped My Sister - Part 2 Leon
If you're wondering why this post took so long, just scroll down. Assuming your computer hasn't crashed. This was package two with Leon Durham on the front. See?

There's Leon, 2 Legit 2 Bip. Mooss was right too:


Two Crime Dogs ain't no bip. I'm not going to call weaksauce this time because he made up for it. Holy CRAP did he make up for it. Commentary will be minimal, and occasional asides like this one:


will be allowed for something interesting on the back. All of the custom cards are 1/1s too.

Ok, fasten your seat belts. This is Bip Country.









Ok, I think it's safe to say I got bipped on that one. there are two more packs to go. Oh sweet Jesus, they looked like the real Bips too.

2010 Heritage racks are haunting Targets
I actually went hoping to find a blaster, but these Rack Packs were there instead. No normal packs. just the Racks. Odd, I thought.


I was somewhat peeved to see there were only 14 cards in the rack. I was almost certain there were 15 or 16 last year. This means for pure card bulk, blasters are the way to go. Here's the breakdown of packs/cards/$$$ if you're interested.



This is assuming that Topps doesn't pull some shenanigans like putting 7 packs plus some ManuPatchFractor Ruth card in the blaster instead of 8 packs.

I got four packs. Two at one Target, two at another. Both times I actually had a legitimate reason for going and wasn't just scrounging for cards. That is, if you consider soap and diapers legitimate. I'm going to show off the four best cards from each of the four packs just because I'm in a four kind of mood. Here's pack one, in order of coolness.



The cover model. I'd really like the Phillies if they weren't beating the hell out of my Braves all the time.




Everyone in Atlanta is all like GRAAAAR idiot Frank Wren traded Javy Vazquez for Melky Cabrera. No he didn't. HE traded Javy for Melky, a relief pitcher, the Yankees' best pitching prospect AND enough payroll room to sign Tim Hudson for three more years. Melky ain't a bad player either, he'll do well in his platoon role with Diaz. What I'm tring to say is I got his card in an airbrushed Braves uni and I'm happy about this.



A pair of mismatched Sox here. Not totally random though, they both led baseball in stolen bases in their respective year. Historically speaking, throughout the entire Topps Heritage run this is my favorite insert set. Not a bad design this year either.



Why do I like Shane Victorino? He tried to murder Brian McCann for Pete's sake, normally I'd swear eternal revenge on someone for doing that. I dunno, I guess it's because the guy has impressed me the way he absolutely ruins the Braves every time they face off. I had a Phillies bonanza tosay too, 7 of 56 cards had a Phil on it.

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