Unwrapping the Sportlots Box #1

A few weeks back the great Night Owl wrote a post about the difference between saving your money vs. getting what you want quickly with the Sportlots box concept as the main character of the argument.  It's a great read like just about everything he puts out, but this is one of the few posts he has made that I vehemently disagree with.  Before I begin, I want to make crystal clear that this is not me calling Night Owl wrong, because that story is his opinion and by definition an opinion can never be wrong.  The way he collects, his way is right for him.  I just want to showcase one possible alternative way of using the Sportlots box to both get what you want and save money. 

I am a very eclectic collector.  My Rockies are main collection, but I have several other interests that I collect to varying degrees.  I collect my UK basketball guys.  I collect vintage Topps sets.  I collect insert sets that hold a particular appeal to me.  And I am currently working on a 9 rainbow parallel 2020 Donruss set, which I will go into greater detail about on a later day.  

Because I have so many interests, I get different hankerings when I visit Sportlots.  Most of the time I go there to find the Rockies team set for the most recent releases.  I have found that I can save 50% or even more by buying team sets individually instead of just getting one on eBay.  Most of the time I can get an entire team set from one seller, but not always.  This is where the box savings helps.  

 

Let's take the 2020 Bowman/Draft set for example.  The Rockies have one of the hot names in that set in Zac Veen so naturally his cards are drastically overpriced for a player that has never played a single minor league game.  I refuse to pay the "I think he will good" tax that so many have been charging.  But I still want the rest of the team set, so instead of paying $10 on eBay for a set including Veen, I got the rest of the set (+ 2 chrome parallels) for less than $2 including shipping by using box shipping.  It took two different sellers and if I used quicker shipping, the cost would have been over $8.  I am not a skinflint, but I am not wealthy to pay 300% more than I need to.  BTW, Case Williams is a real zero year guy because he has never and will never suit up for even a minor league game for the Rockies.  He was traded to the Reds in the Jeff Hoffman/Robert Stephenson deal after the season.

This also works for other minor league sets such as these examples from 2020 Topps/Heritage Minors and prospect heavy sets like 2020 Bowman/Platinum.  Of course, Tyler Nevin and "Jedi Master" Terrin Vavra were no longer Rockies by the time these cards came out.  They were sent to Baltimore in the still hard to understand Mychal Givens deal.

 

Inserts and parallels are also a very good thing to get through the box system, especially when buying from a smaller seller.  Most small sellers do not open enough product to get large quantities of inserts and parallels, but they could have that one that you want for a good price.  What I do is find a card I want such as these 2020 Bowman/Platinum ice parallel Trevor Story, 2020 Topps/Gallery rainbow Jesus Tinoco and 2020 Panini/Absolute Rookie Roundup Sam Hilliard.  Not many small sellers have multiple needed parallels and inserts for the Rockies, so I have to buy from several different to complete team sets.  

So many card sets were jammed into a very short time period.  There were at least 16 sets that were released in November and December.  Some of them I haven't completed checklists for, let alone picking up team sets.  But I was able to just add a few cards as filler to orders for other cards I truly wanted to buy that day.  This 2020 Stadium Club/Chrome Brendan Rodgers is an example of that.  I think the set, but did anyone truly have enough time to enjoy it?  Same with the 2020 Topps/Fire Flame Sam Hilliard.  Kind of a weird set, but it's not a bad design.  But there was no time to take it in before the next new thing came out.  Topps Gold Label is one of those sets that if it went away, would anyone really miss it or even notice?  But since it is around I grabbed this one.  The final Rockies card here is from a set I didn't even know contained MLB players for a while after its release.  2020 Panini/Contenders was written about on Baseballcardpedia as NOT containing MLB players.  Well, it does as shown by this Chuck Nazty.  Not a bad set, I like it in basketball, but again would anyone miss it if it disappeared in MLB?

 

 

Now we get to the actual greatness of the box orders.  With regular shipping, my cards would have likely ended there.  But with box shipping, I can look at additional cards that I otherwise wouldn't buy.  The one area of my collection that has benefited most is my vintage sets.  An example is with the Bowman Platinum Trevor Story from above.  I found it for around 30 cents or so.  With shipping at 75 cents, I could have gotten it a couple weeks ago for around a buck.  However, this seller offered box shipping of up to 25 cards shipped for $1.  So I checked his inventory and didn't see much more I needed with Rockies or NBA cards.  But I noticed he had a nice chunk of vintage for low prices.  So I added 23 1975 Topps and a 1982 Topps Dale Murphy to the order.  Not only did I get a few cards from two sets that I have little from, but the seller also benefited.  Instead of making a few cents off a dollar order that costs 75 cents to ship, the seller got a $5 order from me and was probably able to package my order with others to save shipping costs himself.  

I have been doing that regularly since the box system started.  Two sets that I have been steadily building with orders like that are 1974 Topps and 1981 Topps.  I have the 74 set within about 50 cards or so of completion.  This early Dwight Evans is one of the few I need that I found for decent prices.  The 74 Rangers checklist is one of 8 that I got from a seller, some of which were new to me and some were upgrades of others.  I very seriously doubt I would have bothered to collect the checklist set if it wasn't for shipping filler. 

By the way, is it possible that the Bob Knepper is the best mustache in the history of humanity?  Or is it the worst?  I can't decide whether I love it or hate it.

Another thing that I have been working on is my 2020 Donruss rainbow set.  It is another project that requires multiple sellers.  The orange parallels like the Yadier Molina only showed up at 4 per hanger box.  With a 300 card set, one guy is not likely to have all I need.  So you pop in one or two along with the rest of an order and before you know it, you are around 70% complete of a 2700 card project.  The Kershaw is one of the weird one that has a back variant with the same photo on the front.  I don't like that practice at all.  But anyway.  The main parallel that I am behind on is the Baby Sharks like the Kershaw.  I have a lot (50 I think), but there are a lot to go and they aren't cheap.  Although this time, I was able to add Kershaw along with 4 others.  

Let's end this thing by showing another couple of forms of shipping filler, my NBA collection and a really neat insert set that I have been very passively collecting, 2020 Topps/Big League Defensive Wizards.  First off is a 2019 Panini/Chronicles Panini Keldon Johnson.  I'm not a huge fan of Chronicles just because it is so limited on player selection.  It's a few superstars in the base set and then almost all rookies on 10-20 different designs.  Although the sheer number of cards per rookie do tend to help the collector afford them.  I got this Keldon before he has emerged as a future star in San Antonio this year.  I doubt I will get any more of his rooks as cheaply.  Finally, I added this Matt Chapman (along with a Bryce Harper) to my very passively collected set.  I have 13 of the 15 now.  I need the Trout and the Tater Tot (Fernando Tatis Jr.) cards to complete the set if you happen to have any laying around.

Most of those cards I would have never gotten to appreciate were it not for shipping filler and the Sportlots box system.  I love it both as a buyer and a seller.  It won't work if you just want to place one order from a single seller every so often.  In that case, just pay the full shipping, it will be better for you.  But if you are like me and buy from SL several times a month, the box system will save you money.  Actually that isn't true, because I still spend the same amount of money, but I get a lot more cards for that money.  And for me that is what is truly important.

Thanx for reading.

Sunday PWE Trade Bait #1

One of the things I intend to accomplish with the relaunch of the blog is to get back into trading.  I really like getting cards, of that there is no doubt.  However, one of things I love more than anything is to find the right home for a card I don't want.  Every card ever made deserves to be loved by someone.  Now my blog is not reaching a large audience right now, although I hope that will improve in the weeks to come, but I still think I can find proper homes for some.

What I am going to do on every Sunday is just post some cards.  The first couple of months will be almost exclusively serial numbered cards.  I intend to post 33 cards a week, one for every team in the league, one non or multi team, card and three Rockies since I have far more dupes of them than any other team.  The trick here is that all of these trades will be PWE trades.  All I ask in return for each is a similar card that I need from the Rockies or something else I might like.  Doesn't have to be an exact number match or anything, just a fair trade.  I will also stack up to 4 cards for people if you don't want to just do a single card trade.  But the key is to keep it down to the cost of a single non-machinable PWE trade.   

Feel free to claim the card or cards you want in the comments section.  I will change the color to red for cards that are claimed and delete cards after deals are completed.

 

2017 Bowman/Prospects Purple Cody Sedlock /250 - 2014 Panini/Prizm PDP Powder Blue Luis Severino /199

 

 

 

 

2011 Bowman/Prospects Blue Joel Carreno /500 - 2008 Bowman/Chrome X Fractor Matt Tolbert /250 - 2014 Panini/Prizm PDP Orange Grant Hockin /60

 

 

 

 

2007 Topps/Heritage Chrome David DeJesus /1958 - 2011 Topps/Opening Day Blue Neftali Feliz / 2011 - 2016 Bowman/Prospects Purple Colin Moran /250

 

 

 

2009 Bowman/Draft Prospects Blue Thomas Berryhill /399 - 2008 Topps/Update Gold Johnny Estrada /2008 - 2007 Topps/Co-Signers Silver Gold Michael Bourn /125

 

 

2011 Topps/Opening Day Blue Josh Johnson /2011 - 2012 Topps/Update Gold Jairo Asencio /2012 - 2011 Bowman/Prospects Chrome Juan Duran /500

 

 

 

 - 2007 Topps/'52 Rookies Chrome Don Kelly /1952 - 2014 Bowman Blue Yovani Gallardo /500 - 2011 Topps/Opening Day Blue Justin Upton /2011

  

 

 

 

2014 Panini/Elite Extra Edition Status Blue Mitch Watrous /100 - 2008 Heritage Chrome Jose Castillo /1959, 2011 Panini/Limited USA National Team Addison Russell /199

2016 Bowman/Prospects Chrome Purple Refractor Kyle Freeland /250 - 1999 Fleer/Flair Showcase Row 1 Dante Bichette /6000 - 2007 Topps Gold Todd Helton /2007

 

Cards with new homes

2008 Upper Deck/Spectrum Orange Takashi Saito /399 - 2016 Panini/Donruss Optic Orange Mookie Betts /199 - 2008 Bowman/Chrome Blue Refractor Adrian Beltre /150 - 2013 Topps/Update Camo Marlon Byrd /99 - 2008 Topps/Triple Threads Sepia Bobby Jenks /525 - 2011 Bowman/Prospects Chrome Refractor Jordan Swagerty /500 - 2009 Upper Deck/Icons Icons Jason Giambi /999 - 2010 Bowman/Prospects Blue Rolando Gomez /520 - 2007 Bowman/Draft Prospects Blue Jeff Niemann /399 - 2013 Topps/Update Black Matt Tuiasosopo /62 -

 

Put in a claim and we can discuss the details later.  Like I said, I enjoy finding good homes for these guys almost as much as getting something I want for me.  By the way, I do have newer stuff too, I just grabbed a random stack in my serial box for this one.  But hopefully you like the older stuff too. 

Thanx for reading.

Rating the Rookie Cups - a Refresher + the Best of All Time

 

 

As some of you may remember, I have a very large Topps All Star rookie cup collection.  It's not complete because I am still missing about 30% of the 60s cards and a handful from the 70s, but I am 100% finished from 1980-2020.  This includes cards that do not have cups because Topps in their infinite wisdom decided to not put them on their cards for several years despite continuing to pick the teams.  Go figure.

This series is about looking back at the selections from each year and seeing whether the selection to the Cup Team was warranted, looking at some guys that probably should have made it, seeing how rookie years and careers stacked up against peers, and other fun stuff.  Before my hiatus, I made it through around 15 or so years.  I will probably re-do those for a couple of reasons one of which I will go into detail a little further down.  Another reason is that careers have changed since 2013.  When I analyzed the 2011 Topps team, they were only 3 years into their careers, but now most of them are past their peaks and we can more readily compare them to greats from the past.  I will keep the old stories on the blog even when I redo the years, because I am not a fan of deleting knowledge at all.  Plus I worked pretty hard on the old stuff, so I just don't want to delete it.  But I do want to update it.  

The way I rate the rookie cups is on a 1-10 scale.  Nothing fancy or too specific.  For example, if there are 60 shortstops, the top 6 would be 10s, the next 6 would be 9s, and so on.  And I do that for both the rookie year and for an entire career.  That way you can see that even though someone like Pat Listach whose career did not work out well, he could still have a high number for the season.  Conversely, someone like Joe Mauer that made the team despite only playing a month would not look good in the season comparison, but in the career category would be much higher.  

The main thing that is different is that last time I basically just used my gut feeling for assigning number ratings to a player.  This time I built and maintain a spreadsheet with full stats for each rookie cup recipient.  Yes, I am a dork, why do you ask?  The stats I use will not be something that frequent visitors to Fangraphs will think highly of for the most part.  I use the stats that are on the back of the baseball cards instead of some algorithm that decides who would be best if the seasons were played 10,000 times in a vacuum.  I do use WAR as one of the categories just to show that I am not completely old school.  Although the WAR does change for past seasons often, which is one reason I don't put much stock in the stat.  Pete Rose's hit total in 1973 will never change, so why should his WAR from the same year?  But I digress.  I just do a simple roto style points system to figure out how Player A compares to everyone else at the same position.  With pitchers, I use the right handed and left handed that Topps has always used, but I also go back and moved relievers into the comparable relief pitcher category to make comparisons more equal.  

As a reward for making it this far, I will showcase the #1 player at each position based on my system.  This will be the #1 guy for the rookie year only, not the career.  I am saving that for the individual year posts.  You can use this information as a measuring stick for how reliable my system is or is not.  I'm not changing it regardless, but at you can think I am a moron if you want to.

Catcher - Mike Piazza (1993)

First Base - Alvin Davis (1984)

Second Base - Dan Uggla (2006)

Third Base - Dick Allen (1964)

Shortstop - Hanley Ramirez (2006)

Outfield #1 - Mike Trout (2012)

Outfield #2 - Tony Oliva (1964)

Outfield #3 - Fred Lynn (1975)

Right Handed Starter - Dwight Gooden (1984)

Left Handed Starter - Gary Peters (1963)

Relief Pitcher - Dellin Betances (2014)

The two 1965s are Google images, but the rest are mine.  There you have it.  My selections for the best at each position are just by the numbers, but that doesn't make them infallible either.  Do you have a pick that you think is a better choice?  Is there a particularly surprising choice among the groups?  If there isn't, then you have some kind of weird psychic thing going on, because I know I was surprised multiple times when calculating.  

For example, Gary Peters was particularly surprising, but Fernando Valenzuela would have easily taken the spot if his rookie year were not marred by a strike that cost him about 10 starts.  Even with that handicap, Fernando still ranks 4th among LHPs of all time.  A similar handicap will forever mar the 2020 rookie cup winners as well. 

I was also surprised that there were two winners from three different sets.  I figured with 61 different years there would be more diversity.  Man, that Marlins double play combo was surely something special.  It's a shame they had to play for a franchise that didn't care about winning.

I am going to start next week with the individual year ratings and hopefully you can stop in and enjoy my attempt at analysis.  

Thanx for reading.

Fixing my complaints

Yesterday I wrote a return post that included a lot more complaining than I would have liked.  Yes, it feels kind of normal to complain about Topps because they are honestly not doing a very good job with their product recently.  However, I decided that instead of complaining and just being negative, I would do something about it.  I would remake a Series 1 team set using only guys that made their Rockies debut in 2020.  I also decided that instead of using a stolen 2020 Donruss design like Topps did, I would use a stolen 1977 Topps design like I did in 2013.  I used the relatively simple, but much more eye appealing, design from my 2013 Quarry Unlimited set to showcase the Rockies from the truncated pandemic season.  

As an aside, was any word more overused when describing last year's season that truncated?  Until 2020, that was a word that you maybe saw 5 times in your life, but last year it felt like every hack sportswriter got the same word of the day calendar and just beat it into the ground describing the 2020 baseball season. Can you think of any other words that you feel like came out of nowhere to be used only in one relatively small situation in life?

Anyway, no one came here to talk about vocabulary, so let's take a look at the debuting Rockies of 2020 in all their purple (and red) majesty. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

Unfortunately, only one of these guys, Ryan Castellani, is in Series 1 and he had quite a few Bowman cards already.  Owings was in 2020 Update, Kinley was in 2020 Topps Total, and Doyle had some cards in Bowman Draft and Panini EEE a couple years back, but the rest of these guys have had no Rockies cards made.  I enjoy getting cards of my TEAM, not just the superstars of the team.  I ended up making these in about an hour while I had on a rerun of an 80s cop show in the background.  So why does Topps act like it is such a hassle?  I love to collect Charlie Blackmon, but as glorious as his beard is, how many cards does he need each year?  I would much rather have one of these guys instead of my 75th Blackmon or 125th Story or 50th UTROY (ubiquitous team rookie of the year).  

 

As an aside #2, the website where I used to get my card photos has apparently not been adding sports photos since mid 2015, so I had to just go with Google searches here.  Easily found images, but a couple of them are still pretty cool.

 

What do you guys think?  Would you rather stick with current superstars and rookies only pattern or see a switch to an all inclusive style?  I think based on my memory of the community here I already know the answer, but I still think it needs to be said again and again.

As a bonus, here is a 2020 Topps Update card of Kevin Pillar that I was noodling around with a few weeks back.  I'm not 100% happy with it, but it's not horrible either.  I am not a fan of the design and this is probably the only custom of the 2020 design I will ever do, but Pillar definitely looks better in purple than in the Giants garb he sports in the actual 2020 Update set.

 

Not a bad custom, but I would hate to do an entire team set in this design.  It is just not good.  Kind of like the bastard child of 1992 Score and 1993 Ultra.  But I hope you like it anyway.

 

 

Let me know what you think and thanx for reading.

A come back + a little bit of complaining.

Hey guys.  I have decided to try and post again on a semi-regular basis.  My scanner is not fully operational at the moment, so you will not be getting pictures for a little bit.  I should have it fixed very shortly.  Honestly I just never really needed it when I wasn't blogging, so replacing it was a very low priority.  But I guess that means until I get that problem fixed, I need a thousand words for each missing picture.  

Just a quick idea for what I intend to write about.  It will mostly be Rockies, but I do plan to break out a couple of my old features and go forth with them.  Rating the Rookie Cups was one of my favorites to write and I will definitely be bringing that back on hopefully a weekly basis.  I have actually maintained and improved my Cup database.  I m such a dork that I have a full rotisserie setup for each position for full season and career comparisons.  I know a lot of you are not into basketball, but I am.  I won't be talking hoops much, but I will on occasion.  For some it will be a learning experience it will be a day to skip past the Quarry.  

 

I won't be doing any type of comprehensive custom card sets like I did for several years, but I will occasionally show off some fun customs I will and have done.  I do still have a 60-70% complete 2015 Quarry Unlimited set that I worked really hard on and will show off.  I also have a fully 100% complete 2015 Quarry Unlimited NBA set to show off as well if there is any interest.  Both sets are based on 1976 Hostess with team colors being used instead of the RWB bicentennial scheme of the original.  Personally, I like the NBA version more just because there is a bigger variety of color there, but they are both fun.

Now that the fun stuff is over, let's talk about 2021 Topps Series 1.

As a Rockies collector, I have gotten used to being beaten down by Topps.  On occasion, they will surprise me in a good way.  As bad as 2020 Update was, the Rockies still had Chris Owings and Phillip Diehl make their Rockies debut in the set.  And there were a couple of other underrepresented Rockies like Jairo Diaz, Jesus Tinoco, and Drew Butera in the set.  Several new Rockies like Daniel Bard and Matt Kemp were missing, but I figured they would be in Series 1 for sure.  So as bad as it was, at least there was something positive about it. 

Then I see the checklist is being released and I get super excited as usual.  Will the Rockies get the 11 cards they should get in the 330 card set?  Will it be the first Rockie cards of Bard, Kemp, or Mychal Givens?  Will likely starting catcher Elias Diaz get his first Rockies card?  Will Antonio Santos be the ubiquitous team rookie that most fans have never heard of?  Will the recently waived rookie Ashton Goudeau get his only Rockies card?   So many questions. 

Then the list came out

24 Nolan Arenado
33 Yonathan Daza
68 Charlie Blackmon
73 Colorado Rockies Team Card
76 Jon Gray
107 David Dahl
129 Daniel Murphy
177 Ryan Castellani RC
206 Wade Davis

Of the 9 cards, there are only 4 players currently on the Rockies roster, and of those only 3 actually played for the Rox in 2020.  The team card is useless in my opinion and should be used for another player.  Put team cards in Update if you need them, but not in a 660 card main set.  I can give them a pass on including Arenado because that is a recent trade (one that I am still not comfortable talking about).  I can also give them a pass on Murphy because he retired the same day the Nolan trade happened and at least he will get a full stat "sunset card."  David Dahl is somewhat okay simply he did end the season with the Rockies even though he didn't play much last year.  Yonathan Daza is a head scratcher because this is not his rookie card and he didn't play a single game in 2020.  In my opinion, there were a lot better options than Daza for that spot.  The other one that just befuddles me is Wade Davis.  Wade Davis was released before the 2020 season was even over.  Why is he there?  It is ridiculous that he is there instead of Daniel Bard or Mychal Givens or any other Rockies reliever.  

So to recap the answers to my questions were no, no, no, no, and no.  Sigh.  To top it off the Dodgers got a 20 card team set along with a 30 card Bellinger insert set.  Double sigh.  I really wasn't expecting much, but I was at least hoping for just one new Rockies player on a card and I didn't even get that.  Oh well, at least there is the 86 Topps insert set that I plan to build in full.  I may try to build the silver pack chrome version as well.  

Sorry for the bitter complaining, but it's better than not posting at all, isn't it?

Talk again later.