2000 Topps Chrome Hobby

Time to enter the way-back machine and head to an era where "getting jiggy with it" was acceptable behavior, and the word "chromium" was still featured on pack wrappers.

In 2000, chrome cards were still a slight novelty. I believe this was year No. 5 of the glossy, shiny bombshell that Topps dropped on consumers. Probably not enough time had passed to develop the now-jaded collectors who complain about 4 cards per pack and that the chromey photos are the same as those in the base set.

So, put on your gullible suit and join me in a hopeful pack rip! I cleaned the scanner and everything!

#298 - Jose Vizcaino. Sweet! A Dodger card that I needed. Vizcaino is the answer to a trivia question that comes up periodically:

Who are the only players to compete for the Dodgers, Giants, Mets and Yankees?

Answer: Vizcaino, Darryl Strawberry and Ricky Ledee. Ledee stumps everyone.

#429 - Randy Velarde. Oh, boy. This guy. He annoyed me when he played for the Yankees. Well, let's say the Yankee announcers acting like Velarde was the greatest shortstop ever annoyed me. Fortunately, Derek Jeter came along and then we had new problems.

#316 - Ruben Mateo. This may or may not be one of Mateo's first cards. It doesn't matter, because his major league career was over by 2004. Not too long ago he played for the Newark Bears. He's not there now, though. Just guys like Daryle Ward and Nook Logan.

#269 - Trot Nixon. Trotman!!! We like Trotman. He was an excitable boy. Scrappy, too. There is nothing wrong with scrappy. It's a lot better than slick and greasy.

All right. There's no glossing over that pack. It sucked. Even with the Dodger I needed.

Four cards per pack really blows.

And every photo is the same photo as the base set.

I'm sorry.

2010 Topps National Chicle Retail

I had already committed to not collecting this set based on some... well, what I'd consider "missteps" with some of the artwork and just my general lack of a budget to collect everything in sight. I bought the Cardinals team set, short prints exclusive, but the pack-opening addict in me couldn't resist buying just one teensy little pack just to see what was inside.

157 - Jimmy Rollins

192 - J.D. Drew

175 - Dexter Fowler (This is probably my favorite card of the pack with the Rockies in the background.)

324 - Matt Carson (I guess this is supposed to evoke memories of Rickey Henderson's 1980 rookie card, but I don't know who Matt Carson is.)

59 - Wandy Rodriguez

174 - Marlon Byrd (I never really gave Byrd any credit as a center fielder until seeing him play against the Cards this season.)

- Checklist 1 of 2

1991 Impel Disney

I know it is hard to believe, but Impel created various sets of cards in 1991.  This particular pack features characters and scenes from the World of Disney.  Each pack has 15 cards in it, and there are 210 cards in the whole set.  Like many Impel sets of the time, one could send away for a custom storage album with pocket pages if one so chose.

The set is broken into "Favorite Stories," "Family Portraits," and "World Tour" subsets that are numbered on the card backs.  I have no idea why some of them have a letter in the upper corner and some do not.  The card fronts feature a character or scene.  "Family Portraits" feature little colored 'photo holders' in the corners.

The backs of the cards give more info about the scenes on each card, plus there is a different image than what is on the front. It is like getting two cards for one! Well, maybe.  In any case, "Stories" cards have the name of the story which the still appears, "Portraits" feature trivia about the character shown, and "World Tour" cards look like postcards on the back.  The checklist I pulled happens to be the last card in the set.

Like most family photos, some of them are... wait for it... goofy.  BAZINGA!  Ah, I could have been a 90's card caption writer had I known such a job even existed...

I noticed I had several cards with "D" in the upper corner, so I set those aside and tried to find a pattern.  There isn't one so far as I can tell.  I have no idea what the letters mean. I tried.

At least you got a lot of cards for the money with these! 15 cards in a pack seems like a lot these days.  The price sticker on the back of the pack reads: "2/$1.00 or $1.00 each"  I'm not a math whiz, but...

2008 Upper Deck Spectrum

I just bought a blaster of 2008 Spectrum for a very low price when I realized I also had a pack laying around that I hadn't done anything with. When you're done laughing at the results of my blaster, here's a pack that I can assure you I most certainly did not pay $2.99 for.

88 - Scott Rolen (Scott Rolen is finally healthy. Scott Rolen is showing power he hasn't shown since 2004, when he was a leading MVP candidate. I wonder if the Blue Jays are still content with trading Scott Rolen.)

10 - Miguel Tejada (Here's another player that changed teams but is pictured with his former team. Say what you will about Upper Deck, but at least they didn't abuse PhotoShop.)

59 - Carlos Beltran (Here's a card of the perpetually injured Carlos Beltran.)

4 - John Smoltz (Some wannabe professional golfer.)

2010 Panini World Cup Stickers

I am going absolutely insane trying to find these things. I first found five packs and an album at a Wal-Mart near work. I happily snatched them up and stuck my stickers. I later found a display empty of stickers with a few albums that had all their free packets of stickers peeled off. Since then I have been to damn near every WalMart in North Atlanta and found bupkis. Target, don't get me started on Target. If I ever find the card distributer in my area I'm gonna kick 'em right in the ass and tell them to stop being lazy and get some new stuff in for crying out loud. This pack I got from a hobby store for a buck and a half which is a ripoff but a junkie needs his fix. 

Full disclosure: Of international football, I know nothing. I love watching World Cup matches though and really love sticking stickers into sticker albums. 

576 Cesc Fabregas ESP

From what I've read here and there about this year's World Cup, Spain is a serious favorite to win it all. This dude plays for Arsenal, a club I know from a really good British movie that was remade into a thing with Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore that got Americanized from football to baseball and is known for Drew saying Yass-ter-ZEM-ski. Ok, so I'm not completely clueless about football am I!

533 Kanga Akale CIV

I was confused as hell by the acronym CIV until I looked in the album and saw it was Cote D'Ivorie AKA Ivory Coast. I'm kinda rooking for these underdogs to get out of their group. Not an easy task with Brazil and Portugal in there. I pulled Dider Drogba from my first pack and it turns out he's pretty darn good. I'm pretty proud of myself that I got through this entire paragraph without making a Winnie the Pooh joke. 

490 Juan BRA

I know it's a Brazil tradition that their players are known by one name, like Pele and Ronaldinho, but Juan? Really? There's gotta be like five million Juans in Brazil. One of 'em could easily crash a Cup game, put on a jersey and sneak right into the game! Hey, you! Are you Juan? Yes.... yes I am. No one would ever know. 

The real Juan plays for Roma and I'm slowly working my way up into an ITALIA!!! frenzy so go Juan!

8 Half of Durban stadium

One one hand, these two-fer double sized photos look cool in the album. On the other hand you always get three stickers of one half and none of the other. In the packets I got today I got three different halves of stadiums but no whole stadium. There are 10 stadiums being used so I guess that's not too bad. 

289 Mark Bresciano AUS

Oy! All you Bruces and Sheilas bettah put some moar shimp on the barbie and crack oven a beeyah cuz the Aussies are ganna win it all, mate! Yeah,I got nothin' here. Oh wait! Mark plays for Palermo! ITALIA!!!

(All these teams are printed in the album I don't actually know this stuff)

((also: ITALIA!!!!!))

470 Martin Skrtel SVK

Graar! I am a football player from Slovakia! I am very angry! Don't call me a Czech! Chechoslovakia doesn't exist anymore! My team plays in group F and we are going to get out butts handed to us by ITALIA!!!

Whoa this dude plays for Liverpool. He kinds looks like a scouser hooligan don't he?

481 Jan Novak SVK

One thing I've noticed in opening 10 packets of this stuff is that there is very often two players from the same squad in the pack. This one was the Slovenska Republica pack. I shouldn't have made fun of Martin up there because every one of the stickers I have from Slovakia looks like the cameraman said "Ready? I'll take the picture in five...four... *CLICK*"

218 Landon Donovan USA

Since I overpaid for the packet I pretty much needed to land a star to make the extra cost worth it. I think I saw this sticker in the case for a buck so I didn't do too bad I guess. 

Each and every one of these stickers now resides safely in my album. Oh God, I need more of these so badly... PANINI GET MORE OF THESE IN THE STORES DAMMIT!

2010 Bowman Baseball Retail

Some Nationals rook is on the front. I didn't get a card of him, so let's move on. I had one goal with purchasing 3 packs of these: a purple refractor. Will I get it? I hope so...

$2.98/Pack
10 Cards/Pack

Up there with A-Rod as one of my least favorite players of all time. Not a good start.
Much better. I have the gold parallel from one of the other packs, too. Wainwright is a fantasy sleeper reward.

Lots of strikeouts and good ERA from these second two cards. Decent, if you're in to pitching. Guess what? I am.
The new, small Rookie Card logos look excellent in this set. Actually, this set just looks excellent all the way around. Complain all you want about how basic Bowman is, but their checklists are decent and fair, the cards are well composed and are of good quality. Would you want every set to be a monstrosity like Spectrum or UDX?
Mmmm, scanning chromes is a fickle endeavor. The chromes I pulled from these packs already have an unhealthy propensity for cardboard scoliosis.

Yayyyyy. I got it. Don't know who he is, don't care. Love me some purple refractor goodness. These would have been smashing with late '90s/early '00s Devil Rays unis. Gerald Williams, anyone? This guy actually scanned quite well.
Dykstra Part II tore up whatever league he was in last year. 125G, 11HR, 60RsBI. Led all of the minor leagues in walks.
Pretty generic Prospect card from Bowman. They actually look really excellent this year. The whole set does, really.
These are completely unnecessary. I don't like them at all.
This card led me on...I could see #1 in the set as I opened the pack up, and myself, thinking Topps was being their usual jackassery self, would make that guy on the front of the pack #1. I was wrong, but this is still a nice card. I love Bowman's parallels.

2010 Upper Deck MLS

The details...
$0.98/Pack
8 Cards/Pack

Very cheap, right? Kind of. These are not the high-quality Upper Deck cards you see from football, baseball, and especially UD's hockey releases. I am assuming that in order to bring more collectors into MLS cards, UD decided to keep these cards cheap in order to entice buyers. They are attractive cards, but printed on a stock similar to UD First Edition cards, so no foil. The cards are also pretty thin.

I bought four packs of these along with 3x 201o Strasburg Baseball (along with Goya, Chili and 3 packs of gum) for less than $20. If you want to see more from these busts, head on over to my blog, APC.

Without further dudes, here's the rip of one of the selected packs (admitingly, the least exciting):


#93 Edson Buddle (New York) - LA Galaxy. Buddle was the star of the pack. The native of New Rochelle, NY had his best season in 2009 scoring 15 goals, 3rd in MLS.


#158 - Freddie Ljungberg (Sweden) - Seattle Sounders. Glad I had a green Seattle uni to show off in this pack.

#9 Patrick Nyarko (Ghana) - Chiacgo Fire. I really do not like the Fire. I don't know why...

The backs. Not terrible, nothing exciting. #65 Heath Pearce (California) - FC Dallas.


Ooooooh.....a lady. This is a good insert/subset for woman's soccer (WPS). #191 Christiane (Brasil) - Chicago Red Stars (WPS)....and the rest: #77 Dominic Oduro (Ghana) - Houston Dynamo, #57 Josh Wicks (California) - DC United, #32 Scott Palguta (New Jersey) - Colorado Rapids.