The Cardboard Dugout

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Spring is here and Flowers are in Bloom #showmeyourflower

Well It's the 1st day of Spring and I think it's safe to say the Northeast has made it through Winter without a Winter.

With many new Baseball card products being pushed out this time of year, this weekend (with the help of a twitter friend) I found my self rummaging through a vintage set.....2011 Topps Allen and Ginter.

As some of you may remember, Topps included a Mini set in 2011 called "Flora of the World". The mini card are the industry's first Plantable cards....Yup, Plantable! You are literally supposed to plant the card, your spoils are the blooming flowers that follow. I was psyched to pack-pull one of these little Botanical bitches last year. I assumed it was rare and worth something....not so much. So I stashed it and actually forget is existed. That is until a twitter friend from Texas (handle: @Danolaurel) tweeted that he too had one and was thinking about planting the lil bugger.

Challenge Accepted!

I threw down a friendly wager. We would plant on the same day and in a few weeks/months let our other twitter followers decide who had the (for lack of a better word) most "Endowed" Plant. Winner buys the other a pack pf 2012 Ginter.

Here is the Progress so far:

This is my pristine Sweet Alyssum Plant card

And here's that same card Ridin' Dirty..

Just call me Brett Gardner (Get it?...GARDNER...ouch)

And here's a Vid of @Danolaurel and his adorbs daughter planting theirs. Good luck Green Thumbs!

Stay Tuned for Updates!

Friday, March 9, 2012

I MUST BREAK YOU: 2012 Topps Tribute 2 Box Break

Monday, February 20, 2012

Troubled Times for a Player Collector (Updated)

For those of you that followed my post regarding the different poses of Mark Teixeira, You'll be happy to know I added 2 more monsters to the collection over the weekend.

2011 Topps Chrome Magenta Printing Plate 1 of 1

2011 Topps Canary Refractor 1 of 1

Just one more plate to go, wish me luck!

Thursday, February 2, 2012

2012 Topps Jumbo Box Break Recap and Review

2012 Topps Jumbo Box Break and Recap

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Troubled Times for a Player Collector. The Many Variations of a Topps Card.

Being a self acclaimed hardcore Mark Teixeira Collector, I decide to shoot for something this year (2011) that I've never done before. I decided to try and complete a "Rainbow". I'm sure there's not a clear definition of what a Rainbow actually is, but here's my take: All of the colored parallels of a certain player from Topps Chrome (red, purple,gold etc..) and I completed it, in timely fashion. So I decided to go broader. This led to what I'm officially dubbing the "Pose Collection". How many different variations could I find of Mark Teixeira's 2011 Topps card in the Pose you see below (get used to those puffy cheeks). As of today I uncovered 27 different 2011 Tex Base Cards. Now, before sharing my spoils with you, let me gripe. Topps sure knows how to milk a pose. This collection was bittersweet, because although I'm proud of its completeness, it was expensive, time consuming, and just plain got annoying as other weird variations kept popping up. I'm usually not one to complain about collecting (if you hate it, why do it?) but this is just nuts. I guess any player collectors ultimate goal is to own as many different cards of their guy as possible. So does this mean I'll have to collect 30 more Mark cards in the same pose next year? I don't know, I'm too exhausted from this year. I'll decide after a long winters nap.

Below is my "Pose Collection" in ascending order by rarity. Enjoy!