Trading with Canadians 2020

  The Rockies collection has been largely ignored in favor of the Football Frankenset and the start of the One of Every Bruins project, but this trade scratches the baseball itch before 2020 gets in full swing. Starting with a oddly yellow tinted Vinny Castilla, which is something that I have been on other acetate cards but not very often, along with the Big Cat in a warm-up jacket and a zero-year Rudy Seanez from a non-Topps OPC design.

Tradin With Canadians Pt 1

Part 1 of 2 featuring trading with fellow Canadians, starting with andyroy3 from TCDB. The highlight being a new acetate Dante Bichette from Collector's Choice Crash the Game. I was a big Dante fan, but he was not made for close-ups.

Top Baseball Parallels of All-Time (as voted by me) 1-5

Continuing where we left off....

5. Topps - Clear (2014-2016)
Topps Flagship makes it second appearance on the list, and you know there had to be something acetate coming. This is not the first time a set has had a complete acetate parallel, two football sets, 2000 Bowman's Best and 2013 Panini Momentum come to mind, but this the the first baseball one to come to mind, and I seem to remember these being kind of a big deal when they came out in 2014.

4. Topps Finest - Gold Refractors* (1999)
The second asterisk in the list, along with Fleer Brilliants, 1999 Finest Gold is another hard to find, sought after parallel that I don't actual have in hand. The Larry Walker above showed up on COMC the day after I requested a shipment, so while I "own" the card, it won't physically be in my collection for a few moths until I amass enough cards to warrant a shipment request. The weird deckle edges add to the uniqueness of the parallel, it's really a shame how ugly Finest has been since Topps brought it back a few years ago when they used to do things like this.

3. Gypsy Queen - Mini Black (2011-2015)
It took me a while to warm up to minis, and I eventually did, but I always liked the Gypsy Queen black minis, even the 2015's (which I feel is the ugliest GQ set) look good. I was pretty disappointed when they limited them to 5 in 2015, and even more gutted when they dropped them altogether in 2016, and it sounds like 2017 won't have minis at all, so that sucks.

2. Panini Prizm - Tie-Dyed Prizms (2015)
Not much needs to be said about these, just look at them, bask in the tripped out glory. You almost don't notice there is no logos on the card (honestly these might be number 1 if they had logos). Panini has tried this with other sets in other sports, but they never got it as good as these. Numbered to 50, so they are limited, but not impossible to find or ridiculously overpriced. Sadly it looks like Panini dropped the Prizm baseball line altogether, hopefully it comes back next year with something similar to these dead-head acid-trip beauties.

1. Bowman Platinum - Prospects Camo Refractors (2014)
Throughout the original run of Bowman Platinum (so not counting the lackluster release of 2016) I thought it was consistently one of the best designed of the Topps products, with 2014 being my favorite. The purple, orange, red, green all looked good, but the camo blows them all away. Topps has done camo before and has done it since (as has Panani), but it is just borders, nothing really different, this is different. The only thing I don't like about these is that they are limited to 15, so I still need two to complete the team set.


There you go, a fun little exercise that got me to did through my collection and post some actual content. So, what did I miss, what set was way better than these that I completely whiffed on? Post them in the comments, or make your own list, I am legitimately interested in other people thoughts on this. Thanks for reading.

An Endangered Species (AKA Zistle Trade)

Taking a break from moping and pouting about my favorite website to post a trade with one of the few die-hards left lurking around. I have a ton of cards that scans just don't do justice, but this is the opposite, they actually look better scanned than in-hand. Not true acetate cards, only the cloudy window is see through, but very cool cards, and the complete team set of 1997 E-X2000.

Zistle Trade #60

My 60th Zistle trade, way more that I thought, as I didn't really keep track for a while. Starting off with an acetate of Greg Maddux from 1994 Studio, the oldest acetate MLB card in my collection.

Acetate Appreciation: 2015 Topps Strata

A fairly new release for the Acetate Apprec series featuring an autograph of the only Rockies player in the set, DJ LeMahieu. Why Topps chose DJ over Nolan Arenado or Cargo I have no idea, but here it is, probably the cheapest auto in the set, so at least it was easy on the wallet for an all autograph set. As you can see by the scan there is not much use of the clear part, just the auto basically. Not a bad card design, but what really bugs me is the clear area is in such a noticeable box, it really takes away from the card. I know Strata is more about the Shadowbox cards, which I have yet to get one of, but I feel Topps really could have done something better here with the base or regular autos.

Acetate Appreciation: 1998 Upper Deck Amazing Greats

These seemed pretty hard to find for cards limited to 2,000 copies, but were worth the search. Nice looking cards, a little busy but not over the top. Fairly large set for inserts at 30 cards they also come in a die-cut version limited to 25.

 All I can think of when I see this is the Orioles "This is Birdland" gif.

Acetate Appreciation: 1995 Stadium Club - Clear Cut

A rare case of a card that scans better than it looks in real life. The weird bluey-greenish-teal dominates the card while the color wheel thing in middle doesn't really add much either. Stadium Club is usually know for quality stuff, but this one leaves a lot to be desired.

COMRockies (Parallel Madness)

Still working the the most recent COMC package, starting with my favorite card of the bunch, a camo refractor of Rosell Herrera, numbered to 15, these are pretty hard to find for a reasonable price. I am not a huge fan of Herrera as a prospect, but this was too nice a card to pass up.

Check Out My Tek (Acetate Appreciation)

I was pretty excited when my order from COMC.com arrived, it had been a long time since I got my stash shipping and it included all my mailbox service cards, including all my Topps Tek. I was excited to post them until I saw how crappy my scanner makes them look, but I felt the need to show them off anyway. The one that did show up was the "Disco-fractor" auto of Carlos Gonzalez, numbered to 50 and on card.

Acetate Appreciation: 1996 Leaf Studio - Stained Glass Stars

The stained glass look is a pretty obvious use of clear cards and has been done a few times, but this might be my favorite so far. Inserted into packs of 1996 Leaf Studio, the checklist is a little limited with only 12 cards from 7 teams, including 3 Indians, but the design is outstanding. The die-cut is limited to the top, meaning they still fit in pages and penny sleeves and the design is simple enough not to get messy. Scans really do not to justice to how nice these are in person.

A "Highly Subjective" Trade

Sometimes you never what you are are going to get in trade package, this trade with "Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary" was one of them. Starting with the Canseco above, of a the very few cards showing a position player pitching, and one of the more famous incidents with Jose wrecking his arm throwing knuckleballs.

Breaking the Seal on 2015 Topps

This weekend looks like the soonest that I will physically get my hands on any 2015 Topps, but I have started with a few saved searches and made one purchase so far. I really can't explain why I am drawn to more obscure players, but the only player I really wanted to collect out of 2015 Topps was Tommy Kahnle. When one of his acetate cards popped up with a reasonable "buy it now" price, I couldn't pass it up.

A Rule V pick-up from the Yankees, Kahnle stuck with the Rockies all season and lead the team with 68 2/3 innings out of the bull-pen, and had a 2.62 ERA from from April until the end of July before a few roughs outing and a trip to DL left him with a 4.19 mark on the year.

My Black Friday COMC Rundown

While I definitely did not go overboard this year, I picked up a few cool things worthy of showing off. Starting with a card bought a few days before, a 2008 Upper Deck Masterpieces Chris Cooley, while not a fan of relics, I was sold on this card mostly because of the "21" Sean Taylor patch on the photo and Cooley being one of the last Redskins I actually liked from when the team was just not very good, and not the hot stinking dumpster fire it is now.

Acetate Appreciation: 2000 Stadium Club Chrome - Clear Shots

 From the same set that had the acetate "Eyes of the Game" inserts is the "Clear Shots" inserts from 2000 Topps Stadium Club Chrome. A 10 card set with both hitters and pitchers all in posed shots. Not a very imaginative way to used the acetate stock, but not the worst I have seen. This post is almost as boring as the photos on the cards as there is not really much to say about these other than they exist.

Acetate Appreciation: 2000 Fleer Tradition Hall's Well

The first thing I thought when I got this card is "Yuck." First off the bad pun of "Halls Well", then the horizontal design or more specifically not taking advantage of it with something other than a generic photo, and lastly the card back making no use of the acetate stock at all. Whatever is on the card back is as hard to read in real life as it is on the scan.

There are 15 cards in this set, inserted into packs of 2000 Fleer Tradition at 1:30 packs, or a little better than one per box, and they are all as boring as the Jeter shown here. As far as acetate insert sets go, this is one of my lest favorite.

Acetate Appreciation 1999 SkyBox Thunder - Turbo-Charged

First released in 1996 by Fleer as Circa, this line later became Circa Thunder and in 1999 was released as Skybox Thunder. Another weird set from the pre-Topps monopoly era, when every company had multiple brands and they had to try new things to get noticed in a flooded market. These Turbo-Charged were inserted at at rate of 1:72 packs, or one every two boxes. A ten card insert set featuring power hitters of the day, the design is fairly nice, but nothing ground breaking, not really doing anything unique with the clear medium. These cards are also very thin, making the card flimsy, something that I really don't like in acetate cards.

Topps High Tek, or how to take some interesting, and ruin it.

After the success of the clear parallels in 2014 Topps flagship, Topps announced they were bringing back the Tek line. As a fan of acetate cards, I was obviously pretty excited about this, but a little worried about what the product would be like. I was right to be worried.

In the three years that Tek existed, every year it was released as 20 packs of 4 cards, or 80 cards per box. This would give a nice selection of the multitude of patterns and a fair amount of trade bait for player and team collectors.

2014 Topps High Tek will give you 8 cards per box. That's right, it's another high end set. One autograph, one serial numbered card, and 6 base cards. What a thrill it must be to open a box and get 6 cards towards the set.

It was bad enough making Stadium Club, a set that used to be about photography, a mid-high-end set to get lost in the shuffle with Tribute, 5-Star, Tier 1, Triple Threads and whatever other carbon copy of each other sets, but this takes the fun behind Tek and crushes it under a heel like a disposed cigarette butt.

I love acetate cards, but I still don't have a 2014 Topps Clear, I was pumped when they announced my favorite set, Gypsy Queen, would have clear minis, they are 1/1 and I will never own one. Thanks Topps, for making another set I could not care less about.

The link provided here gives a good breakdown of the product.

Acetate Appreciation: 2014 Topps Clear

We have all seen pretty much everything 2014 Topps has to offer by now, but something that I haven't seen a lot on is what I have found the most exciting, the clear parallels. These have been selling very well on secondary markets so I have not acquired one yet, but judging from the scans I have seen these are pretty sweet. Paralleling the full 330 card base set, and numbered to ten, with all the parallel overload in the last couple years, this is one that I really support. Hopefully the success of these cards leads Topps to embrace the clear plastic cards and include them in future products.

Acetate Appreciation: 2013 Pinnacle - Clear Vision

Not an acetate card in the truest sense, but a set I have been looking forward to posting about, it just took this long for me to finally get one. The newest incarnation of Pinnacle fell kind of flat for me, I still can't get past Panini having to remove logos, but the insert were interesting.

Here we have the "Clear Vision" inserts, coming in ten parallels (five for hitters and five for pitchers). The cards are made in two layers, the top or front of the card being a shiny foily layer with a cutout, and the bottom or back of the cards being acetate should which parallel, this one being a double, with a cloudy background. I couldn't capture it on a scan, but if you hold the cards sideways and look at the edge you can see this pretty clearly. Pretty underwhelming as far as the acetate part, but the multiple layers make for a pretty interesting card.