True Colors

You with those Extreme Corps...don't be confused just remember when...they actually used foil. These cards can make you crazy if you did forget...just look them up...because you know they will be there.

And I will see their True Colors shining through. I will see their True Colors, that's why I love them. So don't be afraid, to look yourself. At their True Colors, they are beautiful.....like a rainbow.

I am sure by now you are ready to actually read this post and not in Cyndi Laupers iconic voice for the song True Colors. No, not Phil Collins remake. Nothing is like an original.

In my last trade with blog reader Oren, he discovered something I never paid attention to before.

The rainbow foil on the Extreme Corps subset in 1995 Stadium Club.

And how much it changes card to card due to the printing process of these.

Some are blue, some are purple, some have red and yellow

 

And some cover all of the colors from the rainbow foil. 

It's quite cool and is almost as if you are collecting a rainbow.

I honestly would have normally just tossed any duplicates into my dupes box and not looked at them for a second glance. 

 

Oren sent plenty of these along with some Transactions foil subset cards that do the same thing.

But, now I am wondering what other Stadium Club foil subsets may spin out unique rainbow cards like these. I know Stadium Club used this kind of foil across multiple 1995 and 1996 products for multiple sports.

Thanks again Oren for giving me an idea for a post today and for these unique cards.

In comments, let me know if you ever noticed the foil on these cards before.

Breakin' Wax:2021 Diamond Kings Baseball Four Hanger Boxes

 Playing the game of toggle on the blogs and taking my mini vacation has led me to being way behind on posts.

Whether those posts are trades, pickups or even box breaks, I am behind.

So let's catch up on a few of those starting today with four hanger boxes of 2021 Diamond Kings baseball.

We all know how hard it is to find retail now-a-days and how if any of us who actually buy retail to open it find any, we buy it. That was the case with the Diamond Kings for me. I am not actually an overly huge fan of the product, but it was sitting there and everyone says hangers are better than blasters so I grabbed em.

Each hanger box of 2021 Donruss Diamond Kings comes with 20 cards per hanger box. The boxes come with an exclusive red border parallel per hanger and each hanger if I remember correctly was $11 each.

The base set for Diamond Kings comes with 170 with a mix of 

Legends of the game

Veterans and Short Prints (Cal Ripken)

along with future stars.

And of course some actual Diamond Kings. These definitely are not the ones from the 90's.

There are not a lot of parallels in Diamond Kings, but a few. Each one of my Hangers came with an Artist Proof and Red Border.

Here are the overall parallels,

ARTIST PROOF PARALLELS: AP Blue, AP Gold /49, Litho Proof /25, AP Masterpiece 1/1.
FRAMED PARALLELS: Blue, Gray, Plum, Red, Wood FOTL /15, Black Masterpiece 1/1, Litho Proof and Black Masterpiece 1/1.

This is an Artist Proof which is just a stamped Artist Proof on the card.

Red Bordered.

There are a handful of inserts in Diamond Kings and I found a variety of them in each hanger.

Gallery Of Stars (solid names)

Legacy Lithographs (once again, not bad names)

Aficionado

Artists Palette (my favorite design of the inserts)

And I was hoping for a huge memorabilia hit or an autograph of a superstar in those four boxes,

 

But one of that happened. At least I pulled a hit and it does have a stripe in the relic. Card also looks nice that's always an extra bonus.

That does it for four hangers worth of Diamond Kings. There's not a lot of big finds there but it was fun being able to open some.

Let me hear your thoughts on the break and the product below in comments!

The New Mentality

*brews his cup of coffee, pours the last little bit of Peppermint Mocha creamer that's in the bottle and decides that's probably it for the Christmas season on that.*

  

The New Mentality in the hobby is spreading and spreading fast.

When I got my father back into the hobby three years ago, he was all about adding cards to his collection and opening packs for the thrill of the chase. 

Then 2020 hit and he caught The New Mentality.

He started to see how others were making big time money off from retail flips and decided to dip his feet in. That's the starting point of The New Mentality. First it was a fat pack. Then a blaster. Then a blaster and a hanger. And then he started to do the thing I hate most, clearing off most of the shelves of products and even attempting to flip the unflippable products like Score. It had gotten so bad where he wouldn't even tell me what products were on the shelves when I texted for him to pick me up something. He preferred to flip it for more than have me be able to open some. 

That was a painful realization.

The New Mentality is an ugly disease in the hobby. It's when greed and money means more than card collecting. It's all about the money and not about the fun. I believe the only cure for people who have caught The New Mentality is to show them how to have fun collecting again.

I am currently working on that with my father. It's a slow, slow cure especially if someone has had that mentality for awhile.

*takes a sip of coffee while game planning the next part of my cure*

Before The New Mentality fully hit him, I was able to land myself one more blaster box from him in trade. It wasn't the hottest product on the shelf but it was better than nothing at the time.

*takes a sip, begins to rip*

In every blaster box of 2020 Panini Optic baseball, there are 27 cards. There are 6 packs of 4 cards of Optic then an extra 3 card pack of Pink parallels. Each blaster is $20 unless you are buying from a flipper.

There wasn't much in terms of names of note for base, so I will skip to the rookies which I was impressed with. There was almost two in every pack which seems odd to me. Feels like the last time I ripped Optic on here there was maybe a couple total. 

Even found a Gavin Lux Rated Rookie. He's no Luis Robert in terms of value, but maybe down the road he will be.

*takes a sip happy at what I have seen already*

 

Now onto the shiny stuff and inserts

Nelson Cruz Silver

Inserts of Illusions with Trevor Story, The Rookies AJ Puk and Stained Glass with Ketel Marte

This Lindor was my favorite designed insert of the group, Mythical.

*takes another sip before another rip*

Now onto the bonus Pink Pack Parallels.

Each of these have three cards. Could be insert parallels, subsets or base. It's all a surprise.

Andres Munoz. Not sure who this is.

Acuna! 

Hiura

Not too bad at all!

*finishes up cup of coffee with the remaining Peppermint Mocha creamer, now back to Hazelnut for the next cup and to finish up this post*

Remember above where I mentioned the spread of The New Mentality is fast, since my father started doing that, others around the area caught it. They have the disease much more than my father does as they follow the vendor store to store to store taking all they can and leaving the scraps. Scraps are known as Hockey cards. This has helped me out some in trying to fix my father's catch of The New Mentality. He isn't getting the opportunities as much to flip anymore and I have been trying to take advantage of that and remind him how great the hobby is just collecting again.

And believe me, collecting is great. So isn't coffee.

Before I close, I wanted to give you some insight on what to look for when you or someone else you know has caught The New Mentality.

Here are the signs to look for to know if you or someone you know has caught it, it's as simple as one, two, three.

1. Buys a pack, blaster, hanger or mega box of a popular product when its able to be found
2. Looks up value online to see what it goes for.
3. Flips it.

It will be pretty obvious when you have or someone you knows does.

How do you know if you are cured or don't have it? Well, that's as simple as one, two, three as well.

1. Buy a pack, blaster, hanger or mega box of a popular product when its able to be found.
2. Barely make it to the car before ripping it. It's okay to rip it just outside the Walmart or Target door. We all have been there.
3. Enjoys the cards that were opened.

I hope this helps. If you or someone you know has caught The New Mentality, remember to remind them why they got into collecting in the first place. It may or may not work but it's worth a try.

Breakin' Wax:2020 Donruss Baseball Hanger Box

It was awhile ago when I busted this hanger box of Donruss baseball, end of August roughly, so I figured it was time I posted it.

 

Donruss baseball wasn't my first choice in something to open, it was the only option at the time so I was happy to find something when I had the itch.

Was it worth fixing the itch? Guess you will find out here,

There are 50 cards in every hanger box of Donruss baseball. You have a shot at autographs and relics but are guaranteed to find 6 holo orange and 2 diamond parallels in every box.

At the time, I hadn't seen any Donruss baseball up close.

but it felt like a repeat of the past few years with the same design

the terrible nickname cards overflowing

and and overused Diamond King theme.

I wasn't too impressed to start this box.

Then came the rookies,

Can't argue with Bo Bichette and Kyle Lewis who to me is the runaway ROY in the American League.

Then came more disappointment,

These 1986 Donruss design is cool, but feels like it has been in this product for years now.

Something that hasn't though is a new line of emoji parallels to hip up this product and tickle those born after 2000. Such as this On Fire of Brock Burke and also the infamous Baby Shark then Look At This,Number 1,One Hundred and Presidential Collection.

 

Now onto the guaranteed parallels starting with the 2 Diamond parallels of 

Marte

and Chapman.

Those inserts usually look shiny anyways, but its the diamond shapes in the shine that separate it from a base version.

 

Up next is the 6 orange holofoil

Cal Ripken is a nice find

So wasn't Gerrit Cole and Luis Servino

Not a terrible break overall with a couple of good rookies and a few decent parallels.

I do like what Panini does for Donruss football and wished they would take that approach to the baseball as well. Not that the baseball is terrible, but there is room for improvement. 

 

One of the biggest improvements I would make first is getting rid of the nickname cards.

Seeking Help:1997 E-X2000 Baseball

 

Cards I need to a complete set,

95,89,85,83,77,74,50,49,45,31,12,5,4

Not too many left here! I will update this post as I go but here are the ones remaining.

Groundhog Day Part 1

Since the Coronavirus pandemic, I feel like my life has been similar to Bill Murray's in Groundhog Day.

Waking up with the same routines, feeling like daily life has stopped and staying home day after day after day after...well, you get the point.

There doesn't simply feel like an end to the madness. Maybe we all need to be better people to put this nightmare to an end sort of like Bill in Groundhog Day. And by being better people, that means to stay home.

Like I have been.

Luckily for now, the mail system is still going strong, but very slow. At least, for now, its there and helping keep my mind off from all of the madness. If the mail was to stop like rumors are saying it will in June, I may go crazy.

I want to at least get my daily bills and junk mail. Cards haven't been coming in at an alarming rate anymore like they once were when I was able to trade but occasionally trickle in. Something is better than nothing.

A couple of weeks ago among this madness a unique mail day arrived that brought me back. Of course I didn't open it right away because of the virus as I usually let my mail sit for a few days now. Though nothing has been proven that mail is a carrier of the virus. It's better not to test fate, let it sit and be patient even though it isn't always easy.

This mail day brought back some great memories. Those memories from 1998.

Much simpler times in my life then.

I was in my freshman year of high school. My father and I were still collecting heavily together and did our weekly check-ins at the local arts and crafts store that carried product for us. As soon as payday hit, we went there.

So it was a Friday in 1998 and we were headed to town to run errands for my mother. And by errands on a pay day, I know what we were really doing so I was more than happy to tag along. As I expected, we had to make a stop at that arts and crafts store. As we looked the shelving unit over that held the cards upfront, we noticed that the middle shelf had a product we recognized from the year before. The one and only card in a can, Pinnacle Inside.

1997 Pinnacle Inside was a product we sought out heavily. We bought so many cans we were able to complete the entire can set opened. Except one can, we kept our Ken Griffey Jr can sealed which I still have sealed today along with the rest of the can set. So we knew what we were in for when we saw the 1998 version.

First can we bought for 1998, was Junior just to keep it sealed. We then grabbed a McGwire and Sosa cans to open. Which led to two problems, one how in the world were we going to sneak these into the house past my mother who hated collecting and us buying cards. Two, how were we going to open them in the car without a can opener? Fortunately, my grandmother lived just a few minutes away so we went there and borrowed her can opener.

Now I know many collectors thought it was a stupid idea and concept. I actually was in support of the idea and enjoyed the uniqueness it brought. The uniqueness that the 90's brought is like no other.

If you haven't picked up on what I am getting at, that mail day I spoke above about is some unopened cans of 1998 Pinnacle Inside. Well, there was also some bonus can as well.

There was 8 unopened 1998 Pinnacle Inside cans overall and one from Pacific. I never knew up until recent that a Upper Deck and Pacific had their own variation of the cans as well. But neither touched what Pinnacle brought forth.

Here was the design of the front of the can. It also gives away what the base card design is as well. Each can came with 10 cards.

This is what I was thought was ingenious about these cans, for ingredients they put "Product Facts" and broke down odds, etc.

The other side of the can.

Here are the other cards that were in the lot,

Mark McGwire...nostalgia overload!

Remember when they arrived?

Cal Ripken jr

Mike Piazza

Greg Maddux

Remember when the Marlins were good? Feels like decades ago.

I should have stuck Clemens next to Piazza....

And the one Pacific can. I believe it is just a set which isn't even as cool as a real product being packed into a can. At least it has Griffey Jr....

Another side of that can.

and another side of it. Really bland in comparison to Pinnacle Inside.

What's next for these cans? Most will be used for display but I will open one. Which is why this is Part 1 of my Groundhog Day.

So don't fret if you see my next post and see something about 1998 Pinnacle Inside cans. It's done on purpose. You aren't reading a repeat and living the same day over. Well, maybe you are if you are me or simply you just clicked the same link to read this again.