But, Um...

Monday nights are big night in this household. It is practically the only night on TV where you can watch three legitimately funny sitcoms nearly back-to-back (minus the incredibly lousy "Accidentally On Purpose" in which I absolutely refuse to participate...thus time to write a blog!

So tonight on "How I Met Your Mother", the episode focused on the "but um" which turned out to be a college drinking game that everybody takes a shot whenever Robin says "but um" in an interview. Ultimately everybody gets completely tanked and hilarity ensues.

The episode brought me back to my college days when my buddy Ryan and I had a "but um" evening thanks to this man...

It was September 8th, 1998. It was the summer of Sammy Sooser and Mike McGwire. For about the last week and half Ryan and I watched as ESPN relentlessly broadcast all St. Louis Cardinal games waiting for the moment that Big Mac smacked HR number 62. On this particular evening, McGwire just got enough of the ball to get in over the fence in left and chaos ensued.

Being the young college fools that we were, we decided to head to the local bar and celebrate this historic achievement with the one caveat that whenever the bar television showed the McGwire HR, that we would take shot, or a swig, or a cherry bomb, or whatever was in front of us at the time.

Needless to say, things got interesting in a hurry as the bar had two televisions...one tuned to ESPN and the other tuned to ESPN2. I would suspect though that you could have been on the cartoon network or animal planet and STILL have seen the HR highlight.

As the evening wore on, more of our friends showed up and partook in the game. This was good because the more the merrier, but also very very bad for those least intoxicated that were always Johnny on the spot to point out when the highlight was running again.

Where the evening unraveled and ultimately became lost from the memory banks and into fuzzy lore was when some hot rod at ESPN decided to close out the 11PM SportsCenter with a 62 HR montage of Big Macs blasts. A look of horror shot across our faces as bomb after bomb went over the fence. The rest is history.....very foggy history.

The Curse Is Broken!

Well, thanks in part to a spastic, furry, horned mammal, tomorrow's curse breaking post is now moving up to today! Congrats to Spastic Moose. I immediately realized the flaws to my system. I immediately assumed that Sweet Spot was going to be as crazy-over-the-top with their relics as Ballpark. I figured that the possibilities would be endless.

Whoops.

Turns out that there were only eight quad-relics included in Sweet Spot and my third clue immediately narrowed it down to one. I get a nice little slap on the wrist for not doing my research first. You relic hunters iz crazy man...CRAZY!

But, on the positive side, the quick solution allows my readers to become beneficiaries of my post originally scheduled for tomorrow....TODAY! Aren't you lucky?

So going back to the original story, JD and I hopped into the car on a dreary, wet Sunday afternoon, armed with the knowledge that order was restored to the galaxy as Dallas was eliminated from the playoffs. Luck was one our side, so I figured it was time to head to the ol' (new) cardshop and roll the dice on some Sweet Spot.

A short history will reveal that I have had TERRIBLE luck with this product...in fact I believe I wrote a rather scathing post sometime in November or December after I bought 4 packs out of six...and ended up with four relics. It was either that or three relics and a Yankee rookie auto, which is just as good as getting kicked in the Jimmy.

But like sitting at a blackjack table, or throwing the extra 20 bones into video poker, I knew that my luck had to turn around at some point. So once again I gave myself a mathematical 50% chance of snagging a sweet spot by purchasing half of an unopened box. I chose the front pack, and the last two packs. Don't ask me which the hit came in because they got all rattled around in the shopping bag anyways. But the ORDER I opened them was this...

Pack #1 - Relic - Can't even remember who and don't really care, as it is going to spastic moose anyways!

Pack #2 - The quad relic of the incredibly short-lived contest this morning.

Pack #3 - I knew I had the hit immediately when I noticed that the cardboard of the normally "dummy" piece was white and not grey. I paused for an incredibly long time and savored the moment and mulled over the possibilities. I have heard great stories of the sweet spot hits coming from this store, including a Michael Jordan auto.

Slowly I slid away the first few base cards and hit this...

A YaMo 24/30 auto glove! I am not super-thrilled about the player pull, but this is my first on-glove auto, and is the lowest-numbered Sweet Spot I have pulled next to my Halladay patch to 25.

I don't even know what I intend to do with this one yet. I know that it is a great candidate for Jacoby's treasure chest, but I also feel like there are some great Cards fans out there who would like it as well, so I am open to offers.

The great news is that the curse is over. I can happily ignore this product from here on out and know that I finally pulled a sweet spot, but even better a "non-Yankee" Sweet Spot. Hurray!

The Quad-Swatch Contest!

UPDATE: Contest is OVER before it really began. SpastikMoose jumped on the Sweet Spot Checklist and nailed it immediately. Well, hu-rah for the powers of the Internet! Spastik, be sure to email me with your mailing info as well as the team you follow. My company is currently blocking yahoo mail for some reason, so I will need to check tonight and will send your prize out to you immediately! Nice work! Well, over the weekend, Jacoby and I dropped into the ol hobby shop (the new ol hobby shop) and purchased some supplies as well at the inevitable few boxes of the Sweet Spot. I have had TERRIBLE luck with this product and am absolutely obsessed with finally pulling a sweet spot out a box. Each time I have picked, there has been a new box, so in essence I have had a 50% chance of finally breaking the curse.

I'll let you off the hook...I broke the curse....but that is tomorrow's post.

Today, let's have a little fun. Out of the second box I opened, I pulled my first ever Sweet Spot quad swatch. Over the last year of posting you have learned of my increased dislike of the fabulous fabric, so today, my trash is your treasure....but you gotta earn it, and it ain't gunna be easy.

Here is the deal. In order to win the Swatch, you will need to guess all four players on the card. Use any means necessary to do so, there are no rules. About every half-hour or so, I will update this post with a new clue to help you along the way. The winner will not only receive the Quad swatch, but also the swatch I pulled from the first pack as well as any assortment of cards that I have that can help you with your collection needs? Worth playing for? (Enter a Jeff Probst joke here).

To win, post your response in the comments section.

On to the clues!

1. These four players are all current players
2. These four players are all on separate teams
3. Three of the players are American born, one is Dominican.

It's Coming...

Brand Name Cards

On occasion, I like to dip into the "Bag that it all", otherwise known as the bag that my wife brought home from work one day that a coworker had dumped off that was filled with junk wax. Stacy knew that I wanted to start a collection for Jacoby and figured the bag would be a good start.

Fast forward almost a year and now every time I break out that bag, he eyes roll into the back of her head, for she knows that she is responsible for opening Pandora's box. Now our house is littered with hobby boxes of various products, base cards, packing supplies, envelopes with addresses that I need to enter into a database, blue tape and...well, you no doubt know exactly what I am talking about.

The other night I dipped into the junk wax for a special reason...not to be revealed in this post...but I did find something that I had not originally noticed...A 1992 Ziploc Carl Yastrzemski!

I have been studying this card over the last couple days and also comparing it with the other various current day product I have laying around, and you know what? This card ain't half bad! In fact, I would say that Ziploc put a lot of effort into the design, the image, as well as the research on the back of the card. I would dare say that had I been a collector back in 1992, I would have been all over these. The Yaz made me start to think about these special "brand name sets". To my knowledge I don't think that many, if any companies still offer baseball card inserts today. Don't quote me on that, but my research did not turn up anything more recent than the early 90's. I decided to scour around a little bit and find some more classy examples of brand name cards...

Kmart - This is a 25th anniversary Kmart brand card. Whether that means that Kmart made cards for 25 years, or whether Kmart had been open for 25 years, I have no idea. Here is a stellar Bob Clemente.

While no logo is on the front of this card, this is a 1975 Hostess Oscar Gamble. I saw a few other examples of Hostess cards and they all seem a bit blurry, but you gotta give some style points for the fro and stache.

McDonalds jumped into the fray as well. this card is from a 1992 insert set.

1988 Nestle Dave Winfield...

1986 Kitty Clover disc cards...Apparently Kitty closer was (is?) a potato chip company that offered round disc baseball cards for several years.

1991 Bazooka Dave!

Drakes Kirby Puckett. I did not catch the year on this set, but I can tell you that Drakes is the Northeasts equivalent of Hostess, offering a lovely selection of coffee cake, yodels, and funny bones. The Drake Duck is not to be confused with the Hostess Heart, which is certainly not to be confused with Pan Bimbo Bear.

Burger King and its set. Again, I did not catch the year on this release, but I know at the very least the they make a helluva burger.

These are but a few of the many brand name cards that are floating around out there. I would love to learn more about these and see some examples if you could point me in the right direction. Who knows, maybe I will fill up a few binder pages down the road. Good stuff!

Jacoby's Treasure Chest

Hi folks. Not much time to blog today, but being Friday, it is time for another (exciting?) episode of "Jacoby's Treasure Chest". Here are this weeks random three. enjoy!

Jay Leno Sucks!

That oughta get me a few accidental web hits!

But obviously I am not hear to talk about Jay Leno...this is a baseball card blog for Pete's sake! So lets talk about baseball.....well, since I feel bad about luring unsuspecting victims to my blog, I guess we can talk about Leno for just a little bit. It kinda leads into my actually blog topic...somewhat.

So I will just come right out and say that I am on team Conan. I have followed Conan ever since he and Andy first entertained audiences AFTER Leno. Helped get me through college...that and Madden football...and my hacky sack.

Anyways, Conan was spot-on with his statement he issued the other day. Moving the tonight show back 30 minutes would destroy the legacy of the show, and also would disrupt the Jimmy Kimmel show as well as Carson Daly. Conan stuck up for himself and his peers, and that was a totally classy move.

Now there are plenty of people out there that will argue that Leno is just doing what the network wishes to do, its not his fault, right? Well, WRONG because, unlike Conan, who has gone out of his way to defend the integrity of the show and his peers, Leno has not even come close to saying "you know what? I had my run on this show, it's Conan's now and I don't want to ruin the experience for him". Leno could have taken the high road, but absolutely did not.

Go Conan.

Anyways, the segway is that during my daily multiple-periodical scan for industry stories, I have read a lot of stories on the late-night drama. The other day, while reading these multiple-periodicals, I stumbled on a nice little gem in the sports section of the Wall Street Journal regarding "Blue Chip Cards" or more specifically a 30 sports card industrial average consisting of 15 baseball cards, and five football, basketball, and hockey cards that Beckett (WHOA, take it easy there) designates as the most influential cards in each sport.

WSJ listed seven of the 30 cards and illustrated the value of the card over the last five years. Since WSJ only included a photo of one card, I decided to jump in and find the other six and share them with you. Here is the sampling...


Topps 1952 Mickey Mantle - This card made the comment list of Most Elusive Treasure yesterday. The values (now remember folks, this is according to Beckett, so take it with a grain of salt) is as follows: in 2004 the value was $20,000. As of 12/31/09, the value is $30,000, an increase of 50% over 2004.

1933 Goudey Babe Ruth - Note: WSJ list the product as "Gaudey", so this might be the wrong card, but more likely it is just a typo. In 2004, this card was valued at $6000, today it is $8000, or and increase of 33%.

Topps 1966-67 Bobby Orr - 2004: $2500. 2009: $3000, an increase of 20%.

Topps 1965 Joe "I wanna kiss you, Suzy" Namath - 2004: $1600, 2009: $1800, and increase of 13%

Topps 1957 Bill Russell - 2004: $1000. 2009: $1100, and increase of 10%.

Bowman 1948 George Mikan - Heads the other way. 2004: $2500. 2009: $2250, a DECREASE of 10% value.

Finally, a T206 1909-1911 Honus Wagner. Obviously this is a reprint and you would be hard-pressed to find an original on Ebay. The original was valued at a smooth $500,000 just five years ago. Today? $350,000, a DECREASE of a whopping 30%.

The article does not speculate WHY some cards increased so much in value or why poor Honus decreased so steeply, but at the very least you are able to see some of the hottest movers and shakers over the last five years (according to Beckett).