One Met at a Time, Vol. 12

Player:  Cliff Floyd

Card Info:  2005 Topps Bazooka (Gold Chunks parallel), #166

I like parallels -- colored ones, especially -- as much as anyone.  But, these Bazooka "Gold Chunks" cards are three times the thickness of a normal card.  And that's a little bothersome when the time comes to put them into an album sleeve.  Or maybe I'm too particular?  Nah, can't be.

Great photo choice on this one, by the way.  Cliffy trotting around the bases at old Yankee Stadium.

At the time of this posting, there are 37 Cliff Floyd cards in my Mets collection.

MK

Archives Arrived at Last!

I finally found 2016 Archives at my neighborhood Target store.  A week later, but we're no worse for the wear I suppose.  They had a few blasters but no rack packs, so a blaster is what I went with.

I opened seven of the eight packs within the box and put one aside for my son's box o' packs -- one pack from each Topps product since his birth year of 2014.  [Ed. Note: I've gotta tell you, it's a pretty impressive cache of packs the little guy's got working!]

Anyhow, the first card out of the very first pack I ripped is pictured above.  Was this blaster meant for me or what?!  Sure, I didn't score any big hits or autos or whatever -- though, maybe my son's pack has a Darryl Strawberry auto, who knows -- but I did pretty well by pulling seven Mets cards!  There are a whopping 15 Amazins featured in base set (no SPs, thank God!)

As for the reproduction and integrity of the '79 design, I give Topps a solid 'A' for their efforts.  The colors match those of the archival Mets cards from '79 and the photo choices are good and 'new.'

The card backs are also nicely done.

By the way, I feel no difference in the card stock this year versus last year.  I read a few places where folks felt it was different or thicker or whatever.  That's really my only complaint about the latter-day Archives product. Same as every other year.

The other '79 Mets I pulled...

Of course, Tom Terrific is among the 300-card checklist.  I think it woulda been really great to have seen Seaver on the '91 design, but this works, too.

Familia, who notched his 20th save of the season Thursday night, makes his very first appearance in an Archives set.

Next up, the 1953s.

Since I wasn't alive for the originals, nor was I collecting Heritage back when this was the model set, I really, really like the '53s in this year's product.  I especially love how the Mets skyline logo looks within the design. I'm certainly glad Topps didn't try to pull their usual stunt of putting the circular logo inside of another white circle (like they did on the 1987 minis a few years ago).

Bartolo, aka the Big Sexy, is a perfect specimen for the elder design, don't you think?

A look at the back.  These might be the best card backs in Topps history, no?  At least they're in the discussion.

Topps has tabbed Matt Reynolds as the Mets RC emblem-holder across all it's products, I see.  I'm cool with that.  At least he's on the big league roster.

Finally, all the rage these days, the 1991s.

Beautiful!  I was overjoyed that the Mets representatives in the '91 subset weren't subjected to the city name on top of the team name.  Some teams have it, some don't.  Is there a rhyme or reason?  Only Topps knows (or maybe they don't).  In any event, the addition of the city over top the nickname not only looks bad, but it's dopey and unnecessary and I'm glad I don't have to put up with it on my Mets cards!

The backs are faithfully reproduced.

The Dude rounds out my Mets pulls from the seven-pack retail rip.  I hope Topps is paying attention to us bloggers who really are diggin' the zoomed out photos on the '91s.  Please return us to those times in the latter day releases, please!

Okay, so the overall subset tally for the Mets in this year's Archives looks like this:

-- 1953: six Mets (Gooden, d'Arnaud, Wright, Syndergaard plus the two above)

-- 1979: four Mets (just missing Granderson)

-- 1991: five Mets (Cespedes, John Franco, Conforto plus the two above)

In addition to the base, I'd love to track down the blue parallels.  Those deep blue borders look just about perfect on a Mets card!

Like most everyone else I've read, I'm very happy with this year's Archives.  So much so that I think I might build this year's complete 300-card set (or at least get a hand-collated set off eBay).  At the very least, I want to get all 100 of the '91s, as those are right in my wheelhouse.

I do a lot of ragging on Topps (and all of it is so richly deserved), but I have to hand it to them when they do a solid job.  So, good on you, Topps!

MK

Cards Which Are Baseball (aka A Return to the Norm)

After a brief sojourn into football and basketball, we now return to our regularly scheduled content. Namely, cards depicting America's national pastime.  More specifically, Mets cards!

At the last card show I attended, it was a case of barely walking through the door and getting sucked in by the very first table I came across.  It was a friendly and familiar vendor, but one who usually does not bring any dime boxes.  But, he apparently acquired a few collections recently and wanted to try something different, i.e. dime boxes.

Well, "different" worked for me, as I spent about 90 minutes going through the boxes and pulling cards.  In other words, I was in "the zone."

The boxes held a lot of Topps flagship and Bowman from the past five or six years, which is normally not the most enticing mixture.  However, there were tons of parallels, refractors and inserts peppered throughout, thus making this an Easter egg hunt worth the time and effort.

In the lead-off spot, a 2011 Topps Wal-Mart exclusive Blue Diamond insert.  Topps went kinda kookie with the diamond theme back in 2011 as a means to celebrate 60 years of producing cards.  At the time, it seemed like overkill, but looking back it produced a lot of fun variations to chase.

Y'know, like the sparkly Diamond Anniversary parallels from Series 1 and 2.

Plus the Cognac parallels that were available through packs of '11 Update.

A 'first' for my collection was this throwback logo parallel, the likes of which were exclusively available via Target retail packs.  I've seen these around the blogs and eBay in the past, but there is more than meets the scan, so to speak.

I had no idea these cards were a printed on sturdier, thicker card stock and featured cardboard backs.  Very cool and completely nostalgic!

I was pretty happy to find a couple of these throwback Mets during my hunt.

Keeping with the theme of retail-only cards from 2011, I was fortunate to find a pretty good run of these black-bordered specials, which were exclusive to Wal-Mart stores.

I think I might like these the best out of all the colored variations from flagship, including the blue, red and gold. Yes, they're tougher to find and/or keep in good shape since the corners and edges will magnify any imperfections, but there's just something about these.  They're so damn sharp looking.  Especially with the 2011 template.

The 2010 version wasn't so terrible either...

Man, I would love to track down the complete team sets for these black variations.  For the time being, I'm pretty stoked to own these.

Jumping back to 2011 for a moment, with some refractor action...

Your regular old chrome refractor here featuring former backstop Mike Nickeas.

And then a notch above with the x-fractor with Jason Bay.  Normally, I wouldn't necessarily be looking for refractors or x-fractors, but when they're in front on you and they're Mets cards and they cost a dime, you don't skip past them!

Might as well stick with the chrome refractor theme with these next few...

A 2008 copper refractor of Carlos Delgado numbered to /599.

Jose Reyes' 2008 Bowman Chrome refractor.

A 2010 Bowman Chrome refractor of Carlos Beltran, who -- at the time of this writing -- has homered in three straight games for the Yanks.

One of the best photos from 2012 Topps, here's an x-fractor of Ike Davis.

More Ikes...

A 2014 red hot foil of the former New York first-sacker.

And, to cool things down, a Wal-Mart blue parallel.

I still see a few glowing embers from that RED HOT parallel, so maybe another cool blue to handle matters.

Speaking of hot...  So, this Murphy guy sure can hit, huh?  I'm still a fan of Daniel Murphy and I have nothing but love for him. But, damn, I wish he was putting up these numbers in Oakland or Seattle or something. Having it happen within the division and just a few hours down I-95 really stings!

One of my favorite all-time Mets card photos right here.  The gold version of Marlon Byrd's only Topps card as a Met.  Marlon put up solid numbers during his short stint in New York.  Sorry to hear that he's recently become another PED statistic.

Some other fun Mets cards I was able to dredge from the various monster boxes...

A Ron Darling insert from 2008 Update.  Ronnie started three games in the '86 Fall Classic, posting a 1-1 record with a 1.53 ERA.

Not truly a "Mets" card, you could argue, but it's still going to be counted among them in my collection.

I love coming across these Spring Fever cards!  I found one (David Wright) at my local card shop a couple of weeks ago, but that one cost me half a buck.

It's funny, but I was looking for this card on eBay not so long ago!  Nice to have it fall in my lap for a dime.

Does Bowman still do the State and Hometown parallels?  If not, whatsa matter with them??

A black-bordered Doc mini from 2014 A&G.

I never knew a first-year Bowman card even existed of part-time player Eric Campbell.

And now I have two versions of it.  This hobby -- like life -- can be very strange!

It's Roberto Alomar, it's die cut and it's fun!

This strange thing is from the 2003 Topps 205 set.  It's what's known as a "Brooklyn Triple Folder." On one side you've got a black-and-white action photo featuring a pair of players.

While the flip side includes color portraits of the two players involved.  The flaps are held down by some sort of adhesive, but I don't intend to unfold this thing.

Pretty tough to top a well-done insert featuring the two greatest base stealers of all-time.

Shinjo rookie!!!!

Not just a 1991 Topps Traded Hubie Brooks, but a 1991 Topps Traded Tiffany of Hubie Brooks.

It's probably appropriate to end with an oddball, so here ya go.  McDonald's HoJo from 1992.

Thanks for taking the time today (or tonight, depending on when you're reading this) to rejoin me on the baseball trail...

MK