Variation madness

First things first: SamDaMan, where are ya? Want your free cards? As a contest winner, you have the right to them. Please email me your address so I can send you your winnings. You have until Friday. If I don't hear from you by then, the cards are headed to the runner-up, Dan from Saints of the Cheap Seats.

OK, the card I'm featuring is a 2008 Topps Heritage Ichiro Suzuki (yeah, he has a last name, and I'm always using it). I received it from Zach of Autographed Cards because he knows I'm on a never-ending quest to complete this set. This card is a black back.

Zach noted that I was collecting the black back set, too, and commented on how difficult that would be. He's right. I don't really expect to complete the black backs, but I hope to, just like I hope to be a millionaire one day and buy my daughter a stable-full of pink ponies. Perhaps when I complete the entire set, regardless of whether they're green or black backs, I'll give up on the notion of "must complete black, must complete green." Because it's really silly when you think about it.

I hope Zach doesn't mind me saying this, but something struck me when he said that he didn't even know the Ichiro card was a black back until he pulled it to send me. He said he had the card for months before knowing it was a variation. I completely understand where he's coming from. That happens to me all the time. These odd little variations that card companies have thrown at us makes set-collecting a never-ending series of checklists. Did I collect all the green backs? Check. Did I collect all the black backs? Check. Did I collect all the chrome parallels? Check.

I've done exactly what Zach did. In fact, I did it just two days ago with this card:

It's a Topps Allen & Ginter Ryan Church mini. I was looking at it as I was checking through cards for a trade. Then I looked at the back.

It's a no-number back. I don't know how many months I have had this card, but I never knew it had no number on the back. All those months, I had been quite sure the only no-number back I had was Ty Wigginton.

But the issue hasn't just come up with the backs of cards. I discovered this little bit of information while sorting my Dodgers a couple weeks ago:

The card on the left (by the way, I really need to clean the glass on my scanner) is the gold foil variation. But I had no idea I had a gold-foil variation card of Furcal until two weeks ago. I'm quite sure I received this card in a blog trade months ago. But I have no idea who sent it to me, so I can't thank that person for it.

Shouldn't variation cards be a little more obvious to collectors? Shouldn't you make the parallels shiny red or magnetic or made out of cork or something? I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "All you have to do is pay a little more attention, dumb ass."

Well, here's the thing. This is a HOBBY. I have loads of minutiae to pay attention to in just about every aspect of my life, from how I should edit the 20th paragraph of a newspaper story, to where I should purchase my electricity, to what my daughter's favorite puffle is (don't ask), to who has the best deal on a half gallon of milk. I don't have any extra time to pay attention to whether the font on the back of a baseball card should be helvetica or century gothic.

If you're going to make a variation, smack me in the face with it, so I know what it is. Don't get cute. (I realize the black backs and green backs were actual variations in 1959, but they were unintentional. Topps didn't have to do that in 2008. That's a little too gimmicky if you ask me).

So, I don't know what I'm going to do with the green backs and the black backs. I know this: I do enjoy it when I read how happy bloggers are that they completed the "non-shortprinted set" of Masterpieces or Goudey. I applaud that. I'm not sure if I could be happy with that, though. If I collected all of the non-short prints, there'd still be this persistent voice in my brain repeating, "but that's not the COMPLETE set!" That's what I'm afraid will happen with the green backs and black backs.

I would like to go back to the old days, when the only variations were error cards and the corrected cards. But that doesn't seem to exist anymore, unless it's a gimmick.

For example:

These are the two well-publicized cards of Pete Mackanin, former Pirates manager from the 2006 Topps set. The card on the left is the first version of the card that was issued and is not Pete Mackanin. It's Lloyd McClendon, who was the Pirates manager before Mackanin.

Topps issued a correction, which is on the right. But both of these cards book for the same price. I'm assuming that's because both of these cards are equally plentiful. That's a switch from the past, because for years, in countless examples, one version or another, either the error version or the corrected version, would be worth more than the other.

That's the way I'd like it to be. Variations should be errors, easy-to-detect errors. Rather than creating these artificial errors, which are actually variations, that are hard to find, and require you to make card collecting your second job. And, of course, for most of us, card collecting doesn't pay squat.