My daughter is more awesome than technology

My daughter went out to the store, and with her own money, bought me four packs of Topps Series 2 for Father's Day.

Sure, she had to open one of the packs ahead of time and stuff them into a discarded "Twilight" wrapper so I could pull it out of the gift bag unsuspectingly. After all, she is her father's daughter and knows how to goof around. (She's constantly giving me rundowns of the weird vampire love saga that dominates the conversation of every girl her age. But it's only because she knows I don't want to hear it. I respond with a breakdown of John Ely's last three starts and we're even).

The Kemp 2020 card came out of the stack pulled from the vampy wrapper. I was very pleased. I have pulled just one other card from this series, and since the Dodgers are well-represented in the series, I'm looking forward to grabbing them all.

My lone issue with it is this:

I know it's a nice photo, but come on, man. It's obvious Topps can't keep up with the number of sets it makes. If it could, it would have different pictures available for everything.

Other than that, I am quite impressed with the look of the 2020 card. It might be my most favorite insert set of the year even if the cards don't look futuristic. (I don't even know if that was the intent).

Instead, the cards have a definite Kellogg's 1970s feel. I know some say Sportflics, but Sportflics weren't 3-D like Kellogg's and the 2020 cards.

There's your Sportflics card:

 They were cool, as long as the card was tilted.

And here's your Kellogg's card:

I don't know how well you saw the 3-D image on old Kellogg's cards, but I always struggled to find it. To this day, I have to stare at the image for a long time and maybe, on days when I'm feeling particularly smart, I will see a faint hint of 3-D action.

That's not a problem with the Kemp card. Even I can see the 3-D effect.

As Cardboard Junkie just mentioned in his post, the new 2020 cards don't appear to use the lenticular technology that was integral to the Kellogg's and Sportflics effects. There are no lines criss-crossing the image.

I tried to do a little research into how these cards were created, but I felt myself flashing back to physics class and discussions of prisms and refracted light. I started getting very, very, very sleepy. And that was the EASY part of physics.

But never mind that. All you need to know is: the 2020 cards are very cool. And more importantly, my daughter is very cool for getting just what I wanted for Father's Day (I didn't even tell her to get Series 2 over Series 1, she just knew. I trained her well).

Oh, and one more Father's Day gift:

The pull of the year sold today. Unfortunately, I had to come down on the price. The hype may be subsiding.

But hey, when was the last time I sold a card for 95 bucks?

Never.

Farewell, Strasburger.

(Thanks, Rob).