I continue to add my card inventory to the Trading Card Database site. Nothing quite underlines the fact you have too many cards like this process.
I'm probably a little more than halfway through, 60 percent perhaps, and there's still so much more to cover.
It leaves a lot of time for thinking as you're checking box after TCDB box. And one of the things that I was thinking about yesterday is how not every team collector's experience is the same.
This is not a sudden realization, for anyone. I've long known that a person who collects Dodgers or Yankees or Red Sox is not going to have the same collecting experience as someone who collects Brewers or Diamondbacks. This is not 1979 when Topps was the only game in town and there was basically one set to chase and the teams received pretty much the same allotment of cards.
Since the '90s, and probably with boxed sets before that, team distribution has been all out of whack. Some teams get a lot of cards, some get very little. And how does that make you feel? That's what's interesting to me, especially as someone who collects one of the teams that traditionally receives a lot of cards each set.
As a Dodgers fan, I know I must find a bunch of cards, for flagship, for Heritage, and definitely for anything else. Unless I purchase the sets all at once, it's going to be a project. I appreciate the recognition of my guys and that the card companies are making cards of players like Austin Barnes, but sometimes when I see the checklist for a club like the Mariners, it feels like the grass is greener over there.
Take, for instance, 2016 Bunt, which I was filing into TCDB. This is a set I haven't thought about in a few years, especially since Topps replaced the brand with the superior Big League (where oh where is 2021 Big League?).
But I noticed the large disparity in the number of cards per team in this set, which isn't anything out of the ordinary, a lot of spin-off sets are like this.
The Dodgers have nine cards in 2016 Bunt. That's a sizable amount for the set, but fairly average stuff for a Dodgers collector.
The Red Sox have even more. Those are the nine I have, but I am missing five others! So there are 14 Red Sox in the base set.
Meanwhile there are just five Tigers in the Bunt base set. And as I was entering them into the database I discovered -- huh -- I've completed the entire Tigers team set!
It wasn't that difficult. Not difficult at all. I finished it without even noticing for five whole years! That's when I started getting a little envious -- must be nice to complete your team set without even trying or even noticing. All I had to do was buy a few packs and there they were!
It must be heaven to be a Rays fan -- that's a three-player team set right there! Boom, boom, boom! You're done!
No searching, no trading, saves on cost sometimes. What a world that must be.
The 2016 Bunt Phillies are even better. TWO CARDS! Aaron Nola and Mikael Franco and that's it! (Of course I managed to get only the Nola card, so maybe it isn't so easy).
I'm being a bit facetious here, as I know that those fans of smaller market teams complain all the time about the lack of recognition from Topps. While Clint Frazier continues to get cards in sets just because he's a Yankee (that will end now), players on the Rangers and A's battle for card recognition. I know that's got to be frustrating.
But so is hunting for a healthy stack of players for every single set and then they stuff the inserts with a bunch of your guys, too. And with teams like the Dodgers, who have a long history, you know Topps is going to hammer you over the head with the legacy guys (really playing with the definition of "team set" when they keep putting dead guys in the mix). How about a little love for Houston's Larry Dierker or Cincinnati's Jim Maloney?
There are good and bad parts to being a team collector for a popular team and a not-so-popular team. That's all I'm saying. Because, unfortunately, card companies spend more time thinking about what cards are going to sell -- what teams are going to sell -- instead of an even representation of each squad, even though in real life each team has the same amount of players. But real life left cards a long time ago -- have you seen card backgrounds lately?
All right, that's all I have. I have to go see how many Dodgers are in Allen & Ginter Chrome.
Comments
(Also, now that you mention it, I've pulled an inordinate amount of Clint Frazier cards over the years.)
P.S. That's pretty awesome that you've inputed 60% of your collection into TCDB. Congratulations.
Then more smaller sets came and went.I accept it now. But back in the day, I was so frustrated buying pack after pack looking for the rest of the players.
If I could go back, I would say,"Diego read the checklist, that is why they are made." 😂
What I don’t care for is when my team’s checklist allotment shrinks in the standard Topps Baseball set down a good half-dozen cards lower than the expected first place teams. One year this # dropped all the way to 15 cards when other teams were up around 25 cards. But even then when I looked into it, I couldn’t assign a lot of blame to Topps because so many players for the Tigers weren’t even good enough to play complete seasons anyway. The roster was in so much permanent flux that the set editors clearly had less chance to pull the trigger on issuing cards for players appearing in 50 games.
And unless some short term player does something memorable like coming off the bench to steal Home and win a game against a first place team unexpectedly while you are watching live … after a while you don’t mind not having so many cards to commemorate another > 100 loss season. Oh, yeah, that guy who couldn’t hit over the Mendoza line in his 39 games that year - do I really want to think about that all that much, ever again? Do I really want more than one card of the first round draft pick who lingered on the bench for 3 years as a back-up after all that hope placed on him?
But one thing that happens when your team is bad for a while is there seems to be more error cards issued for them - cards of players who didn’t even suit up for your team that year, which are the real twist of the knife from Topps. Your team is so bad we’ll print cards of players who don’t even play for it any more. Gee, thanks.