First off, it was bugging me that I didn’t do my research and pulled an all gray Rangers uniform. So, just to prove I’m not crazy and for the sake of doing things right, here’s the right combo to compare to the Marlon Byrd airbrush from my previous post.
Notice the easy to remove stripe...and Girardi shooting daggers behind those shades
Okay, now that’s out of the way, I wanted to talk a little bit more about team sets.
Of course, 2010 gave us a Topps pre-packaged set that anyone within the region can purchase with little trouble or financial detriment. The past few years have seen the same type of thing from what I can gather. That simply is not good enough for me. Getting different pictures on MOST of the Topps cards isn’t all that special. It’s merely about completism (not a word, but run with it).
I was looking at the Cubs schedule a while back ago to see if there was a decent enough giveaway I could use to coax my Cub-hating girlfriend to attend the game. There wasn’t.
In the back of my mind, I was also secretly hoping I would come across the giveaway of a Cubs team set, so I could force her to go, thus giving me two sets. Again, there wasn’t.
But why there wasn’t?
My dad was a teacher and had summer off, so he made a point to get us tickets to the Cubs games where they gave out baseball cards. Even though I work a normal 9-5 job, I would gladly take a day off to get my hands on some exclusives like this bad boy
Oversized, flimsy and awesome
We have 4 copies of this somewhere (3 are in still sealed sets). Almost all of our team sets are still shrink wrapped. This one wasn’t, so I nabbed it for the Maddux collection.
This card proves that it can’t be hard to produce a set for the teams to giveaway at the games. The stock this is on is so flimsy, it can barely be considered cardboard. They didn’t care to make it regular card sized. The back is plain as all get out and the design on the front leaves a little to be desired unless you’re really into German Expressionism. I can’t imagine it being a licensing issue if they’re being released at the game. Hell, have Topps design something new for the 30 teams if it must be them.
But it’s fantastic, because I know how I got it — by going to the game and rooting for my team (unless they were playing the Mets that day). How many other people got sets? Only 9,996. How many of those kept them? Probably less than that. It’s not so much the rarity that makes it great, it’s the fact that you had to be there at the right time to get them. Now, I just have to be at Target at anytime within 6-8 months with a fiver burning.
Do any of your teams still do the card giveaways? Or has everyone moved to the passe-even-when-they-first-started-making-a-comeback bobbleheads?
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