Common Cards, Uncommon Photography - Splendid Splinters Edition

As noted in a previous post, getting ready for Collector's Day back in November left me with a full binder full of cards with great photos to re-launch my "Common Cards, Uncommon Photography" series.  So many in fact that I was able to set aside a few groups that fell into "themes."  So without further ado:

"Splendid Splinters" (Part I) - Cards Featuring Broken Bats~!

2011 Topps Ramon Hernandez #233

A beautiful shot.  I love that they got both halves of the bat and the ball in the same picture.

2000 Topps Chili Davis #42

Chili looks like he is about to test that old saying that there's no shivving in baseball.

2007 Upper Deck Carlos Zambrano #283

Amazing timing to catch the bat while it is still in one piece!

2004 Upper Deck Jay Payton #258

I think Jay got just a little bit jammed, seeing as how he has approximately zero arm extension on this swing.

2010 Upper Deck Kyle Phillips #32

A fantastic shot capturing the rare "split the barrel right down the middle" break.

1993 Upper Deck Wes Chamberlain #267

I can't say I've ever seen a broken bat go backwards or towards the dugout, but that sure appears to be what is going on in this picture.

That's all for today, more to come in the next post!

2015 Topps - A Sight For Sore Eyes

I'm guessing many of you already commented on the upcoming Topps baseball release back in August when the cards were first previewed.  However, as I've been away from the blog for a while I only just looked them up today, so I thought I would chip in my 2 cents.

Since returning to card collecting on a regular basis I've found myself growing more and more frustrated by the card designs Topps puts out.  Now don't get me wrong, none of them have been "bad" per se, but they have all been so plain and similar.  I mean, how many times can you put out a set with a white border, silver foil, and little else?

Seriously,

how

many

times

???

Contrast this with another 5-year period in Topps' history:

Now I may not like all of those (I've always hated the 1986 design), but 25-plus years later and I can tell you without hesitation exactly which year those cards are from.  25 years from now I highly doubt I'll be able to say the same about the 2010-2014 Topps issues.  I would be happy to endure the occasional ugly design to get others that are fresh and exciting.

Which is why I was so happy to see the new design for the 2015 set:

Is...is that COLOR??  And colors that change for each team??

Seriously, this made me SO happy.  Thank you Topps for doing something a little different.  And please, MORE of this!!

As far as the other previews of the new set, I am definitely interested to see what the Rainbow Foil parallels look like.  Shiny and colorful are almost always a hit with me, so I could easily envision myself putting together a Brewers team set if they turn out nice.

Of the inserts we know about, I love it when cards and history intersect, so I am most intrigued by the Baseball/History set which combines famous historical events with baseball events that happened on the same day:

The Gallery of Greats set also looks nice.  I am hoping that in person they have a little more of a "painting" feel to them, but it appears in this image that they are just regular photos:

I also love the "Future Stars" rainbow logo pin cards.  I very much hope that a Brewer is included in that set because that card will immediately go onto my want list:

Is it February yet??