There is a strong line from the uniform to Votto's left arm, which perfectly leads the viewer up, and away — which is what the baseball just did. The full extension of his left arm argues for a potential that the announcer is actually saying "and he sure got all of that one," especially when one compares it to other cards/photos of Votto in this same post-swing instant, without that extension.
And that's all this image wrote. It is a nice one for this player in particular, subtly reminding the viewer to flip the card over and consider this player's power, which is not what he is famous for. Because would you really want an In Action card, showing The Canadian God of Walks, generating a +1 in his famous, perpetually League Leading stat? Though come to think of it, maybe a carefully photographed trot to First would make a nice little tribute to serious On-Base skills.
If you have absorbed all 19 cards in the set so far, you know this card has basically everything in common with the #2 - Derek Jeter card, except for which side of the plate they bat from (& they even use the same brand and color of bat). Could it be that the biggest superstars get the most 'zoom in' on their baseball cards? We shall have to keep looking at these cards to figure that out. Darn.
+Bonus points for the colorful blurry crowd, and another tiny batting glove MLB logoman appearance, supplying the tiniest possible smidgen of blue on the card.
+Bonus points for the colorful blurry crowd, and another tiny batting glove MLB logoman appearance, supplying the tiniest possible smidgen of blue on the card.
Uniform Hero? Yup. Probably the largest on-card Uniform # yet seen.
Where’d the egg hatch? Somehow, the scouts had Joey Votto a tad low on the draft priority boards, as he was selected in the 2nd round by Cincinnati in 2002. How that might relate to his 5 year (a tad long) path to his MLB debut in 2007, I am not sure. I also think MiLB stats for Votto would be basically interesting.
How about the migrations? Another prestige low-checklist-spot-holding Sea Turtle that has remained a 'Franchise Player' throughout his career. Votto won an MVP in 2010 and is currently signed through the end of 2023.
I doubt there is a fan anywhere that can truly say they don't like Joey Votto - everyone likes Canadians, in my life experience. 2019 will be an interesting season for him, his first in several years, as Cincinnati has somewhat pushed a few chips into the center of the table and said "Call." Unfortunately for the Reds, the other clubs sitting at their table comprise the NL Central, a couple of whom have also picked up some more chips from the cashier this winter.
Don’t flip over real Turtles.
If this blog were even more contemporary, Votto would likely be a contender for being a League Leader leader, with many more to his credit beyond the 5 captured on this card back.
I'm not sure exactly when Topps first began using direct quotes on the back of baseball cards, but it is definitely a handy technique for these constructions.
Can the Turtle Catch the Rabbit?
CAREER CHASE: With 197 doubles, Votto is 595 away from Tris Speaker's all-time record of 792.
Just 19 cards in to the set now, and the Topps research department is making an honest effort to diversify these.
At the end of 2018, Votto had hit 372 Doubles.
Now one would think that even in November, 2012, a fan might have likely already been daydreaming about Votto's chance at breaking a different All-Time record, particularly given the way he had just tied for the League Lead in Walks in 2012, despite appearing in only 111 Games. (!) So let's re-imagine this card back segment, and see what happens, as it could have appeared to baseball card collectors desperately absorbing some brand new Series One amidst the deep Polar Vortex of the winter of 2013:
CAREER CHASE: With 429 walks, Votto is 2,129 away from Barry Bonds' all-time record of 2,558.
At the end of the 2018 season, Votto had 1,104 Walks, which is 2nd among Active players (Pujols leads this one), and currently 78th All-Time.
Subspecies? Once again without all that much surprise, Joey Votto appears in both Opening Day and Chrome in 2013, with this same card image. Although First Basemen make good candidates for the "Great Catch" series, this card has no other variants.
Bling That Shell As I have noted all through this run of 9 cards that makes up the 2nd binder page in this set, I still need cards on it. For the Votto card I have a definite specimen purchased, not yet delivered - the Emerald parallel, which probably has the 2nd highest print run after the Wal-Mart Blue - something that helps tremendously for a strongly collected player.
And before I wander off into my parallel reality, I just wanted to note that the point of this blog is not to beg for help with these parallels, although I will certainly be doing that in a few cases. This particular page has been tough to fill throughout the project, and this difficultly can only really increase as time passes. But I have been thinking to start this blog for quite some time, though my original plan was to finish the parallel project, first.
The pages coming up are largely filled, or one cheap, commonly available parallel (the Votto Emerald cost me all of 60¢) away from completion. I have finally reached a point where I am going to start filling those easy pick-ups, and doing so sequentially, in hopes that acquisitions run ahead of the blog posts, and I do expect that.
This project has meant semi-regular monitoring of any chance to buy these cards, of course. And about ten days ago, a unique opportunity scrolled it's way into my eBay 'feed' - a copy of a 2013 Factory Set, the "Hobby" edition, which includes a 5 card pack of the /230 Orange parallels in each set, which we haven't seen much of, yet. These are found nowhere else, and nowhere close to 230 of each copy will ever circulate, as many collectors buy one of these as part of their investment portfolio, with an additional thought that breaking the Topps logo plastic wrap on the set would ruin it's value. So straight into a closet go untold thousands of these sets. I will return to that concept shortly.
In the meantime, let's rip a pack!
I hope I do not have the only "Set Blog" post, where someone rips a sealed pack of the cards involved, just to relive the original experience. But that is possible. It is probably especially possible that no other Set Blog has a video of the experience.
I should finish the story on obtaining that little pack. The Factory Set that was posted for sale was listed as "Sealed," but clearly wasn't in the photos. The listing also promised it included the special 5 card pack.
Given the Rookie Card mania that generally consumes so many in this Hobby, most people view the 2013 set as having essentially only about one card - the Manny Machado RC. Their main interest in obtaining a sealed set of these now would be for a copy of that card, quite probably in about as perfect a condition as possible. So without that Topps logo seal, most collectors would be mighty suspicious about whether a Machado would still be included, and whether it might not have been switched out with one horribly ruined by some sort of damage largely invisible to the naked eye of normal people.
The other suspicion would be about that 5 card pack - it comes in a clear wrapper, and would probably be not at all impossible to "search" the 5 cards, while technically still leaving the pack "sealed."
For my purposes, however, I would be just fine with an already searched little pack. As long as the seller was honest about including it, I would be fine taking my chances. I can use about 50 different Orange cards potentially, for 20 slots in the project, that could come out of the little pack. However none of them are valuable and none would register with anyone 'searching' the pack for the Machado Rookie, or a couple other cards that would definitely reward a purchaser of the little pack. I'm not strong on calculating probability, but I think needing one of 50 cards of 660 possibilities, with 5 chances to 'hit' one that I need, would be about a 1-in-3 chance. ?
So I put a $15 bid on the orphaned set of Sea Turtles, and hoped, and was rewarded with a little pack of cards to open, and another set of Sea Turtles to keep. As it turned out, the seller was someone who collects comic books, and the set of cards was just something he picked up as an inclusion with a purchase of a large lot of comics; he knew almost nothing about baseball cards, nor the worries anyone would have about the inaccurate "Sealed" auction title.
I definitely look forward to lucking into this type of purchase again, though not at the more expected $40-ish price point for a normal Sealed 2013 Topps Factory Set. Aside from needing some of these fairly scarce parallels for my project, I am not immune to the "lottery ticket" aspect of baseball cards, even though I never buy anything but the very cheapest tickets. A chance at hitting the Machado RC, or a couple other cards, adds to the motivation. There is also one known printing error card that only appears in early production runs of the Factory Set - we will consider that card here before too long. That one "key" RC in the set, by the way, still sells for all of about $3 "raw", and given Machado's difficulties in signing a new long-term contract this winter, I don't expect that to change all that much, any time soon.
Speaking of which - by the time that particular price point might change some day - you might want to open any 'Sealed Factory Set' you might own. They do not have an infinite longevity, like other financial investment instruments, and that is not just a crack about the future value of baseball cards. The glossy cards Topps produces in the 21st century simply can't be left in packs and sets and probably not even those long cardboard card boxes collectors use, without some risk of damage, over time - the cards can all so easily stick together. Check out this image of a card most every collector would like to pull from a pack left over from 2001 Topps:
No, Ichiro is not such a consummate pro that he completed the throw before running in horror from the swarm of bees attacking him. That is the result of what is called "bricking", as over time glossy baseball cards can begin sticking together, and can't be separated without damage.
In my experience with cards from the 2010s, they have been seeming to begin this process sometimes, when I go to look for something from 'doubles' in a 600 count box, rather than in binder pages.
Not every glossy set will do this, and not every set of storage conditions for a glossy set will create this - but it can't be ruled out, either. A lot of people hoarding that one sealed box, that contains the killer Rookie Card (or, maybe 3 of them, if in packs) of that one player, all the way till that player appears on the podium at Cooperstown, and only then will they open the box - will be learning this the hard way.
Of course, one can also realize that for some collectors, the only thing that matters actually IS the seal. As long as the set or box of packs is sealed, that's all that counts. It reminds me of Schrödinger's Cat - the only way to discover if the baseball card is still in good shape is to open the box, which might reveal the GOAT's glossy Rookie Card is now just part of a weird brick of partly melted 'paper' and ink all fused together. So that desirable card is both valuable, and worthless, at the same time, as long as you never open the box.
My advice? Open up your Factory Sealed Sets of 2013 Topps, check out that little pack of Orange parallels in the Hobby edition, and then check my want list. :)
(Or just simply set up a box of left-over glossy cards in the same place you may wish to hold things like Sealed Factory Sets, and just monitor the surplus cards for evidence of 'bricking' every couple years.)
Who knows, you too, could hit the Orange Machado RC, though your odds of that might be about as good as my estimation of his current chance to ever appear in Cooperstown, New York.
OK, so, if you watched the video you know I now have an Orange /230 parallel of the Yu Darvish #10 card. A far more good than meh "pull" from that little pack.
Can I work it into my All-Parallel project? Yes.
Will I? Maybe.
Early on in day-dreaming up this collecting project, I knew I didn't want any "double" colors when selecting a permanent parallel to include. So no Wal-Mart Blue parallel of a card with a blue Sea Turtle. I also completely reject using Emerald/Blue combos, as the blue Sea Turtle largely disappears on those cards.
But over time I continued to refine those decisions and began to collect the cards more on preference for the visual final result. I largely scratched the use of the /99 Camo cards. I even decided I didn't much care for the Black/Blue combo, which exhibits a fair bit less "pop" us card collectors are always ooohing and ahhing over. Other people just call that "contrast." I will use a few Black/Blue as I go along, but I have busted them down to 2nd, or 3rd choice. I have similar concerns about using a Toys R Us Purple with the blue cards, though I will not completely reject those either.
But a key problem is all the 'blue' teams - there are 12 of them as compared to 8 red teams, 5 orange ones, and 5 teams with a unique color. Filling out the blue teams usually becomes the most challenging part of constructing the page now, and they are on every page, guaranteed.
Let's take a look at this page of cards, all in their native glossy white-ness:
This page has 4 blue cards: Darvish, Lawrie, Ethier, and Moreland. It also has a rare feature - 2 cards of the same singular team color, the grey for the White Sox. But the singular team colors can actually make for easier pages, as they work with usually all but only one parallel.
This page also has multiple options to use a dark blue parallel from Opening Day, for which I had a copy for the Pedroia card. Being able to use one of those cards, something not true on every page, means I only have to find 2 of the difficult, low print run parallels, and then the other 6 can be from the much simpler to acquire "retail" parallels (though that includes one "Blue Sparkle" which actually exists in only 150 copies); the Red, Blue, Emerald, Gold, and Purple make up the balance.
Early in constructing this page, I decided to use the Pierzynski card with the /62 Black parallel. That means I would need only one more limited /x card. And given my choices for the blue cards, I really only wish to use Red, Gold, Pink, and Orange parallels as first choices with those, and Purple and Black, in that order, as a second choice.
The final concern driving the construction of the needs list for the project is the particular player, and the cost it would entail to get a specific card for them. So in general for an All-Star player I am going to select one of the four parallels with thousands of copies each.
That point made it a simple decision to pick the Target Red parallel for Darvish. It also will go well with his red cap in the image. And so then the want list for the page listed the Lawrie, Ethier, or Moreland cards as wants, as either Pink, or Orange cards. Once one of those is secured one of them could be a Gold, and the other a Purple (or even still whichever of the Pink or Orange doesn't solidify this, if I could get one of each of those, cheaply.)
Confused yet?
But now, I unexpectedly own an Orange copy of the Yu Darvish card. I could complete the page with just a Purple and a Red - easy.
Ultimately though, I haven't scratched a Pink (or an Orange) card off the want list for this page. I still want the Darvish on the Red parallel. Sigh.
I was able to leverage that small pack of Orange cards into nudging another page quite closer to completion - the one with the Hanley Ramirez page, in Series Two. We will see that page here a few years from now.
Now it is well past time to move on here. The next 3 pages are 100% complete. Except, I can't help but look for a few ... upgrades.
Blog Update Highlight Well now one of my most pleasing 64¢ acquisitions has arrived at Sea Turtle HQ. Progress, progress...
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